Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (32 page)

They didn’t know of the goddess that gave
them their gifts. Instead, the brotherhood named this temple to
honor their ancient Norse gods, most notably the god of sunshine,
Freyr, once known to them as the Sunkeeper. Victor tried to speak
his mind, but the words proved difficult for a man with his throat
clogged with dried blood.

“Long have we served a power higher than the
laws of man,” Hans trumpeted from the pulpit atop a chorus of mirth
from the men down in the pews. “We kept ourselves constricted by
those laws in fear of the world we knew and the darkness that
festered like a disease upon its surface. Many years did we find
for those reasons, only I don’t fear the world any longer, and
neither do my brothers. I’m not the enemy you were so easy to
believe me to be. I only want that place in the world I was
promised in our most ancient of texts. Tell me, Mr. Mayor; after
centuries of nomadic oppression wouldn’t you ask the same for your
people?”

“Not this way,” Victor croaked.

“The heathen finds his tongue!” Hans burst
into a hoarse laughter that saw his entire caucus erupted into a
similar state. “There is
only
this way! Or do you not pay
notice to the history of the human world? This is the way of them.
Not us. We only pay tribute where tribute is due, so say we
all.”

“Who are you?” Victor asked, as his one good
eye lowered to Hans’ side where a small knife lay clutched in hand.
“I don’t mean the man you pretended to be when you first approached
me all those years ago or the man you became to weed your way into
my inner circle. I need to know the man behind the pretense.”

Hans paced in front of the cross Victor found
himself nailed to as the broken moon amulet dangled from his neck.
One of the broad Nord’s hands was pressed atop his bald head, the
other wrapped around the short, black handle of his blade. There
were slight tremors in his movement as he walked back and forth,
likely ticks onset by the rage and contempt he had for the man
strewn up on the cross.

“That isn’t for you to know,” he said through
clenched teeth. “You don’t deserve that right... not anymore… I’m a
king
among my people and I take my orders from emperors. Not
dying old men without a clue to spare.”

“I will not tell you of myself.” Without
proper cause or reason, Hans Brackhaus demeanor changed from brutal
tyrant to whimsical bard, reborn with newfound enthusiasm for their
gathering. “Instead you shall come to know the world that bore me.
The Brotherhood of the Crescent Moon are the men descended from
those that first touched the hands of the Sunkeeper. After
millennia of worship our human progenitors made contact with the
Asgardian capital of Valhalla in the lands of the New World, these
lands, and it was
good
, old friend. It was right. I only
wish I could’ve been there to bear witness to its blessed
creation.”

A spirited Hans beat on his chest once, which
caused the others in the sanctum to respond in similar fashion. “In
the old days we were the fiercest warriors in the known world.
Berserkers, we were called, and our tales told to scare good,
little Catholic children into a life within their borders.”

“But as our ancestors would soon learn,” said
Hans, turned to those that waited with bated breath for his
verdict, “even the mightiest warriors can become more. With ships
led by the only human paragon our order recognizes, Leif Ericson,
son of Eric the Red. He was the first to discover that, in these
lands, we could become more than we ever could imagine in our
homeland. We became equal measures warrior and mage, set in this
world over four centuries before the Hell Gate swallowed Vatican
City whole. We are the warlocks, those chosen by the gods to rule
these lands, and we don’t reveal ourselves to those long for this
world.”

Not all the invaders that came to these lands
stayed to witness the birth of their new race. Most of them were
unworthy in the goddess’ eyes, so they left aboard the vessels that
brought them and returned to the shores of Norway. The Vikings
there rested on their laurels and their wealth, unaware of the true
dangers that waited for them in their homeland.

When the Hell Gate tore through the world it
left the Christian faith in tatters for decades. In those fires
emerged beasts of terrible strength and cunning. These were the
demons, nosferatu, lycans, fiends, and many more the world would
soon come to know well. They sought to weaken the world of man and
the gods that dwelled there, soaked in the faith of humanity.

