by Black, Paula
‘Probably hiding in the garden with his tail between his legs, or scrounging breakfast off the neighbours.’ Barefoot and bare-chested he padded after her, covering the distance to the vault door in long, easy strides. Drawing up in front of her, he ran his thumb across her full lower lip and his voice was husky and accented as he spoke. ‘Can’t say I didn’t enjoy having you locked up here as my prisoner.’ With a seductive smile, he turned to punch the code into the keypad and the heavy metal lock disengaged. ‘You’re free to go, Little Red.’
He acted like she wanted to go ... she didn’t. Once she knew Setty was safe and fed and she had clothes and food, Ash would be crawling right back down here to sort the papers in the safety of their duvet fort. Her lips pursed a kiss to the pad of his thumb, fingers trailing down the strong line of his forearm as she leaned into him for a second. ‘I’ll be coming back, Big Bad, or better yet,’ she laced their fingers and squeezed, tugging him through the door, ‘you’re coming with me.’
She wasn’t ready to face the outside alone.
Ash peered into the apartment, eyes darting, Connal’s heat a security at her back that allowed her to breach the fear barrier set up just on the other side of the door. She stepped through and that cut the cord, it sped up her slo-mo searching and the wolfhound’s name was a call on her lips. She hoped he was just scrounging food, with every quickening step that brought her closer to the outside, she hoped. Damn mutt. The apartment seemed massive now, as she crossed it. Taking too long to travel the distance from hidden door to door, it gave her nerves time to vibrate anxiety, a dark foreboding taking root and sprouting up vines of thick fear. Her voice rasped a little as she called his name again.
Connal followed, she could feel him wrapped around her fingers, a slight pause rising tension down her arm, a tightening around her hand drawing her gaze to his for a split second before her fingers were around the handle and she was pushing at the heavy wood. ‘Is it locked?’ Connal’s head shook, but his eyes were a little wider, body set in rigid lines as Ash let go of his hand and braced her entire weight against it, setting her feet firmly on the ground and heaving into the old hinges.
‘Don’t, Ash ...’ His voice, a growl over the huff of her breath, turned her head in annoyance and she brushed him away. He couldn’t let her out of one door and expect her not to want to go through the other. The thing protested, put up a fight while she shoved. She glared at the male standing beside her, unmoving and tense, no offer to help as she pushed her weight into it until it cracked open and the gap widened. Her smirk was all triumph, a self-satisfied grin kissed to his locked jaw before she squeezed through the gap, hollering for the dog, eyes roving the undergrowth where he snuffled for rabbits.
Her foot found the obstruction before her gaze did. It was wet, and tacky and she drew her foot back with a wrinkled nose and a furrowed brow. The thing in front of her was a grotesque lump of doorstop. Mangled and an unnatural blue, the dry-flaking cracks in its skin crumbled when her foot brushed against it in her retreat, chipping away at the black webbing of lines pulsing slowly at the surface. It was humanoid, bloodied and deathly still, save for the rough rattling breaths crackling into the morning air like too much static. ‘What is that thing?’
‘Red fog withdrawal, what happens when a wolf doesn’t make it home on time.’ Connal pushed at the pathetic creature’s shoulder with his foot and the flesh disintegrated under the pressure, collapsing like ash. ‘This Cinderella is on the way out.’
The thing looked so human. Male. The early morning sun glinted off his face, sending his skin Smurf blue, a hoop of gold catching the light. Ash looked closer and recoiled. It was the Bull, the rutting male from the club with his snake hips and a thick ring through his nose. Death was far from pretty. ‘It’s not moving. But look at its eyes. It’s in pain, isn’t it?’ Terror leapt out from the wide, wild eyes of the creature. She couldn’t imagine being aware when her body was failing, decomposing with her brain still functioning, still thinking.
‘It’s an excruciating death. This one is paralysed. The mutt must have bitten it.’ A foot to its jaw and the head listed to one side, bloody teeth marks confirming his suspicions. ‘Wolfhound saliva is poisonous to Fomorians.’
