The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (12 page)

He’s in the dark wood now, listening to the Night Wind howl his name.
 

“Lift me into your night sky, O Lord of Blood, Lover of Blood, Drinker of Blood…”

The offering named Maul staggers at me. He’s sweating, bleeding, gasping for air, pale with shock and fear and rage.
 

The reek of his blood makes my stomach ache with hunger.

The offering takes a final slow swing at me. It’s a desperate, half-hearted attack. His mind may not know it yet, but his spirit has already offered itself to my Night Lord.
 

I snatch his wrist from the air, twist behind his back until his shoulder wrenches from its socket. The Maul shrieks in pain and I twist and twist until there’s a sharp crack and when I release him the offering falls to his knees in the center of the cage, staring at the white bone protruding from his forearm.

“Compound fracture,” a man in the audience whispers. “You owe me ten thousand dollars.”

“O Night Wind, lift me from this excrement. Lift me from this life of filth. Carry me from this bleak land,” I pray as I approach the screaming offering.
 

The Maul manages to stand. That’s quite impressive, considering the pain he must be in.

“Filthy spic,” the Maul spits.

Hatred.
 

It’s probably won the Maul many fights. But not this one.
 

I reach out, slowly, grip the offering’s other hand, then with the practiced steps of a dancer I twist his uninjured arm until it also snaps.

The Maul is too pained to scream. Instead he looses a long, low wheeze and soils himself.

The audience boos.
 

“Will this offering convince you of my devotion, O Night Lord?” I whisper. “Will this gift raise your wretched stillborn from this life of defilement and misery?”

The Maul looks into my eyes.
 

He sees the One I Am Slave To.
 

The Spotted Stalker. Tezcatlipoca. The Night Lord.

Tears stream down the offering’s blood smeared cheeks.
 

“Do you seek release?” I whisper.

The Maul mumbles something. His two shattered arms dangle uselessly at his sides.

I place my hands, gently, on the offering’s blood and tear-stained cheeks.
 

“Do you seek release?” I ask again. It’s important the offering assents to be given as blood sacrifice. The Night Lord does not accept unwilling sacrifice.

“Make it quick,” the Maul says, his voice broken and wracked with pain.

“Lay down,” I tell the offering.

The Maul nods, all the fight in him finally fled. He collapses backward and lays very still.
 

Giving himself to the Night Lord.
 

A sacred moment.
 

Holy. Pure. Eternal.
 

“Fight, you fucking pig!” someone in the audience screams.

I turn and howl at the offender, a pudgy-faced man in a cream-colored suit, sending him scrambling backward, then pick up the metal pipe, straddle the offering once named Maul and bring the pipe down onto his head again and again, saying the sacred words of the night temple: “Accept this offering, O wind, O Night Wind. Accept what this living filth offers in your proud name.”

When I finish the offering’s head is a battered mess of bone and blood.
 

But he’s still alive.
 

I lean beside the offering, drop my claws a half inch, not enough to be noticed by the audience, plunge my hand into the offering’s chest, tear out his beating blue-red heart and bring it to my lips.
 

My eyes are a gift from the Night Lord.
 

As are the claws and fangs.
 

This man’s heart tastes bitter and foul, but it’s enough.

“Raise me from the filth, O Night Lord,” I whisper as I feed.

***

After, when the offering’s blood is still warm, I settle in the corner of the cage and retrieve my deer’s foot amulet. My neck is swollen and sore form the Maul choking me, but I’ve suffered worse. I’m trying to reign in my breathing when a woman’s voice whispers close to my ear, “What is your name?”

I freeze.

I’ve never been so close to a woman.
 

I scent her, sweet like sun-warmed mountain wind. It’s the pale-skinned woman. I know without having to look. The one with the gold-flecked green eyes.
 

I keep my back to her, squeeze the deer’s foot, mouth a silent prayer for courage and strength.
 

