Night Kings: The Complete Anthology Read Online Free Page B

anything to drink?” Lukas asked.
    “Yeah,” said Gemma with a crooked smile.
“It’s called water and it comes from the tap.”
    Lukas left the two of them to deal with their
troubles and headed into what Gemma called her kitchen. That gave
the two women time to come to grips with what’d happened, far from
the man that’d initiated the entanglement. It was a tense
conversation between Elsa, who didn’t know where to start, and
Gemma, who didn’t know when to end.
    “Do you want to tell me what happened back
there?” Elsa asked. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.
It’s like they were all under her spell.”
    “It was no spell,” Gemma said assuredly.
“Possession took them.”
    “Possession?” Elsa questioned. “What the hell
does that mean? How do you know any of this?”
    “I can’t say,” Gemma said. She looked down to
her hands where a balled up rag lay between her fingers. Her hands
trembled, but it wasn’t from the cold water or the sight of
another’s blood. It was the reason for the lost blood that sent
shivers down her spine and to her finger tips.
    “Can you at least tell me about him?”
whispered Elsa as she motioned to the kitchen area. “Is he still
under that bitch’s control? He wouldn’t stop talking of her the
entire way here!”
    Elsa’s voice rose as she spoke of the lady in
red and her otherworldly grip on both Lukas and the rest of the men
that’d lined up to court her. The lanky gentleman in the kitchen
wasn’t the only one with a fractured ego to go with the bruised
contusions. Elsa had always held Lukas above other men, but the
lady’s made her see another side to the young man she’d grown up
next to. That’s what she hated most of all.
    “I don’t know,” Gemma said softly.
    “What do you know?” an irritated Elsa
demanded of her friend. “You seemed confident enough for the both
of us back there.”
    Elsa stopped dead in her tracks when she
realized how her actions would be interpreted to the woman that’d
just tended to her wounds.
    “I’m sorry,” she said, blushing in
embarrassment. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’ve been a good
friend, Gem, far better than I’ve been these last few days. I’m
here for you… you know that right?”
    Gemma Kohl knew only too well what her friend
meant and she moved in for a close embrace. They’d been friends for
a long time, since the ninth grade, when Gemma intervened in a
fight she had no stake in.
    Elsa wasn’t the kind of girl to take anyone’s
crap and when she stood up for another the girls were quick to turn
on her. She could handle herself in a fight, but against odds few
could overcome, she was trampled underneath too many feet to count.
Gemma saw something in her that few managed to see and when she
entered the skirmish the other girls were fast to back down. It
would turn out that Lukas Wendish wasn’t the only one to hear of
the Kohl bloodline. They children had every reason to fear her.
They just didn’t know the reason why.
    Gemma and Elsa never demanded anything of
each other; only that they be there for one another when no one
else would be.
    “You’re a good friend,” Gemma said. “Better
than you realize—.”
    “Do you hear that?” interrupted Elsa, alarmed
with her ears perked forward. “I think I hear something
outside.”
    The noise was faint, but it was all too
present inside the thinly walled bungalow. Slowly it became louder,
until it became apparent that it wasn’t one noise they heard. It
was many.
    “Ladies,” said Lukas at a hurried pace, “get
in here now!”
    Both Elsa and Gemma rushed into the kitchen,
where Lukas had taken up position, hunched over the sink to peer
out the one window in the room. They joined him on both sides and
looked to the park behind where more than a few dark figures could
be seen.
    The silhouettes crept closer, but it wasn’t a
direct path they took. They swayed back and forth, red eyes aglow
in the night with their purpose