“You don’t walk into a den of our mortal enemies,” growled Bernhard as he dared Lukas to grasp hold of the weapon. “You don’t get to do that to your mother. You don’t get to do that to me. You want to throw your life away? Do it with a shred of honor!”
He beat on his chest and beckoned for the young contender to claim his birthright and take on the role of leader of their pack. It was an honored custom, one that usually happened much later in life, but Bernhard knew that if his son continued along this path it would be an honor not received.
“Take it and face me!” Bernhard roared.
“No,” an addled Lukas said. His lips quivered and fingers trembled in trepidation of what might come to pass. The sweat beaded down his brow and clouded his already crimson hazed vision. The lady called for him, beckoned him to pick up the weapon, but still he could not.
“Yes,” seethed Bernhard with bloodlust in his eyes. “You’ll do as I command.”
“No.”
“Take it!” his father bellowed.
“No!”
He grabbed onto the axe his father had so deeply sunk into the tree, and with one tumultuous pull, he released the weapon from his wooden bindings. And when it looked as if Lukas was ready to cleave his father in two, he switched his grip on the weapon and handed it to Bernhard handle first.
Bernhard promptly accepted the axe, and with a satisfied smile he tossed the sack he’d carried over towards his careworn flesh and blood. His bluff had paid off handsomely, but he couldn’t help but worry there was a very real chance that axe might’ve found a way into his chest.
“This is your fault,” Lukas said with no mind on the clothes beside him. “All of it.”
“If you’re going to speak the truth,” replied Bernhard, “then speak the whole truth.”
“You sent me to that forest!” Lukas was teary eyed, enthralled with one that wouldn’t come to his aid, and ready to drop down to his knees in despair. “You sent me to that reaper. Did you have a hand in its death? Is that what the lady wants from me?”
“She wants nothing but death and decay,” his father answered. “Do not slip into her web of lies. I heard of a gathering on the outskirts of town the night of the reaper’s death. When I sent you to sniff the scent it wasn’t a body I expected you to find.”
“And so you had me bring along the mayor’s daughter?” Lukas pounded his fist on the stone beneath him and further slipped into the lady’s embrace. “Don’t tell me you wanted her there for moral support. She’s my friend… she was my friend, not that you gave a damn about that. You just went and did whatever you could to slight Salem’s beloved mayor in secrecy. Isn’t that right?”
“You know little of what you speak,” Bernhard said. “It’s the possession that speaks through you.”
Lukas dropped to a knee and howled to the moon, as if ready to change right then and there. “Oh, eat crow. I’m so damned sick of that word.”
“I’ll let that slip since you’re under another’s spell,” Bernhard said as a low rumble emanated from his belly. “She is killing you, my boy, and she will see the job done unless you release yourself of her burden.”
“Do you know her?” Lukas asked.
“I know those of her kind,” he replied, “and I know what their possession can do. For humans it can pass harmlessly out of their system, but for those of our kind it festers inside until all that remains is a mindless husk devoted to the monster that that felled it.”
Lukas had heard enough of his father’s diatribe. He belonged to the lady in red and she to him. He would never understand, could never understand. So he turned from his father in disgrace.
“Something foul is spreading through the town of Salem,” warned Bernhard as he wrapped a clawed hand around the arm of his son. “Our pack must run together if we are to see it through the darkness that comes. If we cannot do that there’ll be nothing left of us at the end.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“In that, my son, we’re in total agreement,” said a wistful Bernhard Wendish. “It’s everyone’s problem.”
Chapter Thirteen
Night Kings: The Raven Watches
Gregory Blackman
Hunter or Hunted
Back on the streets of Salem, a shaken Sarah Matheson confided in the kindness of a stranger.
“Look at you,” Ben said to the young woman. “You’re shivering.”
Ben took the fedora off his head and offered it up to Sarah in a show of concern. The rain had died down since the deluge they experienced earlier, but it hadn’t subsided completely. Still it barred Sarah’s view and hid those that might wish not to be seen.
“And starving,” Sarah said with one hand on her stomach and the other around Ben’s waist. “I haven’t eaten in days.”
“Why the heck is that?” Ben asked.
“Don’t you live around here?” Sarah asked innocently enough in return. It was good to feel the warm of another once more against her side. She wouldn’t let that slip from her fingers so easily this time.
“I’m here on business,” Ben said.
“Oh,” said Sarah, grinning from ear to ear, “well, Salem’s not exactly the safest place these days.”
“Why’s that?”
“Not sure,” she answered with her lips pouted, “but there are a lot of scared people around. That always means something in this city.”
“How do you know that?”
Sarah looked into Ben’s eyes and was for a brief moment lost in his innocence. He was a good man. She’d come to learn that and much more as they walked out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“It’s my job to know,” Sarah said with a devilish smile. She’d waited long enough and decided the time was right to thank the man for all he’d done for her. It was, after all, the very thing she did best in this world.
She led him by hand down the nearest back alley. At first he hesitated, but she could tell that this was something the man had thought of, as well. They always thought of it around her.
“What are we doing?” he asked, nervously.