It was a timeless war the gods were locked
in. The humans caught in between were just along for the ride.
Those that chose to fight back didn’t fight for long. Not until
heavens came to reign supreme.

The Christian faith became empowered by a
great many followers, each fearful that the monsters would come to
their neck of the woods. If only the faithful knew the monsters had
been there since long before they’d first whispered a prayer. God
and his armies of light descended upon the heathen lands where a
number of monsters had been driven. They cleansed the land in what
was later referred to as the Cascade amongst supernatural kind.
Countless meteors cleansed the lands of the pagans and set fire to
any hope they had of past glory. It was told that each ball of fire
to descend upon the land was affixed with its own set of golden
wings.

The Vikings were lost to the world, all but
the few that remained tethered to the ideals of false gods in the
New World. The goddess, the one that kept herself concealed, saw
great possibilities in the Vikings that stayed. At first they were
bloodthirsty savages that lacked the moral convictions of civilized
men. Because of that nature, their powers were slow to come to
them, and only after the goddess deemed them worthy did she allow
them access to the Sunkeeper’s Temple they built for her. The
goddess thought she could temper these men into a force for good in
the world. She thought wrong and the land paid for her
miscalculation.

The berserkers saw their powers increase
beyond measureable scale in the temple’s innermost chamber, and it
was there they became more than the men that settled this land. In
their eyes they’d become the hand of gods, rulers of all they
surveyed.

They quickly turned against the goddess’
wishes and stormed the lands that surrounded with hands of steel
and fire. Many tribes fell while the goddess debated her children’s
fate, countless peoples that could have amounted to more. It took
until the fires reached the Iroquois people in the north for the
goddess to seal her temple to her children.

Locked from their second home in less a few
centuries, the warlocks became lost to the lands they walked. They
built great ships to voyage home and teach their kin of what they’d
learned, but when the warlocks returned home they found their land
no longer belonged to them. These were Christian lands.

“You made a liar out of me, brother,” said a
scornful Hans Brackhaus, a man now visibly shaking in unrequited
furor. “We took you in, made you everything that you are, and this
is how you betray us, from the damned start?”

Hans raised the knife above his head and
lunged forward to plunge it into the gut of his old friend. Despite
hands flush with tremors, Hans managed to push the blade deep into
the mayor’s body, until the hilt of the knife was buried in his
abdomen.

“You should’ve told us what the hell you were
when I came to you all those years ago!” Hans withdrew from the
cross and turned to his gathered mass of followers, but left his
blade behind as a grim reminder of the pain yet to be inflicted. “I
opened my arms to you and you stabbed me in the back! You made a
fool out of me, our brotherhood, and our way of life!”

“I should’ve told you,” Victor said as a
slight chortle arose to block up his blood ridden throat. “I
should’ve told you… so you could butcher me… my wife, and my
newborn daughter? If you take me for that brand of fool then I’ve
done my job better than I thought possible.”

Victor’s head sunk from the loss of blood,
but he fought to remain conscious all the while. There were things
left this world he needed to see done, things that would prove
difficult if he were to fall here and now.

“So we could watch you more closely,” Hans
replied. “You might’ve even been considered an asset, whatever you
are, had to disclosed your abilities and their measures. We needed
to know you were committed to the cause and in that regard you
failed us miserably.”

“While I didn’t agree with your methods for
dealing with the wretched lot of demon kind,” said Hans as he
ripped the knife from Victor’s belly, “I still considered you my
brother in arms. I even pretended to let you wear the mayoral
crown. How do you accept my friendship and hospitality? You spit in
my face and lie behind my back! Yet, no matter what I say, or what
I do, as far as the monster in you is concerned, I’m the goddamn
enemy here. Isn’t that right? After everything I’ve
fucking
done for you? You were a cockroach when I found you and that’s how
I’ll see you finished—as a filthy, squished up cockroach.”

