Night Kings: The Complete Anthology (41 page)

When the lights dispersed a glowing white
tiger emerged through the warlock king and devoured him in a mess
of opaque strands of light. He writhed in torment with his fists
raised to Valhalla above as the light tore at his very essence. He
was a king, meant for the finest things in life, and yet here he
was condemned to death on the eve of his glorious triumph.

Even as death took Hans Brackhaus, his war
cry remained in the air as his iridescent soul bled off into the
night; and as the glistening white tiger faded from his world, Elsa
Dukane took its place, on her hands and knees, eyes alive with the
awakened power of her other.

Chapter Fifty Eight

Night Kings: Old World Cull

Gregory Blackman

When the World Ends

The city of Salem was torn asunder on the
night of the full moon. That moon now waned in the sky above, but
the damage it wrought would linger long afterwards. With the death
of their lieutenant, their commander, and now their warlock king,
the brothers had been left broken, but still of this world.

The horde scuttled against now overwhelming
odds and fled into the fires they brought to Salem. Some would
survive long enough to reach the city limits; others would know
death’s embrace near as soon as they fled into the backstreets, but
all of the brothers would experience their own personal hell before
they fled what remained of Salem. Remus Castalon would make sure of
it.

All the witches stood in silence as Elsa
Dukane emerged from the mammoth sized beast. There was only one
that gathered the strength to put thought into action and that was
the warrior of light, herself, and she sprinted through the vacant
lot with eyes locked on another.

“Father, I’m here for you!” Elsa cried as she
collapsed to the ground and took his frail husk into her arms.
“You’ve got to talk to me. Goddamn it!”

Victor Dukane was near death, but still he
drew breath. He couldn’t move. He could barely speak, but the words
he whispered into the ear of his daughter would forever change her
world.

“I-I never wanted this for you,” the fallen
mayor stammered as blood touched his lips. “I only wanted to
protect you from the darkness that took your mother. I failed… and
for that the city burned… I’m as guilty as the authorities will no
doubt conclude me to be.”

His lower lip quivered incessantly, but
Victor pushed past the failings of his human body and continued
with what needed to be said. “While you are the result of love, the
love for both your mother and the humanity that bore you both, you
were considered impossible among my kind, a joyous, impossible
burst of sunshine in the world, without a hint of the ancient
heritage of your dubious father. My failure to notice your gifts
was my first failure as a father, but it wouldn’t be my last—.”

Victor began to choke on the flecks of blood
that refused to crawl up his throat. Elsa tried to put his mind at
ease, keep him from finding his tongue, but Victor persisted to
battle his daughter and fought to appease his inner demons.

“You’re human side comes from your mother,”
he said, “but your other half, the one locked inside, comes from
your father. You’re people, the asura, have long wandered the
cosmos in search of a home to replace the one we lost. Earth was
that planet, a world both wondrous and horrid at the same time,
with enough resources and land to see all its peoples well
nourished. That’s what we believed at the time… but those were many
years ago. What we learned in all that time is that we knew nothing
at all about this planet.”

“You must go to the Old World,” Victor
continued through the fires that climbed up his throat. “Only there
will you be able to merge your two halves…”

“You’re not making any sense. How will I know
what to look for?”

“Your inner self will now,” her father
answered, “and if she should falter along that path… those that
remain of our kind will no doubt track you down; for you know, my
dearest daughter, it’s not every millennium one of ours is welcomed
into the universe.”

His answers only served to add more questions
to fuel Elsa’s desire for the truth. What would be found in the Old
World? What would happen if she didn’t merge halves? Those
questions would neither be asked nor answered as her father began
to glow with a peculiar red aura.

His light was almost out, but after three
millennia on this world Victor Dukane finally knew the peace he
sought. He could thank his daughter for that. In return, she would
know a world of hardship and darkness, but where he faltered along
the way he knew his daughter would be resilient.

