The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (14 page)

They’re in shock.

A sharp pain in my head makes me wince.
 

I try and remember where I am. What happened?

A pool game. Icy blue eyes. A scent that made me—

“Get the fuck out of my way,” Trish screams, and I open my eyes to see a scowling, bearded, thick-necked guy wearing a leather cut standing in front of a steel door. The cut looks familiar, and somewhere in the corner of my mind it makes me think of something, or rather it makes me feel something like need.
 

“Not going anywhere, bitch,” they bearded guy says.

Trish slows, then sighs. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. Help me lower her to the floor?”

The guy moves to me. His hands grip my waist. Trish lets me go and I slide down the wall to the floor. The guy is still bent over me, about to turn around and stand when Trish clasps her hands together, raises them over her head and brings them down on the guy’s neck. He’s out like someone flicked a switch, collapsing in a heap on the floor beside me.
 

“Dumb motherfuck biker,” Trish says, leaning down and hauling me to my feet. The sound of sirens is louder now, screaming down the streets and alleys, and as Trish kicks open the steel door I see a wall of heavy, driving rain and then we’re into the night, the rain beating against my face as we scramble arm-in-arm down an alley.
 

But what happened back there?
 

I think I lost something.

I think I lost something I didn’t even know I had.
 

D
ARKNESS
.
 

I
LIE
in my icy grave for what feels like forever, my life force as fragile as a candle in a breeze.

I’ve nearly killed us both.

A quiet sound. Regular. Rhythmic.
 

It’s the sound of water dripping around me.
 

Running over my fur.
 

I realize I’m terribly thirsty. I try and move my head to the sound of dripping water. Nothing happens at first, then a stabbing pain as the broken bones in my neck grind together. The pain makes me chuff and growl. I try again, manage to move my head to the water. I lap my tongue out, drinking.

The chill water reminds me of another ceaseless need.
 

I want to feed. I
will
feed.
 

The dripping water is coming faster now. Drip-drip. Drip-drip. The glacier ice I’m entombed in is melting around me. I’m warm, and growing warmer. Something pops back into place in my leg. I’m healing.
 

I think of Pimniq. How long have I been gone? Have they sent a team out searching for me?
 

The thought of a team of men nearby makes my stomach growl.

I lash out with my paw, raking into the ice, suddenly furious.
 

I want out of this icy-wet grave. Want to feel the sun warm on my face. Want the scent of prey in my nose.

I know I’m feeling these things through him.
 

This is his body.
 

I wonder if I can cast him aside once we’re healed and free from the ice. Am I strong enough?

I don’t think so.

I moan and lift my head, sniff at the ice, trying to determine which way is up. There. It’s night above me. The stars are out. Sila the wind scours the rubble-strewn glacier. I rake my paw against the ice again, tearing off a chunk that lands heavily on my broken ribs. The pain doesn’t matter. Only escape matters. Freedom.

I claw at the ice with both paws, my heart beating loud and strong. Nearly there. My claws are hot enough to melt through the ice.
 

I dig and scratch at the ice wall, my mind focused on that overpowering dream of freedom.
 

I want to roam.

Soon my right paw punches through. I pull it back, stare through the tiny window in the ice and up at the stars and sniff the air.
 

There are men above. Far away.
 

But men move slow in the land that never melts.
 

Two more powerful scrapes and the hole is large enough for my head. I get impatient, thrust my head into open air without digging the hole large enough for my chest, and get stuck. I rage and thrash and bellow until the ice gives way, then crawl out into the open.
 

I try and stand up, but my hind legs won’t listen. I’m not yet fully healed. I need the energy only a kill can provide.
 

Moaning in pain, I dig my front claws into the ice and drag myself forward.

The men have a campfire. Fools.
 

The smoke is like a road leading me right to them.
 

They’re not as far off as I thought.
 

They will have guns and dogs. It would be smart to stay here, rest until I’m fully healed, then track them later. But they might slip into their boat and return to the mainland.

The ground is littered with house sized boulders and crisscrossed with crevasses that plummet a mile deep into the glacier. I crawl forward, inch by slow inch, dreaming of a kill.
 

It takes me all night to crawl to to within striking distance of the camp. When I see the shadows of their tents I pull myself beneath a huge boulder and rest, content in knowing they cannot escape me.
 

I wonder what it’s like to live as these men are now: dead without knowing it.

***

I wake before dawn.
 

My rear legs are weak and can barely support my weight. But they do, and I lumber toward the camp, the hunger so deep it’s like a blade slicing into my belly.

There are five men in the camp, each reeking in that uniquely human way that’s both nauseating and hunger-making.
 

The dogs of men catch my strange scent and begin barking.
 

I lift my head and roar, not caring how many dogs there are, not caring what weapons the men have, then I charge down a short hill covered in slick green moss and patches of snow.
 

The dogs see me, a pack of a dozen huskies, and quickly flee in the opposite direction, but they’re tied in a long line to a stake set in the ground and when they realize they’re trapped they go mad with fear and turn on one another, biting and snapping and howling.

The dogs of men were proud animals, but that was long ago.
 

A man emerges from a large canvas tent only a few paces away. He’s pale, a newcomer, dressed in grey flannel underwear. He has a moment to realize he’s going to die before I lash out at him, taking off half his head. He falls at my feet as another man ducks out from the same tent, sees his companion on the ground, screams and ducks back inside. I circle around the tent, toying with him.
 

There’s a metallic click as he loads a hunting rifle. I turn to face the sound. Then a booming explosion as the rifle goes off from inside the tent. The bullet hits me square in the chest and barely penetrates my fur.
 

