by Black, Paula
Relieved, his boots hit the pavement, falling into a rhythmic step that mirrored hers. As he walked, Connal was acutely aware of the pounding thud of his own heart, a primal beat drumming at the base of his neck that was nothing to do with the exertion of keeping up with his quarry and everything to do with the big yellow disc in the night sky. He felt the quickening in his blood like a live wire in his veins, amped-up, vital and savage. The proximity of the Thralls wasn’t helping any. It wasn’t yet midnight when they hit the city centre, but already they were encroaching on the streets. A riotous carnival of red, they overtook him on waves of bawdy laughter and debauched revelry, a glassy-eyed, high-energy, psyched-up herd, driven by their own ravening desires. The tourists looked on bemused, entertained by the parade of this private party that seemed to have spilled out onto the city’s streets.
But Connal stared in horror over the heads of the crowd swarming up Dame Street, watching as more and more revellers poured from the side streets to join the party’s swollen ranks. The sheer numbers hit him sure as a cold slap in the face. This was not an infestation. This was a fucking epidemic. MacTire’s invasion had crept up on him by stealth, and it seriously grated that Nan DeMorgan had rubbed his nose in the shit, while he’d wallowed in whiskey and denial. Like a drove of migrating animals they converged on Form. His eyes scanned the crowd, fearing he would lose his mark amongst the sea of red, but, thankfully, Ashling DeMorgan was moving against the tide. If she made it to Form, she wouldn’t be coming away the same person, assuming she got out of there at all. Eyes firmly on the prize, Connal was unaware of the roadblock until it literally came crashing into him, in the form of a brace of high-vamp females.
‘Hell-o, big guy.’ The brunette purred seductively through full lips, stained blood red. ‘Ready to party, handsome?’
The second girl, a bottle redhead, pressed a flyer for the full moon party into his chest, grazing her words along his jaw. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere? Are you famous or something?’
Her partner stroked his bicep with her half-black talons and sucked on her teeth, moistening her lips with the pink tip of her tongue. ‘I’ve seen this one at the club, Steph. Never forget a fine thing like you.’
The recruitment tag team weren’t twins, but the matching coquette poses and black uniforms, skin tight, all greyhound skirts and exposed, plunging cleavage, had clearly been carefully calculated to tap into that particular male fantasy. He imagined it was normally a very successful strategy, but as he stared at the Celtic insignia of Form embroidered on the breast pockets in red silk, all Connal could think of was that he hoped to hell Liath hadn’t pulled the full moon shift at the club tonight. The thought of her out pimping for MacTire like this made him sick to the stomach. He should have, could have, done more to dissuade her from taking the job. Just one more reminder of how he’d dropped the ball.
Furious with himself, he brushed off the female attention a little too roughly, then regretted it instantly as the brunette rubbed dramatically at her wrist and levelled him with a wounded pout. Her redhead partner gave him the hairy eyeball. ‘No call to be nasty, ye know, we’re just doing a job here.’
The brunette flipped her hair and carefully rearranged her ruffled expression. ‘Yeah, you seriously need to take a chill pill, Mister.’ With that, she slapped another flyer into his open palm and the pair dissolved back into the crowd. Connal looked down and stared at the leaflet in his hand. That’s when he remembered his purpose. He scanned the thinning crowd again for Ashling DeMorgan’s distinctive rear profile, panic rising in his blood. Somewhere in the run-in with the duo of Form waitresses, she had dropped off his radar and was nowhere to be seen.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Fingers trailing the wall, her gaze was seeking out the next grid when she came up against an obstruction in the brick. No longer raspy under the pad, it was paper, shiny glossed and smooth. A poster, backlit by a blood red moon, a half-crescent of black served as banner for the proclamation of ‘Full Moon Party! We’ll Make You Howl At FORM!!!’ and then the address in silver, glittering in one corner. Form. The name rang the bell of familiarity and sent it pealing around her memories in search of the context. She should know it. Ash tilted her head, looking down the street, and for the first time noticed that the posters covered every wall in a long line of colour. How did I not see that?! She followed it, drawn by the straight, meticulously perfect positioning that led in the direction she was going. They hadn’t been there when she’d first gone into the pub ... had they?
