Night Kings: The Complete Anthology by Gregory Blackman

response. Instead
the lady received the sarcastic retort of a man with many targets
on his back.
    “Was it you that killed the reaper?” Victor
asked.
    The lady returned her focus to the street
below and let the wind blow by as she contemplated her answer. She
hadn’t killed the reaper; and worse yet, she had to learn from
humans of the discovery. It was an insulting situation she had been
placed in once already. One she wouldn’t see repeated.
    “This is why I come to you, old man,” said
the lady in red with a flick of her tongue. “So few of my kindred
have the fangs to accuse me of the actions you do. Tell me, Victor
Dukane, what makes you think it was I that did the deed?”
    Victor turned his back to the lady and cursed
his fate. He had only conjecture and hearsay to aid him in his
search and when no answers could be uncovered he decided to go
straight for the source, and said, “Because I know of no one else
strong enough to kill one.”
    The lady in red furled her brow and looked
the mayor dead in the eyes. “You truly believe I’d risk war with
the reapers?”
    “You mean after the genocide of your race?”
asked Victor, sharply. “Why, my dear lady, I believe you’d be
capable of anything.”
    Her patience had been tested and now verged
on collapse. She allowed only one to speak to her in such a manner,
and Victor Dukane wasn’t half the man her eldest son was. Victor’s
time would be at an end, soon enough, all she needed was to wait
long enough and pull the trigger.
    “You were hardly this insubordinate when I
fed you all of that information on the others in Salem,” the lady
stated as she stepped backwards into the darkness. “Remember that you were the one who approached me on that fateful
night.”
    With those words she left having gotten the
information she needed; and she did so without tipping her hand in
the slightest. There was a disturbance down below, in the streets,
one that threatened her kind in the shadows they once ruled. She
knew what that disturbance was now and it was worse that she
feared.
    As the lady slipped into the shadows, Victor
knew he still wasn’t alone. There was another there, one that
waited, and one that listen—just as they’d been told.
    “Thank you for giving me the time I
required,” Victor said to the towering figure that crept outward
from the shadows.
    “Did she do the deed?”
    The hooded man behind the voice was still
enveloped in the shadows, but Victor Dukane already knew with whom
he spoke. It was one of his closest allies inside city hall and
outside where their storied history kept them close together.
    “I don’t believe so,” Victor replied, “but
who can be certain of anything with that bitch around.”
    “When shall it be her time?”
    “Soon,” Victor mused. He walked over to the
darkened section of the rooftop and extended a hand to his obscure
associate. “When we have what we need. Come, Hans, let’s get to
work.”

Chapter Seventeen
    Night Kings: Sunkeeper
    Gregory Blackman

    Werewolf, Fried

    In the forests north of the harbored confines
Victor Dukane found himself was another of his lineage in a similar
situation. Elsa was embattled with a monster, but this was a
monster of entirely different construct.
    Lukas Wendish’s snarl cut a wide arc across
his fanged maw. Not once did his eyes leave her tremulous thighs,
full of meat and the tastiest of blood. He came no closer to her
than she did to him. Still, he wouldn’t let her go so easily.
    If this was going to be the end so be it.
That’s what ran through Elsa’s mind when faced with what might come
next. She waved her small knife in the air, as though it might do
her any justice in the event of an attack. She knew better than
that. Yet, there were few options left in which Elsa could mount a
proper defense. This was all she had.
    It could’ve been a million to one odds and
still Elsa Dukane would stand her ground in front of a broad oak
tree. She could only hope that