Becoming Red (The Becoming Novels)

by Black, Paula

  She never got callers these days. Social services had long since learned to give her and her tumble down mausoleum of a house, with all its cluttered eccentricity, a wide berth. They had a strange habit of going missing. But in the old days, when there was still an occasional caller, a new, unsuspecting neighbour or a wet behind the ears social worker who saw her as a challenging case-history in the making, when they called, he noticed how they seemed to physically recoil from looking directly at her, from staring into the face of their own inescapable mortality. But not Connal.

  He stood, despite the chair sitting vacant opposite hers, and she didn’t entreat him to take the weight off his legs. That was not the nature of their relationship. Feet apart, broad back squared off, his stance was all military precision, at odds with the faded jeans and the coils of hair that fell well past his shoulders and the rough lines of his unshaven jaw. She so rarely called him up to her parlour these days and then only to issue insults and orders. He awaited instruction: a name, a location, perhaps a desired method of extracting the final breath.

  Her gaze seemed to fall on the metal disc at his throat. Perhaps the firelight had glinted off the metal and beady, magpie eyes simply followed, or perhaps she was taken by a sudden bout of nostalgia, but the corners of her wrinkled mouth curled into a sneer as she addressed him.

  ‘Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in? An laoch cróga, an ea?’

  Her atrophied vocal cords nonetheless gave strength to the sarcasm laced through her words as she spoke, addressing him as ‘the brave hero warrior’ in the Gaelic tongue. It was a pet name she used for him, knowing well it gave him the scratch.

  ‘Just look at the state of yourself, Connal the Savage. A sorry sight you are, reeking of the drink and that den of sin and vice.’ She closed a tremulous grip around the handle of the poker and stabbed at the embers of the fire. Connal maintained a taciturn silence, staring at the gilt over-mantle as she continued. ‘If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.’

  He closed his eyes and let the verbal abuse roll off him. Next would follow the comments about his dire need of a haircut and a razor for that offensive, whiskered chin. DeMorgan’s blather and put-downs were a time honoured tradition he tolerated begrudgingly, tuning out her voice until it was a low drone in his ears.

  ‘You fritter your time away acting the maggot, carousing in public houses, mouldy drunk, when MacTire is taking control of the streets. He is claiming the city from under your snout. You will be the death of me yet, you feckless wastrel.’

  ‘The death of you Anann? You’re like a cockroach. Indestructible.’ He spoke to the mirror over her head, impassive.

  ‘Don’t play the cute hoor with me, boy. No ship is unsinkable. You, of all, should know this.’

  His brows furrowed at that statement and he lowered his jaw to look directly into her shimmering eyes, silently questioning. She waved a hand dismissively at his change in expression and spat into the fire.

  ‘I do what is required of me, Anann. Do I not fulfil the terms of our agreement?’

  ‘Ara, that you do, to the letter, and divil a bit more.’ She thrust the poker into the hearth and turned to pin him with a frosty glare. ‘And that would be the crux of it. Cop on, would you. MacTire’s light burns bright. He senses opportunity, hungers for it. As would you, warrior ...’ Ancient, piercing eyes, sharp as razor blades, seemed to scan his face for some resonance with her words. ‘... had you not two heads on you from the damn drink. You’ve let your blade grow dull, Connal. She is the lynchpin that will make the one of you and break the other.’

  ‘She?’ Connal ground his molars. He supposed he had been paying attention to the old biddy’s ranting after all, but her cryptic words and the caustic manner of their delivery never failed to get his hackles up. Infuriating old woman. But he was listening now.

  ‘She, the new Latent is coming, and this one is different.’ At this, she reached out and bony fingers dug into his forearms, as though emphasising the importance of this information she was imparting to him.

  'They're all different.’

  Leaping up from the chair, the characteristic dowager hump that deformed Nan DeMorgan’s spine was nowhere in evidence, her crooked limbs were animated by fury and her wheezy breath was searing his jaw as she got right up on him.

  'Don’t you get smart with me, amadán. You would do well to remember your debt to me. MacTire cannot be allowed to get to this one. You understand what I am saying to you, Connal Savage. I need you to take care of her.'

  The growl in his throat was barely audible, but the animosity bled into his words. ‘I am nobody’s fool, DeMorgan, and taking care of your blow-ins is not in my job description. You know how I feel about handling females. If this one is so different, why don't you take care of her yourself?'

  'You,’ she punctuated the word by sinking yellowed fingernails into the flesh of his forearms, ‘will do this thing. I guard your death, Warrior. Never forget it.’ She poked the centre of his chest with her gnarled index finger, drilling home the echo of words spoken to him centuries before. ‘And I do not need to tell you,’ she stepped back now to eyeball him with shrewd accusation, ‘that under no circumstances are you to fuck her.’ When his brows quirked amusement at the colourful choice of word tripping off her geriatric tongue, she grasped his jaw in a bruising grip. ‘You men are all alike, with your swollen brains between your legs.’ She cracked the flat of her palm hard across his cheek.

  He didn’t flinch, but his voice was tight with restraint. He recalled a time in distant memory when she had been more than keen to get him between her legs. She had held his refusal to bed her against him ever since. ‘No fucking. Take care of the girl. Understood. Mistress.’ The title was delivered as a clear and distinct insult.

