Lupine Howl: The Complete First Series (All 8 books)

by Amy Cross

  9.

  Frank throws the unconscious wolf into the back of his van and turns to me. He pulls a huge roll of notes from his pocket and counts off what looks like a couple of grand in old, used notes, which he shoves at me.

  “Keep your mouth shut,” he says brusquely. “Courtesy of the estate”.

  I cautiously take the money and look at it. Somehow it feels wrong to take this, it feels like blood money. But the truth is: I'm starving, I have nowhere to go, and I need this money so badly. Reluctantly, I stuff the cash into my pocket, trying not to look at the still wolf in the back of Frank's van. Despite everything Frank told me about the wolf, the creature looks so weak and helpless right now.

  “None of this happened, okay?” Frank says, slamming the van doors shut. I think he realised I was starting to have second thoughts about everything. “You didn't meet me. You didn't meet him. You didn't see or hear anything”. He looks at me and laughs. “Hell, if you start mouthing off, you'll end up locked in a padded cell anyway”.

  “What are you gonna do with him?” I ask.

  “Why, you wanna watch?” he sneers. He stares at me for a moment. “That money I gave you, yeah? It means that from this moment on, you don't get to ask questions. You don't get to even have questions. This is the end of the road for you, and you should be grateful about that. You don't need to think about this any more”. He sighs. “I wish I could get out of things as easily as you do. Now seriously, girl. Fuck off. If I ever see you again”...

  He goes around to the front of the van, climbs into the driver's seat and starts the engine. I step aside as he backs the van away and then accelerates down the street. After just fifty metres or so, he takes a left into what looks like a small lock-up garage.

  Turning, I see the dead old man that the wolf was starting to eat. It seems wrong somehow to just leave him out here, but I guess someone will come along and take him so he can be buried properly. Besides, I really don't want to have to explain how I got here, so I hurry off into the night.

  When I reach Leicester Square, it's still only 9pm and the place is heaving with tourists. There's some kind of film premiere over on one side, so I go and look at the stars walking along the red carpet. The only one I recognise is George Clooney, which is pretty cool. I turn and head past the bright lights and then I realise that, hell, I've got two grand in my pocket, I deserve at least a proper meal. So I head into a small burger bar and order a huge meal, then I sit at a window table and finally try to work out what I'm going to do.

  “Alright,” says a guy who suddenly sits next to me. I can tell straight away that he's going to cause trouble, from the way he's grinning. He keeps glancing back over at a group of others – a couple of guys, a couple of girls – at a nearby table who are clearly his friends. “Why are you all alone, then?” he asks, staring at me.

  “I'm fine, thanks,” I say, concentrating on my food and hoping he'll just leave me alone.

  He reaches out a hand for me to shake. “Lloyd,” he says.

  “Hi,” I say, not shaking the hand.

  “Come on,” he continues, “you can't be happy sat there all by yourself, come over and join us”.

  “No thanks,” I say, hurrying to finish eating so I can get out of here.

  “What's wrong?” he asks. “Don't you like the look of us or something?” He stares as I eat, waiting for me to answer. “What, you think we look like cunts or something?”

  I fold the last part of the burger up into a napkin, put it in my pocket and stand up. “Thanks,” I say. “Got to go. Bye”.

  “Fucking bitch,” the guy says as I walk away. I half expect him to follow me, but thankfully he doesn't. I hurry out of the bar and into the safety and anonymity of the crowd. Within a couple of steps I'm in a throng of people, jostling to get past as I head towards Charing Cross Road.

  I still don't know where I'm going, but I have this urge to keep moving. I pull the rest of the burger from my pocket, but someone bumps into me and I drop the food on the pavement. Sighing, I push on and soon I'm part of a river of people heading down towards Trafalgar Square. It feels good: for a moment, with money in my pocket and no need to worry about food for a few days, I feel like a normal person. It's an incredible feeling, but it dissipates as soon as I get down to Trafalgar Square and watch people pouring in and out of Charing Cross train station. Unlike them, I have nowhere to go, and no-one is waiting at home for me.

