by Black, Paula
‘It makes you different, Ash, an unknown quantity.’ He paused to overtake a tractor in the road, before turning back to meet her eyes with a dark expression. ‘Did you know your real father?’
Her head shook, a veil of raven curls cascading to cover her features. ‘No, my mother had pictures but, it hurt her to show them. I stopped asking.’ Ash had learned young that anything to do with her biological father made her mother cry. And only faint impressions lingered. A new silence travelled with them along an evening road and she watched the shadows lengthen, stretching out dark fingers to catch at them as they sped up. Driving into nowhere, winding upwards, her thoughts were as confused as the bends in the road, taking them into a sudden stop that halted her mind’s turnings to a soft, smiling question. ‘Where are we?’
‘Johnny Fox’s, the highest pub in Ireland.’ Cutting the engine, he shifted in the seat to offer her a crooked smile, rough fingers tucking a stray curl behind her ear. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink. Putting it politely, today has been a triple A, gold-plated mind-fuck.’
Mind-fuck, indeed ... Ash crossed her legs under her, perched on a chair at the heavy wood table by the fire, half watching Connal at the bar with a brunette, half trying not to dart her head around, checking out every single person in the place like they could be looking to eat her. It was a pretty pub, old, fragranced by the smoky musk of burning peat. She exhaled, face dropping into her hands and just took the quiet to breathe.
Palming the two glasses of Guinness, Connal thanked the bar girl and tread the old floorboards back to where Ash was sitting at the table. Her hair was as wild as the firelight dancing in the over-bright blue of her eyes, her cheeks flushed pink from the outdoors, and the crying. In his baggy sweats and threadbare Angels’ shirt, he thought she’d never looked more beautiful.
‘Don’t we make a fine pair.’ Connal laughed huskily, folding his broad frame into the wooden chair designed for a much smaller man. There was dirt under his nails as he slid the glass of stout in her direction, callused fingers brushing her hands where she’d laid them on the table.
A scoffed agreement. She was pretty sure she looked homeless and he looked like a model for some new grunge trend. All male and completely gorgeous, decorated in flecks of mud and clingy moss. Even the red rim of his tears couldn’t detract. Bastard. She took the glass with a murmured ‘thank you’, flexed her fingers to stroke along his, a shy smile offered in his direction.
Lifting his glass, he tipped it to hers, a smile creasing the corners of his eyes. ‘Tears, wine and the company of friends ... a thirteenth Century cure for depression and sadness. Sláinte!’
A clink of glasses, a curve of lips that didn’t quite touch her eyes. ‘To Setanta, the biggest cuddle monster, the most loyal sock chewer, our guardian always ...’
‘To the mutt.’ He replied, the words tinged with sadness and then, as the old poem said, they drank deep and were silent.
A breath in the silence, breaking it. ‘What’s going to happen to me, Connal?’
‘I don’t know.’ His large hand reached to cover hers across the table. She was trembling.
‘I mean, if they win, if they take me. What will they do to me, apart from the obvious?’ She couldn’t begin to imagine what their ‘breeding’ entailed, but it looked too much like something from Animal Planet in her head to make her ... Comfortable was NOT the right word.
‘Same as happened to the others, the ones that walked willingly into Form or refused DeMorgan’s offer of Sanctuary.’ She would disappear into their underworld, never to be seen again. For all his frankness, he couldn’t bring himself to voice what they both already knew.
‘They’ll kill me?’ Of all the worst case scenarios, this was probably the best. Her fingers curled into his.
Absently, he ran his thumb over the Celtic engravings on the band of her ring, chewing over words that threatened to choke him. ‘They will bite you, to test your response to the eitr.’
‘And that will make me a sex slave? Like the girls at the club.’ Ash’s nose crinkled, working that thought through her head and encountering only disgust.
