Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) (18 page)

‘Here is our direct line.’ The nurse’s sympathy deepened as she pressed the card into Connal’s waiting palm. ‘Please don’t hesitate to use it, and, on behalf of Tir na nÓg, I would like to say once again, how terribly sorry we are, and reassure you we are doing everything in our power to locate Ms. DeMorgan.’

The nursing home’s porch light cast the woman in an unflattering light, emphasising the dark shadows under her eyes. Strands of hair had escaped what would have started her shift as a neatly combed up-do. He pitied her, left to explain the circumstances of their misplaced resident, with all its emotional and medico-legal implications. He could have spared her the angst. The moment he knew the Morrígan was gone, Connal just wanted out of there.

He’d allowed himself to be herded into the melamine office, and listened as her carefully prepared speech whittled his patience to a thread. Anann DeMorgan’s recovery from her stroke had been just short of miraculous, apparently. In the past twenty-four hours, the old lady had gone from helpless paralysis to walking, talking pain-in-the-ass. Just as Connal remembered her. Sometime that afternoon, she’d slipped their security and gone AWOL, leaving a neatly folded pile of clothes on the headland overlooking the sea. Nurse Valentine steadfastly avoided the use of the word ‘suicide,’ though that assumption was clearly driving the uncomfortable undercurrent of the past half-hour’s conversation.

‘The police and the coastguard will resume their search at first light. Things always look better in the morning, I find.’ Her smile was strained.

‘Yeah, tomorrow is another day, and all that,’ Connal replied. Except another day was all he had. A thousand years of virtual immortality, and suddenly life or death hinged on a single rise and set of the full moon. He had two choices: locate Anann DeMorgan and plea-bargain, or settle in for a slow, agonising death aboveground. The lesser of those two evils was debatable. Returning to Fomor to face-off against MacTire wasn’t an option, when he couldn’t even shift to defend himself. Talk about the devil and the deep, black sea ...

He left the nurse standing in the halo of the security light and mounted the Black Shadow, squeezing the throttle and kick-starting the motorcycle into roaring life. A light rain was sheeting in off the sea and the salt air stung his cheeks as he took the coast road south. Freedom never tasted so bitter-sweet.

He pulled up on the headland, a short distance from the area cordoned-off by yellow police tape. The stuff was flapping about in the wind like so many loose strands. The Garda presence had long since departed. Their search of the coastline would not bear fruit. He could feel it in his marrow; Anann DeMorgan was gone and it was going to take something more than a search party to draw her out now. The Morrígan would be looking for blood, and Connal was just desperate enough to give it to her.

Ash pressed the red button and the phone beeped, hanging up on the nursing home. Granny had left the building. She wasn’t surprised. Nothing surprised her about granny anymore, but alongside her profuse apologies, the nurse had mentioned Connal calling. She frowned at the phone. So he was looking too. The old woman could be anywhere: off the side of the cliff like the nurses thought (Ash didn’t think it likely), or just home. A long shot though it was, she dialed the DeMorgan house, working the ragged nail on her thumb between her teeth as it rang. Pathetic how she was reduced to phone calls from the safety of her safe-house prison. It seemed so mundane, given everything. Granny was some almighty goddess. Shouldn’t there be some mumbo jumbo to summon the old lady? A phone call just didn’t seem spiritual enough.

The wall of security monitors flickered with occasional movements, drawing her eye; a janitor sweeping the dance floor, a woman changing the bed in what she assumed was a private room. Only a few walls and this promise of neutral ground stood between her and death. Not much of a bungee cord to trust her life to. The phone rang and rang, setting her nerves on edge. Each time the connection cut off, she pressed redial, until the tone was nothing but white noise over the clamour of her thoughts.

Then the line clicked over.

Silence. She couldn’t even hear anyone breathe but a quick check of the display showed she was definitely connected.

Her brow scrunched. 'Grandma? Is that you? Hello?'

'Ash?'

Her name in that voice sent her heart into spasm, flatlining and then hammering so hard she wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear it. She choked around the syllables. 'Connal?'

'Yeah,’ he said. ‘You're not in Fomor.'

Is this what they’d been reduced to? Stating the obvious? Ash wanted to stab the awkwardness and replace it with easy intimacy and growling laughs.

'No, Mac ... MacTire ...' Shit, why did she have to say his name? 'He set me up in his place in Form.'

He fell silent and she realised how that sounded.
Crap
. She hastened to reassure him, words coming quick. ‘I’m alone. He didn’t come with me.’

There was a gruff noise on the other end and she clutched the phone closer to her ear, feeding on every sound he made.

‘You don’t need to justify yourself to me, Ash,’ he said.

She almost whimpered. Dragging it back, she took a breath, trying to steady the break she could feel in her voice. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Yeah, so am I.’ His tone was cold, not an apology. Defeat? Resignation? Disappointment? Hurt squeezed her chest. He was shutting down on her and she could feel them coming full circle, back to the beginning.

