Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) (19 page)

As she ran towards the house, the world opened up in a flash of senses. She relinquished just a portion of her humanity and felt for the new strength inside of her, the remnants of that explosive, feral power that had led to her imprisonment. The reins weren’t so loose that she sprouted fur, only enough to add a lengthening to her stride, concentrating her vision, broadening her hearing, her olfactory perception clueing her in to the fact that she was alone. The streets were empty of the rush of people; she hadn’t been followed. Yet. She had a head start on the lunatics and was grateful for it.

Casting her gaze upwards, she had the faintest idea that she was racing the full moon shining above her. Far away howls struck chords that made her beast keen.

She had to move faster.

Minutes after leaving DeMorgan’s house, and the elegant facades of Georgian Dublin were going by in a blur as Connal left a city just coming to life for the full moon. To the growl of the engine, streets thinned out to tree-lined country road. This was the edge of civilisation, where the wilderness encroached on man’s attempts to tame it.

This was the only way. Connal couldn't trust Mac to keep Ash safe in Fomor beyond the full moon. But the closer he got to his destination, the more despair crept beneath his skin. That image of them kissing was branded into his cortex for eternity and imagining all the sordid ways MacTire would be ‘taking care of her’ really didn’t help his sanity either. He despised the hurt, and the jealousy, but knew they were exactly what he needed to draw out a warmonger like the Morrígan: anguish was grist to the wheel of her devious machinations.

When the forest became too dense, he abandoned the motorbike and continued on foot. His breath grew laboured as he climbed, his body aching in muscles he hadn’t known he had. With his wolf-nature imprisoned as it was, his body felt human, the weakness a foreign sensation to him. Wending deeper, the canopy of trees obliterated the moonlight, plunging him into darkness. Without his animal senses or night-vision, Connal was left to pick a cautious path through the roots and branches, wishing to hell he’d had the sense to take a flashlight. The woods were eerily quiet to his dulled hearing, the normally richly layered scents dulled to a base-note of pine and damp undergrowth. It was true you never really appreciated what you’d had ‘til it was gone.

Was it too far gone for him and Ash? Some stupid, deluded part of him still clung to hope. He blamed the doctor for kindling it. Knowing he didn't deserve her didn't stop the wanting. Planting a fist into the trunk of an innocent bystander, he exhaled his frustration. The tree didn’t fight back.

His feet knew the way to the graveyard despite the darkness. It was a path he’d walked for a thousand years, regular as death. And what better place to call forth the Morrígan? Connal stopped at the stone marking his son’s final resting place and hunkered down. Brushing away the leaves and lichen clinging to the sculpture was as habitual as breathing, a comfort.

‘I need your help,
a leanbh,’
he whispered, ‘one more time.’

Reaching inside his jacket, he withdrew the bone-handled knife he’d taken from the DeMorgan house. Turning it over in his palm, moonlight glinted on steel. Summoning the Morrígan was a two-edged blade, and even as he sliced into his own forearm, doubt spread through him like blood-poisoning. But what choice did he have?

Connal spoke the incantations, the soft Gaelic words tripping off his tongue. Pumping a fist, he willed his own blood to spill onto the sacred ground of his son’s burial.

Each crimson drop that fell sizzled on contact with the earth, sending up a plume of black mist. When the flow dried up, he cut again, and again, repeating the words until he was shrouded in the strange fog.

He didn’t need to look to know when she was there. His body tensed involuntarily, every tiny hair standing on end.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ he murmured.

‘I hear misery loves company,’ she replied.

The Morrígan’s voice was different, her laughter light, no longer the hoarse cackle of an old woman, but hers nonetheless. Connal lifted pale eyes to regard her through the mist. Raven-haired, with flawless skin and that blood-red mouth, she was just as he remembered her on the night they first met, and the resemblance to Ash stole his breath.

‘You like what you see, Warrior.’ Her lips tugged into a cold smile.

‘Who's your plastic surgeon, Anann? I could make a killing on referrals,’ he sneered.

Her smile widened and the Morrígan ran taloned hands down the curve of her waist, preening. ‘How is it the humans put it? I've thrown off my mortal coil.’

‘You're not mortal, DeMorgan. You never were.’

