The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (15 page)

Rún planted down beside him,
a fall of blood-red hair concealing much of his face, eyes downcast and warily
watchful, a wolf hidden in the forest, unseen and all seeing. He shifted
restlessly and then fell into utter stillness. Broad, but more lithely muscled
than Brandr, he would be handsome, beautiful even to females, he drew them
easily enough, except for one thing, kept hidden from all. Madden could just
make out the jagged scars revealed by the neck of his tunic.

Two seats remained conspicuously
empty. Crys had lost his head to the Morrígan's slayer more than a decade ago
and in the aftermath, Knutr, Crys’
félag
, his brother in arms, had lost
his mind and was shackled somewhere in the dungeons beneath the caves for his
own safety and that of his kind.

The remaining two seats were
taken up by Tyr, lean and sinewy with muscle. Madden was shocked to see the
male as anything other than his wolf as he inclined his head to the King and
took his place beside his blood brother, Fite. The two males exchanged the mark
of
félagi
, each pounding a fist to the other's heart. Madden felt his
lip curl and had to straighten it into some semblance of a poker face, strained
in lines of green envy as his gaze tracked the greeting, the fists landing
solidly over the snarling knot work depiction of their wolf, its front paws
reared over their hearts, mirror images of power and status.

It sickened him, roiling in
his gut like bad sushi. He couldn’t look at those marks, on any of them,
without it sticking in his craw.

Faced with the proximity of
their massive bulk, all battle-honed brawn and snarled posturing, it was a
stark reminder that beneath their human exteriors, there lurked animal minds
and instincts. The Fomori were a wild and savage race. Binding themselves to
human souls had not lessened their bestial natures, merely clothed them in a
disguise that allowed them to walk amongst men. It was to MacTire's credit that
he had controlled his people this long, that they hadn't simply annihilated
each other. Conflict ran in their veins, violence was their oxygen. The King
had been shrewd enough to harness their aggression into the monthly hand to
hand combats: Contests that determined who won the right to ride the full moon
tides to the surface.

MacTire flicked at a speck of
dust on the arm of his throne and settled impatient eyes on Madden. The weight
of the King's attention on him pulled his spine rigid. 'Well, speak
Thegn
.
My warriors have women to fuck and blood to spill. What news from the
Overworld?'

Madden swallowed back his
resentment, running his tongue behind his lower lip as he measured up the best
way to tell what he knew.

'I'm going to hazard a guess
and say you are a wolf down after last night's hunt?'

'Hors.' It was Tyr who spoke.

'Excuse me?' Madden was
beginning to think he needed to add Tourette's to the long list of antisocial
behaviours that defined the vargs.

'Hors. Arrogant blond
bastard? Did the victory lap after the Contest.' The rest of the
Skuldalid
nodded in recollection. One or two sneered openly. 'He's M.I.A.'

Madden merely nodded his
acknowledgement and continued.

'A young woman showed up in
my emergency room, freshly clawed, saying she got caught up in the middle of a
dogfight on the street.'

Brandr's growl cut through
the confines of the enclosed space. 'So you're saying DeMorgan's Slayer took
out Hors. Son of a mangy bitch!'

'If Hors broke Haven Law, and
was hunting outside of Form, I say that made him fair game.' Tyr, dirty blond,
boyish, almost angelic features that belied a shrewd intelligence. On a dark
night, he almost passed as civilised.

'He knew the risks. He
couldn't handle himself in a fight. He deserved to die.' Fite would say that.
He could more than handle himself and was underestimated by many. Silver-haired
with hazel green eyes, he looked the gentlemen, distinguished and elegant. All
clean-cut lines of muscle and a moustache that bordered on porn-star styled, he
was vicious. The snake you never saw coming until it had you dead on the floor
from a single strike.

'Fuck Haven Law!' Brandr
interjected on a growl. 'It is the law only of our enemy. If we allow DeMorgan
to pick us off, one by one, we are extinct, just as sure as if she'd finished
the job when she murdered our womenfolk.'

'What difference? We are as
good as dead already, entombed in this hell on earth.'

