Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) (21 page)

Connal bounded up the winding stairs, three steps to a stride. Sounds of pain and punches being thrown filtered up from the front garden, where Madden and Doyle were getting down to it. Flinging open doors on empty rooms, his path lead inexorably higher, to the cramped stairwell of the attic. He’d never gone up there while DeMorgan lived in the house. It was heavily warded then. Not any more, it seemed. The scent of wolves and aggression was potent. He was mounting the steps on silent feet when Ash’s overheard voice stopped him dead.

‘I suppose those things are silver-tipped?’ she asked derisively.

‘No sorcery here, Witch. This is simple, old-fashioned physics. One of these bolts through your skull and it’s lights out on your new-found immortality.’ It was Fite speaking. No mistaking that caustic sarcasm.

With his back hugging the wall, Connal’s body followed the turn of the doorway and he stole a glance inside. Fite’s back was to him, a crossbow trained on Ash's forehead. He sensed numerous other bodies in the room, their attention all focussed on Ash, where she was cornered. The attic was cavernous, a ghostly distortion of space, its walls lined with gruesome trophies. Guess that solved the mystery of what DeMorgan did with all those severed wolf-heads he’d brought her. No time to dwell on that little revelation, though.

He stealthed inside, and from across the room, Ash’s startled blue eyes collided with his. Her lids flared and her lips parted in horror, only to be silenced by the finger he pressed to his own. He knew how bad he must look to her, shorn and battered from the Morrígan’s abuse. The scream died in Ash’s throat, but it was already too late.

Fite pivoted his aim around to target Connal’s head, elbow drawn back as he primed the bolt in the bow. 'You're supposed to be dead, Savage,' he snapped, those strange, hazel eyes narrowed to slits. The warrior looked like he was seeing a ghost, in this hall of the dead, with its echoing pillars. Somewhere in the eaves, a bird’s wings fluttered. ‘What the fuck hole did you crawl out of?’ Fite snarled.

Ash’s answering growl reverberated off the walls, drawing the attention of every head in the room. 'You hurt him,’ she said, ‘and I'll tear your throat out before you can reload.’

Fite’s aim immediately swiveled back onto Ash, whose claws and fangs were bared in a blatant threat.

‘Likewise,’ Connal said, edging across the dusty floor, getting himself nearer to her.

None of the others were armed, but they inched closer, tentatively closing the circle. Once they were in striking distance of either Ash or himself, they were both gonners. The best he could do was get in front of her, take the shot, and hope to hell she stood a fighting chance against the pack. Female wolves had a power advantage. If he could just take that damn crossbow out of the equation ...

‘Drop your weapon, Warrior.’

That booming bass authority had Fite’s wolves standing to attention like MacTire had rammed a poker up each one of their asses.

Fite’s silver head twisted back in the direction of the door, but the bolt’s aim never deviated from Ash.

The King had the muzzle of a handgun pressed to Tyr’s temple, while another huge, straggly-haired male with crazy eyes had the boy clamped in a bearhug that left his feet dangling in mid-air.

‘This is not how we settle our differences,’ MacTire declared, ‘engage like a Fomorian, Fite, or forfeit your boy
.’

‘How the hell did you two escape?’ Fite growled at the King, exasperated.

MacTire’s face split in a hard smile. ‘Knutr here has skills, apart from the singing.’

The loco male tightened his chokehold on Tyr and matched the King’s hyena grin.

‘If you'd taken the time to search me before you shackled me,’ MacTire said, ‘you'd have found the keys to the cells in my pants.’

‘The contents of your pants frighten them, Sire,’ Knutr’s maniacal laughter bounced off the walls.

‘Let Tyr go,’ Fite ground out his request.

‘Drop your weapon,’ MacTire said, ‘and I shall drop mine. We fight with honour, as wolves. Not with these tools of weak, mortal men.’

There was a tense pause, and then Fite dropped, soundless, into a crouch, laying the crossbow on the floor. He rose again and kicked the bow. It glided across the dusty boards with an odd grace.

MacTire lowered the gun and, mirroring Fite’s manoeuvre, sent it spinning into a corner.

Knutr released his grip, dropping Tyr to his feet. The boy growled and postured, straightening his clothes, shoulders squaring up in a show of aggression. Connal measured the space between the wall of wolves and the only way out. You couldn’t sneak a cat through that gap, never mind Ash. His canines pulsed, tasting the fight in the air.

MacTire and Fite faced each other. The giant of blond, packed muscle versus the lithe, snaking athleticism of the silver-haired male. It was the King who parlayed.

‘There can be only one Alpha,’ he said. ‘Determined in combat. Submission or death. You know the rules. You all know the rules. I suggest you choose wisely.’ MacTire’s intimidating black gaze scrolled across the room, stopping pointedly to meet the eyes of each wolf in turn. ‘Sexton?’ he asked. ‘Our fathers were firm friends.’

The wolf with the shaggy brown hair glared over at Ash before dropping his eyes to the ground.

‘And you, Arnor? You too would betray your King?’

Arnor shifted from foot to foot, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

'And you Ragi?'

Connal had to admire the King's first-hand knowledge of his men's names, but as, one by one, they deserted him, MacTire's credibility was headed down the tubes.

‘Fuck this.’ It was Brandr who broke ranks. ‘Fite,’ he said, ‘I signed up to slaughter the abomination, not this. Not treason.'

Connal daggered a look at Brandr, then cast a sidelong glance at Ash, judging the depth of the insult. She looked steady.
Breathe in air, breathe out those homicidal tendencies,
he thought
.
Brandr was technically on their side. For now.

