Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (38 page)

Bolts of lightning, ice and fire were fired
in all directions in attempt to slow Remus down. It proved to be an
immeasurably large task and he avoided all of their projectiles as
he moved from one warlock to the next in rapid succession. He made
swift work of the warlocks nearby, but they were many and he was
few. He couldn’t keep this pace forever, but suddenly, the man in
black found he didn’t have to.

The eyes of the horde were removed from Remus
when the flash of snarled teeth emerged from the back alleys. The
frenzied werewolves used the close confines of this battle to tear
into the warlocks massed against them. The elements were used
against them, but the werewolves fought to remain on their heels
and kept out of the line of fire.

Remus was astonished to watch as the
werewolves actively went out of their way to avoid him. It would’ve
been a bizarre sight on any other night, but for it to happen on
the night of the full moon was an entirely different world of
strange.

“This time, vampire,” beckoned Holger,
“you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.”

Remus dropped the dark robed brother that
currently resided in his arms and wiped the man’s blood from his
lips. He waited for the mountain of meat in front of him to
approach, intent only to goad him further before the final blow was
delivered.

“You think so?” Remus asked as the many rows
of shark-like fangs descended from his mouth. “There’s not a beast
on this world I can’t devour whole. There are only the ones that
resist long enough to be diced into a dozen pieces.”

Holger rebuked the man in black’s showmanship
with some of his own. He placed his free hand on the fuller of his
claymore and whispered a few inaudible incantations. The claymore
burst alive with an azure flame that ran from the hilt to the tip
of the cutting edge.

“Impressive,” the king mocked. “I bet you’re
the guest of choice at fanciful dinner parties…”

Remus’ voice trailed off as two werewolves
bound between the two of them. He almost forgot there were others
in this battle, others that likely cared less for him than the
brothers they feasted upon. This wasn’t his fight. It wasn’t
theirs. This was the battle for Salem and everyone within these
walls had a stake in its outcome.

“You smell like a human,” taunted Remus in
attempt to force the warlock’s hand, “and you look like one,
too.”

It worked as intended. Holger stormed from
one side of the street to the other and closed on the man that took
his mentor’s life. He took several arched swipes at the vampire
king, but much to the brawny Nord’s surprise, all his attacks
missed by a wide birth.

“You certainly fight like a human,” Remus
said with a distasteful snicker. “Are you sure it was your brother
that lacked the gifts of your kind?”

Remus overheard the conversation the hulking
warlock had with Victor Dukane. While he didn’t know of Holger or
Julian before this night, the vampire king wasn’t opposed to using
the information to his otherworldly advantage. It was his second
favorite weapon, after all.

“You monster!” a livid Holger bellowed as he
came once more at the man in black. “Tell me what you know!”

“I drained the fool,” he lied, in hopes of
further antagonizing the warlock. “Then I snacked on his organs and
devoured his bones whole. I saved his brain for last… I like to do
that, you know.”

Enraged by his failings as a warrior and
brother, Holger lunged forward to see the man in black cleaved in
two. His overextension was a calculated risk, but not for the one
that meant to take it.

Remus used the warlock’s slow recovery time
to his benefit and caught Holger flatfooted, without any means to
soften the blow. But it wasn’t with his hands that Remus struck at
his foe.

A wide-eyed Holger stood lurched over as the
vampire king passed him by. His hands trembled so badly that he
found the claymore too weighed and it clashed to the ground. That
ringing remained with him as he looked down to see a small tread of
black had punctured his gut.

Before the mighty Holger could as much as
winch in agony several more of those black threads found the inside
of his stomach. He raised his head to see hundreds more stands of
black headed his way. They came from the chain link fences in the
back alley across from him, but these were more than wires that
came for him tonight.

It was the infamous shroud of Remus Castalon.
This was the true strength of the vampire king and now their
mightiest warrior had come to learn of his ways. He watched in
satisfaction as Holger’s body was riddled with more black threads
than even his enlarged frame could handle. The warlock exploded
into a mess of blood and excrement that left the man in black with
no one else to challenge his authority.

