Becoming Red (The Becoming Novels)

by Paula Black

  ‘Yeah,’ he lied, and watched them leave, before training his attention back to the snivelling creep on the floor. ‘Get off your knees, Scotty, and beam us the fuck to Fomor.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Waiting had probably never been so tense. Madden was stood beside the colossal statue of tension that was MacTire, and the male didn’t even look to be breathing. But for the slight dilation of his pupils as his focus caught on the swirling vortex of blood nearing the shore, he could have been a sculpture. Madden daren’t move though, not with the way the other members of the Skuldalid sneered at him, waiting for some glimpse into the residual pain of a humiliating punishment, so they could laugh at him like hyenas on crack. Some welcome party, he wanted no part of it. He wanted to be topside in a hot bath, getting a massage from a few of the club’s girls. A pretty blonde maybe. None of it would come to pass until MacTire gave him leave to return above ground. Fomor was unstable and hungry for a look, a taste, of this female key. Boots scuffed bone sand, the only tell of his agitation as he forced himself not to move, not to flinch, when a pacing Varg skimmed too close to him. Fuckers liked playing with him now. The privileges of his status as brother-in-law to the King held about as much water as a sieve, when MacTire himself had publicly issued the orders for his debasement at their hands. It didn’t matter that he’d been allowed to accompany the Skuldalid for the female’s arrival. That was just a means of adding insult to his injuries. Doyle had succeeded where Madden had failed, and MacTire had dragged him here, with his pride in tatters, to rub his nose in it.

  A snarl was leashed and ready to be let loose on the next Varg that walked behind him, but it never came about. MacTire moved, ploughing through the few males that had swarmed forwards in haste to see the girl, when the two bodies splashed up, crimson to charred bone beach. Here was history, being written in the sands of Fomor, a double coup that defied the comprehension of every pair of eyes that witnessed it. Here lay the pariah of their race, the author of their downfall, limbs entwined with their brightest hope. Here was their mortal enemy, delivering the key to freedom right into their hands. It spoke to Madden of atonement, but there wasn’t a male amongst them, Madden included, that would hesitate to avenge their lost. Mothers, daughters, sisters, mates. If the Savage had come seeking to atone for his wrongs, he would find no forgiveness here, amongst the Skuldalid. Every bruised muscle in Madden’s body ached from the base degradation that was their brand of mercy, and he had merely failed to produce the girl. To break the oaths of the félag and take arms against your own blood? There was no more inglorious act. The King’s Vanguard had waited many centuries for justice.

  They were so still, the two bodies that were the focus of all eyes, locked in an embrace that fitted them into one form. She looked more delicate than the last time he’d seen her, fragile and deathly pale, wrapped in the bind of the Savage’s arms. Breakable. A strange rush of embarrassment filled heat into his cheeks, as though he had stumbled upon a private moment in a world of blood and pain. There was no savagery in the hold, none of the fierce brutality marking her skin beneath the faint spiderweb pulsing at the surface of her pale flesh. Only tenderness in the kiss that never broke. Hurtled into hell and not even that could separate one from the other. It was light fractured in a place where shadows ruled. Madden couldn’t tear his eyes away.

  The dull light of the torches planted at the water’s edge illuminated the black pathway of veins slowly receding and he feigned a doctor’s interest in the phenomenon, a distance away and observing. Her breath was visible now, the rise and fall of her chest shallow compared with the ragged, panting growls of frustration sawing the Savage’s body as he fought the leaden paralysis claiming his strength. Madden could relate. He hated that weakness, it struck like lightning on the trip over and could hang around for hours. Not something you wanted when the universe’s bitchiest raptors haunted the skies of Fomor. As if on cue, a murderous screech cut a nervous murmur across the crowd of Vargs, slicing through the stunned stillness that had carved awe into the face of every male on the sands. This female was different and they could smell it.

  ‘Get him off her,’ MacTire growled, incensed at the picture before him. His obsidian eyes were alive with a maniacal gleam, the torch flames casting him as a grotesque Gollum with the precious wolf bloodlines in his covetous sights. Rún and Brandr moved forward to obey. Gripping Connal’s useless limbs, the russet-haired warrior hesitated, exchanging a look with his blood brother. Madden read into that look, the unvoiced reticence to wrench apart these two ... lovers?

  A growl dashed the hesitation into motion, the brothers moving fast to unravel the chain security of Connal’s arms from around the unconscious female and draw her unresponsive form off the sand. Rún took her weight, so real, her curves cool draped over his arms.

  ‘Fucking parasite, we finally pried you off her.’ Brandr leant down, his scruff-faced lip curling into Connal’s. ‘You should have died the other night, you stinking cur, in the gutter, where a traitor like you belongs.’ Drawing up on a snarl, Brandr found MacTire looming above them and looked to the King for permission to finish the job.

  From the ground came a wet croak that drew both men’s attention. By the time he mustered the strength to speak, the Savage had schooled his paralyzed mouth into a half smile. ‘Brother, it’s been too long,’ he wheezed.

