Chapter 3 - The Sun at Night: An Untold Story?
Liz woke on her side, her limbs tangled and jutting beneath her. For once she was sure she had been sleeping as a wolf, as she'd been spared consciousness through the transformation back. Through heavy eyelashes, she stared at the slender curve of her arm in front of her face, not wanting to leave the comfort of wherever Patti had found for them to crash. It was an actual bed, something Liz hadn't experienced in a couple months. Couches, yes. Cots. Fairly comfortable heaps of newspaper, even. But usually, if there was a bed, Liz insisted it go to Patti, even if she was a wolf when they found it.
Which she always was.
Liz bolted upright, taking in the room in the hopes of finding her sister quickly. Some trashy motel. One ancient-looking TV, two beds, two adjacent windows, three doors—only one was an actual exit, the rest were likely a bathroom and closet. And between the beds, which struck her as bad taste in interior design, was a chair. The person sitting in it must have dragged it there. And whoever they were, they sure weren't Patti. Liz's expression darkened and she felt a trace of the wolf stir inside her.
"Where's my sister?" she demanded, too angry to be ignored. She was real and present and ready to fight.
The boy had already been regarding her with a curious but not entirely offensive expression. He tossed a finger in the direction of the bathroom door just as a black nose edged it open from the inside. Patti emerged on all four paws, a plastic bag of ice clenched in a victory smile.
Liz was so relieved to see her she broke character and snorted. "Ice?"
The boy shrugged, standing. "It was free."
She turned her attention back to him with a newly polished glare. "We mugged you!"
"Patricia, back into the bathroom," he scolded the wolf. Patti ignored him, shaking the six-pound bag with vicious intent until the ice spilled out of it and skittered across the room. "Ah! See, now look what you've done! You've ruined the ordinary symmetry of this room. I worked so hard to arrange it properly."
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Paying for the motel," he remarked idly, moving around the bed to collect the shattered pieces before they melted. Patti tore at the plastic with her paws, spilling more and more shards and scooping up mouthfuls to crunch on.
She frowned at the unimpressive surroundings. "I thought you were rich."
"Well, you did steal my wallet," he commented, still bent over the floor. "It's Kid, by the way, Death the Kid. I don't think we were formally introduced."
"I know who you are," she snapped, which was a lie, because she'd forgotten all about the little ID card with the elegant-faced boy staring grimly out of an even haircut and expensive custom suit. Even forgotten about the three white stripes in his hair, which was the most pretentious and self-indulgent looking bleach job she'd ever seen—and she was from New York.
Patti sent another spill rippling into Kid's range. He grimaced. "Ugh, Patricia. This is why I told you to stay in the bathroom."
"No one tells my sister anything, pretty boy. And you still haven't explained what you're even doing here."
Kid refused to cease his pointless task. As long as the ice was spilling, he would be there collecting it and taking it to the bathtub, where he could safely arrange it. Liz rubbed her forehead, already irritated by it.
"If you must know," he answered, with his back to her as he worked, "I'm here to break your curse."
All of her critical thoughts went silent for a minute and she was aware of her heart thudding in her ears. "How do you know about that?" she rumbled.
"Patricia liked what I had to say, so she let me rent this place. Basically, the deal is, if you two become my weapon partners, I break your curse. Or, alternatively, when I break your curse, you become my partners. It can go either way, really. That's what makes it so beautiful. Either way we're all happy."
"Wait, wait." Liz pressed one hand to the bridge of her nose. "We're not weapons."
"According to subsection three-twenty-seven on the Death Weapon/Meister Academy student handbook, which was written to settle a lengthy debate about whether or not a skilled monkey displaying signs of soul sense was fit to be a meister, you qualify. Any human or animal whose soul is capable of changing into a more powerful form is welcomed as a weapon by the DWMA because of their ability to take on souls. But even disregarding that, I want you."
Liz listened to his explanation, sitting back on the bed with her eyebrows furrowed in a disbelieving line. This rich boy thought he was their dream come true. She and Patti would never be able to work with him, let alone put up with his strange behaviors—which were, at the moment, still dedicated to clearing the floor of ice, despite Patti having wandered away from her mess and fallen asleep in the corner.
"I don't get it," she said, crossing her arms. "If we only qualify as weapons when we're wolves, and you break our curse, then we won't be weapons anymore."
He shrugged. "Then at least you won't have any excuses to make trouble on the streets, right?"
She closed her eyes so he couldn't see them roll in their sockets. "You're cute." She didn't believe him.
She couldn't afford to.
