Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) (14 page)

‘She was in here, Doc. Her scent is all over this room.’

Connal was rifling through the furs and sheets strewn across the bed, nose buried in a pillow, inhaling like a bloodhound.

‘But she’s not here now.’ Pulling himself into a stolen pair of MacTire’s leather pants, Madden thought better of telling the poor bastard whose bed Ash had been sleeping in. When he looked up, Connal had moved to the dressing table and was picking over a red brush matted with long, black hairs. There were dresses piled over the back of the chair. Safe to assume she’d been living in his chambers, then, not just sleeping there, unless King Goldilocks was a closet cross-dresser. He sized up another pair of pants and tossed them in Connal’s direction.

‘We have to leave,’ Madden said. The merest whiff of her and Connal was like a dog with a bone. He just wouldn’t let it go. Madden didn’t get it. To him, Fomor smelled like the big-cat enclosure of a zoo. Not bad exactly, so much as pungent, the smell of territorial animals never meant to be caged together. ‘She’s not here. They’d have brought her with them to the Contests.’ Likely, she’d be the main attraction, but Connal didn’t need to hear that either. ‘And before you get any bright ideas, that’s a fight we can’t win.’

Connal threw him a pointed look. ‘An hour ago, you were the one gunning for me to take on MacTire.’

‘That was
before
I knew you couldn’t shift.’ Madden scowled. ‘Any time now, this place will be swarming with bloodthirsty vargs. We have to hide.’

Connal reluctantly dragged himself from her scent and they snuck out the door, stealthing through the tunnels, hugging the walls around corners and speaking in low whispers.

‘How long ‘til the full moon?’ Connal asked, poking his head around another ninety degree bend and giving Madden the all clear.

‘You don’t feel the quickening?’ The doctor followed, frowning as he indicated the next turn.

'Nope.' Connal shook his head, 'not even a tingle.'

‘Damn,’ Madden was both aghast and impressed, ‘the collar has that much control over you?’

‘Not the collar,’ Connal replied, ‘The Morrígan. She’s cut me off. If she hadn’t, no force in the world could have taken that coin from my neck.’

‘I never realised she had that degree of power over you.’ Madden had assumed Savage and the Morrígan were allies, united by a common enemy.

The big guy shrugged. 'I was her slave. That was the bargain I struck. When she first took me on, I was so volatile, I had so much anger inside of me, I couldn't control it. So she did.'

Madden regarded the male, wondering what sick conditioning that would have involved. Physical pain, torture, almost certainly. Connal’s expression was unreadable. The doctor cleared his throat and changed the subject. ‘The full moon rises in just a few hours. We can hide out in the Masters’ Temple until it’s time, then we’re home free.’ He forced a smile and pushed off from the wall.

Connal stalled. ‘I won’t leave without her.’

It was Madden’s turn to shrug. He ran his thumb along his bottom lip, choosing his words carefully. He opted for blunt truth. Why change up their honesty run now? ‘You may not have the luxury of a choice, Savage. You can’t shift. That makes you just a man against a pack of wild dogs. In my book, that’s suicide.’

A growl, just the other side of human. ‘I can’t do nothing, I have to try.’

The man was stubborn, he had to give him that. Balls of fucking steel. Admiration swelled up behind Madden’s breastbone. He coughed to clear the tightness. ‘And if you find her? Then what? In two days time, you’re both going to die aboveground. Have you considered that maybe she’s safer here? Until you’ve brokered a deal with the old lady?’

‘Would you leave Liath down here with these animals?’

That shut him up.

They continued to the temple door in a silence that should have been strained, given the circumstances. Instead, it was comfortable and accepting. It was awkwardly not awkward. As they were about to enter, Connal held him back.

'Just show me the hideout,’ he said
.
‘You stay there. I'm going to do a little hunting. If I'm not back by full moon, you go without me, understood?'

'The underground caverns are vast. You'll never find her, Connal, and if you do, you'll have to go through an army of pissed vargs to get to her.'