Ash was so concentrated on the path of posters and where they might lead that she didn’t realise she’d walked nearly halfway home before she stumbled over something small and tripped to support herself, swinging on the hard, biting corner of brick and falling right into something that was definitely not a grungy alley wall.
‘Hey, whoa there. You ok, Miss?’ Strong hands held her shoulders as she righted herself from her precarious unbalance against the wall. A guy coming out of the brickwork to stop her face planting.
‘I’m fine ...’ Ash shrugged his hands from her with an itch, a shiver of muscle bunching under his fingers. ‘You always leave cans in the middle of walkways? Is that how you draw poor unsuspectings down dark alleys?’ She huffed, cheeks burning with embarrassment, brushing dust and damp moss from the red of her coat with loving fingers, only raising frowning eyes when she was sure she hadn’t twisted an ankle. Her palms throbbed though, but she was too aware that she was alone in a side street with a stranger to want to look down now.
‘I’m sorry,’ he was laughing at her, and she scowled. ‘It was an empty can, I didn’t need it. Didn’t think you were going to walk right into it. It’s not invisible.’
Eyes rolling, she flushed a bit more and waved at the posters he’d slipped up to the graffiti’d wall, already papered with shreds of ‘Missing Person’ flyers and ‘Have you seen this Girl?’ pleas that got lost under his advertising. ‘Are these parties good? Form seems to be a bit of a name around town.’ Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, but Liath had mentioned it and she didn’t think this guy would protest her bigging up his workplace.
His head cocked, dark eyes crinkling as he assessed her, dirty blonde hair flopping around on his forehead in a carefully styled, ragged mess. ‘You’re not from around here, are you? Form’s the best place in town bar none. And no party beats a Full Moon party. This shit right here is why people are meant to be on this earth. This is happiness, sweetheart.’
He shifted his weight and she shifted hers, leaning away as he came in closer. His words were over-confident and a little put on, but enthusiastic, happy. It was his tone and the way his eyes travelled her head to breasts to toe to breasts again that got her hackles up and gave her the slick feeling all over. He towered over her, whispering close like he had some secret to impart and she was the only one he would bestow it upon.
‘I could show you, teach you how we party in Form.’ It was issued as an offer and spoken like a demand. His eyes threatened as his lips entreated. ‘It’s not far, just up by Dublin Castle. Not far at all.’ He could have been the Cheshire Cat for all the wide smiling and purring. But she wasn’t Alice and when his fingers spread out across the velvet arm of her coat, she didn’t trust in him to take her to Wonderland.
‘I’m not dressed for clubbing ...’ Ash forced a playful laugh from her throat as she danced out of his reach, ducking around him to take a step towards the opening of the alley.
He moved quicker than she could, hands planted either side of her head, walling her in against the brick with a leering, toothy grin. The exit seemed so damn far away as her face turned from his and she batted at the hand that slipped to once more stroke his fingers down her coat, from shoulder to wrist, long and leisurely. ‘You don’t need to be dressed at all ...’
Ash went cold. The dread that had been swirling in her stomach dropped a ton of rocks to weigh her down in a pool of panic. She should have got the hell out of Dodge when she’d first stumbled in
to him, when she’d got the heebies under his gaze, when the twitching energy that had possessed her body all week had suddenly up and frozen solid in her veins in a chilled tension. His hands were moving, one squeezing her jaw as his face leaned close and he inhaled with a Hannibal intensity. Fava beans and Chianti to go with a slice of freaking out female, Sir?
‘You smell ...’ He groaned, and her eyes popped wide. Shit, he really was going to cook her!! Ash was flailing now. The second time since she’d been in this godforsaken city that she was being surprised by a man intent on doing her harm. If this shit came in threes ... She fought, bursting into an explosion of fear that clawed her hands at his face and had her struggling to reach something, anything to crow-bar the idiot off her.
