The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (103 page)

She jumped and whipped around
to face him and he caught her arms to steady her when she wobbled with the
spin.

‘Hey, hey. Shhh,’ he soothed,
‘it’s me, Connal. It’s alright. Everything is going to be alright.’

‘Connal. Shit,’ she said
shakily, taking his hands, scanning his face, like she needed to be sure he was
real. He tightened his hold on her arms. ‘Thank God. I don’t remember anything.
I … they came to my house. I told Josh to hide.’ Her brows furrowed as she
tried to pull up whatever was in her head.

‘You’re back now, Liath.
That’s all that matters. Josh is fine. I’ll explain later, okay?’

She nodded, her whole body
shaking with shock.

‘Maura?’ Connal called the
woman from the back of the crowd. ‘Maura, can you take care of Liath for me?’

‘Of course,’ she said,
wrapping her motherly arms around Liath’s thin, tremulous body.

‘Get her out of here,’ Connal
mouthed. There was a supernatural shit storm about to hit, and this was no
place for feeble humans.

Maura nodded grimly. ‘You come
with me, Dear,’ she said, ‘and I’ll make sure you get home to your little boy.’

Connal watched Liath collapse
gratefully against the other woman as she led her away. Madden could only look
on, relief and rejection written on his features in equal measure.

‘Go after her,’ Connal
pushed. ‘She deserves to know the truth.’

‘What about you?’ Madden
replied, but his eyes and his heart were following Liath’s retreating form.

‘There’s nothing you can do
to help us here, Doc.’

Madden shook his head. ‘What
does she want?’

‘What does the Morrígan ever
want?’ Connal replied. ‘Dead Fomorians.’

‘Good luck,’ Madden said,
gripping Connal’s wrist in a firm handshake.

‘Yeah, you too, my friend.’

Madden released his hand,
nodded once and then jogged after the women. Satisfied the raveners were making
no move to follow them, Connal turned back, scanning the makeshift arena,
seeking Ash, and finding carnage. The bone carcass of the beast was still
steaming, Fite was on his knees beside the crumpled untame, his hands surprisingly
gentle as they moved through the wounded animal’s grey fur. Mac was drawing
some sort of blanket over the naked, shivering girl, while Knutr watched on in
a daze. If that truly was Ash’s sister in the King’s arms, then the child Knutr
had once mourned was very much alive, and they’d just witnessed her wolf being
devoured by the Morrígan’s army of raveners. Talk about a mind-fuck. The
Skil
worked, there was no denying its power in the Morrígan’s hands. Question
was, what was she planning to do with it next, and where was Ash in all of
this?

At the Morrígan’s side,
the cynical, thousand year old voice in his head
replied.

Wandering through the no
man's land between the huddle of growling wolves hemmed in on all sides by the
courtyard, and the moving curtain of raveners darkening the sky, Connal found
his heart was on one side, and his head on the other.

Ash looked at him, standing
there, lost between the wolves and her betrayal.

She’d had to do it. There was
no escape, no second guessing. Just cold, hard, devastating reality. Tears
clouded her vision, taunting her with her own emotions. She’d told herself she
could be icy once more, that she could shut herself down and do this, because
it had to be done, not only for Liath, but for the city, for the world.

Connal’s face was damp, eyes
so bright with unshed emotion that he hurt to look at. His confusion bracketed
his mouth, pain lined his brow and blood clung to his dark hair. It had grown
out in the time they’d been apart and she wanted nothing more than to wrap her
hands in it and never let go. God, he was beautiful. So strong and powerful and
amazing. He made her laugh when the world was ending, made her scream ecstasy
while he tore her apart. She loved him. And yet she had to do this. Her lower
lip quivered, remembering how he’d held her, how their last time had been,
before she’d snuck from their bed to betray him.

‘Now to close the conduit,’
the Morrígan announced.

So caught up in her own
hellish decisions, Ash barely heard. ‘What?’ she asked, her head snapping
around when it finally sunk in. ‘What about me, and Connal? You promised.’

‘Patience, my dear. All in
good time,’ the Morrígan soothed. ‘I will not release another wolf until the
way back to Fomor is shut forever. Wouldn’t want any of the rats trying to
escape back into the sewer before my girls get a taste of them now, would we?’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Panic
lit a flare in Ash’s chest and she had to clench her hands to hide the sudden
tremble. She wasn’t just playing with fire, here. She was playing chicken with
a volcano and just praying she could get out of the way before it erupted.

With a serene smile, the
Morrígan drew the blade across her hand in a slow caress, priming the steel in
the sliver of black blood that welled from the perfect cut.

The metal glinted obsidian
when the goddess raised it above her head and arced down in a graceful curve
that embedded the knife in the ground. The hilt reverberated from the force.

