The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (85 page)

‘How the fuck do I know?
Maybe he’s some kind of mutant.’

‘Well that’s just wonderful,
Dr Jekyll. What do we do now?’

‘Liath and Josh are in
danger. I have to get them away from him.’ Madden’s movements were robotic as
he pulled the phone from his suit pocket and scrolled through his contacts with
a tremoring fingertip.

‘Okay,’ Ash replied, ‘but
shouldn't we at least get what we came here for?'

'It's all gone,' Madden said,
motioning to the mangled steel cabinet that was drooping off its hinges. ‘He
destroyed it all.' There was a crunch and he shifted the soles of his loafers
to reveal the scatter of glass shards, glistening with blue liquid.

‘Shit.’

‘We can only hope Connal gets
back with the
Skil
before it’s too late.’ Wearing the face of anguish,
he hit the call button and stuck the phone to his ear.

'Mrs. Murphy? Yes, it’s
Doctor Madden here again. Sorry to disturb you at this late hour, but something
very important has come up.’

He paced the tiny room and
Ash’s ears strained to hear the other side of the conversation.

‘No, no Liath is fine. She’s
stable, but,’ he paused to draw breath, ‘your daughter fell in with some bad
company, Mrs. Murphy. I'm concerned for your welfare, and that of your
grandson. I believe they might be targeting you. Have you noticed any unusual
activity outside the house this evening?’

Mrs Murphy’s response only
deepened his frown.

‘He did? Red eyes, you say?’
He laughed without a trace of humour. ‘No, of course you're right. Just a
child’s overactive imagination. It was probably just a fox. The boy has been
through a lot lately.’

Madden’s knuckles were
bloodless and the phone shook in his hand.

‘No, I've already informed
the police, Mrs Murphy,’ he lied. ‘You just lock your doors and stay inside,’
he schooled his voice into a semblance of calm. ‘I'm coming right over. I need
you to pack some bags and don’t open the door for anyone but me, understood?’

He hung up and glared the
wall.

‘What happened?’ Ash asked.

He stared at her, wide-eyed.
‘The dogs started to go wild, barking and clawing at the back door, so Josh let
them out in the garden. He told his grandmother he saw glowing red eyes staring
out at him from the bushes, but she didn’t take him seriously. By the time she
came out, the wolfhound had chased whatever it was away.’

‘Oh shit.’

‘I did this,’ Madden said.
Grief stricken, his arms fell limp by his sides.

‘Keep it together, Doc,’ Ash
squeezed his bicep. ‘Will the blood runes keep Josh safe?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said
anxiously, ‘they must have had some effect. Otherwise -’

Otherwise there would have
been nobody alive to take the call.

‘Doyle is an unknown entity.
I can’t take the risk.’

Not so unknown,
Ash thought grimly, looking about at the slaughter
he’d left in his wake. ‘We know enough to say he’s dangerous, so we can’t take
any chances. We need to get them out of the house.’

‘There is no place for them
to go. The
thegn
won’t shelter a half-breed child. Do you know what
they’ll do to him if they discover what he is?’

Ash could guess, by the
distress cracking his voice, that it wasn’t anything good.

‘I can’t protect them from
this monster,’ he quailed and his face turned a sickly shade of green. ‘Oh
Gods. Paddy, Killian, all of the patients ... What have I done?’

‘Doc, look at me,’ Ash
gripped Madden’s shoulders and locked him into her determined stare. ‘If it
comes to it, I can protect them. And I may know of a place they could go.’ She
reached into the ass-pocket of her jeans and pulled out Maura’s dog-eared
business card. She’d only kept it because the wolfhound on it reminded her of
Setty. Now she thanked the gods for small fortunes. ‘She’s not exactly a
friend, but I think she might be sympathetic to Liath’s plight.’

Full night had fallen by the
time they finally pulled up, right at the door of the farmhouse. As the car’s
interior lights came on, Ash craned her neck to take in the scene on the back
seat. The movement of the car and the warm air from its heater had lulled Josh
to sleep with his head propped against Liath’s shoulder. For the journey,
Madden had pumped her with enough sedative to drop a baby rhino. Mouth lax, she
mirrored the boy’s crumpled posture and would have looked at peace, were it not
for the random twitches in her limbs. In stark contrast, Mrs Murphy sat
poker-straight, purse in her lap, lips set in a thin, puckered line.

‘Are you sure this is a good
idea?’ Madden asked warily, scouting the isolated terrain through the windshield
wipers.

‘Do we have a choice?’ Ash
replied and roused the dogs curled at her feet.

She stepped from the car into
the light rain and huddled into Connal's jacket. She stood a moment, letting
her heightened senses send feelers out into the night. Their only answers were
the gentle whinnies of the horses in the paddocks and the growl of a dog from
inside the house. Satisfied they didn’t have company of the clawed and fanged
variety, she let the dogs out, then cracked the rear door and helped Mrs.
Murphy from the car.

The elderly woman’s
square-toed shoes sank into the mud and she grimaced, wrapping herself in her
camel coat. ‘Is this really necessary?’ she said tightly. ‘As I tried to
explain to the doctor, this is all some ridiculous misunderstanding. My daughter
may have had a child out of wedlock, and I never approved of her working in
that nightclub, but my Liath is a well brought-up girl. She would never
associate with the likes of drug-dealers and criminals.’ Mrs Murphy settled her
handbag in the crook of her elbow and, despite being mired in horseshit,
attempted to muster a semblance of dignity.

‘I’m sure this is just
temporary,’ Ash tried to reassure her. ‘You’ll be back home in no time,’ she
said, but her smile was unconvincing.