'Speak for yourself, man. For
as long as we stand in battle, we are immortal. Alive to bite and screw as many
human women as we please. Forever.' Brandr’s smirk as he bragged of the
screwing wasn’t lost on Madden.

'Sterile females, too weak to
bear our pups. Do you forget our numbers are finite? The fact remains that
every loss brings us a step closer to total extermination.'

The combat of words was by
now in full flow, fists pounding the table, teeth bared, volleying counterattacks
spitting back and forth until Madden could scarcely tell the voices apart.
MacTire stayed silent above the din, his glacial stare focused solely on Madden
throughout the dispute. When he spoke, the deep resonance of his voice
immediately silenced the rest of the room.

'Wolves have been dying
honourable deaths in battle since the dawn of time. The Healer did not swim
through the sewers of Hell to mourn our fallen brother, now did you?' Four more
pairs of eyes lifted to pin Madden down. He felt like an insect, squirming
under the sole of a giant boot. 'Tell me more of this woman.' The thickly
accented timbre of MacTire's words had a hypnotic quality, reeling Madden's
attention back to focus solely on the King's penetrating stare. The intensity of
his eyes, blacker than a starless night, unnerved Madden, the room shrank to
just the two of them and he struggled to camouflage the tremor in his voice.

'She goes by the name of
Ashling. Ashling DeMorgan.'

Damn.

It was as though the air had
been sucked from the room, such was the stillness, the silence that descended
at the mention of that name. Like talking into a vacuum. 'Her sole living
relative, Ms. Anann DeMorgan, grandmother, suffered a debilitating stroke one
month ago and was admitted to a nursing home.’ MacTire's cheeks took on a
pallor that spoke of the blood draining out of his boots.

Brandr's cheeks, by
comparison, were suffused with fury. 'What trap is this? We will make the old
crone choke on her own deceit.' White knuckles gripped the table and he moved
to stand. MacTire raised a hand that was the verbal equivalent of a shut the
fuck up to the hot-headed warrior. Brandr found his ass planted firmly back in
his seat, hands gripping the arms of the chair. The bastard might as well have
been shackled to the thing, such was the King's control over his man.

'Describe this Ashling
DeMorgan,' he commanded.

'Fair skin, blue eyes. Long,
black hair, high cheek bones. Petite, but with curves.' Somehow aware he was
treading dangerous waters, Madden left out 'beautiful' and tried to stick to
the strictly factual, medical details. 'Nationality: British, but she has been
living in the United States for all of her adult life. Date of birth: thirty
first of July nineteen eighty seven, Blackpool, England. That would make her
... ' Madden's brows knitted as he mentally calculated. 'Twenty five this year.
Healed scar on the left ankle. Celtic tattoo on the right shoulder.' A pause.
‘She tests positive for
Tapetum Lucidum
, Sire.’

Low murmurings went around
the table.

'Enough!' MacTire's soulless
eyes had become animated, the flames of the torches seeming to dance in their
fathomless depths. Madden watched the drumbeat of the King's quickening pulse
where it pounded at the base of his throat. 'Where have you secured her? Why
have you not brought her here?' MacTire made no attempt to conceal the threat
that invaded his voice.

Madden flailed mentally, the
flare of his lids betraying the panic rising within him. He tripped over his
own words, despite having rehearsed them relentlessly. 'I sutured her wounds,
examined her for the signs, went to draw up the drugs to incapacitate her and
she, well ... when I got back ... she was gone ... but ...'

'You. Let. Her. Go?'

MacTire launched himself out
of the throne, clearing the table with the agility of a big cat. Before he
could draw breath, Madden found himself slammed back against the wall with the
force of a tank, the air punched violently from his lungs. The King's massive
hand encircled his throat in a brutal chokehold, crushing his windpipe, riding
him up the wall until his toes were grazing the stone floor and he dangled in
MacTire's iron grip. Eyes bugging, he could feel the popping of capillaries
under his skin that was turning his face a sickly shade of purple. A clammy sweat
broke on his forehead and trickled in rivulets down his spine. MacTire's eyes
were fathomless in their blackness as they bored into him, seething words
growled through bared, white teeth.

