Free Night Kings: The Complete Anthology by Gregory Blackman Page A

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.
    That man was her father, Victor Dukane, a man
that saw her through the good times and the bad. Those days were
long gone, now replaced by a noncommittal disdain that seemed to
change little with each passing day. She couldn’t blame her father.
He wanted to see her safe from the dangers that loomed over the
city of Salem. Little did he know that was the reason she was being
driven astray.
    It took several minutes before Elsa could
regain her composure. Still it throbbed, but it subsided to
manageable proportions and she found the strength necessary to
unclasp her hands from around her head. It was at that moment she
realized that no longer was she alone in these woods.
    Elsa had found her wayward friend, or rather,
Lukas had found her. Only it wasn’t the Lukas she hoped to find. It
was the monster beneath Elsa dealt with now. She had come all this
way for this opportunity. She wouldn’t walk away now that Lukas’
true