The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (13 page)

He cleared his throat and got
back in the game of verbal tennis. ‘They bite. They spread disease.’

‘What disease, like rabies?’
Now she swore she could feel her wounds itch with an infestation of something
that would turn her into Cujo. ‘Oh God, am I infected? I got a shot ...’ The
small dose of whatever seemed ridiculously useless compared to a mutant strain
of mythological lycanthropy. She folded her hands in her lap and forced herself
not to scratch.

His steely gaze tracked the
press of her hands between her thighs. ‘Yeah, something like rabies.
Rave
rabies. But you’re good. They got you with a scratch, the bite is the carrier.
You’re safe until they get their teeth in you.’

Her relief softened the lines
of her face, absently stroking the stitched ridges of the clawed marks as she
thought. ‘Rave? But that’s the drug circulating around the city. Doc Rob and
the nurses were talking about it.'

‘Idiots. That’s what they
choose to believe. The infection behaves like a drug. I suppose it is a drug,
just not one that’s administered in a conventional way.’

Ash’s head tipped back as she
swigged a mouthful more from the flask, aware that the bottom was probably very
close, and shifted her shoulders into a more comfortable spot on the bark. ‘So,
let’s say what you’re saying is true, and these prehistoric animals are
infesting the streets of Dublin. Why don’t they just call in Rentokil, or
whatever, and have them exterminated?'

‘These things are smart.
They’ve found ways to hide amongst the population, they have people who help
them.’

‘Help them? Like the WWF or
the ASPCA, or whatever it’s called here? They must
really
love you.’

‘Not exactly.’ Connal propped
his forearms across his knees and played the twig between his fingers.

‘Not exactly like the WWF, or
they don’t exactly love you?’ She was fiddling with the lid of the flask, gaze
trained on him expectantly.

‘Both. Neither ... I don’t
know, damnit. My brain hurts.’

She waved his pain off. ‘What
do you expect? I got attacked by those prehistoric wolf, beasts, whatever. I
need answers. Why do you kill them?’

 ‘You could say your
grandmother is ... was ... Rentokil in this neck of the woods, and I was
contracted to work for her.’

My grandmother? Ash frowned.
'Why did they attack me?'

Connal exhaled, twirled the
stick and met her eyes. 'Your red coat didn't help.'

'They're attracted to red?'
That explained all the inappropriate touching ... maybe.

'They are subterranean
creatures, with limitations in colour vision, but they can see red very
vividly.'

'So when you said I looked
like bait ...' A blush crept up her cheeks and her hair fell forward to conceal
the embarrassed infusion.

'Yeah.' He offered her a
sheepish, half smile. ‘I didn’t mean to imply you were ...’

Her hand went, waving him off
as her cheeks blazed. Throat clearing, she launched off again. 'There were two
of them. What happened to the other one?'

'There was only one when I
got there.'

Leaning forward, her elbows
met her knees and her eyes found metal grey under raised brows. 'Yeah, about
that, you were following me.' Again.

'I was.' His head nodded on his
shoulders.

'Mind telling me why?'

He levelled her with a
penetrating stare. 'Because your grandmother ordered me to watch out for you.'

Well, damn if that answer
didn’t have her brows flying up to totally disappear in her hairline, and then
they creased, worry creeping her features in a frown. 'She what? Why?'

'
Y
our grandmother
has been waging a war against these things for a very, very long time. They
won't hesitate to use you to get to her.' He made a move to get up, levering
stiff limbs from the forest floor and dusting down his thighs. ‘This thing
won’t bury itself.’

Ash was transfixed as he
unravelled himself up from the ground opposite her, and she was focussed on
that more than anything he said after. Her grandmother? What was she doing?
Issuing garbled commands from a hospital bed? Even when her brain logged onto
the fact that she was near eye level with something she’d only ever felt, her
frown wouldn’t budge and she sat stupidly looking up at him for a time. 'But
... my grandmother isn’t a threat.'

'No, she isn’t, is she.’
Connal strode back towards the hearse, bending to fist the decapitated head up
off the forest floor. He tossed the spades out onto the earth and set to work
hauling the tarp out of the car.

N
o matter how many times Madden took the gross-express
to Fomor, he never got used to the horrible, disorientating claustrophobia of
it. It was akin to dying and being born at the same time, like drowning in tar
that engulfed all your senses. Its force, like strangely warped gravity,
stretched you infinitely long while simultaneously crushing your bones,
churning you into so much pulp before finally coughing you out. It left you
helpless, on the shores of a landscape that was both familiar and unnaturally
surreal. Not to mention very bloody dangerous. He might have threads of wolf
woven into his DNA, but the natural habitat of all the
Thegn
was on the
surface, walking the earth as men, not down this putrid hellhole.

