The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (23 page)

‘Bravo, my son! By Balor’s
cock, I swear we will beat the human weakness out of you yet.’

‘That’s good, that’s good,
right? He’s not dead. I’m not trapped in a cellar with a dead thing, nope.’ Ash
exhaled a long shaky sound. ‘Just a man,’
guy-beast,
she corrected. The
bars moved in her hands, and she stepped back. The door came with her, a
whisper of creaky hinge over the pained breathing within the cell. There was
nothing between them now but air, no protection she could hide behind, just the
wide expanse of the cell and a large, bleeding male.

God, he was cut up. A date
with Freddie Kruger and a body massage by Edward Scissorhands would have
resulted in less damage, and as she teetered over the invisible line the door
had left, Ash’s heart clenched. Her insides were being pulled taut, straining
against the hold her fear had on her, yet drawn forward by a longing to ease
the suffering she had caused.

And she had caused it.

He’d stayed behind for her.
To get her out of a ... Was she actually going to admit it was a trap she’d
willingly walked into? Yes, he’d got her out of a trap.

Just go slow and don’t
freak him out
.

If he furry hulked out, she’d
be a goner.

She took the step, shaky and
weak as it was.

‘Connal?’
Slow and steady
Ash, hushed tones
. ‘Big Bad?’ That stupid name he had for her used to
bristle her hackles and now, she just wanted to hear his retort, hear ‘Little
Red’ on his lips.

Are you completely insane,
Ash? The man is one of them and you’re stepping into his cage like he hasn’t
just been a snarling lump of fur and claws.

And fangs, don’t forget the
mouthful of fangs.

Oh shut up, Fear.

Another step turned into four
determined power strides, crossing to his side like she wasn’t a terrified
rabbit, and sinking to her knees on a relatively blood-free spot of concrete.
Ash stuck her hand out, hovering it over his head, ready to descend into the
figurative pit. God, what if he was just playing with her? What if he got hairy
again and tore her arm off?

Suck it up DeMorgan. He’s
half dead and not moving anytime soon
.
Her fingertips brushed through the woolly-soft coils of his dreads and she
sobbed out a trembling exhale. Touches tentative, Ash smoothed her fingers
along his stubbled jaw, palm cupping the rough-sculpted angle of his cheek,
trying to avoid anything that looked ... Hell, all of him looked like it hurt.
Her stomach roiled as she passed her hand over his shoulder, not quite daring
to touch the mangle of clawed flesh that stripped over his side. Bubbling
breaths expanded his ribs, short and stuttering and Ash’s eyes went wide.

She was losing him.

She tugged her cell from its
makeshift pocket in the cup of her bra, fumbling fingers touching 911 on the
screen, and listening for the dial tone. She waited for it to connect her to
someone, anyone who could help. The paramedics, the fire service, fuck, she’d
take a vet at the moment. They’d probably be more help. The two tiny bars of
signal she’d had up top disappeared to tell her that it was searching. She
waited and it kept searching, finding nothing and connecting her to nobody. No
signal in this bomb-shelter of a vault and no way to turn him in for Area 51
experimentation, even if she wanted to.

Connal was burning up under
her fingers, and it was no heat of passion that flushed his skin the way it
did. Feverish. Clammy, and sticky with blood and sweat, she could feel him
leaving her. A sob rolled up her throat, her eyes stinging and overflowing as
her vision blurred with tears. She fisted his dreads gently.

‘No! Goddamnit, no! I forbid
it, you cannot die, Big Bad. You cannot! Connal! Fight, it’s time to fight,
now. Please ...’

'Time
to fight, dog.'

He
rose to his feet, the spill of unravelling chain links the only outward
expression of the rage that bubbled up from the well of despair that was the
remnant of a child's soul. He ground his teeth. The 'fight' only served his
captors, they fed off it, used it, as sure as they cannibalised the flesh of
the dead. It was all he had left in this destitute existence and he guarded it
as a treasured, secret possession.

His
body had developed despite the starvation. He had no appetite for dog flesh.
Hunger fuelled the ferocity of the fight and that was desirable. Maturity
kicked in regardless to fill out muscles already honed in the pit. His neck
thickened, tightening the iron collar the smith had forged to fit his skinny
throat the day he was taken.

The
sun's rays cut a glare across sensitive retinas as they hauled him into the
arena. The air filling his lungs was rank with the sweat of the animals whose
blood stained the sands crimson. No glorious amphitheatre this. Just a pit, a
filthy, flea-infested dog pit. Kill or be killed. Yet with his appearance, the
benches encircling the sands rumbled, thunderous with the stamp of frenzied
feet, the wild expressions of both male and female equal in their savagery, baying
for blood, eclipsing the snarls of the leash-strained untame, scarlet shawls
waved aloft. Yet amidst the heaving crowd, his eyes were drawn to the still,
female form. Robed and hooded, she was watching him intently from behind a
swathe of hair the colour of a ripe cornfield.

