The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (95 page)

‘We were a little preoccupied
with the threat of the world ending, Doc.’

‘Yes, but it didn’t end, did
it? The Morrígan’s promised apocalypse never materialised. Why do you suppose
that is?’

‘Because Ash is different? A
cross-breed?’

‘Or because the Morrígan lied
to us all along.’

‘And wouldn’t that be a
first,’ Connal said with a droll laugh. ‘You think Ash accidentally broke the
curse?'

‘I can’t be sure. It’s not
like we’d have had a string of wolves volunteering to test the theory, true?’

‘True,’ Connal laughed. 'So
maybe your botched experiment proved useful for something after all.'

They both turned their
attention to the smouldering mound of blue flesh spreading across the dewy
morning grass. The decay was so rapid, it's ribs were already exposed. Flecks
of charred flesh took to the breeze and eyes that had burned red were reduced
to mere sunken hollows. Soon there would be nothing left but a scorch mark on
the ground.

Assuming they survived that
long, this was what he and Ash were facing come the next full moon.

Oh happy days,
Connal thought.

Somehow witnessing it in Technicolor
made the prospect of martyrdom a whole lot less palatable. He looked up at
Madden’s furrowed brow and the doctor’s eyes hit the floor. Apparently his
thoughts had turned an equally dark corner.

'I’d rather all those people
hadn't died for my mistake.'

Welcome to my world
, Connal thought. The
thralls
at the hospital
had been good as dead already, but given Liath's predicament, he doubted that
was something the doctor wanted to hear. ‘You know,’ he said, resting a palm on
Madden’s shoulder, ‘someone once told me I held myself to too high a bar. Fed me
a whole spiel about crimes of passion and how bad shit sometimes happens beyond
a man’s control. If it weren’t for that conversation, I might not be walking
this earth today. I sure hope that son of a bitch wasn’t blowing smoke up my
ass.’

Madden’s smile was wan but
the glisten in his eyes and the soft shrug of his shoulders showed Connal that
his point had struck home.

‘He won’t be killing again anytime
soon,’ Connal said with a nod to the mess on the ground. 'If Ash did break the
curse, it was only temporary.'

‘Yeah,’ Madden exhaled
shakily, ‘a couple of days at most. What can we do with that?’

‘I don’t know,’ Connal
frowned, running his hands through the jagged crop of his dark hair. ‘Maybe buy
some time?’

Questions, rather than
answers, dominated his thoughts. Could they cheat the Morrígan’s bargain? Was
this something they wanted to share with MacTire, or use against him? Did they
want a dangerous pack of wolves walking the streets of Dublin? They could tell
them the curse was broken, and two days later the entire Fomorian race would be
nothing more than a skid-mark in history.

Not so long ago, he’d have
jumped at the chance to be rid of his fellow species forever, but Connal didn’t
want that, not now, and the truth of it surprised him. Somewhere between the
fight for Ash and his trip back to Fomor, the wolves had become something more
than the mindless killer melting on the ground at his feet. He’d glimpsed their
humanity, and come face to face with his own.

That was what they did with
soldiers, wasn't it? Dehumanised the enemy to make him easier to kill. Make him
an animal, an
olc
, a creature without a soul, without a conscience,
without a heart beating in his chest for the loved-ones he’s fighting for. His
own father, and the Morrígan in her turn, had made a soldier out of him, and
he’d allowed himself to be led. For centuries he'd worn his own prejudice like
a blindfold, but something fundamental had changed in Connal. He'd looked his
enemies in the eye: Madden, MacTire, Knutr. Hell, even Fite, and it was like
seeing his own reflection for the very first time. They each had a human face,
and a story, and people they would live and die for. In his heart, he no longer
wanted any of them dead. If the Morrígan tapped his secret desires now, she'd
find that tank was empty. His soul ran on something infinitely more powerful:
Love, and that was absolutely down to Ash. She'd become the very thing he
despised about himself, and he loved her all the more for it. If he could love
her so unconditionally, wolf and all, then there was hope that someday he could
even learn to love himself.

He drew a deep breath. ‘It’s
all irrelevant, isn’t it? Unless I can find her.’

‘You’re going after Ash?’

‘Damn straight,’ Connal
growled. She was his salvation, and he simply would not stop until he got her
back.

‘Ready ...’ Gov’s voice
startled Ash from her bubble of tension and her hand flexed. She put the skull
on the ground.

‘Set ...’ Ash rolled her eyes
at his dramatics, but the sunlight was crawling up her foot. She sliced the
blade into her palm, so sharp she barely felt the sting as her blood welled up,
dripping to the top of the skull and trickling down the smooth globe. She
smeared it over the wolf’s head, tracing it around the empty, staring eye-sockets
like macabre, finger-painted eyebrows.