‘Please, at least give me a chance to explain.’ If she could just touch him, look him in the eyes, she could make him understand. Maybe hit him with a frying pan. It had worked once. With the phone glued to her ear, she was pacing, her body thrumming with the urge to hunt him down. ‘I need to see you. Let me come to you?’

Her ears picked up a faint shush of movement; his dreads brushing over fabric as his head shook. ‘You need to stay away from me, Ash,’ he said, ‘for your own good, you need to sit tight.’

Her bones ached with the rejection and stopped her pacing dead.

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Where will you go?’

‘I can take care of myself, Ash. Been doing it for centuries before you came along.’

Ouch
. He was striking nerves with vicious precision and she wasn’t sure he even knew it. If he did, he’d made his point. He no longer wanted her. He hated her.

The urge to strangle him was strong, the urge to beg even stronger. Her world was fragmenting. Tears wet the phone, dripping between the raised digits. ‘Please Connal, don’t leave it like this between us.’

‘It’s for the best,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving here now. It’s not safe. Don’t follow me, Ash.’ The receiver clicked as he hung up the phone.

In the hallway of Anann DeMorgan’s house, Connal’s forehead cracked against the plaster. Hand shaking, he dropped the handset into its cradle.
Should never have answered the damn thing.
He’d only relented to shut the incessant thing up, and in the vain hope it was the nursing home with an update on DeMorgan. Ash’s voice had thrown him a curve. It cut deep, knowing she was back in Dublin. Temptation and dread took root in equal measure. Much as he ached to see her again, he couldn’t stand to see her pity. Just hearing it in her voice made him weak, when what he needed now was strength.

The phone started to ring again, a shrill vibration through the silence of the empty house. This time, he ignored it. He couldn’t protect her. Not this time. Not like this. MacTire could at least give her that. He pushed away from the wall on a ragged exhale. This old house was full of painful memories. He had to get away.

The Morrígan’s wards were down, and in his absence, the
thegn
had been crawling all over the place. He’d thought it chaotic when the old lady lived there. Now? It looked like a tornado had ripped through its innards. Only a matter of time before the wolves came too, looking for Ash. The phone continued to ring, even as he shrugged into his leather jacket and gathered up the few items he needed for the ritual. That was good, because for as long as it rang, he knew Ash wasn’t doing something stupid, like leaving the only place left on earth that offered her protection: the heart of the wolves’ den. Connal slipped Ash’s silver ring onto his little finger and fastened her pendant around his neck, his big hands grappling with the delicate fastening. Designed for a feminine throat, on him, the chain, with it’s circular triskelion of intertwined ravens, was more of a choker. If she agreed to bargain with him a second time, the Morrígan would require a token. He turned his back on the old house with its battlefield of strewn papers and artifacts, and as he did, it struck him as a fitting shrine to the brief, violent passion he and Ash had shared there.

The wall held up Ash’s spine when her legs wobbled in the aftermath of the call. He’d actually hung up on her, severed the connection with an almost physical cut. Ash was still reeling when she saw it, a flicker of movement on one of the monitors that, up until now, had been still. The black waters had moved.

She snapped upright, her heart thumping painfully in her chest as she trained her attention on the bank of screens. The surface of the conduit was still, the basement empty. Nothing weird there.

Perfect. Her nerves had her hallucinating.

And then the pool retched.

Spread across the floor, the figure was unmoving. She was frowning as she closed in on the monitor, eyeing the tall breadth of male playing at being a rug. His hair was light, she could tell that much, but his face was turned away from the camera.
Please be Mac, please be Mac.
An ally would be much appreciated on this side since Connal and her grandmother were currently either hating on her or MIA. Ash watched for signs of life. The ride over was paralysing, but he should have flexed or twitched by now.

Eventually he did.

Her body seized, rabbit-in-headlights tight with fear.

Metal-tipped claws dragged across the basement floor, slipping for purchase in the accompanying Fomor gloop. The body wormed. Stab after stab of claws to slick concrete had her worst nightmare scaling the floor towards the showers.
Fite.
Not Mac, not Mac at all. God, had they found her so soon? She was glued to the screen, trapped in a breath-catching, adrenaline-surging, heart-in-throat web of panic. What had happened to their search of Fomor? Had they got to Mac? If they hadn’t believed him ... Nauseated, her imagination was inventing all sorts of interrogation scenarios. Years of watching gladiator movies and nights ogling TV Vikings brought the ideas to vivid, gory light. Would they have turned against their own leader? Simply to kill her?

They just might.

Fite was pushing to his feet. He was shaky but upright and that was a bad sign.

Bad became worse. Ash froze, eyes glued to the screen. If she blinked, she feared the world would fast-forward and she’d be out of time.