  ‘You have no right to call me that.’ The lability that crept into the King’s voice was off-key for a man known for dispassionate cruelty. His face contorted with revulsion, he struck Madden as unstable. ‘Our mother cursed the day she spat you from her thighs, mongrel. She should have wrung your neck at birth and spared us all your treachery.’ MacTire’s boot kicked out and a shower of bone-sharded sand rained down on the captive’s head. This was the Savage’s legacy to his race, charred remains in a sea of brutal bloodshed.

  The King demanded Madden’s wandering attention with a proclamation. ‘My men. Our day has come to rise once more. See that Elatha has provided the vessel for us to thrive once again.’ The register of his voice dropped to a reverent whisper as he approached Ash, the fingers of his giant hand moulding to the pale curve of her cheek. ‘And is she not beautiful?’ The pad of his thumb brushed across her full lips. Draped, limp in Rún’s arms, Ash remained mercifully unconscious, though the blue-black lividity had receded completely to reveal the porcelain perfection of her skin. The silk sheet Connal had wrapped her in was shredded, barely covering her modesty from the lascivious eyes of the gathering crowd. MacTire’s hand dropped to sift the raven silk of her hair through his fingers. Lifting a handful of damp curls to his face, he inhaled deep and a growl ripped from his throat. Gripping her jaw in one powerful hand, he angled her throat to reveal the freshly cut bite mark in her skin. Wheeling on Connal where he lay powerless on the shore, the King snapped.

  ‘Was it not enough to seduce my mate and plant your maggot spawn inside her belly? Must you defile this one too?’ He gestured to Ash, where she hung from Rún’s arms. ‘She trusted you and yet you condemn her to the same hell as the rest of us. Once a betrayer, always a betrayer.’

  ‘You know nothing. She loves me, brother,’ Connal’s words were a cracked whisper. ‘She will never go willingly to your bed, MacTire. Even if you force her, it will always be me, in the end. Me in her thoughts, in her heart. Mine.’ His eyes drifted closed, but the shadow of a smile hovered on his lips.

  MacTire’s booted foot moved to obliterate that smile in a sickening crunch of bone, but it was clear to Madden that the remnant of its effects lingered in the strain that bracketed the King’s mouth with deep-furrowed chagrin. ‘You are a traitor to your race, Connal Savage. You will die here, alone, in the same agony you left your kin to suffer.’ MacTire snatched up a fistful of dreads, yanked Connal’s head to a sickening angle, and spat squarely in his face. ‘Burn in hell with your bastard child, my blood brother. They say the babe mewled like a worthless runt when he was thrown to the Untame. I should have slit your th
roat then, along with my faithless bitch of a mate.’ His boot tipped Connal’s chin up and a vicious yank of strong fingers tore out the silver hoops hooked through the Savage’s flesh, breaking the skin to a grunt of stifled pain and removing the rings and their pure blood connections in a spray of scarlet. He was nothing without the pierced birthright, less now than the dog he had been.

  Madden felt the sand shift beneath his feet, or was it that he had turned to stone and the rest of the world was suddenly turning on a different axis?

  If Thor’s Hammer had smashed his face in at that moment, he wouldn’t have felt a thing. MacTire’s words ran his blood cold and instilled shock to every cell, electrifying his heart to a beat of deranged, swelling fury. It rose to lash across the spasm of his confused thoughts with one truth. MacTire, not Connal, had killed his sister. And the arrogance of the man had him declaring it before his own creatures. Too confident, too angry and probably too damn stupid to realise Madden as a threat, MacTire simply ploughed on with his orders.

  ‘Break him open and gift him wings of bone. Season his innards with salt. The Raveners will relish his flavour so much the longer.’

  The King’s words warped in Madden’s ears. The same momentum that propelled the wolves into their future was sucking him back into a past he no longer recognised. The Vargs milled around his frozen form as though he were invisible, rushing to shackle a limp Connal to hang between a rock structure, a monolith with sharp points reaching to the skies and a gap enough to string a man up.

  ‘Keep him conscious. The Blood Eagle is no fun if he sleeps through it,’ MacTire laughed. The sick, murdering bastard actually laughed as they stripped what shreds of clothes still clung to Connal’s body. Flash frames of memory played across Madden’s frontal lobe, rapid-firing despite his outward stillness, stripping away layer upon layer of ingrained misunderstandings.

  Aoife, flushed and breathless with life and secret laughter, returning from one of her covert, midnight adventures. He’d understood enough to know it was a male who brought her that joy, but had never known his name nor seen his face. God, but he saw it now. Dreads hung low, silent tears cut tracks down filthy cheeks as the blade ripped through the sinew and bone of Connal’s broad back, the rip and crunch of brutal hands fashioning gruesome, bloody wings from the cage of his ribs.

