The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (64 page)

A lynching party for sure.
Fun!
A bubble of panic was closing in around her, no time to do anything, no
time to think or decide or decipher the next mouthed instructions on screen.
Surely her grandmother's house was the first place they’d go. It was the only
place they knew to look for her, the only place she had. And Connal was there.

Redialling, Ash paced the
wall of monitors, judging every move in the basement as a threat and fisting
her hand over her heart. The damn thing was beating so hard she was
legitimately worried it would bust out of her chest like Alien and scamper off.
It would return to Connal, she knew; he was its keeper, willing or not.
Frantic, she muttered. ‘Pick up, pick up, pick up.’
Ring, ring, ring ring.
‘Now is not the time to ignore me, Big Bad, I swear to God.’ Fear that Connal
was there and would be caught out by a wolf ambush was the new cause of the
rolling terror in her gut. He didn’t know. He had no clue they’d followed her
on the train out of Hell. The connection timed out and she stabbed angrily at
the redial. Knowing her luck, he’d just be sat there, scowling one of his
eyebrow-furrowing glares and praying she gave up.

She couldn’t.

Looking up from the seventh
redial, Ash saw herself faintly reflected in the basement monitor. Just pale
skin and blue eyes and tangled curls. Worry was a strain at the corners of her
mouth as she chewed her nail, not really tracking the background ringing, not
really seeing the men troop across the camera feeds. She nearly overlooked the
bartender. He was bent at the waist and looked to be scoping out something on
the floor. With every hunched step he took, dread pooled liquid lead in her
stomach. He was following a trail. Her trail. She’d climbed out of the
primordial ooze and left a residue, neon-signing her path to the elevator.
Heart thudding in her throat, she was choking on the beats as his fingers
touched a glob on the elevator door. Then he looked up, peering straight into
the camera lens, his face a mask of suspicion, as though he was staring right
at her, as though he could see her.

Fuck.

She was utterly screwed.

Panic was as familiar as
breathing now, an integral part of her new world. She was not indestructible.
Not to them. They could tear her twelve ways to Sunday as easy as brioche. She
pushed at the fear until it hit the bestial energy pacing under her skin. Much
better. Territorial and pissed beat terrified hands down. She could function
with that. Ash looked around, breathing with the monotone ringing on the line.

Her gut churned as she
watched the bartender pushing at the elevator buttons, playing with the lock.
They knew she was there. Ash suddenly felt very naked in just a towel. Rifling
through Mac’s closet, she kept one eye on the monitor as she climbed into his
giant-sized clothes. She eyed a massive pair of boots. She’d be swimming in
those things. Faster barefoot, if it came down to running.

Shit. What was she supposed
to do now? Sit there and wait to be found? Mac and Connal had both told her to
stay, but how much trust could she put in an elevator door? They might not be
able to spill her blood in this place, but there was plenty else they could do
to her.

No,
screw
that. Mac
hadn’t shown. Something had gone wrong in Fomor. She would not be a fish in a
barrel.

She was going to try to make
it home.

The house was warded, if she
could get there, she might be safe. Assuming her new status didn't turn those
wards against her. Her spine was steel as she saw her clock run down. The
bartender had disappeared from the shot, returning moments later with Fite and
his goons. Heads together, they were obviously talking tactics on how to get
in, until one of them approached with a couple of crowbars, and that's all it
took to get them fucking up the elevator. But seriously, how could she have
been so stupid as to leave a trail? Strung out on fear and disoriented from the
trip over didn’t seem like an adequate excuse.

The elevator doors slid open
on the screen, and Ash was jolted into motion. Her claws unsheathed
instinctively, the sharp bite to her lip telling her she’d sprouted fangs. She
was across the room and working to open a window when the elevator binged
behind her, revving her up to a frenetic throttle of scrabbling with the
handle. Footsteps pounded along the short hallway. The door-knob rattled.

Fuck, Mac, if you lied
about me having the only key ...
She
didn’t have time to finish the mental threat, her head-space taken up by escape
plans and fear that she’d slip from this height and die.

A collision shook the door in
its frame just as her foot touched the first step of the fire escape. Rain had
made the metal slick and precarious. The flimsy bolts securing it to the side
of the building made it terrifying. Ash was not fond of unsecure heights and,
for all she knew, this thing was a deathtrap, masquerading as salvation. Better
that than getting turned into wolf chow. Another slam to the door flinched down
her spine. Her foot bobbed a little more of her weight to the rickety escape
and her other leg followed, testing it before she committed.
S
he
waited for the whole thing to crumble in a metallic screech, the only sound
s
the
pounding of her heart and the soft huff of her breath in the cold air. When
that didn’t happen, she scrambled down the side of the club, wet slipping
beneath her feet, making her clutch the handrail. The metal groaned when she
traded steps for time, missing out whole sections as she slithered her descent.
As her feet touched the pavement of a side alley, Ash’s eyes and ears were
focussed above her, waiting for the crash of an imploding door or the smash of
the glass, expecting to see wolves blocking out the skies, slavering for a
taste of-

‘Don’t scream.’

From out of the shadows, a
silencing hand clamped over Ash’s mouth and tackled her roughly back against
the wall of the club. The roar of her panic numbed the pain of the impact as
she stared up, startled, into the face of Doc Rob. Not the disheveled Robinson
Crusoe extra from down in the caves, but the clean-shaven, slick-suited,
smooth-talking bastard who’d lured her into Form in the first place.

