The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (17 page)

Then the cloud-shape swirls into the darkness of the vaulted ceiling and vanishes.

The church is dead quiet.

Father Andres crosses himself, which is a fucking laugh.
 

Lonny gives me a look like he’s questioning getting patched in.

One of the Stricken monkey skanks is mumbling through her gag. Nash raises his eyebrow at me. I shrug, and Nash tugs out her gag and tells her if she screams he’ll tear her heart out.

The Stricken chick gives Nash a pouting look, then says to me, “Did you feel him, handsome? His…spirit? In the black cloud? He’s close!” Her eyes bug out of her hideous monkey head and I tell you this: it’s been a while since I had a good lay, but not
that
long.

“What the fuck are you nattering about?” I ask, still feeling weak from the healing.

The other two Stricken laugh through their gags.

“I’ll tell you if you promise to let us go.”

“Sure, I promise,” I say without a blink.

“Liar,” the bitch hisses.

Nash cuffs the monkey-thing on the back of her head.

 
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she says. “It’s too late. You fucking Purebloods. Got complacent. Comfortable. And now…he’s Becoming! Even that Guardian knows more than you. A fucking Skin knows more than you!”

I nod to Nash. He pins the Stricken chick’s arm behind her back. I reach into my leather cut, grab my Zippo, flick it alive and walk real slow at the monkey-bitch, holding the flame out in front.

The Stricken bitches flinch and cower, and the one Nash’s holding thrashes and squirms against his grip.

I wave the lighter in front of the Stricken’s face. “You know what happens now,” I say, real unhurried and casual, like I’m ordering a hamburger. “I can either kill you quick after you tell us what you’re nattering about…or I can burn your ugly face off, then kill you.”

The Stricken chick shakes her head.
 

I bring the lighter to her cheek, press the hot metal into her flesh.
 

The reek of burning skin fills the church.
 

The Stricken chick screams, and when she’s done I say, “So? Your call.”

“The First Fallen, you Pureblood asshole! He’s drawing close. Can’t you feel him? The time of Purebloods is over. We Stricken will rise in your stead! The Age of Discord has arrived! You grow weak while we grow strong. Our evolution continues, while your kind…” The monkey-bitch flashes me a wicked grin. “Your kind are ground to dust.”

“Bullshit,” I say, about to burn her again. But I think about the black blood that scorched Nash, and from the look in Nash’s eyes I know he’s thinking the same.
 

Shit’s changing quick. And I need to know why.
 

“Who was he?” I ask, nodding at the dying Skin guy.

“A Guardian of the Gate.”

“So?”

“That’s all I know. I swear it! The Guardians are searching for…for…”

“C’mon,” I say, waving the lighter at her.

“For the Risen! The Fallen’s packmates. His family! His—”

“His army,” I finish for her.

The Stricken chick nods.

Fucking hell. I wish I thought she was lying. But I believe her.

The Stricken bitch banishes her animal, and standing before me is a smoking hot blonde with a sweet rack and an ass that booms for days. She smiles and leans forward, showing me more cleavage, and says, “There’s other things we can offer you, sweetie.”

“There sure are,” I say, lifting the lighter to her tits.

Her smile falters.
 

“You don’t have to…you could let us go…”

“I could, yeah.”
 

I nod to Nash. He leaps onto the Stricken bitch, clamps his hyena jaws around her throat to silence her, then drags her thrashing body into the church’s shadowed aisles.
 

The sound of bones cracking and muffled screams echo across the nave as Nash feeds.

 
I nod to Sorry, point to the dying Skin asshole who shot me, and say, “Ungag the other two. Let them feed.”

Because that’s how it is.
 

Stricken feed on Skins and we feed on Stricken. Its the natural order. Top of the food chain, motherfucker. Only tonight, with that three-eyed creature forming in the air above my head, I’m beginning to wonder if somewhere there’s a Stricken that’s learned to feed on us.

