The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (88 page)

‘Crys came looking for a
fight,’ Connal said. ‘He broke from neutral ground. The last time we’d crossed
paths, I scarred his face. I thought he was looking for payback.’

‘He was looking for payback
alright, just not for that. He was a handsome son of a bitch, like myself,’
Knutr tossed his hair flamboyantly, then frowned and shook his head, ‘but
vanity was never his vice. No, he went looking for the Morrígan, because she’d
taken his daughter, and it was my fault. Mine.’ He whined and kicked at the
dirt with his feet.

‘Will you tell me what
happened to Ash’s mother?’ Connal asked. ‘She deserves to know.’

Knutr exhaled, long and
shaky, making his lips vibrate. ‘Never spoke a word of it since the day they
died,’ he said.

Connal sat cross-legged on
the ground opposite Knutr. Fite had propped himself against the wall and was
pretending to clean his metal talons, while listening intently. He would be
equally curious, Connal thought, to know what had led to the death of one of their
skuldalid,
and driven another to insanity.

Knutr swallowed hard.
‘MacTire had word of a new latent female who was drawing the attention of
wolves from all over the city, so he dispatched his two most trusted warriors
to bring her back to Fomor. We tracked her down to a convent in Dublin, where
the nuns had taken her in, thinking her mentally deranged.’

Connal cocked a brow.

‘She was found wandering
naked in the streets, raving about bird-women.’ A laugh rattled from Knutr’s
chest. ‘She was the sanest of us all. She’d escaped the Morrígan’s realm, after
centuries of imprisonment.’ Knutr tugged at a forelock of his hair. ‘Crys and I
never counted on falling in love with her. That just happened. When the time
came, neither of us was prepared to take her to MacTire. We told him we’d lost
her, that the Morrígan claimed her, just as she had so many other latents. He
bought the story. Why wouldn’t he? In reality, she fled the country, and we set
her up in England with a
thegn
guard. They had to move frequently. Both
MacTire and DeMorgan have eyes everywhere, you know? It was not the life I’d
have chosen for her. We had a place in Blackpool. Crys and I used a
little-known conduit to visit her there at full moon, whenever we could get
away.’

‘Blackpool, England?’ Connal
asked. ‘I thought all routes led to Dublin,’ he said, perplexed.

‘Not true,’ Fite answered,
proving that despite the nonchalance, he was actually paying close attention.
‘Dublin isn’t unique. There are other black lakes scattered around Ireland and
the British Isles. They can be accessed through remote passageways deep in
Fomor’s caves, but the men are forbidden to traverse them alone.’

‘That’s why we used them,’
Knutr nodded, ‘to avoid detection, but then the babes were born and everything
changed.’

Had he heard that right?
Connal frowned. ‘You said babes? Pleural?’

‘Ashling had a half-sister,
my daughter.’

‘Where is she now?’ Connal
asked.

Knutr’s entire body crumpled
and a sound like a whimper escaped his throat. ‘She was born horribly deformed.
She didn’t survive.’

‘Shit,’ Fite exhaled.

‘I’m sorry,’ Connal said with
grim sincerity.

‘I never even got to see the
child. Ravyn was in labour, and MacTire detained me in this shithole with some
bureaucratic bullshit. Crys went in my stead. He handled everything. But when I
finally returned, everything had changed between us. Ravyn could hardly bear to
look at me. I’d sired a monster on her. She rejected me. I too became a monster
to her.’

‘I’m sure she -’

‘No,’ Knutr held up a shaking
hand to quell Connal’s sympathies. ‘I exiled myself to Fomor and swore I’d
never go back there. I never wanted to see that look in her eyes again. But you
can’t know how hard it was, all those years, knowing my own blood-brother was
blissfully happy with her, and their perfect daughter. My own jealousy was
cannibalising me from the inside, so when Crys got sloppy, and rumours of a
wolf travelling the forbidden conduits reached MacTire’s ears, I told myself I
was being loyal to the King, that I was his
skuldalid,
and that meant more
than the bonds of
félagi
. When MacTire sent a posse of wolves through
the conduit, I stood by, and I did nothing. I never warned them what was coming
for them. A part of me hoped she’d be brought back to Fomor on her knees, that
I’d finally get to see her again, on my terms. I was a fool. The wolves
followed Crys’ scent and stormed the house. They tore Ravyn to pieces. Ashling
would have died there too, only the Morrígan spirited her away.’

‘How do you know all this?’
Connal asked.

