by Black, Paula
The blade was small, but it glinted with a lethal edge that said it wasn’t just for show, combing through the fine baby curls of Josh’s hair, the adorable ones she still hadn’t found the heart to cut, like it was nothing more than the brush her boy hated so much. He couldn’t see it, that much was clear. But Liath could and it was stabbing into her heart with every spin through that soft blonde hair. Like curling ribbon with scissors.
Her voice was angered, hissing fear. ‘You son of a bitch!’
‘Do you kiss your son here with that dirty mouth?’ The bastard laughed, but there was no darkness in it. It was joy. He was enjoying this.
The pain intensified, spearing her through with knots of terror as Josh laughed with him, the point of the blade trailing over sensitive skin, so light it tickled her small son. She could barely keep a grasp on herself, shaking through and through, rocked to the depths of a terror she hadn’t felt in years. She always let the bad men in it seemed.
Doyle put a finger to his lips, his smile so bright she searched for a manic taint. ‘Your mother looks frail, wouldn’t want to give the poor woman a heart attack.’
‘You bastard.’ She gritted the words and Josh gasped, his wide eyes disapproving her choice of language.
Doyle leaned in close, petting the top of her son’s head with the flat of the blade and uttered words that set her heart into spasms, her breath trapped in her lungs, throat closed in a panic of anger. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. Little Josh here is going to take a trip with me. You’re going to find your friend Connal and tell him to get his whore to Form at midnight tonight and we’ll make a trade. Any later, and I can’t guarantee the merchandise won’t be damaged, beyond repair, know what I mean?’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
It was late evening when Connal pulled the hearse up to the kerb outside the gates of the DeMorgan house and killed the engine. The skies, like the atmosphere between them had brightened, the downhill journey from the mountains filled with easy banter as they’d found common ground in music while fighting over radio stations. Heaving against the wrought-iron gate, Ash called dibs on the shower. He locked the car and followed her up the path, calling after her that his shower was easily big enough for two, when a movement in the shadows of the porch grabbed his attention. Barrelling forward, he growled at Ash to hold up, blocking her way with the tensed wall of his body.
A blonde head peeled away from the shadows.
‘Liath!’ His heart flopped inside his ribcage, relief that they hadn’t been ambushed rapidly congealing into concern at the girl’s disheveled state. He bounded up the steps two at a time to meet her on the porch. ‘Liath?’
He caught the movement in his peripheral, registered her arm swing a split second before she slapped her palm hard across his jaw, a cracking impact that left a stinging imprint of her hand.
‘You bastard!!!’ She cried. There was grief and desperation in her reedy, cracking voice as she pounded her clenched hands against his chest, clinging to him even through the assault.
‘What the heck, Liath. What happened?’
What the heck is right!! Ash took grip of the leash chaining the beast of her jealousy and tugged, trying to hold back the growl that rose up at Liath’s feminine assault. Anger demanded to know what betrayal had her neighbour pummelling her man’s chest like a punch bag. She stood back, her weight shifted from foot to foot, a scowl on her lips and a heavy dread in the pit of her stomach. Ash feared what the woman would say. A selfish reaction, definitely, but the first thing that came to mind was, oh fuck, he got her pregnant, followed by, no, shit, don’t think that.
If she was, well, Connal would have a family again ...
Chin dropping, arms wrapping around herself, Ash made herself as small as possible in the background. The rage of tiny female hitting up on a wall of mammoth male would have been amusing, if the weight of confusion didn’t sit heavily on her mind.
The sobbing was incessant. Liath couldn’t breathe enough to get words out, and her angry cries were a jumble of words beating at Connal’s chest. Ash strained to listen and the dread that lay like lead in her stomach expanded, rock hard. She couldn’t unhear what she heard in the tumble of angry sound spilling sudden sense from Liath’s mouth, and it was far, far worse than she could have imagined.
Ash glanced around, the street was quiet, but shadows lurked. ‘Come inside, Liath.’ Nudging Connal out of the way, her guiding arm came around the tear-drowned female. ‘You need to calm and tell us everything ... shhh ...’ Probably a pointless soothe, but the other woman’s sobs quieted as the door was unlocked and they ushered her into the looming protection of her grandmother’s house.
