The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (38 page)

As the crowd backed up to
admire their work, Madden was gifted a view of the winged and broken man
sagging to his knees, head fallen forward, arms back stretched, only the chains
suspending him off the ground. A bloody, fallen creature. But this was no
Lucifer, riding them into Hell on the back of his own pride, feeding his thirst
for power on the blood of his own kin. No, what Madden saw now was a dark,
avenging angel, chained and bleeding, with the black wingspans of the Raveners
circling overhead, closing in on the fresh scent of carrion.

Madden remained utterly
invisible. There was no glance in his direction as the Vargs swarmed into a
ragged procession, lashing out at the agonised man in chains with thick fists
and snarling, spat, curses. MacTire was at the head, walking close to Rún and
the precious female still laying limp in his arms, his fingers in the drifting
curls bouncing with every step. MacTire didn’t look back. He had their future
beside him, and his back turned on their past. The damned must die alone.

Betrayed, shunned, tortured.
Madden stood as they walked away, and found himself on common ground with his
enemy. A Ravener shrieked overhead, foreshadowing death. He looked down upon
the fallen angel of vengeance sacrificed at his feet, and back up to the
retreating forms of his family, silhouetted against the caves.

His heart was torn.

The Becoming Novels: Book
Two

JESS RAVEN & PAULA BLACK

“He who fights monsters should look into it that he
himself does not behoove a monster. When you gaze long into the Abyss, the
Abyss also gazes into you
.’

Friedrich Nietzsche

“
I
sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded
me. I sought my brother and I found all three.
”

William Blake

Ninth Century. Dubhlinn, east coast of
Ireland

H
e was too late …
God, there was nothing left of her
.

Scenting his aggression, the
pack paused in their gorging and, as one, cranked their blood-dripping muzzles
in Connal’s direction. In the chill of the moonlight, steam rose up from their
thick pelts and from what was left of the gored prey at their feet. Aoife’s body
was unrecognisable, except for the matted clumps of blonde hair.

A huge beast at the left
flank of the pack growled, commanding Connal’s attention. From its jaws hung a
rag-doll form, dark curls ruffled by the wind, giving an illusion of life where
clearly there was none.

Connal’s gorge rose, hackles
bristling as a wall of red
slammed down on his vision. His bones began to snap
and twist. Hatred was a powerful anaesthetic, rage an adrenaline shot to the
heart of his fury. The wolf in him took full possession, blacking out all
memory of the carnage that left a bloodied trail of slashed carcasses littering
the sands of the arena. No quarter given, one by one, often two and three at a
time, Connal hacked them down in a hot slaughter of fangs and claws, until panting
and shivering with the overdose of bloodlust coursing through his veins, he
slumped, human once more, cradling the cold body of his baby son, grief jagged
in his chest.

That was how the Morrígan
found him, broken on the ground, keening the loss of a child and a lover and a
stolen future.

He didn’t think to question
how she got inside the arena. He was aware of black wingspans cutting shadows
across the full moon, circling, drawn by the fresh scent of carrion on the
sands. Between one sweep of darkness and the next, she stood over him, a vision
of alabaster skin and blood-red lips. Midnight hair grazed her lower back, its
wild waves contained by a silver headband that met in the centre of her
forehead in a pair of raven heads.

‘What evil could do such a
thing, to an innocent babe in arms?’ she asked, kneeling to brush slender
fingers to his dead son’s skin.

Connal lifted tortured eyes
to the face of this woman who spoke, not in the guttural Norse tongue of the
Fomorians, but in the old Gaelic lilt of the village where he was raised. She
touched the stubble of his blood-spattered jaw. ‘What have they done to you?’

‘Who are you?’ Connal rasped.

‘I am Death. I am Vengeance.
I am War.’ Her voice deepened and the earth trembled as the woman rose up, arms
spread like dark wings, suspended in the moonlight. A preternatural aura pulsed
blue around her silhouette and her hair writhed like a nest of eels. ‘I am
Morrígan,’ she said, ‘I have what you seek, if you will bargain for it.’

Morrígan? Every boy knew the
name of the Phantom Queen, a fireside myth for ale-soaked storytellers.
Devious, powerful and bloodthirsty, the heroes of legend bargained with the
witch at their peril. But this was no legend, and Connal was a slave, not a
hero. Goddesses didn’t just materialise in your darkest moment of grief. Nobody
actually believed in the existence of the Ancients. The Morrígan was nothing
more than the near-death hallucination of warriors on the battlefield.

‘You come to mock me, woman?
Now? Be mindful of my state. I have never killed a female, but I will not rule
you out as my first.’ He showed his wolf, baring fangs, eyes flashing red, but
his heart was not in killing the bitch. He’d slaked his thirst on the untame,
and now the focus of his retribution was on only one man.

