The Lady in Red (#1, Night Kings)

Night Kings

  The Lady in Red

  By Gregory Blackman

  Copyright 2013 Gregory Blackman

  All right reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Written in Canada.

  Gregory Blackman’s Collection

  *Released or Coming Soon*

  The Reaper Series:

  Duster and a Gun

  Reaper’s Dogma

  Short Story Anthologies:

  Night Kings

  Moon Gods

  The Kingdoms of Ash Series:

  The Unseen

  Blood Ties

  Tip the Scales

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  Night Kings:

  Humans own the day and yet it’s the supernatural that lay claim to the night. Vampires, the oldest of night’s children, have at last found a home in Salem and it’s a home they’re unwilling to part from. Their mortal enemies, the werewolves, lurk not just in the vast forests that surround the city, but inside the very fabric of the community. Salem has always been able to weather the storm that brew between both factions, but they’re about to learn that they aren’t the only creatures that go bump in the night.

  The Lady in Red:

  The city of Salem has long held dark secrets within its ancient walls. Those secrets emerge into the daylight when the death of a reaper puts a whole city under the microscope. No one is going to be safe when the search heats up and forces vampires, werewolves, and witches alike to come out of hiding and take a side in the war to come.

  Please Note: Night Kings is a YA collection of episodic short stories based in the city of Salem. It is not intended to be read as a novel and should be noted before purchase that a single episode won’t take longer than a few hours to complete.

  Warning: This eBook contains graphic imagery and coarse language.

  Table of Contents

  Night Kings: The Lady in Red

  Gregory Blackman

  01 No One Weeps for the Reaper

  02 Peacekeepers

  03 Dead to the World

  04 The Man in Black

  05 Holistic Healer

  06 The Lady Cometh

  07 Until Sunrise

  Chapter One

  Night Kings: The Lady in Red

  Gregory Blackman

  No One Weeps for the Reaper

  The woods of Salem, Massachusetts, have never been known as a safe place to traverse. Many tales have been spun by the townsfolk over the years of monsters seen in the shadows. No one ever saw the demons that surrounded these stories, but the same shiver went down each and every one of their collective spines to let them know there was more to these tales than some bard’s grandiose imagination.

  Legends told of monsters that would linger in wait for a tasty morsel to wander into the forests alone. Those were the dark ones and they would descend upon their unknowing prey, drain them of their blood, and spew out their bones for their next victim to stumble upon. Yet, little did the humans know how close their legends came to reality.

  Dark secrets have been a part of Salem since the days the city was founded. That was a time of persecution and ignorance, a time not unlike the one today, but one with fewer options for those of a sinister nature. For even a monster desires land it can call home. Salem was such a place and it attracted monsters far and wide, the monsters that wished to hide in plain sight, and the ones to be feared most of all.

  What started as a small settlement on the fringes of society became a towering city that saw its interests vested in all cities nearby. It was from this dark alliance the city came to command such dominance in the region. Yet, it was an alliance still unknown by the humans that thought they owned the city. Elsa Dukane was one such citizen of Salem, all too human, and unaware of the ethereal gauntlet clasped just beyond her throat.

  With a soft, ashen complexion and hair as black as a raven’s feather, one could say she was an attractive young woman. Not that she, or anyone else could tell past the thick layer of mud and grime that would often accompany her. She had an adventurous spirit, one that might prove deadly in a town such as this. As a recent high school graduate, Elsa was forced to take a year off from university when her mother passed and her overzealous father forbade Elsa to leave the state with all her friends. That suited her well enough. They weren’t all that close anyway.

  Everyone in Salem was normal and that just wouldn’t do. It was as if there was a conscious effort by the townsfolk to cast aside any interesting facets of their lives and live an existence both stoic and introverted. There was work. There was home. And there were few things in between.

  It was a brisk autumn afternoon and Elsa found herself in the outskirts of Salem in search of something she couldn’t have prepared to find. Yet she wasn’t alone. Her childhood friend, Lukas Wendish, was with her on this search. It had even been at his insistence the two of them were in these woods in the first place.

