by Paula Black
He planted a kiss to the metal coin hanging from his neck and sat half-in, half-out of the open driver door, turning over the engine and ... Halle-fucking-lujah, his prayers answered, the starter motor coughed to raspy, spluttering life. Before fate decided to pull a U-turn, he flung open the wooden garage doors and coaxed the rust bucket out into the overgrown jungle of a back yard. It was a hulking snarl of briars and bindweed that he shared with the main house. And wasn’t that some ugly metaphor for how his whole existence had become tangled up with the ancient resident who lived above him? He stared up at the window, thought he caught sight of a fleeting shadow, but put it down to the glare of the sun off the old glass panes. He ducked back inside the garage and hefted the tarpaulin and its grim contents over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. Popping the rear doors, he unceremoniously dumped his cargo into the belly of the hearse, grunting under the strain and wrangling his gag reflex into check. Blondie was one heavy son of a bitch. He threw the spades in on top of the load and slammed the doors, kicking at the rear tyres, hoping to hell the worn treads and corroded rubber would get him as far as the Dublin mountains.
Ash was nursing an iced coffee she’d put together herself, as close to Starbucks as she could get without leaving the house. And she really didn’t want to leave the house. Her body was trying to convince her she’d been on a month long binge-drinking party, with dreams she hoped to hell weren’t memories and a banging headache that was resounding with hammer strikes every time she moved. A normally heavenly shower had been a nightmare of pain as the hot water rushed over bruised skin and deep lacerations, her skin corseted in ugly black stitches from throat to elbow. She stood in front of the hallway mirror, mug in hand, phone in the other, red tank bright against her pale skin and turned slightly, watching the curve that made the attack so much more than a figment of her imagination. Three long lines. A pack of dogs. Wolverine. The cops had called to say they had found nothing. As she expected. They did, however, promise to let her know if they caught the dogs, and offered their services if her stalker problem arose again. To be honest, Ash wasn’t so sure of how much help they’d be in that department. Though Connal in handcuffs was an unusually nice image.
Her thoughts made no sense and too much, and she kneaded her temples with one hand as she peeked at her reflection. At least she didn’t look too haggard from her adventure. It must have been the dreams invigorating her. Ash could still feel the caress of leather, the heavy drilling pound of muscled hips ... it had been like something out of Animal Planet, raw and vicious and all consuming. She’d woken with a headache and bruises. Not at all freaked.
She was still pretty sure she was up and moving simply from the adrenaline of the night before. Ash felt like a spy as she folded the thin floral johnny and stuffed it behind a clutter of plastic containers. Satisfied every fold of fabric had been concealed, her mug was back in hand, lifted to her lips to feed her calming caffeine. There was no solid reason for her bolting from the hospital, stolen gown and coat barely covering her as she’d run hell for leather home. Just a feeling, a push in her head, a rising panic that wasn’t entirely her own, a blaring WARNING sign painted across her brain as the doctor left and she felt steady enough to stretch her legs around the room, forcing blood she didn’t really have into muscles gone to sleep. The tingling had been put down to the after-effects of her shock, throwing her off balance and flushing her with queasy heat until she sought cool from the glass window at the back of the room. Her brain was still trying to convince her it had been some hallucination from the blood loss, but her gut told her what she had seen with her own eyes. It had just been curiosity, forehead to the cool of the glass, eyes open, looking for the flicker of ... Tapeworm Lucite? No ... Wait ... eyeshine, in the reflective surface, judging the shimmer of red that passed through jewelled blue with every beam of headlights. It was there, dimmed somewhat in the glass, but she caught it. Like looking at a moving picture with red eye.
Moving slowly, Setanta glued to her side like he was worried she’d topple over at any moment, Ash set the emptied mug on the kitchen counter and stared absently out of the window, no light to catch the red now, but she could just see what had been that night. Another pair of eyes; not hers looking out, but crimson red, looking in. It had been the source of her fear and paranoia, strengthening gut instinct until it was a siren in her head screaming at her in a high-pitched, out of control radio buzz to get out of the hospital and lock herself home as fast as she could. It had left no room to disobey and she hadn’t questioned it. She questioned the sanity of it now.