"So, Patricia wanted to leave the storytelling to you," he finished, finally dumping the last armful of ice into the tub. He brushed the dust off of the knees of his finely ironed suit pants and slicked water away from his hopelessly damp sleeves. "Dammit. Dammit."
"I don't think that's gonna happen," Liz mused, watching his fidget angrily with this clothing.
He looked up. "No?"
She rose with the grace of an aging queen, her eyes locked firmly on his. "No. I think I'm going to take Patti and leave now."
"Well—" To his credit, he stopped himself from grabbing at her arm, gesturing instead to the sleeping wolf. "The thing is, your sister already agreed to it. And you seemed alright with it too. When you were like that."
"When I was—" Liz's voice pitched to a shriek for the barest of instants before she locked her indignancy away with her anger. "You can't base my ability to make decisions off my behavior when I'm a wolf!"
Though, that was something to think about. She tended to be a violent wolf. And the fact that both she and Patti had fallen asleep in Kid's presence, even with all their animal instincts…
"Elizabeth, please," he said. Rich people never understood how painfully condescending their own words were. "I can help you."
"What makes you think we need it?" she snapped.
He was quiet. He glanced at Patti, who regarded him with one blue eye, prying itself open at the sound of raised voices. "You're losing time as a human," he said quietly.
"What?" she demanded.
"She told me. In not so many words. You turned into a wolf too quickly this time."
"I was—upset. We were being hunted—you were there, weren't you, you bastard? I remember smelling you. You saw all the guns."
"Curses like this often have a time limit. It's not really a surprise. You two used to be able to talk to each other between morning and night, didn't you? But that time has gotten shorter and shorter. It's true, isn't it? Now you barely see each other."
"Shut up." Liz sank down next to her wolf sister. "It's not true, it's just that...we've been so stressed."
"If you don't do something about it now, eventually the both of you will be wolves forever."
"God...stop it," she murmured, resting her hand on the silver neck fur.
Death the Kid took a step toward her. "Dammit, think of your sister."
She turned a glare on him that could have melted all the ice he'd dumped in that hotel bathtub and a few glaciers beside in a millisecond. "I always am."
Patti struggled awkwardly to her feet, eyes tipping between the two warring teenagers as though unsure of to which she owed her allegiance.
"I need the curse. I need it to protect her." Liz dug her fingernails into her palm, feeling her lip curl into the memory of a snarl.
"If you join with me, you won't. You won't need it. You'll be able to protect her on your own. I can promise that." He spread his hands. Patti's tongue flicked out to lick his fingers as she sniffed at his palm.
"Patti, stop that. We're leaving." Liz stepped past her and toward the motel room door, but her wolf sister remained.
Kid giggled involuntarily as Patti nudged his hand with her nose right before he cleared his throat and his voice went serious again. "Where will you go? Spend another night on the streets? At least stay until morning. I can take care of everything you need."
"You're just saying that because you know I won't be here in the morning," Liz muttered. "Patti! Now!"
Patti was startled by the shout. Her head ducked away from Kid as she looked at Liz in confusion. Liz realized three things at once: first, that if she left now, Patti would just find Kid again as soon as morning came. Second, they had the power to leave at any time. Thirdly, she was no longer sure whether Patti even recognized her own sister when she was as a wolf.
Liz swallowed as the best course of action fought a war against her pride and distaste. "You know what, fine," Liz growled, trying to make the choice her own. "We'll play your stupid game. You wanna break our curse, you'll have to find the man who cursed us."
"So who is he?" Kid asked, finally sitting back down, his hands meeting in his lap. All signs of tension in him dissolved, as if there'd never been a disagreement. Patti tested the air with her nose for a minute before placing her front paws decidedly on the bed and hopping up onto the springy mattress only to curl up next to their benefactor, notably within petting range.
Allowing herself a private moment to mentally describe Death the Kid with every filthy word she'd ever seen graffitied on the back end of a bridge, Liz maneuvered the bed to lie down on Patti's other side. It was a queen mattress, so she didn't come into contact with any of the silky gray fur. She saw Patti's head shift to regard her before they both settled.
"We don't know who he was," Liz muttered. "Some creep."
"How old was he?" Kid reached behind him to retrieve a pen and pad of paper from the nightstand, clicking the pen almost ten times—she counted eight—and scribbling a line on the paper to make sure it worked.
Liz squinted, as though the memory would become clearer. "It was hard to tell. He looked like an old guy. But he moved like he was young."
Kid scrawled something down. Or at least drew another scribble. "Do you remember his face?"
"He had a cloak and hood on at first, but yeah, we knocked it off him. He had a round, kinda rumply face. Really fat nose and lips. Bald as hell."
