Becoming Red (The Becoming Novels)

by Black, Paula

  ‘I ... may have told him you were here. But only so he wouldn’t worry after the dog.’ The words were rushed and followed by a deep inhale. ‘I didn’t think he’d go in without knocking, but Connal doesn’t always adhere to the rules.’

  Ash’s brow furrowed, her frown deepening. Liath knew him well, it seemed, better than she let on, and for a second, Ash contemplated asking her about the tattoo. If she knew what it meant to him. If she’d seen it anywhere else. But that would lead to two things she wasn’t sure she wanted to know or be known. Firstly, her neighbour didn’t need to know that she’d practically stripped the guy, Connal, before she’d freaked out. Secondly, she didn’t want to examine the green beastie whispering that this female may have seen more of him than Ash had. And she didn’t want to examine too closely why she could taste that tang of jealousy.

  ‘Well ...’ Slightly mollified that her neighbour didn’t seem all that terrified of her intruder, Ash sniffed and cranked her jaw up. Pissed, and more than a little embarrassed she’d caused such a fuss when this seemed like nothing too serious to the petite blonde, she forced an edge to her voice. ‘He needs to learn some goddamn manners. He can come and apologise whenever he’s ready. I promise I won’t hit him again.’

  ‘You hit him?’ Liath’s face blanched with shock and worry. ‘With what? Is he okay?’

  ‘With a ...’ Lowering her voice and mumbling, ‘frying pan.’ Ash shook her head. ‘He was fine when he left. I doubt I caused any permanent damage.’ Though he could be laid out in a hospital somewhere still seeing tweety birds and resting off a concussion. Or suffering a severe case of whiplash. She’d slammed on the brakes of their lust mighty damn hard. ‘Maybe,’ she hesitated, ‘if you see him, you could give him my apologies? And teach him how to knock?’

  ‘You can tell him yourself, love. When he isn’t getting off his face drunk at Form, he’s usually wandering around with a scowl and a hangover. You’ll undoubtedly see him.’ Liath wore the face of disapproval, but it turned to a smile when she met Ash’s eyes. ‘He’s more bark than bite most of the time, you shouldn’t need to hit him again when you see him.’

  ‘Lovely ...’ Ash snorted, two hands tunnelling her hair back from her face as she exhaled, trying to piece together this woman’s obvious affection for something that had seemed terrifying enough to spark her nightmares. ‘What’s Form?’

  Blonde hair flowed back as Liath raised her face to the sun, basking in the gentle heat. ‘It’s a club in town. They’re always serving, they never close and they pay their girls really well. The tips alone cover my bills.’ At Ash’s look, a laugh crinkled at the corners of gentle green eyes. ‘Oh no, not THAT, love. Strictly waitressing. Though my uniform is more stripper than waitress.’ A small shrug, her chin resting on her shoulder as she looked back into her house and its hallway inhabited by an army of toys. ‘You should come by some night. Even if Connal isn’t there.’

  Any response that might have left Ash’s lips at that point was cut off by a child’s cry, a loud ‘MAMMY!!’ hollered tearily from somewhere within. She smiled at Liath and waved off her apology. ‘Go, I’m good. I swear. It’s nice to know I didn’t get broken into. I’ll just invest in some more locks.’ By way of reassurance, Ash two thumbs-upped the woman and wandered back, taking the steps down from the doorway with another wave, extra cheery. Returning to the dwellings of insanity to seek out a locksmith and maybe plan what she would say if she ever came across the man-mountain named Connal.

  Her phone was just ringing out when she stepped back into the bowels of the house and she tripped to catch it, hand fumbling at the antiquated piece until she could fit it against her ear with a breathless, ‘Hello?’ No answer, only the dead tone of the recently hung up. She wrestled her cell from the pocket of her jeans. Yup. Four missed calls from the solicitor and three voicemails. Well today, she wasn’t taking any calls. Ash was exhausted and raw with nerves from the night before.

  Besides, she couldn’t put off visiting any longer and after the unsettling experience with her late-night visitor, Ash was desperate for something more familiar. Fearful as she was that the broken woman would be unrecognisable as the grandmother of her memories, right now, she needed family.