‘I have to do this, Doc.’

‘Then I’ll come with you.’

‘No. This is my fight. You’ve already saved my ass once.’

‘Twice.’ Madden’s mouth turned up in a grin. ‘You know what they say, third time’s a charm.’

Connal glowered. ‘I had the raptor covered.’

Madden snorted and patted Connal on the back. ‘Sure you did.’

‘Look, Doc. My hands are so bloody, the stains will never wash off. I won’t add your blood to that tally.’

The tightening across Connal’s shoulders told Madden he was deadly serious, so he made light and bumped his fist to Connal’s chest. ‘Awe shucks, Savage. I’m touched. Truly.’ That earned him a glare that carried no heat.

‘Screw you, Doc. If I don’t make it, somebody needs to look out for Liath, and the kid, right? So stick a cork in the heroics and wait this one out on the bench like a good boy.’

‘You’re an asshole, you know that, Savage?’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, coming from you, my friend.’ Connal clamped a hand on Madden’s shoulder and inhaled.

They were all out of banter.

‘Just be safe, you son of a bitch.’

Consciousness crept up on her, imposing on fractured dreams. Her lashes fluttered, blinking in a dark so deep she wasn’t sure if her eyes were really open. She didn’t dare move her head. It pounded, a hammer striking her temples, and when she shifted aching bones, sweat-damp skin stung as it brushed the cold floor.

Ow, ow, ow.

Hit-by-a-truck in pain, Ash was feeling sympathy for Frankenstein’s Monster, if being ripped apart and put back together felt anything like this. She stretched tentatively and was rewarded with a metallic jangle. What the hell? Raising a hand to her face, bleary eyes adjusted enough to see the thick clamps shackling her wrists, and the chain stretching from one hand to the other. It clinked and tugged at her throat as she rolled into a sitting position. Ash froze, taking inventory of what she could feel: damp stones beneath her ass, a lot of aching, a cold circle heavy around her throat …

Oh hell no! They’d collared her?

She pulled at the chain hooked through the loop on her neck, but only succeeded in choking herself. As she coughed in air, Ash looked for the events leading to her imprisonment. The last thing clear in her head was her disgust at the violence. She’d been so angry, she’d all but screamed for it to stop. After that? She got nothing but vicious static.

How long had she been out this time? She felt worse than that time her ex dumped her and she’d gotten intimate with an entire bottle of vodka. Maybe they’d drugged her. There were no windows, no lit wall brackets. The pitch black was disorientating, no sense of space or time.
For all she knew, the full moon could have passed already.

God, what if she’d missed it?
Panic leached from her pores in a cold sweat. Without the full moon, she had no hope of escape, and she wasn’t sure she had it in her to wait, or survive, another month. The contests had changed something, broken something. That was the pain. She felt broken.

She shuffled forwards as far as she could go and hollered croakily. ‘Hello! Is there anybody down here?’ The darkness slowly softened as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Bars carved out her portion of jail.

Raising her voice, she tried again, forcing a plaintive, feminine note into her tone. ‘Let me out of here! Mac? Anybody. Please.’ Begging seemed to work in the past and she was panicked enough to try it now.

Only her own voice echoed back at her.

Slumping down the wall, she analysed her cage, strained her ears for sounds of anyone she could plead with.

There was movement, but it didn’t sound like help. A strange snuffling occupied the shadows, like the rapid inhale-exhale of air through flared nostrils. Something was sniffing her out, and she was grateful there were bars between her and whatever was on the other side. Sounds followed the heavy breathing. Child-like and eerie, the song drifted from the corner of the neighbouring cage.

The horribly familiar tune from her childhood set her hackles bristling with its creepy lyrics. She did not want to die with Sesame Street’s
One of These Things is Not Like the Others
stuck in her head.

Inching forwards in a chained shuffle, she strained to see into the shadows.

‘Hello?’
Way to go, Ash, make yourself the victim in a cheesy horror movie.

