The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (92 page)

No, thank you.
Ash stifled a shudder. ‘I’m with somebody.’

‘Right. Needledick,’ he
smirked, cupping his crotch.

Asshole.

‘I’d like to see you say that
to MacTire’s face,’ the Mohawk replied, saving her from responding.

That whipped the other men’s
heads round. Creed frowned, turning back to scrutinize her. ‘She’s MacTire’s
property? She doesn’t act like a
thrall.’

‘That’s because she’s not.
She’s his mate.’ He was close enough to take her hand and he flipped it to
examine the marks on her palm. ‘Aren’t you?’

She wanted to deny it with
every fibre in her being. ‘Yes,’ she lied, ‘yes I am. Are you the Governor?’

He inclined his head. ‘My
friends call me Gov.’

'Please accept my apologies
for my brothers' behaviour,' he said, motioning for her to take a seat in the
private back room. 'They don't get out much. Sometimes they like to play with
the tourists who wander into the shop.'

'Who’s to say I'm not just
another tourist?' Ash countered, folding herself carefully into the cushy
leather armchair. She must have looked a sight, holding the top of her dress up
and the hem of it down, but she didn’t care. His ‘brothers’ had left her
feeling skittish and exposed.

His lips curved, pulling
around the piercing. 'Humans are easy, like open books.’ Eyes as dark-blue as
the ocean depths turned darker when he looked at her, contemplating. Finally
his head shook, making the white-tipped height of his navy mohawk wobble. ‘No,
you are quite different. I've trained enough of Elatha's children over the
centuries to know what
you
are. Your wolf is strong. She's guarding you,
blocking your thoughts. What is it you have to hide, Miss … ?’

‘Just call me Ashling.’

He inclined his head.

‘And you may call me Gov.
Tea?' he asked, taking a seat opposite her and motioning to the porcelain tea
set laid out on the table.

'No. Thanks,' she said. There
could be anything in that brew.

'It's not drugged,' he smiled
and the piercing in his lower lip gleamed.

'Are you reading my mind?'
she asked. He’d said he couldn’t but she wasn’t putting anything past him.

His expression was inscrutable
as he crossed his legs and the red tartan skirt rode up his black-clad thighs.
'I do not need to read your mind to know your thoughts,' he said with a smile.
‘Ashling: the prophetic vision,’ he said, translating the meaning of her name
from the Gaelic. ‘An Irish name, though you speak with an American accent. Tell
me, Ashling, how is it that one of the cursed walks the earth when the moon is
only a crescent?’ When he smiled at her this time, it was a baring of teeth
that made her wolf bristle. ‘I know of only one such creature, and he is under
the protection of the Morrígan.’ He leaned forward and held her in his
blue-black stare for a moment, before pouring himself a cup of tea. ‘Or at
least he was, until recently.’

Madden had warned her not to
get into discussions about Connal, so she decided to go with the truth. ‘I am
the Morrígan’s granddaughter, so I suppose that puts me under her protection
too.’

The tea caught in his throat
and slopped onto his saucer as he spluttered. ‘So it is true,’ he said, wide-eyed.
‘You do have a look of her about you. What rock has our dear sister kept you
hidden under, all this time?’

‘Your sister?’ It was Ash’s
turn to be gobsmacked.

‘Oh, not literally,’ he waved
off her surprise, ‘but she is one of our kind.’

'And what kind is that?
Exactly who or what are you, and your ‘brothers’ out there?' She couldn’t think
of them without her lip curling.

Gov watched her over the rim
of his cup, sipping like he was at an English tea party. He cradled the cup to
his chest. 'Together, we are the artful three of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the
people of Danu.’

Ash gaped at him.

‘Luc is the sculptor, Creed
the engraver, and I ... well, I excel at shaping metal, and other things, to my
will.'

Her jaw snapped shut. There
was no denying they had skills. She'd experienced their
manipulations
first hand. ‘You’re Ancients, like my grandmother?’

‘Quite.’ The clipped word
sounded odd in his smoky accent.

Ash’s brow furrowed and she
picked absently at a small, perfect hole in the leather. ‘I’ve read a lot on
Celtic mythology, and your names don’t sound familiar.’

‘Do Goibniu, Creidhne and
Luchta ring any bells? We shorten our names to make it easy on the mortals.’

No wonder. Those were a
mouthful.

It clicked. Where she’d
recognised the shop name from. 'You're the gods that forged the weapons of the
Tuatha Dé Danann.'

His body rippled with his
lazy shrug. 'I believe that to qualify as a god, one needs followers.’ The ink
on the bald sides of his head moved in light and shadow as he looked down into
his tea. ‘Once, we were revered by many, and forged mighty weapons, it is true.
These days, we make Celtic trinkets for tourists, and the straggle of believers
we entertain might better be described as groupies.'

'Is Double-D out there one of
your groupies?' Ash asked, thinking of the blue-haired woman with the tattoo on
her ass.

'Dearg-due is Creed's
plaything,' he said, and she detected a note of disapproval.

‘Not named after her ample
endowments then?’

'No,’ he laughed. ‘You want
to watch out for that one. She's a real blood-sucker.'

'I didn't imagine those fangs
then.'

'Those are real. But the rest
...'

'I know. They didn't actually
touch me. I didn't do those things.'
But damn, they'd felt so real.
She’d need a serious decontamination shower and some bleach mouthwash later.

'What can I do for you,
MacTire's mate and Morrígan's blood?'

'Are you the
Thegn
Master?'

'I am one of the masters,
yes.'

'I thought you would be more
... like them.'

