“Why were your eyes red?”

Sam’s heart lodged in her throat.

Shit shit shit! Of course she saw me! She was right there! God I’m such an idiot! Okay, we can fix this, just play dumb.

“Uuhm.. Wh-what eyes?”

NOT THAT DUMB!

Roxy giggled a bit. “Are you sure you’re not still asleep, Sammie?” Sam’s heart fluttered at the nickname, but still she kept up the act.

“What’re we talking about?” Roxy shifted so she was looking directly into Sam’s eyes, but the blonde just flopped onto her back, head resting against the headboard of the bed. Roxy sighed, before a devious smirk covered her face. She crawled over Sam’s prone form and laid down on top of it, chin resting against her crossed arms, face inches from Sam’s own.

Sam’s breath hitched. Roxy was so close. Her breath was brushing against Sam’s face. Her warm coffee-brown eyes were staring into Sam’s own blue ones, a hint of playfulness sparkling at their edges.

“Seriously dude, what was up with your eyes earlier?” Roxy whispered quietly. Sam could tell from her tone that the dark haired girl wasn’t actually that bothered about it, she was just curious, but that didn’t change the fact that she can’t know because oh god she won't understand she’ll hate me she’ll think I'm weird she’ll tell someone she’ll-

Roxy poked her cheek, tearing the blonde from her spiralling thoughts. She averted her gaze. “I-I-I don’t know what you mean.”

Roxy lifted her head a little and raised her eyebrow in that way she did that always caused butterflies to form in Sam’s stomach. She moved in closer, smirking slightly.

“You, Samantha, are a terrible liar.”

Sam snorted and pushed her off playfully, causing an impromptu wrestling match that somehow ended with both girls falling off the bed and onto the carpet in a sweaty, giggling heap. Sam lifted herself off of the other girl and planted herself on the carpet next to her.

“I won!” she celebrated with a panting laugh. With the full moon up right now it had been really difficult not to let her wolf leak out during the tussle.

“Hah, barely.” Roxy replied as she turned her head towards her companion, smiling warmly. Sam smiled right back.

The two girls basked in the warmth of each other’s presence for a few precious moments. Sam reached out and grabbed Roxy’s hand.

“You know, I think you’re the first real friend I've ever had,” she whispered. Roxy turned onto her side to face her and Sam did the same. “I think I can be pretty intense for most people, and they get weirded out and leave, so at some point I guess I just stopped trying to make friends and just figured out how to make do. But then you came along and you just... didn’t care about any of that. So just... thanks for being my friend. It means more to me than you know.”

At this point Sam could feel her chest burning from the unshed emotion. It wasn’t common for her to bottle up her emotions but admitting her loneliness to Roxy like that had torn something in her, something that she desperately didn’t want her crush to see. She tried desperately to hold it back but deep down she didn’t really know how. Her bottom lip started quivering and she bit her lip to choke back a sob. An indistinguishable emotion flashed across Roxy’s face for a split second before she fell back into a soft smile. A hand reached out and touched Sam’s cheek.

“Please promise me you wont leave.” Sam choked out as her fragile hold snapped. Tears started streaming down her face, accompanied by quiet, heaving sobs as Roxy shuffled closer to embrace her friend while she broke apart in her arms.

“Shhh, it’s okay hun, I'm not going anywhere. You mean just as much to me, and I wouldn’t throw away our friendship for the world.”

After a few minutes, Sam’s quiet sobbing eventually petered out, soothed by the soft strokes of Roxy’s hand through her hair and across her back. She was exhausted, and the warmth of the girl next to her was slowly putting her to sleep again. Sam didn’t fight it, and fell into a peaceful slumber in the arms of her dearest and only friend.

—

Roxy awoke. Immediately she could tell she wasn’t on her bed. Her body was stiff and whatever she was lying on was hard and rough, and there was a warmth cradled between her arms. She inhaled and the distinct smell of pine wafted through her senses.

Wait, what?

Roxy cracked open an eye, and saw a fluffy mane of golden hair. Her heart started beating a thousand times a minute. Sam, her close friend, and the object of her current affections, was curled up in her arms??? Suddenly, memories of the night before rushed into Roxy’s head. Tired cuddling, a playful wrestling match, tearful confessions and soft comforts.