‘You call rotting in that ageing corpse eternal life? Please. It was a living death. I thought I’d never be free of it.’ With every word she spoke, any illusion of a resemblance to Ash crumbled. Even in this youthful shell, the Morrígan was hard-edged, bird-like, and predatory. Light on her feet, she spun, billowing the cloak that hung from her shoulders. ‘I find myself rejuvenated by recent, favourable events. No thanks to
you
, I might add.’ She jabbed an accusing finger in his direction.

Connal rose to his feet, towering above the Morrígan’s petite form. Height was about the only advantage he had in this situation.

She cast him a dry look and moved to walk amongst the graves, the hem of the cloak pooling across the moonlit ground like an oily shadow. ‘Such sentimentality,’ she lashed out, sending first one headstone tumbling, then another, and another, until they were toppling all around them like dominoes, ‘and over dumb animals. It’s stupefying,’ she growled, kicking dirt over the smashed face of one intricate carving. ‘But then you were always soft, Connal Savage.’ She turned on him in a flutter of black silk. ‘I should have cast you off in the beginning, when you hadn't the stomach to see your destiny through. You’ve been nothing but a millstone around my neck ever since. You can’t even die when you’re supposed to. And now you’re crawling back, begging for mercy, just like you always do. I warned you what to expect if you defied me.’

'I'm not here for myself.' Connal steeled himself.

She turned from wiping her feet on the cracked headstone to level him with her incredulity. ‘You came for the girl?’ The Morrígan cast her eyes to heaven and cackled derisively. ‘Ha! You’re a bigger fool than I thought. Tell me, is her belly ripe with their vile puppies yet?’

That cut him to the quick. ‘
What
did you say?’ he growled.

She gifted him a smug smile.

His eyes bored into her, demanding answers. ‘You lured Ash to Dublin on purpose, didn't you?’

‘You didn't leave me much choice, Loverboy. Your softness was killing me.’

‘Why would you do that, to your own flesh and blood?’

A gust billowed through the black mist and she was gone. He felt her nails graze his throat from behind and he flinched. The inhuman way the Morrígan moved was unnerving and her reply, when it came, was a hot whisper in his ear. 'A lady never reveals her secrets.' Pale hands reached around to claw his chest and he felt the tug of teeth closing around the lobe of his ear.

His body went poker straight. ‘You are no lady, Morrígan,’ he hissed.

She was toying with him, a game all too fucking familiar. He knew better than to move. She might not be able to kill him, but she could inflict a world of pain, and would take pleasure in it.

Piss her off now and Ash stood to lose everything. Play along, and there was at least a chance of her getting out alive. He cranked his head back in the Morrígan’s direction.

'Why did you assign me to keep her safe, Anann?'

She crooned like a lover against his rough jaw. ‘I had thought to kill two birds with the one stone.’ Her cold fingers played with the waistband of his sweats, grazing his abs. ‘You were supposed to die trying to protect her. You couldn't even do that right. You never fail to underwhelm me.’

‘You wanted me dead?’ Connal’s voice was tight with restraint, his body tighter. ‘After all my years of loyal service to you? I killed for you, Anann.’

‘No. You were killing me. You slaughtered only when it suited you, when you weren’t carousing in that flea-pit of
thrall
-girls or drowning your sorrows in whiskey. You have always been insolent. You have never paid me my due respects.’ She snaked a hand down over his hipbone and cupped his crotch.

Connal’s jaw clenched. He was flaccid, as he always was when the Morrígan laid hands on him. Why she thought it would be different now? ‘The answer is still no,’ he growled.

‘Oh, but I haven’t asked the question yet.’ She backed off him then, and took to stomping through the ruined graveyard once more. ‘Do I repulse you so much, Savage? I could force you, you know.’

‘I think I preferred your oatmeal-drooling, old lady incarnation, Anann. Much more attractive. Not so desperate,’ Connal replied.

She bared her teeth at that, lids flaring, eyes burning, furious.

‘Did I touch a nerve, Morrígan?’ He smirked.

She extended a delicate hand towards him, slowly curling the fingers into a fist. The air shimmered and as her grip tightened on nothing but air, so too did a vise of pressure that clamped Connal between his legs until tears sprung from his eyes. The excruciating pain brought him down hard to the ground, drawing his face in lines of pure agony.

‘I like you better on your knees, Warrior.’ She released her grip and left him flushed, bracing his thighs, gasping through the white-hot torture.