Ash knelt there until her
knees went numb and her fingertips were bloody from soothing him. He’d calmed,
his breathing appeared stronger, his heartbeat thudded more regularly. But he
was still on fire and he hadn’t gained the consciousness she hoped for, his
eyelids flickering violently, caught in some internal nightmare he couldn’t
wake from.

‘Shhh, Connal ... shhhh ...’
She crooned nonsense when he groaned and panted through whatever pain gripped
him. He hadn’t stopped bleeding and her previously clean spot on the floor was
now sticky with congealed blood.

Lowering her mouth to his
ear, Ash rested her forehead against his dreads as she whispered, ‘I’ll be two
minutes, tops, Connal, okay? I just need a moment to ...’

She needed a moment to get
out of all the blood. It was clinging to her skin, squelching through the
fabric of her stockings and she thanked God she hadn’t worn white. She couldn’t
have handled that.

Peeling off the floor with
one last look at her unconscious stalker, she left him, her muscles cramping as
blood rushed into dead legs, unsteady and exiting the cage with as much grace
as a tranquilised rhino.

Now that she was standing,
she needed to find a bathroom, and with a quick look at her cell telling her
signal had still not been sought, perhaps some other sort of communicating
device, a landline or laptop or something. She couldn’t be completely cut off.

Bathroom needs came first and
she located the unusually neat section behind a double thick drape, the black
marble flooring differentiating it from the rest of the cellar domicile. It was
surprisingly nice, for a single guy. Tidy and matching, with luxurious red and
black towels folded into a small cubby and an old, but clean, copper tub taking
up the centre space. A shower was bracketed away in one corner. It was the
fanciest thing she’d seen in the whole place. Discounting the vault door, that
was. She refused to admire that though.

Needs satisfied and stockings
binned, Ash dabbed his blood from her skin in a quick sponge bath and left
fresh, hot water running into the kitchen’s portable basin. She ventured out
while it filled, hunting a landline that proved to be as non-existent as the
Abominable Snowman.

Frustration rode her hard as
she stomped her fear back into the bathroom, gathering the basin and a few of
the black towels into her arms. No vet was coming to help, no doctors. Ash
would do what she could, and took her makeshift care kit back to the man, the
creature, who now needed her to save him.

He wasn’t moving when she
approached the cage with her arms full, the door still open.

‘Connal?’

He moaned in response.

Still alive.

Her heart beating easier, she
set down the water, flattened a towel over the patch of drying blood at his
side and sat down. Another towel was lowered carefully over his bottom half,
eyes averted, cheeks fever-hot.

‘He’s dying and still manages
to be smoking.’ Ash may have hated him just a little in that moment and she
dunked a towel into the hot water before brushing the sodden cloth over the
bloodied flesh of his face. She didn’t know enough about infection and serious
injuries to know whether the fever was a result of something setting in or his
body attempting to heal itself, but she couldn’t sit by and let him be dirty.
Maybe the clean warmth of the soft fabric would help ease him. She just ... she
didn’t know what else to do and she was flailing for an anchor, a sense of
purpose. She could feel herself drowning.

‘It’s going to be okay, it
is, you know. You kill, well I guess you kill things that are like you, don’t
you? Point is, you kill things. You can’t die. Please don’t die on me. Not like
this.’ Her words rambled, her hands moving the fabric over the breadth of his
shoulders and into the curve of his throat. Patting at lacerations that looked
too deep and too ragged to ever heal, she tried to be gentle. God, it was like
trying to organise a bag of grated cheese, stroking down the jagged flaps of
skin until every individual piece was flat.

Time became measured in
basins of water. It took six before his skin was clear of old blood and was
only slightly leaking rivulets of fresh, bright red. The towels had been rinsed
more times than she could keep up with and she passed the freshest one over the
worst of the wounds once more as it bled. Her heart was leaden, her stomach
turbulent, gorge rising every time she saw the skin peel up when she cleaned
too hard and he whimpered in agony.

How much help she was really
being was anyone’s guess, though she figured she couldn’t really hurt him any
more.

She was wrong.

Two seconds later and it was
chaos in a cage as his body exploded into a bone-snapping, teeth-snarling,
enormous mass of lethal fur. She’d unleashed the beast inside him with an
accidental catch of torn skin in wet towelling and it had her fighting
frantically with the bars of the cage as the latch shut and locked. Giant beast
apparently meant lockdown.