They sat in triangular formation around Anann DeMorgan’s Chesterfield suite, a triad of shock in all its manifestations. Ash was, well, ashen. Connal was seething, his upper lip curled involuntarily into a snarl. Liath was, by now, hysterical. Having extracted her account of the morning’s events in a broken series of hitched sobs and tormented cries, she was physically breaking down before their eyes.
‘Can’t ... breathe’, she panted. ‘My baby!!’ Her nails clawed into the red velvet pile of the armchair, her chest sawed rapidly, the pulse at her throat fluttering like a trapped bird.
‘She’s hyperventilating,’ Connal growled, failing to contain the vicious edge to his anger. Shifting to his knees before Liath, he covered her clawed hands with his own and spoke to the terror in her eyes. ‘I’ll bring him home to you. I swear it.’ He cranked his head around to Ash. ‘We need to do something, or she’ll pass out. You got a paper bag?’
‘Oh!’ Ash leapt up, from motionless, pale and drawn, to animated with purpose. ‘I have something better! Somewhere ...’ Drawing out the word, she rummaged through the drawers at the side of the couch, pushing away a tub of bobby pins and rooting for a brown cylinder. ‘I have Valium! Never used them for the flight ...’ Muttering about blasted drugs, Ash came up smiling, the small tube of pills held proudly.
Finally she could help the poor woman fighting for breath, her hand clutched over her heart like there was a razor screw in there that just kept turning. Ash pressed the pills into Connal’s hand whilst she fetched water and returned to offer two of the small, white pills alongside the glass.
Liath’s hand trembled, reaching. ‘Promise me.’ Her stare, watery, jade-green eyes, entreated them both. ‘Take me with you, when you go. My baby will need me. You take me with you.’
‘Of course. Midnight, on the dot. You’ll be with us to make the exchange. We’ll get your boy back ...’ Ash didn’t know if she was lying or not, but the words must have held some tone of truth because Liath nodded, relief exhaled on a shudder. She figured she imagined the sharp disapproving glare Connal shot her, shrugged it off. ‘Take them, I promise they’ll help.’ She nudged her hand, coaxing Liath to gulp them down and waited for the swallow before she sat back, cross-legged on the floor.
‘She needs to rest, Ash. It’s hours ‘til midnight.’ Connal’s hand brushed her knee, flashing her the briefest glimpse of gratitude, before he stood and took to pacing the rugs of the period living room.
Fingers gently met, the quickest of contacts as he rose above her. The warmth of that touch lingered a comfort as she pushed to her feet. She needed to be doing anything but nothing and the excuse was a welcome one, injecting her with another dose of usefulness. Liath was drowsing, calmed some, her eyes red with drying tears and Ash touched her shoulder gently. ‘You’ll feel better once you’ve rested. I have a spare room, you can lay down for a while. You’ll be no good to Josh exhausted.’ When the blonde nodded her assent, Ash hooked her hand under her elbow and carefully eased her to her feet, like she was fragile, guiding every step to navigate the house until she could see her to her room.
Connal closed the door after them with more force than was necessary. He waited until he heard footfalls on the upstairs landing, hatred festering a growl in his throat. What kind of scum-sucking bastard took a child hostage? But then
he knew, intimately, exactly how low MacTire would stoop to get what he wanted. The kidnapping smacked of desperation, meant he wanted Ash real bad. Whatever it took, he was not about to let that happen. With Ash and Liath gone, Connal reverted to type, channeling his wrath into battle readiness. Wrenching a decorative spear down from the wall, he pushed aside Anann DeMorgan’s fireside chair and rolled back the dusty carpet to reveal the bare, pitch pine boards. A horrible, sickening suspicion twisted like lead in his gut. This felt personal, as though taking the child was a message, a direct dig at him. Well, if the bastards were hoping to strike a nerve, they’d better be prepared for a reflex reaction.
Wedging the spear’s tip between two of the timber slats, the loose section of floor gave way easily. The small crates hidden within took a little more prising apart to coax them to yield their musted contents, but by the time he heard Ash’s feet descending the staircase, he was stood by the sideboard with a neat row of semi-automatics, ammunition and variously sized hunting blades lined up on the high-polished mahogany.
