The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (97 page)

‘Is this how you greet your
grandmother, after all these years?’ the apparition said.

It can’t be ...

‘It’s you?’ Ash scanned her
grandmother from her feet upwards and the similarities to her mother were so
striking, they hurt to look at. But her mother had never worn that expression:
one of calculating superiority.

The Morrígan glided closer,
her hair lifting as though kissed by an invisible wind. It was the only thing
that moved. The folds of her sheer, black robe could have been frozen. Her
accent was soft and lilting. ‘You came to my realm expecting another?’ she
said, one perfect black brow arched.

‘No. I … it’s just that
you’re so -’ Ash’s hands waved as she cast around for an appropriate word, ‘-
young.’

Her grandmother scoffed
delicately. ‘Youth has nothing to do with it. I am old as the earth,’ she
replied. Stretching her hands out towards Ash, she looked almost kind.
‘Finally, you come to me here in Morrígan. I admit, I expected you to seek me
out sooner.’

‘I need your help,’ Ash
admitted. Kind of an understatement.

The Morrígan’s shoulder
lifted in an elegant shrug. ‘Of course you do.’ She smoothed down a fold that
didn’t need smoothing and smiled. ‘You are not unwelcome here, though I am not
accustomed to uninvited guests. None has ever survived the lake, especially now
the Ellén Trechend resides there.’

Ash looked at her,
questioning.

She got an exasperated
has-no-one-taught-you-anything look in return and slowly clarified. ‘The
three-headed monster of the lake. I trust you didn’t kill your sister?’

‘My sister?’

Impossible.

Ash shook her head. ‘No,’ she
insisted, ‘my sister died at birth.’

The reply she got was bored.
‘Did she though? You cannot deny the resemblance.’

No. There was no denying
that. Peering into the water, Ash had almost been convinced it was her own
reflection she was seeing.

Her grandmother’s
disinterested tone continued over Ash’s mental considerations. ‘I persuaded
your mother to tell the father she died at birth, rather than present the beast
as his child. What man could love such a hideously deformed creature, after
all?’

Ash stared at her grandmother
like she was the one with three heads. ‘What are you saying?’

‘At your mother’s request, I
took the child under my wing, offered it a home, and a purpose.’

‘But she looked human. She
looked just like me.’ Except for when she didn’t. A frown tugged down Ash’s
brows.

‘Ellén has no human form,
except through the reflection of the water. At the time, I offered to take you,
too, but your mother wouldn’t have it.’ The Morrígan drifted so close, Ash
nearly took a step back to avoid a collision, but her grandmother only reached
out. ‘My poor, dear, motherless child. So pretty,’ she crooned, combing through
a lock of Ash’s hair. ‘Were you born ugly and deformed, like your sister, you
might have been spared so much pain. As you yourself have discovered,’ she
said, caressing Ash’s cheek with her talons, ‘those animals murder their
half-breeds. Do you imagine they would have taken pity on your sister, any more
than they did your mother, or you?’

Ash couldn’t deny it. Fite’s
words pinged about inside her skull.
She’s an
abomination.

‘Tell me, did they manage to
plant their vile spawn in your belly?’ The Morrígan’s nails clawed at Ash’s
lower stomach and she recoiled from the touch. ‘No,’ she said, answering her
own question, ‘your womb is yet barren. So much the better. I would spare you
what your mother and I had to suffer.’

Ash could only raise a brow
to that.

‘I did try to protect you.’

‘Protect me?’ Yes, this woman
had snatched Ash from the jaws of death as a child, and sent her across the
Atlantic ocean to live, but Ash had since come to realise that her
grandmother’s illness had been a contrivance, designed specifically to bring
her home. ‘You lured me to Dublin,’ she challenged. ‘Knowing what I was, you
put me in the path of the wolves, knowing what they would do to me.’

‘Walk with me,’ the Morrígan
said, guiding Ash along a stone pathway, ‘and I will explain. I had little
choice. I was rotting, ageing so rapidly I was practically mummified. I needed
your help, Ashling. You were my last hope.’