And Sam admitting she only sees me as a friend...

The raven-haired girl immediately felt guilty, as though she was taking advantage of her friend by cuddling her like this. She very slowly shuffled herself backwards until there was enough distance between herself and the sleeping girl. Sighing, Roxy picked herself up and sat down on her bed, hanging her head in her hands.

Sam was a very physically affectionate girl, that much was clear, but up until this point, Roxy had been telling herself that Sam was being extra affectionate with her because she liked her back. Evidently, that wasn’t true, as Sam admitted last night. She only saw Roxy as a friend. Roxy was okay with that, right? She was strong, she could handle just being friends with the girl who had entranced her from the moment she laid eyes on her. She could handle it.

Right?

A strange, whimpering growl pulled Roxy from her thoughts. She looked up to the source of the sound, and saw Sam, rolling around and thrashing about on the floor in her sleep. Another strange growl tore from her throat, startling the raven-haired girl.

How the hell is she able to growl like that??

Sam bared her teeth, and even from her distance, Roxy could see that her already pronounced canines were even longer than usual, as if she was preparing to attack. All Roxy could do was sit there, absolutely stunned.

Sam’s growls suddenly turned into fearful whimpers, and a terrified expression overtook her still sleeping face.

“...no... p-please... please don’t...” Sam’s voice sounded so small and scared that Roxy’s heart broke, just a little bit.

“no... no... mom... MOM!” The last word came out as a shriek as Sam shot up into a seated position, blood red eyes darting around the room frantically, searching for the threat. Eventually her eyes found Roxy, who stared back in amazement.

I KNEW IT! How the hell does she do that??

Sam panted heavily, eyes still locked with Roxy’s, as the red slowly seeped out of her irises to be replaced by their natural sky-blue hue.

“Sam, what-”

“I-I can explain! I swear! J-j-just give me a second, p-please. I… I n-need a minute.”

Roxy sat there patiently as Sam’s breathing slowly returned to normal. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak, but a knock on the door interrupted her, startling both girls.

“Roxanne? I heard a shout, are you okay?” Roxy’s mom’s voice was muffled through the door, but her words were clear.

“Y-y-yeah I'm okay! I just tripped!” Sam looked at Roxy, head tilted to the side, clearly confused, but Roxy just shook her head in response.

“Can I come in?” Without waiting for an answer, Roxy’s mom tried the handle. Thank god she locked it when they came home yesterday.

“No! No, I'm... uh... I'm changing!” Roxy quickly turned to Sam to whisper to her.

“You need to get out of here, if my mom sees you, I’m seriously dead.” Roxy ordered. Sam took a second to process, then nodded determinedly, quickly rushing to the window next to the girl’s bed.

“Roxanne, open this door now!” Her mom’s voice was turning sharp, and Roxy knew she was out of time. Should she take any longer, her mom would definitely punish her, so her only option was to open the door and pray that Sam could get out in time.

With leaden steps, she walked slowly to the door and unlocked it, before grabbing the handle and pulling it open. Her mother stood before her in the hallway, all high cheekbones and perfect makeup, even this early on a Sunday morning. Martha Kindley was a prim and proper woman, through and through, which was the cause of much tension between her and her tomboyish daughter.

She surveyed the room with beady green eyes, and Roxy was suddenly very grateful she’d inherited her dad’s brown eyes instead. Since she didn’t seem to have any issues, Roxy assumed that Sam had made it out okay, and made a mental note to apologise to her later for the sudden send-off. Martha huffed in apparent satisfaction.

“You really must be more careful Roxanne, I swear, you’re so clumsy.” Roxy could only mutter an agreeance through gritted teeth as her mom walked off down the hallway.

—

Sam vaulted out the window onto the patio roof, before slipping off into a safety roll on the ground. She sprinted into the woods, the pounding of her feet on the dirt echoing the thoughts running through her head.

Fuck fuck shit fuck she knows she knows she knows oh god what do I do how do I explain this?