“Like you don’t know,” Sarah answered. She pushed Ben against the brick wall wrapped her arms around his waist in a passionate embrace.
They continued on through the rain for some time as they soaked up every moist drip each other had to give. It wasn’t until Ben pulled back in pain that he realized his fervent admirer was in this for much more than him.
Blood dripped down his bottom lip into clasped hands that hid abhorrent expression, for it wasn’t the Jezebel with hair of fire that he looked upon any longer. It was the face of a monster, one with a whole host of fangs, each one meant from evisceration and death.
“What the hell are you?” Ben cried out.
But it was too late for him. He was already dead. Ben struggled to liberate himself from her grasp, but there wasn’t an inch to budge. His life was amusement to his unholy attacker and it was the fear he produced she relished in at this moment. And in Ben there was an endless supply of fear. While he still lived.
Before Sarah’s lips could press themselves to the neck of Ben a hood was thrown over her face and tightened to the point of suffocation. She fought and clawed her unseen attackers, but there was little she could so against their silver lined gloves.
While these men may have lacked the strength of their otherworldly victim, their hands were akin to fiery embers that set fire to every part of her they touched. Sarah was pulled back into the darkness and away from Ben’s arms.
He sunk to the ground in horror as he watched several hooded men bring down the woman that seduced him then tried to drain him of fluids. He had no idea what to make of the scene that had unfolded here tonight. Ben shut down, stiff as a board, and eyes locked on what lay in front of him.
These men showed no fear in the face of a monster such as Sara Matheson. Ben didn’t still know what that monster was. In the end it didn’t matter. These men certainly knew all too well what they dealt wi
th. They struck her in the head repeatedly with metal bats and refused to stop until she ceased movement of any sort.
Was she dead? Only Ben wondered that. The men that came to his rescue knew better than that. The largest of them scooped up Sarah’s unconscious frame and slung it over his shoulder. With a nod of his head the two others stepped to his command and turned back to the entrance of the alleyway.
“What of him?”
“He’s seen too much.”
The man in charge nodded to the figure closest to the nearly catatonic Ben, and with Sarah still over his shoulder, he began his exit into the night. That left the men he given his orders to see to it and dispose of tonight’s eyewitness.
The glint of the man’s steel caught Ben’s attention and he was brought out of his self-induced trance. For a split-second Ben regained what he once was before the bullet left the man’s steel chamber. Now he’d learn what it meant to breathe your last breath.
All while the lifeless Sarah Matheson was carted off into the night, unbeknownst to all, apart from one that watched it all go down from above.
A flap of his matted feathers saw the raven off the signpost he rested and into the dreary night sky. He saw what needed to be seen.
Act Two
Sunkeeper – Dayside
Chapter Fourteen
Night Kings: Sunkeeper
Gregory Blackman
Ashes to Ashes
It was a dark place that a certain young woman found herself. She couldn’t see past her own hands and struggled to see the four walls that enclosed her to the world. Those hands were bound by thick chains, and no matter how hard she fought to free herself, those chains wouldn’t budge.
Even with her vampiric night vision, Sarah Matheson couldn’t see past the shroud placed just outside her reach. It was as if a presence lingered in the room. One not even she could see. Sarah was covered in her own blood. They were from wounds long since healed, but they came at the expenditure of a great deal of blood. That made her weak, dazed, and in bemusement of how she ended up in this situation.
A vision struck her when least expected and Sarah Matheson was suddenly transported back in time. She was attacked in the middle of a feast by men unknown to her. She was beaten for the better part of an hour, and after they’d had their fill, they threw her in this darkened cell where she waited now.
It was a cell with no bars, only walls, and one door that barred her from the freedom she so desperately yearned for. There was a man in there with her and he wouldn’t leave until he’d gained the information Sarah was believed to possess. Only she knew for sure, and what she knew, was nothing at all. That didn’t stop the man from beating her senseless while he asked his questions.
It soon became apparent to her captor that Sarah didn’t know anything of the lady or the reaper. Sarah was then left in a pool of her blood and sealed off from the world. Consciousness was lost soon thereafter.
“Help!” she cried to the darkness that surrounded.
There was no response.
“Help!”
“Is there anyone out there?”
“Can no one hear me?”
“No one comes for you,” a figure said from beyond her vision. “No one comes for those that hunt in the night.”
A barely coherent Sarah Matheson looked towards the door that barred her departure from this dreadful place. It was still sealed shut with not a sliver of light peeking out from behind. Whoever spoke to her hadn’t been on the other side of that door.
Was there another in this cell or was it an imagined voice that called to her alone?
“I need to feed,” a disheartened Sarah said. “I’m too weak. I... I can’t take this anymore. I’m going to fucking snap.”
“I’ve heard that before,” the man said.
“I’ll die soon,” whispered Sarah, without the energy to give a damn. “You don’t want me to die. Do you?”
“We all die someday.”
Not only had Sarah been robbed of her meal, but she’d also been taken alive for what amounted to few questions and much blood loss. It was a grave sin for their kind and all the more ammunition for the lady in red to lead her to the slaughter. Even if she got out of this place, she would never escape the lady’s wrath.
