Comfort the Wolves

0. Rain and Holy Water

Prologue - Fifteen Years Earlier

It astounded him how different one side of the river was from the other.

On his side, the rain streamed down cobblestones in threads that caught the light. Women lifted their skirts over red leather boots to tiptoe through puddles. Men in cologne checked the rain-spotted glass of expensive watches before they hailed a taxi.

But on this side of the river, the rain turned the place to muck. The mud was heavy and cold. It slurped at his boots and splattered the hem of his trousers. And it smelled like a cracked coffin from hell: fish rot, piss, motor oil and cheap, pink-smelling perfume.

The perfume came from The Dice and Damsel, a brothel with yellow windows open to the rain. Women in nothing but multicoloured corsets leaned out and smoked long cigarettes between lipsticked teeth. They watched him cross under their windows; his hat worn low, collar flicked up to his ears, cane barely squelching a purchase in the mud.

Of all the places in the world to wedge an altar, the Old Mother had to choose this one.

It was a hovel of a building off the last door of the Damsel. The peeling white paint marked a different sort of establishment than the red and black stripes of the brothel.

Lewis hesitated, listening over the rain to the voices inside. Then he knocked three times with the gold knob of his cane.

Two women waited inside, holding candlesticks that stretched strange hands of light over their faces and deepened their frowns. The girl must be further inside.

"You came alone," said the first.

Lewis bowed his head. "So as not to frighten the girl, then." The altar was nothing but a closet compared to the cavernous, sprawling creatures of his side of the river. Eight kneelers; no electricity. Just candles melting into the floor and the heavy smell of incense coating his lungs.

"Well, you're not seeing her," the second woman snapped.

This human he knew immediately. Her voice held a cadence that soothed the animal in him. Frederica, the girl's grandmother; a potential mate of the Pack herself. Though faded with age, he caught her scent too, a mix of musk and honeysuckle.

Lewis bowed over his cane to her, pressing his dripping hat to his heart. "Madam Finn, as Alpha of White Pine, allow me to offer my deepest apologies to both you and your granddaughter for the breech of our contract."

Frederica merely watched him down the slant of her nose.

"My," the first woman clicked her tongue, wrapping a frizzy wooled shawl more tightly around her. "The alpha himself? What an honour." She must have been Old Mother Tamar, the founder of this small altar.

"You mated then, Alpha?" the grandmother asked, tilting her chin up slightly.

"Yes, madam. Tatiana has been my mate these last two years."

Frederica sniffed. "Makes no difference, no matter what they say. A wolf is a beast. And no beast will touch that child ever again."

"Honestly, Rica." Mother Tamar gestured for his coat and laid it over a kneeler. "He's come all this way. The Alpha. A grace from him might allow the girl a little peace."

Frederica watched him set his hat and cane gently over the coat. Lewis noticed a tremor in her hand before she crossed her arms. "This way, then."

Lewis followed the swoosh of skirts to a small storage room at the back. Past the altar, he could smell the girl hiding in the closet. She smelt soft and yellow, like a brush of sunlight.