Hope S Wells

Hope S Wells

The Werewolf

    The Werewolf, as he was known (other werewolves just being werewolves) had lived for over three hundred years. Born a werewolf, and with the curse of Ayn'Sca'Raer, he was to live forever. His parents raised him to do good, and after learning of his immortality, told him to find, and guide, the others like him.
    The first time he met one like him, it was a fellow werewolf. Unlike him, they had not been born a werewolf, and like all others who became (rather than being born) werewolves, they had lost themselves to the terrible urges that came with the curse. The Werewolf tried to help, but it was useless, and in the end he slew them.
    Over the years, he met many others. Most were werewolves, and none bar him were born as such. He fought some, and killed a few, but despaired in helping them. Those who were human he taught what he could so they could avoid the fate awaiting them if they ever became a werewolf. Yet having been told, some were tempted. Immortality at a small cost they thought, though they were wrong.
    Fifty years ago, he met a very special vampire. Unlike all others, they could walk in the daylight, and could live entirely off their own living blood. They were Ayn'Sca'Raer too, and yet through a different curse, had become immortal without being doomed to insanity.
    With this knowledge, when he next found one to guide, he would save them forever.

 The Girl

    He first smelt her while wandering a new city. He liked to explore cities, especially those he had seen before. With many years of change and growth, and yet so much of the old still remaining, it was a fascinating mix of nostalgia and new discoveries. On a walk along a street, near where a train station had once stood, but had not for years, he caught a whiff of one with the curse.
    His centuries of experience quickly led his senses to a young girl, walking grumpily behind her older sister, busy complaining about her sister moving on to high school. Her sister seemed grumpy, but he ignored her. It was the younger one who had the curse. And so, he waited, and followed, until late in the evening.
    Hope had a strange sleep cycle for a nine year old girl. Before ten p.m. she could never fall asleep, and yet come that hour and she’d be able to nod off in seconds, given the opportunity. So when all her sister and brother were in bed, and only her parents awake, she would lie there and stare at the ceiling, thinking about silly things. What if she’d been born a pirate? What if one of her friends was a ghost? Her imagination was strong, and she loved to think up new silly stories as she waited to sleep.
    She was woken up shortly after ten by a hand over her mouth. A voice softly said, “Don’t move, girl.”
    Her eyes shot open, and she saw a man leaning over her. “Listen to me very carefully, girl. Always remember this.” The man leaned in close, his breath warm on her face. Hope could barely contain her urge to scream. “You have a curse, girl. This curse means a few things. One that will help you believe me is that come puberty, you will be found to be barren. One that you must know is that should you ever become a werewolf, you will become immortal. But you should never become a werewolf, as you were not born one, and thus would lose yourself if you did. Instead you should become a vampire, as your curse will allow you to walk in the daylight. The last thing you must know is this – within twenty years, the entire world will be overrun by the terrors of the night, and worse.”
    The man relaxed his grip on her mouth slightly, and said “I was born a werewolf, and I bear the same curse. I will return to guide you further when I know more.”
    He released his grip on Hope’s mouth fully, and she screamed. As his back turned, she saw his form expand, and twist, and change, and then he leapt through her window with a loud crash as Hope’s screams became louder. She saw him leap the fence outside in the moonlight, and then her light flicked on. As her parents rushed to her side, she gasped fearfully, and stared at the darkness outside her window.

The Teen

    Hope was eighteen years and fifteen days old when he returned. Her parents had convinced her that it had to be some crazy bum, and that what she’d seen must’ve been some kind of dream – and probably what she’d heard too. Hope never really believed that, though. She kept from her parents that he had said she was barren, and when she was found out to be at thirteen years old when her periods never began her young mind was convinced that it was the truth.
    It inspired her to take up various martial arts, self defence, and whatever else she could do to better protect herself. If there were werewolves and vampires and worse out there, she wanted to save herself. She confided in her close friends sometimes, but none of them really believed her.  But it defined her life, and who she grew up to be. Self-reliant, tough, and fanciful.
    He approached her in a cafe after observing her routine for a few weeks. She looked confused as he sat down, at first because she expected her friends to arrive later, and then because she did not recognise him.
    “I assume you recognise my voice?” he said, and she looked at him with fear. “You don’t need to worry,” he continued, “I’m just going to give you this.”
    He took a book out of a satchel bag he was carrying, and pushed it across the table to her. “What is it?” she asked.
    “All you should need to know. The most important part is last, unfortunately. Five or six years. Some city is going to be cut off, but I still don’t know which. Doing anything to stop it will get you locked up or killed, so don’t try. I may find time to visit again, and perhaps we can talk without you becoming white as a ghost. Still, good luck.” With that, he stood and left, leaving her speechless.

