The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (66 page)

‘Yes, beautiful, glorious
death,’ the Morrígan licked her blood red lips.

‘You promise me?’ Connal
asked, ‘If I give you what you want, Ash will be protected from the curse. Free
to live above-ground, or below, as she chooses?’

‘Pathetic, love-struck fool,’
the noise from the back of her throat was pure contempt, ‘you’re just begging
to fall on your own sword to atone for your wickedness, aren’t you?’

‘Just swear to me you’ll keep
her safe,’ he demanded.

‘Give me what I want,’ she
stroked his jaw where she’d struck him, ‘and it shall be done. I’ll even grant
you
until the next
full moon to see her safe.’ Her smile was cruelly
magnanimous. ‘There is danger yet, while the wolves roam free.’

Connal’s lids closed as he
tasted the Morrígan’s temptations. Death was always on the cards, but by
allowing him to protect Ash, she was offering him a chance to see her, one last
time. How could he refuse? ‘What of my wolf?’ he asked, pushing himself up from
the ground. ‘You did something to me. I can’t change form.’

‘Indeed,’ she smiled,
self-satisfied, ‘a gift, in exchange for your gross insubordination. A small
demonstration of the control I hold over you still.’

‘I can’t protect her like
this.’ His hands spread out, displaying his weakened body.

The Morrígan approached in
that ethereal way she had of moving. White teeth hooking into full, red lips,
the heel of her hand rode down the crotch of the sweats. ‘Reinstatement of your
animal strength will require brokerage of a different nature.’

‘I can’t. I won’t.’ His mouth
curled in disgust and he backed away from her touch.

Her hand gripped his
waistband, hauling him back.

‘Oh, I am afraid this part of
the bargain is non-negotiable.’

With the Morrígan, there was
always a catch.

A
sh skidded on street-filthy feet, horror jerking her
to a standstill with so much force she nearly impaled herself on the iron-work
fencing her home.

Towering, the house greeted
her with a wide open door and spilled contents. A bomb had hit, exploding books
and drawers and nick-nacks to the front garden, and any hope that this was
still a safe-house went up with it. The windows were pushed out like mouths:
screaming, violated. The curtains were drawn and all the lights were off. Ash
shuddered, her hand stalled on the gate, gathering herself to step inside.

It may not be warded anymore,
but she was still going in, however briefly. If Connal was in there, she had to
warn him. Maybe they could run together. Besides, no matter how animal part of
her was, she could not go on the run without any shoes.

She feared the mess they’d
left.

She’d just got it looking
like home.

Sadness twinged somewhere
deep, the loss reaffirming what she already knew. She had no home. Not one of
brick and possessions, not one of family, not one Connal-shaped and growly. The
wolves had systematically torn all of them from her, starting with her mother.
They left her with only the stain of their involvement. She was tainted, one of
them. Monstrous to the one person she ached to reconnect with.

Snapping her head back into
action, she swore she felt the warm breath of warning skitter down her spine.
There could be no more delays. Ash opened herself up to the adrenaline of panic
and made her way into the house on sore feet.

The path to the stairs was
hazardous. Great bulks of furniture had been hefted into the hallway. A grand
wooden desk was propped between two walls, leaving just enough space for her to
slip under or over it. Ash dived down and four-pawed it, head cocked for
sounds. She took the stairs in a two-step lope. Aware the way she moved wasn’t
quite human, she gave in to it regardless, needing everything she had to
survive, beast included.

The door to her room was
ajar, though that wasn’t what gave her pause, or what made her eyes close and
her mouth fall open. The thing inside her whined and her nostrils flared.
Oxygen. Breathing easy for the first time in forever, air came to her,
saturated in his scent. She could taste their intimacy on her tongue. It let
her imagine him still in her world, as he was in her sheets.

But no muscled mass dominated
her room, no gorgeous stalker lurked in her shadows. He wasn’t there, but he
had been, not too long ago.

