The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (67 page)

He pivoted his shorn head and
looked up into a familiar pair of eyes.

In them he saw a shock of
recognition that made Connal feel exposed. He averted his gaze, focussing
instead on the wolf carved into the headstone. ‘Doc,’ he rasped, ‘aren’t you
supposed to be a couple of continents away by now?’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be
the handsome son of a bitch?’ Madden replied. ‘What happened? Another one of
your pets die?’

Connal threw him a what the
fuck? expression.

‘The ancient Egyptians shaved
their eyebrows when their cats died. I thought perhaps ...’ Madden gestured to
the heap of dreads littering the ground, brows popping.

‘Is that supposed to be a
fucking joke,
Thegn
?’

The doctor’s shoulders lifted
in a shrug. ‘Maybe ...’

A rumble erupted from
Connal’s chest, low and growling. Laughter, rough and sawing, followed. ‘Very
fucking funny,’ he wheezed, and his eyes were wet with unshed tears. ‘What
brings you here, Doc? Come to torture me with your gallows humour?’

Madden’s expression turned
deadly serious. ‘Ash has left Form.’

Connal was on his feet with
unnatural speed, confronting the doctor. ‘What do you mean?!’

‘The wolves tracked her to
MacTire’s penthouse. She ran before they could break down the door.’

‘Son of a ... and you let her
go?!’ A growl ripped from Connal’s throat.

Madden arched one dark brow.
‘Perhaps you failed to notice, but your girl is fierce, Savage. She would eat
this
t
hegn
alive.’

My girl. Connal swallowed
hard. Fuck. ‘Where did she go?’ There was nowhere safe.

‘I believe she went looking
for you,’ Madden replied.

‘She thinks I’m at the
DeMorgan house, but that's the first place they'll look.’ The echoes of that
damn phone, ringing out into the empty hallway, sounded like an alarm in his
head. ‘The wards are down. They can just walk right in.’

‘And that, my friend, is why
I came looking for you.’

‘How long ago?’ Connal
pressed.

‘I came straight after she left.
Took a little time to locate you, though.’

‘How did you track me down?’
he eyed the doctor suspiciously.

‘We
t
hegn
have our ways,’ Madden replied cryptically as he bent
to retrieve Connal’s discarded biker jacket from the dirt. He dusted it off and
held it out to be worn, but the call to action was unnecessary.

Connal’s vision had bled to
scarlet, huge canines distorting his mouth as he shoved his arms into the coat
and took off running, hell for leather, back through the forest. The Shadow
would be faster than his wolf, but, with bloodlust pumping through his veins,
holding back the change was a physical struggle.

‘Your wolf is back, then?’
Madden’s question brought up the rear as he ran, chest thrust forward, thighs
and arms pumping, flat-out, Chariots of Fire straining to keep pace with
Connal’s superior speed. ‘What did she make you do?’ he wheezed.

Connal threw the doctor a
look over his shoulder that was a great, black hole of don’t even go there. To
his relief, the exertion of running kicked any further conversation to the
curb, along with any ruminating over the sick shit the Morrígan had made him
do. If the extra speed and strength tipped the balance of life and death in
Ash’s favour, then it was worth it, a thousand times over. Even if he could
never look her in the eye again.

Crashing through the forest,
they broke from the cover of the trees and Connal threw a leg over the
motorbike, kicking the engine to a roar that scattered the birds.

‘You need a ride, Doc?’ he
shouted through the gas fumes.

Madden shook his head. ‘I’ll
only hold you back. Besides, I got my own.’ The moonlight glinted off Doc
Madden’s shiny Beamer.

Connal tipped him a salute
and squeezed the throttle, the wheels spinning dirt as he shot away. Somehow he
knew Madden would be following, and sure enough, the sleek BMW and Connal’s
Black Shadow were careening neck and neck for much of the hair-raising sprint
down the mountain.

Rural green morphed to
cityscape in a motion blur, Connal’s bike edging the car through congested
junctions of night-time traffic. When he pulled up outside the DeMorgan house,
Madden was bringing up the rear.

Dismounting, Connal stepped
through the wrought-iron gates. Light was glowing through the twelve-pane
windows on the upper floor, where Ash’s bedroom was. Connal had switched it out
before he left with her jewellery. The heavy front door was swinging on its
hinges, and in the doorway, arms crossed on over-pumped pecs, stood that
greased-up, slime-ball bartender, Doyle.

All the arrogance bled out of
the
thegn
’s expression as he registered Connal’s terrifying,
back-from-the-dead presence. Doyle’s feet tripped down the stone steps, palms
up in submission, clearing a path to the house in hopes of avoiding the brunt
of the Savage’s vengeance. Connal snarled, baring his fangs. As the man
cowered, a hand landed on Connal’s shoulder. He whipped around, prepared to rip
whatever had touched him to shreds, only to see it was Madden.

‘This son of a bitch is
mine,’ the doctor sneered, slipping off his suit jacket and draping it neatly
over a bush.

‘You sure you got this, Doc?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Madden growled,
turning up the cuffs of his pristine dress-shirt. ‘You go get your girl. This
one will be my fucking pleasure.’

C
onnal bounded up the winding stairs, three steps to a
stride. Sounds of pain and punches being thrown filtered up from the front
garden, where Madden and Doyle were getting down to it. Flinging open doors on
empty rooms, his path lead inexorably higher, to the cramped stairwell of the
attic. He’d never gone up there while DeMorgan lived in the house. It was
heavily warded then. Not any more, it seemed. The scent of wolves and
aggression was potent. He was mounting the steps on silent feet when Ash’s
overheard voice stopped him dead.