A familiar fire started burning in her chest, and for the first time in two days Sam allowed it to engulf her, pausing only briefly to put aside her clothes so that they didn’t get ruined in the upcoming transformation. Red seeped into her irises and her bones creaked as they shifted and changed. Her teeth lengthened and her nails sharpened into claws. Her skin itched a second before golden fur started sprouting. Her spine cracked and she fell to all fours, her arms almost completely unrecognisable, now appearing as canine forelimbs. there was a dull pain in her chest as her organs shifted around to better suit this new form. A howl tore itself from her newly formed snout, and her transformation was complete.

It had been far too long since she allowed herself to embrace her primal urges like this, in Sam’s opinion. Once she ensured her clothes wouldn’t be lost she set off, pounding through the undergrowth, running freely and wildly and following any random scent that her nose picked up. It was calming, freeing in a way that nothing else ever was. When she was like this she knew that everything would be okay.

Memories rushed through her head of running through the woods with her mother when she was a pup, of hunting rabbits with her father. She missed them so much, and as much as she loved her adoptive family, nothing could ever compare to her love for her parents. Sam was just grateful she was able to connect with them in this way, even after all this time. One day she’d find the bastard-

The smell of blood shot through her senses, bringing her back to the present. As far as she knew, there weren’t many predators in this area apart from her, and she hadn’t hunted anything yet today, so that meant that there was something out there that shouldn’t be. Sam quickly changed course and started following the scent.

The trail quickly ended in the torn up carcass of a deer, warm blood dripping from its mangled remains and congealing in a pool below the corpse. Up until now, part of Sam was holding out hope that maybe a fox had just caught a rabbit or something, but for a fully grown deer to be completely decimated like this meant that there was something big roaming around. The thought put Sam on edge, her fur bristling.

Hidden among the almost overbearing scent of viscera in the air, was a strange scent, one that Sam hadn’t smelt before. The scent of rust with a hint of earth. Sam knew it must belong to whatever tore apart the deer, and made a mental note to remember it, should she ever come across it again.

After the particularly gruesome and slightly concerning encounter, the werewolf’s lust for the freedom of the woods was unequivocally quenched for the day, so she turned around and ran back to the spot where she left her discarded clothes, deciding that, yeah, it’s probably time to head home.

—

Sam walked in through the front door, only to immediately be assaulted by the mouth-watering smell of bacon and eggs wafting into the living room from the kitchen.

“Well well well, look what the cat dragged in. Or, I guess, the dog in this case.” Ava was sitting on the couch, clearly watching something on the TV, although it was now paused so that she could fully focus her attention on her sister.

“Yeah, good morning to you too, Aves.” Sam grumbled half-heartedly, not really in the mood for her sister’s antics after the emotional rollercoaster of a morning she’d had.

“So...” the brunette started, smirking slightly, meaning Sam was definitely not going to enjoy this next question. “I take it your date went well?”

“Oh my God Ava, I told you-!” Sam sputtered before lowering her voice. “I told you that it wasn’t a date!”

“Now see, I was inclined to believe that, but then you just so happen to spend the night with the girl you’ve been making goo-goo eyes at all week, and what do you expect me to think?” That ever-present infuriating smirk was once again plastered across Ava’s face, accompanied by an insinuating eyebrow raise, and at this point Sam was seriously considering doing something about it.

“Okay, first of all? Nothing remotely like that even happened, so ew, stop insinuating, you perv.” Ava simply shrugged her shoulders in response.

“Can you blame me for considering it a possibility? I've seen the way you two look at each other.”

The blonde rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Second of all, I didn’t even mean to spend the night. We were hanging out in her room and we’d had a long day so I accidentally fell asleep.”

“In her arms..” Ava said with a wistful sigh accompanied by that fucking smirk and Sam’s face instantly turned beet red.

“No!... Maybe... Shut up!” Ava’s joy was palpable and Sam was really wishing there was a hole she could bury herself in right now.

“Ha! I knew it! It was a date!”

Sam loudly shushed her but clearly a second too late as Carol, Ava’s mom (and by extension Sam’s adoptive mother), poked her head out of the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about. Carol was okay in Sam’s book, but she could never compare to her real mom.

