The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (56 page)

Madden’s brows shot up into
his hairline. 'Two words for you, Savage: DeMorgan's granddaughter.'

Connal frowned. 'Okay, so
you've got me there, but that's different.'

'So is this.' The doctor was
deadly serious.

'You're a dark horse, Doc,
you know that?'

'No more than you, Connal
Savage.’ Some of the tension eased from the doctor’s rigid stance. ‘We all have
our secrets. It’s no coincidence she’s your neighbour. I used my contacts to
set her up next door to the DeMorgan house.’

Connal gave him a puzzled
look.

‘Do you know what they do to
male
thegn
children? Nobody wants the dirty truth of the half-breeds
exposed. I figured living that close to DeMorgan's wards, and to you, they’d be
safer. If the wolves ever found out what Josh was, they might turn a blind eye,
rather than take the risk of getting so close.’

'Well shit.' Connal stared at
the doctor. ‘Liath doesn’t know about you, does she?’

‘No,’ Madden hesitated, ‘I
manipulated her memories.’

Connal whistled low. ‘The Old
Masters would be turning in their graves.’

‘Manipulating human minds is
permitted when the race is threatened with exposure.’

‘I’d say that was a loose
interpretation of the laws,
Thegn
.’ Connal laughed.

‘I did what I had to do to
keep them safe. I know you understand that.’

Yes, Connal understood
exactly how far a man would go to save what he loved, and a creeping respect
for the doctor was working it’s way under his skin. ‘You have my word. If I get
out of this, I’ll watch out for her, and the kid.’

‘Thank you.’

Connal nodded. ‘Does anyone
else know?’

Madden’s lip curled. ‘Doyle.
The bartender at Form.’

Connal’s jaw went slack. ‘I
thought he targeted her kid because she and I were friends,
’ he said,
‘
but maybe Doyle was smarter than that.’

‘What the hell do you mean,
he targeted her?’ The colour had drained from the doctor’s face.

‘You didn’t know?’ Connal
frowned. ‘Doyle took Josh hostage to force me to hand over Ash.’

‘Son of a Bitch! I’ll rip his
fucking throat out!’ The veins on Madden’s temples were pulsing. ‘They’re not
safe. I need to get back there, Savage. He’s a psychopath.’

‘I took his
thegn
oath, not to lay a finger on either of them.’ Connal didn’t say it, but given
Madden’s confession, he was starting to wonder if that oath was worth the blood
it was drawn in.

‘Just get us down there,
Savage,’ Madden gestured to the settlement in the valley, ‘I’ll take care of
that worm Doyle. Personally.’

Connal nodded, and both men
stepped forward to the lip of the cave. ‘Time to outrun the devil,
Thegn
.
On my mark, we hit the ground running.’

Madden went bobble-headed,
swallowing hard. Connal stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill
whistle. In unison, twenty-odd serrated beaks turned towards the noise, their
beady eyes focussed on the bundle Connal was swinging. The weight of the flesh
worms droned through the air as he pitched them high and far. ‘Chow time,
fuckers,’ he shouted.

The raveners took the bait.
Flocking to the air on vast wings, they swooped down in the direction of the
projectile.

‘Now!’ Connal hissed,
dragging the hesitant doctor from the mouth of the cave by his upper arm. They
scrambled down the cliff-face in a flurry of displaced stones, feet and hands
grappling for purchase down the steep slope, half-sliding, half-running, an
avalanche of bodies and dirt. Connal took in the landscape and his heart sank.
A wide plain stretched out before them, offering no cover whatsoever. They’d
badly underestimated the distance they needed to
run
, but they
were past the point of no return.

Frantic, they tore across the
expanse, feet churning the black sand. They’d made it almost halfway when the
first shrieks tore through the sky.

‘Fuck, they’re coming,’
Madden panted.

‘Don’t look back, Doc.’
Thighs pumping, Connal’s breath burned his lungs as his feet ate up the sand.
Beside him, the doctor’s face was drawn. He seemed to be running on pure
adrenaline.

An ominous wind beat at their
backs and their shadows lengthened as the first of the raveners swooped down
for the kill. Hooking a foot behind the doctor’s knee, Connal sent Madden face
forward into the dirt. The doctor took the fall hard, crying out.

Ignoring the protest, Connal
used the torque to wheel himself about, putting himself between the doctor and
the screeching harpy. Its foul breath billowed a toxic cloud in his face. Side
stepping the bird’s first lunge, he threw himself into the second incoming
attack and grasped the ends of the creature’s beak. He prised it’s mouth wide
open, gagging at the gore of half-chewed flesh worms dripping from its serrated
teeth. The animal struggled, its talons raking at the exposed flesh of Connal’s
stomach. It clamped down with renewed determination and Connal’s arm muscles
trembled with the effort of restraining the thing. He couldn’t hold out, and he
couldn’t get the momentum behind his grip to break the creature’s neck.

A hoarse cry rang out and the
ravener reared back, its claws scraping the sand. Connal could hardly believe
his eyes. Madden had mounted the giant bird and was riding its back, his
forearms clamped around its neck in a strangling hold. The whites of his eyes
showed as he bared his teeth on a snarl and, together, the two men wrenched the
creature’s neck anticlockwise, pushing against the resistance of a spinal cord
that snapped and recoiled with a horribly satisfying crunch of bone. The
ravener’s head went loose and it crumpled to the ground in a flurry of black
feathers.

Both men slumped.

‘You tripped me, you son of a
bitch,’ Madden wheezed.

‘I saved your Goddamn life.’

‘The way I see it, I’m the
one who saved yours, Savage.’ The doctor cracked a grin. ‘I can’t believe we
took that thing down.’