‘That’s one possibility.’ He ground out the admission through clenched molars, beating back images of her infected with their poison, black nailed and disinhibited, begging on her knees for their brand of abuse. But there were worse outcomes. ‘Some humans can’t take the high, they’re driven to insane violence. It’s no coincidence Jonathan Swift built an insane asylum right at the site of the Dubh Linn.’
Oh joy, she’d either be a mindless fuck-zombie, or a homicidal human Cujo ... ‘Is there a door number three?’
‘There’s a slim chance you might actually have enough wolf blood in you, that you could take the eitr and it would activate your latent genetics.’ He stared daggers into the pine table, unable to face her with the fury in his eyes. ‘That’s what they’re hoping for.’
‘To turn me into one of them?!!!’ Electric ran through her body in a jolt of emotion. She was freaked, a touch of abhorrence threaded through her tone before she could reel it back and tamp it down. And then a knock on her internal door poked her to her realisation. He was one of them and she’d all but implied that of all desirable things to be, he ranked somewhere beneath toe fungus. Sheepish, she kept her gaze on their hands, her delicate fingers woven through strong callused ones in a tight grip.
Her reaction shouldn’t have affected him. Hell, he carried around enough self-loathing to fill a black hole, but still, her words cut and he fought the urge to pull back his hands. He was done with retreating, though. Something essential between them had changed out there in the woods. Instead of pulling away, he met her eyes full on. ‘It could make you fertile, capable of bearing their progeny. As to whether you would become wolf, nobody can answer that question. It’s never worked.’
It was another outcome, so why did it still feel like a death sentence? Head hung, her voice came out with a bitter edge. ‘So when you say slim chance, what you actually mean is no chance. Don’t sugar coat the pill, I’m not a child.’
‘No.’ His fingers tipped her chin, lifting her eyes back to him. ‘You’re different from the others. An unknown quantity, like I said. Anann DeMorgan said it too, she warned me. If you really are her granddaughter, then you are more than human.’
‘But we don’t know that until I get bitten and we find out?’ Always the hardest route up the mountain ...
‘I’m sorry.’ It was his turn to hang his head.
A beat of that dreaded, heavy silence and then her soul was on its knees. ‘I want you to do it.’
‘What?!’ His head whipped up, sure as if she’d slapped him.
Tone sure, she clarified. ‘I want you to be the one to bite me.’ If she had to be anyone’s sex zombie, she wanted to be his.
‘I won’t do that to you. You saw what you could become.’ Fear played across the heavy frown furrowing his brow.
‘But you won’t hurt me, you won’t abuse me, use me to repopulate the world.’
The muscles in his jaw clenched tight, his hand curling into a fist on the table. She needed to know what he was. If she knew, she would never be asking this of him. ‘I don’t just kill wolves, Ash. The Thralls, the ones that turn vicious, I kill them too.’
‘If that happens,’ Swallow, breathe, Ash ... ‘I trust you, to grant me the same release, if it goes badly, don’t let me hurt anyone.’
‘No!’ His fist slammed down on the wood, drawing the eyes of the drinkers scattered around the other tables. He glared at them until they turned their attention studiously back to the drinks in front of them, shuffling their feet in fearful submission.
‘I won’t do it.’ He hissed.
‘You have a better suggestion?’ Teeth gritted, she was growling, her hands on the clenched fist he pounded into the table. ‘I turn rabid, you have my permission to shoot me in the head.’ Her nails cut crescents into his skin, bloodying him with her tense, mounting desperation. ‘I tur
n into one of their slaves, they won’t be interested in me any more.’ She tried for lightness, tipping her head to draw his gaze to hers. ‘So I’ll be a drooling fembot in the bedroom two nights a month. I already want you.’
Touché . ‘You have no idea what you’re asking of me.’ His voice was lowered to a growled whisper. ‘And what if you turned wolf?’ A challenge thrown back at her, determined to use all the ammunition at his disposal to turn her from this insane logic.
