The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (11 page)

He planted a kiss to the
metal coin hanging from his neck and sat half-in, half-out of the open driver
door, turning over the engine and ... Halle-fucking-lujah, his prayers were
answered. The starter motor coughed to raspy, spluttering life. Before fate
decided to pull a U-turn, he flung open the wooden garage doors and coaxed the
rust bucket out into the overgrown jungle of a back yard. It was a hulking
snarl of briars and bindweed that he shared with the main house. And wasn’t
that some ugly metaphor for how his whole existence had become tangled up with
the ancient resident who lived above him? He stared up at the window, thought
he caught sight of a fleeting shadow, but put it down to the glare of the sun
off the old glass panes. He ducked back inside the garage and hefted the
tarpaulin and its grim contents over his shoulder. Popping the rear doors, he
dumped his cargo into the belly of the hearse, grunting under the strain and
wrangling his gag reflex into check. Blondie was one heavy son of a bitch. He
threw the spades in on top and slammed the doors, kicking at the rear tyres,
hoping to hell the worn treads would get him as far as the Dublin Mountains.

Ash was nursing an iced
coffee she’d put together herself, as close to Starbucks as she could get
without leaving the house. And she really didn’t want to leave the house. Her
body was trying to convince her she’d been on a month long binge-drinking
party, with dreams she hoped to hell weren’t memories and a banging headache. A
normally heavenly shower had been a nightmare of pain as the hot water rushed
over lacerated skin, her shoulder corseted in ugly black stitches from throat
to elbow. She stood in front of the hallway mirror, mug in hand, phone in the
other, red tank bright against her pale skin. She turned slightly, watching the
curve that made the attack so much more than a figment of her imagination.
Three long lines. A pack of dogs. Wolverine. The cops had called to say they
had found nothing. As she expected. They did, however, promise to let her know
if they caught the dogs, and offered their services if her stalker problem
arose again. To be honest, Ash wasn’t so sure of how much help they’d be in
that department. Though Connal in handcuffs was an unusually nice image.

Her thoughts made no sense
and too much, and she kneaded her temples with one hand as she peeked at her
reflection. At least she didn’t look too haggard from her adventure. It must
have been the dreams invigorating her. Ash could still feel the caress of
leather, the heavy drilling pound of muscled hips. It had been like something
out of Animal Planet, raw and vicious and all consuming. She’d woken with a
headache and bruises. Not at all freaked.

She was still pretty sure she
was up and moving simply from the adrenaline of the night before. Ash felt like
a spy as she folded the thin floral johnny and stuffed it behind a clutter of
plastic containers. There was no solid reason for her bolting from the
hospital, stolen gown and coat barely covering her as she’d run home. Just a
feeling, a push in her head, a blaring WARNING sign painted across her brain as
the doctor left and she felt steady enough to stretch her legs around the room.
She put the tingling down to the after-effects of her shock, throwing her off
balance and flushing her with queasy heat until she sought the cool of the
glass window.

Her brain was still trying to
convince her it had been some hallucination from the blood loss, but her gut
told her what she had seen with her own eyes. It had just been curiosity,
forehead to the cool of the glass, eyes open, looking for the flicker of ...
Tapeworm Lucite? No ... Wait ... eyeshine, in the reflective surface, judging
the shimmer of red that passed through jewelled blue with every beam of
headlights. It was there, dimmed somewhat in the glass, but she caught it. Like
looking at a moving picture with red eye.

Moving slowly, Setanta glued
to her side like he was worried she’d topple over at any moment, Ash set the
emptied mug on the kitchen counter and stared absently out of the window, no
light to catch the red now, but she could just see what had been that night.
Another pair of eyes; not hers looking out, but crimson red, looking in. It had
been the source of her fear and paranoia, strengthening gut instinct until it
was a siren in her head screaming at her in a high-pitched, out of control
radio buzz to get out of the hospital and lock herself home as fast as she
could. It had left no room to disobey and she hadn’t questioned it. She
questioned the sanity of it now.

The night slowly lifted from
her vision, the howling speech in her head giving way to the twitter of birds.
She blinked. The day was clear, easing into evening, but there was something
out there that wasn’t all that pretty. A coughing mechanical hack, a
Transformer with the flu waking up somewhere at the back of her house. She
peered out, hands gripping the sides of the sink as she craned, looking for the
source of the sound through the tangled up web of briars and thorns that made
up the back half of a garden she hadn’t yet dared to explore.

Sonofabitch!

She recognised that
dread-locked head, the breadth of shoulders dipping down and back up as he
hefted something about into the back of a ... by God, is that a hearse?