  As I walk, I pass a phone box. Reluctantly, I go into it and put some coins into the machine, then I dial a familiar number and wait while the phone rings.

  “Hello?” asks a voice at the other end.

  I stand there, my mouth open ready to say something. But there's nothing to say.

  “Hello?” the voice asks again. It's my father's voice.

  I put the phone down and head out of the phone box. That was stupid. Really stupid. If he realised it was me... Hell, he probably did get at least a suspicion. After all, how many other people are likely to phone him up like that and then be too afraid to say a word? But I didn't give him the chance to say anything else, because I know what he thinks about me. There's no point just letting him repeat the same old thing. Damn it, I must never, ever be weak like that again. I need to forget his phone number.

  “Alright love?” asks a voice behind me. I turn to find Lloyd and his friends from the burger bar have followed me. “No-one home?” Lloyd says, grinning.

  I turn and walk away, hoping that this was just a coincidence and that they'll leave me alone. But I quickly realise that they're following me and I'm their sport for the night. As I head down the side of Charing Cross station, hoping to lose them in the crowds around the Embankment area, I feel Lloyd grabbing my shoulder.

  “We just want to say sorry for being a bit rude back there,” Lloyd says, forcing me to stop. I consider kneeing him in the crotch and running off, or shouting for help, but I'm still hoping that these idiots might just leave me alone if I wait long enough.

  “Okay,” I say finally, nodding. “Bye”.

  I try to pull away, but Lloyd holds me back. No-one in the crowd seems to care. I guess they see this kind of thing happening on the streets every night, as they make their way home from work and walk past people who are arguing. To them, this is just a disagreement between friends, just another little incident to not get involved with.

  “I'm starting to think you're the rude one,” Lloyd says. His friends are still hanging back a little, apparently amused by watching him mess me around.

  “I just want to go,” I say.

  “You're pretty,” he replies.

  “I really have to go,” I say, turning and managing to slip from his grip. But he grabs my arm and won't let go.

  “You live on the streets, do you?” he asks. “Sleeping rough? How come a pretty girl like you ends up homeless? Eh? Aren't there jobs you can do? There's places you can suck cocks for money, haven't you tried that?” He grins. “I'll give you a free audition if you like”.

  “Leave me alone or I'll scream,” I say.

  “Alright, fucking whore,” he says, the grin vanishing from his face. “Just thought you could use twenty quid, that's all. Just doing you a favour”. He grabs me and pulls me closer. “I wouldn't actually give you twenty quid to suck my cock. Maybe a fiver at most”.

  I pull away from him, but as I do, I trip and fall onto the ground. As I land, my teeth dig into my lower lip and split it open. My coat crumples under me and the money Frank gave me flies out onto the pavement, landing next to Lloyd's feet. He bends down, picks up the bundle of notes and stares at me with a look of disbelief.

  “Where did this come from?” he asks. He turns to his friends. “The fucking whore's loaded! There must be two grand here!”

  “I need that,” I say, getting up, wiping the blood from my lip. “Give it to me, it's mine”.

  “Yeah,” he replies, clearly somewhat stunned at how much money I have. “The thing is -” He grins at me for a moment, then he turns a
nd runs. His friends take the cue and run after him. I immediately run after them, pursuing them around the corner and along the busy street. But there are so many people, it's impossible to keep track of Lloyd and soon I'm just running through a sea of people with no idea where my money has gone. Eventually I reach a road crossing and I stop, looking around in the hope that I might see them. But there's no chance. I stand there, with the crowd moving around me, and I realise I'm back to where I started: penniless, alone and with nowhere to go.

