Becoming Red (The Becoming Novels)

by Black, Paula

  ‘What is it with you people and my coat?!!!’

  This time, he didn’t look her in the eye. Jaw set hard as marble, he let the ‘you people’ slide and trained his focus on the posters lining the wall instead, with their symmetrical rows of black crescent moons. ‘Like I said. Bait, Little Red.’

  What was this, the dark ages of male chauvinism? A woman shows a few inches of flesh and she’s a scarlet Jezebel seducing poor innocent men who can’t keep it in their pants. Eyes narrowed dangerously, Ash pocketed the knife lest she actually did pluck out those ridiculously pretty eyes of his with the point.

  ‘Little Red? I suppose that would make you the Big Bad?’

  Now his eyes lifted to her, pinned her with a stare of penetrating intensity. ‘Oh, you have no idea ...’

  She was really tempted to get all up in his face and let her knee tell his balls just how his words riled her beyond pissed. But that would mean touching him, and Ash bottled that thought before it sprouted flames. ‘How did you even know about the guys? How long have you been stalking me? Leave. Me. Alone. Just because they want me and I don’t want you doesn’t give you the right to monitor my interactions.’

  ‘You seemed plenty interested back at the house. As I recall it, you were the one ripping my clothes off.’ His ego took her barbed rejection where it hurt and he blurted out his verbal backlash without passing it through the decency filter in his brain. ‘But don’t get your knickers in a twist, Angel. I’m probably the only bloke in this city that doesn’t want to fuck you.’ Liar. Liar. Pants on fucking fire.

  Spitting mad, a hiss was violence in her throat, feline and snarling. ‘Where do you get off talking to me like that, you Neanderthal, sexist pig? You’re implying I was asking for it?!!’ He all but calls her a whore and he has the gall to look hurt? Ash wasn’t usually the type to wish people ill, but right now, she was envisioning all sorts of bad falling down on his head.

  And yet the flames continued to burn, her body flickering the fires up wherever his eyes touched as her mind spat insults that would probably never leave her lips.

  Tight with restraint, Connal was beginning to wonder if Nan DeMorgan hadn’t assigned him this infuriating nutcase as a warped form of punishment. He was furious at his own failings, and he didn’t need a psychology degree to recognise his own classic, kick the dog, displaced aggression. And yet, he couldn’t stop the verbal trainwreck. ‘You have no idea what you are encouraging here. You play with fire, Little Red, don’t come crying to me when you get yourself burned.’ As he stared her down, a wall of crimson slammed down on his vision and he growled a curse. Christ, not now, Savage. Rein it the hell in ... But he could feel the humanity slipping through his fingers ...

  Ash hedged, her shoulders hunching a little, fighting back a burn in her cheeks that may have been shame. To say it touched on a sensitive spot was an understatement, but she’d done nothing wrong, enjoying the attention a little. Not like she was walking around in a dress as skimpy as her best underwear and throwing herself at guys. Even her insides were angry, raging a churn in her stomach. He barely knew her, where did he get off calling her a slut?! ‘FUCK YOU!’

  In a heartbeat .

  He needed to dial down the aggression, and fast. He was dangerously close to the edge, skin pulled too tight around his bones, jaws throbbing, muscles bunched into tense cords. Between the moon and the blonde bastard and the unfathomable effect this girl was having on him, it felt like he was dancing on razor blades. He was in a tunnel, with his own blood roaring in his ears, and all the while some residual, civilised part of him was screaming to get the hell out of there before somebody really got hurt ...

  Before she could turn her tongue back onto the rails of more scathing ‘Fuck Yous’, he bolted. Left her standing. Just walked away. How dare he.

