She’d been in Gemma’s home a few times over the years, but her mother, Marianne Kohl, forbid such notions when she was around. She was, however, prone to long stretches of time on the road. This wasn’t one of those times and Elsa wasn’t sure if she would ever return.
It would appear that Gemma agreed with such notions and she’d already started to remove some of the miscellaneous objects from her mother’s home. Yet, with so many esoteric belongings and not nearly enough closet space, much of her mother’s aura still remained inside these walls.
For Lukas there wasn’t a word to his assessment of Gemma’s home. In an instant he knew why he hadn’t been allowed inside. None could survive the embarrassment of this becoming public knowledge. There were a wide array of objects foreign to him, but it was the gnarled roots, bottle assortments of body parts he could only hope weren’t human, and skulls of varied size that captured his imagination. His father had told of such people before, but all his words had been that of caution. Families such as the Kohl’s were not to be trusted.
“Nope,” said Lukas, “never been here before.”
Gemma left the two of them in the living room while she headed to the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a small tin box and washcloth.
“Let me patch you up,” she said.
“There’s nothing to patch up,” Lukas replied with dumbfounded confusion. “My ego’s a little bruised, but I’ll manage.”
“That’s good,” said Gemma, “because I was talking to Elsa. You remember the elbow, the one you struck her with?”
Lukas did remember. He remembered well. He was enthralled by another at the time, one both beautiful and wicked at the same time, but his thoughts were of a darker nature. It may have been the lady in red that possessed him to fight, but it was the man in black that guided his actions. Lukas knew what the man was, deep down, under his wing-tipped façade. And as he looked around Gemma’s home it became apparent she did, too.
“C’mon,” said Gemma, nudging her friend to the couch, “let’s sit down.”
“I’m fine,” Elsa maintained.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Gemma responded. “At least let me clean that blood off your stubborn face.”
Elsa was led by hand past Lukas, whom she extended a tongue to in disobedience, and sat down on the couch with Gemma. A wet rag was taken to her face amidst objections to the contrary, but a persistent Gemma wouldn’t hear of it and continued on until the job was done.
“You got anything to drink?” Lukas asked.
“Yeah,” said Gemma with a crooked smile. “It’s called water and it comes from the tap.”
Lukas left the two of them to deal with their troubles and headed into what Gemma called her kitchen. That gave the two women time to come to grips with what’d happened, far from the man that’d initiated the entanglement. It was a tense conversation between Elsa, who didn’t know where to start, and Gemma, who didn’t know when to end.
“Do you want to tell me what happened back there?” Elsa asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. It’s like they were all under her spell.”
“It was no spell,” Gemma said assuredly. “Possession took them.”
“Possession?” Elsa questioned. “What the hell does that mean? How do you know any of this?”
“I can’t say,” Gemma said. She looked down to her hands where a balled up rag lay between her fingers. Her hands trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold water or the sight of another’s blood. It was the reason for the lost blood that sent shivers down her spine and to her finger tips.
“Can you at least tell me about him?” whispered Elsa as she motioned to the kitchen area. “Is he still under that bitch’s control? He wouldn’t stop talking of her the entire way here!”
Elsa’s voice rose as she spoke of the lady in red and her otherworldly grip on both Lukas and the rest of the men that’d lined up to court her. The lanky gentleman in the kitchen wasn’t the only one with a fractured ego to go with the bruised contusions. Elsa had always held Lukas above other men, but the lady’s made her see another side to the young man she’d grown up next to. That’s what she hated most of all.
“I don’t know,” Gemma said softly.
“What do you know?” an irritated Elsa demanded of her friend. “You seemed confident enough for the both of us back there.”
Elsa stopped dead in her tracks when she realized how her actions would be interpreted to the woman that’d just tended to her wounds.
“I’m sorry,” she said, blushing in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’ve been a good friend, Gem, far better than I’ve been these last few days. I’m here for you… you know that right?”
Gemma Kohl knew only too well what her friend meant and she moved in for a close embrace. They’d been friends for a long time, since the ninth grade, when Gemma intervened in a fight she had no stake in.
Elsa wasn’t the kind of girl to take anyone’s crap and when she stood up for another the girls were quick to turn on her. She could handle herself in a fight, but against odds few could overcome, she was trampled underneath too many feet to count. Gemma saw something in her that few managed to see and when she entered the skirmish the other girls were fast to back down. It would turn out that Lukas Wendish wasn’t the only one to hear of the Kohl bloodline. They children had every reason to fear her. They just didn’t know the reason why.
Gemma and Elsa never demanded anything of each other; only that they be there for one another when no one else would be.
“You’re a good friend,” Gemma said. “Better than you realize—.”
“Do you hear that?” interrupted Elsa, alarmed with her ears perked forward. “I think I hear something outside.”
The noise was faint, but it was all too present inside the thinly walled bungalow. Slowly it became louder, until it became apparent that it wasn’t one noise they heard. It was many.
“Ladies,” said Lukas at a hurried pace, “get in here now!”
Both Elsa and Gemma rushed into the kitchen, where Lukas had taken up position, hunched over the sink to peer out the one window in the room. They joined him on both sides and looked to the park behind where more than a few dark figures could be seen.
