For The She-Wolf of Baker Street, I wrote a section where Audrey first met Ruby Stockton, the love of her life, to flesh out their relationship and the things that Audrey gained from knowing Ruby. It got edited out as it didn’t quite fit the flow, but here it is as a taster for The She-Wolf of Baker Street!
Cursebreaker
1983: Northumberland National Park
The full moon threw muted light, silvering the stones atop Hadrian’s Wall and casting other side in ink-dark shadows. Audrey Hudson loped in these shadows, alone and glad to be so. Other weres ran here tonight, no doubt. Audrey preferred not to meet them, or to hear to their opinions.
The night still held some warmth from the country’s current heatwave. Audrey, even in wolf form, appreciated it. After William Ormstein’s attack a few years ago, she found chilly weather more of a challenge; it made her scars ache and her limp more pronounced.
Perhaps she should move to London one day. The news reported that the sweltering thirty-something degree heat wave was debilitating, but after three years of northern damp in her bones, Audrey was prepared to give it a try.
Not tonight, though. Not soon. Not while Ormstein was still in Bristol and might get wind of her in London. She wasn’t afraid of him; she was angry. She hated him. But she wanted to be stronger than he was, if they ever met again. She wasn’t strong enough yet.
Audrey halted at a sudden sound. She raised her snout to the wind, crouched ready to attack, or defend, quivered as she strained to hear the sound again.
She could sense everything nearby – the waterways with names like Broomlee Lough and Caw Burn or Piper Sike, and the nocturnal animals that gathered by them. Foxes, badgers, hedgehogs. Overhead, the wings of bats and owls. As dawn approached, the rabbits and roe deer would stir, but not yet.
The sound that alarmed her did not repeat, but now she was hyper aware of all the animals. All the prey. Audrey prowled along the shadows, keeping downwind of the nearest creek, following the scent of water and of prey.
‘Fox’ll give you bellyache.’ The guttural, wolf-warped London accent came out of nowhere. Audrey nearly sprained something, rapidly spinning to face the threat.
A large werewolf stood downwind from her, deep brown pelt marked with black striations. The were’s head was cocked to one side, watching Audrey closely with penetrating golden eyes.
Audrey growled, too steeped in wolf to speak. Nine years a werewolf, and still that skill eluded her.
‘Run with me,’ offered the were.
Audrey didn’t trust this beautiful werewolf. She didn’t trust anyone. They all feared her. Ormstein had made her double-cursed.
‘Come with me,’ the were offered again. ‘Run with me.’
But oh, she wanted to trust this one. She ached with loneliness. This were didn’t know her. Maybe she could run with another were again. Just this once. Just tonight,
Audrey couldn’t speak it, but she stood ready, head raised. The other werestood with her, shoulder to shoulder. Like pack.
‘Follow me!’
The dark wolf loped away, setting a wild pace, tearing over hill, valley, meadow and moor; skirting peat bogs; leaping the ancient wall.
They didn’t hunt. They only ran, full of joy.
Dawn struck the weres like fire, the pain of it undiminished with time, only endured more stoically, with knowing it would pass. Soon, two naked women remained, curled in the grass, panting for breath. Audrey sat up, shivering, and hugged her knees, her pale skin all goosebumps. She was a long way from where she’d left her clothes. She felt vulnerable, foolish. Uncertain.
The other werewas a Black woman, at least ten years older than Audrey. She stood up, stretching, feeling her way back into her usual skin. She was tall, curvaceous, with dark, tight curls cropped short and bright brown eyes.
‘What a run!’ Even naked, she was full of confidence. She held her hand out to Audrey. ‘Morning, love. I’m Ruby.’
‘Audrey,’ Audrey muttered.
‘I’ve scented your tracks here, the last few months.’ She pronounced it “monfs”, true East London style. ‘I was hoping I’d meet you.’
Audrey couldn’t think of anything to say, so didn’t. Ruby didn’t seem offended. She searched by the wall and returned with her own cache of clothes.
‘You take the coat,’ she said, pulling on a skirt and blouse. ‘My cottage is close. We can look for your things later, on the bike. Tea first.’
Audrey was human and naked in a national park. She didn’t have much choice but to agree.
Ruby’s two-storey cottage was on the fringes of Bellingham, 16 miles north of where they’d begun. Audrey was soon sitting at the woman’s kitchen table, wearing a dress several sizes too large and gratefully sipping a cup of strong, excellent tea.
Ruby grinned when Audrey asked gruffly about the bicycle to fetch her own things, stowed near Broomlee Lough.
‘It’s a quad bike, actually,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you out when we’ve had a rest.’
‘I’d rather get going,’ said Audrey tersely. ‘Get home.’
‘Where’s that?’
Audrey shrugged and glowered into her tea. She jumped when Ruby touched her shoulder.
‘You’ve been all over the park, for months now,’ said Ruby gently. ‘Like someone staying at hostels. Or camping out. Nowhere proper to stay.’
Audrey gripped the mug so tightly the ceramic handle creaked. It was appalling to be so transparent.
‘I know what it’s like, to have nowhere to go,’ said Ruby. ‘You can stay with me, if you like.’
‘I don’t need a pack.’
‘I’m not offering one. Just a place to rest. Someone to be with. Nobody really likes being a lone wolf. Humans weren’t meant for that.’
‘We’re not…’
‘Wolves either, and not werewolves, come to that, I don’t think.’
‘You don’t want me here. You don’t even know me.’
