Conner (The Athol Trilogy, Book 1): The Athol Trilogy, #1

By Miranda Stork

"5 stars! One of the best novels I have read all year!" --Nicole Hill, Author of Legacy Forgotten, 5 Stars

"You are hooked whether you like it or not! A great read." --Maxi Shelton, Author of Sold Into Marriage, 5 Stars

"'Conner' took me on a wild, fantastic and exciting ride!" --Trish Marie Dawson, Author of 'The Station' Series, 5 Stars

"Conner is a must read for all werewolf fans. It has a fresh spin on wolves, and I thought it was great." --Fictional Candy, 4 Stars

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Erin is a young psychologist, with no time for anything but her work, and unable to remember anything about her past. She leads an uneventful life, but a lonely one, in which she secretly wishes for a soulmate...

Conner is an unusual patient who approaches her, thrusting her into a strange world of darkness that runs beneath our own. He believes himself to be a creature of legend-a werewolf. But he also draws Erin with a roguish charm, and an irresistible feeling that seems to bind them together...

Conner desperately tries to save her from an unknown evil that pursues her with a relentless passion that crosses centuries, an evil that once took her very soul away, somewhere in Erin's lost memories.

As she becomes more entwined in a series of events that will remind her of who she really is, will she make it away from the oncoming darkness unscathed...?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Isara Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781501400711

Book preview

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Dedications

For Mark; my soulmate.  I’m so unbelievably lucky to have found you, I love you so much. You believe in me so much, it always makes me write just that extra chapter.

And for my Nana, Frances, and my late Grandad, John, both of you have always been more than just family.

Also to Enid Blyton, for inspiring a little girl to be a writer.

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Prologue

North Yorkshire, 1751

The cool night breeze shook the branches against one another, whispering to themselves as though they had a secret too tantalising for human ears. A light aroma of sweet summer honey drifted through the small clearing, where a shadowy figure let out a ragged breath. The clearing was lit by a single ray of silver, piercing through the trees, fireflies dancing erratically in its radiance. The unsettling silence that followed the figure’s sigh weighed heavily on the cool night air.

Peering through the framework of trees and branches, he gazed across at the well-used, dusty road. He crawled deliberately through the grass until he was only a few feet away from the edge of the road, his amber eyes glowing, still hidden by the tapestry of branches. The only sound was his hair ruffling in the soft wind, and no human ears could have detected it.

His head moved sharply to one side as the rattle of carriage wheels grew closer. The scent of the ancient trees mixed with the strong aroma of horses. Nose twitching, he furrowed his brow and breathed in deeper.  The conflicting sweetness of a lady’s perfume came to him over everything else, curling his lips with a cruel smile.

His heart thudded against his ribs, the blood in his veins pumping furiously as his muscles readied themselves for the sprint. The figure’s breath rolled heavily as the rattle and clapping of horse’s hooves and the carriage came closer.

A long thread of saliva stretched from the side of his jaw, and he wiped it away hurriedly with the back of a rough sleeve. A small voice in the back of his mind whispered that he should try to fight these feelings of overwhelming power. But it is so thrilling to let them take over, he considered, swatting the thought away.  His victims unknowingly rode towards their fate. Isn’t that what separates us from the animals?

Chapter One

"And that is the basic framework of the schizophrenic mind. Next week we’ll discuss why people become schizophrenic. Or rather, what could be possible triggers of it. I’ll see you all next week. Read the set text, please—I’m looking at you, Mr Gabowski." Dr Erin Miller pointed jokingly towards a retreating student before neatly collecting her papers from her desk. The class shuffled from seats, pulling on shoulder bags and leaving, a drone of conversation rising amongst scraping chairs as they filed out.

Erin! It’s been a while!

She glanced up sharply, her long brown hair swaying across her oval face. Her piercing eyes searched over the throng of students leaving the lecture theatre, settling on her jovial greeter.