She took the bullets with a shocked sort of calm. Returned them quietly, steady-voiced. ‘I want to be able to make my own choices. At least I could fight them off.’
‘I can’t do it. I won’t.’ The legs of his chair screeched back on the boards, withdrawing himself from the table of this insane negotiation with a determined glare.
‘And again I say, you have a better alternative?’
The growl of frustration ripped from his throat. ‘We go to your Grandmother.’
‘Cause that’s not the longest shot in the history of longshots. Ash huffed, annoyed and angry, scowling at their hands. He hadn’t let go of her yet and the thought made tears brim as helpless frustration rocked inside her head. They were on a roundabout, circling and never agreeing.
Stalemate.
Silence reigned, King of their bubble, their glasses drained as a tactile link kept them close. She needed his touch, it was comforting and real. He could lead her through any one of those doors and she knew she’d follow, trusting him not to hurt her, or allow her to hurt others.
But any one of the outcomes could make or break them. It could destroy this ... whatever they had ... and doom her.
She barely noticed when he cradled her hand in both of his to lead her from the table, and the warmth of the pub, into the cool evening. Ash had never been one for praying, but she begged the stars above them for something.
An epiphany that could save them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Crap!’ The mascara wand jerked in her hand as Liath swept it through her lashes. Moistening a tissue to dab at the black smudge on her eyelid, she took a deep, cleansing breath and blotted the rouge staining her lips, suddenly feeling over made-up. First date jitters made her feel fifteen again, not a mother with a four year old son. Her own mother’s downstairs toilet, with its dated decor and the thousand memories clinging to its chintzy walls did nothing to dispel the whole Back to The Future illusion.
She dragged the tissue over her lips, didn’t want to seem desperate. Doyle was gorgeous, a total ride. A fella like him could smell desperation on an older woman at fifty paces. With a mental slap, she reminded herself this wasn’t actually a date at all. But hey, a single mum on the wrong side of thirty had to grab every opportunity by the horns. Liath had imagined a very different conversation when she brazenly scribbled down her number and slipped it into the pocket of Doyle’s tight white tee. After what Connal told her, though, she’d all but consigned Doyle to her lost cause basket. So when she’d taken the private number call that morning, she expected his voice at the end of the line about as much as a call from Elvis beyond the grave. His news was less surprising. After she’d left the club, Connal had gotten into a scrap. Doyle broke it up and brought him home, but Connal was in need of TLC and was asking for Liath.
That she would go to Connal’s aid was never in question. They shared the kind of ugly past that forges unconditional loyalty. Copping a ride with handsome and broody was just the cherry on the cake. Funny, she hadn’t figured those two were tight, but with Connal, you couldn’t always tell. Knowing her uncanny magnetism for bad boys and assholes, she squeezed out a silent prayer that Doyle would be different.
God knew, she’d picked some choice bastards in her time.
Her father’s sermonising voice chose that moment to pop into her head. ‘The portion of fornicators will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur ...’ Well, she’d certainly lived down to the Reverend’s low expectations. The more he pushed, the more she rebelled and her mother and the doctors could say what they wanted about blocked coronary arteries, she knew her pregnancy had put him in an early grave. ‘The dogs shall devour Jezebel ... and none shall bury her.’ Bible-thumping Daddy would be spinning in that grave now, to see her in his house, painting her face for a stranger. God, there had been a time, once, when she’d idolised the man, been his perfect little angel. A strand of blonde hair slipped free, tickling her nose as she peered in close to the mirror, trying to see the girl she had been then. A flicker remained, and that’s what she grasped at now. It had taken her good years hunting that light, she refused to let it get darkened again.
Goddamnit, she was going to start leaking and spoil her mascara. It was ancient history. She smoothed her hair into place and stepped into the hall, closing the door on her insecurities and the ghosts of her past.
‘Mam?’ Liath raised her voice a fraction to carry wherever the other woman could be, the laughter of her son joyous and bright as she stepped along the hall. A smile brightened her eyes when the plump, carelined face poked around the kitchen door, silver-streaked, ash-blonde curls pushed from her mother’s questioning smile.