Pity unfurled in her stomach, bile rising up her throat as the mess of its neck gaped with the hanging weight of its head. Shouldn’t feel sorry for something that killed her family, but she couldn’t help it. The pity was there and she hated it. ‘Setty did this? He fought it? The mutt is dumber than I thought!’ Her boot squelched in another congealing puddle and revulsion shuddered through her, watching her feet as she moved around the dying creature. Her frown deepened. There was too much blood for a single bite, so much she was having trouble avoiding it. She prayed she was wrong, that whatever switch had flicked on with its gory revelation was a lie and the path she followed wouldn’t lead to what she thought.
The twisted knot of thorny shrubs lining the path was pulled back with frantic fingers, sharp pricking brambles grabbing at her as she pushed them back and her skin brushed through fur she’d once buried her hands in. Her toe caught on a metal stud and her stomach bottomed out, knowing the stud would be one of many decorating a collar she’d bought to make the playful pup into more of a badass. Her knees buckled.
She crumbled, like a log burnt too long, the horror touched her and she fell into fragments of dust, screams lodged in her throat as her knees hit the floor. She was breathing tears, couldn’t see for them, the world a slash of blood and silver fur in the tangle of briers and Ash’s hands were halfway to reaching for him when strong fingers bound her wrists in a silent ‘No’. The growl in her throat sounded like grief, it was angry and terrified, her heartbeat a painful sobbing drum in her chest as she tore herself from Connal’s grip. He stood so calm above her, watching with ice eyes as she lost parts of herself to her sorrow. Ash was barely holding herself together, wrapped in a doubled-over ball of wrenching tears, her fingers finding their way into a patch of not-so-damaged fur as she tried not to look, and saw everything. Setty ... For all his antics, killing her socks, eating her out of house, glueing himself so close to her that she tripped whenever she took a step, she’d got used to him being a constant presence. He’d been a comfort. And it was the least she could do to touch him. He’d loved her scratching his ears, playing with them as his tongue lolled out. Now, he was torn up, a dog fight gone bad, a killing blow from something with much larger jaws leaving him bloodied and limp.
‘Connal ...’ She whimpered, reassuring herself of his presence, but all she got was a wall of frozen silence. He was there but eyes she’d watched go hot with emotion, were cold, unfeeling, the edge of steel crashing into watery blue. He was completely unaffected. She was drowning in her sadness and he stood there. Heartless. She’d wondered it once and the word sprung back as she ran her fingers once more over Setty’s ears. No love for an animal he’d looked after. Would there be anything felt for her? Did he have that capacity for emotion she thought she’d seen? Ash knew well she could delude herself into believing things, it had been her saving grace these years and, on her knees curled close to a pup she’d loved, there was no comfort from the man who had held her in his bed, no connection in grief. It was her tears and hers alone that wet silver fur.
Ash could only offer a weak, teary resistance when strong hands closed around her shoulders, hauling her to her feet as she fought to stay in a grieving vigil beside her mutt’s prone form. She didn’t want him to be alone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It was her fault, all of it, and as her eyes caught on Connal’s broad-shouldered form crossing around the back, a bound Setanta held in his arms, the tears fell fresh, blurring the hard, unfeeling set of Connal’s features to rainwater. He looked so cruel, sullen, moving like a soldier, all duty and efficiency as he secured Setty in the back.
It couldn’t be real.
Ash desperately clung to that idea, where she had sought sanity and clarity, now she ached for this all
to be a delusion, a cruel acid trip from something she’d taken. But she knew it wasn’t. The silence in the hearse was too heavy to be imagined, it was a stone weight sitting in her throat, a corkscrew twisting her stomach into cramps of grief that stabbed with every sobbing breath. She couldn’t stop crying. Something had changed since she’d hit Dublin soil and the ice she normally encased herself in wasn’t so quick to freeze her over. And now, she was blaming Connal. The asshole lit fires in her emotions and she couldn’t get beyond the heat. Grief was burning her through and all she could do was leak the ragged tears of her melted ice. Ash pulled the canine-gnawed sock through her fingers when he moved to slip into the drivers seat, wet lashes fanned down as she toyed with the holes in the fabric. No way in hell could she look at him, her sadness was too raw, it left her flayed and vulnerable to him. He could hurt her.