Finally sighting the rotund gentleman stood in a tweed coat by the doorway, she gave a polite nod, forcing a smile onto her thin lips. Dr Whitfield. Hello. Erin’s tone was polite, but lacked any pretence of cordiality. What a surprise. What brings you down here from the practice?

The ‘practice’ she referred to was a private surgery the doctor owned. It was for patients who had psychological issues, but no financial problems. Erin pursed her lips tighter at the reminder. It’s unethical to choose who receives help with their problems based on the size of their bank balances. Having said that, I have occasionally done work there when I need to pay the rent, as it were. Twisting and shoving folders into her battered leather satchel, Erin tried not to dwell on it. She felt a bit of her ethical code dying away every time she did work at Whitfield Care Hospital and Village

Well, I’ll get straight to the point. He paused for a second as if collecting his thoughts, scratching his white beard with stubby fingers. Erin’s ice-blue eyes drifted to the sight, noting the short, chewed nails. We have a patient at the practice who is a little... He paused again. A little...‘non-textbook’.

You’re getting cryptic in your old age, Frank. Can I at least have a clue? She finally cleared her desk and perched on the wooden top, folding her arms with cool precision.

Dr Whitfield smiled tiredly, shaking his head. He believes he is a lycanthrope.

Lycanthrope? Erin crossed her brows, mind reeling for the answer. The word sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Is that like a misanthrope?

A lycanthrope—a werewolf.

Erin raised her eyebrows at him in disbelief, a smirk twitching the corners of her mouth. Is that so? And where do I come into this? Do you need me to go for dog biscuits?

Frank tapped his knuckles against the oak surface of her desk, tutting. Erin, be serious. I wouldn’t come here to waste your time. Dr Whitfield spun on his heel, tucking his hands into the cheap grey fabric of his suit pockets, pacing through the beams of afternoon sunlight that stretched lazily across the dusty floor. You are the leading expert in the county in schizophrenia and related cases. And I’d like you to...take a look at this case. See what your opinion might be. He peered at her expectantly, head cocked to one side as he awaited her answer.

Erin let out a soft breath and slid off the desk, her stilettos clacking against the varnished planks underneath. Sauntering across the lecture theatre with deliberate, slow steps, she looked out of the window to the university grounds below, taking in the shouts and laughter of students and lecturers making their way to classes. Same old routine, day in, day out. Erin did need something new. She could feel it in her bones, like an itch she couldn’t scratch. Shaking her head, she fixed Dr Whitfield with an appraising stare. I don’t know. You know I don’t really like the practice, Frank. There’s only so often I can spend time there before my oath has to be changed.

Look, I know how you feel about my practice, and I wouldn’t ask, but... Dr Whitfield’s voice trailed off, and he cast fatigued, bloodshot eyes over Erin’s cold features. Pulling out the chair behind her desk with a loud scrape, he sat down heavily. He has been a patient for six years now, and we’ve only made minimal progress with him. He continues to act aggressively towards nurses, if no one else. He’s even seriously injured one of them.

Erin’s face tightened. What happened?

Well, the nurse went into his room alone, to give him his dinner. Dr Whitfield grimaced, and added, It’s not really what should have happened, I know. They’re supposed to have two of them in the room at all times, to ensure that nothing happens, but you know how standards slip.

Well, in some places, Erin replied cuttingly. At his drawn expression, she shrugged, nodding nonchalantly for him to continue.

Frank pursed his lips, sweat beading on his forehead. A neatly-folded handkerchief appeared from a breast pocket to pat at them. Erin’s eyes followed the anxious movement, her eyebrows dipping as thoughts whirled in her mind. Dr Whitfield shoved the cloth away again, and persisted, She told us that he was sat calmly on his bed, reading a book. He told her he wasn’t hungry, and asked if she would take it out. She refused, and said she would leave it on a table for him, as is procedure. We can’t leave patients with no food, after all. He asked her again in an aggressive tone and growled. But this was usual behaviour for him and she ignored it. It was normally no more than him making noises to try and unnerve the staff. He took in a deep breath, and closed his mouth sharply, as if his next words were an unpleasant pill to swallow. From outside, there were two other nurses who heard an unearthly screaming. They hit the alarm and raced to his room. They ran in on him biting into the nurse’s throat with his teeth.

