The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (102 page)

Fite’s nod was barely
perceptible, but it was enough.
Thank you.
Connal blew out a long breath
through pursed lips and lowered himself to his knees. ‘Do it,’ he said,
cranking up his chin.

Tyr stepped forward and tore
the shirt from Connal’s chest, baring his skin to Brandr’s iron. It seemed like
a bad omen, he thought, to lose that small connection with Ash. He tried not to
think of how he’d failed her, but she was ever there with him, floating just
beneath the surface of his consciousness.
Where are you Ash?
He pictured
her, imprisoned for eternity in the Morrígan’s unscalable tower, believing he’d
abandoned her there. He focussed on her face, hardly acknowledging Brandr’s
approach, or the pulsing heat that radiated from the wolf-brand even before it
made contact with his skin. Brandr’s aim was true. In a single, confident
thrust, he planted the iron directly over the previous mark in Connal’s skin. At
first, Connal felt nothing but the pressure, but then it came. He gritted his
molars and curled his hands into tight fists, braced for the wave of blinding
agony that crashed over him, and through the shaking and the cold sweats, it
was Ash’s strength that kept him from losing it, Ash’s face that chased away
the terrors of his childhood and kept him tethered to the present.

Still blinded by the sheer
intensity of the pain, Connal didn’t register MacTire coming at him until it
was too late. Eyes fiery red, fangs bared, he ploughed into him with all the
force of a tank. Locked together, their bodies went careening across the
cobbled ground.

'We don't have to do this,'
Connal wheezed from beneath the King’s massive weight.

'Yes, we fucking do,' MacTire
snarled.

'You were drunk. There's
still time to walk away.'

'I’d like to see you try,'
MacTire laughed, crashing his full weight onto Connal's body, bracing a forearm
across his throat and crushing his windpipe. 'You owe me this chance to prove
myself.'

'How does us beating the crap
out of each other prove anything?' Connal said hoarsely.

‘It means everything, to
them,’ MacTire’s eyes scanned the rabid gathering before glaring back at him.

'You think you're fighting me
for her? She's already gone, and I’m as good as dead. I refuse to kill you,’
Connal spat, but the bastard knew nothing of the true sacrifice in those words.

‘That’s your funeral,
Brother. I’ve lived long enough in your fucking shadow.’ Fisting Connal’s short
hair, he cracked his skull back into the cobblestone.

Connal saw stars.

MacTire pressed the
advantage, raining down a rapid-fire volley of fists, each one connecting with
Connal’s face and jaw with sickening accuracy.

The excitement running
through the crowd rose to fever-pitch.

‘Yield to me,’ MacTire hissed
at him, ‘and I’ll make it quick.’

‘I will have that knife,’
Connal spat back through bloodied, swollen lips.

‘Then take it from me.’ The
King’s arm cocked back and Connal felt the stab of claws into his side.

The assault was enough to
bring Connal’s wolf rearing up in defence. Eyes ablaze with red fury, canines
elongated to dagger-points, he roared in MacTire’s face and summoned every
fibre of strength in his body to kick off his attacker and roll himself from
beneath him. No sooner was he free than he popped to his feet in a broad,
fighter’s stance, centuries of practice kicking him into autopilot. No thought,
only reflexes, MacTire wasn’t yet off the ground when Connal’s boot landed
square in his chest, planting the King back on his ass, eliciting a roar of
pain as his freshly branded skin took the brunt of the impact.

‘Get up,’ Connal spat,
burying a boot in the King’s flank even as he wiped the blood from his own
mouth. ‘You want a fight? Get up and fight me.’ Claws silhouetted in the firelight,
he beckoned to MacTire, and the King stepped up. Like prize fighters in a ring,
they circled one another, sweat spraying, steam rising off bloodied, naked skin
as they landed blow after blow, perfectly matched in power and lethal grace.
Both chose to maintain that semblance of humanity, both, for once, craving the
visceral kick that came of fighting as a sentient man, rather than a mindless
beast. Connal was aware of Fite in his peripheral vision, hand curled around
the shaft of the crossbow. He wasn’t going to need it. For once in his life,
Connal’s control was perfect, body and mind in perfect synch, every block and
blow, every bite and rake of claws anticipated with diamond-clarity. Fighting
MacTire was like fighting with his own shadow. The crowd seemed to melt away,
the drumbeats becoming one with the pumping of blood through his veins, and the
pain felt good somehow, like a long-awaited release. Maybe it was concussion,
he thought grimly as he reeled from yet another powerful uppercut, that lucid
interval before your brain haemorrhages out and you slip into a coma, but it
felt like they were dancing, and they both knew all the moves. Until suddenly
they didn’t. As Connal pivoted tight into his counter strike, MacTire’s hands
were down. Only later would he realise what caused the King to fluff his next
step. Connal struck through that window of vulnerability on pure instinct, the
momentum of the punch carrying through the tight left hook aimed at MacTire’s
temple and whipping his neck beyond its rotational limits. With a nauseating
crunch, the King staggered back on his heels. He hit the ground, almost in slow
motion, blond hair splaying as his skull bounced off the stone once, twice, and
then Connal was on him, sitting on the son of a bitch before he could recover
his senses, pinning him in a tight lock.