“It’s all right,” the woman says, reaching through the cage and raking a fingernail across my bare shoulder.

I try very hard not to recoil from her touch.
 

“You’re exquisite,” the woman says, so quietly I can barely hear. “You’re perfect. And not collared…”

“Leave me,” I growl.

I shouldn’t speak to her. But her scent…and her touch…makes something stir. An urge. Something other than the urge to provide Blood Offering.
 

It’s a filthy urge, born of this world of excrement.
 

Tainted. Impure. Deadly.
 

“You don’t have to tell me your name,” the woman whispers. “They’ve call you many things over the centuries, am I right? Blood Giver. Heart Eater. Night Wind. Night Lord. Spotted Stalker. Lord of Near and Nigh. He By Whom We Live. The One I Am Slave To. Tezcatlipoca. And the most interesting, in my opinion: Enemy of Both Sides. I want to know your name in this age. What do you call yourself?”

“Leave me. Please.” My voice sounds weak.
 

It must be her unclean woman-scent. Making my cock throb and harden.
 

She’s a sorceress. A carnal temptress sent to anchor my spirit to this foul world.

“What are you?” I whisper.
 

“Whatever you want me to be.”

“Rodas,” I say, ignoring the fear-driven thought that this sorceress has taken residence in my mind. “My name in this age is Rodas.”

“Rodas? Yes. Thank you.” The woman leans her cheek against the metal cage. I turn just enough to see her out of the corner of my eye. Her skin…I lift my hand, very slowly, as if to touch her cheek, then remember what she is and snatch it away.

“It’s all right Rodas,” the woman says, her voice soft and soothing. “You can touch me.”

I consider calling the Keeper. Why is he permitting this vile filth in the form of a beautiful woman to tempt me? He is my Keeper. Without him I am lost.

“You’ve never touched a woman, have you?”

I stare at the floor. Shake my head.

She leans closer and says, “Please? Please touch me. I want to feel you touch me.”

Carefully, without trusting her, I lift my fingers to her face. Touch her skin. So soft. So smooth and…pure. She’s not a temptress at all. I take my hand away, fighting the urge to scurry into the middle of the cage, as far away from this seductive creature as possible.

Her power is strong, and so different from the hatred the offerings bring.

“It breaks my heart,” the woman says, “to see such a magnificent creature caged.”

“I am not caged,” I say. “I am the Blood Giver. I am why this temple exists. I am needed.”

The woman sighs. My ears perk up.
 

She sounds…unhappy.
 

“Oh, you’re needed all right. You’re needed to make these pigs a lot of money.” The woman’s voice becomes hard, and I understand she also lives close to the One I Am Slave To.
 

“Quiet, sister. Now is not the time.”

A man’s voice. The woman’s pale-skinned companion. I glance behind. The man is standing behind the woman, his hand resting on her shoulder.

A low growl escapes my lips.

The woman smiles. “He doesn’t like you very much, Connor.”

“A pity,” the man says, eyeing me in a way that makes me think of bloodletting.

The woman touches my neck, then says, “See? Uncollared?”

“Yes. And his scent—”

“Yes, brother. His scent is all. Can you feel it? The strength?”

The man doesn’t answer.
 

“I have something for you, Rodas,” the woman says after a brief silence.

I’ve misunderstood. She speaks my language like her tongue is rooted to the roof of her mouth. No one has ever given me anything except food and Blood Offerings.
 

“What is your name?” I ask without meaning to.

“Star. My name is Star.”

Star. She speaks with a beautiful smile in her voice.
 

This is wrong. Tainted. Foul.
 

I study the yellow and black rosettes tattooed on my arms. Thousands of hearts offered in love and devotion to the Night Lord. Thousands of hearts yet to offer.
 

This woman…this creature…she’ll destroy everything.
 

Yet her touch sent a wave of warmth through me.
 

Is this what they call
pleasure
?
 

And if so, now I understand how it can be so deadly. I want more of her.
 

