The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (62 page)

That’s how she ended up
snatching the phone and dialling up an area code and number she had memorised.
The low bleeep-bleeep grated in her head and she was chewing her lip to shreds
when a sleepy ‘Hello?’ connected over the phone.

‘Carla?’

‘Who is this?’

The familiar sound of her
friend’s voice sprung tears to Ash’s eyes and she couldn’t do more than breathe
like a creeper down the line.

‘Ash? Is that you?’

‘Yeah,’ she cleared the
tightness from her throat and tried again, ‘yeah it’s me.’

‘You sound Irish.’

Ash snorted and swiped at the
wetness on her cheeks. ‘You like Irish.’

‘I like Michael Fassbender
and Colin Farrell. You sound weird. You always did pick up accents easily.’

Ash smiled, even though her
friend couldn’t see. It was so good to hear her voice. They fell into easy
conversation that lulled her into a sense of normalcy. Until ...

‘Are you ok, Ash? You sound
funny.’ Carla clearly didn’t mean the accent.

‘I-’ her voice cracked. She
would not break down.

‘Oh Ash,’ a shifting of
fabric on the other end signalled Carla had moved into a more comfortable
position in bed. Ash did the same, going fetal and staring out the window.
‘What happened?’ Carla asked. ‘Is it your grandmother?’

‘No. Not entirely.’

A pause then, at the other
end of the line.

'You met somebody, didn’t
you?'

Damn. The girl was psychic.

'Yeah. Except I think I've
really fucked it up, you know?' Ash fought back the tears.

'I seriously doubt that's
true, Ash.'

'He saw me kissing his
brother.'

'Oh ...'

'No, I mean, it wasn't that kind
of kiss,' Ash back-pedalled furiously.

'What kind of kiss was it
then?'

Good fucking question
, Ash thought.

'These past few weeks have
been so intense.' And that was the understatement of forever, Ash thought.
'Connal was gone, and I believed he wasn't coming back. Ever. Mac was just ...
there. I had a moment of temporary insanity, it was a massive mistake.'

'Hold up a second,’ Carla
sounded animated. ‘This Mr. Intensity, Connal? He dumped you? So you were on
the rebound. The bastard had it coming for ever hurting you in the first
place.'

Ash wished it were that
simple.

'Yeah, see, he didn't exactly
dump me. I may have pushed him away.'

'Oh.'

Carla's judgement was in what
she didn't say. This was the Ash she knew, the one who ditched and ran at the
first sign of attachment. The one who only dated safe, brainiac
,
hipster types, because they were emotionally stunted enough not to be a threat
to her carefully walled defences. Saying she pushed Connal away wasn’t the
whole truth, but explaining how she'd manipulated him into biting her during
sex was liable to lead to the white coats knocking down her door.

'Yeah,’ Ash exhaled, ‘Oh
about sums it up.’

'Wow, this Connal guy's
really gotten under your skin, huh?'

Yes he had, and in more ways
than one.

'Everything moved so quickly
with him, Car. I feel like I'm in a tailspin. I can't tell which way is up.'

'Newsflash, Little Miss
Frigid. That's what happens when you fall in love.'

Ash took her courage in both
hands and admitted it.
'I do love him
,
'
she sighed.

'Damn.' That silenced her
friend, for all of five seconds. 'Well then, it's simple. You have to get him
back, because if you don't, I guarantee this one will haunt you to the end of
your days.'

Her friend's words rang so
true, the phone was shaking in her hand.

'I think I'm already too
late.'

'Does he love you back?'

'He said he did, before he …
left.'

'Well then, what's the
problem, aside from the brother-kissing? And by the way, what kind of prick
makes a move on his brother's girl?'

Ash hesitated. 'Mac was nice
to me.'

'Yeah right, because he
wanted to get in your pants.'

Ash laughed, then swallowed.
Perhaps it was more than just the kiss. The way Connal had looked at her. She
knew how much he hated the wolves, and now she was one of them. 'I'm afraid I'm
not who Connal thought I was anymore.'

'Which of us is? Come on,
Ash. I get it. You're closed. You're defensive, but sometimes, you need to take
a chance and put yourself out there. Let somebody in, let them love you, for
who you are. Which is a pretty fucking amazing person, in my book.’

Ash laughed.

‘Is he so perfect?' Carla
demanded.

Yes. No ... He was so much
more than anything she could describe over the phone. She had whole facial
expressions and hand gestures to convey who Connal was and how utterly out of
control he made her feel. 'He's complicated.'

'Complicated how? Married
complicated?' Carla was getting her protective on. She'd been the same since
high school, always first to step into a situation.

'No Car, he's not married,'
her relief was audible, 'but he's older than me, he's got ... baggage.' Ash
didn't know how else to put it. 'He's no saint.'

Carla laughed softly. 'That’s
one thing God and us ladies have in common. We all love a sinner.’ Her voice
got stern. ‘Unless this guy hurt you?'

'Fuck no. I'd say he's
protective. Incredibly so.'

That made Carla wary. ‘Are
you in some kind of trouble over there, Ash?’

‘No, Car,’ she lied, ‘like I
said, it’s just been really intense.’ This veneer of normality only made
everything that had happened in the past few weeks seem all the more insane.

‘Does he give you orgasms?’