‘Are you sure about minding Josh? I promise I won’t be gone long.’ A soft laugh and the door was pushed wide, bag of flour held carefully in strong fingers and Liath followed into the kitchen space her mother practically lived in.
‘Of course not, dear. I adore having my grandson here to keep me company.’ And he was, on his belly on the floor letting a small golden dog nose under his body for treats, laughing so hard his little face was red and he was squirming from the cold-nosed tickling.
It was a pretty picture, her mother moving around the kitchen, cleaning up after another baking craze, a fuller figured version of herself, laughter-creased and smile-wrinkled, but held up with a good, elegant bone structure that still made her one of the most beautiful women Liath knew. How had she put up with that man for so many years? The woman was either a saint or a total masochist. Every day it was like looking into a mirror of a possible future self, but she wanted those laughter lines instead of the frown furrows she imagined forming and setting up permanent shop between her brows.
The soft buzz of the doorbell jolted her renewed calm with a jerk of fizzing nerves, and suddenly she was all motion, fluffing at her hair, flustered and grabbing up her purse off the counter. Time to open the door ... she could do this. But her path was slow to reach it, the doorbell going off once more before she managed to swing the front door wide, and smile a faintly shy smile at the man on the other side.
‘Would your gentleman friend like a cup of tea, Dear?’ The gentle voice reached through before she could utter any greeting and Liath scowled, a teenager embarrassed by her mother’s familiarity. Cup of tea, my ass. The nosy woman wanted to vet any male to step through the doors and kill them with kindness and refreshments. Her mouth was open to say ‘no, Mam, we’re going to head straight out. No damn tea ...’ but she only got so far as a huff of sound before Doyle spoke his pleasure.
‘You’re too kind, Mrs Murphy. I’d murder a cup of tea. Milk, two sugars please.’
That voice, whether it was the low tone or just the new, strange presence in the house, the normally docile, sleek furred dog erupted into a frenzy of yapping barks, small paws scrabbling to dart through legs that moved to trap her.
‘Lady! Where are your manners? I’m so sorry, she’s usually good with strangers. A terrible guard dog.’ An uncharacteristic worry line creased Mrs Murphy’s brow. ‘I’ll put her out. Liath, why don’t you see your friend into the sitting room and I’ll put the kettle on.’
Liath obeyed simply to speed along their exit. The quicker the tea was made, the quicker it was drunk, the quicker they were gone. She led him, and his straight-off-the-magazine, teenage-fantasy looks, into the cosy spread of chairs that made up their living room. Nerves made an ordinarily sultry walk, the walk she used when she worked, into a slight stumbling jitter. She blamed it on the rug. Totally tripped.
When Josh wandered in, making a beeline for her with a heart-melting pout on his face, Liath knew his grandmother hadn’t let him follow after the dog she could still hear barking outside. Her arms reached to soothe him, settling herself on the arm of the couch so she could hold him.
He never made it to her.
Doyle swept him off his feet as he passed and deposited the small boy on his lap with a laugh. Her heart leapt, a mother’s nerves creeping through the smile on her lips, but the easy amusement in Doyle’s gaze never wavered, and she calmed some.
‘So you’re the man of the house?’ A large hand ruffled at the mop of Josh’s blonde curls, his knee bouncing her son until his child’s laughter sounded through the room. ‘Damn, I feel like fucking Santa Claus.’
‘You said a bad word.’ That drew a frown from laughter, little face scrunching up, small hands on Doyle’s as Josh squirmed to get down and the hold on him tightened. Doyle held fast, until the boy protested and Liath reached for her son, worry starting a crawl up her throat.
‘Let him go, you’re frightening him!’
She would have moved, would have stood and forcibly removed her boy from Doyle’s lap if the man she’d let into her mother’s house hadn’t had one thing.