  She patted his cheek where her hand had struck him. ‘Good. Boy. Defy me in this, Connal Savage, and the vengeance I wreak upon you will be beyond anything you or this world has ever witnessed. And I mean anything.’ A gnarled finger stabbed at the coin at his neck. Now, he flinched. Her pointed reminder of his past yanked at his throat like a choke chain pulled viciously tight, bringing him firmly to heel.

  She dismissed him from her presence without further explanation of when or where he should expect to find this female, although they always gravitated towards Form, eventually, and he would be waiting for her. DeMorgan didn’t elaborate on what she had meant by saying he would be the death of her either. Chance would be a fine thing. A frustrated growl ripped from his throat as he slammed the door behind him. The old crone got off on tying him up in her rhymes and riddles and damned if he was giving her the satisfaction of actually asking. Life had taught him that Fate had a way of landing at your feet whether or not you actively pursued it, usually ready to trip you up and laugh in your bloodied face. As he stalked through the iron gates, he swore he heard the cackle of laughter coming from within the house, but the old windows had a way of twisting the wind.

  By the next morning, it was too late to ask. For all intents and purposes, she was gone. Anann DeMorgan was found collapsed in her chair by a neighbour alerted by the insistent barking of her dog. From a distance, he watched the blue lights of the ambulance bounce off the walls of her crumbling house as they bundled her blanket-wrapped, hemiplegic body inside.

  CHAPTER TWO

  And she was falling asleep. Again. As the professor droned on, her head drooped towards the desk like she had a rubber band noosed around her neck, pulling her down until she snapped back to awareness, a nodding dog in the midst of a bobble head crowd of similarly sleepy students. Too damn early for a class. Couple that with dim lighting and eerie X-Files music playing in the background of some video, and you had the recipe for a nap. The teacher was a veritable sadist, and not even three cans of energy drink and four cups of cart coffee could combat the lulls in her concentration. It was an observational class, today, she’d been told. No debating, no arguing, simply watching. But being awake at the time of day that most folk
lorish creatures were probably, in truth, fast asleep in their fantastical beds, didn’t much lend itself to great awareness. Though there was one specimen of fairytale that could lend truth to the stories. The ogre of a professor tramping up and down in front of a screen that played the bizarre music video. Why are we watching this? Oh, yeah. Chupacabra. She wasn’t buying it, the creepy flashing lights humming on over pictures of a Mexican hairless dog was a total bust, a fake. And yet ... there was something about those teeth, not purely canine. She put it down to the early morning making her consider the truth of it, or maybe it was that she was already half way down the rabbit hole into dreamland and nothing was making sense through the sleepy haze. She started counting Chupacabra’s to stay awake. If sheep put you to sleep, surely a beast that massacred them would wake you up.

  No go. She was heavy in dreams before she got to four, nuzzled by a pelt of darkness, the soft fur brushing black over her skin and smothering her in the shadowed oppression. Her screams were silent, pillowed in a coppery tang, a penny in her mouth that stifled sound and fed her metallic air that reeked of … death. Oh no. Not this one. Not now. It always started differently, a strange moving darkness that eventually tapered out to the soft glowing of multiple night lights. Princess ones, illuminating the Disney women against the white of the holiday home’s walls. Her mother had remembered them, as she always did when they went away. They were lined prettily along the hallway, small slippered feet flashing in and out of the pools of light as she padded towards the sound that had woken her. Arguing. A strange pitched shouting, ramblingly mad, and it frightened her. She clutched the brilliant red of her soft velvet coat around her shoulders and peered from the safety of her hood before the darkness came again in a rush of snapping jaws and she was torn into a twirl of confusion, crimson, almost liquid, flowing out behind her as she fled in circles that only turned her into the flashes of spreading red stains that seeped through the darkness. This part never made sense, it was a kaleidoscope of terror, red and black, sweeping her up until she drowned on the fluid horror racing through her small, trembling form…

  ‘Ash!’ It wasn’t so much the hiss of her name that brought her from sleep as the shooting pain fastening multiple pincers around her ankle. Her fingers probed frantically to soothe the ache in her memory that now left only a scar in her flesh. Damn it all …

  ‘Hey, are you ok?’ The praying mantis like nerd beside her peered worriedly at her, his small brown eyes darting to where the professor was still caught deep in the throes of Chupacabra stories as he leant closer, huddling into her desk. ‘You were twitching; I almost went rooting for an EpiPen.’

  ‘I’m fine Rick. Just a bad dream.’ All her dreams were bad. ‘Did I miss anything thrilling?’

  ‘Nothing that will alter your grade if you don’t know it. He’s lost in his own world again. Was rambling in Spanish a couple ‘a minutes ago.’

  She snickered, circling her temples with shaking finger tips, as though she could knead the images from her brain and wipe her dream slate clean. Rick was still watching her, concerned.

  ‘I’m really ok. This damn early start messing with my sleep pattern.’ Leaning down, she rooted in her bag for the last precious ambrosia, her chance to keep from dreams for the remainder of the lecture. Popping the top of the can, she drank deep and rocked, propping her heels up on the back of the empty chair in front of her and fighting the urge to drift once more into ocean-and-blood-scented madness.

