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THE SUN WOLF
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION 10/28/20 The dimly lit hall had a sour smell to it. A pungent cocktail of mildew and sweat and socks. Andy scrunched her nose as she walked through it, the smell lingering like a cloud she couldn’t escape. It slung to the egg-shell white bricks in the walls and the linoleum tile floor. It hid above the hum of the flickering fluorescent lights and on the bench down the corridor and the gum stuck under that bench. Jesus. Was this really the best they could do on such short notice? Was this place even safe? It didn’t smell safe. Andy trusted her people though, she trusted her family. Maybe the stench would keep all the bad people away. At the end of the hall, the bench sat unused beside the locked door. She turned to the left. The pale vampire with the bleached white hair who was meant to be standing guard—sitting on that bench, specifically—stood in front of a vending machine, shaking it when her Clark Bar caught on a jammed coil of metal. “Stupid, dang… Candy!” Linda Dalton shook the machine some more. Candy rained down into the basin but the stubborn Clark Bar she so desperately desired only got more stuck. “I see babysitting duty has you captivated,” Andy said with a wave. “Oh, hi Andy.” Linda shook the machine more. No luck. Claire’s great-aunt didn’t share many of the temperamental traits that made Andy’s wife so colorful, but keep her from her sugar-fix and the animal came out. “This darn machine thinks it's better than me.” Andy pointed to all the other candy bars that fell down into the catch. “Looks like you have your pick, Linda. Trick r’ treat came early.” “Help yourself.” She shook the machine more. “I want my Clark Bar.” “Clark Bar. Gross.” “Spoken like a kid who grew up eating sugar out of a bowl for breakfast.” One last kick and the Clark Bar fell, and Linda pumped a fist. “Yes!” She wasted no time reaching in, grabbing the candy bar, opening it, and taking a bite. “Sometimes I forget that you were turned into a vampire back in the 50s.” Andy went over, grabbed a Snickers, and pocketed it in her jacket for later. “You really need to get your candy game into the 21st century, old lady.” Linda smacked her lips as she obnoxiously chewed her old person candy. “You here to see him?” “He wake up yet?” “Nope,” Linda shook her head, fished a key out of her pocket, and tossed it to Andy. Andy caught it with two hands. “I think he’s faking though. You know if you think I’m old, wait until you get him up and talking. Fallon hasn’t been clear with the specifics but I’m pretty sure he’s older than her. Claire was saying he’s older than--” “The war,” Andy said, her mind flashing with conjured fairytale images of the schism between vampires and werewolves that split the supernatural world apart over 800 years ago, one that finally reached an armistice a short while ago thanks to her daughter Mia’s quick thinking and tough decisions. “I know what I’m walking into. I’m Andy Stoddard-Motherf***ing-Barclay. I don’t walk into situations without doing my research.” “That’s what you’re doing here, yeah? Research? You both had the same darkness in you. You want to know if he knows something you don’t? I don’t know if he’ll be talkative. That bitch that beat the ghost out of him… she did a number. You might be better off going back to your books.” “C’mon, Linda,” Andy went to the door and unlocked it. “You know better than most: people are just books that haven’t been written yet.” The smile stayed on Andy’s face even as she slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. The stench from the hall didn’t come as strong in Darrow Dalton’s recovery room, but the spirit of it haunted that place. The room itself—square with plain gray walls. No windows—left much to be desired. An exposed toilet sat in one corner. In the other, behind a crudely installed privacy curtain, a handsome werewolf with shaggy blond hair, slept in a hospital bed. Slept might have been too kind a word for it. Coma was closer, though the science of it was complicated by the man’s lycanthropy. Cuts and bruises that were slow to heal lingered across his skin and he was plugged into IVs and all sorts of machines that beeped and booped. Despite all that, he did kind of look peaceful. When was the last time I slept that peacefully? Andy wondered. Pushing the curtain aside, Andy found a chair against one of the walls and she dragged it closer to the bed. She sat down facing him, kicked her feet up on the bed, and began unwrapping the snickers in her pocket. “I know you’re awake. You can stop pretending.” No response. Only the beeping of the machines answered her. “You might not have been in control of your body when you got your ass kicked, but I know your pride’s got more dents and bruises than the rest of you right now. You’re a werewolf, Darrow, the important bits healed a long time ago. The ego takes a bit longer. Another thing I know about werewolves… they get hungry faster than the rest of us. How satiating is that IV?” Andy held up the naked snickers bar, wiggled it, and tossed it at him. It landed on his chest, and a single green eye opened and looked at her. She greeted it with a wave and a smile. The second eye opened a second later and a bruised hand reached up for the chocolate bar on his chest. The werewolf sat up and took a bite of the Snickers. “How did you know?” He asked in an accent that was close to English but sounded stranger and older all at the same time. He chewed while he spoke. Obnoxious horse-chud smacks of his lips. “They called you the Sun Wolf back in the day.” Andy crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “Only badass warriors