The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (33 page)

The blade was small, but it
glinted with a lethal edge that said it wasn’t just for show, combing through
the fine baby curls of Josh’s hair, the adorable ones she still hadn’t found
the heart to cut, like it was nothing more than the brush her boy hated so
much. He couldn’t see it, that much was clear. But Liath could and it was
stabbing into her heart with every spin through that soft blonde hair. Like
curling ribbon with scissors.

Her voice was angered,
hissing fear. ‘You son of a bitch!’

‘Do you kiss your son here
with that dirty mouth?’ The bastard laughed, but there was no darkness in it.
It was joy. He was enjoying this.

The pain intensified,
spearing her through with knots of terror as Josh laughed with him, the point
of the blade trailing over sensitive skin, so light it tickled her small son.
She could barely keep a grasp on herself, shaking through and through, rocked
to the depths of a terror she hadn’t felt in years. She always let the bad men
in it seemed.

Doyle put a finger to his
lips, his smile so bright she searched for a manic taint. ‘Your mother looks
frail, wouldn’t want to give the poor woman a heart attack.’

‘You bastard.’ She gritted
the words and Josh gasped, his wide eyes disapproving of her choice of
language.

Doyle leaned in close,
petting the top of her son’s head with the flat of the blade and uttered words
that set her heart into spasms, her breath trapped in her lungs, throat closed
in a panic of anger. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. Little Josh here is going
to take a trip with me. You’re going to find your friend Connal and tell him to
get his whore to Form at midnight tonight and we’ll make a trade. Any later,
and I can’t guarantee the merchandise won’t be damaged, beyond repair, know
what I mean?’

I
t was late evening when Connal pulled the hearse up to
the kerb outside the gates of the DeMorgan house and killed the engine. The
skies, like the atmosphere between them had brightened, the downhill journey
from the mountains filled with easy banter as they’d found common ground in
music while fighting over radio stations. Heaving against the wrought-iron
gate, Ash called dibs on the shower. He locked the car and followed her up the
path, calling after her that his shower was easily big enough for two, when a
movement in the shadows of the porch grabbed his attention. Barrelling forward,
he growled at Ash to hold up, blocking her way with the tensed wall of his
body.

A blonde head peeled away
from the shadows.

‘Liath!’ His heart flopped
inside his ribcage, relief that they hadn’t been ambushed rapidly congealing
into concern at the girl’s dishevelled state. He bounded up the steps two at a
time to meet her on the porch. ‘Liath?’

He caught the movement in his
peripheral, registered her arm swing a split second before she slapped her palm
hard across his jaw, a cracking impact that left a stinging imprint of her
hand.

‘You bastard!’ She cried.
There was grief and desperation in her reedy, cracking voice as she pounded her
clenched hands against his chest, clinging to him even through the assault.

‘What the heck, Liath. What
happened?’

Liath couldn’t breathe enough
to get words out. Her angry cries were a jumble of words beating at his chest.
‘They took him Conn, they took my baby.’

Connal cast his eyes over the
street. It was quiet, but shadows lurked, and Liath’s hysterics were bound to
draw attention. ‘Come inside, Liath,’ he said.

Ash mounted the steps and
nudged him out of the way. Her guiding arm came around the tear-drowned female.
Liath’s sobs quieted as Ash unlocked the door and they ushered her into the
looming protection of the DeMorgan house.

They sat in triangular
formation around Anann DeMorgan’s Chesterfield suite, a triad of shock in all
its manifestations. Ash was, well, ashen. Connal was seething, his upper lip
curled involuntarily into a snarl. Liath was, by now, hysterical. Having
extracted her account of the morning’s events in a broken series of hitched
sobs and tormented cries, she was physically breaking down before their eyes.

‘Can’t ... breathe’, she
panted. ‘My baby!’ Her nails clawed into the red velvet pile of the armchair,
her chest sawed rapidly, the pulse at her throat fluttering like a trapped
bird.

‘She’s hyperventilating,’
Connal growled, failing to contain the vicious edge to his anger. Shifting to
his knees before Liath, he covered her hands with his own and spoke to the
terror in her eyes. ‘I’ll bring him home to you. I swear it.’ He cranked his
head around to Ash. ‘We need to do something, or she’ll pass out. You got a
paper bag?’

‘Oh!’ Ash leapt up, from
motionless, pale and drawn, to animated with purpose. ‘I have something better!
Somewhere ...’ Drawing out the word, she rummaged through the drawers at the
side of the couch. ‘I have Valium! Never used them for the flight ...’
Muttering about blasted drugs, Ash came up smiling, the small tube of pills
held proudly.

Ash pressed the pills into
Connal’s hand whilst she fetched water and returned to offer two of the small,
white pills alongside the glass.

Liath’s hand trembled,
reaching. ‘Promise me.’ Her stare, watery, jade-green eyes, entreated them
both. ‘Take me with you, when you go. My baby will need me. You take me with
you.’

‘Of course. Midnight, on the
dot. You’ll be with us to make the exchange,’ Ash reassured her, shrugging off
the disapproving glare Connal shot her. ‘We’ll get your boy back ...’ Liath
nodded, relief exhaled on a shudder. ‘Take them, I promise they’ll help.’ She
nudged her hand, coaxing Liath to gulp them down and waited for the swallow
before she sat back, cross-legged on the floor.

‘She needs to rest, Ash. It’s
hours ‘til midnight.’ Connal’s hand brushed her knee, flashing her the briefest
glimpse of gratitude, before he stood and took to pacing the rugs of the period
living room.

Ash hooked her hand under
Liath’s elbow and carefully eased her to her feet, like she was fragile,
guiding every step to navigate the house until she could see her to a spare
room.

