The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (21 page)

‘Shouldn’t I take Ash with
me?’

‘No.’ Ash insisted. ‘I’m not
putting you or your little boy in danger.’

‘The house is guarded. Old
Mrs DeMorgan set up wards. Ash will be okay there.’ Trapping her in the circle
of his arm, he propped the car door open, leaving her no option but to slide
into the passenger seat. He slammed the door. She rolled down the window.

‘You’re not coming?’ Ash
asked.

Connal shook his head. ‘These
boys want a pissing contest, I’ll give them one.’

‘But ...’ The exit doors
flung open like a gust of wind had ripped through them, the streak of movement
so fast as to be indiscernible as Fite, until he was plowing into Connal,
slamming him up onto the hood of the Fiesta. The car jolted, bouncing the
occupants in their seats, and the bodywork crumpled under the force of the
impact. The windshield crazed into a spider web of hairline cracks that sagged
inward, threatening to spill Connal right into Ash’s lap. Their eyes met
briefly, her expression frantic, before Fite’s fist landed a bone-crunching
contact with his jaw, temporarily stealing his sight.

‘This is for Crys, you
fucking son of a bitch!’

Fite spat the words in his
face like venom, cocking back his arm, the lethal metal tips of his gloved hand
bared in a claw. He punched down, stabbing deep into Connal’s side, five
ripping penetrations that tore through the muscle and tendon of his ribcage.

Connal roared. Knees kicking
up on instinct, he planted his soles on Fite’s chest, the power of his thrust
sending the male recoiling across the alley. His body sang with agony as he
popped his spine off the car hood, leaving a massive, man-sized crater of a
dent in his wake. Dreads whipped around his face as he wheeled towards the
windshield. Wild-eyed, teeth bared and outlined in his own blood, he barked the
order at Liath. ‘Drive! Fucking drive!’

Liath looked like she was
about to lose it. He held her horrified gaze, bending her to his will, crushing
the second thoughts that played across her features. The gearbox crunched, the
engine over-revved in her panic. Already the bodies were pouring through the
club exit like oily shadows. The car lurched and Connal’s gut took a ride along
with it, but she pulled it together, released the parking brake and floored the
accelerator. The little car tore out of the alley, clearing the stage for
something far more sinister.

Connal stood in the spot of
the yellow streetlight, his breath sawing, blood saturating his shirt. The
wolves had filed out to line the shadowy walls of the alley and block its exit.
Snarling and baited by the scent of fresh blood, their eyes glowed red. All
were trained on him. Doyle stood cross-armed, guarding the pool of light above
the club’s door, smokes tucked under the sleeve of his plain white tee. He wore
the kind of smirk that spoke volumes about Connal’s chances of walking away
from this fight alive.

‘I want my pound of flesh
from this fucker.’ Brandr pushed off the wall and stepped forward. Fite
inclined his head to the warrior, eerily-slanted eyes sliding to lock Connal in
a hostile glare. With fluid motion, the white-haired warrior lifted his clawed
right hand and slowly licked the blood from the steel tips of the leather
glove.

Connal laughed like a wet chainsaw.
‘You girls keep eyeballing me with all these ‘do me’ vibes, and I’m liable to
slap you in the face with the immensity of my hard-on.’ Arms spread, he flipped
his palms up and motioned with his fingers for them to bring it. Every stalling
moment he could keep the wolves focus on him was a moment bought for Ash.

What transpired next went
down so quickly that even if human eyes could see it through the veil of the
red fog, they would struggle to decipher the sequential changes that
transformed men to ravaging beasts. A symphony of growls ripped through the
air. Brandr and Fite sneered in unison, baring lethally-daggered, ivory
canines. The air around them shimmered like a mirage as features began to
stretch and morph, cloth seams ripping, silhouettes growing at grossly
distorted, inhuman angles. They charged Connal, barrelling into a frenzied
mauling of snapping jaws and flying fur. Serrated canines clamped down on
jugulars, claws tore viciously and scored flesh into ragged gashes. Their pelts
were dyed red in the bloody carnage, the tumble and gore disorienting to the
point that the wolves temporarily lost the focus of their attack.

From within the roiling twist
of fur, Fite emerged, human in form, drenched in blood and swearing a blue
streak. His upper lip was ripped open, one side of his moustache drooping from
the gaping wound. ‘Brandr, you took my face off, you fucking idiot,’ he
growled.

The massive black wolf
bulldozed Connal’s body into the wall before leaping back, morphing to human
form mid-air. In all his naked, bloodied glory, the male grinned a sinister
smile at his friend, hauling air through a powerful set of lungs. ‘Collateral
‘tash damage.’ His grin widened. ‘You always did have a big fucking mouth
Fite.’ Brandr was in his element, never more alive than when he was elbow deep
in slaughter.

Connal’s spine slumped down
the rough brick wall of the alley, human legs splayed at odd angles. His lungs
pumped erratically. His skin was slashed with viscera like a sadistic butcher
had gone noughts and crosses on his flesh with a meat cleaver. A sick, wet,
bubbling sound gurgled from the holes where his chest had sprung multiple
leaks. Fite’s claws had turned him into a human colander. Rough laughter cost
him in agony, dreads whipped up as he threw back his head, using the wall as a
crutch to support his lolling neck. It had been over a millennium since he had
been outclassed in a fight. He stood to lose his head here. The pain wracking
his body was a macabre novelty, so long had he been numb. Death was a taste in
his mouth, a thing he’d fantasised about so often in the long, lonely stretch
of his immortality.
Better to burn out than to fade away ... Be careful what
you wish for
. The clichés were coming hard and thick. The irony was not
lost on him. The very thing that had resuscitated his will to live would be the
means to end his life. He fancied he could still feel her soft hands at his
nape, the scented veil of her raven hair curtaining his vision, but suspected
it was the rapid swelling of his injuries and the lure of unconsciousness
drawing his lids to hover at half-mast.