‘You smell too,’ she hissed, muffling a whimper of pain as his fingers clawed into her hip, his face still buried against her throat with those wet, breathing inhales, like he was trying to breathe her in through his own saliva. One hand pushing at his face, she fumbled, his weight leaning her into the wall and leaving barely an inch for her to fight into the insides of the bag. Whereisitwhereisitwhereisit??!! She’d thought it a funny thing to buy, a pretty little piece of silver, all engraved with Celtic swirls ... a pattern that had intrigued and captivated her. She hadn’t been able to say no. And the street vendor had given her a pretty velvet bag to go with it. Ash whimpered again, her fingers sliding right off the fabric as his body crowded hers, harder, pressing into her like he could convince her to play along to his tune and dance for his lusts.
FINALLY!! The metal slipped free and Ash flicked it out, jerking her hand from the concealment of the bag to brandish the small blade at the guy’s throat. She was trembling and her hand shook, slightly dimming the threat factor as she stuffed the point into the skin under his jaw, pressing to him as hard as he advanced into her. Far from confident, Ash was psyching herself up to do what she had to, but suddenly, arming herself in her bouncy paranoia didn’t seem like a brilliant idea. The blade had seemed so practical, a ward against any other grabby people that decided they could space out and touch her, but now ...
‘Back off, fucker. I don’t want to go to your club and I’d really like to keep my clothes on.’ Her fear lay stress to the syllables. How had it come to this? Ash could barely keep pace with the world around her, she was moving too fast, or it was, or something like that.
He laughed in her face. Tilted his jaw into the point. Let her bleed him some as he bore down on her with a gleam in his eye, all manic. ‘You think I give a damn about what you’d like?!’ All mirth, all unhinged, the switch had been flipped and she hadn’t even noticed the tipping point. She was pinned in an alley with a madman who got off on her little blade being in his skin. Ash swallowed. And then the world went dark, the lights went out and the shadows took possession of the alley to re-form and shape on the trash-littered floor.
Connal threw a hulking shadow that blocked out the light at the mouth of the alley. He rounded the corner, nostrils flaring on a snarl at the mingled scents of fear and blood that made him see red. Overpowered by the stench of the male that had Ashling DeMorgan pinned against the grime-smeared wall, fury whipped a violent black storm through his veins. If the bastard had bled her, Connal was going to hang, draw and quarter the son of a bitch with nothing but his bare hands. His lip curled and when he spoke, his voice had the edge of a razor blade. ‘Now would be a really good time to back the fuck off.’
Blondie’s head whipped around in his direction, evil simmering in dark eyes, a twisted smirk contorting what might otherwise be a conventionally handsome face. Whatever smart ass remark had been forming in his mind crumbled to dust, though, as recognition wiped the confidence off his face. ‘Hey, hey now, chillax there, my man, just helping out a lost tourist, showing her the meaning of the céad míle fáilte, know what I mean?’ Blondie plastered a fake smile onto his mug and released Ashling’s face from his grip, patting her cheek. ‘Isn’t that right, sweetheart?’
Connal’s eyes narrowed to slits of cold steel. He could tell her knees were trembling because the little blade she held was amplifying her fear like a seismograph, shimmey-shaking a dance in her white-knuckled grip. ‘Uhhhuh, and I suppose she’s cultivating these cross-cultural relations by teaching you to shave with her nail file?’
Blondie’s hand shot up to his throat and came away bloodied. ‘Crazy foreign bitch pulled a knife on me!’
‘Good for her.’ Connal’s mouth curved into the hint of a smile.
So it was Blondie’s blood he’d smelled, not DeMorgan’s. Nothing would turn this shitty night around better than carving the self-righteous smirk off this asshole’s face. The thought of letting him walk was anathema to everything he was. He’d never willingly allowed one of MacTire’s boys to walk away from a fight. But the DeMorgan girl already distrusted him, and watching him go Freddy Krueger on this guy was only going to make it harder. Grinding his molars, he stepped aside and growled at the guy to get gone. Blondie scuttled by, hugging the wall of the alley furthest away from Connal. If he’d said boo to the creep, he’d have jumped out of his own skin. And wasn’t that tempting? But the Latent was his priority. Approaching her slowly, he wrapped a hand around her fisted knife grip. ‘You can let go now,’ non-threatening, making light of the situation. ‘Wouldn’t want you giving yourself a paper-cut with that ... letter opener?’ He stroked his thumb down her clenched knuckles and levelled steely eyes on her ashen face. Fear-widened eyes narrowed as they fixed on his, laser beams of sapphire imprinting her panic onto him.
