Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) (11 page)

Numb … he was numb.

‘You’re not dead.’ Madden rolled the giant wall of muscle onto his front. ‘You don’t get to be dead, asshole. You don’t get to saddle me with that shitty guilt-trip for eternity.’ The six hours of festering remorse had been quite enough, thank you. He’d had it with staring at the ugly purple and black imprints of his own fists on the guy’s skin. ‘Now rise and fucking shine, Savage, Connal, whatever the hell your name is.’

Connal groaned, face mashed to rock, pain blooming in florets all over his body. Pre-passed-out memories emerged from the haze like spectres. Damn, when exactly had it become Groundhog day for getting handed your ass? The game was getting old, fast. ‘Is it morning already?’ He rasped, spitting blood into the dust. ‘If you’re planning to fuck me over again, you could at least buy me breakfast in bed,’ his stomach growled, ‘and I don’t mean those putrid maggots.’

Madden straddled his back, tugging on the ties binding Connal’s wrists and ankles. ‘Bastard,’ he said, ‘you had it coming, for Aoife, and for all the others.’ He yanked so hard Connal’s shoulders popped in their sockets. ‘Don’t make me reconsider untying you. There’s plenty of rags left to make a gag for your big mouth.’

‘Gags and restraints? That what raises your flag,
thegn
?’ Connal moaned at the instant relief flooding into numb hands and feet. 'And where are my damn pants?'

'Clothes don't travel well on the ride to Fomor.'

Dragging himself to a sitting squat, Connal rubbed at the abrasions on his wrists and eyed the doctor with a sneer. ‘Yeah, right. I always said celibacy was a breeding ground for perversion.’

Madden sat back and cut a glare in Connal’s direction. ‘You think it’s a fucking life choice?’ His fist planted on the
thegn
mark on his chest. ‘You think I enjoy being branded the runt of the litter, lower than the dogs and animals? A genetic reject, too flawed to be allowed to procreate. What the hell would you know, Pureblood?’

‘I know enough.’ Connal’s statement hung in the air between them.

Madden grunted. ‘Don’t think it makes us BFFs, murderer.’

‘I am a murderer, but I did not kill your sister, or her child. You seek the truth about your sister, then hear it. I owe you that much, for saving my life.’ Connal closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the rock. ‘The child, Quillan, was mine.’

Madden sucked in a breath, but remained stock still, anticipating every word.

‘I loved your sister, if you can believe an animal like me capable of love. I knew nothing of the child until the night of the Blód-Samhain, when she came to me. She’d bribed the guards. The longphort was all but abandoned, because of the raids. She’d paid a man with a horse and cart to take us to the village where I lived as a boy. She hoped they might offer us work, and protection for the child.’ The recollection was slashed like a wound across Connal’s expression.

‘She came to me that night,’ Madden frowned, ‘it was my initiation. She said nothing about leaving.’

‘She’d have been signing your death warrant if she had,’ Connal said, and they fell into a stony silence that stretched out into the Fomor night. Eventually Connal cleared his throat and continued.

‘I suppose MacTire got suspicious, or somebody tipped him off. Whatever, he stayed behind when the other men left and followed Aoife to the arena. The red-haired warrior was with him.’

‘Rún, the scarred one,’ Madden nodded.

'Yeah, but he wasn't scarred back then. MacTire produced a blade and dragged Aoife away. Rún bolted the cage and they left me, trapped in there. I’d have gladly cut off my own hands to get to them, had I the means. I still hear Aoife's screams in my sleep. Every night they haunt me. To this day.'

'He killed her.' Madden's face had drained of all colour, pale as moonlight, ghostly against the darkness of the cave. His lips pressed into a thin line. ‘What of my nephew?’

‘I was too late. They were beyond help. There was nothing left of her.’ The words lodged in Connal’s throat. ‘The bastard left her to the untame and they ripped her to pieces. I could only hope she was already dead before … Fuck, I’m sorry, she was your sister, you don’t need to hear this.’

‘Yeah, fuck,’ Madden breathed, dragging a dirty palm down his face. He paused for a long moment before gathering his emotions. ‘I accept you didn’t kill them, but I need to know the rest, about the massacre, 'cause I think I missed the part where you become a genocidal sociopath.’

Filthy and naked, muscles corded, dreads hanging between his knees, Connal wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of those dioramas of pre-history, complete with wooly mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers. He rested his spine to the rock and stared up at the roof of the cave. ‘The Morrígan came to me that night, with promises of raising the dead. And I was just desperate enough in that moment to buy into her lies. She rose the dead alright, but instead of bringing Aoife and Quillan back to life, she raised the army of untame and set them free ...'

‘Enough.’ With that one word, Madden dead-ended Connal’s retelling of the grimmest night of their history. ‘You embraced your hatred. I get it.’

‘No.’ Connal lifted pale eyes that shone, tortured, out of his dirt-smeared, unshaven face. ‘I tried to stop it, but I was hopelessly outnumbered. In the end, it was useless. Their reanimated corpses couldn't be killed. The carnage spread like wildfire. Once the creatures had annihilated the longphort, they cut a swathe through the satellite camps; relentless, they killed every living thing in their wake, until they’d herded the last remaining men down into the caves.'

