by Raven, Jess
A thegn without the power to turn wolf was no match for a full-blooded varg, even an injured one, and a scrimpy knot of silk could never restrain the beast. That he was still bound meant the wolf had stayed at bay, though, and Connal had a disturbing theory as to why that was. Not that he was in a sharing mood. Let the doctor sweat that one out for himself. ‘If you won’t untie me, I need a distraction from the pain, Doc. You said you wanted answers? So ask. Who’s your sister?’
Madden had no appetite for sadism. Tying the male while he still had the upper hand was simple self-preservation.
Coward, a voice chirped up, and he stabbed the stick further into the squirming maggot. It burrowed into the hard rock for an escape, and got nowhere. I know how you feel, buddy.
Immortality, lived out in this claustrophobic crawl space, had seemed a grim enough prospect. Being locked in with a vicious animal added a whole new dimension of fear.
The King’s men had done a real number on Connal Savage, sliced him like sushi and carved his lungs into something that wouldn’t look out of place adorning a plate of Chinese food. Still, he didn’t trust the tie of his robe to keep that male restrained. Even in his debilitated state, the Savage was a specimen of power, and if he turned varg? … Well, there would be no such thing as a safe distance.
What the hell had he been thinking, hiding himself in a cave with a self-confessed genocidal maniac? No food, no water, no fucking way out. With the Raveners screeching overhead and MacTire’s men guarding the only way back to the surface, it was a prison of his own idiotic making. In the cold light of starvation, imprisonment, and the imminent threat to his life, discovering the truth seemed a paltry reason to die. But he had to know.
His jaw tipped up. ‘My sister was Aoife, consort of MacTire and Queen of the Fomorians.’ He fisted the robe, anchoring the tremor that had drifted into his voice. ‘She was amongst the first slain on the night of the Blód-Samhain. She and her son, and every other man, woman and child too weak to flee the horde of untame you set upon them.’ Madden’s brow was etched with the pain of ancient memories. His chest shuddered. Tousled hair fell into his eyes as he kicked the flailing fleshworm into the dust and it squirmed away. ‘She died by your hand, you son of a bitch.’
‘I did not kill your sister, Healer.’ Connal’s otherworldly eyes shone crimson across the gloom of the cave.
Madden’s hands tightened into fists, bloodless skin wrapped tight to the knuckles. ‘Perhaps not with your own hands, but you unleashed those creatures on helpless innocents, on a night when every fighting male was away from the longphort. They never stood a fucking chance.’
Connal drew a long breath. ‘I’ve had an eternity to regret what I did that night.’
Madden’s body was shaking, eyes glassy in the half-light. His breathing had taken on a strange, hitching rhythm that rose in jagged exhales to a crescendo roar that reverberated off the walls of the cave and scattered the raveners to the skies.
In that moment, something snapped inside him, more wolf than thegn, all humanity stripped away, he bared his teeth and the whites of his eyes gleamed with a manic fury as he launched himself at Connal. Fists cocked back, he rained down his grief in a volley of uppercuts and body blows that the Savage was utterly powerless to defend against. Hog-tied and pinned against the rock, Madden used him as a living, breathing punch-bag to absorb his rage.
Connal’s already broken body only resisted for a brief time, but still the meaty pound of knuckles to flesh, and the fresh crack of recently knitted rib fractures gave Madden a horrible satisfaction, venting the pressure that had mounted inexorably since his obscene humiliation at the hands of MacTire’s men. For centuries he’d lived with the black shadow of vengeance on his shoulders. Centuries prostrating himself at the feet of that son of a bitch MacTire, hoping to throw off the infernal vows that bound him, allowing himself to be abased at the hands of creatures who growled and drooled and howled at the fucking moon, and yet had the gall to call him genetically inferior. Everything came pouring out in a violent tirade, beyond the point where Connal could even feel the blows and beyond the limits of Madden’s own ability to feel.
Numb … he was numb.
TRUTH
‘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 a
gainst 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.’
The muscles in Connal’s back tightened visibly.
‘MacTire fucked us both over,' the doctor said. 'I know you want the same thing. You could take him, Connal. I’m not strong enough, but you are. You could change everything.’
Connal hauled himself up on his feet and for the first time since Madden had dragged him there, his male presence truly dominated the cave.
‘You know what, Doc?’ Connal cranked his head around to level Madden with a penetrating stare. ‘I've been there once. And it didn't exactly work out for me first time around. So, I appreciate the vote of confidence and all that, but I’m no fucking leader.’ He moved, and his huge form shadowed the mouth of the cave as he scanned the barren landscape. ‘I’m getting out of here, Doc. With or without you.’
In the dirt where the Savage had sat, Madden discerned a line-perfect depiction of Ashling DeMorgan’s face. Etched into the stone, it captured every delicate nuance of her expression, and the doctor knew then and there he was fighting a losing battle. ‘With you,’ he replied.
SPOILED BRAT
Ash's fingers shook as she reached to button up the back of the dress Mac had laid out for her. What happened in the temple earlier had shaken her more than she could afford to admit. She had just enough of her sanity intact to know Connal hadn't spoken to her from the grave, but her psyche was screaming a message she couldn't ignore. His death, Setty's death, couldn't be for nothing.
She was on her own, and yes, she was scared half to death, of this place, of these subterranean creatures, and if she was honest, of what she was becoming.
But Connal had been right, Mac too. She was stronger than she knew, and she was not going down this time without a fight.
That black pool in the temple was her ticket home. She knew it, could practically smell Dublin's streets in the scent that rose off the water with the red fog.
If she could just stick it out ‘til the full moon, she could find a way to escape.
She didn't want to think too far beyond then, death was still a terrifying prospect. Better on her own terms though, and if her grandmother really was the Morrígan, then maybe it was time to call in a family favour. If Granny could keep Connal alive, surely she would do the same for her own flesh and blood. Ash chose not to dwell on the fact that her supposedly all-powerful granny was, at this moment, lying in the Tir na nÓg nursing home drooling mashed potato.