Carol was close friends with Sam’s parents, having known them since they were all teenagers, and was even considered an honorary member of their pack. When Sam’s parents had passed, Carol was the one who took her in. She treated Sam like her own daughter, despite their (quite obvious) differences, and never scolded her for her more animalistic traits, even when she was constantly called into the office at school because Sam couldn't stop herself from teething on pencils or biting kids that were mean to her and her sister.

Honestly, she was all that Sam could ask for in a parent, but the girl still couldn’t bring herself to call Carol her mother. Sam couldn’t abandon her birth family like that. She would always be Samantha Reed, not Samantha Walker.

“Who has a date?” Carol asked, her red curls bouncing as she moved her head.

“No one! No one had a date!” Sam spouted far too quickly.

“Sam spent the night with the girl she likes!” Ava shouted out, much to the blonde girl’s dismay.

“Oh yeah, just expose me.” Sam grumbled. A wide, beaming smile broke out across Carol’s face as she immediately fell into ‘mom-interrogation’ mode

“Oh Sam, you’ve got to tell me everything! What's her name? What's she like? When did you meet? What's her favourite food? We'll have her over for dinner soon and I've got to know what to make!” She started waving her hands around as she spoke, still holding the spatula.

“Her name is Roxy, she’s very cool, we technically met twice but she doesn’t know it, and I don’t know.” Sam sighed, praying that that was the end to the relentless questioning. “ANYWAY, I currently have a much bigger problem; She saw my eyes turn red and now I don’t know what to do.”

Two blank faces stared back at her. It was Ava that spoke up first.

“Have you considered just telling her the truth?” the brunette asked, slightly puzzled.

“Of course I've considered it! I just don’t know how she’ll react! She's like my first real friend, I don’t want her to hate me.” The last part came out as a whisper as Sam struggled to hold her voice steady. She was getting tired of having to admit stuff like this. Hopefully this time she could hold it together a little better, at least. To her surprise, Ava laughed.

“Are you kidding me dude? She would be all over that!”

“Wh-what?” Sam’s face flushed pink as her sister stared at her with a flat expression.

“She’s already totally friendly with your wolf form, so what could possibly even go wrong? Plus, if I had a boyfriend that had supernatural strength and speed, I'd be super into that. You've got nothing to worry about.” She smiled reassuringly.

“Ava’s right, Sammie, if this girl really is as great as you say she is, then I'm sure she’ll love you for who you are,” Carol brought Sam in for a warm embrace that, despite her being at least 6 inches taller, always made Sam feel small and safe. The older woman pulled back to place her hands on Sam’s shoulders, making sure that the spatula was out of the way. “And if she doesn’t, well then you dodged a bullet, didn’t you?”

Sam sighed. “I guess you’re right... As usual.” She smiled. “By the way, your eggs are burning, I can smell it from here.”

“Oh shoot!”

—

The clock struck midnight and still Roxy was up, sitting at her computer, eyes burning with exhaustion and strain yet determined to continue her search. She reached out to take a sip of her Monster, only to realise that the can was empty. She sighed, getting up from her desk to throw it in the bin.

Even now, after hours of research, a part of her mind was yelling at her that this was wrong, if Sam wanted to keep her secret, that was her right, and Roxy had no right to go snooping around. And yet, her curiosity remained. After all, how could it not? Sam's eyes could turn red, seemingly at will! And that’s not even counting all the other strange stuff about her she’d witnessed. Everything about it was screaming mystery, and it was one that Roxy was determined to solve.

And that’s how she’d found herself here, in this dark corner of the internet, this creepy alleyway in the dead of night, researching about people with red eyes and other sort of weird phenomenon. Most of the stuff she had come across so far seemed like crazy-person conspiracy junk (and yeah, ok, I guess what I'm looking for is pretty far fetched too), but she finally felt like she might have been getting somewhere. She'd found an old article from the 80’s about a man with ‘red eyes and superhuman strength’ getting shot to death by police somewhere in northeast Europe, which admittedly wasn’t much, but it was the first real clue that she had, and god dammit, she was gonna run with it.

Roxy searched for anywhere the article had been cross-posted, hoping to link it with something that had more information about what exactly the red eyes meant. After a while her search was seeming fruitless, until a very strange comment on a forum page the article had been cross-posted to caught her eye.

