The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (96 page)

‘Where is she?’ Connal
demanded, blatantly ignoring the come-on.

‘You’re a little late,’ he
said, and his lips spread into a sympathetic smile. ‘She’s already gone
through.’

‘Then send me through too.’

‘Didn’t my sister educate you
in anything but killing?’ He sighed dramatically, then raised a hand quickly.
‘Wait, don’t answer that. I know what she’s like.’

‘If you know, then why let
Ash go to her?’ Connal's temper flared in his words.

‘Because it’s her destiny,’ the
Master replied.

‘Fuck destiny. She’s in
danger,’ Connal growled, stepping into his personal space. ‘Nobody ever comes
out of there alive,’ he said feverishly. Grabbing a fistful of the man's shirt,
his vision bled to crimson. ‘You’re going to help me get her out.’

The one who called himself
the Master looked up at Connal from his place on the ground and let out an
excited laugh. ‘By Balor’s foot-long cock, you’re quite the sex-god when you
pull that alpha-male protector vibe on me.’ He shivered with something
bordering delight. ‘I wonder that she prefers to be mated to MacTire over you.’

Connal released him like a
hot potato and glowered.

The Master rubbed his hands
down his thighs and pressed his knees together before turning serious again. ‘I
can’t help you, Connal Savage, even if I wanted to. Only her blood could open
the way to Morrígan. I’m not even sure you could stop her anyway. She’s not
exactly your common or garden dabbler in mysticism that usually falls victim to
the cave. She has more god-blood in her veins than you do. My money’s on her
making it through alive.’

‘It’s not the cave that
concerns me,’ Connal muttered darkly. No, the real terror was what lay beyond
it.

The Master got to his feet.
Lean as a greyhound and unnaturally tall, he dusted off his ass, straightened
his skirt, and looked Connal in the eye. ‘You could come back at Samhain,’ he
said brightly, ‘when it’s open-gates here for every soul, dead or alive and
stupid enough to wander in there.’

‘That’s months away, you
idiot,’ Connal snapped.

‘What’s a few months between
immortals?’ The Master simply shrugged. ‘Just trying to be helpful.’

Connal stepped over the
charred skull on the ground and stared at the low entrance to the cave. The
bramble-covered stone lintel overhead, with its inscriptions in the ancient
Ogham language, framed a triangular hole that was scarcely large enough to
accommodate Connal’s breadth.

The Master’s burst of
laughter came from behind him. ‘Now I know what this entrance reminds me of,’
he exclaimed, pointing. ‘Look at it. It bears a striking resemblance to a
certain part of the female anatomy, wouldn’t you say? Complete with its own
hairy mound.’

Connal wasn’t much in the
mood for laughter, but there was no denying the resemblance. ‘The lady-crack of
doom,’ he said drily. ‘Enter at your own risk.’

‘The cave of the pussy-cats
is well named,’ the Master added. ‘Our sister the Morrígan has a sense of
humour.’

‘Yeah, and a sick sense of
humour at that,’ Connal muttered as he hunkered down and started to crawl on
his elbows through the low stone arch.

‘I told you, you’re wasting
your time,’ the Master called after him.

It didn’t matter. He still
needed to try. Connal had to curl his shoulders and empty his lungs to squeeze
through the narrow entryway. The guy wasn’t wrong. Passing through did have the
feel of being born, only in reverse, and inside, the narrow limestone passage
did nothing to dispel the illusion. Dark, damp and slippery, after about twenty
strides he found he could go no further. Surrounded by rock, whatever magic Ash
had conjured with the strange man was long gone, and so was she.

‘Fuck,’ he shouted, pounding
and kicking the walls. ‘Fuck it. Ash! Where are you?’

‘Bruising your knuckles isn’t
going to get her back,’ a sympathetic voice said from behind him.

Warm hands came to rest on
Connal’s bare shoulders. How the Master had transported himself so quickly and
so soundlessly inside the cave was a mystery, but when Connal turned to face
him in the cramped darkness, his presence was very real.

‘My brother, Creed, has the
gift of a
seidhr,’
he said, eyes bright in the gloom.
‘Long ago
he prophesied that one would come who could break the curse the Morrígan put on
your people.’

‘And you believe that’s Ash.’

‘Yes, I do.’ He nodded.

‘Yeah?’ Connal exhaled
angrily. ‘Well here’s the thing. Knutr supposedly has that same gift, and he
said Ash was going to die, but that didn’t come to pass. So forgive me if I’m
not prepared to invest Ash’s life and our entire futures in the ramblings of
some dodgy epileptic fortune-teller.’

The Master regarded him
curiously. ‘What were Knutr’s exact words during this fugue?’

Connal’s brow furrowed. ‘He
said Death was waiting for her at the foot of the Temple of the Ancients, and
that Ashling’s wolf would die-’

The Master’s brows shot up.

‘-but I got to Newgrange in
time, and she didn’t die. Maura Flannery chased the ... threat away. So how can
you speak to me like your prophecies mean anything?’

‘There is more than one
Temple of the Ancients,’ the Master said carefully, ‘we are standing on the
site of one now, I believe. And Death comes in many forms, does she not?’

Connal felt his face fall.

‘Do not dismiss the words of
the
seidhr
simply because they have not come to pass
yet
. She is
the one destined to break the curse, Connal Savage. She is the generation that
was never meant to be.’