get nicknames like that. And badass warriors don’t like to get beat up. And badass warriors from olden times especially don’t like to get beat up by a girl. You’d rather pretend to be in a coma than have to address that with anyone.” He chomped down on another bite of Snickers. “Who told you they called me the Sun Wolf?” “I’ve done my research.” “So it seems. So it seems.” He finished the snickers with one last bite and wiped his chocolatey fingers on his shirt. “Do you know why they called me that?” “I know who called you that,” Andy said. “Your mother--” “Eh,” he held up a finger and wagged it, a ‘we don’t talk about her’ sort of wag. “That is not what I asked, Andrew. Do you know why they called me that?” Andy’s jaw tightened. “Please don’t call me that.” “Andrew?” “Andy is just fine.” He smiled some, chocolate on his teeth. “So you get it. They called me the Sun Wolf to mock me. That name wasn’t a warrior’s title, not until I forged it into one. I was a small kid, a runt. My sisters mocked me, said they were wolves of the moon while I was a wolf of the sun, sleepy and weak. Joke was on them, you see, what is moonlight anyway? The druids who made us wolves, they bound us to the moon as a symbol but the real power isn’t in the moonlight. Moonlight is but sunlight refracted off the surface of this planet’s satellite. They called me Sun Wolf to make me feel small, and I built a large legend around it.” “And how do you feel about where that legend has led to now?” Andy stood up and gestured around the room. Darrow looked down. Darrow, Claire’s ancient ancestor, had been living apart from everything for so long, no one even knew he existed until recently. When he first arrived not everyone trusted him, but he helped out with things and seemed okay. He was family after all. Family trusts family. Always and always. Then a darkness found its way to them, a dark and twisted soul from another universe, and it cut a path through the family, one that carved past Andy and now left its mark on Darrow. He hid it well, but Andy could the dent left behind on him. “I had her in me too, you know,” Andy said. “Klaire, that dark, broken version of my wife from a universe so horrible I can’t even imagine it. It was only for a short time but… I can still feel it. She made me watch everything, made me see and feel everything as she controlled me and left me helpless.” “Shame.” Darrow swung his legs off the bed and pulled different tubes and needles off his body. “Sounds horrible. I don’t remember a thing.” “Bullsh*t.” “Bullsh*t to your bullsh*t.” He stood up. “I’m telling the truth.” “She wants the people she hurts to feel it, to hurt with her, to feel as awful as she feels. That’s what she’s about.” Andy’s voice got a little louder. “She wants her daughter back.” “So apparently you remember some things.” Darrow slow-blinked. Caught. He shook his head. “It’s not just like riding in the back seat of a car,” Andy said. “You feel what she feels. Urges. Desires. Goals. She had you longer than she had me. You know what she’s planning, what scheme she’s up to. I know you know it. And you know that she’s coming back. One way or another she is coming back and she won’t stop until we stop her.” “You don’t need me, just find that wacko French woman you sent to kick her ass when she was in my body and you’re fine--” “It’s not that easy,” Andy said. “My family is at risk. Your family. How can I even be sure she’s not still hiding in you somewhere? How do I know that we can trust you and you’re not still working with her?” “I was never working with--” “When she escaped she was in your body. She wasn’t just lying low the whole time. She plotted. Planned. It’s what she does. She wants Maggie. She’ll be back for Maggie. I can’t stop her if I don’t know what’s coming.” “Okay, okay. Enough, alright? My head is throbbing.” Darrow held up a hand, signalling that he needed Andy to call off the hounds. Andy waved her hands and refused. “No! Look, I know what you’ve been through. I understand how crazy this is all for you, and I respect that you just spent a couple of weeks with someone else in control of your body and you got beaten half to death by someone half your size, but my family is at stake here. I liked your story about your name—Sun Wolf—like it better than the version of the story I read. You weren’t some runt kid, Darrow, you were the pride of your mother’s eye, a favorite of the pack. You won battles and wooed lovers, you were loved and famous and favored, but when sh*t got real, when the nights got dark and everyone had to huddle together to deal with a problem coming in the morning, you’d be gone with the dawn. The Sun Wolf: couldn’t be counted on when needed.” Andy stepped closer to him. He wouldn’t look at her but her approach forced him to at least turn in her general direction. “You care about your story, Darrow,” she continued. “You want to shape it, shape it into something better than what they have written down. You want to take the name they gave you and make it your own. I sympathize.” She shoots him a look, and guilt for using her dead name flashes across his face. “Now’s the time to turn the ship around. The sun’s rising here and your family needs help. You can run and prove the stories right or you can turn the page and rewrite the legend of the Sun Wolf.” A pause lingered in the room like the stench from the hall. Darrow faced the wall again, staring at it for what felt like the longest time. Eventually, though, he turned back to Andy and his green eyes met her blue. “I know everything,” he said, tears in his eyes. “She wanted me to know. She wanted me to see…” “See what, Darrow?” “That you can’t stop her.”
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