‘As soon as the wolves passed
through the conduit, I regretted my inaction. I went after them, but I was
already too late, and so was Crys. We arrived at the house almost
simultaneously, to see the Morrígan leaving with the girl. Ravyn was already
dead. She’d fought back, and the wolves had been driven wild by lust. There was
so much blood, and we shed more. We painted the walls red, killed them all.’
Knutr examined his hands as though they were still stained by the deaths of his
friends.

‘Fuck,’ Fite growled. ‘We
thought
you
killed those wolves,’ he said, looking at Connal.

‘I never left Dublin,’ he
replied, shaking his head.

‘I was the only wolf to
return,’ Knutr said quietly.

‘We assumed the Morrígan set
a trap, that she’d ambushed you,’ Fite said quietly.

‘There were no living
witnesses to recount the truth,’ Knutr said, ‘I made very sure of that. MacTire
would have executed us both. I hid the evidence, made it look like a human
crime. I’d failed my blood-brother once, I wasn’t about to betray him too. Crys
went straight to Dublin to demand the Morrígan return his daughter, but he met
his death there, fighting you, so it was all for nothing.’ He lifted haunted
eyes to Connal’s face. ‘Your mad old father was right. We are all cursed.’
Fisting handfuls of his hair, he threw his head back and the cry that came from
Knutr’s throat was such pure anguish that it tripped the untame into a chorus
of melancholy howls. There was a crack as Knutr’s spine arched unnaturally. He
fell backward, his limbs jerking involuntarily. Spittle foamed from his mouth.

‘Christ, he’s having a
seizure,’ Connal said, rushing forward to cushion Knutr’s head from smashing
into the stone steps. ‘Help him,’ he growled at Fite.

Fite knelt down beside them
and braced Knutr’s forehead, brushing the tangle of damp hair from his face.
Knutr’s eyes rolled back in his head, the orbs solid red and glowing.’

‘Fuck,’ Connal muttered,
‘what’s happening to him?’

‘It’s a fugue,’ Fite replied.
‘His mother had the gift of
seidhr
. She could see the future. He has the
magic in him too.’

Knutr’s arms snapped up and
his clawed fingers clamped painfully around Connal’s head, dragging him down
until his ragged breath was at his ear. ‘Death is coming for her,’ he whispered
in an eerily distorted voice. ‘At the foot of the Temple of the Ancients it
awaits. Ashling’s wolf will die.’ With that, whatever energy had been coursing
through him left, and Knutr collapsed limp into Fite’s arms.

‘What the fuck was that?’
Connal asked.

‘A glimpse of the future. A
warning,’ Fite replied. ‘He’s never been wrong.’

‘Then Ash is in danger. I
have to get back.’

Ash’s ears pricked. The woods
were silent around her, any nocturnal creatures freezing as she passed by,
terrified of drawing her attention. But she wasn’t interested in them. Her nose
was on a trail. Something had been here. Large and smelling vaguely of wolf.
Her nose twitched, brushing a strand of grass, fixing for a clearer scent.

She moved on, muscles coiled
in expectation, every nerve on alert, waiting for just a shift in the
environment that would clue her in to a threat. None came, even as she slipped
out of the wooded area to cross the open fields at the edge of Maura’s
territory.

A growl of frustration
rumbled from her throat. It wasn’t right. Too many different smells layered the
dirt-musk of the strange wolf, and she couldn’t decide if it was fresh enough
to be a threat. The full moon hadn’t been too long ago, any one of the wolves
could have been up here. Ash’s inexperience with her new senses wasn’t making her
the best bloodhound and as the trail branched off into yet another of Maura’s
fields, her frustration mounted.

Just then the wind changed,
blowing cool through her fur, and carrying with it the unmistakable scent of
blood.

She froze.

The hackles raised along her
spine and her head dropped, ears flattening, nostrils flared. Creeping through
the long grass in the direction of that scent, she stealthed her way into the
adjacent field. When she finally lifted her head and saw what was there, a
silent snarl peeled her lips from the razor-sharp points of her teeth. No
amount of sniffing could have prepared her for the scene she’d stumbled upon. Woolly
bodies, some in halves, some prone and splayed, most headless, scattered the
field like gory, abandoned toys. A short distance upwind, the thing that had
killed the sheep was still there, gnawing on one of their carcasses. Her human
mind was disgusted, and her wolf couldn’t quite latch onto what she was looking
at. Every instinct screamed that this creature wasn’t natural. It was like no
wolf she’d ever seen. Ash cocked her head. Had someone turned it inside out?

Bare of any fur, it could
have been a naked mole-rat, if it were a tiny rodent.

It was not.