The humming stopped and she paused. When it started up again, she took a breath. That’s when the shadows moved and the bars rattled under a heavy impact. A face burst into existence, pressed, snarling through the cage with wild, white eyes and ragged hair. Ash collapsed back with a startled scream. Her heart thudded erratically and adrenaline raised tension in her skin. She actually growled before the shock melting over his face silenced her. His snarl became the tremble of dry lips and the confused scowl of a lost child stared through the bars at her.

‘Ravyn.’ The face retreated into the shadowed corner. Ash pushed onto her knees. Her chest was tight as she listened to his mumbled words. ‘No, no, no, no, the Ravyn is no more.’ He kept saying that. But he couldn’t mean … Her knees scraped the ground as she shuffled forward, straining the chains to their limits. He was singing again.

‘Come back,’ her voice was hushed, ‘Please come back.’

Silence.

‘I’m not Ravyn,’ Ash said. ‘She was my mother.’

No answer, but she swore she heard him move.

‘Please, did you know her?’

Scrabbling in the dark followed and then his face was pressed back to the bars. Bloodshot eyes grasped at her features, and widened.

‘The child. Yes, yes. So like her. And the father too.’ He rose to his feet, pacing circles away from her, grabbing at fistfuls of greasy dark hair and mumbling incoherently.

Ash jerked against her restraints, as though she could physically follow him and the implication of his words.

‘Oh my God. You knew my parents?’ Words escaped around the twist of tears in her throat. ‘You must tell me what you know. Please.’ Ash was grasping at the crazy straws he gave. Maybe it was the isolation, maybe it was the fear, but she was inclined to believe his madness.

‘Too late. The Ravyn flew away. Knutr killed them all, but the light was gone.’

Ash struggled to read between the insanity. That name, Knutr, stirred up the recollection of a conversation. Mac had told her about the félag who went insane after losing his brother. He’d been locked away for his own, and everyone else’s, safety.

‘You’re Knutr, right?’ She ventured. Third person referencing aside, she was pretty sure he was talking about himself.

He didn’t answer her, just continued to ramble. ‘The Princess’ lights went out. Too late. Dead. No light.’ Knutr crouched down and reached into his shirt. Ash had to blink to make sure she wasn’t imagining what he pulled out. An ancient string of Disney Princess fairy-lights dangled from his fist, held carefully and spread out for her to see. She reached out, risking the tightening of the collar to touch the tips of her fingers to the plastic. They couldn’t be the actual ones. Oh God, they were the actual ones. She recognised the scratches that came from packing them into every vacation. Her mother had made sure to never leave home without them. They’d lit up the beach house that night. When she found her voice amongst the memories, Ash hated how weak it was.

‘Where did you get those?’

He looked up at her through the bird’s nest tangle of his hair, but shook his head, chapped lips thinning.

‘You were there the night my mother died.’ Growling, she flung the accusation at him.

Knutr flinched and went back to muttering. She could almost hear the full stops in his broken thoughts. He was riddling her the truth, she just had to make sense of it. ‘Wolves at the door, Crys cross. Double crossed.’ Back and forth, back and forth, he paced. ‘Knutr was too late. Lights out. Child gone.’ Large hands tightened on the string of lights. ‘Wolves paid in blood.’

Chewing the inside of her cheek, Ash combed through his words.

‘Crys?’ she said.

The man stopped for the briefest of moments before resuming his maddening pacing, but it was all she needed to know she was on the right thread.

‘Mac said Crys was your brother, your félag?’

Another pause was the only acknowledgement that she was right.

The man was fragile, but she had to ask. She had to. ‘Please, can you tell me what happened?’

Knutr collapsed faster than she could react. It was the second time she’d watched a man crumble. Where Connal had fallen to his knees, Knutr curled up into a fetal position and the cell-space was filled with his body-shaking sobs.

‘Dead too. All dead. Crys went to beg the witch for help. And off with his head.’ Knutr made a shaky slicing motion across his throat that chilled Ash’s veins. ‘Couldn’t keep the Ravyn hidden forever. Birds die in cages. Wolves sniffed her out. Yes. Gobbled her up. Fly away, my soul. Die today, my brother.’