 

30NST4K17L488
7 years ago

Cower in fear, all you disgusting creatures of the moonlight. The Day of Judgement is coming for all beast-fuckers, were-monsters, and moon-walkers alike. None shall be spared when the end comes. The Sons of the Black Sun will make it so.

 

Roxy surprised herself by bursting out into an incredulous laugh. More conspiracy junk, and yikes, it looked like this dude was seriously liable to hurt somebody if he didn’t get those ideas in check. Like seriously? Were-monsters? What, like werewolves and stuff? What a nutcase! Roxy could believe in people with red eyes, she’d seen it herself! But people turning into giant wolves? That was just ridiculous.

...right?

The end of the comment sparked a curiosity in the raven-haired teen. Sons of the Black Sun? Sounds like a cult. She opened up a new tab before copy-pasting the name into the search bar. Zero results.

Now that was weird. She moved back to the tab with the weirdo on it before checking out his profile. Several more mentions of this group/cult/thing as well as a link that was just a garbled mess of numbers and letters. Roxy was hesitant to click on it, she knew the dangers of pressing strange links, especially in this part of the internet, but inevitably her curiosity won out.

A website homepage popped up on her screen, ominous music emanating from her headphones. The text at the top of the page read 'SONS OF THE BLACK SUN’ with a motif of a wolf head impaled on a stick in front of a crescent moon just beneath it. This was definitely the place.

There was more text further down the page, reading:

WE ARE THE SONS OF THE BLACK SUN, GOD’S CHOSEN PURIFIERS. FOR CENTURIES, OUR SECT HAS PROTECTED HUMANITY FROM THE CREATURES OF THE NIGHT, HORRIFIC BEASTS THAT ESCAPED FROM THE PITS OF HELL DURING THE DARK AGES. THESE CREATURES APPEAR HUMAN ON THE OUTSIDE, BUT INSIDE THEY ARE TERRIBLE MONSTROSITIES, SEEKING ONLY TO KILL AND DEVOUR.

SIGNS OF A WERE-BEAST INCLUDE: SODOMY, HOMOSEXUALITY, AND OTHER SIGNS OF DEPRAVITY, AS WELL AS UNNATURAL EYE COLOUR AND A STRANGE AFFINITY TOWARDS THE WOODS.

THEY FEAR ONLY THE BITE OF SILVER, SO IF YOU SUSPECT SOMEONE OF HIDING THEIR MONSTROUS NATURE, KEEP YOUR SILVER CLOSE, AND IT MAY JUST SAVE YOU FROM THE DEVIL’S SPAWN.

THEY ARE HEARTLESS BEINGS, AND DESERVE NO MERCY, NOR WILL THEY RECEIVE ANY WHEN THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT COMES. JOIN US, BROTHER, AND TAKE JOY IN THE PURIFICATION OF THE CHOSEN.

Okay, Roxy was really starting to get creeped out. She remembered learning about the Salem Witch Trials in school, of people persecuted and killed for no reason other than crazed zealotism and ignorance, and this was seriously ticking all of those boxes. How many innocent people had these crazy people hurt, just because they suspected them of being, what? Werewolves? Demons?

An image of Sam flashed into her head, eyes red and fangs bared, throwing a girl over her shoulder like she was nothing more than a stuffed toy, and suddenly the idea didn’t seem so far-fetched. Still, heartless beings? Terrible monstrosities? Even if Sam was some sort of ‘creature of the night’ or whatever, that didn’t sound like the girl she knew, regardless of any supernatural qualities. Not her Sam. Sam was caring, protective, affectionate like no one else in the world. She was sweet, insecure, and undeniably human, no matter what some crazy religious whack-job on the internet said.

A cold fear gripped her heart at the thought of one of these people hurting her friend. The only thing keeping her calm was the thought that hey, maybe these people are all bark and no bite? At that moment, her eyes caught on a tab at the top of the page, labelled ‘conquests.’ She involuntarily swallowed before hesitantly clicking on it.