Victor Dukane died that night in his
daughter’s arms. She cried a river of molten tears for her father,
but they did little to keep his corporeal body on this world. He
burst into the iridescent light their kind was known for, and while
everyone else was forced to look away, Elsa saw the true self of
her father—her true self—and it provided comfort in a time it was
most needed.

She spent too many years at war with a man
that loved her unconditionally. He was never a saint. He never
pretended to be one, but he was there for her in the end, even at
the cost of his own life. The time to forgive was over. Now it was
time to understand.

“Don’t weep for me, child,” said her father,
composed of dozens of white tendrils wrapped in a spherical mass of
white aura. “No one every truly dies. We simply changes from one
form to the next. That’s where both your mother and I will be…
waiting on the other side.”

Elsa took solace in the thought of her
parents reunited and watched as her father soared high into the
early morning sky. There were a myriad of emotions that stirred
within the far reaches of her head. She needed to release those
thoughts and find comfort in familiar arms—arms that knew loss and
darkness in great measure.

“Lukas?” she asked out loud as the crowd of
witches gathered around. “Where are you?”

“We haven’t seen him, child,” said Aubrey
Wendish as she placed a blanket over Elsa’s shoulders. “He must
have joined the vampire in the hunt.”

That wasn’t good enough for Elsa and she
struggled to lift off the ground, but it wasn’t until the
silver-haired pack mother lent her aid that the job was seen to
completion. She was joined by Leanne Ramsey, and while they were
draped in ragged cloaks, one didn’t need perfect vision to see the
many wounds inflicted on them. Aubrey Wendish stumbled around on
what could barely be called a foot and still she helped the unknown
girl to her feet.

Elsa expended a tremendous amount of energy
tonight. Energy she wasn’t aware she had, but she would see it all
gone if it meant the return of Lukas. She’d been a coward her whole
life. She suppressed her feelings, told herself it wasn’t real, all
in the fear that Lukas would reject her heart. If she didn’t get
the truth out now she might never again summon the courage to tell
him how she truly felt.

“He’ll turn up,” Leanne said softly, “There’s
no way he’d miss a cause for celebration. Not after he’s lost so
much.”

Aubrey took Elsa by hand and led her to the
side of the road. Elsa tried to fight her and continue the search
for Lukas, but she was weak and the hand of another seemed to ease
the soul.

“Why are you talking care of me?”

“Because you’re one of us,” the mother of the
pack said, “and you have been from the start.”

Elsa looked behind her shoulder to the empty
lot where she battled the warlock king. In that fleeted glance she
saw the company sign of Collard Industries. That’s what her other
noticed before the fires started to spread down 1
^st
Street. Somehow the tallest, most prolific building in the city had
vanished in the dead of night and not one person paid it any
attention.

What secrets did its concrete walls hold?
What secrets could prove so powerful, as to unbind a building from
its stone foundations? Those questions wouldn’t be for her to
uncover. She had enough of those to deal with as it was
already.

Elsa wasn’t the only woman on 1
^st
Street who’d been through hell and back on this night. Her best
friend, Gemma Kohl, visited Remus Castalon’s black kingdom, but
unlike any other before, Gemma lived to tell her tale.

It was a dire place where Gemma couldn’t see
her hands extended in front of her. That was nothing to the sounds
that echoed from one ear to the other. Gemma could hear the
tormented souls of the vampire king’s fallen. They cried out for
justice, and for peace, but those desperate voices would know
neither.

A familiar chill ran down the spine of the
young witch as the man in black moved to her side. Gemma could feel
the vampire king leer at her with his cold, dead eyes. Whatever he
wanted she didn’t rightly give a damn.

“Don’t even think about it,” Gemma said.

“One day we’ll call ourselves allies,” said
Remus, letting out a mirthful bellow all the while, “but that day
isn’t upon us yet. My people have much to atone for and it will
take time, money, and blood to teach them another way. It’s not
Salem we have to learn to share, Sister of Salem. It’s the entire
world, and in that my kindred aren’t alone.”