  Seven pm. Her day had started with darkness and it ended the same, mocking her silently with shadows of her nightmares. Her bags slid from her shoulder to the floor with a dull thud, spilling sheaves of notes across the floor and the energy to care left her, making her step over the abandoned pile to wade through the small pile of mail, finger depressing the play button on her answer machine as she sorted: Bill, bill, junk, bill, postcard from one of her foster homes, bill, junk, junk, junk. And over the shush of papers the messages spoke into the still of her apartment.

  ‘Miss DeMorgan, this is Clarity Chace from the Bar Surreal. If you are still interested in the bartending position, we’d like to arrange an interview.’ A long stream of numbers followed and she nabbed a pen in time to jot the digits onto the back of an envelope. Finally, something. Not ideal, but there wasn’t much market for someone with degrees in Ancient Mythology and Folklore. The rent had to be paid.

  She was only half listening, still buzzing from the realisation that she had a possible job lined up and wouldn't be completely screwed after graduation, when the nasal female voice dropped the bomb in all its accented glory. It was an accent that was hauntingly familiar, like a place long visited and long forgotten. The mail fell from her hand, the envelope and its precious numbers tipped to the ground as Ash went numb. Shocked. Confused, and right back where she had been fifteen years ago.

  The voicemail was replied to as soon as she could get her body to move, patching through a call to Dublin. ‘Ms Stewart?’ Ash whispered down the line as it was picked up by a groggy female voice. Damn. She hadn’t considered the time difference; it could be anything after midnight. There was some rustling, a throat clearing.

  ‘Miss DeMorgan?’ She could just picture the woman checking out the international caller ID and the time and wondering why the hell she’d decided to answer.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just got your message and ...’ She trailed off as Ms Stewart put her business clothes on and turned her sleepy to sympathy, speaking words Ash never thought she’d hear. Her Grandmother, one she’d hardly known, had suffered a debilitating stroke and required nursing home care.

  ‘Ms DeMorgan has left a lot of loose ends, a lot of documents lost and hidden. You have been granted Power of Attorney in the case of impairment in her mental judgement. We would need you to come to Dublin.’

  Ash very nearly dropped the phone in shock as memories of those bizarre months spent in her grandmother’s care as a child came crawling into the light.

  CHAPTER THREE

  'Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position ...’

  The announcement cut off whatever other piece of advice the wrinkled lady beside her had been about to bestow, in all her crazy wisdom. Hours had passed this way, stories of mad men on the streets of Dublin had spewed from the gossiping, fluorescent-pink lips of her travelling companion. And all Ash could do was fluff her hair over her ears and answer the probing, far too personal questions the woman hounded into her.

  ‘Where are you going? ... Oh, right in the centre. How lovely! You’ll be close to the bars then, won’t you? ... Pretty young thing like you should be wary going down there alone. All types out and about these days, not like it used to be.’ Ash had answered as pleasantly as she could, feeling the weight of the lady’s stare like a gavel about to be dropped. Even the small Christ hanging from a chain of rosary beads seemed to judge her, as chubby, wrinkled fingers rolled the crucifix, demanding Ash’s attention to the gold piece. Ever since the woman had point blank asked her if the Lord protected her flight this day, and Ash’s answer had been less than pleasing, the religious icon had been in her face, trying to hypnotise her to another faith.

  ‘That’s a lovely coat.’ Only once did she drop the beads, and that was to stroke her fingers over the arm of Ash’s bright red, crushed velvet, satin lined coat. ‘I prefer a less loud colour myself, so as not to draw attention.’ A small dig, veiled in a compliment and Ash had to stop her eyes from rolling right out of their sockets. The woman may as well have patted her on the head while telling her she would have a blossoming career as a hooker.

  ‘You’re not one to do the drugs, are you?’ Ash had started at the sudden switch in topic, from coat to drugs in less time than it took for the woman to blink. Her head had shaken, face masked in confusion. ‘Well you’re a good girl then. Don’t you be taking anything anyone offers you. You can guarantee it won’t be sweeties they’re handing you.’ The woman had then launc
hed off down a completely different path and left Ash stumbling to follow in the zig-zagging lines of inquisition.

  ‘Do you have family there, dear? She’s ill? Oh, no. Well, you’ll have to be getting some friends around you. Lonely isn’t safe on the streets, there are many church youth groups that would be happy to take you in, show you the good side of town ... The whole city has gone to the dogs, it won’t be as you remember, dear.’ Biting her tongue, Ash had chosen not to tell the woman that what she remembered was probably way worse than anything the city had to offer now, and simply smiled noncommittally as the droning continued. ‘And then with the earthquake! Oh it was the worst thing. Not a big one mind, but it shook the ground up some. A warning from God, no doubt. Trying to frighten the sin from the streets.’ The wrinkled face had nodded, sure it had been God’s wrath trembling the earth. It had turned to random babble as the hours passed, the silence of her neighbour only coming when sleep had taken the old woman and turned her lips to snoring instead.