It had her size, if not her
wolf’s bulk. Its body, lean and wiry, was encased in pale skin that stretched
tight over its canine form. The muzzle was long, tearing at the sheep’s soft
underbelly, its ears pointed and thin and laying flat against its skull. Ash
dropped lower, her wings plastered tensely to her flanks, and her snarls ripped
like a chainsaw into the silent air.

The ‘thing’ raised its head,
locking onto her with slanted red eyes. The carcass fell from its bloody jaws,
only a gaping maw where the sheep’s lower half should have been. A rattling
growl shook through the creature’s barrel chest, its ribs creaking with the
vibrations.

And then it was on her. Pain
ripped into the flesh of her shoulder, rolling her under the bald wolf. This
thing was unnaturally fast, and strong. She torqued in its grip, losing skin to
its teeth when she tore free and spun with a snap of her jaws. Her wolf didn’t
see a threat in the delicate bones that could easily break, the thin skin that
could easily tear, or the long spindly limbs that ended in skeletal paw-hands,
but Ash did. It’s hands were more human in this form than hers were. It could
grip and strangle, it could punch and fight. And its hind legs were curved, the
muscle more substantial. She prayed it couldn’t walk on them.

Ash sprang at the creature.

No.

She sprang at Doyle.

Just as his muscles coiled to
attack, she leapt forwards, claws and teeth seeking purchase in that strange
skin, so human on the animal body. He buckled under her weight and went down,
those odd hind legs bunched up between them. Ash growled at the pain of his
claws shredding into her belly and threw herself off him, spitting chunks of
flesh to the bloodied grass.

Doyle’s lips shrivelled back
off wicked fangs with another of those rattling sounds and he was on her again,
a heavy weight battering her into retreat, never letting up on the gnashing
bites that did more damage than she would admit to herself. Agony jolted her
body as she twisted to escape his relentless assaults, the hatred in his
blood-red eyes hitting her with the truth.

He wanted her dead.

This wasn’t a game to him. He
wasn’t trying to dominate her. His lame attempts to mount her hind-quarters
weren’t some sick tries at mating with her. He was going for her spine. He was
trying to paralyse her. Spinning, Ash reared up and threw herself down, her
bones rattling with the impact. Doyle slammed into the packed, grassy dirt
beneath them and his jaw cracked, loosening the clamp of his teeth in her skin.
His
eitr
coursed through her bloodstream, but there was nothing sexual
about the rush. In the midst of a fight, she’d discovered, it was more like a
shot of adrenaline than Viagra. She slipped from his grasping limbs and whipped
around, going for the exposed, hairless throat with a feral growl.

Her muzzle connected with
dirt.

Gone so fast she hadn’t seen
him move, dread dropped like a stone in her stomach.

She kept underestimating him.
She saw herself as bigger, stronger, faster, and yet he was running circles
around her and the blood soaking into the ground was hers.

Ash heaved in a pained
breath. A warning growl rumbled up her throat as Doyle tightened his stalking
circle around her. She kept her eyes on him, the weighted tension of her wings
pulling all her muscles taut, but she didn’t dare stretch them out. Not with
his teeth so close.

The pink-skinned, hairless
wolf stalked through the blood-stained grass and she could see the calculation
in his red glare. He was deciding how to finish her off. Maybe she wasn’t the
only one still human enough to underestimate. If he thought her close to being
done, he was way off point. She was in agony, true. She was tired, but there
were innocents in that house, and she had to protect them.

She surged forwards into a
feigned lunge and Doyle responded as anticipated. He leapt right as she started
left and moved straight into the reach of her teeth. He wasn’t quick enough to
get free and her fangs sliced through his bald skin, grasping the muscle of his
shoulder and tethering the two of them together. His blood drowned her tongue,
and it was sickly sweet, loaded with
eitr
. Ash gagged, her body
rebelling against the taste as Doyle shuddered and whined in her grip. She
slackened. That was her mistake. The moment her teeth left his flesh, the
tables turned faster than she could. Pain crushed her throat and Ash crumpled.
Arched unnaturally in his grip, she clawed at his chest, raking red stripes
down his skin, but nothing budged him. She was belly up in forced submission,
his paw-hands pushing against her ribs. He was slowly crushing her throat and
she scrabbled to get her legs between them. He was too close. His elongated
muzzle creased in a snarl inches from her face, the thin skin wrinkling off
lethal fangs. Doyle was rabid with the power he was feeling, she knew what it
was like, and his fury was primal, animal and terrifying so close-up. She’d
found a new addition to her nightmares. Fear swept her up, paralysing the
humanity in her. Her wolf rushed to take full control and Ash let it.