The fires of battle still raged on the
streets of Salem. The werewolves were succinct in their strikes,
moving from one target to the next before their enemies could hit
them with their elemental attacks. A sudden howl broke out amongst
the werewolves that saw their advance halted.

Remus sunk back to the shadows to avoid
whatever these warlocks had done, but it turned out they did
nothing at all. There was something wrong with the werewolves
themselves, not the men they feasted upon. It was almost as if
their link to each other broke somewhere along the line. The
werewolves, lost once more to their bloodlust, began to fight over
the scraps of their kills. This made them open targets for the
warlocks, and targeted they were by the horde that stood before
them.

The werewolves were swallowed up by the
warlocks massed against them. They tried their best to flee the
scene, but wherever they went, the flames were certain to follow.
In the end, only two managed to avoid the fires and scamper away
into the smoky haze, but their wounds were plenty. They wouldn’t be
back for more.

The man in black was in trouble. He
dispatched of the last straggler in his path and sunk into the
shadows to avoid further confrontation. On any other night the
death of a pack would’ve lifted Remus’ spirits to the cloudy skies
high above. Not this night.

The werewolves of Salem had taken much from
the city over the years, but in the end, they repaid every bit
taken with that of their own blood. No one could’ve asked more from
them. Not even Bernard Wendish.

So why couldn’t the vampire king? His kindred
abandoned him. They wanted the executioner. What they got was a
poor man’s substitute. He didn’t blame them. He blamed his maker
and her influence on the vampire kingdom from its dark roots. She
pitted her children against the werewolves, the Christians, and
even the reapers. She did all of it to attain her dark desires of
vampiric reign. Not just her kingdom, but all the lands of man.

It was no wonder the world hated them, Remus
thought, as he lay perched between the blurred lines between
darkness and light. Vampires were every bit the monsters they were
portrayed as; vile, ruthless, and willing to cut down a child to
save their own skin. Tonight the werewolves had done their
supernatural, civic duty. When would his kindred do theirs?

It was hard to see through the stacks of
smoke, but Remus picked up on a sudden change in pressure. There
was something brewing in the sky above. A crack of thunder broke
out through the streets, and then another, until one couldn’t help
but notice the swirled clouds of black at circled atop all those
crowded on 1
^st
Street.

“By the nine circles!” cursed Remus, his head
stuck in the clouds. “How much worse can this night get?”

Chapter Fifty Seven

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

Who’s the Bitch?

Lukas Wendish had come from fields farther
than the outskirts of Salem. He came through caged doors, rival
pack members, and a sadistic princess with thoughts of turning him
into her next adoring follower. Through these hardships he emerged
both a different man and a different wolf, and while Lukas wasn’t
entirely sure what he would become, there wasn’t time to figure
those changes out. Not while his friends and family risked their
lives against the flames.

Those were friends and family nowhere to be
seen. Lukas stood the very ends of 1
^st
Street as a black
horde of robed warriors stood massed at the other end; but it was
what emerged between them that caught the eyes of all.

Clouds of black fingers raked across the
skies were they culminated together in a black mass high above the
street the warlocks presided. It was the makings of an unnatural
born disaster, one that saw onyx clouds claw their way from the sky
and descent to the cement confines the supernatural races found
themselves.

“What the hell did I walk into?”

It took some time for Lukas to gaze back down
to the world, but when he did, there was something new for him to
locate. A wiry grin could be seen in the shadow of an alleyway not
far from the ethereal clouds. It was Remus Castalon and he sought
the attention of the one that stood alone.

Lukas sprang into action and raced down the
empty street without a thought towards his own safety. That began
to change when bolts of lightning were fired, not from the sky, but
the black army before him. Lukas soon discovered that his newfound
speed and agility allowed him survive what appeared an
insurmountable firestorm, but it wasn’t long before his attention
was snapped and the attacks started to come too close for comfort.
He was forced to duck into an alley and wait for the cracks of
lightning to cease. That’s where he came to know the true horrors
of war.