Erin blinked twice, raising her head in shock. Fuck! Is she alright?

The doctor nodded, but raised his eyebrows in an unspoken answer. Yes. Well, she’s physically alright, but... he trailed off and let the words sit heavily in the air.

And you want me to go in with this maniac and talk to him? Erin let out a scoffing laugh, shaking her head with confusion. Yeah, sure. Why not? Hell, I’ll bring some seasoning for my throat. Her snapped words were punctuated by a sharp jab of her finger towards her neck.

You would, of course, be watched over by two nurses as you were talking to him, Frank nodded, his face puffing up with annoyance like a red balloon. It’s not as if it hasn’t been done before, Erin. I’m certainly not about to let it happen again. He would be restrained. Also, there’s something else. Rising from the chair, he paced across to the window, staring out for a long moment. Erin said nothing, staring at the back of his tweed jacket. He has specifically asked for you.

Erin’s lip twitched. Asked for me?

Yes. Frank Whitfield turned back and looked squarely at her. It would appear you have a fan.

How inviting, she muttered in response.

Look, I’ll leave you his file. Glance over it, and ring me in the morning if you change your mind, he intoned, placing a pink paper file on her desk. He tapped it, and raised his eyebrows. Either way, he can’t remain there as he is.

Erin gave the file a customary cold stare.

Erin strode across her warm living room, the soft glow of her electric fire reflecting off the red sofa. The ‘lycanthrope’ had played on her mind since Dr Whitfield left the pink file on her desk.

It sounded intriguing, but intrigue alone was not a reason to throw herself into a madman’s cage. And it really could be a cage, for all she knew. Standards were only as high as your credit limit at the practice. He tore a nurse’s throat out. Why are you even thinking about this? Deep down, Erin knew the reason why, and it made her feel thoroughly unpleasant. Much as she loved her job at the University, it wasn’t enough. Nothing was. The psychologist in her wanted Pavlov’s dogs, a Little Albert, something she would be remembered for.

She couldn’t even work out what he was doing at the practice. If this patient truly was as bad as he sounded, he should be in a high-security institution. She let out a heavy breath, and wearily flopped down on a chair, picking up the folder that she had carelessly thrown onto her ebony coffee table.

Fingering the sharp spine with one finger, Erin studied the file with apprehension. Curiosity raced through her veins, and she chewed her lip, deep in thought. For some reason she couldn’t place her neatly manicured finger on, this case refused to leave her mind in peace. Perhaps it was the fact he had asked for her. Perhaps life had simply become so dull that she saw herself in a Silence of the Lambs scenario.

Yeah, and look what nearly happened to Jodie Foster, Erin muttered out loud.

After staring at the file like it would respond, she opened it with a casual flip. She flickered her eyes across the thin sheaf of papers, but they revealed nothing more exciting than carefully typed case notes, with a Polaroid photograph paper-clipped to the first page.

The photo was a young man in his mid-to-late twenties, with soft black hair cut short, and although he was trying not to smile, his lips were curling at the corners into a sensual smirk. But the most strange—and also the most striking thing about him—was his eyes. They were brilliant amber. Their depths bore into the viewer, warm honey tempered with cold indifference.

Erin stared for a long moment at the photo, before placing it down with a single raised eyebrow.  He almost...looks familiar. But then, perhaps it’s that nervous twitch hidden behind the irises. I know I’ve seen that before. She sifted through the rest of the file. The first typed sheet detailed when he was sectioned, and to which ward. The second sheet seemed more interesting, a list of symptoms. Erin muttered it aloud to herself.

Delusions of being able to change into a lycanthrope or werewolf, aggressiveness, growling noises, socially inept, egocentric...