  ‘Arrogant, jerk-ass ... grrr ...’ Ash started over on her insults, feeling the irritation roll off her tongue. ‘Infuriating, tall, giant lump of ...’ There were no words in her head violently abusive enough to express her frustration. Who the hell did he think he was?!! Self-appointed stalker and saviour? She never thought those words could be used in the same description of someone. He’d been following her all along. The eyes that she had felt on her had probably been his.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ash kicked at the cobbles and her boot heel scraped over the ground with a loud crack, like gunfire, aggressive as what was building up inside her, but not half good enough to make it dissipate. He wound her up something good, and she was struggling to maintain a level of composure that wouldn’t reduce her to messy, angry tears in the middle of the street. Home, she had to get home, and then she could dissolve. All the fear, all the anger, and helplessness, at Connal and the blonde asshole who thought she was just a hot foreign piece of ass for him to take by force, was just simmering there under the surface. The latter, she could have handled. A little more force on the blade threatening to spear his jugular and Ash was pretty sure the guy would have backed off. The former? She was out of her depth and floundering for sense in the not so clear cut emotions that he riled up inside her. The man was a blowtorch hissing relentless heat against her carefully glaciered feelings and striking the exposed, thawed out emotions with a stick. Prodding her where she didn’t want to be prodded. Especially not by him.

  Who the hell did he think he was? That seemed to be the universal question today, she’d asked it so many times and was still no closer to the answer. Her feet were kicking the ground as she walked. Scuff, step, scuff, step, scuff, step. Angry and stubborn, her walk was agitated and tense, in her own head as her body wandered on without her, treading back the way she came until she looked up and realised she had absolutely no idea where she was.

  Ash had somehow turned from the street, freed from an alley only to traipse off into the middle of nowhere. Buildings that looked dark, streets swollen with shadows, not a glitter of red on anyone ... there was no one. She couldn’t even hear the laughter anymore. Ash had her internal GPS all out of fritz, and she blamed Connal and his heated stare for burning her systems down.

  Ash spun to get her bearings, the night suddenly closing around her as her panic surged up for the second time in short hours. Pivoting on her heels, she swallowed down the anxiety and felt around for the anger. That would surely keep the chill of fear at bay until she sorted herself, but she couldn’t seem to find a measure of calm anywhere. This night was just too much. She breathed deep. Caught the faint scent of seawater and salt musk. Heard the distant thud of the music from clubs nearby. Good. She hadn’t turned off too far from the main thoroughfare. Her head cocked, tipping curls of thick black hair to bar her vision as she listened. There was something else, and she was hoping, praying that it was her newfound stalker. Better the evil you know. When nothing leapt from the shadows, Ash shook the noise off as lingering adrenaline and kicked herself into walking on. She must be close to home by now.

  There it went again!

  This time when Ash turned, there was nothing to block her vision of what was crashing towards her, but her brain still convinced her it wasn’t what she saw. Her throat opened up in a scream and she jerked violently to the side, torquing in a twirl that reeled her brain around in her head like she was trapped in a tumble dryer. But it wasn’t just panic that tore her off to the side in a whirl. No. She’d been caught on the tail end of a machete attack, the tearing of fabric and three burning gouges screaming through her body with a blind of white-hot pain. She’d spun into the attack, turning too soon, or not soon enough to avoid the damage. Her pretty blade didn’t look silver anymore, whipped out in furious panic and stained red before her brain even realised she’d made contact. Only the jarring pain in her shoulder registered the hit. Ash panted, her legs tottering her into a drunken run, away from the throb of agony riding around her shoulder, away from whatever the fuck it was, all golden fur and sabre fangs snapping inches from her face as she’d been forced off to the side by the razor blow. Some kind of feral Wolverine ha
d crept up on her and tried to take her out.

  It was not what she thought it was, it was not, was not!!! If she let herself believe that it was, Ash knew without a doubt she’d be just as crumpled as she had been when she’d seen the brand on the chest of her stalker. She daren’t look back, she could hear the thing coming back for her. Her dazed, pain-gripped brain prayed for her stalker now. A rattling hiss of a growl startled her into a flash movement and she was swept aside by a ravaging snarl of flying fur. The creature yelped, its golden fur bleeding a spot of red as it tangled with a giant white mass of hairy. Shit!! Another one? She’d heard of packs of wild dogs coming into cities and running people to ground but this?!! She didn’t know where the heads were, but she could hear the teeth as they went to town tearing into everything around them. A tornado unleashed into the ball of beast currently diverted from ripping her to shreds on the side of the road, and all she could do was stare. She could run, and get the hell away, but she was rooted to the spot, fascinated and terrified and bleeding the colour of her coat until the shredded fabric couldn’t even be seen against the torn up skin beneath.

