Hair of the Wolf Read Free Page B

night.
    Once she was a bit further down the block, he reached into the depths of his faded and beaten trench pulling out two cans of stolen spray paint. One was black and the other red. Now, to do the job that he was really here to do. He turned into the beckoning corridor.
    The alleyway was dank and smelly. The fog was dampening everything there, and as a result a fine layer of dew was covering the trash. The added moistness only made the trash rot—which added to the putrid stench. Skid grimaced and tried to only breathe through his mouth. He was used to the smell of decay that seemed to go along with the dreary world he lived in, but something about this particular alley and this particular night was really bad.
    As thoughts ran through his head about the tagging he was about to do, adrenaline started pumping into his blood, and he began to get a bit giddy, which made it easier to ignore the fetid smell. Tagging the house of God. There was no act deemed greater in Skid’s skewed reality.
    Skid hated God, and his hatred coursed and flowed in his veins with a dark passion love could never equal. He had grown up mostly in orphanages and Catholic charity boarding schools. His parents hadn’t wanted him, so had given him up—and he hated them too for not loving him. As a young boy Skid had been naturally trusting and full of love to those around him. In a lot of ways, betrayed love built a much stronger hate than malice alone ever could. And Skid felt betrayed by a lot of people in his life.
    But the lord of mankind held a special place in Skid’s hurting heart.…The way he figured it his heart was no worse than anyone else’s. After all, look at all the messed up things people do to each other every day. He had witnessed enough of them first hand to know just how people could use each other. But God he definitely hated most of all.
    It was hatred so deep even Lucifer Morningstar would envy it and place it on display for all in Hell to see. God had hurt Skid more than any other. God had given him every piece of pain in his life. Every shard of Skid’s shattered soul, every wasted tear, shed only to mingle with his own blood, was God’s responsibility.
    Throughout his entire childhood the nuns had all beaten him for reasons he couldn’t understand. Three of the priests had used him and then, feeling guilty over the act, had him beaten for being the temptation that led them to sin. He remembered the faces of all the nuns and priests. In fact, he remembered with a perfect clarity every single face that had ever caused him pain over the course of his short life.
    Someday he would … he would get even. Someday he would do much worse to them than they had to him. After all, was he not taught that what you cast unto waters you receive back tenfold? He would have his revenge. And right now he was starting it. He was going to tag this church with his name. He was going to make this house his spiritual property and take it away from a useless God … and he would do it to every church in London.
    He quickly scanned the alley. It was filled with cardboard parodies of those homes never owned and of owners nursing their soulless futures. It was obvious that the homeless often tried to camp here, but were booted out by the coppers. Right now the only life sharing this space with Skid was a wretched old vagrant, dirty and pale, asleep under a pile of newspapers. Skid walked up to him and planted his steel tipped toe right into the old geezer’s ribs.
    “Oi, granddad. Shove off!” Skid panicked. The streets were eat or be eaten, and he wasn’t about to get eaten. He planted another kick into the man’s midsection. Much to Skid’s surprise the old man didn’t budge. He didn’t even groan at the force of the kick.
    Skid was young—he knew that he didn’t have much muscle—but his life had made him tough. He knew how to throw his entire weight into a kick so he would break bones—a trick he learned quickly so that whoever