Connal laughed huskily. ‘A
story to tell your grandkids, Doc, if we ever get out of here. There’s
twenty-plus more where that thing came from.’ On cue, the baleful cries of the
raveners intensified. Rolling onto their backs, the two men looked to the
skies, braced for certain death. What they saw took their breath. The mutant
birds spread their wings and pitched across the sky. As one great flock, they
changed trajectory towards the glowing crater in the distance.

‘What the hell happened?’
Madden propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Think we scared them off?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Connal deadpanned,
‘absolutely.’

Scrabbling to their feet,
Madden dusted down while Connal picked chunks of gravel from the wounds slashed
across his abdomen. ‘We need to move, fast,’ Connal said, ‘before they get
bored of whatever shiny new thing caught their attention. Can you run?’

‘Hell yes,’ Madden nodded,
‘I’ll run from here.’

They took off again, racing
across the sand.

‘Tell me something,’ Madden
asked breathlessly. ‘Where was your wolf back there, Savage? Why didn’t you
shift?’

Connal glanced over at him.
‘Can you keep a secret, Doc?’

Madden fell out of step
momentarily and stared at him.

‘Seems when MacTire took that
collar from me, he took more than just my ability to breathe topside,’ Connal
confessed, ‘I can’t shift.’

S
tanding in line at the vanguard of assembled warriors,
Fite had a one-track mind. From the moment she’d swept in and silenced the
arena, his sharp eyes never left the female. He took in everything, from the
possessive hand Mac had welded to the base of her spine, to the easy
conversation that passed between them. And when she wasn't looking, he noticed
how the King's eyes strayed to her face, with a look that confirmed Fite's
worst suspicions.

‘You see his neck?’ Tyr
growled.

Fite inclined his head in a
tight nod. The King was wearing her teeth marks in his throat like a damn badge
of honour.

‘That’s some hickey,’ Tyr
said.

‘Shit.’ Fite groaned. MacTire
was balls-deep, goo-goo eyes infatuated with the girl. All the harder to
convince him she was trouble.

At the King’s call, Tyr
stepped forward, and Fite’s eyes tracked the boy as he stepped up to his much
larger opponent. He took his seat to watch with a smile playing at the corners
of his mouth. His félag’s son’s angelic, adolescent appearance was deceptive.
Though the boy had been young and fatherless when they were cursed, Fite had
taken him under instruction. He knew well those wiry muscles packed a lethal
combination of power, precision and ruthless bloodlust. Tyr could turn their
underestimation to his advantage. Nobody brought their A-game to an underdog.

At his death, Tyr’s father
had sworn Fite to raising the boy like a son, and as he watched him get down to
the fight, his chest swelled with a fatherly pride. Every blow landed, every
tear of flesh and rip of fur, Fite encouraged from the sidelines with growls
and shouts and fistpunches to the air, revelling in the violence. The entire
crowd was buzzing from the high, howling their pleasure, spurring on the
bloodshed. As one they rose to their feet, roaring approval as Tyr took the
larger animal down to deal the winning blow.

But a single, dissenting
voice rose above the crowd, a female voice.

In unison, a hundred heads
whipped up from the action to the King’s seat, where the air was crackling,
shimmering around Ashling DeMorgan’s body like a mirage. The cry of ‘stop’
morphed into a sinister howl and all hell broke loose. Where the girl had
stood, a massive red wolf reared up, teeth bared and snarling. And from its
back …

‘Wings.’ Fite’s throat went
dry. ‘It’s got fucking wings.’

Their broad, black-feathered
span spread and flapped, whipping up currents of air. It howled again, a
mournful cry to the skies, before launching itself from its stone perch to land
squarely in the centre of the arena. Tyr was wrenched from his opponent and
tossed aside. The boy’s human form crumpled in the dirt like a limp sack of
bones and a wave of dread stopped Fite’s heart dead in his chest. Fury rode
hard in its wake. Ominous black silhouettes swept overhead, obliterating the
sky. Chaos reigned, wolves and men milling about, running for cover from the
unmistakable shrieks of the raveners. One swooped down to clamp its
razor-toothed beak around a wolf’s head before lifting off, its helpless prey
dangling, howling as it was eaten alive. In the midst of the slaughter, the red
wolf stood protectively over the injured fighter, fangs dripping saliva, its
blood-red eyes trained on Fite as he sprinted across the sands to cover Tyr’s
unconscious body. Gripping the boy’s wrists, he moved to drag him to safety.

‘Let me help.’ Fite cranked
up his neck to the gruff sound of MacTire’s voice. Standing before him,
wild-eyed, the King grabbed Tyr’s ankles and together they hefted the boy’s
limp body off the ground.

‘Now do you fucking believe
me?’ Fite snarled as they carried Tyr to the relative safety of the nearest
tunnel.

MacTire grunted. Outside, the
raveners circled the giant, mutant wolf, picking off victims as they scrambled
across the stone benches. Powerful wings beating the air, the she-wolf growled
and snapped her jaws at the circling predators.

Feet pounded down the tunnel
from the opposite direction, and a crowd spilled through, armed with the heavy
crossbows kept as defence against the winged death. A wolf was no match for a
ravener in open combat, as the poor bastards farthest from the escape routes
were finding to their cost.

On the ground, Tyr wasn’t
moving. His throat gaped in a vicious wound and his pale body was randomly
twitching.

‘Give me one of those!’ Fite
wrenched a weapon from the hands of the nearest warrior. One shot, point-blank
between the eyes, would end this bloody carnage. His aim was legendary. He
pulled back the bolt and turned towards the arena, only to find MacTire
blocking his way, a fist white-knuckle gripping the front stock of the
crossbow.