God, what had he been doing?
Rolling himself in her sheets? That was too painful an image to linger on. The
idea stole between her ribs and settled his scent into the beating drum of her
heart. She could pretend he had.

He was gone, and she told
herself that was a good thing. She needed to be gone too. Stat. Wasting time,
mooning in Eau de Big Bad, would get her dead. Ash rummaged under her bed for
the duffel bag she’d hidden there.

She jammed the closest
clothes to her into its belly. Her stuff was strewn around the room, the
wardrobes bare, hangers dangling. A couple of shirts, two pairs of jeans and
whatever else she’d grabbed later, Ash was worming her feet into socks and exchanging
Mac’s baggy sweats for some of her own. Turfing things aside in her forage for
shoes, she pushed on the first pair she found: ratty Converse knock-off’s she
should have thrown out years ago. They’d have to do. Tossing the bulging bag
onto the mattress, Ash searched her dresser with quick fingers, finding by
touch the DVD case and its precious contents. Her stash. Whatever the burglars
had been looking for, it hadn’t been money. The disc had been long discarded
and the box held a billfold of cash, enough to get her away and a room for a
few nights.

Too long in the house
already, there was one more thing she needed. It was the only thing she had of
her mother’s, that last link. Ash feared it lost in Fomor; still she looked,
rooted through the few items of jewellery she possessed, poked under fallen
books and dragged herself through the sheets, disturbing Connal-scented clouds
as she hastily flipped them up. No ring, only memories, lay amongst the
scattered pillows. Shit.

As she shouldered the duffel,
the first howl struck the air into quivers, the chime on the Grandfather clock
of her impending demise. They were close. Garden close.

Double shit.

Fucking Connal and his
addictive scent.

Death by dawdling. How
majestic.

Ash crept along the hall. Her
senses stood to attention as though her ears were pointed, as though her muzzle
was long, as though she was covered in fur and walked on stealthy, padded paws.

Down below, a heavy crash
tore through wood in a splintering crack and she was off, darting down the hall.
She leapt the assault course of obstructions, spun to race down the stairs, but
skidded to a halt when her brain screamed that they were coming up. Footsteps
hammered her floorboards, the threat swarming into her house on waves of
aggression.

Out, out, out, Ash, GET OUT!

Blood pumped her into motion,
roaring in her veins, pushing her upwards, urging her to take the stairs to the
attic and flee.

It was an area she hadn’t
dared explore, bad-vibing her that one time she’d convinced herself she needed
to check the place out for vermin. Heebie-jeebies had won out then. This time?
The heebs were no match for survival instinct. Ash wrenched the door open. The
hinges protested the jerk, but she couldn’t even care about the noise
attracting the wolves. If they hadn’t already sniffed her location, they soon
would. Her only hope was to find a way out. Old terrace houses like her
grandmother’s and its neighbours usually linked up. If she could get next door
or shimmy down a drainpipe from a skylight, she’d be halfway to staying alive.

Stumbling into the attic, any
plan she had formulated flew from her head, knocked clean out by wonder. This
can NOT be an attic. A glance behind her confirmed that it was. Those were her
stairs leading down to the top floor. Blood rushed between her ears, dampening
the sounds of the wolves below.

At first glance, the attic
appeared normal, the rafters not a head higher than her. But that wasn’t quite
right. A squint changed the view, setting the wood beams miles above her. Her
fingers reached to touch one whitewashed surface, but brushed nothing. The real
wall was yards away. Her head ached as she struggled to grasp the concept. It
was an impressive illusion. The attic was massive, a mansion inside a cardboard
box. Spa
t
ial distortion. She was in the TARDIS of loft spaces.

A very creepy TARDIS.