The waters were heaving. Great, roiling belches of pitch liquid regurgitated warriors at an alarming rate. Four wolves lay spewed on the floor. Two more rounded a corner, bare-assed, free of slime and pulling open lockers. Already the prone men were starting to gather their limbs under them and crawl to the showers. From what the grainy screen showed her, Fite, freshly showered, now wore a perfectly-tailored leather suit. Lethal and structured, he was treading the floor, back and forth; a commander waiting for his troops. Her eyes watered with the strain of not blinking, and she gave in, a quick flash down of her lashes before she was zeroed back in on the screen.

Sonofa-!

Fite was bent in conversation, head close to the man she recognised as the bartender who served her that first time in Form. Cowering under Fite’s intense stare, he looked smaller than she remembered, less like a deranged kidnapper. Their lips were moving, their body-language animated, but she couldn’t hear them.

Where was the damn volume?

Quaking fingers pressed at buttons, fumbled with dials. Nothing yielded any sound and she was no master lip-reader. Fite was invested in what the bartender had to say though, in between barking orders in the direction of the lockers. Heads popped up, shirts were pulled on faster, clothed bodies forming a semi-circle around the two. He was relaying whatever information he’d received, face stern when the others became animated. They reminded her of beagles before a hunt, all excited energy and perked ears, thrilled by the expectation of a kill. The bartender had given them something to get them juiced. Fite looked to be issuing commands, the word ‘DeMorgan’ on his lips so much she could read it.

A lynching party for sure.
Fun!
A bubble of panic was closing in around her, no time to do anything, no time to think or decide or decipher the next mouthed instructions on screen. Surely her grandmother's house was the first place they’d go. It was the only place they knew to look for her, the only place she had. And Connal was there.

Redialling, Ash paced the wall of monitors, judging every move in the basement as a threat and fisting her hand over her heart. The damn thing was beating so hard she was legitimately worried it would bust out of her chest like Alien and scamper off. It would return to Connal, she knew; he was its keeper, willing or not. Frantic, she muttered. ‘Pick up, pick up, pick up.’
Ring, ring, ring ring.
‘Now is not the time to ignore me, Big Bad, I swear to God.’ Fear that Connal was there and would be caught out by a wolf ambush was the new cause of the rolling terror in her gut. He didn’t know. He had no clue they’d followed her on the train out of Hell. The connection timed out and she stabbed angrily at the redial. Knowing her luck, he’d just be sat there, scowling one of his eyebrow-furrowing glares and praying she gave up.

She couldn’t.

Looking up from the seventh redial, Ash saw herself faintly reflected in the basement monitor. Just pale skin and blue eyes and tangled curls. Worry was a strain at the corners of her mouth as she chewed her nail, not really tracking the background ringing, not really seeing the men troop across the camera feeds. She nearly overlooked the bartender. He was bent at the waist and looked to be scoping out something on the floor. With every hunched step he took, dread pooled liquid lead in her stomach. He was following a trail. Her trail. She’d climbed out of the primordial ooze and left a residue, neon-signing her path to the elevator. Heart thudding in her throat, she was choking on the beats as his fingers touched a glob on the elevator door. Then he looked up, peering straight into the camera lens, his face a mask of suspicion, as though he was staring right at her, as though he could see her.

Fuck.

She was utterly screwed.

Panic was as familiar as breathing now, an integral part of her new world. She was not indestructible. Not to them. They could tear her twelve ways to Sunday as easy as brioche. She pushed at the fear until it hit the bestial energy pacing under her skin. Much better. Territorial and pissed beat terrified hands down. She could function with that. Ash looked around, breathing with the monotone ringing on the line.

Her gut churned as she watched the bartender pushing at the elevator buttons, playing with the lock. They knew she was there. Ash suddenly felt very naked in just a towel. Rifling through Mac’s closet, she kept one eye on the monitor as she climbed into his giant-sized clothes. She eyed a massive pair of boots. She’d be swimming in those things. Faster barefoot, if it came down to running.

Shit. What was she supposed to do now? Sit there and wait to be found? Mac and Connal had both told her to stay, but how much trust could she put in an elevator door? They might not be able to spill her blood in this place, but there was plenty else they could do to her.

No, screw that. Mac hadn’t shown. Something had gone wrong in Fomor. She would not be a fish in a barrel.

She was going to try to make it home.

The house was warded, if she could get there, she might be safe. Assuming her new status didn't turn those wards against her. Her spine was steel as she saw her clock run down. The bartender had disappeared from the shot, returning moments later with Fite and his goons. Heads together, they were obviously talking tactics on how to get in, until one of them approached with a couple of crowbars, and that's all it took to get them fucking up the elevator. But seriously, how could she have been so stupid as to leave a trail? Strung out on fear and disoriented from the trip over didn’t seem like an adequate excuse.