The Woman

    As much as she was more than clever enough, Hope never went to university. She took up a job as a secretary, and kept herself fit. She read the book end to end, again and again, learning how to spot the monsters that haunted the night and the day. She showed some of her friends, but they just laughed, unsettled, and wondered to themselves whether her life was healthy, given the seemingly insane reasons it was on its path. And yet, as her friends, they agreed that if she ever had true proof, they would listen.
    Hope waited for just under seven years before it happened. A month before her twenty fifth birthday, Midwel was sealed by a barrier. Nobody knew what it was, how it was, or why it was. No-one knew what was going on inside. She talked to some of her friends about it, but although they were uneasy, they argued that a whole city of people would be fine, whatever was going on in there.
    She was one of the few people who noticed the rise in disappearances beneath all the noise. Worldwide, chaos was rising from every possible source – terrorists, economic crises, and worse. Beneath it, the inexplicable – people disappearing, strange changes in whole towns, and more – was forgotten. When Midwel was cut off, it was just one more layer of noise.
    When Midwel was no longer cut off, she was the only one who found it weird that most of the population fled the city just before it was nuked by some mad cult that had formed while the city was cut off. It wasn’t long before the stories trickling in from “true survivors” over the internet started to appear, and yet they were quickly removed. Few heard anything, but the whispers began. People were unnerved – conspiracy nuts were having a field day with some kind of conspiracy, and yet all those who investigated in the big media reported nothing.
    Hope started learning how to shoot.

The Home

    It was about three in the morning when Hope was woken up by the sound of her front door opening. It didn’t sound forced, which meant whoever it was had her landlord’s key, some how. She sat up in bed, and listened carefully. One of the loose floorboards creaked loudly, followed by dead silence. Hope silently slid out of bed, and carefully tip-toed to her stairwell.
    Peering down, she saw a circle of light from a torch waving around on the bottom steps, apparently as someone approached the stairwell. She saw the light flicker up onto the window opposite from where she was peering, so she slipped into her spare room and started looking around for her hefty torch that more or less doubled as a club. She hid to the left of the doorway, back against the wall.
    She heard faint footsteps making their way up the stairs, saw a flash of light flicker through the room, then steps making their way onto the landing. The torch flicked into the room for a few seconds, as if someone was taking a brief glance, but it then moved on. Hope heard the footsteps pass the room, as if heading towards her bedroom.
    Hope knew that her bed could only be seen from her doorway, so she waited a couple of seconds before peeking out of her spare room. She saw the intruder - a man of average height and non-descript hair - on his way to her doorway, so she crept up behind him as he approached it and started moving the torch to look about inside. Kind of a stupid way to do things, she thought to herself, if I had a mobile and I was woken up by that light the police would almost be here by now.
    She slammed her torch into the back of his head with a sickening crunch. As the man collapsed to the ground, she suspected she'd over done it. She turned on her torch and shone it in the intruders face, and got a moderate surprise - though not as much as the intruder did when she happily said "Vampire."
    The intruder scrabbled to try and get to his feet, but Hope quickly slammed the torch into his head again, and again. With the his skull broken in more places than normal humans can live with, the vampire was merely catatonic. Hope wandered off with her torch to get her needles.

The Plan

    Hope drew eight needles full of blood out of the vampire, before beheading him with her machete. She placed the head in a garbage bag, then quickly showered herself to clean herself off. She changed her clothes, and checked the vampire's pockets. She found a wallet bereft of cash and card, that had his id in it, and also a phone that had a lot of recent calls to her landlords number, as well as several smses that subtly hinted that her landlord had made him a vampire.
    Hope smashed the phone and placed the head and needles in the boot of her car, along with her torch and a long knife. She grabbed a change of clothes and a filled a couple of bottles with water, before she locked up, hopped in the car and drove off. Hope drove for about an hour and a half, and at five a.m. she stopped on an abandoned, out of the way stretch of road. She popped her boot, hopped out of the car, and locked it.
    She hopped into her boot, where her torch, a long knife and the needles waited. This better work, Hope thought, or I'm dead. She pulled the boot shut, and turned on her torch. Taking the knife, she cut deeply down her left arm, before quickly grabbing the needles and - one after the other - jamming them into the cut and injecting the blood. As her strength faded, the last needle falling from her limp hand, she hoped.

The Ayn'Sca'Raer

    Hope woke up slowly, but when she came to her senses she grabbed her torch. She shone it on her left arm and saw clotted, half-dry blood. Shining the torch around, there was blood everywhere. But she felt fine. Hope smeared the blood on her arm, trying to see if there was a wound beneath. There wasn't. Carefully feeling her canines, hope smiled. I'm a vampire. Well, hopefully not quite, she though.
    She opened the boot from the inside, and carefully let a sliver of sunlight through. She poked her finger into the light, and... Nothing happened. She was unharmed. Hope grabbed the vampires head and waved it in the sunlight. Where the sunlight touched it, it became brittle and started to break into dust.
    With a smile, Hope opened the boot fully, and looked out into the morning as the vampire's head crumbled away beside her.