The silhouettes crept closer, but it wasn’t a direct path they took. They swayed back and forth, red eyes aglow in the night with their purpose clouded even to themselves as they moved forward to the tune of another. From all sides they came, ever closer, until they were upon the walls that kept the three friends safe.
Chapter Six
Night Kings: The Lady in Red
Gregory Blackman
The Lady Cometh
Before Elsa could question the nature of the ominous figures outside the home, Lukas dashed off towards the front door with eyes of steel. He barricaded the door with little more than his hands. Whatever he thought would happen, he believed it to be soon.
At first there was no sign of the growing horde outside. Then they came and they wouldn’t cease until an entrance had been gained. Lukas barely kept the door for swinging wide open with rotten hands aflutter, all in attempt to jam the doorway and gain access. He knew not where these monsters came, nor their purpose, but he knew enough to fear their wrath.
“And these things would be?” a less than enthused Elsa asked. In one night her entire world had come apart at the seams. Everything she’d known to be true was put to question. Salem always had its dark roots; she knew that well, but to read of, and to witness were two entirely different realms of conception.
“No time,” Gemma said. “We can’t stop them from getting inside. Let’s get Lukas. We need to get out of here—.”
Gemma was cut short as two hands broke through the window. They clasped around her chest and pulled her backwards as she fought them off to no avail. It was Elsa that came to her rescue with a kitchen knife in hand. She hacked at the leathery flesh, and hacked, and hacked, but this was a monster that could feel no pain.
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In fact, this monster could feel only one thing in this world. Not anguish, hatred, love, or compassion. Hunger was all it knew. All it could yearn for. After what felt an eternity to the young woman, running nonstop on pure adrenaline, Elsa saw her task complete when her attacker’s arms had only bone to hold itself together. She pulled Gemma from the monster’s grasp and the two of them fled to the living room.
Lukas hadn’t fared any better on his side. Nearly a dozen hands had managed to insert themselves inside the doorway and made it impossible for the door to close. He tried as best he could, but it was clear to both Elsa and Gemma that he only proved to delay the inevitable.
“Get the door!” he shouted with a fleeted glance backwards. “C’mon, there’s no time!”
Lukas needed a weapon; a bat, a knife, anything of use. He needed something supernatural, but the fear of this dark revelation coming to light was a fate near indistinguishable from death. It wasn’t until his friends aided in the blockade of the doorway that he was able to obtain such a weapon, albeit one with considerably less bite.
He returned a moment later with a butcher’s knife in his hand and words of caution for his female friends. A war cry broke out in the living room as Lukas charged forward with the blade high in the air and a fire in her eyes. He whacked at the exposed flesh without abandon until both his friend and he were painted in red mist.
“We need to go,” maintained Gemma at a fervent pace. “We need to get the hell out of here!”
Gemma had every reason to fear what lay beyond the door. It meant more than a few dozen undead men parked on her front lawn. It was the figure above them, the one unseen, and if word spread of what these monsters laid eyes upon once inside, the Kohl bloodline would be but a whisper in the wind come sunrise.
Lukas paused in his assault on the front door and turned towards the kitchen. More undead men and women were climbing inside the kitchen window. They crawled on hands and knees, unaware that they could rise to their feet, and all the while they closed in on the disorientated group of friends.
“Now!” Gemma cried. “And I mean right fucking now!”
They ran from the front door and out of the living room, narrowly missed by a number of outreached hands as they headed to Gemma’s bedroom. It wasn’t the best of plans and even those less clairvoyant than her could see that. Even the obstinate lug head she let accompany her to the dance noted the plan as such the moment her bedroom door slammed shut. They needed to escape, but without a window in her room that proved impossible to do in an easy fashion.
The attic was the only safe way out and Gemma saw to the preparations immediately.
“Does someone want to fill me in?” Elsa demanded. “I know this seems the norm to the two of you, but I’m here, and I’m going out of the damned mind!”
“Calm down,” a sullen Lukas said. “We can talk this over when the sun rises.”
“What does the bloody sun have to do with anything?” she asked with her hands flying every which way. “Someone better start with the answers. If I’m to die in whatever bloodbath this is I’m doing it with a clear conscience!”
Gemma didn’t know what to say to her beleaguered friend. Lukas could do as he pleased, she’d let him for some time. Yet, for Gemma some secrets weren’t hers to share. All she could do now was focus on the task at hand and see it through to that sunrise Lukas had spoke of. There wasn’t an access outside of the kitchen, but if there was one thing this home had been over the years it was unreliable. With Lukas’ butcher’s knife in hand Gemma began to carve her path to escape.
The moment Elsa quieted down was the moment she started back up again. This time it was Lukas alone that took the brunt of her questions. It was a scene that’d taken place a hundred times between them, but never before had it come at such expense to their friendship.
“Is that a bite?” she asked.
Lukas fumbled around to see the mark Elsa mentioned. It was hard to see what she’d seen past the blood spattered across his lanky frame, but there it was, on his forearm and once noticed it couldn’t be unseen.
“It appears so,” Lukas said.