Her eyes adjusted to the
unreality. Rows of supporting columns extended either side of the vast space.
From them, bones jutted, worked into the plaster like macabre coat hooks. They
weren’t holding up coats though. Skulls hung from the femurs, staring out from
the walls with empty eye sockets. Others were looped from the ceiling in
death-stare garlands. Skulls in plaster, fortifying the attic’s supports. Wolf
skulls, hundreds, thousands maybe. They were trophies, piled in corners,
proudly displayed on every surface. Ash risked a look down, relief huffing from
her lips when she found nothing inset into the floor. Dead people in walls was
fine. If she was stepping on them? Ummm, no. Nope. Not cool. The irony hit her
and a laugh bubbled up, hysterical and rough. Traumatised, Ash valiantly held
down her lack of stomach contents. She was going to die among the dead.

The thud of boots on frail
stairs torqued her body towards the door.

Minutes had run down and
she’d trapped herself, no time to scout the room for access to next door’s
attic, no time to squirm her way through the skylight (not that there was a
skylight). Ash did the only thing she could think of
:
She backed
herself into a corner and locked her eyes on the door. At least no one could
come at her from behind.

She couldn’t stop the assault
from the front though. Taking a breath, her heart jack-hammered harder as the
footsteps got louder.

Three. Two. One.

The knob rattled and the door
groaned. Not battered down, they knew she was trapped. This was predator toying
with prey.

Fite’s smirk was the first
thing she saw ... and then wolves poured into the attic and he wasn’t the
greatest threat anymore.

Faced with at least half a
dozen red-eyed, claw-sprouting, fang-flashing males, Ash drew herself up and
felt the answering rush of energy bound around under her skin. Her wolf was
eager, not afraid. It was salivating, and she let it bleed through her
humanity. Her vision shifted to crimson, her mouth ached, her fingertips
flexed. Just a show. Reminding them she would not be going down easily.

A shiver ran through the
pack, the ones she wasn’t so familiar with biting out whines that were silenced
by Fite’s glare. The other members, Mac’s personal guards, simply flinched,
stone-wall faces flickering for a second. Apparently, her wolf had some kick
with the males. A growl filtered from her throat and Fite snapped into a
defensive position, a crossbow whipped from his back-holster and trained on her
head.

Well damn.

Wolf or not, she doubted she
could duck the arrow’s trajectory before it lodged in her brain.

T
he voices crowded in on Connal as he dry-retched, bent
double, alone again amongst the graves of the dead.

Worthless slave. Dirty.
Animal. Murderer. Traitor. Pathetic. Dog. You thought you were worthy of her?
Arrogant fool. You fucked it up. Again.

The faces of his past loomed,
a jury of wraiths. His father, his brother, the Morrígan, the prison guards,
that nameless girl in the red-soled shoes, the countless, faceless, souls he’d
taken from this world, all bearing down on him with the weight of their
incrimination. Somewhere, a baby was crying inconsolably. He clamped his hands
over his ears but the voices only got louder, the crying more shrill.

With his body aching from the
Morrígan’s abuse, Connal fell to his knees in the dirt and squeezed his eyes
shut, but there was no escaping the terrors. Ash’s face was imprinted on the
back of his lids, as she was when she was dying, sickly blue and patterned with
the black veins of death. Her eyes opened, irises glowing crimson, black-tinged
lips moving. What did you do to me, Big Bad? How could you do this to me?

Blindly, he drew the blade
from the earth where it had fallen. Clutching at his hair, he ran the knife
close to the scalp, shearing off a fistful of dreadlocks. He went at it again,
a sawing motion that saw another clump fall to the ground, then another, the
movements of the blade growing desperate as he hacked away until there was
nothing left but jagged spikes and patches of bleeding scalp.

The dagger spilled from his
limp palm. His forehead dropped to the headstone of his son’s grave and the
pain wracked his body in heaving sighs. He sought out the chain at his throat,
gripping the talisman in the hand that wore Ash’s ring, both pieces irrevocably
altered by the Morrígan’s binding promise. He got what he’d come for. But at
what price?

A hand came to rest on
Connal’s shoulder and he stilled, caught in a moment of déjà vu. It was at this
very grave stone that Ash laid her hands on him. That touch had been the game
changer for him, but, God, it felt like centuries ago.