‘Yield,’ Connal growled
through bared fangs, ‘and I’ll let you live.’

But MacTire was senseless,
his jaw slack, eyes rolling.

‘Yield!’ he barked, slapping
his brother’s face again and again. There was no struggle.

After what seemed an
eternity, MacTire cracked open his eyelids and stared up at him, or rather
through him, so defocused was his gaze. ‘Ashling,’ he groaned and his head
slumped back on his neck.

‘Ash is mine,’ Connal replied
stonily. ‘She was always mine. Now get back up and fight.’

‘I can’t. Can’t move my arms
or legs,’ MacTire bit out. ‘You must have broken my neck with that punch.’

‘It will heal,’ Connal
replied, desperation bleeding anger into his voice.

‘Not soon enough.’

‘Then yield to me, you
bastard, so I can let you live.’

MacTire’s head-shake was all
over the place. ‘Finish it,’ he whispered. ‘Finish me, please. You must.’

Connal stared down at his
blood brother, battered and bleeding and hurting every bit as much as Connal
himself hurt. The arrogant fucker was handing him a get out of jail free card,
a gold-plated, guilt-free opportunity to fulfil the Morrígan’s bargain. Hell,
the guy was begging for death. So why couldn’t he bring himself to go through
with it?

‘Do it,’ MacTire muttered.

‘I can’t,’ Connal conceded.
‘I won’t.’

‘You don’t have to,’ the
familiar voice came from behind him.

Connal’s heart leapt like a
puppy whose owner just got home. ‘Ash!’ he cried, abandoning MacTire on the
ground as he turned for confirmation that his punch-drunk ears weren’t playing
tricks on him.

Ash stepped through the crowd
into the circle and Connal stood a moment, devouring her with his eyes. She
looked different somehow, better, if that were possible. She looked poised. The
black robe and the silky fall of her hair across her shoulders gave her a
distinct look of the Morrígan, but she appeared healthy, and uninjured, and she
was smiling at him, though there was a darkness in her eyes he’d never seen
before.

‘How long have you been
there?’ he asked. Hands idle at his sides, he became acutely aware of the crowd
gathering in around them and the distance between them that she made no move to
close.

‘Long enough,’ she replied.

Long enough.
Suddenly MacTire’s momentary distraction made perfect
sense. He’d seen her before Connal had, and it had cost him the contest.

He took a stride towards her,
but she stopped him with a shake of her head, the mental projection
come no
closer
ringing in his ears. But was it a warning, or a rejection?

Her eyes dropped to where
MacTire lay motionless, flat on his back.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ Connal
said quietly.

‘No, Grandmother told me you
wouldn’t have the guts to go through with it,’ Ash said.

Grandmother told me …
what else had the Morrígan told her? Did she know he’d
whored himself to her to buy back his strength? The coldness in her eyes said
she did.

Rejection, then.

The joy of their reunion shrivelled
up inside him.

‘I’m sorry, Ash,’ he said,
and shame crept heat into his cheeks.

She stared back at him, and
the steel in that look was heartbreaking.

‘Ashling,’ MacTire called
from the ground. ‘It is you. I wasn’t hallucinating.’

‘I’m very real,’ she replied,
her cloak sweeping the cobbles as she moved to crouch at the King’s side.

‘Are you well?’ he asked
roughly.

‘Never better, which is more
than I can say for you, you arrogant fool.’ She laughed softly and Connal
fought back a cringe when MacTire’s big hand came up to grasp Ash’s wrist.
Now
the bastard’s spinal cord decides to start healing
, he growled to himself. Seeing
them together was never going to get any easier.

‘My brother refuses to put me
out of my misery,’ MacTire glared over at him.