  A loud yelp cut through the air, a chainsaw buzz of growls turned on in the centre of the writhing storm of animal that was rolling in blood in front of her. Closer, closer, Ash watched. She was watching still when they got close enough to brush fur against her thigh and knock her back a few steps.

  It was as though she had slo-mo reactions. Look to the tussle of animal fighting over the right to eat her. Lock eyes with something that must have been native Dublin. Because nothing she had ever seen had eyes like that. Bled to crimson, the bestial gaze was fixed on her from the ravage of fighting. Once it locked onto her face, it didn’t look away. And for precious seconds, neither could she. It was the kick in the teeth rip of a machine gun snarl and that look that finally set her feet into motion, flipped her about and had her legging it hell for leather in the opposite direction. A sawing, frantic flee of heavy breath and screaming muscles.

  Only a backward glance told her that its blood red gaze never ever left her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  'Ow ... owowowow.’ Wuss, you’re a goddamn wuss. Put some alcohol on it and be done with it. Ash winced. The thought of putting anything on it made her want to cry, and the tears welled up even as she fought them back with a vicious head shake and tried to clear her watery vision enough to look at the damage. The lacerations were deep, long and thin, raking from her nape to curve slashes down her arm. She shouldn’t have spun, not while his pitchfork or whatever the fuck it was, had still been in her skin. But it was twist or lose her goddamn head. And the cuts throbbed like she couldn’t believe; the pain had taken on a life of its own and was slowly weeding through her system. Her knees ached. She’d hit the floor hard and as she tried to come up with something to tell the nurses, traipsing into the Accident and Emergency room at too-damn-early-in-the-morning, she watched the bruises paint themselves over her skin. Falling down the stairs wasn’t going to cut it.

  ‘Can I help you, Miss?’ The nurse’s blonde brow was furrowed into a worried knit, her expression bright with concern and just about ready to pounce Ash into a chair if she swayed one more time. She steeled her spine, took a grip of her pain, and forced herself to walk up to the desk. It wasn’t even the injury making her lightheaded. It was the hospital. Another demon, dragging her weaknesses kicking and screaming into the light. The shrinks had brought her to a place just like this after the whole trauma, to ‘recover in peace’ while they ran checks for signs of abuse and neglect. Even then, young and afraid, she hadn’t been stupid, and she remembered telling them, something that repeated with her nightmares, ‘it wasn’t Mummy, Mummy didn’t hurt me’. And her nightmares rattled off a story of wolves that fragmented fairytales into a childhood reality. This, clean and sterile and buzzing with the heartbeat of death and pain, had slowly removed the shards of fairytale stabbing the truth of her memories into something less than real.

  Shaking off the shiver that rose her spine, Ash turned on a smile slightly agonised and a whole lot nervous. ‘I ... I walked into a dog fight. One of them got me pretty bad, and I don’t know about rabies shots and whatnot, but I think I’d really, really like one.’ The words came out on a rush before Ash could even filter and assess the believability, the truth blurted out before a lie could be formulated. No sense to even curb her language as pain spiked and her anxiety mounted. So she wasn’t surprised when the nurse lost her eyebrows in her hairline and looked her over with the ‘oh God, another addict’ look.

  But disapproval cleared into full-blown concern as the woman noted that all the red on Ash wasn't just from the coat. ‘A standard question, Miss, and I mean no offence ...’ Ash waited, clutching her coat around her and drawing the wide wariness of the nurse’s eyes to the bright flash of blood red standing stark against clinical white. ‘Have you taken anything recently? Anything to cause balance and stability issues? Any medication?’ Ash answered in the negative. She didn't do drugs, hated taking anything that could affect her perception. She figured leaving out the few drinks she’d had at the pub wasn’t going to change the outcome. No way on earth had she hallucinated the giant hairy beasts out of alcohol. The pain in her arm and the tears in her flesh were all too real. ‘Alright then. Perfect. We’ll get you looked at right away, I’ll take care of you myself.’ Ash followed where the nurse led. Silently.

