Free Night Kings: The Complete Anthology by Gregory Blackman

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