‘She bled into the black
lake,’ Connal said quietly, ‘she did break the curse, unintentionally, but it
didn’t last. The effects wore off at dawn.’

‘I take it the
olc
your friend created won’t be worrying us any longer then?’ The metal in his
lower lip glinted with his knowing grin.

Shit. How had he known
about the creature?
The last thing
Madden needed was an avenging ancient gunning for him for breaking the
thegn
laws.

The Master tapped the side of
his nose and his smile grew enigmatic. ‘Never underestimate our knowledge,’ he
said. ‘Your
thegn
friend is not the first to attempt such a
transformation, though the curse always dealt with the consequences swiftly in
the past. Not this time though,’ he nodded thoughtfully, ‘and now we know why.’

‘If you say Ash is destined
to break the curse, then why didn’t it last? Why did the
olc
die?'

‘Because,’ he said, and
Connal felt the man’s breath hot on his cheek as he leaned in close,
‘permanency is going to require a much greater sacrifice on your girlfriend’s
part.’

‘Sacrifice?' Dread lined his
gut like liquid lead. 'You mean death,’ Connal swallowed hard, his expression
grave.

The Master didn’t reply.

‘No,’ Connal growled,
forcefully removing the hand that had come to rest on his shoulder. ‘No.’

'The sooner you accept Fate,
the easier a Mistress she becomes,' he offered.

'Fate is a cruel bitch, in my
experience,' Connal growled. 'If you refuse to help me, I suggest you keep the
fuck out of my way.' He shouldered past the strange man and made back towards
the cave's entrance.

'You won't find her,' the
Master said resignedly, 'but for what it's worth, you will see her again. That
much, I promise you.'

Half-drowned and choking on
horror, Ash fell through the pinprick of light with a wet scream. Her head
breached the surface, air rushed into her lungs and she was dragging in huge
breaths as she scrambled away from the underwater graveyard, hauling herself up
onto dry land.

A scurry of movement and
short, high-pitched shrieks had her rolling from her exhausted flop into a
defensive crouch just in time to see a clutch of young women jump back from the
water’s edge. Clutching blood-stained clothes to their naked bodies, they
huddled together.

Shit.

She’d scared them. Pushing to
her feet, Ash grabbed an abandoned garment floating at the edge of the water
and held it out to them like a peace offering.

‘Please. Don’t be afraid.
What is this place?’

They were silent, eyes
tracking every little movement she made.

Ash crept closer, feeling
bedraggled and spent, her nerves and patience rubbed raw. ‘I’m not going to
hurt you,’ she exhaled, exasperated by their flinching silence. She held the
bloody cloth out again and was rewarded by an ear-splitting screech that rent
the air.

The others took up the cry
and all Ash could do was stare at the oddly pointed teeth protruding from their
upper and lower gums. Obviously the place lacked a decent dentist.

‘I’m sorry, please ...’
Please
what?
Please shut up wouldn’t be very polite. Ash shifted her weight onto
her other foot and that was all the encouragement they needed. Like birds, that
movement scattered them in a flock of fleeing forms.

She didn’t bother entreating
them to stay, because when they turned, Ash caught sight of their bare backs,
and decided she’d much rather watch them leave.

Each girl was marked. Either
side of their spines sprouted thick black buds in varying stages of
development. Some were dark bumps pushing under the skin, some had broken
through and stuck out in a curl of tissue, some were slightly flared. White
feathers stuck up awkwardly in tufts and on another, the feathers appeared to
be turning black and the colour spreading like an oil stain over her spine. A
dark sense of foreboding rose through her gut, sitting a macabre exam that she
should know the answer to. It was on the tip of her tongue, but she got
distracted when one girl turned back to look at her.

A piercing flashed in her
ear, just a regular gold stud you could buy in any jewellery store. On another,
she spotted the chipped remains of a manicure.

Ash frowned.
Had they once
been human?
Whatever they were now, they couldn’t still be classified as
such. Yet they clung to remnants of a past life and Ash mused over that with a
soft sadness. She’d done that, she continued to do so in so many ways, but it
couldn’t change what she was.

Left alone, Ash shook herself
from her thoughts and scanned her surroundings.

Where the hell am I?

The cave pool had spit her up
in a wide hall with towering arches. Vines curled around high supporting
columns and dressed stone banisters and marble steps in blooms and bright green
leaves. It was a magnificent cathedral reclaimed by the wilderness.

The air around her shone with
bright diamond specks. Ash raised a hand to sift her fingers through the
glittering motes and they played rainbow lights over her skin, almost seemed
alive as they moved over her hand. She laughed, delighted by the phenomenon and
spun on a childish impulse, her arms spreading out. Her head tipped back. The
vaulted ceilings floated above her in a series of domes and arches. Shafts of
light cut glowing beams through the vines and every so often a dark silhouette
would soar overhead. The beauty almost made her forget about the girls and
their strange growths, and everything else. A weight had been lifted and she
was having trouble remembering what had been weighing her down in the first
place. She felt carefree.

Until someone stepped on her
grave and a chill ran through her nerves. It was the only warning she got
before a dark figure glided forwards, as though conjured from the shadows
themselves.

Instinct had her crouched,
her claws bared defensively as she snapped her fangs at the wraith coming
towards her. Primal warnings were shooting off in her head, even as she lowered
her hands, doing quick double-takes that didn’t change the face of the woman in
front of her. For a split second, she was a child again, and this woman was her
whole world. Confusion made her posture loosen, no longer defensive, more …
lost.