I stand on my hind legs and roar, then leap on the tent, crushing the man beneath me. I snap my jaws onto him, taste his blood, rake my claws into him, then another rifle shot echoes out as a third man behind me shoots.
 

I roar and leap backward, charging the third man head on.

He’s an Inuit, and when he sees my massive bulk and three gleaming black eyes he whispers, “Tornarsuk”, drops the rifle and runs.
 

I let him go.

If I’m still hungry after I feed I’ll track him.
 

The man in the tent behind me is still alive. He’s screaming in pain and terror. Which is as it should be.

Two more men emerge from the second tent, each carrying high-calibre hunting rifles. One, a pale, is wearing an blue with gold trim RCMP uniform. He soils himself when he sees me, but manages to raise the rifle in his shaking hands and fire. The bullet glances off my skull, narrowly missing my middle eye. The second man fires and catches me in the front leg and then I’m on them both in two leaping bounds. I sweep the first man into my paws and crush him dead. Bones snap and blood leaks from his eyes and nose and mouth and then I toss him into the final man, who’s frozen in horror. They both sprawl into the mud. I step on the final man’s leg, snapping it.
 

It’s over.
 

I lumber to the first kill, the man whose head I nearly took off, and begin gorging myself. The man with the shattered leg is trying to crawl away, which makes me chuckle and snort as I feed.

A few of the luckier huskies have chewed free of their leather harnesses and escaped. I won’t be bothered with them. They’ll die out here on the ice and become food for other hunters.

The dogs of men forgot what it means to be a predator long ago.

***

I wake up broken, but I wake up a man.
 

I’m lying on my side in the snow on a small knoll. Behind me the valley narrows as it sweeps uphill toward the imposing granite spire of Sivanitirutinguak. The spire, the sight of my near-death, is shrouded in white-blue cloud. Judging from the sun it must be mid-afternoon. Below me the valley widens until the the glacier meets the ocean. A few icebergs drift aimlessly in the ocean’s current. From there the valley becomes a fiord, and at the end of the fiord lies the village of Pangnirtung, population one thousand four hundred.
 

My home.

The copper taste of blood in my mouth reminds me of my spirit animal’s kill. Below, only a mile off, I see the camp of the search and rescue party sent to look for me. Even at this distance I see the blood coloring the snow. I don’t need to go closer to know what I’ll find there.
 

My head throbs. My right leg feels broken, and I’m covered in ugly blue-black bruises. Remnants of the fall.
 

Still, I’m alive.
 

I only wish I didn’t have the spirit bear to thank for that.

I thrust to my feet and nearly collapse back into the snow as a wave of dizziness washes over me. It’s always this way after he inhabits me. Like it takes time for my mind to grow used to my human skin again.
 

I scoop a handful of snow into my mouth and spit, trying to wash out the taste of human blood.

Pangnirtung is a long way off. I take one step, then another. Like climbing a mountain spire, I’ll get there by concentrating on the movement.

I’ve learned it doesn’t pay to dwell too much.

The spirit left me willingly this time. Consumed his kill and returned to his world.

But it won’t be long before he decides to stay in this world.
 

And that means the end of me as a man.
 

Forever.

***

I make it to within a mile of Pangnirtung after walking for the rest of the day and well into the night. My feet leave red tracks in the snow behind me. I’m naked and bruised and bloody.

I pause outside the village and listen. Hear the whine of snowmobile engines, the guttural chug of an idling diesel truck. Pangnirtung is stranded between the ocean on one side and mountains of ice and granite on the other. There are no roads to or from the town. All equipment, supplies and food must be flown in from the cities in southern Canada. But there are roads inside the town itself, and it’s a matter of pride among the residents to own a truck.
 

Beats walking the two miles across town in minus forty snowstorm.

The wind is blowing inland, carrying the smells of a human outpost. Oil furnace smoke. Garbage. Drying fish. And something else. I sniff the air. Something strange. Foreign.

The animal in me growls.
 

He has given me these: a hunter’s sense of smell, hearing, eyesight. Endless endurance. Power. The ability to heal wounds.
 

I would trade them all to be left in peace.

Another scent arrives, and this one makes my skin crawl with goosebumps. There’s fear on the evening wind as well.
 

Something’s wrong in my hometown.
 

Pimniq
.
 

The thought of my sister makes me break into a loping jog.
 

When I reach the first few houses the dogs, semi-feral things that understand only hunger and pain, begin barking. A few lights click on, but no one opens their doors. Polar bears have been known to wait outside a house until the door’s opened, then pounce.

The house my sister and I have lived in since our parent’s death is a drafty rectangular box with plumbing that freezes for half the year. Instead of running down the road I stick behind the houses, not wanting to be seen.

For some reason that feels important.
 

I am Pimniq's only family now. I am responsible for raising her. I don’t begrudge that fact.
 

But the Canadian government does. They feel I’m not a suitable guardian. Why? They won’t speak, and when they do they speak in twisting half-truths.
 

But for the past several months they’ve been sending social workers from down south to interview me and everyone who knows me. The last one they sent was a snide, condescending asshole who’d never set foot outside Toronto. When I told him to get out of my home and leave us be he threatened to take my sister away and put her in foster care.

I told the social worker if he tried I’d tear him to bits and feed on his filthy carcass.
 

It wasn’t an idle threat.

The village chief explained to the pale social worker that I was speaking metaphorically, that for the Inuit this threat of feeding on someone is a display of respect.
 

I was unhappy the chief lied for me, and I told him so.

“Not for you,” the chief said. “For your sister.”