“Well,” said Elsa, “what the hell? Are those zombies? Were you bit by a freaking zombie?”
“No,” he said matter-of-factly and went back to his guard on the door. “They’re not zombies. At least they’re not zombies in the conventional sense.”
“What the hell, man?” she asked yet another question that wouldn’t be answered. “How can you be so sure of yourself?”
“They’re called ghouls,” said both Lukas and Gemma in near perfect harmony.
They shot one another a glance before they turned back to Elsa with blank expressions on their face. They hadn’t meant to reveal themselves, but the persistent Elsa Dukane managed to grind them down to the point of exhaustion, where they’d blurted out what was obvious to some and alien to others.
“That’s fantastic,” Elsa blurted out as she threw her hands into the air. “Now I know the politically correct name for the flesh-muncher that’s going to eat me!”
“Wait,” Lukas said, soothingly.
“You can wait for a damn minute,” Elsa said. “I’m not going to stop until I get some answers—.”
“I said wait for a second,” said Lukas, now more forceful. “I don’t hear anything.”
“And I sure as sin don’t hear any explanations,” Elsa pouted.
“That’s not what I mean.” Lukas threw his hands up in the air in a similar manner as Elsa had once done moments earlier to drive home a point. He wasn’t sure if it landed, but it provoked a sour response from Elsa so he took that as something done right. “You’re impossible. You knew that, right?”
“Stop fighting,” said Gemma as she lowered the knife from the ceiling. “I hear it… or rather… I don’t hear anything at all.”
“What are you two talking about now?” Elsa asked.
Gemma and Lukas spoke of the other side where the ghouls had taken root. No more did they scratch at the door and no more did they stumble along the lone corridor towards her room. Wherever the ghouls had gone it was no of their own accord. Not while the chance of warm flesh lay on the other side of the door.
“You can’t,” a panicked Elsa cried out as Lukas placed a hand on the doorknob. “Don’t do it!”
But it was too late for Elsa’s words of warning. Lukas threw open the door and struck as intimidating a pose he could, hoping for the best while he prepared for the worst.
It turned out to be neither the best nor the worst case scenario for the three friends previously locked up in a bedroom. Sprung from their cage the group exited the bedroom and slowly began to make their way down the lone hallway of the Kohl home. They bunched up close in case any stray ghouls jumped in their direction, but there were none left to spare, at least none capable of harm.
Gemma’s living room was awash in crimson from hardwood to plaster. It was from the rotten, oxidized blood of the now lifeless ghouls. They littered the room, or rather what remained of their eviscerated corpses, cast aside seemingly one by one as they were drained of blood. It was at the center of the living room that a man stood, but no ordinary man it was, for they’d all seen this man before.
It was the man in black and he stood as unassuming as any man could be while holding the forearm of another to his lips. It wasn’t enough to drink of his enemies, as mindless they may be, he had to gorge himself on their blood.
He turned his head leisurely in their direction and flashed Elsa a toothy smile of row upon row of razor-sharp fangs. They sunk back into his mouth and soon the face of a monster unlike she’d ever seen became that of the mysterious man she once swooned over.
Chapter Seven
Night Kings: The Lady in Red
Gregory Blackman
Until Sunrise
Lukas, still enraged over their fight earlier, raced towards the man in black with everything he had left. Lukas knew what the man was. Knew it since the blow he’d rec
eived on the ballroom floor. There weren’t many men that could bruise both flesh and ego, and do so in the name of defense. Not to a man of the Wendish bloodline. And still, just as it had been on the ballroom floor, everything he had wasn’t enough.
Only this time it wasn’t of the man in black’s will. Lukas found that he’d been frozen in place by an invisible force. He said not a word. He couldn’t. Not while the unseen hand clutched at the fabric of his being. All of a sudden that same hand relinquished its grip on Lukas and he collapsed to the floor under his weight.
Unaware of what happened to him; Lukas slinked back to the company of his friends, and asked, “Does someone want to tell me what the hell just happened?”
Elsa couldn’t help but note the look on the man in black’s face while it all went down. He was just as interested as to the source of Lukas’ mysterious time lapse.
“What the hell are you?” Elsa asked of their mysterious intruder.
“What I am is no concern to you, miss,” said the man in black, gaping smirk plastered across his ashen face. “Yet, it would appear at least one of you is already well aware.”
“Who are you?” Gemma asked.
Gemma waited until now to insert herself in the conversation. The man in black saved their lives, of this she was more aware then the others, but he was no friend to them.
The man took a stiff bow in their direction, and said, “Remus Castalon is the name and I fear the fault is mine that you aren’t already well aware. Now it’s been some time since I’ve enjoyed the company of others, but I do believe it’s proper to announce oneself and their auxiliary before they demand it of another.”
“…The fuck did he just say?” Lukas asked as he looked to Elsa and Gemma for support. He would find none given and sunk down low with the shake of his head. “Aw, never mind.”
“What’re you doing here?” Gemma asked. “Your entrance couldn’t have come at a better time. I know what you are. I know what you do. So I ask you once more. What are you doing here?”
Night Kings: The Complete Anthology Page 3
