Wolf Omega: Lykanos Chronicles 2

Notes on Daniel Archer

I stop the story here to answer questions that some readers may want before I proceed to the end of my tale.

Daniel Archer laid out his coming-of-age events in the anguished details of his chronicle, Criminal Beware. If you haven’t read it, then this chapter may be of little use to you. It might be better to accept that I fell madly in love with Daniel when I took him for my fledgling and turn now to the next chapter. For the rest, let me offer my viewpoint of those moments in Daniel’s story that mattered to me most.

Foremost, I will answer the only question Daniel posed to me once he’d read this account of my life. No, I didn’t know or understand who Daniel was before I met him.

The name Archer may still be in your mind because you read it in this account only three chapters ago. But it was merely any other name to me in 1922. It’s true that Jonathan Richardson requested I throw a party in my home to welcome the new director of the U.S. Grant Hotel. But I hardly glanced at the name he gave me. I never associated it with Lillian Archer, the jaded girl Duccio had abandoned in New York thirty years earlier. I barely remembered Lillian’s face after so long. Nor can I account for why Daniel’s coming-of-age didn’t happen in New York. I suspect Duccio lived within five miles of Daniel for most of his life.

At first, I didn’t know that Daniel Archer and the newly awakened lycan who lived blocks away from me were the same. I’d watched him gently with my mind, and I knew he was not a child. But I never entered his mind to see the details of his face staring back in a mirror. Instead, I waited patiently for his mental powers to develop during that first week as his physiology changed. I wanted him to be ready to receive my thoughts when I introduced myself. But my intentions failed upon meeting him.

At that dinner party, I entered my drawing room to be greeted by a sight that almost caused me to transform on the spot. While Daniel recollects the struggles of his own self-consciousness at that event, I remember coming face-to-face with Duccio. I could sense that Daniel was the new lycan, and I knew he was precisely who everyone said he was. Still, my eyes only saw Duccio standing before me. It was as if Daniel wore a sorcerer’s mask; their likeness was that of identical twins.

The smile I greeted him with was false; my manners purely autonomic. I struggled every minute to maintain my composure. I didn’t want to look at Daniel even from across the length of my dining table at dinner. The dark magic of Duccio’s face shooting me glances was too much to handle. More astonishing was how Henry took no notice! Had his sight deteriorated so far in old age? Were Daniel’s personality and air so different that Henry didn’t recognize the carbon copy of a face he’d known since he was eighteen years old?

During that meal, Daniel’s developing senses caught fragments from my mind; images that overwhelmed him. He saw my intention to slaughter Jeremy Ebink, the junior partner Martin Jenson had brought along to welcome Daniel to San Diego. It was a fleeting thought of violence, but it assaulted his young lycan mind. I watched Daniel struggle to comprehend what he saw, though I could do nothing to help him through the moment. Daniel felt he’d gone insane, and I also questioned my sanity upon observing Duccio’s doppelgänger leave.

After the party ended, I slipped out to hunt Ebink. Daniel was on my mind, but I needed some way to separate myself from him. I needed to move my body. I left to prowl the Stingaree district, where Ebink and Jonathan headed to sate their lust in a brothel. Days later, a police detective arrived at my door, asking questions about Ebink’s disappearance.

The events that transpired while the city police searched for a mass murderer set the start of my relationship with Daniel.

Of course, his likeness to his father affected my attraction to Daniel. Both are exceedingly handsome, and I couldn’t help but be drawn to Daniel for that reason alone. But there was no other similarity between the two men beyond their physical appearance.

Daniel changed my life differently than I imagined he could. When his mind matured and opened to me, I never felt that I was speaking to a child. He was not someone to coddle or develop in that way; he had no need of a mother. He was a man of ambition and filled with dreams, much as Maximo had been. Daniel was a fully realized soul with a sense of self that only increased as his lycan gifts gave forth. And I fell madly in love with him.

More to the point, Daniel and I were entirely compatible both with our bodies and our minds. We could hear each other’s thoughts without effort, and Daniel came of age with the rare gift of telepathy for mortals, just as I had. This unexpected talent delighted me more than anything, to hear people’s thoughts through his mind and my own.

The most painful part of Daniel’s chronicle was reading his recollection of the night I murdered my beloved Henry Jackson. It happened all so quickly that I still shudder at the thought of it.

Attempting to frame Daniel as the mass murderer who city police sought, Henry slaughtered a boy who lived around the block. After destroying the child, he placed the murder weapon, a bloody baseball bat, in Daniel’s garage. The truth I’d seen in Henry’s mind made all his pleas for mercy, all the years of trust and love I bore for him—all of it—disappear. My dark protector saw only an evildoer. A child-killer like all the others she’d destroyed, and she leapt out to give the slain child justice.

That Henry had meant to harm my fledgling and lover didn’t really matter, for that was a simple enough problem to solve. No, my wolf struck out to avenge the child. The moment of his slaughter was mostly out of my control. Sempronio has once shown me that uncontrolled rage is possible for us all, but I was nevertheless startled to lose myself like that. And when I’d sated my wolf, and Henry was dead, I trembled and wept over what happened.

I was entirely to blame for Henry’s misunderstanding. I paid his silent concerns no mind for weeks while my infatuation grew. In reading Daniel’s recollection of the day Henry recognized him as lycan, or an angel, I realized how he must’ve believed that Daniel was another intruder, another Duccio, come to pollute my life again and bring me sorrow.

More painful than anything was that I had taken Henry’s head, just as Duccio had destroyed Sempronio and Maximo. I never explained to Daniel what this meant to me. How could I adequately describe the combination of such anger, guilt, and sorrow? How could I admit to anyone that I had destroyed the very life I’d sworn to protect?

With Henry gone, I relied on Daniel to help stabilize my life. I loved him madly, and I gave him the most important gift I had to share.

Atop the California Tower, and in Her full light, I begged the Goddess for Her trust and strength. With a burst of mental energy, I brought forth Daniel’s dark protector—his vovkulaka—his werewolf.

Now, I resume my tale from that moment.