  True to her word, after she had assessed and questioned, peering over-curiously at her nails, and seemingly not finding what she searched for, the nurse didn’t leave her long in the waiting room. The place was packed for so late, with weaving drunks and slobbering maniacs yelling at the walls, one guy handcuffed to the bench of chairs, nails half black, chipped polish or nail bed bruises rising from the cuticle. He bled from a gash in his forehead as another railed at him from across the room, glass jagged and splintered poking from his forearm. A bar fight no doubt, but the energy in the place was almost a madness. They were mainly women, with skin bloodied from scratch marks, makeup out of place and clothes barely there and torn.

  ‘I hate working the Full Moon shifts, I’ve been bitten twice already.’

  ‘It’s an insanity, lunar-tics, all of them.’

  ‘At least weed mellows them out, this Rave drug ...’ There was disbelief and a tinge of horror to her voice even though the nurses were laughing as they passed by. The edge of fear to the tones spoke a chill down Ash’s spine and curled her deeper into the hard-backed clinic chair. She felt exposed to the crazy around her, like a nerve being pricked. And every howl, or scream, or curse made her want to join them, to yell them into silence, to return the growls rolling off Mr. Handcuffs. She certainly fit in with their colour scheme. Red, on each of them, lulling and provoking her attentions. Madness.

  ‘Miss?’ Ash’s head jerked up so hard she twinged the base of her spine. The gentle nurse who had admitted her smiled kindly, a new strain around her eyes as the waiting room filled. ‘If you’d like to come with me, we’ll get you sorted.’

  The place was sterile as could be. Hell for any bacteria and the depths of Hell for her. Clean was good, hospital clean was freaky. Ash perched in her tablecloth, butt-flashing hospital gown, ass hopped up on the bed, eyeing the implements around her through a pain-hazed vision and waited. More waiting until the silence was interrupted by Burly and Stout in uniforms. They were efficient if a little hurried, their radios spazzing out of control every couple of seconds with a call up that took one to answer as the other gathered her deets and tried not to look too closely at her arm. She’d bunched the pillows up behind her in case any one of them saw fit to stand at her back. Her panties were not flattering. She answered as honestly as she could with what she remembered, that there had been only two, and they seemed to be fighting each other, to get to her. They must have really been starved. The cops had just looked at each other until she felt like she was wasting their time. She’d mentioned him. Connal. Not by name or description or anything. She probably
should have told them more. An entire description, everything she knew, but all she could say was just that she’d wandered off course from the main street because she was trying to get away from the guy who was stalking her and the rapist looking to get her in his hands again. Even as the words came spilling out, she was aware she risked losing any witness credibility she’d had. She was going to blame her loose tongue on the painkillers they hadn’t given her yet. Even to her it sounded crazy, and this was the damn truth. With everything they’d wanted, the cops had left on a promise to call her if they found anything. Ash highly doubted they would.

  The clock ticked around slowly, every minute feeling like an hour and leaving her alone with her own head, the muffled sounds of growling and cursing from the waiting room filtering through like a radio on static, silence, with sharp bursts of crackled noise infiltrating her thoughts. What the hell was that, Ash? I mean, seriously. That was NOT what we thought it was, right? She was officially insane. She’d always talked to herself, but this switched her shit up into the turbo stream of crazy-ass. Her nightmares were walking the real world with her now. No longer content to prowl the darkness of her sleep, they were infecting her waking hours with their darkness and curved, ice-pick claws.

  ‘No, it was a pack of dogs, a rabid pack of dogs ...’ Not a giant fur-ball of fangs with the sole mission of taking her out.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Shit. She wasn’t alone. The curtains had drawn on her one-man conversation to admit another member, a tall, clean-cut, pretty member of the male doctor variety. Jeez, where is all this tall coming from? Ash had to look up ... and up to meet the newcomer’s eyes. If she stayed in Dublin any longer, she’d be getting a crick in her neck. They made their men TALL.