She gave him a minute to laboriously write down bald as hell before starting the story in earnest. And, strangely enough, talking about it made the memories clearer in her mind.
Everything was fine until Patti laughed.
The man cowered at our feet, his own knife turned on him. It was a pretty thing—the face of the moon was shaped into the hilt, and the grin was a blood groove. Very artistic, looked like an antique. I just remember because I really wanted to take it from him. He had angry fear all over his face, the kind that leads to a lot of swearing, like that'll improve the situation. But I had the knife, and it was the kind of knife that led to cooperation.
"Maybe next time you should try robbing someone a little closer to your own age, gramps," I said, letting the knife play through my hands. It had been a cloudy night, but the sky opened just then, just in time to light the blade up like a flourescent bulb.
And Patti laughed. A low, toothy laugh, deep in her throat, more threat than humor.
And above us, the moon was laughing along.
The failed pickpocket fell on his face so quickly I thought for a second that he'd died of fright, right there, his arms outstretched across the ground in the grim stiffness of rigor mortis. But then he wailed out.
"Oh, holy ones, please forgive a faithful one's stupidity," he begged.
I looked at Patti, who raised an eyebrow back.
He continued, "I see now my mistake and my only wish now is to serve you until the end of my days."
"Aw, hell yeah!" Patti cheered, which caused the man to lift his head. Before I could do anything, he was on his feet—he was way too fast for a guy that old, I tell you—and his fingers were wrapped around our wrists like bony vices.
"Hey!" I fought his grip, but he was supernaturally strong. I should have known something was wrong with him then. "Let us go before I make you!"
"Come, come, there is much to prepare. You will be given new robes and new identities." He was muttering as he dragged us forward, out of the alley, but before he could get us there, I took the knife and stabbed it into his forearm.
He let go so fiercely that the weapon went with him. He backed away from us, clutching his impaled arm, seemingly unoffended. "I can see the both of you need some time to decide," he said nervously. "My apologies. I will seek you out again once you have made your arrangements."
And we thought that was it. He vanished, I made sure Patti was OK and mourned the loss of that awesome knife, and we were no worse off than we had been before he'd come along. But then, a week later, he did come back with his arm bandaged, during the day this time. We were in a totally different part of the city, the edge of Brooklyn, so I don't even know how he found us. He tried to haul us off again, but we were ready for it.
"Why will you not come with me, holy ones?" he asked.
"Because I'm smarter than that," I snapped. "Where do you think you're taking us?"
"I thought you knew. But, of course! You wouldn't. Your human vessels know nothing of the Order. Allow me to explain." He straightened, folding his hands, becoming one with his stupid purple cloak. "I am the last remaining priest of the Order of the Sun and Moon. All the followers before me either lost the faith or passed on waiting for your return."
"Our return?" Patti asked. She always knew the right questions.
"I realized it when I saw your face," he said, trying to appear humble. "You are the living human incarnation of the moon. And so you, my dear—" at this, he tipped his head to me, "—are her sister, the sun."
That's when I knew he'd lost it. Totally old-age, fanatically-obsessed, creepy-old-man lost it. Patti started laughing again, but that stopped when he bowed at her feet and caressed her leg with one hand. With righteous pride, I watched her kick him away viciously. No one touches my little sister.
"Have you got your celestial bodies crossed," I muttered. "We aren't anyone's human incarnations, idiot. We're just the girls who are about to beat you up and take your money."
And we might have done that. I mean, he deserved it for being a creep. But he didn't even fight back, and he didn't have much on him, not even the knife (to my disappointment), so we went easy and left him to crawl away on his own. We didn't hear from him for another week. When we did, when we saw him again, I was ready to kill him. I didn't know how he kept finding us and I didn't like the idea of having a crazy stalker. But he was different that night.
"If you're so convinced you're not the sun and moon," he said, "let's see how well you do without them."
That was when he cursed us. He unsheathed his knife and pointed it at us, and before I could leap it him it started to glow, and I realized he'd cut us off in a back street on purpose. We were both blown backward by some magic force, held back against the wall, as he pointed at both of us individually and spoke.
"Your sun will be the moon," he said to me. "You who claim the highest intelligence will be reduced to nothing more than a dumb animal." Then, to Patti, "Daylight will own you. Oh restless girl, you will not control your own movements, and you will remember every second you lose."
He lowered the knife and we both dropped to the ground as though the wind had been knocked out of us. He folded his cloak around his shoulders as he backed away with one last addendum. "I will face my punishment for this when you remember your true selves and come to me. If you do not, the day will come when your human vessels will forget each other's names and walk the earth forever as wolves."
We didn't think anything of it.
But then I transformed for the first time as soon as the sun rose.