Night Kings: The Complete Anthology by Gregory Blackman Page A

logic prevail them tonight and force
Lukas to regain but a small portion of the man he once was.
Possession be damned. He was still under there somewhere. She had
to believe that.
    The smallest of flinches saw that theory
tested. The earth was torn asunder as Lukas charged towards an
unconvincingly stalwart Elsa. She didn’t move an inch as he came,
although she had every reason to do so.
    Elsa waited until the last possible second to
decide her pitiful stiletto was no match for his serrated incisors.
She leapt to her side and narrowly avoided Lukas’ locked jaws that
saw him crash into the great oak and send a flurry of splinters
into the air behind him.
    Elsa had a brief moment to recollect her
thoughts upon the matted soil before the wolf picked himself off
the ground. Elsa attempted to dig her nails into the ground and
claw her way out of the ditch she’d fallen into, but it took her
far longer to rise than she hoped and in her moment of victory she
turned around to see it all crash down around her.
    Not only had the wolf recovered from the
stunted blow, but the possessed Lukas Wendish had already made a
move on her throat.
    Elsa shrunk back and threw her hands in front
of her face. She waited for her inevitable end, but it was an end
that wouldn’t come. A luminescent burst caught the gaps between her
fingers and shone onto her now wide open eyes. It was followed by
the sound of a whimpering wolf and when Elsa took her hands down
she understood the reason why.
    Lukas was set afire by an unknown force. He
tried to outrun the flames, but they were one with him and carried
him off into the night.
    All the while his languished howl filled
Elsa’s already clouded mind. She swore that she could hear his
voice long after his flickering silhouette vanished. It was a
horrid sound, accompanied by a stench of equal proportions, and a
memory she hoped wouldn’t linger.
    There was a shadow in the foreground that
Elsa Dukane hadn’t noticed until the wolf’s unanswered cries for
help died with the wind. She spun around to greet that person with
a right hook, but was hurled to the ground instead.
    Elsa’s pocket knife was thrown aside and out
of reach by the time she hit the dirt. She turned to face her
silent antagonist, but was stunned to learn just whom it was that
sent her to the ground.
    “I warned you,” said a less than enthused
Gemma Kohl with empathetic hands extended. “Lukas cannot be trusted
any longer. He’s nearly under the lady’s complete control now.”
    “I don’t believe that,” Elsa said, flatly. “I
refuse to believe that.”
    “And that is why you would’ve died
here,” Gemma said with a hushed tone and cold, dead eyes.
    She stepped towards Elsa and in response her
friend took one step back. It was a common reaction when faced with
the powers she possessed. Unlike the vampires and werewolves, her
powers were of the spectral realm and could be neither seen nor
felt until it was too late. Such power had a tendency to scare
those outside her circle away.
    “What is he?” Elsa asked with her head tilted
upwards to the pale moon. “I thought werewolves could only turn
under the full moon?”
    Gemma took another step forward. This time
Elsa held her ground and waited until she received her answer. Elsa
wanted to believe her friend. Wanted to believe that whatever Gemma
said wouldn’t be the same lie she’d been told ever since they first
met.
    “A werewolf he is,” said Gemma, “but the full
moon doesn’t grant him control of the wolf inside. That power was
born unto him. The full moon denies them of this power and robs
them of rational thought. Let me be clear, Elsa. Do not get
caught outside on the night of a full moon. Not in the city of
Salem.”
    Salem once filled Elsa Dukane with pride.
That pride extended to the city that raised her, the residents that
dwelled within, and her father, the man that reigned from up high.
Pride that’d long since receded to the furthest reaches of