The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (10 page)

‘What causes it? Why do I
have this?’

‘It is most likely a
throwback to our evolutionary past, Miss DeMorgan. A primitive, vestigial gene
resurfacing. Totally harmless, but fascinating nonetheless.’

Her eyes went wide. ‘You’re
saying I’m related to a cat? I don’t recall an Uncle Garfield.’

‘Of course not.’ His eyes
crinkled in amusement, but his words were deadly serious. ‘Cats in general have
blue or green eyeshine. Yours is red, in common with a number of ancient
species, suggesting a more primordial genetic lineage. The scientific research
potential is intriguing ...’

She recoiled a little,
fisting the material of her johnny as his eyes shone with a near maniacal zeal.
He was getting carried away and he scared her. He wanted her in a lab, a guinea
pig to shine lights at and stick with more needles.

‘Would you be prepared to let
me take some blood samples for further genetic analysis?’ he asked.

Ash just wanted this done
with. ‘Take whatever you have to so I can leave.’ The words came from her lips
a little more strained than she’d hoped for. She watched him wheel a little
cart of sharp and pointies up to her side. Her face felt hot and cold at the
same time, her head a little woozy as her vision blinked.

‘Are you okay?’ His hand was
warm lifting her chin and Ash nearly swam back away from him through the fear
swamping her senses.

‘Not so good with needles,
Doc.’

‘I’ll be gentle.’ And for the
most part he was, though Ash was pretty sure she dropped out of consciousness a
few times. She was exhausted. The night had gone from fun and playful to dark,
dangerous and scary beyond belief.

‘Miss DeMorgan? Ashling?’ She
fluttered her lashes open and focused on the caramel brown of his eyes. ‘We’re
done.’ He shook the little vials of her blood, the liquid sloshing a deep red.

‘You have everything?’

He nodded and ran through the
list of what he still had to pump her with, what he’d taken from her and why.
‘I’d really like a specialist to come and look at you,’ he said.

T
o a casual observer, the guy on the bench in the open
necked shirt was just any other city worker, on a break and tossing the crusts
of his lunch to the birds who scavenged the park, picking over the human
leftovers. Except for a few incongruities, like the fact it was after midnight,
and instead of the sun’s rays on his back it was the cold light of the moon
illuminating this patch of urban greenery in the heart of the city. Then there
was the small detail that ravens were not supposed to be nocturnal creatures,
and yet the birds flocked to the grass, inching ever closer, drawn by the
murmured incantations that fell from his lips with barely perceptible
movements.

There were no casual
observers. He made sure of it as he waited for the perfect opportunity, that
outward air of infinite calm belying the furious knocking of his heart against his
ribcage. It was the same urgency that had seen him abandon the bustling
emergency department at a flat out run, stuffing the vials of her blood into
his pockets as he broke out into the cool night. Dr. Robert Madden was not a
patient man. He’d floored the accelerator of his beamer and hared it out of the
staff car park like the Grim Reaper was breathing down his shirt collar. And
the man with the scythe was MacTire. He was going to kill him for letting her
slip out of his hands.

She had seemed so damn
compliant, and he’d left her barely five minutes while he locked himself into
the cramped clinic room, away from prying nurses’ eyes. As he’d jabbed the
hypodermic needle into the vial, he’d let that smugness wash through him,
imagining it like a drug high. Even as the sedative sucked up into the syringe
on its liquid rush, he’d been thinking he might not need the drugs to subdue
her. He had won her trust. This one would come willingly. All these years and
finally he’d hit pay dirt, right there in his ER. He’d conjured up MacTire’s
face and how it would look when Madden held him to his end of their deal, had
to tame the smirk curling his lips as he drew back the curtain, the syringe
slipped discreetly into the pocket of his white coat. But then his gaze had
fallen to the rumpled sheets of her abandoned bed, the IV bleeding a stain to
the white sheet where she’d ripped it from her vein, the bedside locker gaping
open, the plastic bag containing her possessions noticeable by its absence.

The flimsy curtain rail came
down in his blanched fist. He wheeled on the young Filipino nurse in the
corridor, veins standing out on his forehead, glaring daggers, demanding to
know where his patient had gone, reducing her to a lip-quivering, teary mess.
Shoving her aside, he stormed through the ER, sequentially jerking back
curtains and flinging open doors on bewildered staff and patients, coat-tails
flapping as he barged through the chaotic waiting room. She was gone. Fucking
gone.

Punching through the security
doors, he sucked in the night air, fuelling the frustrated roar that greeted
the breeze-blown, deserted ambulance bays. Gone. He was a dead man walking.
Gross basic error, allowing his brain to cross the victory line before his feet
had carried him over. MacTire was ruthless. Panic flooded in over the crest of
his anger, neurons firing frantically, scrambling for an out like a maze rat. Nobody
else had seen her or knew what she was. He could destroy the vials of blood,
cover up the records. MacTire need never know. But her genes could be his
golden ticket, and he was damned if he was going to drop her and let some other
son of a bitch pick her up off the streets. This was his chance to escape the
cesspit of a life his own screwed up chromosomes had landed him in. He had her
blood, he knew where she lived and her innocence would work to his advantage.
It was gambling with his skin, but he was going to come clean to MacTire. A
bird in the hand and all that.

