Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (31 page)

“What kind of sorcery is this?” an alarmed
Kaleb asked.

He watched, speechless, as the werewolf of
Lukas Wendish molted from this world in a bloody mess of flesh and
fur. The man emerged, curled up in a fetal position, and bleeding
profusely from the many wounds inflicted.

“Fine,” Kaleb grumbled. “I’ll kill the heir
like the cowardly man he wants to be so badly.”

Lukas twitched and grimaced on the ground. He
was transformed. No more tethered to the gods of the moon. That
didn’t keep the young werewolf turned man to be an open target for
punishment.

Kaleb lunged at the heir with eyes on the
kill, but an elbow driven into the pack master’s neck sent him
airborne in the opposite direction. He crashed against the trunk of
a tree, and in a cloud of splinter and dust fell motionless to the
ground.

“You always spoke of the pack when we were
kids,” Lukas said. He was torn open on his right side, from thigh
to shoulder, cut open and a bloody mess. Despite these wounds he
managed to rise to his feet and greet the circled horde. “I don’t
think you every really knew what the word meant. The lycan race
spent millennia as beasts without the souls of a mortal to tame
their hearts. They were bloodthirsty, ruthless, and no mans equal
on the battlefield. But as they moved across the countryside it was
the humans they took that were the true threat to their race. They
were born with another half, a human half, and it gave them the
strength to do what none could do before. They deposed their unholy
ancestors and they did it with the power of the pack. We are
descended from those hybrid few, not the monsters that enslaved
them.”

“After centuries of subservience the newborn
werewolf race struck in numbers no lycan family could contend
with.” Lukas’ wounds were plenty, but to the pack’s astonishment as
much his own, those deep cuts began to heal in rapid fashion. He
continued in on, not interested in the history session, but rather
the moment of peace it seemed to provide. “Packs were formed to
keep werewolves close-knit and loyal, but distant enough to see
prosperous hunting grounds for all. To disgrace pack mentality is
to deny all the progress it took to bring us here. Humanity isn’t
the inferior gene you believe it to be. It’s what allowed us to
grow from monsters to men. There’s still time to right the wrongs
of the past, my brothers and sisters. We can find an honorable way
home.”

The werewolves began to clamor as signs of
life returned to their pack master. Lukas wasn’t sure if their
calls for blood were for him or their apoplectic pack master over
by the tree. Regardless of their reasons, Lukas was sure to brace
himself for any possible attack.

“I don’t need a history lecture,” Kaleb
yelped. His back was likely broken, but still he pushed and pulled
until he righted himself.

“Your actions say otherwise,” Lukas said with
the teeth and claws of his wolf, but in the form of a man. He
looked to the other wolves for support, but found it lacking. “The
lycans pillaged and raped our ancestors. Are these monsters you
choose to model yourselves after? Because I see near a quarter of
what was once a healthy pack. You corrupt the strong and discard
the meek. Even the spiritual leaders of our pack weren’t immune to
your wrath.”

“You impudent wretch,” Kaleb screamed. “Your
father—!”

“Was a better man than you or I,” said Lukas,
earnestly and in remembrance of what truly led to this meeting. “He
would be ashamed of every single one of us. Yet, despite each and
every one of our collective sins, there’s no shame greater than the
pack member that’s killed so many of his own kind. The vampires
will write songs about you, old friend. All we can hope for now is
a just end to the fates that have come to pass.”

Power comes at a cost to all who quest for
it. Kaleb more than desired some of that power for himself. He
desired it so badly that he reached out and took it from the
clutches of a widow.

Lukas turned towards his mother, but as his
gaze shifted from Kaleb to his bruised and beaten mother, the
enraged pack master took one last chance to end what started with
the death of a reaper. He let Kaleb get less than a few inches off
the ground before he struck with a foot that saw the pack master
planted once again.

Kaleb was a bloody mess, but despite himself
and his many founds, fought to rise and meet his foe eye to eye.
That soon became impossible for the pack master that quickly rose
to dominance. Another bare foot from Lukas Wendish stomped on his
snout and sealed his lips from being able to speak anymore.