She’s pulling me from worship.
 

From true devotion.
 

“Would you like your gift?” Star says, tracing her fingernail across my shoulder and up my neck.

I resist the urge to pull her hand into the cage, bite into her wrist, drink of her blood.
 

“No. Leave me.”

“My sad, broken man. It’s only a small gift. To match your deer’s foot. Lift your palm outside the cage.”

“No.”

The woman sighs. “Fine. I’ll leave it beside you, Rodas the Heart Eater.”

Star sets something on the floor with a metallic clink.

“I’d like to see you again,” she whispers. “Would you like that?”

“No.”

Star leans even closer, presses her face to the wire cage. “I need to tell you something, Rodas. But it’s a secret. Come close. Please?”

I need to know this secret. Need to learn what this foul woman wants of me, so I lean back until my ear presses the cold metal cage.
 

The temptress named Star brushes her lips against my earlobe.
 

My body trembles. Tears escape my eyes.
 

I’ve never cried before.
 

What spell of this filthy world has the whore cast on me?
 

But I don’t pull away. Something shrieks, deep inside my chest, and I startle a little, afraid I’ve loosed my fangs, afraid the Keeper will discover the Spotted Stalker’s hidden gift.

“You taste magnificent,” Star says in my ear. “You taste like…forgotten power. Ancient power.”

“Tell me,” I say, resisting the urge to tear through the cage and pull this whore woman into my arms and…what?
 

What does a man do with a woman besides offer her to the Night Lord?

“I’ll show you what to do,” Star says. “After we free you.”

“You’re in my mind,” I say as a strange sensation seeps into me, making the hair along my spine stand on end. This is the sensation they name fear. I’ve seen it in the eyes of every offering.
 

But I’ve never known it.
 

Not until this woman brushed her lips against me and entered my mind.
 

“I’m not in your mind,” the woman says. “It’s more like…we’re running side-by-side through a dark forest. Scenting prey. You break left, and I know to break right and circle around to trap our prey. How do I know this? Instinct. Honed sharp by a millennia spent hunting the weak.”

“You’re a hunter as well? You offer blood?”

“Yes. But for different reasons. Goodbye now, Rodas. We’ll meet again under very different circumstance. And do not forget your gift. It comes without strings.”

Then she’s gone.
 

I feel her slip away; fight the urge to turn and look as she leaves.

The cage door rattles open.
 

They’ve come to collect the body of the most recent offering.

I look down. There, on the ground, is an amulet no larger than my thumb. A flat disk of shining grey-black stone embedded in silver. The stone gathers the bright light in the temple and returns it to my eyes smokey and dark.
 

I cup the amulet in my left hand and the deer’s foot in my right.
 

There is power here.
 

Soon they will bring another living offering.
 

O Night Lord, raise me from this land of waste.

S
ERVES
ME
RIGHT
, getting shot to shit in my own club. It hasn’t been cool for me to hang out in public for a long while, yet here I am pool-sharking a Skin bitch like an asshole college kid.
 

If you look around the room and you don’t know who the fool is…it’s you.

The machine gun blasts come quick, one-two-three and I’m diving to get the Skin girl under the table while glass and slivers of wood explode in the air. I hit her hard, just below her waist, and carry her down even harder. She smacks her head on the hardwood in a way that makes me worry I’ve killed her, then moans and flops her her head to the side and I tell you this: squeaky-clean cop girl’s gunna wake up with a fucking headache that might make her think twice about slumming with the bad boys.

For a split second my arms are wrapped around the Skin girl’s waist and my body’s laid over hers and I feel something strange, a sensation I can’t even put a name to. It’s like something inside me…
settles
. Like chills right the fuck out. You know how a storm has to end for you to realize how hard it was blowing? And after, in the peace and quiet, you’re like, ‘Man, that was fucked up.”
 

That’s how I feel in that instant with Lily.
 

Calm. Settled. Peaceful.