The Lady in Red (#1, Night Kings) Read online

  Chapter Three

  Night Kings: The Lady in Red

  Gregory Blackman

  Dead to the World

  For the embattled mayor of Salem city council was akin to open warfare, but it was his home he feared most of all.

  “Quite honestly,” a beleaguered mayor said, “I don’t give a damn what you think of me. I’m doing this for you. One day you’ll understand. And if you don’t that’s your cross to bear. Not mine.”

  Victor Dukane had spent most his life in courtrooms and boardrooms, but there was one room that he’d never managed to emerge from unscathed. That room was his dining room, and his opponent, a daughter he’d never been able to understand.

  “You want to protect me?” Elsa asked. She rose from the dinner table in defiance and moved to beside her father. “Then let me live my life! Sheltering me from the world outside only serves to drive me further from this damned home!”

  There was a real threat out there. None knew that better than Elsa. She’d found the man Lukas had called a reaper, and although she scarcely knew what that title meant, she wouldn’t allow one life taken in violence determine her course in life.

  “You don’t have to understand my motives,” Victor said as his daughter stormed out of the room. “You just have to follow them. You’re not going to that festival tonight. Not after what’s happened. That place isn’t safe for you.”

  Elsa paused at the doorway of the room and turned back to her face. “You know, dad, you weren’t the only one she left.”

  She’d already donned the outfit she’d be wearing for the evening. It was a dusty rose evening dress with sweeping surplice and frilled lace, and a last minute cancelation of her plans was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  Elsa fled the main floor and headed to her bedroom. With her door locked behind her she collapsed onto her bed and proceeded to reach for her music player. She wasn’t one to voice her objections so vehemently, but after years of indifference, his now heavy-handed approach to parenting was just another excuse to drive that wedge farther between them.

  With her headphones in and eyes closed, Elsa completely shut off to the world around her. It was for those reasons she didn’t hear her bedroom window creak open and dark figure enter. It moved ever closer to Elsa with hands outstretched.

  “…The hell?” Elsa asked as a hand placed itself on her shoulder. She struck back with an elbow to the attacker’s nose that sent him down to the floor. She ripped the headphones from her ears and dove over the side of the bed to get better look at her assailant.

  “Ugh,” said the figure from below, “what are you doing?”

  “Lukas, is that you?” Elsa drew back immediately and fell back to her bed in laughter. “You can’t do that. I almost broke your nose.”

  “Almost?” he asked in response and rose with a hand over his bloody nose. “C’mon, El, that wasn’t cool. Did any blood get on the suit?”

  He struck more than a few comedic poses in his newly acquired suit so that Elsa might get a better look. There was no blood on his suit, but that was the least of his problems. There weren’t many men, young or old, that could confidently pull off a pastel colored plaid suit. Lukas wasn’t one of those people and he stood out accordingly.

  “Looks like you’re dressed to impress,” Elsa said with a hand to cover her gaping smile. “I mean, if you’re into girls without any taste.”

  Lukas brushed off her jokes and extended a hand to his companion for the evening. “Shall we depart?”

  “We shall,” said Elsa as she accepted his hand and twirled around once in the bedroom, “but we’d best leave the same way you entered.”

  “Problems with the old man again?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” she said. “It would only be a problem if he were ever home.”

  She peered outside her bedroom window to the bushes below. Before Lukas could advise caution she darted from window to latticed wall and began her downward descent pass the main floor smoking den. It was a room used rarely in their gargantuan mansion and one that they could use to pass undetected by her father.

  The distance from outskirts to city center wasn’t one that took much time. While Salem stood as tall as any city in the state, it remained in the small form of the town that once was. From gated neighborhoods in the north to Blackrose Manor in the south, the city of Salem was as close-knit a community as there could be. All the more strange that few people were ever caught conversing outside their homes.

  Tonight’s Festival of the Moon was to be held at the farthest reaches of Elsa’s home, Blackrose Manor, home to both tonight’s proceedings and innumerable ghost stories. The manor was owned by an eccentric millionaire, said to be nearly one hundred years of age, and so sickly that he hadn’t left the top floor of his home in almost two decades.

  They took a slight detour on route to their destination to pick up the last of their party. It wasn’t the finest part of Salem they found themselves, but it was a neighborhood that had close ties to the house they were about to visit. To those that lived on these streets they were as close as kin and not to be trifled with. That was the power of a Kohl; a family with no name, no currency, and yet found a family that needed neither to survive.

  But Gemma and her mother did more than just survive in the slums. They thrived.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Lukas said with eyes over his shoulder. “Let’s make this fast. Don’t want anyone jacking my style.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” said Elsa, playfully. “You should probably get out of here while you still can! Hurry up, Lukas, those pretty little legs of yours can’t possibly run fast enough to outrun the imminent horde of fashion starved citizens.”

  “You laugh now,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Be nice,” Elsa hushed. “Gemma’s been alone since her mother took off in the middle of the night.”

  “Does she at least know why?”

  “Nope,” said Elsa with a nervous gulp. “No one knew she was leaving, least of Gem, and the only sign of her departure was a note suggesting that Gemma would be safer without her only parent around.”

  “So she went nuts,” Lukas rationalized.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Elsa said.

  “Come on,” said a wounded Lukas, “we’re both thinking it. She’s always been a little batty. Since we were kids I’d remember her scaring us off every time we’d go ringing on her door—.”

  “Oh,” said Lukas, stopping dead in his tracks as he caught sight of their missing friend, “hey there, Gemma. I didn’t see you.”

  Gemma Kohl stood in front of the two of them with her hands on her hips. She wore a radiant canary dress that billowed at her feet in the gentle night breeze and was topped off with matching headband to add color to her pallid skin.

  Elsa had always known her friend was beautiful. Now the rest of the city would be able to see.

  “Makes sense you didn’t see me,” said Gemma blankly. “You’re not the type to talk shit to someone’s face.”

  Lukas was floored at her response and failed to grasp the necessary words for a proper apology. It would turn out none was needed and once Gemma doubled over in laughter, Elsa was quick to follow suit.

  Gemma was hiding her pain; and she was doing it well. Only Elsa could see the anguish behind the crooked smile, the dead eyes. Elsa knew the heartache of losing a mother, but Gemma’s mother had left of her own accord. That was a pain not even Elsa could pretend to understand. All she could do was see the signs in front of her.

  “Are we doing this or what?” Lukas asked.

  “Well, I didn’t get all dressed up for nothing,” Gemma said, “that’s for damn sure.”

  He extended an arm to each of his ladies, and with their acceptance, escorted them from out of the dregs and into the decadent. Each had their reasons for escaping the everyday minutia of their lives. One was running, one hiding, and the other trying to find their place in this w
orld.