The night slowly lifted from her vision, the howling speech in her head giving way to the twitter of birds, her thoughts stroking quickly across her mind and fluttering off into morning light. She blinked. The day was clear, easing into evening, but there was something out there that wasn’t all that pretty. A coughing mechanical hack, a Transformer with the flu waking up somewhere at the back of her house and disrupting the peace that had settled in her head with an answering spike of pain. She peered out, hands gripping the sides of the sink and craned, looking for the source of the sound through the tangled up web of briars and thorns that made up the back half of a garden she hadn’t yet dared to explore.
Sonofabitch!!!
She recognised that dread-locked head, the breadth of shoulders dipping down and back up as he hefted something about into the back of a ... by God, is that a hearse?!! ... So now the asshole thought he could come to her house and take her stuff and what she assumed was her grandmother’s car without saying even a word to her? No. Just no. Ash pushed off from the counter, chugged down the small painkillers she’d set aside, grabbed some discarded sweats from the banister and hopped into them as she snatched up the hooded jacket hooked by the door. Stuffing her feet into her walking boots, she was done and out the front before she could even second guess going after a guy three times her size and scary as all get out. Ash had her car keys in hand and was lamenting the loss of her red coat when she saw the front of the hearse poke out from the street. Too many cop shows had her waiting until it pulled the corner onto the main road before she eased the cute blue Minor out and concentrated on not veering to the other side of the road. Driving stick wasn’t her strong suit and she battled to keep the thing from stalling as she tried to tail from a safe distance. A start-stop follower surely wouldn’t arouse his suspicions. Eyes rolling, Ash swerved just in time to get back on the wrong side of the road before she drove herself into a ditch and made his stalking mission obsolete.
This was going to be a very long drive.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Connal was maybe a mile on the road when he copped he was being followed. Steel gray eyes focused on the vehicle three cars back in his rear view mirror. Nan DeMorgan's nineteen fifty three blue Morris Minor was pretty unmissable, and you didn't need a certificate from MENSA to know who was behind the wheel. Ashling DeMorgan might have been headed someplace else, their routes converging by coincidence, but the benefit of the doubt died when the traffic thinned and they were virtually the only two cars on the road headed out of the city. He debated losing her, diverting, stopping even, just to see what her reaction would be when he confronted her, but he was more than a little intrigued, and weighing up the situation, he concluded that he preferred her on his tail than lost and alone in the labyrinthine suburbs of Dublin. While she'd slept and he'd tinkered with the engine of the old bone wagon, Connal had come to a decision of sorts. If Nan's strategy of keeping her granddaughter ignorant of their world had been a move to protect her, clearly that plan wasn't working. It was one thing to be a walking time-bomb, it was quite another to be parading around with a big red self-destruct button and a sign on your forehead proclaiming 'push me.' So he cranked the radio up and the windows down and amused himself on the journey, spying on his company through the rear view mirror, twitching a smile at her expressions of deep, brow-knitted concentration as she grappled with the stick shift and the alien concept of driving on the 'wron
g side of the road.'
Their odd little classic car rally drew more than a few curious looks from the rubber-neckers on the streets. When they passed through Rathfarnham village, a pious-faced clutch of old ladies hobbling out of Saturday evening Mass saw the hearse approach and made the sign of the cross. Their efforts to ward off evil redoubled when their whistling hearing aids picked up on the strains of My Darkest Days' Pornstar Dancing carried through the open passenger window. With his dreads and leather and the cruel cut of his face, Connal was definitely more Grim Reaper than somber undertaker.
The houses thinned out and the roads narrowed until their only spectators were the shadowy trunks of the oaks and firs lining the route that wended them high up Montpelier Hill and deep into the thick of Massy's woods. What with the ruins of the notorious Hell Fire Club looming from the summit and the encroaching isolation, Connal figured ‘round about now would be when Ashling DeMorgan should be having serious doubts about the sanity of her decision to follow him up to this place of occult myths and shallow graves. Then again, he wasn't entirely certain the girl was sane, and what she was about to witness probably wouldn't do much to help her headcase status.