'We are
skuldalid
,' Brandr continued, 'loyal to the King.' The hairy brute stepped over an invisible line to MacTire's side. That his félag, the red-haired Rún, followed, was no great surprise. No more than Tyr taking his place alongside Fite.

'It shall be six-a-side then?' The King swung the blond lash of his hair across broad shoulders. 'A fair fight indeed.'

'Ashling won't be fighting,' Connal snarled, making a barrier of his body in front of her. Still, he couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye.

MacTire rounded on Connal with a knowing smile. 'We Fomorians respect our women, Savage. And that includes their right to combat. You may find Ashling's ability formidable. I, for one, want you at my side.' The look he gave Ash over Connal's shoulder was sickening.

'I'm in,' Ash said.

Her voice, Connal knew. But his Little Red was no fighter. Was she?
Fierce
. The doctor's description pinged around his skull. What she’d said in the Temple about taking care of herself, those claws ... Ash really was wolf, and it killed him that his enemy knew it better than he.

‘I’ll be ok, Big ...’ Ash cleared her throat to cover her slip, ‘Connal. I can handle myself, and I can handle them.’ She tipped her chin at the walls of tension backing up Fite, making sure her face was steady when Connal looked over his shoulder at her. Meeting his eyes disturbed the beat of her heart. God, he looked so broken. And it went beyond the sadistic haircut. What had they done to her Big Bad? He was so close, she wanted to touch him, to reach right out and wrap herself around him. She settled for stepping up to his side so that the wolves could see her.

As the aggression in the room dialled up, the promise of violence cranked Ash’s bones. The beast inside her was gaining confidence with each additional pack member. Connal, Mac, Brandr, Rún, Knutr. Preferring these odds, she was struggling to keep hold of the leash. Her vision had stalled on predatory crimson, her claws refused to retract and she could no longer hide her fangs behind her lips. She was talking herself down even as she stretched her senses, letting her wolf size-up the room’s occupants.

Tyr caught her eye and she felt a push of fur under her skull.

She snarled as he impressed his thoughts upon her.

You’re mine,
he growled.
I owe you. Flesh for flesh.

He wanted to take her on, fair enough. She had hurt him, and much as she regretted it, sorry wouldn’t cut it. He was a warrior. The honour was in the fight, and if she was brutally honest, she was itching to make the boy submit. Again.

Inclining her head at Tyr, Ash broke the stare and cut a look to Mac, who was watching her, head cocked. Her lips curved at him in a smile that relayed her thanks and the softest hint of affection.

Silence had weight in the attic. It laid on them, both sides prowling a live-wire fence of primal energy. The Contests had nothing on the charge in this room. Ash heard the snap before she felt it. Behind Fite, a wolf was body-popping, a haze falling around him as his joints began to splinter.

Hell broke loose in an explosion of fur and teeth.

The shift roared through her, fast on the heels of the other wolves. Humanity took a backseat, was strapped in for the ride as she bust out and was met head on by Tyr’s large golden wolf. Ash locked in and lashed at him. His shoulder took the brunt as he twisted from the rake of her claws. Tyr howled and an answering cry rose up from the flanking wolves. They weren’t the only ones who’d cut loose.

To her right, Connal, massive and white, was laying into an opponent. To her left was Fite, his lean, silver beast engaging MacTire, whose wolf was huge, thickly-furred and black ... Pain slammed into her flank and tore a yelp from her throat, spinning her to face a grey wolf with its claws tipped in her blood. Ash roared and opened her jaws wide, muscles bunching as she settled her weight into her haunches. She never landed her blow. Tyr tackled her from the side and she crashed to the attic wall. As she fought to draw breath, she saw the grey wolf occupied with dodging Brandr’s razor talons. Then Tyr was on her again, gouging her shoulders, his muzzle snapping inches from hers. Ash scrabbled beneath him, her back legs daggering nails into the soft flesh of his underbelly. He reared back and she attacked, striking a slash to his face.

Fighting tooth and nail was an apt description.

Everywhere she looked, blood flowed and fur matted, whimpers echoed around; the wolves were lethal, throat-tearing machines. She hurt, really hurt, yet this animal body was built for fighting and revelled in it. Even as she wished for it to end, the primitive part of her was baying for more.

And it got more. A fresh wave of howls had all heads whipping to the attic door, where wolf after wolf was spilling over the threshold in a growling stampede that sent the odds wildly out of favour. Tyr rounded on her, lip curled off pointed fangs. He was joined by another that lowered its ears and canted its head when she snarled, but didn’t back off. Instead, it circled like a mosquito, darting in to nip her flank, and dashing out of reach. Shaking off the bites, she backed up. She was vulnerable at the throat, belly and wings. He’d already struck something sensitive; blood poured freely from the arch of her right wing, deadening it. Tyr went for her neck. Ash deflected by tucking herself in and falling flat to the ground. She launched herself at the nearest furred body and her mosquito-wolf crumpled with a yelp. Ash silenced it by severing throat from neck in a single bite. The blood on her tongue was lust in her veins.

Her snapping growls kept Tyr off her back, and when she dodged his next lunge, the momentum sent him barreling into Connal’s flank. Connal’s white wolf rounded on her prey, but Ash tagged him out of the ring with a butt of her head to his furred shoulder. Tyr was still hers.

Battles raged around them. Mac had Fite’s silver wolf attached to his rump, its teeth embedded in the muscle and ripping the flesh beneath. Concern took her concentration from Tyr long enough for him to get a clamp on the scruff of her neck. His paws beat out punches, slashing at her chest. Her defense was to surge them forwards. She clawed down his ribs, piercing his soft belly. His whimper hurt her but she bore down, shifting his weight beneath her, the bulk of her beast pinning him as she yanked her scruff from his grasp.