The elevator doors slid open on the screen, and Ash was jolted into motion. Her claws unsheathed instinctively, the sharp bite to her lip telling her she’d sprouted fangs. She was across the room and working to open a window when the elevator binged behind her, revving her up to a frenetic throttle of scrabbling with the handle. Footsteps pounded along the short hallway. The door-knob rattled.

Fuck, Mac, if you lied about me having the only key ...
She didn’t have time to finish the mental threat, her head-space taken up by escape plans and fear that she’d slip from this height and die.

A collision shook the door in its frame just as her foot touched the first step of the fire escape. Rain had made the metal slick and precarious. The flimsy bolts securing it to the side of the building made it terrifying. Ash was not fond of unsecure heights and, for all she knew, this thing was a deathtrap, masquerading as salvation. Better that than getting turned into wolf chow. Another slam to the door flinched down her spine. Her foot bobbed a little more of her weight to the rickety escape and her other leg followed, testing it before she committed. She waited for the whole thing to crumble in a metallic screech, the only sounds the pounding of her heart and the soft huff of her breath in the cold air. When that didn’t happen, she scrambled down the side of the club, wet slipping beneath her feet, making her clutch the handrail. The metal groaned when she traded steps for time, missing out whole sections as she slithered her descent. As her feet touched the pavement of a side alley, Ash’s eyes and ears were focussed above her, waiting for the crash of an imploding door or the smash of the glass, expecting to see wolves blocking out the skies, slavering for a taste of-

‘Don’t scream.’

From out of the shadows, a silencing hand clamped over Ash’s mouth and tackled her roughly back against the wall of the club. The roar of her panic numbed the pain of the impact as she stared up, startled, into the face of Doc Rob. Not the disheveled Robinson Crusoe extra from down in the caves, but the clean-shaven, slick-suited, smooth-talking bastard who’d lured her into Form in the first place.

‘What the hell are you doing out here,’ he whispered harshly, ‘do you
want
to die?’

Heart galloping in her chest, her taloned hands prised his from her face with a snarl. ‘If you’re planning to take me in, you’re going to have a fight on your hands this time, Doc. I’m not that naive little girl anymore.’

The doctor stood back, straightening his cuffs and dusting down his jacket as he raked appraising eyes over her new
manicure
and Mac’s oversized clothes swamping her curves.

‘I don’t doubt that, Miss DeMorgan, but it’s not me you need to be worried about. You are no longer on neutral ground.’

‘I’m not about to sit on my hands in that room while the wolves break down the door and drag me back to that cess-pit.’

‘They know you’re here then?’ His brows knit in what looked like genuine concern.

‘Yes, and I suggest you get out of my way before I’m forced to remove you from it, Doctor.’

‘Let me help you.’ He reached into his pocket and her posture stiffened defensively, but it was only a key-fob. ‘I have my car ...’

‘No offence, but the last time you offered to help me? Once bitten, as they say.’ Her mouth curved in a tense smile.

‘Very well.’ The doctor inclined his head and stood to the side. She backed away warily, keeping her eyes on the doctor even as she scanned the heights for signs of the wolves. Perhaps that door was stronger than it looked.

‘He’s in love with you, you know.’

She froze and her eyes locked with his in the half-light. For a moment she considered if he was talking about Mac.

‘Hard, desperate, stubborn love,’ he went on. ‘Do you know what it feels like to stand by and watch the person you love be with somebody else?’ He spoke with the conviction of one who knew intimately how that felt, and she cowered internally at the accusation in his tone.

‘Connal Savage is a good man. Remember that. Whatever poison MacTire and his cronies fed you about him. Whatever guilty cross he’s carrying about the night of the genocide, the circumstances of it were beyond his control.’

She didn’t owe this man any explanations, but the words came unbidden. ‘I never meant to hurt him.’ Her voice sounded so small.

‘So you understand. He never meant to hurt anyone either. Sometimes the bad stuff happens in spite of good intentions, and then all you have left to judge a man by is his heart. Connal Savage’s heart is with you, Ashling DeMorgan, for better or worse.’

‘I have to find him. Did he say where he was going?’

Doc Madden shook his head and levelled her with a hard stare. ‘I believe he is going to barter with the devil.’

‘Then it’s true? He’s lost my grandmother’s protection because of me? He’s going to die?’
Because of me.

Madden scrubbed his hands down his jaw and nodded. ‘He’s not bartering for his own life, Ash,’ he said softly.

She frowned in confusion.

‘He’s bartering for yours.’

The minute she got over the rip of pain in her chest, she was running, the doctor forgotten. Connal was going to sell his soul for a life she wasn’t so certain she wanted to live without him. They needed to talk, she needed to say ... something, before the horde of hellhounds descended on them.