Meg turns to me. ‘Remember how confused you were by us being tripartite? We are the Morrigan, we are one, but we are three as well. Your gifts came from me as Badb. The battle crow, they called me. The seer. The prophetess. I dripped my blood into your ancestors’ veins. Your grandmother’s life is ours and now we will take it back.’
The talons on Meg’s left hand gleam as she brings it down to Nanny Bet’s throat, tracing the soft skin.
‘Meg!’
The dark eyes of the Morrigan stare at me.
She punctures my nan’s skin and a drop of blood bubbles.
Sweat pools and freezes on my neck. ‘Meg, you aren’t this. You aren’t a killer. You aren’t death.’
Her grip softens. ‘I don’t want to do this,’ says Meg. My Meg.
‘You don’t have to,’ I say. ‘We can end this.’
‘I don’t want to hurt anyone.’ Meg releases my nan and she looks at me. She starts to smile, but then her jaw cracks andshe coughs up blood. She strangles a scream and her eyes cloud black.
‘This spirit is weak,’ the voice of the Morrigan slices the air. ‘She will learn.’
Meg’s taloned hand is forced up and there’s a sickening crunch as a bone snaps. Then another. Her fingers snap one by one and her hand is folded all the way back. A tearing sound sends nausea coursing through me as Meg’s hand is crushed from within.
Meg screams and her hand goes limp.
‘I’m sorry, Michael,’ whispers Meg.
‘Meg?’
Then she is gone. The Morrigan’s darkness swims through her eyes and Meg’s ruined hand rests by her side.
‘Don’t hurt my nan, please,’ I beg the Morrigan. ‘I’ll do anything.’
The Morrigan lowers her head to rest on Nanny Bet’s.
‘I’ll spare her. She doesn’t deserve an easy death anyway.’She bares her teeth in an awful grin.‘Instead, a punishment for her. And a warning to you.’
The Morrigan closes her eyes, raises her face to the moon and howls.
Dread, fear and agony surge through me as her cry fills every atom of my being.
She’s joined by the crows. They call out from the trees, from the fence, filling the night sky.
More voices join.
From beyond the garden, on the street. From houses nearby.
A baby cries in terror.
A woman curses in rage.
Men keen in grief.
A few houses away, I see a window open. A child leans out and squeals in horror.
A car screeches to a stop somewhere on the estate and a man calls out, ragged and hot with bloodlust.
Across the city beams of light shoot into the night sky. There are roars and shouts.
The familiar pain prickles at my neck and I close my eyes. A series of images flashes in my head, revealing the violence unfurling all over the city, but this is not a vision of the past. It’s happening right now.