‘What the
hell
are
you doing out here,’ he whispered harshly, ‘do you
want
to die?’

Heart galloping in her chest,
her taloned hands prised his from her face with a snarl. ‘If you’re planning to
take me in, you’re going to have a fight on your hands this time, Doc. I’m not
that naive little girl anymore.’

The doctor stood back,
straightening his cuffs and dusting down his jacket as he raked appraising eyes
over her new
manicure
and Mac’s oversized clothes swamping her curves.

‘I don’t doubt that, Miss
DeMorgan, but it’s not me you need to be worried about. You are no longer on
neutral ground.’

‘I’m not about to sit on my
hands in that room while the wolves break down the door and drag me back to
that cess-pit.’

‘They know you’re here then?’
His brows knit in what looked like genuine concern.

‘Yes, and I suggest you get
out of my way before I’m forced to remove you from it, Doctor.’

‘Let me help you.’ He reached
into his pocket and her posture stiffened defensively, but it was only a
key-fob. ‘I have my car ...’

‘No offence, but the last
time you offered to help me? Once bitten, as they say.’ Her mouth curved in a
tense smile.

‘Very well
.
’
T
he
doctor inclined his head and stood to the side. She backed away warily, keeping
her eyes on the doctor even as she scanned the heights for signs of the wolves.
Perhaps that door was stronger than it looked.

‘He’s in love with you, you
know.’

She froze and her eyes locked
with his in the half-light. For a moment she considered if he was talking about
Mac.

‘Hard, desperate, stubborn
love,’ he went on. ‘Do you know what it feels like to stand by and watch the
person you love be with somebody else?’ He spoke with the conviction of one who
knew intimately how that felt, and she cowered internally at the accusation in
his tone.

‘Connal Savage is a good man.
Remember that. Whatever poison MacTire and his cronies fed you about him.
Whatever guilty cross he’s carrying about the night of the genocide, the
circumstances of it were beyond his control.’

She didn’t owe this man any
explanations, but the words came unbidden. ‘I never meant to hurt him.’ Her
voice sounded so small.

‘So you understand. He never
meant to hurt anyone either. Sometimes the bad stuff happens in spite of good
intentions, and then all you have left to judge a man by is his heart. Connal
Savage’s heart is with you, Ashling DeMorgan, for better or worse.’

‘I have to find him. Did he
say where he was going?’

Doc Madden shook his head and
levelled her with a hard stare. ‘I believe he is going to barter with the
devil.’

‘Then it’s true? He’s lost my
grandmother’s protection because of me? He’s going to die?’
Because of me.

Madden scrubbed his hands
down his jaw and nodded. ‘He’s not bartering for his own life, Ash,’ he said
softly.

She frowned in confusion.

‘He’s bartering for yours.’

The minute she got over the
rip of pain in her chest, she was running, the doctor forgotten. Connal was
going to sell his soul for a life she wasn’t so certain she wanted to live
without him. They needed to talk, she needed to say ... something, before the
horde of hellhounds descended on them.

As she ran towards the house,
the world opened up in a flash of senses. She relinquished just a portion of
her humanity and felt for the new strength inside of her, the remnants of that
explosive, feral power that had led to her imprisonment. The reins weren’t so
loose that she sprouted fur, only enough to add a lengthening to her stride,
concentrating her vision, broadening her hearing, her olfactory perception
clueing her in to the fact that she was alone. The streets were empty of the
rush of people; she hadn’t been followed. Yet.
She had a head start on the
lunatics and was grateful for it.

Casting her gaze upwards, she
had the faintest idea that she was racing the full moon shining above her. Far
away howls struck chords that made her beast keen.

She had to move faster.

M
inutes after leaving DeMorgan’s house, and the elegant
facades of Georgian Dublin were going by in a blur as Connal left a city just
coming to life for the full moon. To the growl of the engine, streets thinned
out to tree-lined country road. This was the edge of civilisation, where the
wilderness encroached on man’s attempts to tame it.

This was the only way. Connal
couldn't trust Mac to keep Ash safe in Fomor beyond the full moon.
But t
he
closer he got to his destination, the more despair crept beneath his skin. That
image of them kissing was branded into his cortex for eternity and imagining
all the sordid ways MacTire would be ‘taking care of her’ really didn’t help
his sanity either. He despised the hurt, and the jealousy, but knew they were
exactly what he needed to draw out a warmonger like the Morrígan: anguish was
grist to the wheel of her devious machinations.

When the forest became too
dense, he abandoned the motorbike and continued on foot. His breath grew
laboured as he climbed, his body aching in muscles he hadn’t known he had. With
his wolf-nature imprisoned as it was, his body felt human, the weakness a
foreign sensation to him. Wending deeper, the canopy of trees obliterated the
moonlight, plunging him into darkness. Without his animal senses or
night-vision, Connal was left to pick a cautious path through the roots and
branches, wishing to hell he’d had the sense to take a flashlight. The woods
were eerily quiet to his dulled hearing, the normally richly layered scents
dulled to a base-note of pine and damp undergrowth. It was true you never really
appreciated what you’d had ‘til it was gone.