“We will try,” Gemma said in agreement.

Remus Castalon had come a long way from his
Sicilian roots. He’d traveled the world, seen every sight
imaginable, and some of them beyond even supernatural belief, but
every time he tried to become a better man he would find that he
only served to become a lesser monster. If there was a healthy
balance in this world he’d not found it. No vampire had.

Could Remus become that vampire while the
greatest threat to kindred survival lived within the same city as
him? Lukas Wendish grew leaps and bounds over these last few weeks.
Could the young werewolf one day usurp him as the truest monster in
town? In the city of Salem everything was a possibility. The
vampire king couldn’t have that.

“Some habits prove hard to break,” Remus said
to the sister beside him. His voice trailed off as the two of them
looked out to survey the carnage brought to their hometown. The
fires had taken much of Salem, but there still stood a glimmer of
hope in what remained. In that they drew a great deal of comfort.
“You fought well tonight, little witch.”

“You’re not surprised?”

Remus cocked his head sideways, looked down
upon the young sister beside him, and asked, “Should I be?”

Gemma Kohl didn’t have an answer for him. She
wasn’t going to play his game. Not while the few sisters left alive
needed her. She looked down the street to the mountains in the
west. They could only be seen for brief flashes before the
smokestacks of a burning city wash them back out of view, but it
was a sight that needed to be seen.

“Our last holy site is buried under that
mountain,” muttered Gemma, pensively and with remorseful
undertones. “Out of all my sisters, I alone got to see its inner
sanctum. If only for those few minutes El and I had. That honor
should’ve gone to someone of more importance than me. Whatever hold
it had over Salem, good or evil, that hold rests over the city no
more. Our pillar remains connected to the goddess’ realm. At least,
in that we can be thankful.”

The sight a hooded Cetra Altaras in an
alleyway nearby caught Gemma’s attention and, just like that, her
conversation with the man in black came to an end.

“It appears the high priestess thinks you’re
fraternizing with the undead,” said the vampire king to some
delight. “We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

Before Gemma Kohl could spurn the advances of
Remus Castalon, he dismissed himself with a stiff bow that saw him
descend into the shadows that marked the concrete floor. She knew
why the high priestess wanted her to go. That didn’t make it any
easier to swallow.

There would be no celebration in the streets
of Salem, probably not for many years after, but it appeared too
much to ask for the young witch to share in a victory with her
friends after she’d seen more than a lifetimes worth of
bloodshed.

“Come,” said Cetra Altaras as she guided the
sisters that still lived into the alley. “We must be gone from
these streets before the humans return to find us here.”

It wasn’t the humans Cetra Altaras feared.
Not this time. It was the sisters themselves that proved the true
threat. They were the enemy within. There was work to do and it
would begin while the fires still gripped their city. Too long the
witches relied on outside sources for information. No longer would
the Sisters of Salem be led astray. They needed to burn in the
fires that took so many of their kind. They needed to disappear
like in the times of old, slip into the shadows were they could
never be seen, never be heard, but where they could always be
felt.

Gemma shuffled off to the back alley where he
other sisters moved to flee the streets they fought to protect. She
didn’t want to leave Elsa, the werewolves, or even the nefarious
man in black, but now wasn’t the time to question her high
priestess’ wishes. There was much to do and Gemma Kohl would be
there to lay the foundation of what was to come.

Suddenly, Gemma was pulled aside by an
unknown hand. She tried to speak, but her lips were forced shut
from a witch’s incantation. She knew this because it was the first
one her mother ever taught her.

“My dear child,” said Marianne Kohl, “I came
back for you. I said I would come back for you. I did. I came back
for you.”

Once Marianna was a mirror image of the
daughter she bore. Those were many years ago and Gemma looked upon
a mother ravished both of the mind and of the body. She was
incoherent, milky eyed, and trembling incessantly. She had all the
marks of the seer, powerful witches with the precognitive abilities
that became ravaged over time by the visions they saw.