The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) by Jess Raven, Paula Black Page A

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 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. ‘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, D ude. 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?’ h e 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 to, because if not ... my
nightmare has come to life.
    ‘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 a hip
flask, offering it like it was an olive branch. ‘You look like you could use a
stiff one.’
    Her fingers shook as she
reached out and carefully took the flask from his hand. A stiff one? Yeah,