He brought the old Cadillac to an abrupt stop in a sun-dappled dirt clearing just at the edge of the woods. She tentatively pulled up the Morris Minor alongside him. He killed the engine, popped the door and sauntered over to the driver side of her car. One hand thrust deep into the pocket of his jeans, he made a motion for her to roll down the window with the other. She seemed to think about it for a moment, hands clutching the wheel like she was debating flooring the gas and reversing the hell out of Dodge, but her cat's curiosity won out and the glass barrier between them dropped. The corners of his mouth turned up in a crooked grin.
'Well, Miss Ashling DeMorgan. We meet again. If I didn't know better, I might think you'd followed me.'
‘Ash,’ she started at the sound of her name on his lips, even as she corrected it, but recovered enough to inject a bit of annoyance into her words. ‘About time someone gave you a taste of your own medicine, don’tcha think, Mister Connal?’
Touché. She knew his name. That pleased him. ‘I already warned you, Ash, this is a dangerous game you’re playing.’ Her hand reached for the door but he got to it first, swinging it wide and stepping aside to give her space to exit the car.
She edged out, chin notched up high, plastered as close to the paintwork as she could get without touching him, despite his all gentlemanly actions. Tugging on the hem of her jacket, she toyed with the zip, missing the security of her velvet. Sadly, her crimson coat had taken as much a beating as she had. ‘You took something from my grandmother’s house. Give it back.’
He rocked back on his heels and regarded her. Girl had nerves of steel to follow a guy like him up into the woods and accuse him of thieving. Especially given what she’d been through the night before. DeMorgan’s granddaughter, he reminded himself. Ballbreaker was in the DNA. ‘I wasn’t stealing from your grandmother. I work ... worked, for Anann DeMorgan. And before you go calling the Guards, you might want to take a look at what it is I’ve got in there.’
Oh God ... this was the part where she looked in the hearse and ended up being one of many dead bodies dumped in the back. She eyed the door warily, discreetly trying to peer through the window against the glare of the sun. She saw nothing but a mass of something. ‘Tell me, then I’ll look. What’s in there?’
Connal eased his ass back against the side of the Minor and buried his hands in his pockets, kicking at the dirt with the toe of his boot. He never took his eyes off her. ‘A wolf.’
Ash scoffed. ‘Wolves have been extinct in Ireland since the seventeen hundreds.’ She raised a sceptical brow, her gaze judging the lines of his face like the truth would be written there somewhere.
‘See for yourself.’ He simply shrugged and leaned forward to pop the lock on the back doors of the hearse.
‘Shit.’ It was the only thing that came to mind when the tarpaulin fell away from a furry flank, the movement of the door dislodging the sheet from what it covered. She’d been half right. He did have a body in there. But it wasn’t human. Sapphire eyes were narrowed in confusion, brow knitted as she lifted her gaze to his and backed off from the door. A soft breeze, cooling and calm, lifted the blooming stench of death from the carcass and she coughed, hand to her mouth holding the gag that rose in her throat right down. She would not hurl her cookies in front of this guy. She’d smelled worse in her friend’s dorms. ‘But ...’ Ash tentatively pulled on the fallen corner, trying to tip more of the sheeting away with minimal touching, breathing in the fabric of her jacket and the flowery detergent that barely cloaked the scent of the dead animal. She jerked it too hard, snagged it in her fingers and sent the body on a small lurch, but it was enough. Enough to show the dainty blade she didn’t realise she’d lost pierced deep into a thick pelted shoulder.
It was a faint whimper. ‘Oh wow, I killed it?!!!’
The great brute laughed and if she hadn’t been too busy gaping, Ash would have smacked him. But uncovering the blade exposed something else, revealing just enough to show the bloodied torn flesh and mutilated muscled trunk of a neck and ... Oh God ... Ash spun and staggered away from the grisly sight, but not before she heard the head hit the ground with a grass-muffled, sickly wet thud.