Sorry and Lonny tear the gags from the Stricken bitches and push them toward the Skin. They start that damned screeching and the Skin’s eardrums explode. But no worries. He’ll be dead soon enough. The Stricken fall on him instantly, greedily, their fanged monkey faces biting into his chest, arms, legs, striping the flesh from his bones and gobbling it down, eating the fucker alive and relishing every bite of their last meal.
 

Fucking animals. It’s not all moonlit walks through quiet forests. This shit is real.
 

The Skin moans and shudders and tries to swat the Stricken off him. But he’s weak and powerless, and finally his head settles against the marble floor and the fight leaves him and for thirty seconds or so he’s still alive, conscious of being devoured and giving himself to the predators and I have to wonder, in these final terrible moments, if the silly asshole’s praying to his god?

I doubt it. Being eaten alive doesn’t leave much room for prayer.

I get dressed, light a smoke and watch the Stricken feed, thinking about what the Stricken bitch said about the First Fallen and the Guardians, thinking about the cops swarming my bar and sweating my crew right now, thinking about having to go underground and stay low for fuck knows how long, thinking about Mia alone in the sewers under Seattle, slithering in the putrid darkness, driven by brute instinct and a desire to feed.
 

Like the rest of us.
 

Then I think about the Skin girl, the one with the scent like nothing I’ve ever known, the one I took two bullets to save, and for the life of me I have no answer as to why I did that except a feeling like a wild animal gets when on the hunt, a single driving need that narrows the world, blocks everything else out.
 

Lily. That’s her name. I need to see her again.
 

If she’s still alive.

And right then I know the half-eaten Skin spreading his bloody mess across the church aisle wasn’t aiming to murder me.
 

He was aiming for the girl.

I grip one of the Stricken bitches by her blood-soaked hair.
 

She hisses at me, tries to squirm away, but I drag her from her meal and rake my claws across her throat, slicing her wide open and spraying her black blood across the altar.

Father Andres sweeps down the stairs, drawn by the scent of black blood.

I wave him to the other Stricken. She makes to run, and suddenly the good Father’s a greying half-man half-wolf, and let me tell you this: the old bastard can still move. The last Stricken skank gets a few steps down the aisle before the Father pounces on her back and drags her down.
 

My animals howls. Sorry joins the good Father in the kill.
 

I drop my claws and plunge them through the Stricken chick’s chest.
 

I need this fucking feed.
 

And what I need, I get.
 

“Y
OU
CAN
’
T
GO
in there,” Trish says.
 

“I need to. I need to hold him. Just for a second.”

“Yeah? Tough shit. There’s a woman in there he calls mother. It’s her job to hold him now. You think of that?”

“Yes,” I say, suddenly irritated. “I think about it every waking moment.”

Trouble is, Trish is right. She usually is. It’s her most annoying quality.

We’re in a cab outside a bungalow in Cherry Hill. The home isn’t a dump, but it’s average in every way: grey stucco streaked with rain and a light green mould around the eaves. A sagging porch. A lawn of flattened brown grass. A cedar fence with lattice on top, the cheap pre-made panels you buy at a big box store. I’ve driven by the house in every season, and in spring the cherry tree out front blooms into a fan of rustling pink flowers. There’s a swing hanging from a thick branch, but I’ve never seen him on it. “I just wonder if he’s happy is all.”

Trish taps the front seat headrest. The cabbie shoots her a look in the rear-view that says hey, its your dime lady.

“We shouldn’t even be here,” Trish says.

“Just hold him,” I whisper, knowing it isn’t going to happen. “Just once.”

I gave Lachlan up nine years ago. I was fifteen. Some mistakes you can’t outrun. Like stones around your neck, the faster you run the heaver they feel. You carry them with you, and if you’re lucky on some days their weight lightens and you draw a full breath and there’s a glimpse of hope that its going to be all right, that the life you lived in your past won’t haunt you to the grave.
 

But I haven’t felt that yet. The lightness and hope.

“I brought him into the world,” I say, my voice cracking, “and then I just…let him go.”

“You did what you felt needed to be done. What you felt was right. Shit, Lil, you were a teenager. A child.”