'Exactly as the Morrígan had intended.' Madden's tone was caustic.

'Yeah. She bled into the black waters and worked her magic to seal her curse on the prison that is now Fomor.’

Madden eyed the man across from him warily. ‘But all these years, you’ve been her assassin. You’ve killed your own people.’

Connal nodded slowly, dreads falling over his face. ‘I’d struck a bargain. Where else did I have to go?’ Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘You think MacTire would have welcomed me back into the pack? I was a slave, and now I was a pariah. Killing was all I knew. I struck a bad bargain, my duty became the price.’

Madden stood, arms bracing the narrow mouth of the cave as he breathed the still air from the perpetual darkness. ‘As a
thegn
, I do have some understanding of servitude, and of duty.’ Those were two things Madden understood all too well. Turning back, he looked his enemy straight in the eye. ‘We are not so different, you and I, Connal Savage.’

Dreads shook about Connal’s head. ‘I have never understood you
thegn.
You’re not bound by the Morrígan’s curse. You’re free to walk the earth as you please and to mate with humans. You're stronger than a human, and smarter. You hold positions of power all around the world, possess the killer instincts to rule this planet, and yet you choose to grovel to a handful of primitive beasts. Haven’t you ever considered that you were the evolutionary success? That the wolves were the ones marked for extinction?’

Madden’s eyes widened at the blasphemy spilling so easily from the man’s mouth. He sank back on his heels, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. ‘Never out loud. Not unless we wanted our tongues cut out. The
thegn
have been indentured for so many thousands of years, it’s woven into our DNA.’

‘There have to have been rule-breakers,
Thegn
who desired freedom?’ Connal was looking at him like he could see right through Madden’s impenetrable mask.

Unnerved, he cleared his throat. ‘Sure, there’ve been transgressions, always dealt with severely. No one’s ever dared challenge MacTire’s higher order.’ Madden felt heat suffuse his cheekbones. ‘What about you? Did you rebel?’

‘Against her? Hell yes. I rebelled countless times, but every time I did, she made innocent people die. Guilt always dragged me back, and in time, well, it’s as you say: you do something long enough and you start to find ways to justify your actions. I’d lost the will to fight my way off the path destiny chose for me. There was no reason. Until now.'

'The girl.' Subconsciously, Madden found himself gravitating closer to the man, shifting until they were side by side, backs to the cave wall. ‘You fell hard, huh?’

'Yeah,' he exhaled.

Madden turned his head to the silhouette of Connal's hard jaw. 'You really love her that much? Enough to die for her?'

Connal nodded, picking absently at the scabs on his chest where MacTire had torn out his piercings. His body was healing fast, the hastily stitched wounds knitting into jagged pink lines, but his skin was still streaked with dried blood, evidence of exactly what he’d been prepared to endure for her. 'It would seem so.'

'Enough to give her up?' Madden asked.

A growl echoed off the walls. 'I'm not that generous.'

'Then you're planning to get her back.' Madden’s interest was piqued.

'Honestly? I hadn't thought beyond getting her to safety. I gambled on a one-way trip.'

'But now?'

'I got her in here. I have to find a way to get her out.'

'You know she can't live on the surface. She's wolf now. Your bite has activated her latent genetics.'

Connal cut him a sidelong glare. ‘Yes, I was witness to a pretty graphic demonstration.’ His gaze fell back to the patterns he was scratching into the dirt with a rock. ‘If I can get to the surface and explain the situation to Anann DeMorgan, she can help.’

‘Do you think she’d help you?’ Both their eyes were trained, not on each other, but on the picture that was slowly emerging from Connal’s etching. He’d said he liked to carve, clearly a diversion carried over from his slave days. Made Madden wish he had his tin whistle, anything to occupy idle hands and an overactive mind.

‘She warned me I’d be forsaken if I so much as touched her granddaughter. So no,’ he dragged the sharp edge of the stone in a sweeping curve through the soft rock, ‘I don’t believe she’ll lift a finger to help me, but it’s Ash I’m bargaining for, not myself. I already sold my soul. I am bound by my word and by the collar the Morrígan put on my throat.'

‘You’re not bound by it now.’

‘Huh?’ Connal’s head bobbed back up and Madden motioned to his neck.

‘The collar, that silver coin you wore. It’s gone. MacTire must have ripped it from your throat when he had you tortured.’

Connal’s hand reached up to touch his bare throat, where the coin had once sat. ‘So it is. That complicates matters.’

Madden brows raised in question.

‘I no longer have the Morrígan’s protection. I get to shrivel up and die after full moon, just like all the others. Sweet.’

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Words rose in Madden’s throat, begging a voice, but it was several attempts later before he mustered the courage to set them free.

‘We don’t have to go back. You could kill him. MacTire. You could challenge him in contest and claim the throne. It is yours by birth.’

‘Jesus, you know you sound just like her? The Morrígan.’ Connal spat the name into the dirt.

‘There’s nothing waiting for you up there. Or for me. We’re in the same boat. I’ll be a hunted man for the rest of my life, and if what you say is true, once the moon wanes, you’ll be a dead man walking. That bitch screwed you over once already. She’ll do it again. You owe her nothing. I don’t deny I want to avenge my sister and her son. Your son.’