The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (65 page)

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 bristled 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.

The world pitched as Connal
listed sideways, hitting the earth with a hollow thump. Staring up at the
Morrígan as she spoke was like looking down a tunnel through a narrow-angle
lens.

‘Brevity, I have found, adds
infinite poignancy to life’s fleeting moments. The morning frost, the blooming
rose, the sexual awakening of a young woman. All must wither and die. Such
finite beauties are the most coveted of all, are they not?’

‘Will you help her, Anann?’
Connal squeezed the plea through the invisible constriction around his throat.

‘You really do have romantic
delusions about the girl,’ she regarded him you might an alien, unfathomable
creature, ‘I may have use for you yet, Connal Savage.’

‘Anything.’

‘You know my price.’

He looked her straight in the
eye and nodded. ‘Death. Your price is always death.’ It was an easy decision.
One he’d already made in the car when Ash was dying in his arms. The aftermath
had never felt like anything but a brief stay of execution.