‘A
thegn?
Hell no,’ he
laughed. ‘I’m too fond of cock to ever be a celibate.’

‘Then how did you become
their teacher?’

‘That is a long story.’

She shrugged and leaned back,
making a show of getting comfortable in the chair. ‘I’m in no hurry to go back
out there and face your freaky brothers.’

His smile was friendly, his
eyes watchful. He was cataloguing her every move. 'Very well. I'll give you the
potted version. Back in the day when our people first arrived to take
possession of this rugged island, Danu, our matriarch, assigned us dominions,
villages and settlements to oversee and to civilise. Elatha had the misfortune
to inherit the Fomorians. If it were the X-factor, then Elatha was the judge
who got the tuneless rejects, instead of the hot girls or the cute boy-bands.’

Ash covered a snort at that
and he grinned at her before continuing.

‘They were untameable, savage
and virtually immortal. We had to keep them contained beneath the black lake.
Elatha took it upon himself to transform his ugly brutes into the headline act,
but in order to do so, he had to bend the rules a little.’

Ash leaned forwards. His
story enthralled her. She’d heard a few different versions, from the ‘brutes’
themselves, but this was new.

‘Elatha was a notorious
womaniser. By seducing his way through the ranks of the Tuatha Dé, he managed
to steal one of our treasures. He used it to perform the dark magic that
created the race of Fomorians you know today: part gorgeous Viking, part
vicious animal, shaken together in a delicious, horny milkshake of sexy,
alpha-male demigod.’

A blush warmed her cheeks and
she silently thanked her wolf that he couldn’t read her thoughts. Elatha did
make gorgeous monsters.

‘Trouble was,’ Gov continued,
‘these creatures came with great power, but feck-all responsibility. They had
no conscience, and no control over their animal natures. In her wisdom, Danu
saw the dangers of this new hybrid race, but rather than put them to death, she
appointed a handful of us to take them in hand. We taught them to be civilised,
so they could live in peace among our followers. All in all, it worked out
pretty well, for a few generations at least. Until our sister, Morrígan,
decided she had an axe to grind with the wolf men, and set about annihilating
their entire race. After she’d cursed and banished what was left of them, there
wasn’t much call for instruction anymore.’

‘Why did my grandmother want
them dead?’

‘Why does any woman want to
kill a man and all of his descendants ever born?’ Gov laughed. ‘He needed to
harness a goddess’s powers of creation. I assume, like half of the Tuatha Dé,
she put out for him, and he screwed her over. Then again, she did always have
the look of a bunny-boiler about her, you know? No offence,’ he said, covering
his laughter with a hand over his mouth.

‘None taken,’ Ash replied.
‘What was the treasure he stole from you?’

‘A blade,’ he said. ‘It has
many names. Some call it the
Claíomh Solais,
the Sword of Light. The
original light sabre, you might say,’ Gov laughed.

Great, now she was picturing
this Elatha guy as Darth Vader, complete with a black helmet and a wheeze.

‘Elatha’s children gave it
another name,’ Gov added, and his look was almost expectant.

‘The
Skil
?’ Ash asked.

‘Yes,’ he clapped his hands
together, ‘very good. You are more than a pretty face. The
Skil
.’

‘Do you know how it works?’

‘I ought to,’ he grinned. ‘We
made the thing. Luc, Creed and yours truly. But the blade has been lost for
many centuries. Your grandmother stole it back from Elatha and stabbed him
through the heart with the thing.’

‘What? I thought she wasn’t
allowed to kill anyone?’

‘Oh, we gods can kill one
another, just not the mortals. We have to be allowed some fun, after all.’ He
crossed and uncrossed his legs, smoothing the tartan down his lean thighs.
‘Elatha bled out like any mortal in the end. His earthly body, and the knife,
were lost to the black lake, and she cursed his bloodline for eternity. It was
quite a show.’ His grin widened. ‘Hell hath no fury, as the Christians might
say.’

‘What if the
Skil
wasn’t
lost?’ Ash ventured.

Gov looked her over,
speculative, pausing a moment before he spoke. ‘The blade is a catalyst.
Depending on the substrate, it has the power either to create or to destroy.’

‘It’s a weapon, right?’ He
made it sound more like a chemistry experiment.

‘Yes, but no ordinary
weapon.’ Gov hesitated, set his tea on the table and braced forward on his
knees, stroking his chin. ‘Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me why
MacTire has sent you sniffing around for information about the
Skil
?’

His tone had turned deadly
serious, his stare unnerving, and an approximation of the truth seemed the
wisest course. ‘He wants to use it to free a
thrall
,’ Ash said.

‘Bullshit,’ Gov hissed. ‘You
think I can’t smell your lies? MacTire wouldn’t waste his breath on a
thrall,
let alone send his mate to the Master for one. Speak the truth or get out.’

Ash tried again. ‘She’s a
friend of mine. She’s going to die.’

He raised an incredulous
brow. ‘All mortals die, sooner, rather than later. What do we care? I’m not
above sending you back out there to let them finish what they started. Now tell
me, little Morrígan girl, what does MacTire really want with the
Skil
?’

Ash’s heart pounded and her
mind raced a mile a minute, clutching at thoughts.

‘He wants to break a mating
bond,’ she lied, praying to all the gods that he wouldn’t smell it. Holding out
the palm he’d examined earlier, she pointed out the two mating marks. ‘The
Savage got to me before Mac did. He put his mark on me, and now Mac wants it
gone. Please. Help me,’ she pleaded, laying on the wide-eyed, terrified look.
‘I can’t go back to him with nothing. He’ll punish me.’