Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) Read online

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  NO REGRET

  AWAKENING

  SHE-WOLF

  RAVENING

  DOUBT

  CHAINED BEAUTY AND THE BEASTS

  BLOOD BROTHERS

  ORIGINS

  PERSUASION

  THE KING'S BED

  IMPATIENCE

  SHOWER OF ACCUSATIONS

  TRAINING

  SANCTUARY

  WAKEY WAKEY

  TRUTH

  SPOILED BRAT

  ESCAPE

  CONTESTS

  COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

  NO CONTEST

  GOLDILOCKS' BED

  WHAT A KNUTR

  MUTINY

  BUSTED

  PASSAGE BACK

  SELF LOATHING

  SUITE HAVEN

  THE CALL

  ANSWER ME

  LOVE-STRUCK FOOL

  HOMECOMING

  HAIRCUT

  LOYALTIES

  CHOICES

  LOCKED IN, SHUT OUT

  MAKE ME

  HEART TO HEART

  BACK TO FORM

  HAPPILY EVER AFTER?

  GLOSSARY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  The Becoming novels: Book Two

  Published by Raven & Black.

  www.ravenandblack.blogspot.com

  twitter @RavenandBlack

  Copyright © 2013 by

  Jess Raven and Paula Black

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN:978-0-9574846-3-4

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the authors except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Becoming Bad is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents other than those in the public domain are the products of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “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

  Should you find yourself lost in the Becoming world, please remember there is a GLOSSARY at the end of the book to help. You can access it from here or from the interactive table of contents.

  PROLOGUE

  Ninth Century. Dubhlinn, on the east coast of Ireland.

  He 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. They 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. With 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.

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

  ‘I am already enslaved. I already kill. The master’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 the 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.

  ‘What have you done?’ Connal’s eyes drew wide with horror. In his arms, Quillan was cold and still as the grave. ‘No. No, no, NO!’ His eyes pleaded with her. ‘This is not what I bargained for.’

  ‘No?’ She kicked up her jaw and laughed coldly. ‘You bid me raise the dead.’ She motioned to the prowling, reanimated corpses.

  ‘You said you would grant me what my heart desires most! This is NOT ...’ Connal gritted his teeth, head shaking. ‘You tricked me.’

  ‘No trickery here but your own mind’s denial of what the heart holds, Warrior.’ So calmly she spoke, then curled her hand into a fist and pressed it to the wolf-brand on his sternum. Heat seared through his chest. ‘I have looked into your heart, Savage, and the vengeance there is so dark, it obliterates any and all other desires. It is that thirst for death that drew me to you, a beacon of beautiful darkness.'

  No. She was lying, manipulating him. Wasn’t she? Doubt gnawed, a rat in his chest. He couldn't think with her crowding him. She was behind him once more, hands tunnelling into his hair, her voice seductive, stroking his neck, again that feeling of invisible wings, feather-grazing his skin.

  ‘Embrace your hatred, Connal Savage. You despise MacTire. Look at what your own flesh and blood has reduced you to, taken from you. You are the rightful King of the Fomorians. Your brother is a usurper who denies you your legacy. I have given you the power to take it back, by force.’ Her hands shot out once more, the gates of the arena gaping wide at her command, and the great army of undead was unleashed.

  NO REGRET

  Present day Fomor, beneath the black lake.

  MacTire, anointed King of the Fomorian people, or what was left of them, inflated powerful lungs and strode into the great banquet hall, where his men were assembled. The clamour of feasting and debauchery rose up, mingling with the familiar scents of roasting meat and caged masculinity. Gathered along the drift-wood trestle tables were the sole survivors of a once formidable race. Hunted and slaughtered to near extinction, they were without a single female to breed a new generation. Until now. Unconscious in his bedchamber, Ashling DeMorgan was the great hope of Fomor.