The growl of the engine drowned out the tear-rough rasp of her exhale and she wiped at the water tracks marking her cheeks as the large car moved away, too soon turning onto a familiar stretch of road. Last time she’d driven this, it had been alone and bubbling over with annoyed curiosity, stalking a guy who stalked her and stole her grandmother’s car. Last time she’d driven this, Ash had had her whole perspective changed, her nightmare had been dead at her feet and buried beneath them and she’d been fucked into the ground by a man she’d since tasted and touched until she knew his body better than her own.
His body, she knew. The rest of him was still a little foggy.
It had been the first time she’d felt true clarity. Terrorised and confused, yes, those too, but for the first time in her life, the nightmares made sense. It had been the first time they had ... well ... a lot of firsts, burying a dead body amongst them. Ash’s brow furrowed from its press against the window, a frown creasing to the glass. He wouldn’t, would he?
Cold and heartless as he seemed to be, Ash would not stand for their pup to be buried anywhere near the remains of the wolf. Connal’s silent treatment about snapped the lines of tension strung taut across her body, her mouth opening to explode a whole heap of ‘Hell No’s’ that turned to a huff of air as his strong hands coaxed the hearse onto a thinner, less used path into the darkness of trees. She scowled, trying to track the way, looking for something familiar to mark where they’d dumped the lump of nasty beast. If he put their pup anywhere near that thing, she would unleash a whole load of hurt on his ass. Pity she didn’t have a frying pan handy. A pathetic laugh escaped her on a trickle of hot tears, so overloaded on the mess of emotion that nothing was making any sense.
Blinking to clear the water-jewelled drops from her lashes, Ash lifted her head and really looked as the car pulled to a stop at the side of the dirt track. This place was desolate. All trees and undergrowth, green and dewed from the light trickle of rain that had fallen to coat everything in a glisten of pretty shimmering droplets.
It looked too nice to be a graveyard for monsters.
Sapphire eyes followed the movement of his body, the dip of the car as his weight left it, and the silence was jagged and sharp with hiccuping breaths she fought to swallow. Fuck, she wished he’d just talk to her. She needed him, to touch her, or kiss her, or reassure her, or, hell, she’d take a glare and an insult at the moment if it meant he noticed her. He hated her.
Connal hesitated, fingers curled around the car door handle, a breath trapped in his chest along with the dense tangle of thoughts that refused to coalesce into any kind of meaningful conversation. Whatever it was she needed from him, he didn’t have it to give. His well was dry, parched roots shriveled up, retracted so deep inside of him, they were good as dead. No tears, no pain, no loss, no anger. There were only so many bargains you could strike against a soul before it became a blunt instrument.
Cracking the door, a chill breeze blew across the enclosed silence. The leafy undergrowth crushed under the soles of his feet as he emerged into the gloom of the day. Heavy raindrops fell from the trees to splash his shirt as he circled the car, popped her door, and waited. The tense silhouette of her body didn't move, just sat staring at the pale hands wrung in her lap, plucking at the baggy sweatpants she’d borrowed from him in the frantic aftermath of finding the body. A hitched breath escaped her lips and he knew she was crying. How had they come to this? His hand dropped from the door to fall limp at his side. Needing to put his empty hands to some purpose, he walked to the rear of the car.
The back doors of the Cadillac swung wide on their bundled up cargo. He'd wrapped the dog in one of the sheets from his own bed, counting the times he'd kicked that damn mutt off the mattress. The fabric moulded to the beast’s heavy haunches, a perfect ghostly outline in white, marred by the tell-tale rusty smears that bled a map of violence through the thin fibres. Tugging back the edge of the sheet to reveal the dog's head, his palm shaped the powerful curve of the animal's skull. It was a familiar touch, and though he knew the body was cold, the brush of coarse, silvery hair against his skin gave the illusion that life lingered still. He almost fancied he saw the muscles twitch as they would when the dog, asleep on the rug in front of his fire, dream-chased some imaginary foe.