Suspicion crawled like an
insect beneath Ash’s skin. ‘You’re not old now. You’re young, and beautiful.
What happened?’

'You happened, my dear.
Whatever carnage you provoked during your stay with MacTire has brought me back
to life.’ She came to a stop and turned to Ash, her eyes lit up with fervour.
‘Exactly how many died fighting over the right to mount you?'

'What? Nobody died ...' Except
they had died, hadn't they? Ash trailed off. For a time, down there in Fomorian
Hell, she’d lost control and unleashed a ravener army on the wolves. She’d
blacked out in her wolf form, but there had definitely been bodies at the end
of it all. ‘I don’t understand ...’

‘Breathe,’ the Morrígan
demanded, extending her arms.

Confused, Ash followed the
beautiful shafts of lights to the domed ceiling and she drew in a hesitant
breath.

‘Death is my oxygen, my
nourishment. Other gods thrive on prayer and adoration. I feed on the
mortification of flesh, like the ravens on the battlefield. It has always been
so. This,’ she said, motioning her hand through the sparkling dust motes, ‘this
is my air. Each tiny particle a dead soul to feed my immortality.’

Ash almost choked at the announcement.
She was breathing
dead people
.

Millions and millions of
them.

‘So you feed off death,’ Ash
said, attempting to fight down her rising gorge and breathe through her nose at
the same time. ‘People die all the time. What changed?’

‘People die. Humans, yes, but
not the Fomorian wolves. They die only by violent ends. You see, when Elatha
stole my powers of creation to make his mutant dogs, he tethered my life-force
to theirs in the process. For as long as they live, I am dying. When one of
their kind dies, I resorb that piece of my immortality. And so it shall be
until they no longer walk the earth.’

Suddenly it made sense, why
she would want them dead, why she’d made Connal hunt them down. Not out of some
altruistic concern for their victims, this was pure, selfish, self-preservation
on the Morrígan’s part. The creepy room in the attic of her house came to mind,
the one with the skulls and bones. It was a temple, a shrine to death, or to
life, depending on your viewpoint.

‘You said Elatha stole your
immortality from you?’ Ash asked. ‘The
Thegn
Master, Gov, said Elatha
seduced you.’

That got the Morrígan’s
attention. Her eyes lit up with a dark anger. ‘Did he now?’ Her voice was like
ice on a blade. ‘These are the falsehoods the Fomorian scum whisper from their
pit? Seduced?’ The Morrígan’s silky movements stiffened and Ash paused, wary of
an explosion, but she just continued walking, her voice getting tighter and
harder. ‘I was abducted, restrained at their pleasure whilst they brutally
raped and cut me and stole my immortality. The moment I squeezed your mother
from my bloodied loins, I was damned. And there was nothing I could do to stop
it, save praise Danu I wasn’t cursed with a litter of the monsters, as they are
wont to sire. All so that Elatha’s loathsome race might live and breed whilst I
withered away.’ The charge in the air grew, glittering motes getting darker and
coiling around her grandmother in a black cloud. ‘I knew it was happening. I
tried to rip the seed from my own womb, but there is only one blade that will
cut immortal flesh, and by the time I wrested it back from that animal, it was
too late. Did they expect that I would crawl into a corner like a whipped dog
and die? Did you?’

No. When Ash had been
abducted to Fomor, she’d fought back, tooth and nail.

‘I crawled away from that
wretched place on my hands and knees, torn and bleeding. And they laughed at
me. How they all laughed at the great warrior goddess brought low. I am War,
and Death.’ Each word gained ground, gained volume and emotion. ‘The Morrígan
does not lie down. The Morrígan does not surrender.’

‘You killed Elatha?’

‘I plunged the
Skil
into
his thieving, rapist’s heart and laughed as he bled his life into the black
lake. Not that it stopped the rot. By the time the child was born, the signs of
my decay had already begun. But, in time, I learned ways to claw back pieces of
my immortality. Inciting those barbarians to kill one another was never a
challenge, but I needed more.’

‘So you manipulated Connal
into killing them?’ Ash’s wolf growled protectively and the noise rose in her
own throat, harshening her words.