She licked at Doyle’s muzzle
with a submissive whine.

He jerked back … and went
flying. A blinding shadow collided with him, like a white bolt of lightning,
throwing the naked wolf into the air. Ash heard him impact the ground a few
feet away and come up growling. A wet nose nudged under her jaw and she butted
her head gently into the large white wolf standing over her.

Connal.

He was bombarding her with
impressions of concern and volatile fury. He was beyond sending her clear
images. She didn’t care. He’d come back to her. Ash gathered herself to stand,
testing her weight on a leg that buckled beneath her.

I’m fine,
she told him.
It’s not serious. But he’s too strong
.

She could feel the frown in
his head even as his wolf turned its attention to Doyle’s frozen aggression. He
hadn’t moved against them, stood where he’d landed, his eyes glowed bright red
in the darkness, pinned on Connal.

Doyle took a step and Connal
charged.

They hit each other with the
impact of two freight trains and the air shook with thunderous growls. Melting
into a rabid ball of white fur and flashes of human skin, Ash couldn’t see head
nor tail of either of them. Claws flashed, fangs glittered with blood and Ash’s
heart stopped beating, every sense fixated on the brawl in front of her.
Breathing took a backseat to her horror. She’d seen this before.

That night when her coat had
died.

A snarling broil of animal
aggression had played out on the streets of Dublin. Over her. And it was
happening again.

Only this time, she wasn’t so
sure Connal would win. Doyle was a psychopath wolf-mutant on Fomorian crack.

The odds weren’t looking
good.

Blood scented the air. Both
had got a hit in, but she couldn’t discern who bore the most injury. Even with
her sharpened eye-sight, the battling wolves were still a blur, Doyle only
distinguishable when she caught flashes of smooth, pink flesh.

The tell-tale cock of a
shotgun twitched Ash’s ears around and her head followed, eyes searching for
the source. Maura stood at the fence-line, her eyes wide, fear dripping from
her pores in a cool sweat. She held the gun steady though, her aim dead-centre
to the whirling mass of beasts.

The warning rumbled from
Ash’s throat, and Maura spun the gun on her, already wide eyes getting
impossibly larger as they took in her wings. Ash pulled them into her body
protectively and made herself look smaller. She didn’t dare shift back to
reassure the woman, she only hoped her message got through.
Be careful,
Connal is in there. Don’t hit the wrong one. Please.
If she shot Connal,
Doyle would win. Then they’d all be screwed. Baring her teeth at the
hound-breeder, Ash refocused on the wolves and Maura’s attention followed.
Connal had Doyle on the ground, but Doyle’s hands were tearing chunks of flesh
from him and her Big Bad was weakening. He faltered and the naked wolf flipped
into an attack.

A shot rang out.

Ash dropped to the ground,
her ears ringing with the deafening blast. A whine cut through the air. The
shotgun went off again, closer this time. Ash growled, keeping low as Maura
pumped another round into the night. A human-skinned blur darted past where she
was hunkered down and terror filled Ash quicker than air filled her lungs. If
Doyle was moving …

Maura was a red-hazed figure,
crouched in the grass over Connal’s slumped form, murmuring.

A whine tripped from Ash’s
throat.

Maura twisted fast, the gun
coming up with practiced efficiency, squaring off between Ash and her goal. The
white wolf lay at the other woman’s feet, massive as a horse and not moving.
Ash’s lip curled off her canines … and then she dissolved. Her beastly form
melted back in a crunch of bones and a shimmer of air, leaving her naked and on
her knees.

‘Is he dead?’ She could
barely hear over the frantic beating of her heart in her head. The world spun
and she clawed handfuls of dirt, her leg dragging uselessly on the ground. She
was met with silence.

‘Is. He. Dead?’

Grief squeezed in her chest.
She couldn’t find his heartbeat. Panic hazed the air around her.

Maura stepped back with her
hands up. ‘It’s the saliva,’ she said carefully. ‘He’s not dead, just paralysed.’

Ash pushed back the change
that was threatening within her. She’d forgotten, momentarily, in her fear,
that the shots were designed to incapacitate, rather than to kill.

‘Move, Maura.’ Anger bit into
her words, leaving her voice guttural.

The other woman didn’t budge.
‘I won’t let you hurt him,’ she said.

Ash’s anger snapped and her
wolf pushed under her skin, ready to defend. ‘Me hurt him? You’re the one that
flattened him with a shot full of wolfhound saliva. You made him vulnerable to
that thing.’

‘I chased that monster off.’
Maura’s back straightened, stubborn, but her cheeks held the flush of shame.