It was a cruel trick of the light, the scene shrouded in unearthly stillness, quiet as the grief that hung, a mute stone in his chest. Throat tight, voice a rasp, Connal dropped back on his hunkers, whispering words in a lilting mother tongue to the animal's now deaf ears. He spoke to the stillness of roads rising and the wind at his back, of sunshine and of soft rain falling. 'Peace,’ he murmured, ‘until we meet again, old friend.' He patted the dog's flank and drew the sheet back over its head, then heavy of hand, he lay the shovel atop the pile, gathered the limp bundle into his arms and stood. Kicking the doors closed, he caught his own reflection in the glass and the sadness in his eyes was ancient as stone, equally cold and impenetrable. Through the rain-spattered window of the car, he felt her stare on him, and knew what it was she saw that made her flinch away. Monster. He gave the open passenger door a wide berth as he stepped around it, didn't look at her as he spoke the clipped words. 'It’s wet. Stay in the car, if you prefer. I can take it from here.’ Damnit. Those were the exact words he’d used when she walked away from him in the bath, weren’t they? Their torrid night of intimacy seemed like it belonged in a different story now, erased by the frozen rain of grief, a chasm of distance opened up between them on the fault lines of the mutt’s death. The night that blazed a chemical alchemy of lust had left them with nothing but fool’s gold come morning. Two strangers brought together by cruel circumstance.
Without waiting for her answer, Connal tramped off through the wet woods with his burden, fully expecting her to wait in the car. He had smelled her fear, as well as her tears, in the confines of the vehicle, scent their only communication as they’d driven in silence to this isolated spot in the mountains. The rain had stopped, but the breeze scattered showers of droplets from the drenched canopy of leaves overhead. The soil would be waterlogged and claggy to dig.
Cracking branches underfoot alerted him to Ash’s approach. He could feel the anger in her stomping approach and it made him weary. Passing him, she spun on her heel and blocked his path. Hands planted on her hips, she stared him down.
‘You think this is all my fault! I know you do. For leaving Setty outside.' Tear-streaked cheeks suffused pink to match the rims of swollen eyes that were bright with defiance. She’d finally cracked. 'God knows the guilt is chewing me up, but how was I supposed to know this would happen, Connal? Obviously this is just another dead body to you.’ She motioned to the sheet-wrapped bundle with a trembling hand. ‘To be shovelled into the mud of just another unmarked grave. One more dirty secret disposed of.’ In all likelihood, she would be next. ‘Unlike you, I am not some robot. I’m hurting enough here already, without needing you to punish me with your cold shoulder. I loved that stupid, loyal dog. He led me to you, when you needed me. I won’t let you bury him up here alongside the creatures that ripped him apart.’
Connal froze in his tracks, lowered t
he weight in his arms enough to regard her with a strange look in his eyes that was a mixture of confusion and incredulity.
‘This is not your fault, Ash. None of this has been your fault. The dog was doing what it was trained to do, what the wolfhound breed has been trained to do for millennia.’ A trained guard dog, just like Connal. He and the dead mutt in his arms were no different. Sure, he survived, this time, by the skin of his teeth and the arrogance of the wolves who underestimated the depth of his reserves, but it might just as easily have been him, bleeding out on the stone steps of his apartment. At least he was giving the dog a decent burial. Who would take the time to do the same for him? Would she? He knew in his heart he wouldn't want that for her. She was so brittle, not made for this life to which he himself had become so inured. He looked at Ash again with new eyes, seeing something of himself, his old self, reflected back. It was something he had missed before and suddenly, he found himself questioning the intensity of this woman’s emotions for an animal she’d only known a few days. When it came to transference, he’d written the book.
‘This isn’t really about the dog, is it Ash? Any more than it’s about you researching mythical creatures for your thesis. This is personal. Spit it out, before you choke on it. Who did you lose?’
He saw right through her. This hulking, unfeeling stone of a man looked right into her soul like it was cellophane, and she felt naked in his judgement. Bristling with annoyance, she struggled to hide the defensive tone in her voice. ‘Why wouldn’t it be about Setanta? He died protecting us, protecting me, and you don’t feel anything because it’s what he was meant to do?!!’ Hissing anger, grief-torn and hiding, Ash hated his x-ray emotion vision. How could anyone see so much when they didn’t know how it felt? His logic was simply that. Logic. Cold, frigid and factual. No emotion. ‘What would you even know about loss, when you feel nothing at all?’
