The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (86 page)

‘That’s okay,’ Ash said,
snatching up a couple of scones before the plate was swiped away from under her
nose. ‘I’d rather be outside, where I can hunt,’ she smirked and flashed Maura
a mouthful of scary canines.

Maura blanched and made the
sign of the cross. Her hand reached out instinctively to curl around the gun.

‘Mind you don’t shoot me by
accident,’ Ash looked up from pouring a fresh mug of tea. ‘I’ll be the hell-beast
with wings,’ she said, flexing long, black claws. Stifling a laugh, she took up
the tea and scones and sauntered out to where Madden was curled up in his
Beamer, shivering under a plaid car-blanket.

‘These are for you,’ Ash
smiled, passing the mug and goodies through the car window.

Madden offered her an
appreciative smile.

‘Wouldn’t want Satan’s minion
getting hungry. You could get nasty on us.’

‘Don't even joke about it.
She’s some piece of work,’ he laughed.

‘Yeah, Doyle comes sniffing
around tonight, my money’s on the crazy lady.’

‘Thank you,’ Madden said,
sipping on the steaming tea.

‘What for?’ she asked. 'The
old battle axe won't be winning any congeniality contests. She could have
killed you.'

'You know what for,' he said
quietly. 'It means a lot.'

'I feel bad that she's left
you out here, to the wolves, unarmed.'

'Not completely unarmed,'
Madden cracked a smile and drew the hilt of a vicious looking sword from its
sheath.

Ash would have been
impressed, if the carnage Doyle had caused back at the hospital wasn’t still
imprinted on her mind.

'We don't have to stay, you
know.'

'No, I want to stay,' he
said. 'They will be safe here.'

'And so will you,' Ash
promised. 'Mind if I store my clothes in the trunk of your car? I'm in the mood
for a little moonlight patrolling,' she grinned.

'Just don't go worrying the
livestock,' Madden laughed. 'I'd hate to see your head mounted over Maura
Flannery's fireplace.'

'Never did see myself as a
trophy girl,' Ash smirked.

Madden popped the trunk from
inside the car and Ash used it as a screen while she shed her clothes. She held
onto Connal's jacket a moment longer than necessary, inhaling his scent. She
couldn't bring herself to think about what was happening to him down in Fomor.
He was coming back to her. That was non-negotiable. Besides, if anything bad
had happened, she'd feel it, wouldn't she?

'So,' she said, determined to
get her head back in the game, 'assuming Doyle doesn't show up for a taste of
Maura's wolfhound-flavoured buckshot tonight, are we good to go visit the
'Master' tomorrow?'

'Yeah,' Madden muttered, 'but
something tells me he's about to make shotgun Annie in there look like a
hostess for Disney.'

'I bet he's just a big 'ole
puppy dog.' Ash's laughter morphed into a growl that was pure animal. The beast
inside her was reaching to take over and with one last look towards the house,
she succumbed. The chains fell away and Ash's body crackled as the wolf took
over in a surge of snapping joints. It felt easier like this, her body large
and powerful, the car no longer big enough to shield her as paws replaced feet
and hands and fur kept her warm against the night’s chill. Her ears pricked
towards a rustle of movement, her lip curled off razor fangs, until the scent
hit her: Madden trying to get comfortable in his vehicle.
Not prey
, she
chanted, grasping at humanity in her bestial body. Turning instinct away from
the doctor, Ash padded off in the opposite direction, ignoring the spooked
whinnies and loud barking.
We're patrolling, not hunting. Not hunting.
Ash
lengthened her stride and ran to the border of Maura's territory, her wings
snapped tight to her back.

‘Can I get you anything,
Sire? More ól? Some
thralls
perhaps?’ Connal recognised the
shaggy-haired male from the mutiny in Ash’s attic. The guy wouldn't have looked
out of place in an eighties’ rock group. Sexton, the King had called him. He'd
held his own in the scrap, but there was none of that fight in him now.

‘Who bit you and turned you
into a grovelling sycophant?’ MacTire growled, ‘get your fat lips unstuck from
my arse, Wolf, and tell me, where is my
skuldalid
?’ The
skuldalid
were
his ‘family,’ his fiercest warriors and most trusted men, though even they had
turned on him when it came to Ash.

‘All the men are gathered at
the arena, Sire, watching Fite exercise his pets,’ Sexton replied.

MacTire cocked a brow. ‘His
human pets? Or his beasts?’

‘The animals, Sire.’

‘Good,’ he declared, ‘I’m in
no mood to watch others take what I cannot. And I'm not your damn sire.' The
King laid his palms flat on the table to steady himself and rose to his full,
imposing height. He eyed Sexton suspiciously. ‘Why are you not with them?’

‘My Lord,’ he said carefully,
‘Fite instructed us to guard you.’

‘Guard me?’ MacTire scoffed.
‘Prowl around behind closed doors and spy on me, more like.’

The other male’s eyes hit the
floor.

'As I thought.' MacTire raked
him with a contemptuous glare before turning back to Connal. ‘Come, my
blódbrodir
,’
he addressed him sarcastically, ‘the men will want to meet the one who would be
king.’ He clapped him hard on the back and his low rumbling laughter rang hollow
off the stone walls.

Connal stood and the two were
eye to eye, equal in breadth and strength, more alike than either could admit,
in spite of their different colouring. ‘If we’re doing a meet and greet, I
could use some clothes,’ he said.

MacTire gaze scrolled slowly
up Connal’s naked form, from feet to face.

‘Get him something to wear,’
he commanded Sexton, ‘my brother has lived so long amongst the humans, he has
grown uncomfortable in his own skin.’