Leaving Madden to gather his
supplies from the trunk, Ash draped the still-sleeping boy over her shoulder
and the sorry gang of rain-damp refugees traipsed into Maura Flannery’s
kitchen.

She was expecting them.

A roaring fire blazed in the
hearth and there was tea brewed and a huge plate of sandwiches made. And, God
but the smell of fresh-baked goods was like heaven’s scent. But there the
pretence of the welcoming, homey farmhouse ended abruptly.

'Wipe your feet and come in
out of the rain,' Maura bellowed. She wore a wax duster coat that might have
looked bad-ass if it weren't for the hand-knit number on her head. Her wild red
curls were doing battle with the garish crochet hat that Ash could have sworn
doubled as a tea-cosy the last time she'd been there. At her feet sat a snarling
wolfhound Ash suspected was kept in check solely by Maura’s domineering
presence. The animal’s swollen teats betrayed her as the brood bitch.

Taken from her pups to
defend us
, Ash thought guiltily. The
animal looked fierce, nonetheless, and she was thankful to be wearing Connal's
scent.

‘You can put the child in
there,’ she said, motioning through a doorway to a parlour with a sprawling
armchair by the fire. Ash laid her burden down gently and drew a woollen
blanket over Josh’s sleeping form. Mrs Murphy perched on the chair opposite and
warmed her hands over the open flames. ‘I’ll bring some tea,’ Ash offered and
turned back to the kitchen, closing the door behind her. The Irish answer to
every crisis was a hot cup of tea.

‘Were you followed?’ Maura demanded.
The kitchen table had been cleared and she was busy hefting brown canvas wraps
onto it from a long wooden box on the floor.

‘No,’ Ash said confidently.
She’d been on tenterhooks the entire journey and had the claw marks in her
palms to prove it.

‘Good. Can’t be too careful,’
she said, unrolling one of the canvases to reveal an intimidatingly large
double-barrel shotgun. Maura’s answer to a crisis, it seemed, was an arsenal of
weapons that wouldn’t look out of place in a war zone. She handled the gun like
a pro, splitting open the break-action. ‘I lace the shot with wolfhound
saliva,’ she explained, loading it up with huge red cartridges. ‘Can’t take any
chances with an
olc
.’

‘An
olc
?’

‘The old name given to the
demon wolves that once stalked our land.’

‘You’ve gone up against one
of these things before?’

‘Not in my lifetime,’ Maura’s
hair shook, ‘but if that hell-beast comes within an ass’s roar of my homestead,
he’ll have my lead so far up his arse, he’ll be spitting shot when he whines at
me for mercy.’

Smile at the scary lady,
Ash told her mouth, but her lips refused to cooperate.

Just then, Madden crossed the
threshold with Liath in his arms and a bag slung on his back. A menacing growl
ripped through the air. Maura cocked the shotgun and braced it to her shoulder,
aiming her sights on the door.

‘I thought you said you
weren’t followed,’ she hissed, and the hound at her feet snapped its jaws at
the newcomer.

‘I wasn’t,’ Ash insisted.

'You brought this
thing
here?' she said, incredulous. ‘You invited
thegn
scum into my home?’ Ash
could almost feel the pressure of Maura’s finger on the trigger as she took a
step forward. She held her breath as Madden’s feet eased back through the
doorway. A creaky floorboard could set this situation alight.

‘This is Doc Madden,’ Ash
said, as steadily as she could, ‘Connal’s friend. I told you about him on the
phone. He helped Connal escape from MacTire.’

‘And where is Connal now?’
she glared suspiciously. ‘What have you done with him?’ The barrels of the gun
swung in Ash’s direction and she raised her hands.

‘Connal went to get something
from MacTire that will help the boy’s mother.’ Ash motioned to Liath who was
beginning to rouse from her stupor. ‘Look at the bite on her neck. She’s
thrall
,
and if we don’t help her, she’s going to die. Please. He only wants to help
the girl.’

‘I agreed to shelter the
woman and her family. You said nothing about one of Satan’s minions,’ she said
caustically, cutting Ash a glare. ‘My bitch can smell the corruption on him.’

Sure enough the hound’s lips
were peeled back off its teeth. One word from Maura and it would be at Madden’s
jugular. To his credit, the doctor stood his ground.

‘Please Maura,' Ash said,
'I’m sorry. There wasn’t time to explain. He’s the only one who can help Liath.’
Ash thought better of revealing their true relationship. If Maura discovered
Josh was a half-breed, she suspected they’d all be tossed out on their asses in
the road.

'She's waking up,' Madden
interrupted, 'I need to get her back on the intravenous infusion, before she
starts tearing the place apart. If we're not welcome here, say so now.'

Maura wavered, chewing her
lip, but her eyes never left him and her trigger finger didn’t relax. ‘There’s
a room for her upstairs,’ she motioned with the gun. ‘You do your business,
then you get out of my house. I won’t have the likes of you sleeping under my
roof.’

‘But you can’t -’ Ash
started.

‘No, that’s okay,’ Madden
said. ‘I can sleep in the car.’

Remind me never to fuck
with a farmer’s wife,
Ash thought as
Maura led him up the stairs on the barrel-end of her shotgun.

A half-hour and some pretend
niceties later, Josh and Mrs Murphy had been fed a supper of sweet tea,
sandwiches and fruit scones and sent to bed, leaving Ash alone again with
Maura.

‘You can have Sadhbh’s room,’
she said curtly as she cleared away the remnants of their meal. ‘She’s away in
Dublin, at college. Just don’t interfere with her things.’

Still bitter and twisted
that I snagged Connal when your daughter couldn't,
Ash thought
.