Stepping through the door, Ash blinked. Then quipped in her best Evelyn O’Connell voice, ‘Have I missed something? Are we going into battle?’ He was better equipped than an armoury, and as she moved to stand beside him, her eyes skipped over the array of weapons, sharpened to a lethal edge and polished to perfect working order. Her hand hovered over a double-barrel. ‘Do you have a spare? I can shoot, and, more often than not, I manage to hit the can.’ She was joking, she could take down clay pigeons with the best of them, but his face was so serious she didn’t think her lightness broke through.
His large hand covered hers and removed it from the weapon. He turned to face her with a storm brewing in his eyes, words spoken with a finality that said he would brook no argument. ‘You’re not going in there with me.’
‘You’re not going in there without me.’ She mimicked his tone. There was no other option that she could see, nothing blaring a neon sign of what to do. ‘We promised Liath we’d make the exchange.’
‘You made a promise, Ash. I only promised to bring him back.’
‘You can’t go alone.’ Her palm met his arm when a growl rolled up his throat. ‘Did you forget what happened last time? I like your head attached.’
He cocked a brow at the blatant challenge to his masculinity, palming a semi and testing how it fit in the waistband of his jeans before lifting the cold steel of his eyes back on her. ‘Last time was different. I was unprepared for you running into Dr. Death’s arms at the first hint of danger. This time it will only be Thegn. No wolves. I’ll handle this, alone.’
Casting him a narrow-eyed glare, she was deadly serious when she spoke. ‘I won’t have a child’s blood on my hands, Connal.’
No, but he would, if it came down to the wire. The muscles in his jaw set with iron tension, bracketing his mouth with the lines of his frustration. So much blood on his hands. So much blood spilled avenging the death of an innocent, and now Josh was yet another child caught in the crossfire of his enemies. He might not get the boy back, but damned if he was prepared to lose her too.
‘You go in alone and you have no way to guarantee his safety. You need me, to make the exchange. Hell, I am the exchange!’ Without her it wasn’t a party ...
‘There won’t be an exchange, Ash. I refuse to play you into their hands.’ She was right, he had no guarantees to give, not when it came to a scumbag like Doyle. Centuries of betrayal had a way of eroding your belief that good always trumped evil. He wished he could share her optimism that even villains had an honourable streak, that Doyle would stick by the terms of an exchange, but his dark heart told him the child may be good as dead already.
‘How do you expect to get him back? Please, explain it to me, Big Bad, because I’m not seeing the win-win here.’
He bit out the words on a snarl. ‘I’m going to rip the bastard’s head off.’
‘You can do that? I thought you said Form was neutral territory.’
He dropped down on his hunkers to prise open the heavy canvas bag on the floor, feeding weapons into its dark interior as he spoke. ‘Form is built on sacred ground, the original site of the black lake, before it was filled in, in an attempt to allay the superstitions of evil that were rife at the time. It is the place where the Ancients used their own blood to seal the Fomorians into their subterranean prison and it has been prophesied that to spill wolf blood on its ground will precipitate an apocalypse.’
‘So what? You’re going to ride in there, guns blazing, like one of the four horsemen, and bring about the end of the world?’
‘Even I’m not that stupid, Ash. I’m going to make them come to me, on my terms.’
‘You can’t do that! He said he would kill the boy if I don’t show.’
‘You think Doyle will just throw away his best bargaining chip?' He looked up to pin her in the intensity of his steel-grey stare. 'You underestimate just how badly they want you, Little Red.’
‘I can’t take that chance on a child’s life, not when it’s me they want.’ Frustration was a very familiar emotion since he’d entered her life, it waited under her skin until he annoyed her, taking them both around endless circles that delivered them to no new outcome. Ash was dizzy from their circling, and his silence only proved to aggravate the already raw nerves simmering under the surface. Until she uttered the one thing that she knew gave them some sort of chance. Something he was dead set against under normal situations. She prayed the new variable in this decision would sway him.
‘Bite me.’
‘What?’ Drawing up to his full height, the weapon in his hand hit the polished wood with a heavy thud. ‘What difference could that possibly make?’