‘Oh, my dear granddaughter.
You underestimate me,’ the Morrígan cackled, ‘I manipulated them all. With two
sons left behind to contend the throne, and one of them no better than a slave,
what better time to mastermind their ultimate destruction? It was I who took
the form of Aoife’s sister Cáit and introduced her to the Savage. I who sowed
the seeds of her desire for him. I who whispered doubts in MacTire’s ear about his
mate’s fidelity, and I who placed the blade of light in his hands and told him
it would break his mated bonds.’

Ash chewed the inside of her
cheek for calm and then spoke. ‘I thought the
Skil
needed a god's blood
to do that.’

‘And so it does,’ the goddess
scoffed, ‘not that I had the slightest intention of bleeding for the
heartbroken fool. He was supposed to cut her with it, and being mortal, the
smallest nick would prove fatal. Then I could harness Connal’s revenge and use
it against them. How was I to know the stupid girl would kill her own child?
But, no matter,’ a delicate shoulder shrugged, ‘the outcome was the same, in
the end.’

‘You used Connal.’

‘I used his bloodlust.’

‘How?’

‘The Samhain is special, a
magical time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead opens.
As a goddess of death, I harnessed his desire for blood to perform the rituals
of necromancy.’

‘You raised the dead?’ Ash
said, her lids flaring.

‘Yes. I raised an untame army
to crush their entire race.’

Ash gaped, though she really
shouldn’t have been surprised. The depth of her grandmother’s hatred astounded
her. It was a level of emotion so dark, Ash never wanted to know how that felt.

‘You set out to kill them
all.’

The Morrígan spun around with
a clap of her hands, her youthful face brightened by a smile. ‘Of course.
Extermination was the key to regaining my immortality. It still is.’

Ash shook her head and pushed
her hair from her face in agitation, pacing away from her grandmother. ‘Then
why did you stop? Why imprison the last of the race in Fomor?’

‘I didn’t stop.’ Her
grandmother came to a floating halt in front of her and grasped her hands,
bringing them up between their bodies. ‘The Samhain ended before my hellhounds
could finish them off. With the setting sun, my beautiful demons evaporated
into dust.’ Her expression darkened. ‘It was all Connal Savage’s fault.’ The
sweet tone turned to a vile hiss and Ash jerked back. The Morrígan’s grip
tightened, grinding the bones of her hands together so hard that tears sprang
to Ash’s eyes and she choked on a pained gasp. Her grandmother’s lip curled
around her words. ‘He was supposed to be killing for
me
. Instead, he
turned on my hounds and fought them off, single-handed. Gutless fool hadn’t the
mettle for the slaughter. He paid for that insubordination later.'

Gutless?
Ash thought. Connal blamed himself for what had
happened, when in reality he'd been the only thing that stood between his
people and total annihilation. Her heart clenched. He’d been suffering for so
long over something that wasn’t his doing.

'So cruel ...' Ash said,
squirming to free herself from her grandmother’s iron hold. The Morrígan didn’t
let go, but she did preen.

'Thank you.’ She smiled
prettily and Ash wanted to claw her face off. ‘I was so close, but the few
remaining males ran to ground, like frightened mice, hiding beneath the black
lake and Elatha’s protection, where my curse could not affect them. Even in
death, that bastard mocks me.’

‘That’s when you put the
curse on the wolves?’

‘Yes, so much death, it made
me powerful. I was drunk on their blood, and shall be again. Soon. If only they
knew,’ she laughed, ‘that all along, they have been prisoners of their own
fear.’

Prisoners of their own
fear? What did she mean by that?
Ash
had endured the harsh reality of the curse herself, and it had almost killed
her. Fear didn’t make you turn blue and crumble to dust.

‘It was a glorious night,’
the Morrígan said wistfully. ‘Every woman and child perished. No more
bloodlines to further dilute my lifeblood. The Savage’s devastation was almost
touching. He was about to take his own life, until I pointed out it would only
make me stronger. I should have let him do it except, well ... something of the
man intrigued me-'