by Paula Black
How could it be real? How could they be ... people? She’d resigned herself to the half reality of the wolf corpse in the woods. That had been a creature. Only a creature. Savage and animal. But she’d sat with people at a table, humans who, on closer inspection, were more the beast in the woods than she could ever have expected. Whatever happened from this point on, Ash had the feeling she wouldn’t come out of it whole.
Thoughts wheeling around her head, her body was motionless, still captured in the memory of being flung side to side as the vehicle raced, she could feel the twinge in her muscles as the car had jerked with the impact of Connal hitting the windscreen. That sickening crack that splintered glass. If his head cracked like that ...
No. She refused to acknowledge the pain in her chest that twisted if she even considered never seeing him again. He’d risked his life, he’d maybe given his life, to get her away from them. The blades stabbed deep with every flicker of memory, every word exchanged, each glance shared, the kisses, the touches.
Just as it goes.
Try not thinking about something and you ultimately get stuck thinking of what you didn’t want to think about.
At least she wasn’t imagining his head splattered across a sidewalk.
Oh, wait ...
Groaning, her head dropped to her hands, curling over into a ball of anguish that ached in every bone in her body. She hurt and they hadn’t even got their hands on her. He’d stopped that.
Her stalker. Her saviour.
Maybe she hurt, but she would bet her mother’s ring, he was hurting a hell of a lot more. She wished she could press pause and rewind. If she’d listened and not ignored his warnings against Form, he’d be with her now. Probably annoying her, definitely infuriating her. But he wasn’t and it was a new pain that struck deeper than fear.
Ash barely heard the scratching whine of claws at her back door, Setty calling for a bathroom break.
‘In a minute, boy.’ Raspy words, thready and choked with tears she hadn’t known were there. She swiped at the wet heat coursing tracks down her face and pushed off from the couch; a jerky, robotic motion, slow stepping through to the kitchen, Ash shook her head at the giant mutt scrabbling at the door.
‘I need to get you a cat flap. Please don’t go far.’ She didn’t want to be alone. The latch was lifted, the door unbolted, and Setty was off like a silver-furred bullet, barking loudly as he barrelled into the garden and hurtled down the steps to disappear down a path of overgrown brambles. ‘Shhh ...’ She hissed after him, glancing warily at the gardens either side, shadows lengthening, alive, shifting into darkness that could hide razor claws and bone-crushing teeth.
‘Setanta!’ He was scrabbling out of sight, strains of high-pitched whining drifting on the still night air. Nature was being too quiet around his barking. The silence before the apocalypse. He definitely was not doing his business. ‘Shit ...’
Ash stepped out, arms clutched around herself, holding herself together and fending off anything in the night that might want to take a chomp out of her.
When Setty collided with something hard, she was down the path so fast she didn’t even feel the thorned branches tear through the fabric of her stockings, scratching against her flesh as she darted through the garden, tripping, panicked, down the steps to face the whimpering mass of silver.
He’d attacked a door. Stubborn mutt had pounded the thing right open and was just disappearing into the dark entryway when crimson smears tore her attention to the floor. If the damn pup had injured himself ... hell, that’s more than a scratch. Ash’s brow furrowed to a knit, stepping over the drags of red, the brushes of blood caught on the door and directing a trail across hard flooring.
Gingerly, she called out for Setty, a timid ‘Hello?’ echoing back from within, preceding the dull clang of something hitting metal and her dog’s signature pleading whine.
It was like arriving in Dublin all over again. Walking through a door into a place that held a frightening unknown. And just like she had that first night, she stepped through it and took her chances.
Whatever she’d been expecting, the total lack of personality on the other side of the gloom wasn’t it. It was disappointing. Boring for a serial killer. She felt like she’d been put in a cardboard box in the middle of Ikea. There was no sight of Setty, but she could hear him some ways off, muffled and carrying on at whatever he’d found, bloodied paw prints lining her path around furniture. God, she was an idiot. Shaking with a dull kind of terror, Ash let her adrenaline drive her forwards. It was better fuel than her energy drinks, and the worst kind of compulsion. It kept her going when she should have made herself as small as possible and locked herself in her room, instead of venturing into a stranger’s apartment after a trail of blood and a crazy dog.