‘Go ...’ His voice rang out,
and the cue made her twist her body. Sunlight flared into the space she’d
occupied. The early morning light hit the skull and the blood sizzled. Ash
flinched back as black smoke rose from her handiwork to cloud the entrance to
the cave in a dark haze. Gov’s low voice muttered things she didn’t understand,
rising and falling in a chant that sounded vaguely familiar. She looked towards
him and he made shooing motions at her. She took a deep breath.

‘What’s beyond the smoke?’
she asked.

‘Nobody knows, for sure’ was
his reply. 'People go in, but they don't come out.'

Not creepy and foreboding.
At all.

Steeling herself, Ash hooked
her backpack over one shoulder and crawled through the mud and smoke, casting
her senses out when the haze blinded her.

It wasn’t a smooth,
coordinated entry. Ash skidded down the short incline on her front and Gov’s
accented laughter followed her inside, before fading out as she oriented
herself. Her leggings were torn through at the knees, the skin beneath scraped
and bloody.

‘Remember,’ Gov called out,
‘not everything in the water is what it seems.’

Ash glared up at the tiny
entrance she’d crawled through. ‘I thought you said you didn’t know what was in
here,’ she shouted back.

Gov didn’t answer. Blowing
the hair from her eyes, Ash turned to get her bearings.

The way she’d come in was
small, but the chamber she found herself in wasn’t. It was more a hobbit hole
than a rabbit warren. She had the headroom to swing a cat, if she chose to.
Shadows inhabited the space with her, only the softest rays of dawn spilling
through the entrance to illuminate a long, narrow tunnel at the edge of the
gloom.

‘Well, that’s a sign from the
gods if ever I saw one.’ Ash gathered herself up, looped her pack over her
shoulder and followed the light.

Her steps echoed off the
packed-dirt floor, bouncing off rock walls that narrowed the further she
walked. The corridors of Fomor flashed through her head. She wouldn’t find any
wolves down here though, and if she wandered into trouble, neither Mac nor
Connal would be there to pull her out. The skin on her arms was goose-fleshed
and clammy, the air thick and cold, but that wasn’t what made her shiver.

Pressing forward, the
oppressive blackness closed in until her shoulders were brushing the walls and
the top of her head grazed the ceiling. Her breath came shorter in her lungs,
and though she’d never really been claustrophobic, Ash was starting to feel
like she was in a coffin. The path dipped, lined with ruts just waiting to trip
her, and an irritating noise dripped through her head. She could see why people
went crazy trapped in caves, but Ash pressed on, she had to. More than just her
life hinged on this meeting with her grandmother.

Her feet were aching by the
time the tunnel began to widen again, and Ash quickened her pace towards a soft
light that spread before her.

It glistened wetly and she
approached it warily.

The path spread out to cradle
a perfectly round pool of water, the ceiling rising, dome-like, over it. Ash
looked around. The tunnel didn’t reopen on the other side. It was a dead-end.

Keeping herself frozen, she
listened. Something was off, an unnatural stillness to the place that rubbed
her fur the wrong way. She couldn’t pinpoint it.

Ah…

The water didn’t move at all.
Not a ripple. She tentatively stepped onto the ledge and looked closer.
Something flashed beneath the surface.

Jerking back, Ash flattened
herself to the wall, watching the water.

Nothing happened, but her wolf
was spooked. She stepped forward and the image came back into view, moving with
her.

Ash exhaled a soft laugh,
chiding herself for being silly.

It was just her reflection.

She crouched on the ledge and
peered into the water. Her reflection peered back at her, tears tracking down
watery cheeks.

Her fingers flew to her face.
Her skin was clammy, but dry. No tears.

What the hell? She frowned,
leaning in closer to the water. The reflection was still there, no longer
mirroring Ash’s movements, but sobbing now, hands flat to the surface of the
water, palms pressed like it was a window that could be pushed open.

Hovering her own hand over
the image, Ash studied the girl in the water.

On closer inspection, it
wasn’t
her reflection at all. The hair was layered and wild, a dark
brown kissed with blonde. The face was thinner, her lower lip fuller, nose
shorter. The eyes weren’t her blue, but a smoky, storm-cloud grey. Was this
what Gov had meant about the water?

One delicate hand reached for
Ash. The grey eyes staring back at her were wide and red-rimmed from tears, so
sad that Ash was extending her hand even before the girl mouthed those two
words:
help me
.

Her fingertips had barely
breached the surface when the water roared and a massive, furred paw lashed out,
digging razor talons through the flesh of her wrist. She wasn’t quick enough to
tear them free and Ash screamed in pain and terror as those curved claws hauled
her, headfirst, into the suddenly turbulent waters.

Thrashing in the creature’s
tightening hold, a howl bubbled from Ash’s throat and she choked, suffocated by
the water, her chest tightening, her limbs flailing, fighting to get to the
surface while the girl pulled her deeper. Could she drown? She wasn’t sure, but
her body was in a full scale panic like it thought she could.