The man was deranged and heart-broken, spilling the truth in streams of nonsense.

‘Was Crys my father?’ She waited a beat, another thought striking and making her eyes wide. Brothers shared their women. ‘Are
you
my father?’

Knutr turned to look at her. Dragging himself over to the bars, he crouched, weaving in front of her with teary, bloodshot eyes. ‘Which of the two are you?’

The two?
He was confusing her with her mother again? ‘I’m Ravyn’s daughter. My name is Ashling, Ashling DeMorgan.’

Tired eyes lit up and a blissed smile spread over his lips. ‘Yes. I see him in your eyes. And her.’ Knutr caressed the air in front of her. ‘How we loved the Ravyn, and led her to her death.’

Ash slumped, her whole body caving in on a stuttering exhale. The truth she sought was somewhere just out of reach, lost in the ravings of this crazy man, who just might be her uncle.

When she looked up from the quiet tears falling to her shackles, Knutr was clutching at the fairy lights. He was twitchy and animated, eyes darting around the cell, hunting invisible foes. ‘Birds die in cages, little Ravyn,’ he said. ‘Must spread its wings and flee before they kill it too.’ Long arms flapped at his sides and she almost smiled. In the gloom, he looked like a grimy flamingo.

‘Trust me. First chance I get, I’m out of this putrid hellhole.’

Ash tugged at the restraints, twisted and pulled and choked while he watched on. She hollered Mac’s name until her throat was hoarse. She knew she was making herself frantic, but she didn’t want to die in a cage, like her mother. She would not. ‘Mac! Let me out, you sonofabitch!’

The male sing-songed at her. ‘Little bird’s heart all a flutter. Be calm, don’t break your wings. Knutr can release you.’

Ash jangled the chain connecting her to the wall. ‘I can’t reach the bars to get close to you.’ She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to either. Buddying up with a psychopath at a distance was fine. Up close … well.

‘No need, little one. The metal bends to Knutr’s will.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘Though the hinges are a little rusty.’

Like a grand conjurer, he motioned with his hands. She laughed, until the bolts holding her shackles started to groan and wriggle free, the nuts turning and shimmying to fall in a soft jingle on the cold cell floor. Ash wrenched the metal from her neck, shedding the collar with a disgusted growl, finally breathing easily again. She massaged the chafed flesh of her throat and made her way to the door of her cell. ‘Way to go Magneto,’ she grinned. ‘That’s some party trick.’

Knutr took a dramatic bow, preening. ‘I’ve had a long time to hone my talents.’ If there was an edge of bitterness to his words, Ash tried to soothe it with a gentle smile.

‘Can you open the door locks too?’ Her brows raised in a hopeful wiggle, but fell at the shake of his head.

‘Solid brass. No magnetism. Bastards upgraded the cells after my first escape.’ He offered her an apologetic shrug.

She could feel the weight of his gaze when she turned away to probe the lock with the slim barrel of a bolt. ‘Then how in Hell am I supposed to get out of here?’

‘Employ some talents of your own?’

Exasperation growled from her lips as her forehead met metal. ‘I don’t have any damn talents, aside from doing a pretty good rendition of Phantom of the Opera in the shower.’ Her amateur lock-picking skills weren’t going to cut it this time.

‘Use your feminine attraction,’ he countered.

Uh, no.
‘The last thing I want is more animal magnetism. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place,’ she growled. A strong dose of wolf repellant would be more in her line. Ash was beyond frustration. She could lean on the door all she wanted and it wouldn’t move. Her back slid down the smooth metal as she spun to face the darkness, her eyes seeking Knutr in the gloom. Back to mumbling, he knelt in the centre and no matter her prompts, her subtle questions, he’d apparently tired of their conversation and spoke to the voices in his head instead. Left alone with her own thoughts and absently touching the twin crescent grooves in her palm, Ash planned her interrogation for his next bout of lucidity.