Sprawled prostrate on the
rough shore, red-tinged waves lapped his body and ran off through his hair,
plastering the dark strands to his clean-shaven cheeks. His designer suit was
shredded. Ragged remnants clung to shivering gooseflesh. The ambient
temperature down in this vast cave consistently ran at least ten degrees below
what it was on the surface. Like Hell froze over. He imagined the vulnerability
as similar to anaesthesia awareness, having your brain fully online while your
flaccid body can do damn all to shield you from whatever sadistic intent the world
holds for you. A spineless jellyfish tossed ashore. Never failed to scare the
ever living crap out of him. In the fear stakes, being paralysed ranked right
up there with the cramped spaces. His eyes stared up, fixed on the red sky
stretched out above him. No stars to look up to from this choice gutter, only
the black silhouettes of the raveners soaring above the rugged cliff tops in
the distance. Worse than nails on a blackboard, their nightmarish cries had a
way of clawing their way into your deepest terrors. The raveners were the Great
Levellers of Fomor. From the lowest varg to MacTire himself, all harboured a
healthy fear of the bringers of death. And if those bastard vargs didn’t come
to drag him to the caverns soon, Madden would be nothing but carrion, to be
eaten alive by their serrated beaks and barbed claws. Anxiety fixed his wild
eyes on their vast, black wingspans, gauging their distance from the shore. He
was loath to move, lest their laser-sharp sight detect his struggle. At least
the scent of his fear would not betray him. There wasn’t a breath of wind down
here. Never was.

His fingers twitched in the
strange, rough sands that washed up on the shore. The texture reminded him of
the powdered coral lining the beach of a tropical island, except this stuff was
black, like volcanic sand. Madden had once made the mistake of examining a
handful at close range. What he saw sickened him. The tiny shards were
recognisable to his trained physician’s eyes as the crushed fragments of bone.
The grisly sand had filtered through his fingers as he’d stood, horrified,
struggling with his memories of the massacre that had produced such a vast and
dominant feature of this macabre landscape.

They were memories that
reeked of blood and terror, his people fleeing before the Savage’s horde of untame.
Somewhere here, in this mass, unmarked grave, lay the scattered remains of his
mother and his two beloved sisters. It shamed him that the strongest of the
race, himself amongst them, had retreated from the chaos to seek refuge in the
caves, leaving their dead and injured strewn across this wasteland, at the
mercy of the raveners. Not a soul amongst them had proposed going out there. He
could still feel MacTire’s arms, physically holding him back, when he screamed
to go to his sister and the baby. Though he’d resented the restraint at the
time, and they had never spoken of it again, long years of reflection had
brought him to the conclusion that the King had saved his life that day.

From the time he’d made the
grim connection with the sand, whenever the sea spat him onto the shore, Madden
had lain purse
-
lipped, for fear of ingesting the salty water whose
unusual taste he now recognised as carrying the distinctive tang of blood.

He had just closed his eyes
to try to relax, a surreal sunbather without a sun, attempting to meditate
himself into a Zen state when ominous black shadows darkened the red glow
behind his lids. He felt the remains of his shirt torn from his chest and he
hesitated, frozen in dread anticipation that the raveners had found him and his
number was finally up. He mustered the courage to look his nemesis in the eye,
cracked his lids, only to find himself staring up into the grotesque faces of
two of MacTire’s guard dogs. Man, he was never so happy to see those ugly
bastards. But gratitude was not an emotion you expressed in Fomor. Ever. Least
not if you valued keeping your cock and balls attached to your body in any way
nature intended.

‘Hey, Hey! Less of the
manhandling, you idiots, I’m not one of your
thralls
.’

Varg one drew back a fist
accessorised with a wickedly sharp set of knuckle blades. He punched into
Madden’s face, the razor tips coming to an abrupt stop only millimetres from
saucer-wide, dilated pupils. The beast snarled, saliva dripping down an unholy
set of daggered fangs. Terror wasn’t an emotion you really wanted to express
here either.

As least when they got above
ground, the Fomorians had the decency to cloak their hideous appearance in
human form. Down here, there was no need for the pretence. MacTire, of course,
and his
skuldalid
, were the exceptions. Madden suspected it was less
about them being more civilised than the common vargs, and more about MacTire
being a vain son of a bitch.

‘If you’re done playing
chicken with my eyeballs, you gobshite evolutionary reject, use your own and
see what I am.’ Madden mustered enough strength to slap a hand to his pecs and
rip what was left of the shirt aside, bringing the vargs’ attention to the
symbol of the
Thegn
-wolf carved in the centre of his chest.’

‘That’s right, Tweedle-dumb
and dumber, I am your Master’s eyes and ears up there. Don’t see him taking
kindly to you mutilating those eyes, do you?’

Madden’s lips curled into a
sadistic grin and the creature growled its fetid breath right into his face.
‘No offence, baby, but I never kiss on a first date, and you could really use a
breath-mint.’ Varg two poked at the Celtic symbol in his skin with the point of
a blade and grunted in the other’s direction.

‘That’s right, gorgeous,
pro-tected status. Lay a hand on me and it’s bye bye surface privileges for
you. No more balling all that willing and nubile
thrall
ass.’ He managed
to wink at the creature, pleased his motor functions were finally starting to
return.

The Fomorians, in this
primitive form, were a race of few words, but actions spoke louder. The blades
retracted from Madden’s face and after a bit of sand kicking, powerful claws
hooked into his armpits. He found himself being dragged across the sands, heels
cutting deep furrows in the graveyard of bone dust. Grunted protests filled his
ears as the pace picked up in response to the increasing urgency of the shrill
cries echoing around the rocky cliff-tops. The raveners were hungry and the
need to reach shelter was one Madden shared with his surly litter bearers.