Erin shook her head sadly as she read down the list. She did briefly wonder why Dr Whitfield wanted her to take this case. He wasn’t an idiot, and this sounded a lot more like clinical lycanthropy rather than schizophrenia, but she reasoned that they had some similar tendencies. Still...it seems like a lazy diagnosis. That, or he wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. Let’s hope it’s the latter. But clinical lycanthropy was incredibly rare, and it did usually turn out to be an extreme form of schizophrenia.

Returning to the file, Erin leafed through endless sheets of medication lists and daily reports until she finally came across something that caught her eye. She gingerly took out the two single pieces of paper. They were hand-written, not typed, and they were written in a crisp copperplate, with the exception of a few sentences at the top.

‘Whitfield Institution, August 2011,

This is a small piece written by the patient Conner Woods, to be used for psychological evaluation only. It was written as part of an exercise to see if the patient held false memories. This is in his words, and can be considered a personal statement.

Dear reader,

No doubt you have an opinion made up from the countless medication lists and stories of my attacks. However, I am reminded of a famous phrase from Oscar Wilde; ‘Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.’ Perhaps you would gain a better idea of me from my own words. They aren’t much, but they are what I remember, regardless of what people in this dreadful place think.

My name is Conner Woods, and I was born in the

village of Athol, in Ireland, in the vicinity which is now known as Armagh.

I was born in December around 300 BCE, on a cold yet beautiful day, I was told. I was an only child, although I get the strange memory of once having had a twin brother. It’s a flickering memory, more like the image you think you saw in a very old film. I was brought up by a man I thought was my father, but who turned out to be my stepfather.

I was always different. I had raven-black locks, and—strangest of all—amber eyes, bright as an owl’s. My stepfather always treated me differently. Not without love. I never had want of that. But with anxiety, as though I might snap with a violent temper at a moment’s notice.

We lived very comfortably at that time, quite happily.

Everyone knew each other and we all helped one another. The children, including myself, were brought up by everyone in the village, each of them teaching us in different ways. One of the villagers taught me to read, another to fight. I also remember there was a girl in the village, the daughter of the chieftain. She was so beautiful. I grew up and fell in love with her, but that is another story.

Everyone has a distinct point in where everything in their lives changes, be it for better or worse. For some, it is when they become parents, others, when they find their soulmate, or realise their destiny. For me, the first of my two turning points came when I passed my eighteenth year.

I was restless, and there were murmurs amongst the older villagers about the other children and myself, talk of an ‘awakening’. I had no idea what this would be about. I also noticed that small groups of villagers would disappear outside of the village for days at a time. They would leave with bundles of items, wrapped in brown cloth, and come back empty-handed.

I decided to go for a walk after some of these villagers one night, to see where it was that they went. In the sky, a weak, early moon competed with the brilliance of the setting sun. The wheat shushed at me as I walked through its long stalks, enjoying the cathartic feel of the ridged heads against my palm. I walked through the woods for some time, when I came across something that gave me pause.

It was a small roundhouse. Its rotted walls clung together by strands of ivy, and moss peered from every crack in the aged wood of its skeleton. It wasn’t so much that there was a hut. It was that this particular building played on my thoughts. A memory from childhood crept into my mind.

I had come across it once before at the age of six or seven, and ran to my mother lagging behind, delighted at my discovery. As I told her of my sighting, her face fell. You must never go there again, never! She grabbed my arm and pulled me back along the path, sobbing and upset—at what, I wasn’t sure.

As the memory faded, I stared again at the roundhouse. I should have walked away, but something compelled me to go forward, to answer this unknown question in my mind. I took a deep breath and passed through to the darkness of its interior.

Inside, there was a single sunken wooden bed, covered in furs, and a rudimentary shelf. It held more flagons and jugs than anything else, a clue perhaps to the being that dwelled within its mould-stenched walls. There was a small, well-used stone slab below the dusty window, cluttered with clay pots, and a threadbare woollen rug adorned the floor. A tattered cloth lay rolled up on the slab. Curiosity tugged at me. It was as though fate had led me here, to this piece of cloth. I snatched it up, unfurling it to reveal large pictographs painted on with dark ink. I seated myself on the threadbare rug and ran my finger over each symbol.