‘You say they want me so badly, but if I’m Thrall, I’m useless to them. Valueless instead of priceless. I walk in there, and it’s irrefutable proof I’m not the broodmare they think I am. And they have no reason to keep Josh.’
More like no reason to keep him alive. ‘You want to go in there on your knees, drooling and begging that son of a bitch to fuck you? Why don’t we just walk you in there now, with a Hallmark card and goddamn bow on your head?’ He growled his retort. ‘Just because you won’t be their broodmare doesn’t mean you won’t be ridden to death, Ash.’ And like as not, Doyle would slit the kid’s throat out of spite. Not that she needed to hear that. She wouldn’t be going in there with him. Period. ‘They will use you ‘til you break and then cast you aside.’
Her whole body shivered, nose wrinkled in revulsion, lip curled as he pushed the argument, determined.
‘And what if it turns out you are everything they think you are? You expect me to hand you to them, spread-eagle, sacrificed on a platter?’
‘You said so yourself, the chances that I am anything to them, let alone this mythical baby mamma, are slim to none!’ Fingers tangled in the ends of her hair, braiding her nervous tell. ‘And even if I am, I think I’d like the truth on my terms.’ Preferably with little to no bloodshed.
‘Are you prepared to die for your curiosity?’ He gritted out the words.
‘For curiosity, crossing the street, gang attacked by a frenzy of wolves come next full moon ...’ Her shoulder lifted, a twitchy half shrug. ‘It seems a lot of ways this could go, I’ll die.’
His growl cut her with ice.
‘Happy note though, you bite me and I go crazy, the psych treatment wouldn’t have been a waste.’ Lightness when she was dark with shadows of the unknown. ‘If I turn into a serial killer, I trust you to take me out.’ That thought, of him being behind what ended her, shook her through with fear but she stamped it down. Wouldn’t help her argument if she was weak with terror.
‘Jesus Christ Ash! You say it like it’s nothing, like I could just put a gun to your head and ...’ And what? Put her down, like the innumerable, faceless, black-nailed souls that haunted his nightmares? He’d sooner rip out his own heart. The tremor in his hand rattled the gunmetal against the wooden surface of the sideboard. He was rattled. Not by
the sordid reality of what could happen to her, but by the revelation that it mattered to him. In the few days he’d known her, this girl had chipped away at the hard-encrusted defences of a lifetime spent at war and burrowed herself deep into a part of him that hadn’t breathed for centuries. His eyes fell to where her fists clenched a spasm at her sides.
‘It is not nothing, Connal. It is a little boy in the hands of monsters who want me. I have to try.’ Desperation and the life of a child in the balance wrung a tremor through her voice. ‘I’m going whether you say so or not. If you leave me behind, you better damn well know I’ll be following you there. You can’t stop me.’
He glared at her, but a hand coasted down over the back pocket of his jeans, shaping the metal cuffs he’d tucked away when she was out of the room. He could stop her, and he would. ‘Infuriating woman,’ he murmured.
Resisting the urge to poke her tongue out at him, teeth worried at the flesh of her lower lip. ‘Does that mean you’re going to bite me, Big Bad?’
‘No, Little Red. I have no intention of sinking my teeth into you.’ Callused fingers toyed with the ends of her hair where they curled down her shoulder, and his gaze was drawn irresistibly to the milky white column of her throat. This infuriating woman could lead him to hell with all his good intentions. The register of his voice had dropped to a gravelled whisper when he spoke again. ‘Clear your head of that foolish plan.’
Her head would not be cleared. Foolish had taken root and it was teasing her. There was the silence again, he shut down and she couldn’t promise to drop it just to ease the quiet. It would be a lie. Heaving a perturbed exhale, she moved from his touch, even the threat of it on her skin scrambling her brain with desire. Hair a shield, it hung loose around her face as she paced the room, gathering more arguments. Her lashes fanned down, shutting out her peripheral vision. Ash didn’t want to see him packing those weapons into the black bag at his feet, it meant she hadn’t convinced him enough. He was still going. Tracking the pacing lines his heavy booted feet had left behind in the thick pile of the rugs, she took a turn around the room, breathing anxious irritation into the air.