I close my eyes. The rain beats a quick rhythm on the cab’s metal roof.
 

Trish mumbles something and the cab lurches forward. As we pull from the curb I look at the house once more, and is that a figure standing in the upstairs window?
 

A little boy, looking down at us?
 

Why are you awake so late, son?
I ask silently, and then the cab pulls around a corner and the house is gone.

“You’re coming to my place,” Trish says in a tone that means she expects to be listened to. But I don’t want sleep at her house. It’s not that I’m not grateful for her friendship—I am. Sometimes its just better to face things alone.
 

Sometimes you feel you don’t deserve true friendship.
 

I want to ask Trish about what happened at the Wilds, but I don’t dare in front of the cabbie. He picked us up four blocks from the bar and was already plenty suspicious. All I remember is a handsome biker who was lousy at pool and my head hitting the floor. No. There’s more…the popping sound of gunfire and the feel of the biker’s body slamming me down. I remember how he felt, hard as stone as he crashed into me, forcing the breath from my lungs and saving my life.
 

The smell of evening woods on him.
 

Then another smell, one I know from my homicide work. Blood. Acrid and warm in my nose. I look down at my sweater. It’s soaked and grimy but not covered in the biker’s blood. I was wearing my undershirt when it happened, and Trish stripped me in an alley behind the bar and tossed the shirt in a dumpster.

“Take me home,” I say.
 

Trish fires me a glare but keeps her mouth shut. That’s big of her.
 

A part of me thinks she’s worried I’m going to phone someone at the station, tell them we were there. It might not be a career ender, two rookie’s getting busted hanging out at a biker bar for no good reason, but it sure won’t earn us a gold star.

“What time is it?” I ask the cabbie.

“Four in the morning.”

Shitballs. Three hours until work. There’s no way I’m sleeping tonight.
 

“I need some coffee,” I say, thinking of the Adderol in my purse. “Lets stop at a gas station.”

Trish sighs and settles deeper into her seat, chewing on a fingernail.
 

The cabbie pulls into a gas station. The florescent lights feel too bright and glaring. I squint into the store. It’s deserted except for the kid behind the counter.
 

“You want anything?” I say to Trish.

She shakes her head no and I hop out of the cab, squinting in the bright light. I toss the store door open. A blast of cool air hits my face and the reek of refined sugar and junky hotdogs drifts into my nose, making me gag. The light inside is even brighter. Nearly unbearable. I wonder about the light bothering me so much, then attribute it to lack of sleep. The cashier, a gangly kid full of pimples and piercings, doesn’t even look up as I enter. I do want some coffee, so I head to the back and pour myself a big cup of black. Shitty gas station coffee is the best. I grab a breakfast bar and make like I’m heading to the washroom, then walk right on by it.
 

The store’s rear exit door opens without an alarm. Easy-peasy.

I slip into the night, figuring I have about three minutes before Trish bursts inside looking for me.

Sorry Trish. You’re a friend, but you’re not what I need tonight, and I don’t have the energy for more questions.

I run through the alley, sprint across a street, down another alley, then turn left so I’m two blocks away, facing the gas station down the street and eyeing the cabbie in the parking lot. Trish is still in the back seat. I keep my eye on her until another cab rolls by, and when I flag him he stops real quick. There’s some advantage to being a reasonably dressed woman alone in the night.
 

I hop in the backseat and the cabbie asks where to?

“Hunt’s Point,” I say.

The cabbie looks in his rearview and raises an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, lady, but that’s a long fare. You got cash? Keep it off the meter save you a bit.”

I dig into my purse, pull out a hundred dollar bill and show it to him. “Shouldn’t be more than sixty, right?”
 

“Right.”

The cabbie throws it in drive and heads toward the gas station where I abandoned Trish. I slink into my seat as we roll past, and when we’re safely out of sight I settle in the corner behind the passenger seat.
 

Hunts Point. Highest per capita income in the state. The cabbie raised his eyebrow for more than one reason. Bet it’s not too often he picks up solo women at four in the morning who ask to be driven to Hunt.