Ash turned to look at Connal.
‘Did you tell him about the bargain?’ she asked.

Connal shook his head. ‘It
wouldn’t have been fair. He’s in love with you.’

‘He thinks he’s in love with
me,’ Ash scoffed.

MacTire’s grip tightened on
Ash’s wrist, demanding her eyes and that she see the truth in his own.

‘Some people need to learn to
love themselves before they can love another,’ she said to him. ‘In your case,’
her lips curled into a smile tinged with sadness, ‘I think you need learn to
love yourself a little less.’

The King gave her a wounded
expression, but beneath the self-mockery, Connal witnessed the pang of genuine
hurt. ‘Your mate handed me my first lesson in humility today,’ he said.

‘He never wanted to fight
you,’ she replied.

‘I know what you’re going to
say,’ MacTire said gruffly.

‘You do?’

‘Yes, and it’s okay. I’m
going to give it to you. We fought honourably, and he won.’ MacTire curled his
fingers, beckoning Rún to come forward. The red-haired warrior knelt between
them and at the King’s command, he opened the leather wrap to reveal the
Skil
,
it’s runic carvings gleaming in the firelight. ‘Connal wants the blade to sever
the bond between us. I consent. I forced the bonding on you. I was wrong, that
much I can admit. Do what you must.’

‘You’re letting me go?’ There
was the smallest break in Ash’s voice.

‘Though it goes against
everything my heart tells me,’ he replied sadly.

‘Thank you, from
my
heart.’ Ash’s hand reached out, her delicate fingers curling around the bone
hilt of the
Skil
until she held it firmly in her grip. ‘That’s not why
we needed the blade though,’ she said, rising in a billow of black silk.

‘No, it’s not,’ a female
voice crowed, parting the tight circle of the gathering with its shrill
authority. ‘Good of you to hand it over so readily all the same,’ the Morrígan
cracked an icy smile as she rode forward on a snarling, three-headed beast that
looked like it had leapt straight out the pages of a demonology book.

Mounted side-saddle on the
enormous winged beast as she was, Connal couldn’t blame the wolves for
scattering as the Morrígan broke through their tight circle. Gods, that thing
was huge, and bloody terrifying: part wolf, part ravener, all snarling jaws and
grey eyes that looked disturbingly human. What had the revellers made of
that
as a parade exhibit, prowling through the streets of Dublin? He doubted many
stuck around to snap photos.

She tugged on a set of
spiked, silver reins and the beast reared to a halt, its flaring nostrils
pluming misted breaths into the cold night. Overhead, a piercing cry rent the
air. It was followed by another, and another, until the sky turned black with
the beat of ravener wings. Swarming, they blotted out the light of the full
moon. The Morrígan raised her arms to the sky and instantly their shrieks were
quieted. When Connal looked back, he saw that the wolves had backed away and
fallen into various defensive postures. Some had shifted, others merely bared
teeth and claws. They were corralled by the castle walls, trapped, and they
knew it. The
thralls
had long been stunned into silence and Maura
Flannery had thrown herself to her knees and was wringing her hands in silent
prayer.

‘You weren’t invited, Witch,’
MacTire called from the ground.

‘Nobody stopped me at the
gate,’ she smiled coldly, patting one of the creature’s necks until something
fell from its giant, saliva-jewelled jaws.

There were sharp intakes of
breath as the severed head of the bald security guard went rolling and bouncing
across the cobblestones, coming to a rest at MacTire’s feet. He summoned just
enough power to kick it away. ‘Heads I win?’ he laughed. ‘I take it you didn’t
come to challenge me at football, Morrígan.’

Dismounting from the beast’s
back, the look she gave him could have broken granite. ‘I came to claim what
belongs to me.’ Never taking her eyes off MacTire, she extended her hand
towards Ash. ‘To me, my dear,’ she said.

Ash took a step forward, the
kind of halting step a bride takes walking to the altar. Instinct hammered a
warning in Connal’s chest. She was out of his reach. He pressed forward through
the crowd to block her from the Morrígan’s outstretched hand. ‘Ash,’ he
pleaded, curling his hands around her shoulders, begging her with his eyes,
‘don’t go to her.’

‘I must.’ She looked up at
him with those empty eyes.

‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he
whispered. ‘What did she do to you Ash?’

‘I have to go to her.’ For a
split second, he thought he glimpsed something there, a reflection of the woman
he loved, but then she blinked and it was gone. Brushing his hands from her
shoulders she walked forward, leaving Connal behind.

