Wolf’s Redemption (The Wolves of Langeais #3)

Chapter Two

Deptford, London

2022

Rebekah Clarke stepped off the bus into the rain and dashed under an awning. She dug into her bag, rummaging through unused tissues, a pen, old receipts, a paperback shifter romance she’d gotten from the book exchange, stray mints, her purse and whatever other unmentionables she’d thrown in there at one time or another. What a crap day. Her fingers closed over her keys. A glass of cheap red wine and a meal of two-minute noodles were all she had to look forward to, but at least she could enjoy them in the privacy of her flat. No more dealing with her boss Charlie’s lecherous looks and grabby hands.

“Your rent is late.”

Bek looked up and groaned. In the doorway of The Spicy Dragon, beneath the stuttering neon sign, stood a tiny woman, arms folded across her chest, her skin as wrinkled as a long-forgotten apple in Bek’s fruit bowl.

“Mrs. Wu.”

Mouth-watering smells emanated from the restaurant. A damn sight better than her intended meal, but Mrs. Wu would as soon extend her credit, or comp her free food, as she’d cut off her right arm. The woman might be four feet nothing, but she was a tyrant of epic proportions. It wouldn’t surprise Bek if the restaurant was a front for the Chinese Triad, and Mrs. Wu the Dragon Master.

“You’re two weeks late with rent.” She waggled a bony finger at Bek. “You don’t pay, I evict you.”

She bloody well would, too. “I got paid today, Mrs. Wu.”

She hadn’t. She was supposed to be, but her boss had stiffed her again. While propositioning her. Charlie knew there were few employers who would take her on. The bastard also worked on the assumption if he didn’t pay her, she wouldn’t have money for rent, and she’d have to give up her flat. With nowhere to live, but desperately needing to keep her job, she’d be at his mercy. Bek would peddle her firstborn before she slept with that cretin. “I’ll go down to the bank first thing tomorrow.”

Mrs. Wu narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “You better. I be waiting for it. Many people are interested in renting your place.”

Bek plastered a smile on her face. As if. This wasn’t Mayfair, and The Spicy Dragon was not the Michelin starred Hakkasan. Nope. Her flat was a cockroach-infested dump, and the restaurant wasn’t much better. One phone call to the health board and they’d shut it down. And then I’ll be back to having nowhere to live. “Tomorrow, I promise.”

Mrs. Wu scowled, then retreated inside.

Bek huffed, unlocked the door and climbed the narrow stairs to her bedsit above the restaurant. She dropped her rucksack on the worn and wonky table and kicked off her shoes. Then she flicked on the heat, removed her sodden jacket and shoved her cold feet into her slippers. Her neighbor, a skeevy tweaker, was already in, the pounding beat of Black Sabbath loud enough to penetrate the thin walls of her flat, but not so loud as to piss off Mrs. Wu. She’d bang on the wall if she thought it’d make any difference.

She plonked a glass and a half-empty bottle of cheap wine on the coffee table, and threw herself on the sofa and checked her phone for messages. Four from her parole officer. She screwed up her face. Charlie had probably phoned him after she’d stormed out, swearing her head off and telling him he could stick it where the sun didn’t shine.

Bek poured herself a glass of wine and gulped it down like water. Like she needed it to survive. She did. Her parole officer was a hard-ass. And a friend of Charlie’s. Lucky me. She rubbed her temple, the hint of a headache already forming. How has my life come to this? At thirty-two, she should have her shit together by now.

Bek poured more wine. She’d gotten herself into this mess, she’d get herself out of it. She slipped her hand into her pocket and retrieved her find. A little gold disc about the size of a fifty pence piece. On one side was a howling wolf’s head. She flipped it over. On the other, four lines of strange, curling script.

She’d found it on the floor of the bar. With the patrons who frequented Charlie’s, chances were the owner hadn’t come by it through honest means. Charlie would’ve kept it for himself. So, instead of handing it over as lost property, Bek had slipped it into her pocket. Now it was hers. If she could figure out its value, it might be her ticket to a Charlie-free future. And better living quarters. Ignoring her messages, she thumbed up Google.

* * * *

Three glasses of wine and an hour later, Bek found a match for the script on the disc. Something called Theban, from the fifteen hundreds. She slumped against the faded and torn upholstery. Bollocks . She couldn’t hock an artifact. Whether it came from a museum or a private collection, someone would be looking for it. Most likely the cops. Wouldn’t her parole officer just love that?

Her phone beeped a low battery warning, and she groaned. Another thing she couldn’t afford—a new phone with a battery that lasted more than a few hours. She poured the last dregs of the wine into her glass, took the two steps to her kitchenette and tossed the bottle in the rubbish. She missed. It hit the corner of the bench-top with a sharp crack and shattered. Bek let her head fall back and stared at the peeling paint on the ceiling.

Could this day get any worse?

Kneeling, she picked up the pieces of glass, slicing her finger.

Why? Why does the universe have it in for me today?

With more care, she cleaned up the mess. Stemming the blood from her finger, she searched through her rucksack for her phone charger. She dug beneath her purse and the paperback novel, scrounging amongst the useless crap she kept in her bag. No charger. She checked her jacket pockets. No luck. She pawed through her bag again. Seriously, it was like a mini version of the Bermuda Triangle. Things went in there and were never seen or heard of again.

Bek tipped the contents out onto the table. Beside the book, her purse, a pen, tissues and a lollipop that had seen better days, she found a lipstick she’d thought lost months ago and a condom, expired last week. But no phone charger. Bollocks.