Stupid and Ashling were about as synonymous as they could get at the moment.
She tiptoed through, her attention drawn to the far end of the room, a smaller space walled off into something resembling a bedroom, minimalist and a little wrecked, and gaping into an opening in the wall that resembled a high tech entrance to the underworld.
Ash reached, pushing at the wood panel that jutted out and was filtering the noises of her dog into the apartment. A fraction of light snuck from the room to glint off something metallic, a thick vault door, like the bank ones, but scarier, industrial and damn well meant to keep something out.
Or something in.
But it was open now, inset with some sort of intelligent computer lock she hoped wouldn’t shoot lasers at her like Resident Evil protection and dice her into little Ashling cubes. She stepped through the concealed door, sensing out steps that descended into what was probably more darkness.
She did not want to see whatever she was going to see under the cover of darkness. Light always made the monsters less scary. You could see the whole of them, from claws to teeth, to multiple heads if they had them. She’d want to know about multiple heads.
One foot at a time, Ash. At least that way we might get out with one limb still attached.
The room bloomed into existence and she hadn’t even touched anything. Taking a deep breath that tasted of wet dog and old pennies, Ash stumbled off the bottom step into a vast cellar space lit up by candle glow ... A hell of a lot of candle glow.
‘Holy fuck!’ It could have been a warehouse, right under her home, stretching out a few houses along, into cathedral-sized epicness. Iron beams and brickwork stretched over her head, fanning out in lines that dropped to concrete columns and thick swathes of draping fabric. Sections curtained off, furniture dotted around like a raided storage unit, it looked lived in, would have been ... homey ... if not for the continuing blood tracks that spread a red stain across the floors, smearing the corners of tables, bleeding to fabrics in a direct blood-paved guide to the far end.
As metal clattered and Setty yelped, she set her creeping to stealth mode, a shaking, petrified ninja slipping through the cellar room and tripping over books. The couch was littered with them and torn clothing that was really goddamn familiar!
Fingers pinched the material of a shirt like it carried serial-killer cooties and held it up in front of eyes that felt saucer-wide. It was the shirt. The one she’d ripped off her burglar in a frenzy of lust.
‘Connal ...’ A whisper, choked and frightened. Clutching the fabric to her chest, her booted toe squelched in a congealing puddle and she whipped it back, pedalling away from the pool of red, catching her weight on her heel as she spun and tumbled, hands tearing at curtains for purchase, ass colliding with the floor so hard her spine rattled and she cried out.
The fabric gave way as she fell, dragged down by her weight and leaving her in a bundle of heavy material, facing a growling Setty as he bounded over to bark-howl at the metal contraption filled to brimming with ...
Fur. Thick and white and sleek to a body that had to have outsized a horse even flat on its side as it was.
A cage. Her stalker had a cage full of bleeding, mammoth-sized ... c
reature.
‘Breathe, Ash, breathe ...’ She couldn’t draw in oxygen around the panic stamping down her throat like a rock of doom, her limbs too tangled in the drapery to do anything but sit and stare at the thing that whined behind tree-trunk thick iron bars.
He’d got one. Her infuriating stalker had actually captured one of the creatures and he’d locked the thing up, even as it bled out all over the concrete floor.
Are you completely off your rocker, DeMorgan? Was that pity we were just feeling? That thing could have been one of the ones that tore your mother apart.
She was a sucker for things in pain though, and this beast was in agony, every breath pumped out fresh, hair-tufted streams of blood that swept out and threatened to colour her boots in its life.
God, what would happen if it died in there? Connal would need a bulldozer to remove it. Maybe she should open the door and it could just crawl-
‘Setty?!! Setanta! Come back!’ The mutt was off in a streak of silver, from snuffling at the metal bars to flying across the cellar and up the stairs with his tail between his legs, her hands catching nothing but the air in his wake. ‘Fat lot of good you are! Protector, my ass!!!’ She yelled at the tail disappearing through the vault door before the heavy metal groaned shut, snapping off the sounds of his barks to faint metallic echoes.