Now Sarah could add her dark companion to the list of things she was fed up with. Was he friend, foe, or a figment of a delirious state of mind? To a starving vampire he could be only one thing. He would be her next meal.
“What the hell, man?” asked Sarah as she fought to rise from the ground. “When I get out of here yours will be the first neck upon which I feast!”
A guttural mirth bellowed throughout her cell, a contrived laughter from a man that may not even exist, and more than enough to send her into a fit of rage. She beat her hands and feet to the ground until the weight of her extremities was too much for even one of superhuman strength.
“I don’t see that happening any time soon.”
“Yeah,” said Sarah, “you might be right about that one.”
Sarah could hear movement from somewhere outside her cell, but despite her heightened sense of hearing she was unable to identify its source.
Three times the stranger tapped on her cell.
“Maybe if you were given the chance to feed…”
“You play me for the fool, meat bag,” said Sarah with mild disdain. “If you were going to feed me you wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to bleed me dry.”
“Smart girl, but there’s not a thing in this world I would deny you.”
“Tell me your name,” beseeched Sarah Matheson as best she could with so little left to give, “so that I may hunt down your whole bloody ancestry the moment I taste freedom.”
Sarah was ready to lash out and cut out her stranger’s throat. She had been for awhile. All she need do was summon the strength to lift off from the ground. It was a feat that’d proved insurmountable for some time now.
“I’ve no name,” the man answered. “Not a man that matters any more.”
“Then you deny me everything,” a dejected Sarah Matheson said.
“Aw, you can’t blame a fellow for trying.” His laughter once again overtook the small cell she was placed in. Yet, this time the man’s amused laughter had turned notably sour. He enjoyed this, Sarah realized, far more than any man should. She cupped her ears and tried to draw out the maniacal laughter from her head. It was futile to resist and still the man’s voice penetrated her shattered psyche.
There was nothing she could do. No one she could call upon. Sarah Matheson was lost to the world. The world lost to her. She would die in this cell, and all the while, her dark stranger would be there, laughing as it went down.
Chapter Fifteen
Night Kings: Sunkeeper
Gregory Blackman
Not in Kansas Anymore
It was well past curfew when Elsa Dukane arrived at the location where the reaper’s body was found. She was alone in the darkness with only a pocket knife to protect her. With her fingers wrapped around its slim hilt Elsa brandished the knife in all directions as she jumped from shadow to shadow. She knew the risks.
It was the consequences of not finding her wayward friend that worried her most.
There weren’t many places Elsa knew to look for Lukas outside the forests of Salem. She figured this would be as good a place as any to begin her search, and although she hadn’t realized it at the time, this was the place where her life turned for the worse.
Elsa hardly knew what a reaper was, let alone his purpose for being here, but the man’s death had spun her father into a frenzied panic and the city along with him. She was sworn to secrecy, told that if word broke of what she’d found in this spot, Salem would cease to exist as she’d known it.
She didn’t know what that meant. Her father did and in her household that was all that mattered. Was it the reapers that would come for their fallen brother? Or was there another danger that lurked beyond the veil of darkness? Whatever it
was, her father wasn’t about to tell.
The only light Elsa had to guide her on this journey was the waxing moon that loomed overhead. She wasn’t sure what Lukas was exactly. He hadn’t said a word since the ghoul attack and when she pressed harder he walked right off the map. Elsa needed to find him.
Elsa did it not for the nascent emotions that stirred within the pit of her stomach. She did it because he would do the same for her.
She’d ruled out Lukas as a possible vampire and the exclusively female succubae. Werewolf was her running theory and with the next full moon still weeks away she figured he wouldn’t be able to turn. And if he was something else entirely she was in big time trouble.
All the critters in the woods had retired for the night. Not even the owls dared hoot at night in the city of Salem. That left Elsa with no one but her imagination to guide her to a lighter place than she presently dwelled. And wander her mind did.
“Maybe he’s a buffalo monster… though he’d probably have a rough time getting though doorways.”
“He could be a half panther man… no, that’s just ridiculous.”
“Are pyromancers real? Or are they just modern age pyromaniacs?”
These thoughts continued for some time in the mind of Elsa Dukane, scared out of her gourd, and using the audaciousness of her circumstance to make light of the situation. There could be anything out here. That’s what scared her the most.
She waited in the trounced over grove where the reaper’s body laid. Her father had cleaned up not just the body, but the entire vicinity. Elsa stood over what once had been engraved into her mind, but it was now a scene far removed from what had once been.
There was no blood to be seen. No trails of flesh and gnarled carcass. Nothing to remind her of the carnage that’d opened a portal to a mysterious new world.
A surge of pressure struck Elsa when it was least expected and she struggled to keep her balance. She grabbed at her head in agony and cried out for the pain to subside. This wasn’t an unknown occurrence to the young Elsa Dukane. There were times in her adolescence when she’d lose control of her legs, her arms, sometimes even her consciousness. And there was only one man that could ease her pains.
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