Roxy stopped breathing. Greeting her were images upon images of bodies, human bodies, all neatly labelled with a date and a location, arranged in a list format, as though it was nothing more sinister than the results of a Youtube search. Many of the bodies were visibly torn up, blood and viscera strewn about the image like the haphazard strokes of a child with a paintbrush, while others were liberally adorned with the clean cuts of a blade or dotted with holes from gunshot wounds. Most, if not all of the bodies were stark naked, with only a few torn scraps of clothing remaining around their broken forms. A particularly gruesome image of a man with his head all but blasted off was labelled ‘Jelgava, Latvia. 1985’ and somewhere through the horrified fog in her mind Roxy connected it to the news article she’d read earlier.

Roxy felt sick, so so sick. It was real. These were real people, and they were dead at the hands of these fucking psychos. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to look away so badly, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the horrific images on her screen. An image caught her eye. Two people lay side by side, bodies in equal states of mutilation. A woman with wild blonde hair and blank, glassy green eyes laid next to a man with shorter silver hair, his own eyes sporting a sky-blue hue. Something about them was terrifyingly familiar, and it made her stomach turn. She read the label.

Dewsbury, United States of America. 2007

That was it. Roxy shut off the tab as quickly as she could before rushing out the door and down the hall to the bathroom. She barely made it to the toilet before the contents of her stomach were violently rushing out. Through her heaving and retching only one thought was racing through her head.

Sam.

She was okay, right? Of course she was! She was there, alive and well just this morning! There was no way anything could have happened to her, regardless of how close to home some of those killings were, right? She was safe, she had to be. And besides, Sam was super strong! Sure, some of those people in the photos looked just as buff and powerful as her, if not more. And sure, against someone with a gun, muscles weren’t gonna be much good. But she was okay. She was.

Roxy, having finally stopped expelling her dinner into the toilet, weakly fell backwards onto the cold tile floor. She had to talk to Sam, had to make sure she was okay, even though there was no way anything had happened to her. Nope. No way.

She slowly lifted herself up off the floor, flushed the toilet, washed her hands and face in the sink, and tiredly made her way back to her room. Her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding as she lowered herself onto her bed carefully, picking up her phone along the way. She looked at the time, 12:52 am, before navigating to the phone app and bringing up Sam’s contact. An image of the smiling blonde stared back at her. Roxy took a deep breath before pressing the call button.

With each consecutive unanswered ring, the fear in her heart grew. Deep down, she knew it was irrational, that the odds of something happening between this morning and now were incomprehensibly low, but that didn’t stop the pure terror that tightened it’s hold on her every second that she didn’t hear the soothing, husky voice that she longed for.

After what felt like an eternity, someone finally, finally answered on the other end with a very tired sounding voice.

“hello? Roxy? Are you alright?”

Roxy could barely keep herself from crying out of relief. Sam was okay!

“Sam! Sorry for waking you up... I.. I’m okay, I suppose. Just had a rough night and... wanted to hear your voice, I guess.” Her voice sounded torn and strained, no doubt the aftereffects of spilling her guts in the toilet earlier.

“Aw Rox! Don't worry about it! I’d always wake up for you!” Sam cooed, and Roxy felt the fear that once lay in her chest be replaced by a familiar ache, nothing but overwhelming adoration for the girl on the other end of the phone. “Is there anything you wanted to talk about? You know I'm always here for you.”

“I.. Just... you know that stuff you said last night? About how much I meant to you?” There was a sound of agreement through the phone. “Well, I know I said so already, but I just wanted to tell you that you mean so, so much to me as well. You make me feel so safe and comfortable, and honestly, I don’t know what I would do if something ever happened to you. I haven’t even known you that long, and I still can’t even imagine not being friends with you.”

A muffled sound came through the phone, and it took a couple of seconds for Roxy to realise that Sam was crying again.

“Roxyyyyy, you sweetheart, you’re gonna kill me over here.” Her voice was shaky and accentuated by sniffles, but Roxy swore that it was still the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard.

The raven-haired teen giggled and the two fell into a calm dialogue. Both girls were exhausted out of their minds, but neither wanted to bring it up and risk ending the call, so they just kept talking, chatting about nothing and everything, revelling in the sound of the other’s voice. Could you really blame them if neither noticed the time until the sun was well above the horizon?