The Wicked: A Love Story

Before sunrise the next morning, making its noisy growling entrance into the neighborhood of 4848 Brummel came an old Harley Davidson, Easy Rider style, with the front wheel so far out it reminded Dan Rawlinson of a woman with outstretched legs, and off of it hopped a man in a studded leather jacket and dark shades, chomping gum as he came up the walk. He pulled off his helmet and he was great looking, great looking but in a funny way, sort of like Laurie, where you could see the traces of an individuality and ethnicity that made him more than common. His eyes were wide under a heavy brow, and his golden hair was curly and pale as he pushed it out of his face. He, Dan realized, wasn’t pretending to be anyone. As Dan opened the door, the newcomer looked mildly surprised.

“You’re Sunny!” Dan held out his hand.

Sunny burst out into a smile, which was the first time in a while he had, and when he did, Dan understood his name.

“You’re the one who didn’t try to kill me.”

“I’m Dan,” Dan Rawlinson said. “Com on in.”

“I had to do some of it on my own,” Sunny was saying when the others were coming into the kitchen. “I had to know I wasn’t completely helpless, and after all, how could I be? We being what we are?”

“But when did you travel?” Dan asked.

“I thought about testing out the sun thing, but I couldn’t do it.”

“I know!” Dan said.

“Can you?”

“I can now,” Dan was saying as Chris and Laurie entered the kitchen. “But it was a while.”

Dan realized that if he were newly made he would want to know how long a while was and said, “You have to be feeding all the time, and it actually took me about a year. I’m sorry about that. It drives some people crazy. As time goes by you can start testing the waters. Sort off like you did by showing up at sunrise, but…”

“And that actually means you’re pretty strong,” Chris added, holding out his hand.

When Sunny looked at it, Chris said, “There isn’t a way to make up for what happened, and if it happened again and I didn’t know you, I don’t know how the situation would have changed. I was there to do a job, Sunny.”

Sunny nodded, but still didn’t shake his hand.

“I’m understanding that,” he said. “I have done several jobs in the last few nights, and I know I probably saved a woman from being raped and strangled, and stopped a few other things from happening, but I also know there are some children who have no fathers and spouses who are now widowed.”

Chris nodded.

“Just understand,” Sunny continued, “I came because Kruinh asked me to, and if I remain with you all, then the day may come when I have to follow orders, or give them, and when they affect you, I will give as little apology to you as you are now giving to me.”

Before they’d left Ohio, Christopher Ashby had gone to Kruinh’s house to see Sunny Kominsky. He was in black that day. He looked good like that, the burst of golden hair against a snug black turtleneck, fitted, faded jeans. The truth is that Sunny always looked right. He was quick to laugh, but sober faced, and seemed as even handed and capable of anything in swimming trunks with a surfboard as he did in leather on a motorbike, or right now where he looked steadily at Chris.

“Can I help you, Chris?”

If Sunny was anything, officially, he was Kruinh’s accountant, or attaché, or... prime minister? That seemed right, and now Chris said, “Well, I’m just going to come out and say it.”

“Alright,” Sunny nodded.

There was no real youth to him, or at least no boyishness. Sunny greeted Chris as if he were an equally old vampire though, truthfully, Sunny was younger than Dan.

“I know Kruinh didn’t kill my sister.”

“Kruinh ordered her death,” Sunny said, “and so she died.”

“You said that eventually the day would come when you had to do something that caused me pain, and that when it happened you would offer me as little apology as I did for trying to kill you, for following Kruinh’s orders.”

“And you think that I was the one who killed Evangeline?” Sunny said.

His face was expressionless.

“You think that after all these years I waited and waited, and when I finally could I convinced your sister to attack us, and then I killed her? Just to get back at you?”

Sunny said this tonelessly, his blue eyes looking on Chris’s. In fact, the two of them looked like they might have been cousins.

“No,” Chris Ashby said, feeling like a fool.

“It doesn’t matter,” Sunny said. “If Kruinh had asked me to do it, I would have done it. If he had not asked me to do it, I would have done it. She threatened all of us. It had to be done.But do you really mourn her?”

“Yes,” Chris said. “She was my sister.”

“She would have killed you too.”

“I know.”

Sunny shook his head.

“Then I’m glad you weren’t around,” Sunny said. “And now it appears if you had been I would have had to step over you and end her.”

Chris understood why Kruinh loved Sunny. Sunny was his Lewis, a man so uncommonly strong, and confident that they could meet as equals. He had no doubt that if Alexander Kominsky had decided on Evangeline’s death there was nothing he could have done about it.

Neither of them spoke for a while, and then Sunny said, “Chris, I’m sorry you lost your sister.”

“I’m sorry she still matters to me,” Chris said.

“No,” said Sunny. “That’s the way it should be. I’m sorry for a lot of things.”

“I’m sorry for that day,” Chris said. “Almost killing you.”

“Trying.”

Chris shrugged and gave a weary half smile.

“I have thought about it,” he continued, “the two times I had to put down a clan that way. Had to. Chose to. “

Sunny nodded.

Chris Ashby said, “I should have said something to you a long time ago.”

“And what did you think to gain by asking him if he killed her?” Lewis wondered.

Chris did not answer. Instead he asked, “If worse came to worse between you and Evangeline…?”

“I would have killed her without blinking.”

“Why doesn’t that bother me? I would have gone mad if she tried to lay a hand on you. She never could have.

“I just wanted to know who killed her in the end. And because of the way I met Sunny, I imagined he was the one. I should have known better.”

“He didn’t say he wasn’t the one.”

“No,” Chris said, “but I doubt he is, and even if he was, it wouldn’t matter. Sunny would have just done what he thought was wise. All those years ago when I attacked him, and I was much older than him, Laurie and I were, we were just following orders—the same as Nazis. We weren’t thinking about what was wise. Sunny is a prince, that’s why Kruinh made him his consort.”