  Nervously smoothing her clothes, she grabbed up the keys for the small Morris Minor she’d found hidden at the back of the property. The thing clunked along just fine if it was left to warm up a few minutes and Ash let the engine idle, toying with radio stations as she tipped the road map upside down, head cocked and eyes squinting to pinpoint the location of the Tír na nÓg nursing home. The name had struck her as ironic when the solicitor handed her the paperwork. Naming a place for a mythical land of eternal youth, when the inmates were more living-dead than living. The engine chuffed, she folded the home’s letter into the map, marking the page she’d need if she got wildly lost, and pulled out onto the road.

  Her nerves ticked away the half hour it took to reach her destination, and they were frictioned to anxious tingling by the time she turned into the parking lot. It looked like any other nursing home. Old brick under white paint, a faintly boxy, clinical shape with one floor and a sloping roof. Bars on the windows protected the glass from the outside and kept the insiders in.

  ‘She’s right this way, Miss DeMorgan, she’s had a good morning. You picked a nice day to come in. The sun makes her calmer.’ The older nurse was all cheer, lying through her teeth no doubt with her little cup of pills ready for administering. Old husks sat in even older chairs, folding into the pattern of the fabric until the chair breathed and their oxygen tanks rattled. Machines hooked into stick arms, papery skin shrivelled around brittle bones, Ash offered smiles to the ones that looked up as she passed, listening to faint heartbeats in the bleeps from their mechanical guardians.

  ‘Anann?’ The nurse’s voice was soft and coaxing, drifting from where she’d stopped beside a large chair, the golden glow warming the circular room to a conservatory of soft-sunned relaxation. Muttering answered the nurse, a gnarled hand limp over the arm of the blue floral chair twitching in annoyance. ‘She may not be all that welcoming, dear, and her speech is unintelligible at best. Just press this button if you need us.’ Her lined face crinkled up in a smile and Ash nodded, taking a deep breath as the nurse wandered away.

  ‘Grandma?’ The word felt foreign on her tongue, but the woman in front of her was known, her memories were accurate, down to the taloned fingernails and wrinkled features. Hard and sharp as a hawk, the stroke had only softened one side of the old woman sat staring out of the window. ‘Grandma?’ Vexation flickered in that gaze as it swung to pin Ash with a frown that was all eyes. ‘It’s Ashling.’ There was no recognition that she could discern, but her grandmother’s focus was all on her, the sun forgotten, ‘I don’t know if you remember me, I was very young.’

  ‘Rayvn,’ too quiet amongst the mumblings, Ash thought she’d misheard, but her grandmother’s fingers managed to move enough to snag at a curl that had escaped from her bun and hung loose as she leaned in closer. ‘Rayvn,’ it came again and it was absolute, crystal clear to her ears. Her grandmother saw only her daughter, not her granddaughter in front of her. It made Ash happier than it should have. She looked like her mother. She was smiling softly as she wiggled her chair closer, eyes on the half-immobile face peering at her.

  ‘I’m not Rayvn, Grandma. I’m Ashling, her daughter.’ This news seeped in in a slow change of expression. Her grandmother’s eyes widened, her hand slipped from the black curl to grip Ash’s with surprising strength. Her mouth struggled to form words, hissing syllables that knotted and warped with her mounting frustration, lips refusing to obey the simple commands for speech. Whatever she wanted to say fell silent and was replaced with the drone of something she couldn’t understand. Squeezing the crinkled hand in her own, Ash pressed the button to call the nurse.

  ‘What is she saying?’ She asked quietly, and when the uniformed woman bent to her ear, her eyes never left her grandmother.

&nb
sp; ‘I believe it to be Dubh Linn, Miss. She says it a lot. The ravens are a trigger.’ She gestured at the gather of black birds littering the lawn, black feathers glossed with green and blue under the sun. So, not her mother’s name, merely the birds. ‘The feathery buggers are always about, they agitate her.’ The nurse smiled and Ash’s mouth curved a response, disappointment trying to break through in a frown. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, some revelation, some sense, but it was clear she wasn’t going to get it. The old woman she’d known had deteriorated into this, and pitying her was helping no one.