  I turn and walk back along the street, acutely aware that everyone around me has probably recognised that I'm homeless. They're probably looking at me, glad that they aren't in my position, wondering what kind of mistakes I made to end up like this. But I'm not going to let this stop me. That bastard who stole my money was right about one thing. There's a way I can help myself. I might not like it, but it might be my only chance.

  10.

  If he had any humanity left in him, he'd kill me right now.

  Instead, Frank is keeping me alive so he can torture me. And although the pain bites into my body and sears my flesh, I can't help but understand his motivation. After all, this is a man who saw his own father getting ripped apart by members of my own pack; a man who spent more than three decades hunting those wolves and was never able to find them; a man who has had to learn to wear failure well. All that pent-up rage and hatred, and he's taking it out on me. Bless him...

  Hanging here, suspended by chains from the ceiling, I await Frank's next attack. He is resting for a moment now, out of breath and wheezing. He's an old man now, and his health is failing. It's possible that his heart will give out with all the excitement. But I suspect he'll hold it all together until he has finally killed me. After that, he'll have nothing to live for anyway. His job will be done.

  I shift from my wolf form to my human form, and back again, as he strikes me with irons. It doesn't really matter what form I take, I feel the pain and I endure broken bones and burned skin. The pain is crippling, and it's all I can do to avoid screaming. But I won't give him that satisfaction. The only victory I can possibly score now is to die with dignity and refuse him the pleasure of hearing me beg for my life.

  “Tired, dog?” he asks as he approaches me, a large metal chain in his hand. He clutches his chest, a clear sign that his body is starting to fail. He swings the chain at me, and it smashes into my ribs. I feel my bones fracture, and I squeeze my eyes tight shut to try to block out the pain.

  “I know it hurts,” Frank says, staring at me. “Even if you don't scream, I can see it in your eyes”. He hits me with the chain again, this time breaking one of my legs. “Let it out,” he says, almost dispassionately. “Scream the way my father screamed”.

  I open my eyes and fix him with a dark stare. I've known Frank for many years, and I've become tired of his constant moaning about his father. Yes, his father died horribly, but Frank is using that as a crutch, as an excuse to explore the kind of demons that most men keep hidden.

  “It doesn't matter how long it takes you to kill me,” I say slowly. “When it's over, you'll still be standing there, alone, with no-one left to torture but yourself”.

  This is all my fault. I never should have trusted that human, but there was something about her that fooled me into believing, just for a moment, that she wouldn't double-cross me. I have no-one else to blame for my death.

  Frank stares at me for a moment, then he smashes the chain against my face, fracturing my cheek and causing me to let out an involuntary whimper as I feel my left eye split open. I switch to my wolf form, then back to human. Either way, it's agony. But I feel I have more dignity as a wolf, as if there is something more noble about that form.

  “I know you're ready for death,” Frank says, stepping up to me. Is this it? Is he going to fire the silver bullet into my heart from up close? “And you certainly will die at my hands”. He smiles. “But not tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or even this week. No, I'm going to keep you alive for months, filled with pain, until I get bored and decide to put you out of your misery. Do you understand? I'm going to play with your pain until you scream for mercy”.

  With that, he makes to smash the chain into my face, but at the last minute he holds back. Instead, he laughs, turns and walks away.

  “See you tomorrow,” he calls over his shoulder as he heads out the door, leaving me hanging there, bleeding and broken, with crushed bones and a damaged eye. How much longer must I wait to die?

  11.

  “Sure, I can use a girl like you. But girls like you are a dime a dozen, if you know what I mean. I get five or six like you coming in here every day, asking for work. You need something special, something that helps you stand out from the crowd”. Tom Rossiter, the fat, bald, over-confident owner of some of London's seedier strip clubs, leans back in his creaking leather chair as he eyes me up. “How long have you been on the streets?” he asks eventually.

  I shift awkwardly in my seat. “What do you mean?” I ask.

  He laughs. “Come on, love. I wasn't born yesterday. You're sleeping rough, I can tell. You're damaged goods. The question is, how damaged?”

