4 JANE

Jane doe walked the lonely highway in an old brown jacket, a worn brown yarra hat and jeans with boots that had accepted mileage in her quest for self-discovery. A buckled sign rose from the haze:

SYDNEY 62.

Jane kept walking.

An NRMA van hunched on the verge a kilometre ahead, a broken-down van with its bonnet up, and hazards fretting orange into the smoke. People huddled in its lee—a mum with two kids wrapped in blankets, an old man with his tie folded into his pocket, a uni kid clutching his backpack like a life raft. None of them was watching the road.

They were staring into the weed-choked gully beyond the Armco bollards.

Jane slowed down to a slow walk.

Predators change the air. The gully felt tight, as if sound itself had learned to wait.

Something moved in the long weeds.

Not a dog. Not a wolf. The joints were wrong. Forelimbs too long. Shoulders ridged like a man’s. Black fur oil-dark over hungry muscle. Eyes amber, ringed with a pale, frost-grey rim.

Direwolf.

The pendant at her sternum warmed against her skin, then cooled again—body heat, adrenaline, nothing more. No warning. No help.

“Everyone, get back,” she said, voice low and even. “Get behind the van. Stay low. Don’t run. small steps, whatever it is back there, don’t be scared. It can smell fear.”

They listened. The uni kid hesitated, phone already halfway up.

“If you film this, you stay in the fight,” Jane said without looking away.

He dropped the phone back into his pocket.

The direwolf’s ears flicked toward her voice. Lips peeled back. Too many teeth. It jumped over the barrier and stood on all four in front of Jane.

“You,” it growled, sound grinding through its chest. “The one they call… the White Wolf.”

Jane slid the pack from her shoulders. The collapsible baton snapped down her palm with a clean mechanical hiss. “I am so tired of that ‘White Wolf’ crap.”

She pulled out her knife, and it rode low along her thigh. Her stance wasn’t pretty—feet a fraction too close, shoulders tight—but it was balanced enough.

“We have expected this,” the creature rasped. “The woman who saves towns.”

“Wrong town,” Jane said. “Wrong day.”

Claws kissed asphalt. No rush. Confident as it paced in front of her.

“You believe this road belongs to you?”

Jane tried a front step the way she’d been taught. Gravel slid under her heel, and she almost lost it.

“Shit,” she breathed.

It came sideways—no telegraph—cutting for her belly.

She got the baton down late. The impact of the direwolf jarred her arms to the elbows, but it stopped its teeth. Sloppy, but it worked. She stumbled with the force, hip clipping the Armco barrier, metal ringing from the impact. The direwolf smelled the imbalance and pressed.

“Back,” she snapped—at herself as much as it was that the direwolf’s breath was in her face.

Feint left; real bite right, it struck.

Jane bit on the feint, swore—“Shit”—and recovered half a beat behind. The direwolf circled, reading her movement preparing for another attack.

“You think you can defeat me, White Wolf?”

“Well,” she panted, “If I can’t—someone else will.”

It slashed through again on a passing attack. The baton cracked across its snout, then forearm. Messy contact, off-angle. Pain sparked in her wrist. Her follow-up heel caught fur, then found just enough joint to steal weight.

The creature snarled—breath like copper and battery acid—and shoved her hard.

Jane let it move her; she turned with the push, then nearly fell over. The ground caught her in a full stumble, right hand grinding into grit.

“Clumsy,” it hissed, lips barely shaping the sound. “Little thing. Oh, so clumsy.”

“Not so clumsy, I am just Practicing with your ugly mug,” Jane said, breath ragged.

It came again, jaws yawning too wide. She jammed the baton across its throat—not clean, too high—and the angle nearly folded her wrists. She dropped her weight, and it was ugly, her hips were late but there, levering it off by inches.

Claws raked her jacket. Fabric tore. Heat scored her ribs.

She hissed—more irritated than afraid.“Damn it.”

The direwolf backed off a step, pacing, resetting.

“No more time for Practicing White Wolf.”“Well lets settle this.” Jane called sideways, eyes never leaving it.“See the flare box?”

There was silence.

Then the old man said, “Yes.”

“Open it. There should be flares. Don’t light one until I say.”

The direwolf lunged again. The baton took a bite; it twisted and batted the stick aside with contempt. A claw raked past, close enough to flare pain up her forearm.

Jane stabbed short—four tight jabs with her knife at the neck of the Direwolf. Low. Mean. Not for depth, for space. Tendon scraped.

The creature recoiled, insulted, as blood streamed out from its wound.

“Now!” Jane screamed.

A red stick arced through the smoke. The old man had the cap off already, but it wasn’t lit.

Jane caught it one-handed, almost dropped it, she recovered, twisted the end plug and tried to light it.

First strike failed. Wrong angle on the fuse.

“Fuck.”

Second strike—

The flare coughed alive, dragon-loud, red grease fire blooming in her fist.

She swept it up between them.

Fire speaks without explanation.

The direwolf paused for a split second. It was a calculation. It was not scared, wounded, yes.

Jane stepped forward—not elegantly, just stubbornly as she staggered in her steps. Feet heavy. Shoulders squared. Baton in her left bent like a crooked hook. The flare in her right hand, swaying like a red and hot molten moving wall.

“Off the road,” she barked as the Direwolf moved backwards away from the flare “Easy,” she said.

It tested left. She blocked too close, singeing fur. A growl rolled out of it that made her knees feel hollow.

It tried right. She shuffled into its path, clumsy but present, flare hissing inches from its eye.

“This is not your road, White Wolf,” it spat.

“Then pick another.”

It weighed hunger against pain. Against this irritating human who wouldn’t give it an easy meal.

The muscles bunched.

Jane braced—and nearly tripped over her own heel.

The Direwolf sprang anyway, clearing the guardrail in one spiteful arc, vanishing into blackberry and ghost gum.

Jane took two more steps, peered into the green. “Yeah. You’d better run.”

She tossed the flare into the wet ditch. It shrank itself smaller.

She kept her eyes on the scrub until the last of the smoke thinned into a bad smell.

“Stay put,” she told the cluster of people, because relief makes idiots fast.

A police Hilux rolled up quietly, grille low, lights off. The young constable’s hand hovered near his pistol like drawing it might offend the night. The sergeant took in the torn jacket, the claw marks, the smoke.

“You all right?” the sergeant asked.

“Fine,” Jane said. Factual. “It headed east through the gully. Don’t follow on foot.”

The sergeant nodded, already keying the radio. “We’ll call it upstream. You want a lift?”

Jane looked north.

The road lay empty enough to invite trouble.

SYDNEY 58 waited in the haze.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m walking.”

Faces watched again from car windows. Someone whispered White Wolf, the way people say weather when they hope it won’t last.

Jane slung her pack, flexed the hand she’d ground into gravel, and stepped back into the lane—placing her feet a little more carefully this time.

The wind shifted.

The city’s taste sharpened: metal, wet asphalt, and the lingering smell of something that didn’t belong this far out.

She kept the pace.

Steady. Stubborn.

Still learning.