‘I never lost sight of what I
am,’ Connal replied seriously, before covering it with a smirk. ‘I am sensitive
to your little problem though, Brother. Wouldn’t want to give you a complex, or
show you up in front of the boys. That’s not my style.’

‘Kicking your arse will be a
pleasure,’ MacTire said drily.

‘Don’t count on it.’ Connal
wrapped the piece-of-leather-excuse-for-clothing he was given around his hips
and followed MacTire through the narrow stone passageways.

‘You leave yourself open to
attack from the rear,’ Connal said to the blond mane that swung across his
half-brother’s muscular shoulders with every stride. ‘A testament to your
arrogance?’

MacTire simply shrugged.
‘There's only room for one at the vanguard in this place, and no king ever kept
his seat by watching his own back. If the daggers are there, then the throne is
as good as lost.’

I wonder, does Sexton keep
a knife concealed beneath his shirt,
Connal
thought.

The sounds and smells of the
revelry reached Connal’s ears long before he and MacTire made their entrance.
Shouts and laughter and bawdy jeers echoed down the cavernous tunnels like
memories on an ill wind. Unbidden, Connal’s heart began to drum in his chest
and his body tensed into a fighting stance. His vision hazed with crimson, his
canines throbbed, instinctual responses ingrained so deep that not even a
thousand years away from the arenas could dampen them. And though the chains on
his body now were nothing but the weight of his memories, still they threatened
to drag him down into the violence of his past.

A large hand curled around
his bicep, snapping him from the battle fugue.

‘We’re here,’ MacTire said
quietly. With a curl of his fingers, he bid Connal to observe with him, unseen
from the shadows.

There were, at most, a
hundred men, gathered along the stone benches circling the arena. Some had
naked women straddled across their thighs, or on their knees, heads in laps.
All were drinking. Centre stage stood the source of their inebriated cheering:
Fite. The warrior was naked from the waist up, lean and ripped tighter than a
greyhound, silver hair gleaming in the torchlight as he stalked the huge
wolf-like creature with which he shared the dirt circle. Connal recognised it
instantly, though he hadn’t seen one of the untame in centuries.

‘I thought them all destroyed
in the massacre,’ he murmured.

‘Not all,’ MacTire replied.
‘We rounded up the few that made it this far and managed to cage them. Fite
likes to take them out and play with them every so often.’

As Fite circled the beast,
the chains and the garrotte around its neck came clearly into view. The warrior
cracked a whip across its flank and it yelped in pain as the steel barbs
embedded into its fur and tore through its flesh. The pain of long-healed
wounds throbbed beneath Connal’s skin. The crowd erupted and the animal lunged
at Fite, wicked jaws snapping at the air and dripping saliva mere inches from
his face. He danced away and the untame went to follow, but the chains held
fast, and the harder it struggled, the tighter the ligature about its neck
became. Eyes bulging, blood matted the fur collaring its throat until it was
wheezing and forced to retreat rather than strangle itself into
unconsciousness.

‘This is his idea of play?’
Connal growled. ‘Does he spit-roast puppies on his day off?’

‘It’s tradition,’ MacTire explained,
‘the untame have been baited and pitted against one another for millennia.’

‘I am aware of that,’ Connal
gritted.
I was treated as one for fucking long enough.
‘This is not a
fight.’

‘He’s conditioning the animal
to make it vicious. It’s a kindness. Without that edge, the others will simply
rip it apart.'

‘He’s inflicting pain on a
helpless animal in the name of sport. It’s not right.’

‘The untame are far from
helpless. If that animal got its teeth into you, it would grant you no mercy, I
assure you. This is our true nature. We live and die by violence. You know
this. Living with the humans, I fear you have lost your bloodlust, Brother.’

He was wrong. In that moment,
Connal was lusting after Fite’s blood with a vengeance that skirted the edges
of sanity. He could take Fite down, with pleasure. Hell, he even fancied his
chances against MacTire. But starting something here, against a hundred wolves?
That would be suicide, and he wasn’t ready to take that step, at least not
until he’d secured the
Skil.
‘I never had a taste for mindless torture,
whatever else I may be guilty of,’ he said, reining in his anger. ‘You need to
stop this.’

‘To what end?’

‘We are better than this,’
Connal snapped.

‘You know,' MacTire said
derisively, 'I think I preferred you when you were the Savage. Part of me
admired your balls for taking your revenge on us so completely, and with such
devastating perfection. Now though, I see you could never have had it in you. I
wonder that my men actually feared you all this time. Deep down you lack that
killer instinct, and that's what will lose you your head, in the end. Don’t you
think it’s time you drop your borrowed guilt and stop trying to save the world?
This hero-complex of yours is getting really fucking tiresome.’

‘Fuck you,’ Connal snarled.
He pushed past MacTire’s bulk and stepped into full view of the gathering, just
as Fite brought the whip down on the creature’s back once more. His presence
alone was enough to drop the crowd into stunned silence, and every head turned
to stare. All except Fite, who was totally focussed on avoiding the snarling
jaws of the animal he was goading into a frenzied attack. He raised his arm to
strike again, but Connal got to him first. Fite took the fall hard, landing
face-first into the dirt, the whip expelled from his steel-clawed fist by the
sheer force of the impact.

The crowd let out a
collective exhale.

‘What the fuck?’ Fite
growled, torquing under Connal’s weight until they were eye to eye. ‘You,’ he
spat. ‘Come back for more punishment?’

‘From you?’ Connal sneered,
‘I don’t think so.’