  Aoife. Heavy with child and utterly joyless. Aoife. Once bright eyes turned fearful and furtive, concealing the black-haired child in her robes. It was the last time he’d seen his sister. She left their tent and never returned. What came in her place was this man, strung up in front of him now, ripped open by the savagery of vengeance. Connal, at the head of a demon army of Untame that unleashed horror on their people. Blood and burning and chaos and fleeing for their lives. And MacTire, in the caves, always MacTire, holding him back when he wanted only to go to her, his sister, with her baby. Again and again, the image haunted him, like a word spelled over and over, until suddenly it looked like a foreign language. Not saving his life, not grieving a mate, or a son, but wearing their blood on his hands, knowing they were already beyond saving, dead on the end of MacTire’s own blade.

  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.

  Will Ash survive Becoming Wolf?

  For a sneak preview of the second installment of the Becoming series log onto

  www.ravenandblack.blogspot.com

  GLOSSARY

  ***Warning: This glossary contains SPOILERS. If you prefer a spoiler-free reading experience, we suggest leaving this until after you finished the book. ***

  Hungry for more background about the world of the Fomorian wolves?

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  www.ravenandblack.blogspot.com

  An laoch cróga - Gaelic for ‘the brave hero or warrior.’

  A leanbh - Gaelic for ‘my child.’

  Amadán - Gaelic word for an idiot.

  Blood eagle - An ancient Norse method of torture and execution, performed by cutting and breaking the ribs of the victim and forming them into a semblance of bloody wings. The lungs would be pulled through the wounds and salt poured into the chest cavity. A punishment reserved for the worst traitors to the Fomorian race.

  Céad míle fáilte - Gaelic for ‘a hundred thousand welcomes.’

  Chupacabra - Meaning literally ‘goat-sucker’, a legendary South American creature, said to drink the blood of livestock.

  Dubh Linn - The old Norse from which Dublin got her name. It translates to 'black pool or lake'; the ancient site adjacent to Dublin Castle where the Vikings decided to settle. The actual black lake was filled in during the late seventeen/early eighteen hundreds.

  Eitr - The blue-tinged, opalescent venom in a Fomorian’s bite, it has an adverse effect on humans (see Thrall). In Fomorians, the exchange of eitr heightens sexual orgasm in a biological incentive to mate and reproduce.

  Elatha - A Fomorian moon god, whose blessing of the red fog permitted the Vargs to walk the earth during full moon.

  Félag (pleural félagi) - Old Norse word meaning ‘fellowship’ or a ‘bringing together of strengths’. On reaching maturity, Fomorian male litter-mates born to different fathers undergo a ceremonial branding and contest one another in battle to establish dominance. Thereafter, the blood-brothers are sworn, one to the other, in a lifelong bond of allegiance, which included the sharing of a single mate.

  Form - A nightclub built on the site of the original Dubh Linn. Neutral territory (see Haven Law).

  Fomor - A mythical, subterranean world, in which the Fomorians have been condemned to dwell forever by the Morrígan’s powers. Fomorians retain their immortality only as long as they maintain contact with Fomor. If they walk the earth outside of the full moon, they age instantly and die a slow, agonising death.

  Fomorian - A mythical, semi-divine race that were the first inhabitants of Ireland. Gods of chaos and wild nature, they have been variously described as grotesque beasts and as beautiful men. Defeated in battle by the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Fomorians were driven beneath the sea, never to walk the land of Ireland again. What is not written in the myths is that over millennia, cracks appeared in their underground prison, the Tuatha Dé were forgotten, no longer worshipped, and fissures, conduits to the surface, developed, leading to black lakes, through which the Fomori began to escape and terrorize the human people in the form of giant, wolf-like creatures. The people of Eblana kept wolfhounds as protection and stayed clear of the known dangers of the black lake where the wolves appeared at full moon in a haze of red fog. But one fateful night, a large fleet of Viking settlers arrived and moored their longboats on the black lake, unsuspecting of the dangers. That full moon, something happened. The Fomori possessed the souls of every man, woman and child on board the boats, using the power of the full moo
n to cleave themselves to human forms in an attempt to finally free themselves of their curse and roam the land they considered was rightfully theirs. Thus began the second great reign of the Fomori, into which our characters were born, a reign that was to last until a terrible battle once again drove them below ground, cursed to live out their immortality in their subterranean prison, or die an agonising death above ground.

  Fostbrodir - Old Norse for blood brother or sworn brother.

  Haven Law - An ancient pact, agreed between the Ancient gods and the Fomorians, establishing the sacred ground of the Dubh Linn as neutral ground, following the Morrigan’s prophecy that to spill Fomor blood on the site would bring about an apocalypse for all humanity.

  Laeknir - Old Norse term for a healer.

  Latent - A human female believed to be a carrier of Fomorian bloodlines. Identified by the presence of the genetic anomaly of tapetum lucidum, or eyeshine. On reaching maturity, latent females develop a sensitivity to the full moon and are drawn to sites on the surface of the earth where the male wolves appear. Rumoured to be the offspring of Thegn who have broken their vows of celibacy and mated with human women.