Her vision cleared with the
next tug, her eyes adjusting to the watery haze in time to see the other forms
swarming around her. Like a macabre costume-ball, a sea of corpses wearing
clothes from across the centuries reached for her with gaping mouths and white
eyes. A forest of skeletal limbs snagged at her clothes as she thrashed about
in her panic to get free of them.

Grappling for purchase, her
hand closed around an arm and it came away in her grip. Ash dropped the limb with
a mental scream, her eyes fixing on the face in front of her. It was a skull,
thin wisps of hair floating off the white crown, dragged back by watery
fingers. It was like swimming in jelly, viscous and cold and she couldn’t get
enough leverage to propel herself upwards.

Terror knotted her throat and
her lungs burned for air. Inside, her wolf was struggling too, desperate to get
out. Before she knew what was happening, she was shifting, in a panicked rush
of fur and fangs.

Stronger, Ash kicked out and
twisted her massive body, snapping huge jaws around her captor’s throat. The
girl struggled for a time before releasing her grip. Finally she went limp.

Instinct roared and Ash drove
herself upwards with her attacker in tow, bursting through the surface like a
furry missile and crashing back into the tunnel.

Ash panted, catching her
breath and trying to calm her racing heart. She licked hot blood from her
canines and shook the water from her fur before facing the girl she’d hauled
out of the pool. The one that had attacked her.

The one that was no longer a
girl at all.

A short way off, just where
the tunnel widened, lay a beast. It was a wolf, but not. Ash stalked around it
warily, sniffing.

What she saw didn’t quite add
up. The drenched wings spread out and dripping over the immobile mass of fur
weren’t a massive surprise; her own fluttered and lay tight to her back. It was
the head … heads. The thing had three, like Cerberus, but way more messed up.
The left head was full wolf, relaxed in its unconsciousness and looking like
any other Fomorian she’d seen. The right one was more ravener than raven, a
beak curving from its bald head and leathery skin feathering down into fur. Ash
shivered, her hackles bristling as she nosed around the third, centre head. The
part of her that was wolf couldn’t figure it out. It was unnatural, a threat,
and she growled before she could silence the impulse. From the large, furred
head, wolf ears drooped in sleep, but where its muzzle should have been,
instead there was a wicked beak. Ash couldn’t decide if she was disturbed by
it, or just deeply pitied it. This thing could join the freak club she was in.
Her exhale ruffled the creature’s fur and the movement made Ash flinch. She
backed up with a soft growl. Whatever it was, she was wasting time staring at
it.

Internally, Ash took a deep
breath and pulled the wolf back. It crackled through her bones, more than
willing to withdraw, and she slumped when her body returned to her in a rush of
popping joints.

‘Ow ...’ she murmured, heaving
herself off the floor and rolling her neck on her shoulders. Everything ached
like she’d been hit by truck and her wrist throbbed. Quickly snatching her pack
from where it lay on the surface of the water, Ash pulled fresh, dry clothes
from its interior and wriggled them on. They clung to her wet skin, but she
refused to go naked to see her grandmother.

She prodded the creature with
her boot. It didn’t move. Ash glanced around. Even if she wanted to turn back,
its mammoth body was blocking her way.

‘Not everything in the water
is what it seems,’ Ash muttered. ‘No kidding. Thanks for the heads-up Gov. All
three of them.’

There was only one way
forward.

She eyed the water, and
shivers spun up her spine. Everything in her revolted at the thought of going back
into the pool, so much so that she had to concentrate just to get her legs to
move.

At least she knew there was
no beast lurking beneath the surface this time.

Just a floating graveyard of
decomposing bodies.

Cutting off the panic rising
in her blood, Ash dove through the grabbing hands and the jelly-like water,
kicking at the bodies that reached for her through the gloom. Swimming deeper
and deeper into blackness, the burning in her lungs almost made her pull back
up. Until a spot of light glinted, way down low. She hunted it with renewed
hope, and propelled towards it, her fingers reaching out.

The winter sun, low in the
sky, had all but burned the morning mist off the ground by the time Connal’s
white wolf cleared the dry stone wall bordering the ancient site of
Rathcroghan. Shifting form mid-leap, he strode toward the man sat cross-legged
in the sunlight, at the entrance to the cave.

‘My, aren’t you a beautiful
specimen,’ the mohawk in the leather skirt practically purred, scrolling up
Connal’s naked body with a look that was pure hunger. With his ink and
piercings catching the light, he looked alien in the wild landscape, like a
cross between an exotic bird and a morning-after leftover from a punk festival.
‘What wouldn’t I give to have an animal like you chained in my basement.’ He
flicked his tongue over the spiked metal stud in his lower lip and Connal had a
sudden image of himself as this man wanted him: naked, collared and down on all
fours. ‘The things I could teach you,’ he said, and his tone was sultry.