Connal bit out words through clenched teeth, needing to get what he came for before he lost consciousness. ‘All along, you wanted MacTire’s wolves to take Ash?’

‘Of course I did,’ she said, ‘but you had to go and bite her, didn't you? You just couldn't resist that plump, ripe cherry. Typical male,’ she scoffed. ‘She might have died. What then? I warned you, Savage!’

‘But she didn’t die,’ he said.

‘No indeed, I suppose I must hand you your ingenuity in keeping her alive. It is the only reason you yet draw breath.’

‘You can’t kill me.’

‘A minor technicality, easily overcome,’ she waved a hand dismissively, ‘besides, I find death overrated. There are so many fates worse, as you should know by now, Savage.’ Her eyes flashed and her face split in a cruel smile. ‘How is your brother, MacTire?’

Connal’s upper lip curled off his teeth in response, and she laughed. The bitch knew, and was taunting him.

‘Did you know, Savage, that I cursed your entire Royal line? Your father’s father, your father, your brother, and now you … all destined for broken-hearted misery. See how you suffer, poor little Loverboy.’ She was all up on him again with her laughter, nails digging into his bristed jaw.

‘Is that what this is all about?’ he spat. ‘Some pathetic, sins-of-the-fathers vengeance deal?’ Her face tightened and he pursued it. 'I’m close, aren't I?

‘Don’t flatter yourself, Loverboy,’ she hissed, striking out, her bird-like frame belying unnatural strength. The impact cracked hard across Connal’s jaw, whip-lashing his neck until he tasted salt in his mouth. ‘I own you. Don’t forget it.’

‘Who died and made you Queen of the man-haters, Anann?’ He offered her a bloody grimace.

Her hand dropped from his face and she narrowed her eyes on him. ‘You’re all the same. So predictable. You pluck our innocence, plant your filthy seeds and then slowly suck the life out of every woman you touch.’

‘I love her,’ he countered.

‘Oh please,’ she threw up her arms, ‘do spare me the ins and outs of your
love
. It bores me to tears. I promised you punishment.’

‘Then take your pound of flesh, only free Ashling from your curse.’

‘Perhaps it better suits my purposes to have her down there, amongst the males.’

‘I don’t know what your game is, Morrígan, but know this: Those males are gunning to kill her, not impregnate her.’

Dark eyes daggered him with a look that was both surprise and suspicion.

She hadn’t known, then, that Ash’s life was in danger. Perhaps her preternatural knowledge didn’t extend beneath the black lakes? She circled him slowly, pausing, tapping her fingers, contemplating what he told her, and hope stirred like the flutter of fledgling wings in his chest. He pressed the advantage. ‘Even now, Ash is hiding out in the sanctuary of Form. She will die when the moon wanes, Anann, and she faces execution if she returns to Fomor.’

‘That would be unfortunate,’ she said, ‘were she to fall to the same fate as her mother. I had thought this one more … compatible.’ A vertical crease marred her perfectly smooth brow. ‘Perhaps I was mistaken.’

‘Her mother too?’ Connal turned, pursuing her circling form with more questions. ‘What is this, Anann? Some ghoulish breeding program? You annihilated their women, instructed me to hunt them to extinction, sheltered the other latent females. Why would you want to mate your own blood to a species you so clearly despise?’

‘We must all seek our immortality where we can find it,’ she replied, cryptically. The Morrígan suddenly sounded as ancient as she really was. Connal tensed as she came to a stop at his son’s grave. Her hands stroked down the smooth stone that was, mercifully, still intact. ‘I’d have thought you’d lived long enough to understand these things, Savage. Without life, there can be no death. Without death, there is no life, only stasis. Such is the great, unbroken chain of ancestors, all seeking immortality through their own progeny. Symbiosis. Reciprocity. The necessary evils of existence.’

Symbiosis, my arse
, Connal thought.
What he knew of the creature before him was a parasite, a carrion-feeder who thrived on death and the misery of others.
But he bit his lip. Whatever her motives, she wanted Ash alive, and that was the only thread he clung to.

‘Speaking of such life and death matters,’ she smiled, ‘how are you finding your own new-found mortality?’ Her hand wrung once more into a small fist and Connal’s chest constricted. He felt the blood draining from his body, his pulse fading to a slow thud. ‘A human heart is such a fragile thing. So easily broken,’ she said.