Shocked silence spanned the
gathering, all eyes fixed on where the
Skil
penetrated the earth, but
Ash was watching the Morrígan. The excitement on the other woman’s face was
manic, her eyes dark as night and consuming the light from the torch flames as
the earth buckled around the
Skil’
s point. A great fissure broke across
the ground, snapping out in a crack so wide and deep the black lake was freed
from its confines and exposed. There had never been anything so pure and yet so
dark. If not for the slight ripples, Ash would have thought it an expanse of
smooth, black diamond.

Ash looked to the wolves,
scanning the fixated expressions of the ones that had come closer, just to the
edge of the torchlight. She frowned. None of them passed beyond it, as though
fear kept them to the light. Even after the fight, they’d stayed clinging on
the outskirts. And then it hit her. The circle of torches served a greater
purpose than just creating a ring. It separated neutral ground, demarcated a
safe area, where Connal and Mac could fight, without the risk of triggering the
Morrígan’s warned-of Armageddon. That was smart, but their fear wouldn’t save
them now. It was their jailer, just as her grandmother had said.

The lake roiled as the
Morrígan took up a lilting chant, holding her bleeding hand over the waters.
The language was guttural and the cadence strummed Ash’s wolf into a whining
ball inside her. A collective flinch went through the wolves and then the
howling started. Ash whipped back round to the lake in time to see the black
droplets of her grandmother’s blood freezing the water on contact. It was no
ice though. The liquid solidified into a shiny, polished-onyx block.

The sounds that struck up
then were panicked and terrified as the wolves realised they were trapped
aboveground, hours from the waning moon. Ash swallowed and bit down hard on the
inside of her cheek to stop her own howl. She had to let this happen.

‘Ash, what have you done?
You’ve doomed us all. I thought ...’ The voice trailed off and Ash’s throat
knotted painfully at the heartbreak in that tone. It was Mac, but she refused
to look at him. It would help no one if she faltered now.

‘What did you think? That she
was one of you?’ the Morrígan taunted, floating forwards, ‘that she enjoyed
being bitten and turned into the same monster that ripped her own mother to
pieces? That she relished being taken and held at your sexual pleasure so much
she was willing to die with you? You blithering idiots. She is mine, my
instrument. She has always been mine, and she has played each one of you for
the fools that you are.’

Ash felt Fite’s eyes on her
and she met his withering glare with a cool return, her face carefully blank.
All his fears had been justified, after all.

‘Come. Ashling, let us purge
their unclean legacy from your body.’

‘Yes, Grandmother.’ Her hands
were shaking. She stole a last glance at Connal and the dejection on his face
broke her soul. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Please, don’t do this, Ash.’
His eyes were pleading, disbelieving and lost.

I must.

She turned away. They were
past the point of no return, past any hope that the wolves might make their
escape back to Fomor. The noose was tightening, they were condemned to die, and
there was only one path open to her now. Only survival instinct kept her on it.

Her spine was slowly turning
to jelly, barely able to keep her standing as her wolf fought the icy
determination shutting down her humanity. It was being strangled, because the
animal wanted its mate and it wasn’t understanding the duty she was bound to.
It would break free and destroy everything if she showed even the smallest gap
in her titanium cage.
Shhhh
, she told it, feeling the fur rise beneath
her touch like a cat arching for contact,
everything will be ok.
Maybe
it didn’t sense the lie, maybe it grasped that it was trapped, but the pressure
subsided and she was alone inside herself, only her vision stained red as she
tightened the screw on the lid of her emotions. She wouldn’t look at Connal
again. Hell, even a glimpse of Mac in her peripheral vision was nearly enough
to crumple her where she stood.

Standing at the edge of the
circle, the Morrígan was waiting for her with an outstretched hand and a smile
that couldn’t hide the smug triumph in her eyes. Ash made sure her footsteps
were steady when she stepped over to her grandmother. When her cool hand lifted
Ash’s chin and exposed the scar on her neck where Connal had bitten her, Ash
didn’t tense. She didn’t flinch as the
Skil
cut through the hardly
noticeable mark in a flare of pain, even as her tears bubbled up and her body
was split in two from the inside out. The bonds were stretched taut, tearing
her apart, as though she were on a rack and her limbs being separated from her
body, but this was so much more than that. This was being caught in the flash
of a nuclear explosion and having the bones stripped from under your skin. The
severance was a rending agony and before the darkness took her, Connal’s voice
rose alongside Mac’s in loud protest.

Her lashes fluttered once,
and Ash found herself clawing from the dark into a world that was firelit and …
furry? The soft brush was so familiar, apart from the fact that she usually
felt it on the inside.
Oh!
She sat up with a start and the giant wolf
jumped and pushed its head against hers with a low rumble.
Oh God
… This
was the other part of herself. She was finally meeting her wolf, and it was so
beautiful. Ash’s hand trembled as she reached out to sink into the russet fur
between the beast’s ears, smoothing down flecks of white running through the
red silk. The wolf nudged into her fingers and she smiled weakly, struggling
with the flow of tears rising up with the pain of her betrayal. They clogged in
her throat and denied her breath.