Becoming Bad (The Becoming Novels) by Jess Raven, Paula Black Page B

could do, first hand.
    Hell, his Blond Assholishness still bore the marks of her own lack of control. Even now, it was writhing inside her, stretching aggressively. She may have it leashed, somehow, but the animal force stirring inside her was no lapdog, docile and happy to obey. No, she had a Great White on the end of her leash, and it gnashed its jaws with every wave of emotion.
    MacTire guided her down another endless corridor. ‘The King put Connal in the fighting pits, hoping to purge his human weakness, but the experiment worked too well. Without the balance of training, Connal became untamable. I should have killed him, and saved us all the misery that followed, but out of respect for his father, he was allowed to live.’ A growl leaked the pain of old wounds into his voice. ‘We even went through with the sham of the branding, just to please the old man. The King was a sentimental fool,’ he scoffed, ‘and it destroyed us all. Connal escaped and massacred our people.’
    Throat bobbing with a swallow, Ash looked up from her feet, only half-noting that rock had turned to fine grains of slate black. The big brute knelt and sifted his fingers through the sands. Torch-flames flickered in the black of his eyes like starlight and she couldn’t look away.
    ‘You see this, Ashling? These are the bones of your ancestors, females, babes, warriors, turned to dust by the Savage and his hatred.’
    He flipped her hand and poured the charred remains into her palm. She gagged, but the grip on her wrist wouldn’t allow her to dispel the dead sand.
    ‘Connal destroyed us. We live in a world built upon the bones of our own people, their lives the foundation, their blood our water. Can you see?’
    She could see. The wasteland of Fomor spread out before her was a world without life. It was a canvas of desolation.
Us
, he’d said. The King considered her one of them. He was sharing his world with her.
    ‘How could one man bring down so many single-handed?’ she asked. It simply wasn’t possible, even for Connal. She’d seen the aftermath of the fight against Brandr and Fite. Mac’s fingers loosened and she tipped her hand, brushing at the particles clinging to her skin. She wiped it on his shoulder, disgust in the curl of her lip. He laughed, twining their fingers again as he rose from his crouch in the sand.
    ‘I never said he was alone, Ashling. He had an army of untame at his back.’
    ‘Untame?’
    ‘Haven’t you wondered why we have this duality of man and beast?’
    He turned her with a guiding hand to the small of her back and she moved with him, brow knitted. She’d never really thought about it. Her head hurt with the fragments of information rammed inside.
    ‘Fomorian biology wasn’t exactly covered in any of my classes.’
    His lips pulled into a grin, a bark of a laugh letting her glimpse the sharp, white tips of his canines. ‘It would be my pleasure to teach you.’
    And wasn’t that something to say. Ash’s body had no trouble interpreting that for it’s own needs.
    Mac smirked, as though her thoughts were his and then he was teaching, veering off a path through a doorway with her in tow.
     

ORIGINS

    ‘Our people were once pure beast.’ Mac’s voice ricocheted off the rock as he led her deeper into the warren of tunnels. They were narrowing and he had to half-turn to fit through the gaps. Ash was barely avoiding catching herself on the jagged edges of the rough-hewn passage. ‘We roamed Ireland, wild and uncivilised, until settlements of men encroached on our world. They brought ancient gods with them, a powerful force that defeated the Fomorians and banished them beneath the black sea. But some of our ancestors found a way to escape, by binding their souls to those of human men and women.’
    They were body-snatchers?
Ash snorted, but forced herself to sober. They’d taken the bodies of innocents.
    Ash was pretty sure the King was leading them down into hell, the bowels of some darkness