Big Bad Wolfe

My best bad guy is a vampire named Darius Wolfe. Few of my devoted followers have met him, but I have seen him through the eyes of too many of his victims to think him anything less than the most villainous villain I have ever written.

And he’s totally good with it.

The stories about him are always told through the eyes of someone else. That will never change. Unlike Julian Scott-Tyler or Ariel Black, it’s a waste of his time for Darius to tell his side of anything. He expects unquestioning acceptance that he does everything for a reason and woe befall anyone who opposes him. I’m uncertain if he’s a psycho or a sociopath; I’d have to consult an expert on whether he fits into a category or is in a league of his own, and I’m not going there because my go-to defence of “I’m just the scribe” might not survive the scrutiny.

Besides, he’s too much fun to write. I’d stopped for a while, three and a half volumes into a series about the woman bound to serve him that may yet see the light of day, albeit in a different way than originally penned. He popped up in last year’s story of a hit man who discovers a girl washed up on the beach, and a couple of weeks ago, I heard from the woman he married when he was still a mortal (I can’t say he was ever truly human). I’ve been working with her since then, telling her side of the tale, and wouldn’t you know, he was a rat bastard in mortality as well. Maybe even worse, given what he did to become immortal.

No, he did not sacrifice his wife. That was Marcel de Chauvigny, who squared off against Julian in the 1890s. Oh, and let’s not forget Raymond de Haven, the bane of Black’s eternal existence. I have a pantheon of vampire baddies to choose from, and of them all, Darius thrills/alarms me the most.

What makes him so scary? Maybe the fact that immortality hasn’t changed him. He wasn’t a mortal so much as he was a dry vampire, waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the potential for limitless power.

I’m writing that story this week. I know how it ends for him (and so does anyone who’s reading this post), but how it ends for Calista, I can’t predict. I hope it ends well for her, but when you’re married to the devil incarnate, being a witch is no guarantee that you’ll survive in one piece.

As with all of my stories, I’ll have to write and see.