‘The thing is locked up!’ As though that could bring the pup back. It was a half hearted reassurance that did nothing to stop the terror that coursed through her own veins.
The creature rolled in its giant cage, groaning growls that rumbled the floor to earthquake tremors.
Nope, no no no no no!! She couldn’t do anything if the beast moved. Too fucking freaky. Ash leapt from her bind of drapes, stumbling and tripping her way in a claw of nails up the stairs. If she’d had a tail, it would be so far between her legs she could have passed for male. Flee, run, fuck, just get out of there!!
She shuddered as it whimpered behind her, gaze darting over her shoulder, hands out in front of her in a push to the door ... that didn’t do anything but bruise the flesh of her palms. The metal didn’t budge. Vault doors, completely unbudgeable. And definitely closed. Again, and again, she shouldered the mass of steel, praying the locks would give.
‘Nonononononononono!’ Ash struck her fists to the door as the code bleeped red once more. ‘Who actually has one of these? Fucking Connal ...’ Cursing him out with every exhale, she slumped to the door, spine sliding down cool metal to pool her at the bottom, eyes brimming tears as they lit on the mass of caged beast panting hard in the corner of the room.
Her brain was ranting, throwing insults and vicious worst case scenarios where Connal came home to her beast-eaten remains rotting in a corner. Assuming he was even coming back at all.
It was static, too many thoughts buzzing and scrabbling in her head like Setty on the other side of the door. He barked, the sound stifled by the thick metal and the beast flinched, heavily muscled flank twitching as one powerful leg clawed out with a giant paw. She watched its movements in her peripheral, its jerking easing as Setty moved away, snarling until he was too far off to hear and she was left alone with the monster.
Turn the lights off, you won’t be able to see it as well then, we can pretend it’s not real. Just a figment, remember? Just nightmares, they’re not real...not real, not real, not real... Repeat the mantra and breathe.
Yeah.
It didn’t help.
Three thousand, four hundred and thirty three dust motes had filtered across her vision by the time it made a sound again, jolting her from her dazed focus and ripping her gaze to its bloody form. Such a plaintive sound, agonised, it expanded its giant chest and crushed it on a howling exhale. It wrenched at her heart. Lonely. That was the sound of loneliness, soul deep and tormented. It was baying helplessly and before the silence regrouped, Ash was down the steps, fingers curling around the bars, forehead rested in between.
It was suffering, and nothing deserved to die alone. She sank to the floor in a cross-legged heap, up close and personal with the darkness that swept through her sleeping mind. It was so different to the beast she’d buried with Connal. They never could have hauled this thing into a hole in the ground.
For the first time in her whole life, Ash really looked.
The glimpse she’d caught at the club hadn’t been too far off. It looked like a wolf, bulkier, broader, with a barrel chest and strong, canine limbs. Its back legs ended in massive paws, its front ... she peered. They were different, flexed out into something that looked like it could grip, more finger-like and taloned. Its broad head elongated into a squarer, longer muzzle, the fur thinner, looking silken, white, dotted with flashes of the same red that stained the beasts matted flank and ribs ...
God it was so torn up she didn’t know how it could still be breathing.
But it was, and as she slumped against the bars, Ash let the tears that had been brimming to fall free. Releasing the fear and terror of the night, the worry for Connal, the concern she felt for the creature, in a hot cascade of scalding tears.
She couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. All bloodied, its coat matted, strips ripped free and lifted as though someone hadn’t stuck the envelope down right. Shaking fingers covered her mouth as her free hand wrapped around the bars of the cage, pressed so close she should have been able to see it breathe. Ash frowned, narrowing her eyes and fixating on the barrel expanse of its chest, waiting for the tell-tale sign of life.
None came.