  A hush spread through the crowd with each step the King took towards the top-table. Seated there were his personal guard and four closest allies: Brandr; Fite; Rún and Tyr. Collectively known as the skuldalid, a more vicious, cunning and deadly band of warrior vargs you could not find, and they were sworn in their loyalty to the King.

  Brandr’s bearded face split into a manic grin. He wiped his greasy mouth and dropped the leg of lamb he’d been chewing on, pushing to a stand. As one, the collected crowd rose to their feet with him.

  ‘All hail MacTire, Ruler of Fomor, Slayer of raveners, Destroyer of our enemy, and future Sire to our next, glorious generation!’ Brandr punched the air and the room erupted with cries of ‘All hail the King!’ Stamping their feet, the crowd raised their cups of ól to a wild chorus of howls. MacTire’s attempts to silence them fell on deaf ears. Instead, he locked wrists with each of his skuldalid in turn before taking his seat for the celebratory feast.

  One of the thegn servants settled a huge platter of roasted meat and a tankard before him, but MacTire's appetite had deserted him. Concealed in the King’s closed fist was a pendant: a Roman coin threaded on a woven thong. MacTire had torn it from his half-brother’s throat when he ordered the traitor chained and tortured. All had gathered to revel in the execution of their enemy, and in the capture of their long-desired trophy: a breedable female.

  Next to him, oblivious to MacTire’s unease, Fite sank his canines into a hunk of cooked flesh, tearing it from the bone and devouring it with relish. ‘Just think,’ he grinned, ‘as we eat, Connal Savage’s bones are being picked clean by the raveners. A suitably inglorious death for the son of a bitch who put us in this godforsaken prison, don’t you think?’

  ‘With the luck of Balor, the mutant ravens will choke on the bastard’s gristle. Kill two birds with the one bone, so to speak.’ Tyr’s laughter rang hollow in MacTire’s ears.

  ‘Been a long time coming,’ Rún’s sharp eyes regarded the King in a way that made him wonder if he’d projected his thoughts to the red-haired warrior.

  ‘A long-overdue favour returned,’ MacTire nodded, looked away and drank deep.

  ‘We are so few now,’ Rún said, ‘I recall a time when only the privileged feasted here. Now?’ His hand swept over the hall. There were empty spaces all along the benches. Each a fallen brother
. The genocide had all but exterminated the Fomorian species. And after? Connal Savage allied himself with the Morrígan, hunting what remained of his own people off the streets of Dublin. Barely five score and fifty full-blood vargs sat before them now.

  The thegn didn’t count. They were weak-blooded runts, tolerated only to serve the wolves in their spiritual and practical needs. Their flawed genetics allowed them to walk the earth as free men, unlike the cursed full-bloods.

  ‘Has the DeMorgan female spread her thighs for you yet, my Lord?’ Brandr leered, eyes glassy from the drink. ‘Does her creamy flesh meet with the Royal approval?’

  A growl stirred deep in MacTire’s throat and a muscle in his jaw twitched. ‘So impatient for your turn?’

  Brandr’s hands went up in surrender. ‘First rights are always the privilege of the King,’ he mumbled, falling back on the plate of meat as though he could gag himself with it.

  It was true they shared their women, out of want and necessity. And Ashling DeMorgan was not the first. There had been other latent females: humans with promising genetics, lured to Fomor in the vain hope of a successful mating. When, inevitably, no pregnancy ensued, the woman would be passed through the ranks of his men until she was broken. But this one, his Ashling? She brought out proprietorial instincts MacTire had no right to entertain. He’d known it the moment her blood touched his lips. He had yet to lay a hand on her, but his body resonated for her in ways he hadn’t known in centuries. She had pure wolf-blood in her veins. He could taste it.

  ‘She is yet to awaken,’ MacTire, who rarely explained himself, felt obliged to now. ‘You yourself saw the girl at the point of death when the Savage brought her through the black waters. Hardly surprising she needs time to recover from his attack.’