A tree provided solace, it was stable and sturdy and her spine slid easily down it as her legs went a little weak and she took to the shade to let her stomach calm and the shivers stop. She may have killed it, but she sure as hell hadn’t hacked its head off. ‘They can’t be real. Honest to God damn real.’ My mother ... Wild dogs? Homicidal step-father? No. I was right?
He eyed her with peaked curiosity. ‘You’ve seen these creatures before? I mean, before last night?’
‘I ... yes ... well no, not really.’ Shut up, crazy, or he’ll be calling the white coats on you ...
‘Not in person, you know. I’m writing my thesis on these things, debunking the myths and existence of mythical creatures.’ Her hand went, waving her half-lie into something that sounded plausible. ‘Yeti’s, Chupacabras, Werewolves ...’ Her eyes drifted back to the covered body and squeezed shut. ‘There are an extraordinary number of reports of large, wolf-like, canine creatures all over Europe. All unsubstantiated sightings -’ she was talking like a text-book, the way she’d proposed the idea to her professor ‘- and Dublin accounts for more than its fair share of those.’
‘And you’re out to prove to the world that these things don’t exist?’ His brows popped, incredulous as he motioned to the very real, grisly and blood-matted proof, noticing how she kept her eyes consciously averted from the thing. ‘How do you do that?’ He challenged. ‘Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.’
A scoff in the back of her throat emphasised her disbelief, clouded the doubt. ‘It’s the twenty first century, not the Dark Ages, dude. When I hear hooves, I’m going to think horses, not unicorns and bloody centaurs.’
‘Jesus,’ he peeled himself away from the tree trunk supporting his spine. ‘Whoever lobotomised your sense of wonder did a real number on you, Little Red.’
Now that stung, and Ash had to shake off the hurt before she could speak, reciting something that allowed her to make sense of her own nightmares. ‘I believe what I can see with my own eyes, I believe all mythical creatures have logical explanations, grounded in the real world. That thing is an animal, just a wild animal. What’s so crazy about that?’
‘You want to know what I believe?’ He countered. ‘A creative mind is a powerful illusionist. Sometimes you have to open up, look beyond the smoke and mirrors, to see what’s really there, not what you want to see, not the comfortable explanation for what you can’t comprehend.’
Her voice tremored, breaking at the end as her theories spun out to shape the truth in front of her, shaking her to the foundations. ‘There is a perfectly rational explanation for what that thing is,’ and she’d find it, she had t
o, because if not ... my nightmare has come to life.
She stank of lies and fear and emotions that contradicted her words, but to push at a mind that closed risked her shutting him down completely. He’d drip-feed her the truth instead. ‘These creatures are very real.’ Connal approached as you might a spooked animal, slow, deliberate, reaching into his back pocket, holding her frightened gaze. ‘You want a drink?’ He sank down on his ass a safe distance from her and drew out the hip flask, proffering it like it was an olive branch. ‘You look like you could use a stiff one.’
Her fingers shook as she reached out with a tremulous laugh, watching his every move with a cautious eye and carefully took the flask from his hand, keeping her skin from his, even as she craved the comfort of living contact. A stiff one? Yeah, but what her head went to could no way in hell fit in a flask. Ash’s gaze fell for a second as her thoughts directed her eyes. And then her throat was burning and she coughed up whatever she’d just swallowed.
‘God! What is in here?!’ It tasted how paint stripper smelled. With a bit of smoke thrown into the mix. But it was warm, and she took another swig before handing the flask back, her eyes travelling past him to where a corner of the tarpaulin just showed. She couldn’t see the head. Ash settled back into the bark. Exhaled. ‘That’s not a normal wolf under there.’
‘It’s whiskey, very good whiskey, and no -’ he turned his head, his expression hidden from her, and reached out to snap a twig from a nearby tree, taking to scratching random patterns in the dirt ‘- technically, it’s not a wolf at all.’