  I stare at him, not sure what to say.

  “How long have you been on the streets?” he asks bluntly.

  “A few months,” I say.

  “Maggots?” he asks.

  I frown. “What?”

  “I've had girls come in,” he says, “looking for work, and it turns out they're fucking infested with maggots. You got maggots?”

  I shake my head.

  He stares at me, sizing me up, deciding if he likes the look of me. “You're not a dancer,” he says eventually. “And you're not a waitress. But you might be what we call a back-room girl. Do you know what that is?”

  I think about it for a moment. “I'm not sure,” I say.

  “You sit in a back-room and work the glory holes,” he says. “Do you know what a glory hole is?”

  I nod slowly. “I think so”.

  “It's a hole guys stick their dicks in. They don't see you, you don't see them. You just jerk them off, or suck them off, and that's it. It pays ten quid an hour and you're on duty from 8pm to 5am. It's long work and you might get ten customers an hour during busy periods. You up for it?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  He takes me through to one of the back-room areas, where I'm told to sit in a small cubicle. There's a small round hole in the wall, and Rossiter tells me that whenever a cock appears through that hole, I have to attend to it. He tells me I'll be paid at the end of the night, in cash, provided there are no complaints and no problems.

  “There are just three rules,” he says before he leaves the room. “Don't bite, don't talk, and don't leave the room until 5am. Okay?”

  Once he's gone, I wait by the hole. Wow, if my family could see me now... Sure enough, every few minutes a different penis appears and I use either my hands or my mouth to get the guy off. I never see their faces, I just hear them grunting, and they're all pretty quick. Within the first hour, I've probably done five or six. The thing is, it's completely un-erotic, it juts reduces sex to a mechanical process. In fact, it's kind of funny, though as midnight rolls around I'm pretty bored. Still, I just have to think of the money...

  At about 1am I hear another client enter the room on the other side of the hole. I get ready for him to poke his cock through, but nothing happens and after a minute or two I start to wonder what he's up to. I can hear him breathing, but so far he hasn't presented himself. I stare at the little hole in the wall, wondering what the guy is doing on the other side. I guess there are some weird types around, but he can't do anything to me, at least not with a wall between us.

  “Hello?” I call out eventually, and I instantly realise I should have kept quiet.

  I listen, and I hear a strange sound, like... well, it's like someone's sniffing on the other side of the hole. I lean forward to take a look, but there's nothing to see. I angle myself differently, trying to see what's on the other side
of the wall, but no matter what angle I look from, I can't see anyone.

  I can still hear him, though. He's definitely there.

  “Do you want something?” I ask, my voice quivering a little. “There's a live show down the hallway, maybe you'd like that better?”

  The sniffing stops while I'm speaking. All I hear now is silence. Eventually I hear the other door creak a little, and it seems my mystery man has finally decided he's had enough. I relax a little, glad that the unusual situation is over. All I want is a nice, clean evening with no real challenges and no opportunities to get anything wrong.

  I hear something.

  Slowly, I turn to the door – the only door, in and out of this little cubicle in which I'm sitting – and I realise that the sniffing has started out in the corridor now. There's a faint shadow under the door, moving quickly.

  I go over to the door, make sure the bolt is across and then I double-lock the chain that runs from the door to the wall. Although the door itself is physically locked, I don't want to take any chances. I back away from the door, keenly aware that there's no other way out of here.

  “Go away,” I say, trying to sound firm. “If you don't leave, I'll call security and have you thrown out”. I look around the room, hoping to see a phone or a radio or a panic button or something. Fuck it, there's nothing. But I'm pretty certain someone will come to check on me soon. I just have to stay in here and wait.

  Suddenly someone bangs on the door.

  “You in there?” Rossiter calls.

  Feeling a flood of relief wash over me, I run to the door and unbolt it, pulling it open and – yes, I know this sounds ridiculous – hugging Rossiter. He pulls away from me.