Ash barely felt his hand on hers, she could only feel the hard, skin-warmed metal beneath her fingers and if she let go ... She wouldn’t be safe. He was talking, Connal, her shock-dazed mind reminded her, and she forced herself to follow the shape of his words, waited for her heart to stop pounding enough that she could hear over the din. With recognition came the wave of heat and the sliver of ice shafting panic down her spine. From one nightmare to another, she was up close and personal with the male that had sent her into a near comatose horror the last time they met. He was the trigger for nightmares that warped and bled across her conscious and subconscious mind alike until she drowned in the stain. She could feel her body trembling up a storm of adrenaline, crashing from the fight that had battled her to knife-point. When she finally persuaded her mouth to work, what breached her lips wasn’t a scream of terror but an indignant huff of a verbal stomped foot.
‘It’s not a letter opener, it’s a pocket knife.’ She brandished it in front of his eyes, waving her fist free from his hold with an agitated flick. The light flashed against the silver in a way that would have been cool if something else hadn’t jolted into her head, with a Hey, wait a minute!!
‘Shit! You were following me, weren’t you?’ Ash’s heartbeat hammered back up to a flat out gallop. She was mentally writing his résumé. Breaking and entering. Check. Stalking. Check. Homicidal maniac was penciled in. With the way blonde fucktard had legged it, she wasn’t crossing it off just yet. After all, what monsters fear, she figured she certainly should. ‘How long were you standing there? Did you enjoy the show?’
Arms folding across his chest, he regarded her from behind his defensive posture. Alibis hadn’t figured in his split-second, heat of the moment, reaction plan. Way to charm the lady, Savage, she’s officially scared shitless of you. ‘Seems like you should be grateful I was here.’
Her exhale could have been a language all its own, heavy with annoyance and a hint of embarrassment. But defiance had a louder voice. What did the creepy stalker expect? A red carpet, hero’s welcome? Hell, she didn’t think she could spit up a ‘Thank You’ if it had been jammed down her throat covered in rat poison. ‘I was handling myself perfectly well before you showed up.’
One dark slash of a brow quirked up and there was a hint of amusement in Connal’s voice. ‘So I noticed. Your grand plan being to poke the bad guy with your pointy nail file thingy?’
‘Oh, right and that’s the technical term
, is it?’ Ash scoffed, brushing dirt from her coat with the knuckles still curled around the knife. She shifted her weight and looked back up at him. Fuming didn’t begin to cover it, but laughter was a step behind and she would not let it out. ‘I drew blood. I cut him.’
Her chin raised up a notch and she dared him to laugh. Her blade may not be more than a toothpick against his bulk but even a toothpick could hurt if it was jabbed in one’s eye.
He tilted his head slightly and the corners of his mouth twitched. ‘And how was that working out for you?’
‘Look, dude,’ the knife stabbed in his direction, emphasising her point, ‘I can take care of myself, I don’t need a babysitter.’ Ash bit down on the slice of vulnerability that threatened to filter her annoyance on herself. She was not a child, and she didn’t need to be watched.
‘And yet you’re out alone, wandering the streets of Dublin city, dressed like bait.’ How could she not see it? She might as well hang a sign around her neck saying ‘Fresh meat.’
Dark brows shot up into her hairline, casting sapphire eyes wide in incredulity. Her words were clipped with a growing vexation. ‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with the way I’m dressed.’
Unable to help himself, his heated gaze rode up the length of her body and the crimson velvet of her jacket. He swallowed, hard, before settling his low-lidded eyes on hers. So much was so very right. ‘Right, and those guys at the pub weren’t all over you like flies on sugar?’ As soon as they escaped his mouth, Connal found himself recoiling from his own words. His green-eyed monster was front face and forward, riding him hard, mocking his weakness. ‘Nice coat.’