‘That’s my girl,’ the
Morrígan all but purred as Ash offered up the
Skil
to her in both hands.
Her eyes widened with almost religious fervour as she curled her fingers around
the hilt.

Ash turned back to Connal
then and gave him a wan smile. ‘My grandmother has promised to help Liath, in
exchange for the knife.’

‘No,’ Connal breathed. ‘Her
promises are empty,’ he said, and the words came out scratchy with the rawness
of his desperation.

‘Have faith, Big Bad,’ she
replied, and his heart clenched.

When the Morrígan looked at
him, it was with undisguised contempt. ‘How dare you,’ she hissed, ‘I honoured
every bargain I made with you, you snivelling ingrate, which is more than can
be said of you. Bring forth the girl
,
’ she demanded, clicking her
fingers, turning her dark gaze directly around to Madden, where he stood,
towards the rear of the group, with a protective arm around Liath, ‘and I shall
release her from the
thrall
.’

Madden stepped forward,
blocking Liath from her direct line of sight. ‘How do I know you can do what
you say you can?’ he countered defensively. ‘I have no bargain with you. What
guarantee do I have you won’t hurt her with that thing?’ He nodded to the knife
in the Morrígan’s hand.

‘Why, no guarantee at all.
But I don’t see any other deities offering to bleed for your little whore,’ she
replied, pursing her lips.

‘Grandmother, please.’ Ash
tugged at the sleeve of the Morrígan’s robe. ‘We have a bargain, don’t we?
Perhaps if we started with Ellén? Then they will know the
Skil
works?’

‘Oh very well,’ she sighed,
flipping her hair petulantly, ‘we shall start with your sister.’

Sister?
Connal barely had time to consider what she’d said
before the Morrígan was folding back the sleeve of her robe and slicing into
her own flesh. It shouldn’t have surprised him that her blood was blacker than
tar and trickled slower than molasses down her milky-white forearm, but the
real shocker was what happened to the
Skil
once it came in contact with
the black ichor. The runic engravings glowed, pulsating with an energy that
seemed to vibrate the metal until the entire blade was illuminated from within.
‘Behold the sword of light, the cleaver of the Gods,’ the Morrígan proclaimed,
slashing the blade through the air. Turning to the three-headed monster, her
movements were rapid, but deliberate. With her free hand she soothed each head
in turn, while with the other she sliced their throats. It was cold and
efficient, so calmly executed, the creature hardly knew what she had done. As
the cuts she’d made split open, light, not blood, spilled from the gashes,
blinding shafts that forced Connal to shield his eyes. When he dared open them
again, it took seconds before the blotches of retinal burn receded to reveal
what had occurred. Slumped at the monster’s feet lay a naked woman, so like Ash
that Connal had to double-take to be sure it wasn’t her.

Events took a rapid turn into
chaos after that. The creature, still very much alive, but clearly pissed,
reared up on its hind legs, unfurled giant wings and bellowed a chorus of
roars. The terrifying sound roused the woman, the one who looked like Ash, but
more fragile. She stared up into the face of impending death and screamed.

The creature’s eyes were no
longer the human grey Connal had noticed earlier. Now, they were blacker than
night, dead like a shark’s, and zeroed in on the helpless prey at its feet.

‘No!’ Ash cried. Connal’s
eyes shot to her as she lunged, but the Morrígan dragged her back, clamping her
hands on Ash’s shoulders. ‘Oh God. Help her,’ Ash pleaded as she struggled in
her grandmother’s iron grip.

Too far away to get between
the beast and its victim in time, Connal thought on his feet. He snatched up
the severed head of the security guard and pitched it with all his might at the
animal’s centre head. It was a glancing blow, but enough to divert its
attention from the girl. Incensed, the thing roared again, all three of its
heads swivelling to pin Connal in the glare of its anger.

‘Get her out of there,’
Connal shouted as the creature came at him, snarling.

There was a flurry of
movement as Knutr, Rún and Tyr broke free of the huddle and rushed forward.
MacTire was closest, though, and had regained enough power in his limbs to roll
beneath the monster’s belly, haul the shaking girl into his arms and drag her
out.

Connal had bigger things to
worry about, like things with three heads that wanted him dead. The beast
advanced on him, crouched low into its attack. With its great wingspan spread
wide, it pounced and went airborne, giant, clawed talons right on target to rip
Connal’s face off. He didn’t even have time to shift. Death was an
inevitability.