‘Lucius,

This is the last time you will hear of me, for our affair must end. It is over. I love you so much that my heart breaks with this message, but it is for the best. We must be careful.

I am with child. They shall always remind me of you, but you cannot see them.

I shall never forget you.

Rosa’

Rosa? That was my mother’s name. It could have been any Rosa, but she was the only one I knew of, named for the blossoms that grew around our village. Her sobs as I told her of finding the hut. The fact I did not look like my father. There was also the fact this was written down at all – it was a new art, and only a chosen few were able to actually scribe and read the rough symbols. My mother was one of those few in our village.

For a few minutes, all I could do was hold the fabric with a trembling hand. The shock hit me in an icy wave. Affair? With child? Dread chilled my bones. I ran back to the village, time standing still as I angrily clutched the cloth in my fist.

I don’t remember how long it took, and I don’t remember bursting into our small hut, the sound of the loom trundling into the still air. My mother was alone, weaving while she sang a gentle tune to herself. I threw the cloth at her feet, and let my stony face burn into hers. There was a moment’s pause before she smoothly bent and picked up the doomed proclamation, laying her tools aside. Her eyes roved over the pictographs, lips moving silently as she repeated the words to herself, chest rising with a deep sigh. Closing her hand over the worn fabric, her eyes rose up to meet mine.

So you know then? The murmured words echoed deafeningly in the silence.

Yes, I know! I hissed. How much of it is true?

She tapped a finger against her closed lips, and rose up, padding across to the doorway. Taking a second to look out into the calm night, she swallowed nervously. I met your father—your real father—when I was a little girl. He lived in the village and was like an older brother to me. When he became old enough, he left, because...he had problems here. He couldn’t adjust to being like everybody else. He returned many years later, when I was still young, but I was married to your father by then. To cut a long story short, we fell in love, and started an affair. I couldn’t help it. I was his soulmate, and he was mine. Your father was simply a loving man, in the right place at the right time. It was perhaps wrong to marry him, but I did not know Lucius would return. Her dark eyes met mine without any sign of guilt. It was startling, and only served to boil the anger in my chest. He was a...werewolf.

What?  You speak madness, woman! I clutched at my head in disbelief, now certain that I was the bastard son of a vagrant and a madwoman. You create this story, to try to explain your part in an affair that my father knows nothing about—

No. I’m afraid I speak the truth.

I stared at her, wondering if she had truly been taken mad, or if she truly thought it would get her out of the path of my fury. Speak sense, woman. This will not save you.

She shook her head, turning away from the cool night air and back towards the fire in the centre of the hut, holding out her hands to warm. Giving a nonchalant shrug, she replied, Do you think that you know all the creatures that exist? That watch us from the distant hills? You know yourself that many monsters lurk in the forests.

That gave me pause to think. It was true that many dangers lay beyond the safety of our fort, off into the forests and hills that surrounded us. It was difficult for my mind to accept the fact that my own mother had lain with one though, and that I was its cursed offspring. They aren’t real! They don’t exist! I repeated vehemently, gasping for air. My throat felt as though it were closing in on itself. I fell to the floor and clutched at my neck.

My mother spun around and smiled gently at me. I’m afraid they do exist. In fact, the entire village is full of them.

I blinked at her in shock, wondering if the words I was hearing were a bad dream, and that at any moment I should wake up and find the sun shining through the doorway like a beam of truth.

Shaking her head once more, she continued, This isn’t how you were supposed to find out. There must be an ‘awakening’ for werewolves when they are old enough. There was to be a ceremony, but I suppose it makes no difference that you know now.

I took in a deep, steady breath, my head buzzing with shock, and rose up, backing away to escape her