‘Shit ...’ Ash couldn’t leave the thing to die in a pool of its own blood. She ran for the kitchen and filled the removable wash basin as full as she could carry. If it was dead, this may at least clean it some, and if it wasn’t, maybe it would make it feel better. Ash felt like a child, uncertain and too full of the strangest hope as she hauled the basin back and tossed the contents in a warm water crash over the monster wolf and the concrete it lay on. It was drenched, and it flailed, thrashing violently.
The cracking of her spine to the opposite wall alerted Ash to her frantic backpedaling, brick biting into the skin of her shoulder blades as she watched in a panic as the creature fought against the attack of water.
Well it was definitely not fucking dead.
Warmth chilled, soaking through its fur and sluicing some of the blood to a watery puddle that trickled through the barrier of bars, pouring into the shallow moat cut into the stone and disappearing somewhere she couldn’t drag her eyes away long enough to track.
The beast let out a whine, an inhuman groan levelling out to laboured huffing breaths that grated on her nerves and she snapped, spinning to face the creature with a harsh, ‘will you shut up!! I don’t know how to help ...’ the yell died in her throat, choking up to a strangled scream, ‘you ...’ Ash was lurching over to the cage, her feet walking all over each other in her haste to get back to its side ... no, not it ... he ... him ...
Naked and wet and bleeding like he’d been cheese grated and pepperoni sliced, there was no furry monster on a concrete floor now. Only a man she couldn’t reach. ‘Connal!!’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The icy deluge of foul water was a slap to attention that drew a gasp from his parched throat. The wet rags of the tunic clung to his shivering skin like wretchedness. Sandalled feet appeared through the slats of the timber cage, toenails mangled, split and filthy as old gravestones, a matching set of broken teeth bared in a sneer as the guard hunkered down to hurl a gob of spittle in the boy's face.
'You stink, dog.'
The whites of the boy's eyes showed stark against the grime smearing his face, bony knees drawn up to a ribcage that stood out like the skeleton hull of a longboat, folded as he was into the cramped crawl space he had called 'home' these countless seasons past. The guard's teeth ripped into a meaty thigh of spit-roast flesh, chewing in a slow, cruel display. The desired effect achieved, the boy salivated at the smell and it shamed him. Dog eat dog was a literal thing in this cesspit.
The carcass
es of the beasts who fell in the arena were put to use as food, skins ripped from their flesh and fashioned into winter clothing. His stomach churned. It had been Bran's fate, that first day, when the hound had thrown himself at the wolves in a futile act of heroism. Bran never stood a chance against so many of the Untame , as the guards called the vicious creatures. He watched his hound ripped to shreds before his eyes while the giant, black-haired brute of a man had stood at the sidelines, intently watching the boy with those cruel eyes of his, as though waiting, willing him to break, to cry.
The beasts were closing in on him, a demonic circle of blood-whetted fangs and prowling menace, but he had no tears, only blind, possessed rage. He set his jaw and fisted his small hands and growled at the animals, David before a ravenous pack of snarling Goliaths. He was going to die, but not before he sank his teeth into and ripped the fur from at least one of these evil hellhounds. The warrior at the fence barked a raspy laugh, clearly reveling in the boy’s abasement. He saw red, literally. He would give the hasty-witted bastard cause for mirth. The scene became awash with crimson and he wondered if this was death upon him. But then something snapped inside him, a culmination of his fury at Bran’s unjust death and the humiliating laughter of his captor. His wiry body simply exploded. Like the kernels of popping corn his mother would toss in the fire, it was as though his outer husk split apart, releasing the huge and ferocious physical embodiment of his rage, a nemesis of lethal fangs and coiled power. His head snapped back and he bellowed an ear-splitting roar at the encroaching circle of beasts. They cowered as though the sound were a lash and began to retreat, muzzles grazing the dirt in supplication to the savage creature that dwarfed even their substantial size. Cranking his head in the direction of his tormentor, he growled and leapt through the air, slamming his flanks into the solid barrier that divided the spectators from the circle of the arena. As he rebounded into the dirt, the slow clapping of the warrior reached his ears.