So, yeah, despite the
enforced outer calm, internally, Dr. Robert Madden was positively vibrating,
juiced up on a potent cocktail of adrenaline and sympathetic nervous system
overdrive. Unfortunately, catching a bird demanded stillness. A successful hunt
was as much about patience as a strong arm. It was a principle that could be
employed to ensnare an unsuspecting girl as easily as a wary bird. Damn, he
couldn’t believe this one just walked into his emergency room. Fate was indeed
one warped bitch.

As he’d stepped casually
through the privacy curtain of the exam cubicle, he’d flipped open the chart
and the name all but leapt off the page. He’d felt the sweat break across his
brow, throat suddenly constricted by the ferocity of his own heartbeat. Lifting
dark eyes from the chart, he’d half expected to see Anann DeMorgan herself, but
was greeted instead by a pretty face of youthful innocence. Did she notice the
momentary lapse in composure before he’d had time to rearrange himself into a
mask of cool professionalism? Probably not. She had been open with him, mostly,
when he steered the conversation towards the circumstances of her grandmother’s
stroke. Granted, she’d lied about her injuries, but probably only because she
imagined any legit doctor would have her signed off to a padded cell if she
spilled the truth behind what had scored those lacerations down her arm. He had
been open with her, to a degree. She made no effort to avoid his examination,
offered her blood willingly. The girl genuinely had no clue what she was. All
the better to catch her. Something had spooked her. With luck, she would put it
down to needle phobia. This one had instincts hard-wired in her brain that even
she herself knew nothing about. He would not underestimate her again, and he
was not going for her without reinforcements.

A swift lunge and a flutter
of black feathers and the bird was trapped in the folds of the green scrub top
he’d appropriated from the hospital for just this purpose. He felt the flap of
its wings against his palms and tightened his grip, tucking the struggling
quarry under one arm while he popped the trunk of his car and fished out a tire
iron. The manhole cover grated over the cobbles as he hefted it aside to peer
down into a vast well of black, oily nothingness. The switchblade drawn from
his pocket flicked open on a snap, moonlight glinting off steel. Casting a
glance over his shoulder, he dragged the struggling bundle from under his arm,
opening up the fabric just enough to expose the raven’s breast. He felt the
flutter of the bird’s panicked heart, the desperate battle for freedom, even as
he plunged the blade deep into the creature’s chest.

Without hesitation, he fell
to his knees at the lip of the manhole and began chanting the words his Thegn
Master had taught him, words in that ancient, forgotten tongue. As he voiced
the rights of passage and entreated the great ancestor Elatha, one hand fisted
the dying bird’s body, guiding the droplets of blood to fall into the murky
waters, offering up its lifeblood to the underground lake. The waters answered
him as they had every time before, with a sinister plume of red mist that
curled up through the opening in the ground, carrying with it the vague scent
of sulphur. The window of opportunity was narrow, and ignoring the flaring
instincts that bade him run from this evil gateway, Madden dropped down into
the waters.

C
onnal unclipped the jump leads from the battery and
dropped the bonnet on the ancient Cadillac, wiping the sweat from his brow on a
bicep. It was one of those muggy, overcast days when the air clung to your body
like a second skin. Didn’t help that he’d been cooped up in Nan DeMorgan’s
dusty garage for the whole day attempting to resurrect her old jalopy. The sun
was beaming through the cracks in the mud-frosted windows, effectively turning
the cramped basement room into a hothouse. He tossed the oily rag from his hand
and stared through the light shafts with their spinning dust motes, eyes
settling on the tarpaulin-covered mound in the corner. Already, the body under
the plastic sheeting was starting to stink. He needed to get it dealt with. No
way he could transport that thing on the back of the bike, just getting it here
to the house had been a full-scale cloak and dagger, under cover of darkness
routine.

The car was the perfect mode
of transportation, custom made for the job, you might say, but she’d been out
of service for decades. Anann had always taken care of the clean-up and Connal
had taken it for granted. Now she was out of the equation, and much as he hated
to admit it, his routine, all the shit he took as a given, was uprooted right
along with her. Pissed off and resentful didn’t exactly cover it. In her place?
This impossible granddaughter, who was hotter than the hinges of Hades and
wound tighter than a clockwork monkey. She was crashing around the streets like
Godzilla on crack, clueless to the ticking time bomb she was or the potential
havoc she could wreak. It was unsustainable. He wasn’t sure she could survive
another night of moon fever. Sooner or later she had to come down from this
high she was riding, and he expected it would be an ugly crash. Eventually,
he’d tracked her down to the hospital, reassured himself she would live,
followed her home and stuck tight to the shadows until she was deadlock
bolted-shut indoors. She would be safe there at least. The mutt would have her
back while she slept it off and Connal got down to the messy business of cleaning
up.