So now the asshole thought he
could come to her house and take her stuff and what she assumed was her
grandmother’s car without saying even a word to her? No. Just no. Ash pushed
off from the counter, chugged down the painkillers she’d set aside, grabbed
some discarded sweats from the banister and hopped into them as she snatched up
the hooded jacket hooked by the door. Stuffing her feet into her walking boots,
she was done and out the front before she could even second guess going after a
guy three times her size and scary as all get out. Ash had her car keys in hand
and was lamenting the loss of her red coat when she saw the front of the hearse
poke out from the street. Too many cop shows had her waiting until it pulled
the corner onto the main road before she eased the cute blue Morris Minor out
and concentrated on not veering to the other side of the road. Driving stick
wasn’t her strong suit and she battled to keep the thing from stalling as she
tried to tail from a safe distance. A start-stop follower surely wouldn’t
arouse his suspicions. Eyes rolling, Ash swerved just in time to get back on
the wrong side of the road before she drove herself into a ditch and made his
stalking mission obsolete.

This was going to be a very
long drive.

C
onnal was maybe a mile on the road when he copped he
was being followed. His eyes focused on the vehicle three cars back in his
rear-view mirror. Nan DeMorgan's nineteen fifty three blue Morris Minor was
pretty un-missable, and you didn't need a certificate from MENSA to know who was
behind the wheel. Ashling DeMorgan might have been headed someplace else, their
routes converging by coincidence, but the benefit of the doubt died when the
traffic thinned and they were virtually the only two cars on the road headed
out of the city. He debated losing her, diverting, stopping even, just to see
what her reaction would be when he confronted her, but he was more than a
little intrigued, and weighing up the situation, he concluded that he preferred
her on his tail than lost and alone in the labyrinthine suburbs of Dublin.
While she'd slept and he'd tinkered with the engine of the old bone wagon,
Connal had come to a decision of sorts. If Nan's strategy of keeping her
granddaughter ignorant of their world had been a move to protect her, clearly
that plan wasn't working. It was one thing to be a walking time-bomb, it was
quite another to be parading around with a big red self-destruct button and a
sign on your forehead proclaiming 'push me.' So he cranked the radio up and the
windows down and amused himself on the journey, spying on his company through
the rear-view mirror, twitching a smile at her expressions of deep,
brow-knitted concentration as she grappled with the stick shift and the alien
concept of driving on the 'wrong side of the road.'

Their odd little classic car
rally drew more than a few curious looks from the rubber-neckers on the
streets. When they passed through Rathfarnham village, a pious-faced clutch of
old ladies hobbling out of Saturday evening Mass saw the hearse approach and
made the sign of the cross. Their efforts to ward off evil redoubled when their
whistling hearing aids picked up on the strains of My Darkest Days'
Pornstar
Dancing
carried through the open passenger window. With his dreads and
leather and the cruel cut of his face, Connal was definitely more Grim Reaper
than sombre undertaker.

The houses thinned out and
the roads narrowed until their only spectators were the shadowy trunks of the
oaks and firs lining the route that wended them high up Montpelier Hill and deep
into the thick of Massy's woods. What with the ruins of the notorious Hell Fire
Club looming from the summit and the encroaching isolation, Connal figured
‘round about now would be when Ashling DeMorgan should be having serious doubts
about the sanity of her decision to follow him up to this place of occult myths
and shallow graves. Then again, he wasn't entirely certain the girl was sane,
and what she was about to witness probably wouldn't do much to help her
headcase status.

He brought the old Cadillac
to an abrupt stop in a sun-dappled dirt clearing just at the edge of the woods.
She tentatively pulled up the Morris Minor alongside him. He killed the engine,
popped the door and sauntered over to the driver side of her car. One hand
thrust deep into the pocket of his jeans, he made a motion for her to roll down
the window with the other. She seemed to think about it for a moment, hands
clutching the wheel like she was debating flooring the gas and reversing the
hell out of Dodge, but her cat's curiosity won out and the glass barrier
between them dropped. The corners of his mouth turned up in a crooked grin.

'Well, Miss Ashling DeMorgan.
We meet again. If I didn't know better, I might think you'd followed me.'

‘Ash,’ she started at the
sound of her name on his lips, even as she corrected it, but recovered enough
to inject a bit of annoyance into her words. ‘About time someone gave you a
taste of your own medicine, don’tcha think, Mister Connal?’

Touché
. She knew his name. That pleased him. ‘I already warned
you, Ash, this is a dangerous game you’re playing.’ Her hand reached for the
door but he got to it first, swinging it wide and stepping aside to give her
space to exit the car.