‘Is that the best you can
muster, warrior?’ She swept her arms in an arc that seemed to pull the shadows
into an inky plumage of wings. Th
e
y beat the air, whipping a chill wind around his body.
The blue aura intensified, engulfing her, bending the air, refracting threads
of light into fur and form … demonic, beastly and terrifyingly beautiful … The
creature lunged at him, snapping its jaws. The force of its growl knocked
Connal flat onto his back. He was choking, pinned and drowning in the onslaught
of power. As abruptly as it had begun, the force retreated. She was woman once
more, looming above him where he lay sprawled, still clutching his dead son.

‘What is this magic, Witch?’
he growled, fighting to fill his lungs as he hauled himself upright.

‘You insult me, Wolf-boy. I
am no common sorceress. There is no witchcraft here, only power beyond your
wildest imaginings.’ She disappeared, gone in the blink of an eye, only to
reappear at his back, breathing down
his neck. ‘I can give you what your heart desires
most, Warrior.’

‘Can you raise the dead?’ he
asked bitterly
.
W
ith a tenderness that belied his fighter’s hand, he
smoothed the dark curls of his lifeless son. There was hardly a mark on the
boy. Some blunt trauma, perhaps
,
had taken him
. He could be sleeping, but
for the chill invading his little body. Connal folded him tighter into his
arms, as though he could cheat death with just the heat of his own despair.

‘On a night such as this, a
Blód-Samhain, the veil between the realms of the living and the dead is but a
mist. All things are possible.’ She purred, dancing fingertips across the
breadth of his shoulders. ‘You choose to bargain with the Morrígan?
’

‘What is your price?’ He
craned his neck, seeking her eyes, but found only fleeting shadows.

‘Only a lifetime in my
service,’ she murmured, her nails tracing patterns in his biceps. ’I have need
of an executioner, a guard dog, you might say. It is a calling to which your
talents are especially suited.’

‘I am already enslaved. I
already kill. The
m
aster’s name matters not.’

The corners of the Morrígan‘s
blood-red mouth curled into a wicked smile. ‘I have no doubt of your ability to
perform, Warrior. Indeed, I anticipate seeing you in action.’ She had an
unnatural way of moving, coiling herself about his body like a serpent, folding
herself around him with a caress of wings. ‘Do we have a bargain, Warrior?’

‘Why are you doing this to
me?’ He shoved her away with a growl. ‘If you can do as you say, and bring them
back to life, then yes, Witch, we have a bargain.’

‘Excellent.’ Her smile was
chilling, sunlight on a glacier. ‘I require a physical binding, something of
your lover’s, something of value
.
’ Her hand beckoned, an impatient flick commanding he
give her something.

Connal had nothing of
Aoife’s. Unless … He strode across the earth to where the money had scattered
from his hands, and bent to retrieve a single coin from the sand. It was Roman,
spoils of the raids. ‘Will this do?’

The silver flickered, magic
in the moonlight, payment for the dead, though it seemed not valuable enough to
buy a life. ‘Yes, this will do.’ She turned the coin over, regarding the image
embossed on its surface. ‘Aha, the she-wolf suckling her twin boys! This will
do perfectly.’ Her smile was ironic. ‘Something of the child too, I think …
perhaps ...’ A blade materialised in her hand, and before he could object, she
was shearing a bundle of curls from the babe’s head, taking fragments of a
young life that made his heart lurch. The Morrígan stroked his son’s hair
through her fingers, braiding it into a single length, satin yet sturdy as
hide.

‘To remind you why you serve
me,’ she said, stepping closer to fasten the collar about Connal’s neck. ‘There
,
’ she
purred, stroking the coin at the hollow of his throat and pressing her lips to
his jaw in a cold kiss. ‘You are mine, Warrior.’

Her hands shot out, and he
flinched, but the strike was aimed skyward. She wove light through the air,
writing glyphs that crackled and spit sparks, piercing the gathering clouds and
churning them into a grey turbulence. Thunder rolled as she signed the last
glyph, unleashing an earth-shaking growl from the heavens that rocked his
balance. She was unaffected, eyes closed, head thrown back, a sight to behold,
pulling lightning from the clouds like threads from a blanket. Her voice was
layered, guttural and sweet, an animal and a maiden in eerie unity, trembling
the foundations of the world with their song. An arm reached up, fingers spread
… and the sky exploded in dazzling light. Lightning crashed to the ground,
splitting dirt and reaching in with luminous fingers to widen the cracks. Again
and again they struck, digging the ground to sizzling chasms.

She was a goddess.

She gave life to the
inanimate, moving things that should not move … raising things that should not
be raised.

When the glow dimmed, there
was no mistaking what his horrified
eyes
refused to acknowledge. Claws
dragged at dirt, mangled muzzles gnashed
,
as broken, decaying bodies hauled
up from the underworld, following the lightning paths, leaking from the doors
to hell she’d opened. They numbered in the hundreds, wolf forms barely clothed
in flesh and fur, wearing their bones on the outside. Their eyes burned
blood-red as they surrounded them, but the Morrígan never lost her placid
smile, looking on pups instead of the walking putrefaction of slaughtered
untame.