‘Where is the old witch to
protect you now,
Vargrliker
?’ Brandr planted his foot solidly into
Connal’s flank. His body indented like a sack of flour, forcing a groan from
his chest, though he was beyond pain, lost in wondering what death would be
like when she finally came to greet her elusive prodigal son. ‘Is she good with
a needle and thread?’ Brandr asked. ‘Perhaps she can re-attach your head.’ He
scrubbed at the beard on his jaw and laughed at his own sick little rhyme.

‘The stinking Judas does not
deserve a warrior’s death.’ Fite spat in Connal’s face while he held his own
ragged cheek together with steel-clawed fingers. ‘Let the dogs finish him.’
Low-growled approval stirred amongst the red-eyed circle of shadows already
closing in for the kill.

Brandr fisted a bunch of
Connal’s dreads and yanked, hard, getting eyeball to eyeball in a sneer. ‘Know
as you die, traitor, that we are gone to claim your woman. She will be
screaming our names in ecstasy as you beg the very dogs you have hunted all
your life to grant you a merciful death.’

‘Poetic justice?’ Fite
quirked a brow, amused.

‘Just call me the Barbarian
Poet.’ Brandr’s laughter was deep-throated as he turned his back.

‘Breathe in violence, breathe
out poetry,’ Fite said, clapping a hand to the male’s shoulder. ‘But now I have
need of an artist. Where is that cockless runt of a doctor to stitch my face?’
Fite fell into step with his brother in arms, their footfalls bouncing off the
walls of the alley as they abandoned Connal to his fate.

The sweet, woody scent of
tobacco smoke reached Connal’s nostrils. He could hazard a guess that Doyle was
propping up the wall, enjoying a post-coital cigarette. Connal’s words were
barely audible, a hoarse, voiceless gurgle in his throat. ‘Should have taken my
head.’

H
ours. It had to have been hours. She stared at the
wall ahead of her. Her head was ringing, thoughts pinging around until she
vibrated with tension, shivering a teeth-chattering attack of paralysing fear.
She couldn’t move. She knew she had to, had to at least get into a cupboard or
something so she wasn’t within shooting range of a window. They probably
wouldn’t even use guns. They’d just rip her head off with giant, ice-pick claws
and leave her mutilated body to rot in the house until Liath came back and
noticed the smell. If she ever came back. Had she made it to her mom? Would
they go after her? Ash was trapped in a vortex of questions with too many worst
case scenarios and no answers.

How could it be real? How
could they be people?

She’d resigned herself to the
half-reality of the wolf corpse in the woods. That had been a creature. Only a
creature. Savage and animal. But she’d sat with people at a table, humans who,
on closer inspection, were more the beast in the woods than she could ever have
expected. Whatever happened from this point on, Ash had the feeling she
wouldn’t come out of it whole.

Thoughts wheeling around her
head, her body was motionless, still captured in the memory of being flung side
to side as the vehicle raced. She could feel the twinge in her muscles as the
car had jerked with the impact of Connal hitting the windscreen. That sickening
crack that splintered glass.
If his head cracked like that
...

No. She refused to
acknowledge the pain in her chest that twisted if she even considered never
seeing him again. He’d risked his life, he’d maybe given his life, to get her
away from them. The blades stabbed deep with every flicker of memory, every
word exchanged, each glance shared, the kisses, the touches.

Just as it goes.

Try not thinking about
something and you ultimately get stuck thinking of what you didn’t want to
think about.

At least she wasn’t imagining
his head splattered across a sidewalk.

Oh, wait ...

Groaning, she dropped her
head into her hands and curled over into a ball of anguish. She hurt and they
hadn’t even got their hands on her.

He’d stopped that.

Her stalker.

Her saviour.

Maybe she hurt, but she would
bet her mother’s ring, he was hurting a hell of a lot more. She wished she
could press pause and rewind. If she’d listened and not ignored his warnings
against Form, he’d be with her now. Probably annoying her. Definitely
infuriating her.

Ash barely heard the scratching
whine of claws at her back door, Setty calling for a bathroom break.

‘In a minute, boy.’ Her words
were thready and choked with tears she hadn’t known were there. She swiped at
her face and pushed off from the couch, jerky and robotic as she slowly made
her way through to the kitchen. Ash shook her head at the giant mutt scrabbling
at the door.

‘I need to get you a cat
flap. Please don’t go far.’ She didn’t want to be alone. Ash lifted the latch
and unbolted the door. Setty was off like a silver-furred bullet, barking
loudly and hurtling down the steps to disappear down a path of overgrown
brambles.

‘Shhh ...’ She hissed after
him, glancing warily at the gardens either side. Shadows were lengthening,
alive, shifting into darkness that could hide razor claws and bone-crushing
teeth.

‘Setanta!’ He was scrabbling
out of sight, his whines drifting on the still night air. Nature was being too
quiet. The silence before the apocalypse. He definitely was not doing his
business. ‘Shit.’

Ash stepped out, arms clutched
around herself, fending off anything in the night that might want to take a
chomp out of her.

When Setty collided with
something hard, she was down the path so fast she didn’t even feel the thorns
tear through her stockings. She darted through the garden, tripping, panicked,
down the steps to face the whimpering mass of silver.