‘Carla!’

‘What? It’s a well known fact
that orgasms affect your brain chemistry. You keep saying this relationship is
intense, so I’m assuming this Connal guy is frazzling your mind between the
sheets. Either that or my friend, the cold, controlled Ash, has been abducted
by aliens
,
and you are a strange impersonator with an Irish
accent who has taken possession of her body.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes you’ve been abducted by
aliens?’

‘No, you goofball. Yes about
the brain chemistry.’

‘That good?’

‘Toe-curling ...’

Carla cooed her approval.
‘He’s a keeper, Ash.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘You grab that tiger by the
tail and you grovel and beg his forgiveness for playing tonsil hockey with his
brother.’

‘What if
he
doesn't
want me? I have my pride, Car.’

‘Screw your damn pride. Your
pride won’t make your toes curl or your heart do backflips. Go get him, Ash.
You have nothing to lose.’

‘You know I love you, you
crazy
cow
.’

‘I know. Just promise me I
get to go to the wedding. In Ireland. With hot Irish guys, in kilts,
preferably, and nothing underneath.’ Ash could hear her friend’s smug smile
down the line.

‘I can’t promise a wedding,
Carla, but I am going to find him.’

She switched the conversation
back over to her friend and how life was treating her and the little one. Carla
filled her in on shows she’d missed and movies she should watch, but Ash was
too busy laying the newly unknotted threads of her thoughts side by side for
clarity.

‘I’ve lost you, huh?’
Carla said.

Ash
realised she’d been silent far too long, and even her
noncommittal noises had dried up.
‘Shit, I’m sorry, Car, I was thinking.’

‘Yeah yeah, go get Loverboy,
Ash. I want to be a bridesmaid, so you have to hustle, before I’m twenty-five,
please.’

‘No pressure then,’ Ash
laughed, but not long after, she had to hang up. Keeping up the pretense of
normality was too much. No pressure? The pressure was crushing, knowing she
might not make it out of this alive. The full moon would wane eventually and
then she’d either die out here like a wrinkled smurf or be forced back into
Fomor and be torn apart by Fite and his men. Same went for Connal. He was out
there, alone, somewhere, and for all she knew the wolves had already gotten to
him. She couldn’t live with herself, knowing she’d left things in such a damn
mess. Her wrist flexed and her fingers brushed the coin that used to rest on
Connal’s skin. It was all she had left of him, the one part of him she was
still able to touch. She could only hope fate would give her the chance to
return it. Even if he hated her now, for what she had become, and for what he’d
witnessed with Mac, she still owed him her life, and she owed it to him to at
least try to explain herself.

That was assuming she could
even track him down.

Her lips pressed to the coin
for the briefest moments before she dropped her hand and stared blankly up at
the ceiling. Getting onto the rung of her plan ladder would have been easier if
she could see the first step. Hiding under the covers and hoping the nightmare
went away wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Calling him seemed the logical
answer, but while they’d exchanged body fluids and I love you’s, they’d never
exchanged numbers. The house and her grandmother were the only tangible links
she had to his life.

‘H
ere is our direct line
.
’
T
he
nurse’s sympathy deepened as she pressed the card into Connal’s waiting palm.
‘Please don’t hesitate to use it, and, on behalf of Tir na nÓg, I would like to
say once again, how terribly sorry we are, and reassure you we are doing
everything in our power to locate Ms. DeMorgan.’

The nursing home’s porch
light cast the woman in an unflattering light, emphasising the dark shadows
under her eyes. Strands of hair had escaped what would have started her shift
as a neatly combed up-do. He pitied her, left to explain the circumstances of
their misplaced resident, with all its emotional and medico-legal implications.
He could have spared her the angst. The moment he knew the Morrígan was gone,
Connal just wanted out of there.

He’d allowed himself to be
herded into the melamine office, and listened as her carefully prepared speech
whittled his patience to a thread. Anann DeMorgan’s recovery from her stroke
had been just short of miraculous, apparently. In the past twenty-four hours,
the old lady had gone from helpless paralysis to walking, talking
pain-in-the-ass. Just as Connal remembered her. Sometime that afternoon, she’d
slipped their security and gone AWOL, leaving a neatly folded pile of clothes
on the headland overlooking the sea. Nurse Valentine steadfastly avoided the
use of the word ‘suicide,’ though that assumption was clearly driving the
uncomfortable undercurrent of the past half-hour’s conversation.

‘The police and the
coastguard will resume their search at first light. Things always look better
in the morning, I find.’ Her smile was strained.

‘Yeah, tomorrow is another
day, and all that,’ Connal replied. Except another day was all he had. A
thousand years of virtual immortality, and suddenly life or death hinged on a
single rise and set of the full moon. He had two choices: locate Anann DeMorgan
and plea-bargain, or settle in for a slow, agonising death aboveground. The
lesser of those two evils was debatable. Returning to Fomor to face-off against
MacTire wasn’t an option, when he couldn’t even shift to defend himself. Talk
about the devil and the deep, black sea ...

He left the nurse standing in
the halo of the security light and mounted the Black Shadow, squeezing the
throttle and kick-starting the motorcycle into roaring life. A light rain was
sheeting in off the sea and the salt air stung his cheeks as he took the coast
road south. Freedom never tasted so bitter-sweet.