‘I don’t,’ Ruby agreed, ‘but I’d like to. You shouldn’t be alone anymore. You’re so young…’
Something in the way she said it prickled under Audrey’s skin; at her pride. She was 26; had been a werewolf for nine of those years. ‘I’m not a child.’
‘No. But young women shouldn’t be abandoned, either. Women aren’t safe in the world.’
‘I can look after myself.’
‘I’m sure you can. But you don’t have to be alone while you’re doing it.’
Audrey was full of suspicion, full of want. To be safe, with a home, with a friend? It was too much. She couldn’t cope with wanting it.
‘Don’t you know who I am?’ she snarled. ‘I’m Audrey Hudson. The cursed Alpha.’
‘No you’re not,’ Ruby replied easily. Still affable, absolutely unafraid. Even of that name.
‘No Alpha, true,’ Audrey conceded with bad grace. ‘You need a pack for that.’
‘You’re not cursed either.’
‘Of course I am. Ask anyone. Ask William Ormstein.’
‘Oh, Audrey, Ormstein’s a bastard. Don’t play his games. He likes to spread stories to keep you isolated. I don’t listen to Ormstein. Neither should you.’
‘I should listen to you then?’
‘Listen to yourself. Not Ormstein, not rumours, not me. Trust your own instincts.’
Audrey considered that.
At 12, her instincts had told her that she should never be alone with family “friend” Ben Tripp, and she’d been proven right to keep her sister Gail away from the letch. At 17, instinct warned that Joe Clarke was trouble and he’d proven even more trouble than she’d imagined, infecting her with the werewolf curse. She had joined his pack, led by Alpha Gordon Edwards, through necessity and fear – she hadn’t the first idea what being a werewolf really meant, and she’d hoped to keep herself and others safe by staying with other weres who at least gave lip service to being responsible for her. She had thought Hugh Hudson sweet, and he had been. She’d thought Edwards a pretty second-rate leader, and he’d been slaughtered with the others with almost no fight. She’d known Ormstein was one to fear, before his attack had killed the child she carried, and left her alive and scarred as a warning to other packs.
What did her instincts tell her now?
That here was a woman, a were, whose kindness felt real. Whose dismissal of the name of Cursed Alpha felt genuine. Who offered shelter which Audrey desperately wanted, and needed.
And she was tired. So tired, of loneliness, and fear, and endless moving on, running without joy or purpose.
‘Do you mean it?’ Audrey asked, voice low, uncertain.
Ruby smiled. ‘I never say anything I don’t mean.’
‘I can stay?’
‘For as long as you like. As long as you need. It’ll be lovely to have a friend around, for me too, you know.’
Audrey nodded cautiously. ‘Okay. I can… get my things from the hostel.’
‘And from the lake.’
‘Yes. I don’t have much.’ It was impossible to take anything but what meant most to you, when you were always moving. Everything she owned in the world was stowed in a backpack. If she had to run, the most important things were in a biscuit tin. ‘When can we…’
‘No time like the present!’
The quad bike was more fun than Audrey had counted on, sitting behind Ruby, arm around her sturdy waist and face close to her broad, warm back. Audrey hadn’t been this close to another person in years. Ruby encouraged her to hold tighter, but Audrey didn’t like to. She had the feeling she might not ever let go.
After collecting her clothes from the moor and her other things from the hostel, Ruby took Audrey to a bakery, then back to the cottage.
‘This can be your room.’ Ruby showed Audrey into the small guest room on the ground floor. ‘And your keys.’ She handed over two keys on a string. ‘Come and go as you like. We’ll work out a roster for looking after things, if you like.’
Audrey stared at the keys, eyes stinging with tears.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she demanded suddenly, and suddenly afraid. This was too good to be real. There had to be a trick.
Ruby sighed gently. ‘Is kindness so strange to you?’
‘Nobody is just kind. There’s always a price. At least, some benefit. Why would you do this for me? For a stranger. For a cursed stranger?’
‘You’re not cursed,’ Ruby said again, gently, like Audrey was a wounded animal that needed soft sounds and unhurried movement. Maybe she was. ‘But all right. I get something, I suppose. I had a daughter once. A natural born werewolf – Dieter and I are both were, and she was born during the full moon. But there are dangers for children like her, especially here in England. She was ten when Dieter took her away. She’d be 18 now. I haven’t seen her, or heard from her, since they left. It was the only way to keep her safe.’
Audrey stared at Ruby. She’d heard of such children. So few survived to birth, but she’d hoped her and Hugh’s baby might have been one of them. She couldn’t imagine how Ruby had given up her daughter; been without her for so long.
‘I live in hope,’ said Ruby, ‘that if Irene was lonely, someone would run with her, if she needed help, they’d offer her shelter. I try to be kind and I hope that kindness will find my daughter too. So for Irene’s sake, you’re welcome here, Audrey. Please say you’ll stay.’
And it was easier, to think that accepting this kindness reciprocated on the giver. It was something they could give each other, then. Companionship. A good deed to show that they could still be done.
‘Yes,’ said Audrey. ‘Please. And thank you.’
Ruby’s smile was bright and infectious. Audrey found herself smiling back, genuinely happy.
And perhaps, she thought, looking at this striking woman with the kind heart, we will become true friends.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Audrey felt that, for now at least, the curse on her life had finally been lifted.
Want to read more about Audrey Hudson: Werewolf, and her new tenants, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (not werewolves, but you’ll be surprised how many are in the neighbourhood)? Read on!