The missile that intercepted
the creature’s course was a blur of grey fur and snapping teeth.
Had the
wolfhounds been freed?
Connal wondered, but as the two animals clashed it
became clear his saviour was no dog. Fite’s untame pet, Cara, was all jaws and
snarling as it countered the creature’s three-fold attack. Had Fite unleashed
it to save him?

The clash was so rabid, it
was impossible to follow the blow-by-blow, but one moment Cara had a lock on
one of the creature’s jugulars, and the next she was tossed to the ground like
a rag, bloodied and twitching from a broken spine.

Son of a bitch.
Connal growled, baring his teeth, but this wasn’t the
kind of animal that would scare easily. Suddenly aware he had company, Connal
glanced either side to see Fite had taken up position to his left and Brandr to
his right.

‘Well, isn’t this cosy?’
Connal laughed.

‘I say three heads are better
than one,’ Brandr replied.

‘Can’t let you have all the
action tonight.’ Fite’s grin was the stuff of children’s nightmares.

‘I’ve got the bird,’ Brandr
pronounced, calling dibs on the ravener head. ‘Fite, you take the wolf, and
Savage, you get the … fuck I don’t even know what that one is.’

‘I have a better idea,’ Fite
said. Whipping up the crossbow, he aimed his sights down the shaft and shot off
a bolt. Even before it had embedded itself right between the eyes of the
wolf-head, he was loading another, but he didn’t get a chance to let it fly.
The creature’s tail whipped round and lashed the weapon from his hands with a
hissing screech.

‘Back to plan A?’ Connal
asked.

Fite and Brandr nodded, all
business, squaring up to face the monster together.

‘No!’ Connal heard Ash’s
protest between the snarls and gnashing of teeth. ‘You promised me you’d let
him live. You promised.’

‘Oh very well,’ the Morrígan
huffed. ‘Just when things were getting interesting,’ she pouted as she snapped
her fingers and let out a shrill whistle.

The drone that filled the air
was like a swarm of bees coalescing into a black cloud, assuming the bees were
ravener-shaped and the size of small horses, that was. All heads snapped up to
watch, even the wounded beast seemed mesmerised as the dark shadow plummeted
from the sky to envelop it in a living blanket of teeth and claws. Against so
many, it didn’t stand a chance. The ones it caught in its jaws were too quickly
replaced, its futile battle and agonised howling soon overcome by the raveners
appetites. They devoured it like piranhas, a hundred and more serrated mouths
picking its bones clean until only its skeletal body lay crumpled before them.

With another click of her
fingers, the Morrígan dismissed her winged assassins back to their watchful
waiting in the sky, leaving no question as to who was the ringmaster of this
bizarre freak-show of a circus.

‘Finally,’ she said. ‘Now,
can we get on with business?’ She pointed the blade directly at Liath and
beckoned her forward with it. The
Skil’s
light
had dulled to its
normal silver shine.

With trepidation in every step,
Madden shuffled Liath up to the fore, his hand at the base of her spine,
whispering hollow reassurances in her ear. Connal witnessed the terrible
desperation of his friend’s choice carved into his features, and the gods knew
he could empathise. It was a path he’d walked too many times himself.

The Morrígan cupped Liath’s
pale cheek and looked on her with something that, on a dark night, could almost
pass as sympathy. ‘My poor child,’ she said, stroking the scar on Liath’s neck
where she’d been bitten, ‘they treated you like a piece of meat, just as they
did me. Let me end your suffering.’ Her dagger-hand moved too fast for Madden
to react, slicing into her own forearm and then across Liath’s scarred throat
in one clean movement. Liath collapsed into Madden’s arms.

‘What have you done to her?’
he cried.

‘I’ve set her free,’ the
Morrígan replied, wiping the oozing black trail from her skin.

Liath’s head lolled back, and
as it did, the wound split, bleeding out the same painfully blinding light that
had cleaved Ash’s doppelgänger
from the body of that monster. Liath
moaned, scrubbing a limp hand down her face as she slowly came to her senses.
When she finally did, she was staring up into Madden’s haunted face, and her
own melted into horror. ‘You!’ she cried, jerking herself from his arms and
backing warily away from the crowd, looking feral in her instinctive terror.
‘What the fuck? Where am I? Where’s my son? What did you do to me?’

Connal got behind her until
she backed up into him. ‘Liath,’ he said, touching her shoulder gently.