Connal closed the door after
them with more force than was necessary. He waited until he heard footfalls on
the upstairs landing, hatred festering a growl in his throat. What kind of
scum-sucking bastard took a child hostage? But then he knew, intimately,
exactly how low MacTire would stoop to get what he wanted. The kidnapping
smacked of desperation, meant he wanted Ash real bad. Whatever it took, he was
not about to let that happen. With Ash and Liath gone, Connal reverted to type,
channelling his wrath into battle readiness. Wrenching a decorative spear down
from the wall, he pushed aside Anann DeMorgan’s fireside chair and rolled back
the dusty carpet to reveal the bare, pitch pine boards. A horrible, sickening
suspicion twisted like lead in his gut. This felt personal, as though taking
the child was a message, a direct dig at him. Well, if the bastards were hoping
to strike a nerve, they’d better be prepared for a reflex reaction.

Wedging the spear’s tip
between two of the timber slats, the loose section of floor gave way easily.
The small crates hidden within took a little more prising apart to coax them to
yield their musted contents, but by the time he heard Ash’s feet descending the
staircase, he was stood by the sideboard with a neat row of semi-automatics,
ammunition and variously sized hunting blades lined up on the high-polished
mahogany.

Stepping through the door,
Ash blinked. ‘Have I missed something? Are we going into battle?’ She moved to
stand beside him and her eyes skipped over the array of weapons. Her hand
hovered over a double-barrel. ‘Do you have a spare? I can shoot, and, more
often than not, I manage to hit the can.’

He hoped she was joking. His
large hand covered hers and removed it from the weapon. He turned to face her
with a storm brewing in his eyes, words spoken with a finality that said he
would brook no argument. ‘You’re not going in there with me.’

‘You’re not going in there
without me.’ She mimicked his tone. ‘I don’t see another option. We promised
Liath we’d make the exchange.’

‘
You
made a promise,
Ash. I only promised to bring him back.’

‘You can’t go alone.’ Her
palm met his arm when a growl rolled up his throat. ‘Did you forget what happened
last time? I like your head attached.’

He cocked a brow at the
blatant challenge to his masculinity, palming a semi and testing how it fit in
the waistband of his jeans before lifting the cold steel of his eyes back on
her. ‘Last time was different. I was unprepared for you running into Dr.
Death’s arms at the first hint of danger. This time it will only be
Thegn
.
No wolves. I’ll handle this, alone.’

Casting him a narrow-eyed
glare, she was deadly serious when she spoke. ‘I won’t have a child’s blood on
my hands, Connal.’

No, but he would, if it came
down to the wire. The muscles in his jaw set with iron tension, bracketing his
mouth with the lines of his frustration. So much blood on his hands. So much
blood spilled avenging the death of an innocent, and now Josh was yet another
child caught in the crossfire of his enemies. He might not get the boy back,
but damned if he was prepared to lose her too.

‘You go in alone and you have
no way to guarantee his safety. You need me, to make the exchange. Hell, I
am
the exchange! Without me it’s not a party ...’

‘There won’t be an exchange,
Ash. I refuse to play you into their hands.’ She was right, he had no
guarantees to give, not when it came to a scumbag like Doyle. Centuries of
betrayal had a way of eroding your belief that good always trumped evil. He
wished he could share her optimism that even villains had an honourable streak,
that Doyle would stick by the terms of an exchange, but his dark heart told him
the child may be good as dead already.

‘How do you expect to get him
back? Please, explain it to me, Big Bad, because I’m not seeing the win-win
here.’

He bit out the words on a
snarl. ‘I’m going to rip the bastard’s head off.’

‘You can do that? I thought
you said Form was neutral territory.’

He dropped down on his
hunkers to prise open the heavy canvas bag on the floor, feeding weapons into
its dark interior as he spoke. ‘Form is built on sacred ground, the original
site of the black lake, before it was filled in, in an attempt to allay the
superstitions of evil that were rife at the time. It is the place where the
Ancients used their own blood to seal the Fomorians into their subterranean
prison and it has been prophesied that to spill wolf blood on its ground will
precipitate an apocalypse.’

‘So what? You’re going to
ride in there, guns blazing, like one of the four horsemen, and bring about the
end of the world?’

‘Even I’m not that stupid,
Ash. I’m going to make them come to me, on my terms.’

‘You can’t do that! He said
he would kill the boy if I don’t show.’

‘You think Doyle will just
throw away his best bargaining chip?' He looked up to pin her in the intensity
of his steel-grey stare. 'You underestimate just how badly they want you,
Little Red.’

‘I can’t take that chance on
a child’s life, not when it’s me they want.’

‘We can circle like this all
night long, Ash, ‘til we’re dizzy, but it changes nothing. I’m not taking you
in there.’

‘Bite me then.’

‘What?’ Drawing up to his
full height, the weapon in his hand hit the polished wood with a heavy thud. ‘What
difference could that possibly make?’

‘You say they want me so
badly, but if I’m Thrall, I’m useless to them. Valueless instead of priceless.
I walk in there, and it’s irrefutable proof I’m not the broodmare they think I
am. And they have no reason to keep Josh.’

More like no reason to
keep him alive
. ‘You want to go in
there on your knees, drooling and begging that son of a bitch to fuck you? Why
don’t we just walk you in there now, with a Hallmark card and goddamn bow on
your head?’ He growled his retort. ‘Just because you won’t be their broodmare
doesn’t mean you won’t be ridden to death, Ash.’ And like as not, Doyle would
slit the kid’s throat out of spite. Not that she needed to hear that. She
wouldn’t be going in there with him. Period. ‘They will use you ‘til you break
and then cast you aside.’