  She tried one last thing, hoping to catch a glimpse of something lucid. ‘Grandma? Can you tell me about Connal? He came to the house last night. Please, do you know him, Connal?’ What are you even doing, Ash? She doesn’t know who you are and you expect her to know- Her inner ranting cut off at the old woman’s screech, a garbled flurry of sound rushing frantically from her mouth as the knotted knuckles of her fingers dug into Ash’s hand. A burst of energy bleeped through the machines with her elevated heart rate and the nurse quickly hustled to ease her off, Anann’s clawed fingers struggling to retain her grip on Ash’s arm, drawing her in before she slumped back. Ash stood, watching the nurse bustle about, muttering.

  ‘I think it best you go, Dear. It won’t help for her blood pressure to rise, it could push her into another stroke. We’ll look after her.’ Ash was dismissed with another glance, her grandmother’s attention back on the birds outside, stumbling her two-word vocabulary to her reflection in the window. There was no one home again. And she had never felt more alone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Ash may have lain awake that night, huddled beneath the covers and listening for intruders that never materialised, but eventually, fatigue wore her down and she was dragged into the kind of deep, dead sleep she hadn’t enjoyed for months. When she finally awoke to the hound tickling her feet, she wondered at the restorative powers of a dreamless night. God, she was about to jump out of her skin. When you get up in the morning with the jitters and no caffeine in sight, you have permission to freak out. And she was, slowly, twitching as she forced herself to stay in one place while she showered, bouncing on the balls of her feet and rolling her shoulders like a prize fighter about to step into the ring. Maybe it was something in the water. She’d make millions if she bottled the stuff as a cure for the doldrums. She felt powerful and weak all at the same time. She felt sexy, turning this way and that in front of the mirror, wet and naked. She didn’t feel fat with her more than average curves, no, the longer she stared the more she thought the word voluptuous, could actually be applied to her.

  She felt high.

  Or what she assumed it felt like to be high.

  Ash was buzzing and the more she tried to stay still, the more she seemed to vibrate with energy. It wasn’t caffeine, she hadn’t needed any.

  ‘Mutt!’ He came bounding eagerly, streaking through the hallway to skid to a stop at her feet, his muzzle on her chest as he gazed up at her with expectant eyes and a thudding tail. ‘We’re going for a walk.’ The thudding increased, thumping against the wood flooring with enough force to create its own little cyclone of air. Leash clipped to his collar, Ash stepped out into the slightly murky noon that had settled over Dublin and set off for the small patch of rural overgrown behind the square of houses.

  She halted, watching him take off as she unhooked him from his lead, shaking out muscles that had tensed with the wires of energy thrumming through her veins and fought back the urges telling her to run. To bounce and play. The word frolic popped into her head and she shook it away with images of Bambi. When she started to shake in small tremors, Ash re-evaluated her control. Casting her eyes around and finding no one, she launched off from a stand-still into a full out run. Booted feet crushed the grass as the mutt yelped in surprise and scattered from his bound towards her. She raced after him, and darted in the opposite direction as he spun around and galloped after her in all his silver wolfhound glory. His tongue lolled out in a happy doggy smile and she weaved and skipped and danced from his pursuit, crouching playfully and growling a laugh as she turned the tables and forced him into a retreat.

  Ash was tired, but as she turned to head back to the house she now begrudgingly called home, the tension rose, flaring under her skin and caging her in her tracks. If she went back, she’d be bouncing around the rooms like a bunny on crack and she’d get nothing done. The Dublin skies broke their cover of cloud to spear her in shafts of sunlight and it was game over. No sense in wasting the sun to sit indoors and play sorter to a bunch of musty papers. She spun on her heel and tugged the pup into the centre of town, moving towards the shops, the bars and pubs that spilled over with people grasping at this sudden wave of sun. It was with a brow-furrowing revelation that Ash realised she hadn’t stepped foot into the hustling crowds of Dublin’s population, venturing out only to the mini-market for supplies when she ran low. Caught up in the throngs of beings, her head whipped this way and that, trying to take in anything and everything she passed with a tourist’s eye. It was a pretty place, a mix of old and new, of small alleyways and wide streets lined with shops, a million bridges she crossed and crossed back as she got turned around and misplaced. Lost, Ash got drawn down the centre. Her eyes looked through every window, a giant building, spanned in brick and columns, catching her gaze and entreating her to shade her palms against the glass and peer through at the metal statue caged within. Her dog whined, butting his head against her thigh as he flopped into a lie on the concrete and she looked down only briefly before her gaze stuck on something on the plaque at the statue’s feet.