He hardly noticed his mother past her
scorched hide, but a few silver patches remained to give her outer
wolf away. He ran to her, but as he came to her side he saw there
wasn’t anything to be done. She would heal, be the true pains would
remain.

Beside his mother was a hunched Leanne Ramsey
who tore at Aubrey’s hide to see a new coat heal overtop. That
wouldn’t be anytime soon and if those men marched down the street
they would be certain to find them here. A single tear lay trapped
in the eye of Lukas, but he wiped it away and saw that hand
clenched into the clawed fist of the first newborn werewolf.

“You’re battles are over,” said Lukas, the
ground trembling beneath his weight. “I’ll see that neither of you
come to witness anymore senseless bloodshed, tonight and every one
afterwards. This ends here.”

His mother tried to lift herself to aid in
his coming battle, but a wave of her son’s hand saw that notion
come to a close. This was the pack master’s fight. With eyes that
pained to linger on the sight of his mother and friend, Lukas
turned towards the street at the end of the alleyway. He emerged
from the back alley to find the warlocks hadn’t moved an inch since
his departure; but it wasn’t him that kept them at bay. It was the
clouds of black and bursts of thunder and lightning, its slow
descent upon the streets coming closer and closer to its inevitable
arrival.

Those things didn’t matter to the pack
master. He bore down on the dark robed men and he did so with the
knowledge that he had the essence of what remained of his pack
beside him. Fifty had become three over the course of four weeks.
He would see that number drop to two, willingly, if it meant those
two could live free from the persecution that these men, and others
like them, would bring upon their kind.

The clouds of black paled in comparison to
those that swirled in the mind of Lukas Wendish. He forgot about
his undead ally and continued forward until he was almost
underneath the strokes of lightning centered on the streets.

That’s when the darkness peeled from around
the next intersection. Like the large black had of the grim reaper,
the wraithlike mass struck Lukas full bore and pushed him back to
the dark alleyway he consciously avoided earlier.

“Not yet,” Remus hissed.

Lukas stared down the man in black until the
shroud was relinquished from his frame. “You don’t tell me what to
do.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Remus, as if struck
with a newfound sense of enlightenment. “You’re a big boy now.”

“Screw you,” Lukas said in the guttural voice
of his new wolf. “You don’t command me, vampire king. Neither does
your sister.”

Remus heard the raspy call of the werewolf in
his voice. He saw the man that stood in the monsters place. It’s
what the vampire king smelled that bothered him the most. Lukas
Wendish wasn’t an unnaturally gifted werewolf. He was another breed
entirely. And what he smelled was both promising and lethal.

He made sure to keep that ostentatious grin
stuck on his shadowed face in the hopes it would veil his inner
demons. Half of the vampire king wanted to welcome this new breed
of wolf with open arms and see their centuries of hate abolished.
The other half of Remus Castalon wanted to choke the newborn wolf
out and devour him whole, before he gleaned the true potential of
his budding powers.

“I don’t need the daddy issues, kid,” said
Remus, halfway between incensing him further and trying to defuse
the situation. “I need a soldier; one that listens to
fucking
orders and doesn’t run off with some halfcocked
plan. You got that?”

“Whatever.”

“Don’t you want to help your esteemed mayor?”
asked Remus, his dead eyes narrowed with interest. “Don’t you want
to be the unknown girl’s hero in shaggy armor?”

Lukas thought it was another one of the man
in black’s mistruths, but when Lukas followed the vampire’s pallid
finger to a lump of white up the street, the young werewolf knew
what his eyes landed on.

It was Victor Dukane, crumpled up on the
pavement where he lay weightless in his own blood. This was a man
Lukas looked up to in admiration, before the dark truths of their
environment settled, only to see his fall from grace. He was alone
in this world, not an ally willing to pull him from the fire.