'You believe you had the
bloodline in your grasp and you let her fucking GO! Have you any concept of how
long I have waited, you squirming, cockless maggot?'

Agony exploded outward from
the epicentre of hurt where MacTire's giant fist connected with his gut.

Madden couldn't have answered
if he'd wanted to. Blinded by the pain, his mouth was working like a landed
guppy, his throat heaving reflexively, struggling to draw the air that was
denied him. He took it back. There was nothing more terrifying than MacTire in
a bad mood. Oxygen starvation was slowing the cogs and wheels of his thought
processes to a slow, agonising grind. The blood! He still had her blood. If he
could just ... His hands clawed frantically at the robe covering thighs that
were now twitching like a condemned man hung from a gallows. Blindly, he fumbled
the precious vials from the right pocket into a fist that pounded limply on the
King's chest with all the effectiveness of a butterfly throwing its wings
against a windowpane.

'I will rend you apart with
my bare hands. I will throw your broken body to the untamed ones and let them
fuck you in every orifice until you are ripped inside out and begging as you
watch your own entrails strewn across the sands as bait for the raveners. They
will be picking your eyeballs from their teeth as you die screaming for mercy,
like the worthless, snivelling runt you are,
thegn
!’ He spat the title
at him as an insult, reducing Madden to what he truly was in their eyes; a
genetic reject, a runt whose wolf had bent over and taken it up the proverbial
ass from the human to whom it had attempted to bind its soul.

It was clear the entire
Skuldalid
was getting serious wood for the brutality of the situation. Their bloodlust
was palpable in the chorus of growls that rose up into the room like the
rolling of thunder. Unless that was the sound of Madden's oxygen-starved blood
rushing through his ears. He was no longer certain of reality, he was passing
out, his vision swimming dizzily in and out of focus, when a lone voice spoke
up, cool and clear, a shaft of light cutting through the storm clouds.

'I believe he's trying to
show you something.' Rún. It was Rún, the quiet one, who voiced the words that
saw Madden dumped unceremoniously to his knees in gasping convulsions.

He felt the vials ripped from
his clenched fist as he sank to the floor, drawing his limbs up into a pathetic
foetal position from which he watched the storm break in MacTire's expression.
The King cracked the top off one of the vials. Passing it back and forth
beneath his flared nostrils, he inhaled deeply and his eyes fluttered low,
slipping closed on a moan that could only be described as sexual. Lifting the
tiny glass container to his lips, he downed the liquid like it was a shot of
fine tequila. There was more of the moaning. Head thrown back, fully bared
canines dimpling his lower lip, MacTire's massive body shuddered, as though in
the throes of a mind-blowing orgasm. Madden didn't need to look at the male's
groin to know the guy was totally fucking aroused. It was all the doctor could
do to keep from hurling his cookies all over the collective feet of the
Skuldalid
,
who stood by, watching in awe as their master threw back his arms, neck muscles
standing out in corded relief, eyes rolling back into his skull, a violent howl
erupting from his throat. The King’s bass-toned voice, distorted by a brutal
fervency, rebounded off the walls. ‘I can feel you, Ashling DeMorgan. You are
inside me. You are Mine!’ MacTire’s massive frame jolted like he’d been hooked
up to the national grid, more wolf than man in the savagery of his declaration.

Holy shit! This wasn't the
first time the healer had brought samples from potentially latent females, but
it sure as hell was the first time MacTire had anything remotely like the
intensity of his current bloodgasm. More often than not, he'd refuse to even
let the stuff pass his lips. Once or twice, yeah, he'd gotten pretty juiced and
had the female brought to him in the hopes of siring the new generation of
Fomorians. They never survived long as his personal playthings. MacTire liked
to play rough and when it was clear they were barren, sooner rather than later,
they got used up and cast off to the wilder pack members. But this, this was
different. Eyes glassy and psychotic, the King bent to fist Madden's robe and
drag him to his shaky feet by the straining fabric of the lapels.