She slapped her forehead with her palm. Bloody Charlie. He’d grabbed her ass as she was unplugging her phone. She must have forgotten her charger as she’d stormed out of the bar. Great. Just great. She’d have to make do with whatever battery she had left.

Bek returned to the sofa and the disc. Clicking out of Wikipedia, her eyes caught on another link.

“ Diary of a Madman .”

Below it, in amongst the text, the word Theban. Bek looked at the wall, beyond which her neighbor’s music still reverberated. Wasn’t Diary of a Madman an Ozzy Osbourne album? She clicked on the link. Yes. And there, the explanation she’d been hoping for. Ozzy Osbourne had used the Theban script on the inside cover of the album.

Excitement buzzed in her veins. Maybe it wasn’t an artifact. If she could link this to Ozzy, it could be worth something. Hunting around for a piece of paper, she scrolled through Google until she found the Theban alphabet and set about translating.

Bek stared at the four lines she’d written. WTF? A bunch of gobbledygook. No wait. It kind of looked like… Could it be… Latin ? And she was back again to it being an artifact. Maybe. Ozzy had once bitten the head off a live bat. Who knew what weirdness he was capable of? Another search through Google for Latin to English, then she transcribed the translation.

Bek threw her pen down on the coffee table. Four lines. A rhyme. She rubbed the little gold disc between her fingers, blood from her cut sinking into its grooves. She stared at the words again. Not a single mention of Ozzy, though it had an occult-like ring to it. She went back to her phone, clicking on links relating to Ozzy, Black Sabbath, Diary of a Madman .

Nothing.

Would her neighbor have any ideas?

Halfway to the door, Bek halted, the disc in one hand, her translation and her phone in the other. Am I crazy? I can’t trust him. He’d take it and hock it himself. Nope. She’d figure this out on her own.

Bek stared at the rhyme. What did it mean? She read the words out loud.

“Vanish from all human sight,

Those who favor moonlit night.

To bloodstone shall they return,

So no man of their secret learns .”

Darkness hit like a solid wall, sucking away her breath and making her ears ring. Bek reeled, lost her balance, lost all sense of up or down, and fell. Like a slow-motion video, she hung suspended in the air, arms flailing for what seemed like an eternity. Then she hit the floor with a thud.

“Oof!” That’d leave a bruise. Or two. Thank God she hadn’t dropped her phone.

“Damn it, Mrs. Wu. I said I’d pay rent tomorrow. You didn’t have to cut off my electricity.”

Bek closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the floor, the damp earth cooling her wine-flushed face.

Wait. Dirt? Her eyes snapped open.

She scrambled to her knees and turned on her phone, lighting up the surrounding space. Yes, dirt. And stone walls. No faded sofa, no peeling linoleum and no seventies-style kitchenette. The pervading smell of dampness replaced sweet and sour pork, and the guitar riffs of Black Sabbath were noticeably absent.

I haven’t drunk that much wine. Have I?

Maybe. And she’d not eaten since lunch. Was this some weird, alcohol-induced dream? Would she wake up in the morning with a pounding headache, a crick in her neck and a hideous floral pattern imprinted on her cheek because she’d passed out on the sofa?

Bek got to her feet, the cold seeping through the thin soles of her slippers and chilling her toes. Goosebumps erupted across her bare arms. A little too much realism to be a dream.

She swung her phone around. Where the hell am I? Some kind of…basement? Below The Spicy Dragon? A sinkhole, maybe?

It’d rained for two weeks straight. Pipes had burst all over the city, flooding streets, houses and office buildings. One had opened up down the street and swallowed a car.

Wide-eyed, she took in her surroundings. Mrs. Wu would be pissed.

But… If I’ve fallen in a sinkhole … Bek patted her body. Why am I still alive? Where were the signs of a collapse? The mud, the water and half a restaurant? The room was whole, devoid of anything but her.

A low chuckle broke the silence, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She swallowed, her fingers clenching around her phone. Slowly she turned, holding it out in front of her and lighting up the small space. Her heartbeat fluttered in her chest, and her hand shook, bouncing the light around like a strobe. Not an empty room. Not only her. There was a man.

A man chained to the freaking wall .

He stared at her through strands of long, blond hair, his bearded face dirty, and reflected light from her phone glittering in his eyes. Shackles encased his wrists and neck, and the surrounding skin was blistered and raw. A torn shirt hung from his broad shoulders, and Bek’s gaze skipped across muscled pecs and ripped abs.

He pushed himself off the wall, standing tall, his chains clinking and black pants stretching over powerful thighs. Footballer’s thighs. Keen eyes studied her with a burning intensity. His gaze raked over her from head to toe before returning to her face, then dipping and lingering on her cleavage. Heat bloomed, and her nipples pebbled.

God Almighty.

She took a step back. Then another.

He advanced on her, stalking her with an animal-like grace surprising for such a large man, until his chains snapped tight, halting his progress. Her panties dampened. What was it about dangerous men that had her ovaries going off like it was midnight on New Year’s Eve?

He inhaled deeply through his nose and closed his eyes. A low rumble emanated from his chest, and a wicked smile tilted the corner of his mouth. He licked his lips, and she followed the progress of his tongue with a hungry gaze.

Down, girl.

He opened his eyes, his gaze locking with hers, full of heated promises. Bek sucked in a breath and backed away until she hit the wall.

Fuck me .

“Mrs. Wu, you really are a Dragon Master.”