  Hey, I know this guy. ‘Setanta ...’

  The small description said nothing about that name, only of the hero he became, a warrior, Cú Chulainn, Cullen’s Hound. But she knew the tale well; it had been a favourite in the book of Celtic tales she’d purchased on an urge years back. She absently wondered where she’d left that book, whether it had come over with her, or whether it was in a box on a plane somewhere on its way. Far from Cullen’s hound, her own beast of a dog was shifting restlessly at her side, snuffling the glass and slavering dollops of wet on the window.

  ‘Just be lucky you’re behind the glass, dude,’ her palm splayed where the statue was, talking to the frozen, cast in bronze hero, before she succumbed to the pup’s demands and moved off into the crowds.

  Staying on the straight as the horse on the end of the leash whined to play with passersby, nudging his massive skull into their hips and swiping at the faces of children with a drooling tongue, she walked past a tall metal spike that pierced the clouds with its tip and refracted light into blinding shimmers.

  ‘Pretty, so pretty. A blood red butterfly. Fly butterfly, fly ...’ Ash pin-wheeled back from the sudden hand vising her wrist, lashing her arm into the curl of fingers and jerking it out, forcing the grip to loosen and slip from the red flow of her top as she cradled the arm to her chest, eyes wide. The woman wasn’t young, but she was well dressed, prim in a dark grey skirt suit and accented red heels. A business woman if ever Ash had seen one, and yet she fawned over the peasant blouse as though it was made of pure gold. Her eyes too bright, feverish, her nails chipped down to the cuticle with the black polish Ash had seen on others, a fashion from her childhood that had somehow resurfaced.

  But the woman didn’t notice her rigid spine or the slow backing away or even the growling hound spiking his hackles up and blocking the stranger from returning her hands to the red fabric. She still reached, mesmerised and dreamy-eyed and Ash smacked her across the knuckles with the handle of the lead, a panicked attempt at fending her off as she stumbled back and ran. A figure in red streaking down O’Connell Street.

  She didn’t stop running until she hit her front door, slamming the key into the lock and barrelling through into the cool of the house, a tangle of limbs getting her caught up in the flow of her panic. She left the house and she got groped by a crazy in a suit. She travelled on the plane and she
got mithered into a coma by a bag of wrinkled crazy. There seemed to be a recurring theme. And it began with a ‘C’.

  She slammed the bolts home, unsure why she was so shook up, with the pounding of her heart like a drum beating a tirade of energy through her veins and make her think she’d like to run like that again. All fast and wild and uncontrolled racing the streets of Dublin like she was The Flash on steroids. She was out of breath, blanketed in a light sheen of sweat and she felt hot to her very core. His hands, those fiery, light-her-up-and-melt-her-down hands, could have been on her skin again and she was damn sure she would have scorched her intruder with the flush rising off of her body.

  God, why was she thinking of him now, of all times? Because the heat reminded her a little of what he had felt like? Because she kind of relished the inferno swept up within her from exertion? It thawed out a little of the ice control she’d buried her life in and had her bent, gasping, dangling the lead weakly from limp fingers.

  Nothing made sense as she spun about on a surge of energy, wired and twitchy still as her body savoured the pound of endorphins flooding her brain with dizzy. Ash wanted to keep moving and in the same breath, she wanted to collapse here in the hallway and just lay until the world righted and she had her cool calm back. It was a tug of war that had her dancing on the balls of her feet, falling into the cushions of the sofa, and pacing on up again before her ass had time to leave a print in the soft-worn leather.

  ‘Damn. I’m more wired than you today, Setanta.’ Ash scruffed her newly named dog behind his ears, as bouncy as she was, trotting after her whenever she got to treading the waters of her rapidly increasing restlessness. She couldn’t stay in another night, she couldn’t ... she probably should. With the way she was vibrating, she’d be snatched up by the police for being drugged-up or caught by a guy with a giant butterfly net.