‘I suppose those things are
silver-tipped?’ she asked derisively.

‘No sorcery here, Witch. This
is simple, old-fashioned physics. One of these bolts through your skull and
it’s lights out on your new-found immortality.’ It was Fite speaking. No
mistaking that caustic sarcasm.

With his back hugging the
wall, Connal’s body followed the turn of the doorway and he stole a glance
inside. Fite’s back was to him, a crossbow trained on Ash's forehead. He sensed
numerous other bodies in the room, their attention all focussed on Ash, where
she was cornered. The attic was cavernous, a ghostly distortion of space, its
walls lined with gruesome trophies. Guess that solved the mystery of what
DeMorgan did with all those severed wolf-heads he’d brought her. No time to dwell
on that little revelation, though.

He stealthed inside, and from
across the room, Ash’s startled blue eyes collided with his. Her lids flared
and her lips parted in horror, only to be silenced by the finger he pressed to
his own. He knew how bad he must look to her, shorn and battered from the
Morrígan’s abuse. The scream died in Ash’s throat, but it was already too late.

Fite pivoted his aim around
to target Connal’s head, elbow drawn back as he primed the bolt in the bow.
'You're supposed to be dead, Savage,' he snapped, those strange, hazel eyes
narrowed to slits. The warrior looked like he was seeing a ghost, in this hall
of the dead, with its echoing pillars. Somewhere in the eaves, a bird’s wings
fluttered. ‘What the fuck hole did you crawl out of?’ Fite snarled.

Ash’s answering growl
reverberated off the walls, drawing the attention of every head in the room.
'You hurt him,’ she said, ‘and I'll tear your throat out before you can
reload.’

Fite’s aim immediately
swiveled back onto Ash, whose claws and fangs were bared in a blatant threat.

‘Likewise,’ Connal said,
edging across the dusty floor, getting himself nearer to her.

None of the others were
armed, but they inched closer, tentatively closing the circle. Once they were
in striking distance of either Ash or himself, they were both goners. The best
he could do was get in front of her, take the shot, and hope to hell she stood
a fighting chance against the pack. Female wolves had a power advantage. If he
could just take that damn crossbow out of the equation ...

‘Drop your weapon, Warrior.’

That booming bass authority
had Fite’s wolves standing to attention like MacTire had rammed a poker up each
one of their asses.

Fite’s silver head twisted
back in the direction of the door, but the bolt’s aim never deviated from Ash.

The King had the muzzle of a
handgun pressed to Tyr’s temple, while another huge, straggly-haired male with
crazy eyes had the boy clamped in a bearhug that left his feet dangling in
mid-air.

‘This is not how we settle
our differences,’ MacTire declared, ‘engage like a Fomorian, Fite, or forfeit
your boy
.’

‘How the
hell
did
you two escape?’ Fite growled at the King, exasperated.

MacTire’s face split in a
hard smile. ‘Knutr here has skills, apart from the singing.’

The loco male tightened his
chokehold on Tyr and matched the King’s hyena grin.

‘If you'd taken the time to
search me before you shackled me,’ MacTire said, ‘you'd have found the keys to
the cells in my pants.’

‘The contents of your pants
frighten them, Sire,’ Knutr’s maniacal laughter bounced off the walls.

‘Let Tyr go,’ Fite ground out
his request.

‘Drop your weapon,’ MacTire
said, ‘and I shall drop mine. We fight with honour, as wolves. Not with these
tools of weak, mortal men.’

There was a tense pause, and
then Fite dropped, soundless, into a crouch, laying the crossbow on the floor.
He rose again and kicked the bow. It glided across the dusty boards with an odd
grace.

MacTire lowered the gun and
,
mirroring Fite’s manoeuvre, sent it spinning into a corner.

Knutr released his grip,
dropping Tyr to his feet. The boy growled and postured, straightening his
clothes, shoulders squaring up in a show of aggression. Connal measured the
space between the wall of wolves and the only way out. You couldn’t sneak a cat
through that gap, never mind Ash. His canines pulsed, tasting the fight in the
air.

MacTire and Fite faced each
other. The giant of blond, packed muscle versus the lithe, snaking athleticism
of the silver-haired male. It was the King who parlayed.

‘There can be only one
Alpha,’ he said. ‘Determined in combat. Submission or death. You know the
rules. You all know the rules. I suggest you choose wisely.’ MacTire’s
intimidating black gaze scrolled across the room, stopping pointedly to meet
the eyes of each wolf in turn. ‘Sexton?’ he asked. ‘Our fathers were firm
friends.’

The wolf with the shaggy
brown hair glared over at Ash before dropping his eyes to the ground.

‘And you, Arnor? You too
would betray your King?’

Arnor shifted from foot to
foot, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

'And you Ragi?'

Connal had to admire the
King's first-hand knowledge of his men's names, but as, one by one, they
deserted him, MacTire's credibility was headed down the tubes.

‘Fuck this.’ It was Brandr
who broke ranks. ‘Fite,’ he said, ‘I signed up to slaughter the abomination,
not this. Not treason.'

Connal daggered a look at
Brandr, then cast a sidelong glance at Ash, judging the depth of the insult.
She looked steady.
Breathe in air, breathe out those homicidal tendencies,
he
thought
.
Brandr was technically on their side. For now.

'We are
s
kuldalid
,' Brandr continued, 'loyal to the King.' The hairy
brute stepped over an invisible line to MacTire's side. That his félag, the
red-haired Rún, followed, was no great surprise. No more than Tyr taking his
place alongside Fite.