“I should kill you,” Lukas said as he drove
his foot down to the bone. “I have every right. You killed our
friends and family. You laid a hand to
my
mother and to
your
sister. Now you want to exterminate an entire city to
exact some phony vengeance on the vampires that dwell here. On this
night we’re possessed by our dark nature, guided to acts of
bloodlust and rage, but what’s gone down these last few weeks goes
beyond the wolf or the moon gods. It’s blood and it’s murder.”

“
You
chose to kill,” he continued,
“and you will pay the consequences for that. You will be forever
denied that which you seek.”

“Do it,” Kaleb growled with a mouth full of
dirt. “Reclaim your birthright.”

“It is tradition,” Lukas reasoned. He leaned
forward and placed a single serrated fingernail within inches of
the pack master’s eyes. “You’ve upset the natural order. There
needs to be consequences.”

“Do it!” Kaleb cried out through clenched
teeth. “Do it fucking now!”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Lukas said. “To
end your life over what’s happened would make you a martyr and me a
hypocrite. You will leave this land with whatever honor you have
left in your bones. You’ll forever be an outlaw among our kind.
Forever removed from place or status.”

It was a fate worse than death for Kaleb
Ramset to be forced to live without friends or family. His only
hope would be to find some distant corner of the country and try
and carve out a life for himself, but pride would have no home
there.

The werewolves in the circle, still lost in
their bloodlust, started to snap and snarl at the two inside. They
wanted blood and they wouldn’t stop until they got some. On any
other night they would heed his call, but not on this night it was
the full moon that held dominion over them.

“Listen to me, my brothers and sisters,” said
Lukas, his hands still covered in their pack master’s blood.
“Kaleb’s path doesn’t have to be yours. I hold no ill will for the
sins committed in your newfound clan’s name. Walk with me and
reclaim the honor bound lives you once had.”

Lukas knew he spoke to more moon god than
wolf, but still he tried to reason to his friends and family. “I
ask you to join me in the ways of my father and his before him.
Salem is on fire.
Our
city is on fire and I know for damn
sure that if my father were around he would be there, fighting to
the death for its right to be here. Into that fire is where I’m
headed, and if you accept me as master of the pack, that’s where
we’re all headed.”

It took a moment for the confused wolves to
understand what was asked of them by the flesh and blood werewolf.
They heard his words, approved of his smell, but these decisions
weren’t made easily while the moon gods pulled their supernatural
strings. It started with the lone howl from the hoary werewolf to
his rear. She was soon joined the ginger wolf across from her in
the circle. Then all the others joined in honor of their new pack
master.

“Leave,” he growled to the downed Kaleb
Ramsey, “while I still hold them.”

He watched as the mangled Kaleb Ramsey limped
away into the smoke filled night. The wolves snapped at him as he
passed by, but under the watchful eye of their new pack master,
their teeth avoided contact every single time. Kaleb would never
live down the shame of his actions. In that Lukas and he shared a
common ground. Both their lives would forever be stained by the
events that led to this night. Both would have to live with the
ramifications.

As Lukas looked around to what remained of
his father’s pack he couldn’t help but notice the blood-starved
eyes in all of their eyes. No matter their acceptance of him as a
leader, the full moon neared its apex in the sky. Control would
soon be out of their grasp, and with it Lukas’ ability to strike a
chord of reason with them.

He couldn’t let these wolves, his friends and
family, loose upon the populace of Salem. They’d tear the citizens
apart on the streets they sought to protect and it would all go
down minutes from now.

All the dissolution and thoughts of despair
brought Lukas back to the teachings of his father. Bernhard Wendish
would speak for hours on end of the ancient wolves, the ones who
slew the lycans, as if they were demons among monsters. The rabid
dogs around him weren’t wolves of storied legends, but they could
still learn use the teachings of the past to their advantage in
this world.

“Attune both your human and wolf to me,”
Lukas said to his pack of frenzied wolves. He had one shot. One
last chance before the werewolves became lost to the world and to
their own bloodlust. “I command you, all of you!”