  They weren’t the typical pair. She was fiery and outspoken with a penchant for using her hands for talking. Lukas, on the other hand, was a lanky and sheepish young man with golden blonde hair and slight pause to his step. The two of them had been side by side since they were toddlers. Her father was the venerable mayor of Salem, and his, a close ally and councilor, meant that often the two of them would spend many nights in seclusion. That left the two of them a world of adventure outside their doorstep, a world that would soon reveal itself in the most gruesome of ways.

  The forests surrounding Salem weren’t known to be kind to strangers, but there were no strangers in these woods today. They’d been raised every bit as much in these woods as they had in their homes.

  “We’ve been out here for hours now,” a parched Elsa said. “It’s time you spill on what we’re doing out here.”

  “A tip,” he replied.

  “A tip?” Elsa balked in disbelief. “We’re in the middle of nowhere because of a tip? There any hunches you want to spend the next half dozen hours on next?”

  Lukas lifted himself up a small bank and held out an arm for Elsa to ascend. It was a boney hand and not one easy to grasp onto, but she did as he asked and was lifted up with what appeared considerable ease for one with so little meat on his bones.

  “Are you complaining?” Lukas asked with a crook in his smile. “I’ve never known you to be critical of anything.”

  “Well,” she said whimsically, “of course I’m not complaining. Just would be nice to know what’s going on.”

  “That would make two of us,” Lukas said. After he helped me to my feet, Lukas turned back to scan the grove that stood before us. “Something transpired in these woods last night; something that needs to be uncovered.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I just do.”

  “Did your father tell you?”

  “No. Stop with the questions, El.”

  “Your father probably told you,” Elsa reasoned to herself. “My dad doesn’t share any of his work with me.”

  “It wasn’t him,” Lukas said. “Let it go.”

  Elsa grumbled a few choice words into her long coat and moved to keep pace with her expeditious young friend. The sun was on
a slow descent into the landscape and soon nightfall would be upon them. Then the woods would be no place for the two of them.

  They continued on for some time, without a direction in mind, or any sense of where they needed to be. They’d passed these same trees and brooks many times, but today was of a different nature. Elsa could see that in Lukas’ eyes, the way he spoke to her, and even the way he moved from step to step.

  “We still headed to the festival tomorrow?” Elsa asked.

  “What festival?” a determined Lukas asked in return. He continued to search the tree line for any signs of disturbance, oblivious to the world around, a world that included present company.

  “The festival of the moon,” she stammered. “You know the one. That festival you called pretentious.”

  “Oh,” said Lukas, “well, the thing is I haven’t a thing to wear.”

  “Bullshit,” replied Elsa, refusing to hear a word of it. “Gemma’s been down since her mother left and you’re entertaining the ladies whether you want to or not. You got that?”

  Lukas gave her no response and instead lingered his eyes on one object of no discernable interest.

  “You got that?” she asked once more.

  “Lukas?”

  “Lukas?”

  “Damn it,” she said, “you’re doing it again.”

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but finally she, too, saw what’d captured Lukas’ interest. There was a single red mark, no larger than a handprint, pressed into one of the many trees on the edges of the secluded alcove. The closer they moved to the red mark, the more Lukas was awash in the trepidation of what was to come.

  Elsa was quick to take command of the situation and she moved them back to an acceptable pace on approach to the red mark. A foul stench filled the area as they closed nearer. It was an odor unknown to the adventurous, yet closeted Elsa Dukane. Not quite so for the friend next to her now quivering with fear.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Elsa asked. She stopped dead in her tracks and stared blankly at the remnants of a man torn to shreds.

  “No,” said Lukas softly. “It’s worse.”

  For this was the body of no average man. A myriad of pistols, swords, and other collectibles were scattered along the blood smeared next to his carcass. This wasn’t any normal man and Lukas knew it right away.

  “It’s not possible,” said a morose Lukas Wendish. “It’s just not possible…”