Victor lowered his gaze from Hans Brackhaus
in front of him, but his sudden turn in composure didn’t come from
anything said by the crazed leader of an ancient cult. It came from
the actions he committed in the name of such madmen.

When Victor was approached by Hans to work in
tandem with the Brotherhood of the Crescent Moon it was an
opportunity he could ill afford not to take. They offered him a
life out of the shadows, a life where he’d never have to worry
where his next mile would come from and one where he could make a
difference for the others of his kind.

Those others never came and Victor was left
alone with the humans and the monsters. He thought he could curtail
their dark habits, prevent a scene such as this from playing out,
and with a little luck, carve out a small place in this world for
his seemingly human family. Then everything began to unravel and
all he wanted was to save the daughter he drove away.

“How can I trust you ever again?” Hans asked
as he traced his knife slowly down from his point of incision. “You
were my friend! I gave you everything, and what did you return to
me? Nothing! Do you hear me? Do you? Because I don’t think you
understand the anguish you’ve put me through… but you will.”

Hans grasped the knife firmly in both hands
and moved to Victor’s bruised and bloody feet. He stabbed downward
with the blade, but his aim wasn’t meant for flesh. His knife cut
through the rope that bound the mayor’s feet, which now lifelessly
hung in the air.

“We’re going to set fire to Salem and then
place the blame squarely upon your shoulders, Mr. Mayor,” said Hans
Brackhaus as his knife remained precariously by the feet of his old
friend. “Once the fires die down and life returns to your precious
city we’ll reclaim Salem the proper way; the American way. We’re
going to buy the land out from under them and we’re going to get it
at considerable discount. My gods, Victor, if you could only
witness the damage you’re about to bring to this
undeserving
city.”

Victor tried to speak his peace, but blood
inched up his esophagus and he found the words unavailable to him.
His screams were similarly muted when Hans Brackhaus took the knife
to his large toe.

Hans carved away with his knife until he got
past the flesh to where Victor’s toenail took root. There the blade
cored his nail from its fleshy binds, and with the bloody nail in
his hands, Hans looked up to the distraught politician, and said,
“You know, there’s a fortune to be pillaged from Salem’s charred
remains. I hear Collard Industries has more than a few samples
worth a king’s ransom on the black market. Anything to aid the
cause, am I right? Of course, one broken vial and the biological
agents contained within could wipe up every human within a hundred
mile radius. What am I saying? Who cares if the humans suffer as a
result? Let the dogs fight amongst themselves. We serve a higher
purpose.”

The dark robed warlocks began to chant in
their thick, native language. Victor was hardly in his right mind
and couldn’t understand a word of what they sang, but the hymn
these warlocks chanted was a battle song, of that he was certain.
This was a call for blood, his blood, and it wouldn’t cease until
he was opened up by each and every one of them.

“We’re going to own this city.” Hans wore a
proud smile on his face as he handed his ceremonial knife to the
next brother in line. “We’re going to own your home, your holdings,
all that makes you what you are; even your dearest daughter,
whatever she is, will belong to us in due time. If she survives the
night, that is. You of all people should know I can’t ensure the
civility of my berserkers.”

They knew nothing of the light inside him,
the light inside his daughter, and if he died in their clutches his
daughter would walk this would without knowing what she really is.
It was a fate worse than death for their kind, for if her two
halves didn’t become one, she would cease to be the warrior of
light she was meant to be, and instead become a vessel for the void
that haunted all their kind.

He didn’t care about what happened to
himself. There was a long list of sins attached to his name. Sins
he knew would one day come back to haunt him. Those thoughts
offered him little comfort when his daughter was somewhere out
there, alone, and unaware of the dangers that dwelled within.

The next warlock stabbed Victor in his right
leg, black, blue, and an undead pink from the blood he lost. The
dagger pressed against his shin blade and saw the bone fractured
before he removed it to allow the next in line to take their turn.
Victor had no tears left for his woes. He was broken, both
physically and emotionally, and without a care in the world towards
his own wellbeing. He made bed. Now he had to lay in it.