The werewolves looked to each another in
confusion.

“Respect the pack!” Lukas bellowed. The
rumble from his baritone voice saw tremors pass outward from his
feet to the others in the circle. “You’ll kneel before me or face
the saw fate as the outcast!”

A flood of emotion and beta waves passed from
Lukas to the others. In battle, wolves could latch on to a leader,
one strong enough to rule, and follow them into the most lopsided
of wars. Lukas could think of no circumstance more exigent than the
one they now found themselves.

He sent the werewolves his darkest fears, his
greatest triumphs, and all the love in the world he had for the
werewolf race. They could be a brutish lot, unattached from the
world around them, and dark keepers of all the sunlight surveyed.
In the most desperate of times, when the battles couldn’t be
contained under the sunlight, they could also become beacons of
hope. It was those times Lukas’ father hoped to one day see for his
pack, but Bernhard never got to see those dreams come true. He died
on the eve of that change. Now it was up to his son to carry that
burden onward.

“Let me lead you one last time into battle,”
Lukas said to all in attendance. “Let us wash away our sins in a
river of our enemy’s blood!”

The werewolves began to bow their snouts to
the ground in reverence to their leader. The moon gods that pulled
their strings forced them to grimace and growl as they fought to
reclaim control, but the wolves under Lukas’ guidance remained
steadfast. They were no more under the control of the moon gods.
They were more than their own wolves. They were his.

Chapter Fifty Three

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

Evil Begets Evil

Victor Dukane awoke to the throb of her bone,
every crevasse of his body, pains that refused to heal over the
rusted spikes that kept him. He didn’t remember the events that led
to his capture, but there was one thing he was able to keep with
him as he was beaten to near death. His daughter was lost to her
light, out of control, but more importantly, she would remain so
until she learned the truth of her other side.

He wouldn’t be there while his daughter
discovered herself amidst cutthroats, killers, and monsters. He
would be here, buried in the remains of the Sunkeeper’s Temple,
paying for a lengthy list of sins.

“Good evening, brother,” said a muffled voice
to his right. “Know that I call you
brother
because you are
one of an ancient and sacred order that few in this world have
known. Those are bonds not so easily broken, yet they’re bonds you
have sought to test time and time again. I will see that at an
end.”

Victor’s right eye was swollen shut, the
vision in his left shaky, at best. His head pounded away in a great
deal of pain, though at this moment his entire body knew a great
deal of pain.

“You joined us willingly,” the voice droned
on, “an equal partner in name and wealth.”

Victor looked hazily around the room. It was
the light from high above that drew his wounded eye first. The moon
shimmered through a small crack in the cathedral roof, a moon that
brought with it many possibilities both good and evil. Then his eye
caught the lower portion of the inner sanctum, where at least a
hundred dark robed men sat upon stone pews in the nave of the
temple. A hundred heads, two hundred eyes glowing red with hate,
and all of them locked on the broken mayor strung up on the
pew.

They sat in wait for his sentence. The
verdict was guilty, of that Victor was assured. He spread upon a
makeshift cross, in the middle of the Sunkeeper’s pulpit, where the
crowded mass sat in wait of what was to come. His feet were bound
and in both his wrists were large nails driven past the flesh and
bone, straight into the wood framed around him.

“This was our place once,” Hans Brackhaus
said from his place next to the bloodied mayor. “Before the men of
the New World came and fouled its sacred halls it stood a testament
to both the men that carved its stone walls and the gods that
commanded it in their honor. When that honor was sullied by these
humans it sunk into the mountains to avoid further desecration at
the hands of lesser man. Now it stands ready to accept the chosen
ones back into its kingdom.”

It was unbelievable for Victor Dukane to
hear, who couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of their
misplaced conviction while his life hung in the balance. These men
were the Brotherhood of the Crescent Moon, men with deep pockets,
deeper connections, and despite the added advantage of hindsight,
they still didn’t know their true reasons for reclamation and
genocide.