The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (35 page)

Sedna lifts her veil and stares at me, her lidless eyes white and bulging, and I see the depths of her pain, and I see how I can love her and help her, and so I bring the hand holding the severed finger up to show her, and I say, “I have a gift for you, my love.”
 

Sedna sighs when she sees the finger cradled in my palm. “A gift. No one’s ever offered me a gift before, Anik. It’s lovely.”

“It’s nothing,” I say. “A small token. Unworthy of you.”

“No…I think…I think your gift is precisely what I need. Bring it to me, please.”

I rise and give Sedna my severed finger. She takes it in her gloved hands and stares at it a moment, then picks up a long needle from the nightstand beside her, sews the finger on a piece of thread and places the necklace around her slender neck.
 

“Do you like it?” she asks, inspecting herself in a gold-gilded mirror. “Does it suit me?”

“It’s lovely.”

“Come to me now,” Sedna says. “I’ve waited so long.”

I hesitate.

Sedna sees it. My will to escape her story.
 

She knows what’s coming for her. And she welcomes it.
 

I’m not harming. I’m offering what she wants. Peace.
 

But for now I slip into her arms.

For now.
 

L
ILY
’
S
APARTMENT
DOOR
is open a crack and her fear-scent is spilling out so I grab my Glock, drop my fucking fangs, push the door open and slip inside, primed for sweet murder.
 

Easy finding her address. Sorry found a picture of her on the Seattle Police website on his phone, complete with a last name. Lily Thompson.
 

AKA Sparkles.
 

From there it was cake.
 

She’s not in the apartment. A dresser drawer is half open and there’s a wet puddle and some blood and boot scuffs on the floor.

“They got her,” Mia says, sounding pissed off for some reason.
 

Being in Lily’s apartment, though, it’s like coming home somehow. Her scent everywhere. Filling my nose, making y wolf pace and paw and howl. I don’t know what it is about Sparkles that drives my wolf so nuts but there it is.
 

I crouch, lean over a drawerful of her clothes and breathe deep.
 

“You’re a fucking weird duck, Aaron,” Mia says with a scornful little sniff.

I smile. That scent. Nothing else like it.
 

I can track her.
 

Clear across the fucking globe if I have to. And if that makes me afraid, because who the fuck is she, this Skin girl that smells like the forested slopes of a coastal mountain in early spring, hemlock and cedar and leafless alder and cottonwood, a carpet of leaves on thick green moss, a glacier-blue river running fast and powerful across smooth, water-worn stones, the sun warming the river’s banks and sending tendrils of steam into the air, the bears stirring and grumbling in their dens, the huckleberries about to ripen and nourish, the eagles shrieking through the mist high overhead—

Yeah, I can track her.

Bet your ass.

I grab a sweater and storm out the door, pretending not to notice Mia’s eyes widening in shock or anger I don’t know which and I don’t much care. She’ll deal or she won’t. It’s her call.
 

Then I’m on my bike, nose in the air, breathing deep, tearing around Lily’s apartment in a wide circle, blowing through reds without bothering to sight first, college kids scampering out my way, the dumber ones flipping me the finger, and I’m scenting a tired, trembling doe come down to the river to drink.
 

She doesn’t want to leave the safety of the woods and cross the gravel-bank to get to the river but she has to. She’s thirsty. She leans down for that first sip, her back to the dark woods, wonderfully vulnerable, and my animal, he’s ready, he’s been watching her for a long while now—

I turn down a street heading west. The scent is strong. It goes straight ahead. Nothing else in the world matters.
 

Nothing but this hunt, and my animal leaps from the woods, he’s alone, his packmates are all dead, it’s been a cold, cruel winter and as I throttle my bike right the fuck down and the engine whines in protest my wolf’s hunger gnaws in my belly, driving me fucking wild, making my fangs drop and my claws lengthen and my shoulders bulk up and I’m howling now, speed driving the rain hard into my skin, and as I cross the gravel-bank toward the frightened doe I smell the salmon from last year’s spawn and the lingering scent-trail of a raccoon family that was down here last night, scavenging for crawling things that live beneath stones—

Lily’s scent takes me to a deserted parking lot down by the wharves. There’s a beater van with the words Ace Plumbing stenciled on the side in faded blue letters and I know that’s them, the motherfuckers had her in there, she was gasping and wide-eyed and frightened beyond words, praying to a god she doesn’t even believe in because terror will make you do awful strange shit—
 

You motherfuckers. A red haze gathers in the corner of my eyes. My wolf shrieks for a bloodbath. You better run, you motherfuckers. You better run and run, and even then you’ll feel my teeth sinking into your necks—
 

I scent Lily’s terror as surely as I scent the doe when she senses my wolf close behind her on the riverbank, and I leap off my bike without bothering to come to a stop, the bike sliding across the parking lot, smashing into a concrete retaining wall and then I’m sprinting down the wharf with Mia yelling for me to wait but there’s no waiting, there’s no yesterday or tomorrow, there’s only now, this single moment, and the doe lifts her head and the river runs fast and deadly in front of her but she doesn’t care, she doesn’t even have to look over her shoulder to know I’m there, one more long, loping stride and I’ll be on her, my teeth sinking into that warm, soft flesh—

Across a gangplank leading to a fishing trawler and Lily’s fear-reek is so strong it burns my nostrils and a guy steps out from the shadows and yeah asshole, you picked the wrong Skin bitch to fuck with because this one’s
mine
; my clawed hand lashes out and severs the dude’s neck before he can get a word out, his stinking body dropping at my feet and I hope there’s more, I hope there’s an army of these twisted douchebag cult motherfuckers to tear apart, I want to bathe in their blood and I’m snarling and growling and spitting and howling, my skin springing fine tuffs of fur and then I leap across the trawler’s deck and kick open the door leading inside—
 

It’s dark.
 

Movement to my left and I’m a raging bundle of death-instinct, all pent-up vengeance and terror and the world erupts in fiery flashes and shattering noise and bullets smash into the wall beside me. A Skin dude runs down a narrow hall screaming something I don’t understand because I’ve moved beyond this weak-assed Skin language, beyond all lies and treachery and pollution to a swift river flowing in the mountains and the doe leaps into the water to escape my snapping jaws, her head vanishing under the chill current as my wolf sprints along the shore, watching her struggle and drown and waiting for her body to wash up so he can feed.
 

I catch the fleeing Skin in the back and drag him down, wrap my hands around his head and snap his pencil-neck and fuck the Glock stuck in my belt, my fingers are too long and wide to fit around the trigger anyway, and then there’s three more Skins running toward me and a dim light at the end of the hall where a door’s slamming shut. The first Skin falls with an uppercut that removes half his face. The second hesitates, whimpers a bit and I launch into him, biting his throat wide open while the third dude turns and runs.

Which is
wonderful
.

I fucking love it when they run.

I crouch down and pounce, flying down the hall, roaring and howling. I smash into the fleeing chickenshit Skin, grab him by the hair and smash his head into the metal floor until I hear a sodden crunch and he goes limp.
 

Then I listen.
 

My packmate’s coming up behind me, stepping over the corpses, calling me a word I almost recognize.
 

Aaron. Aaron.
 

I snarl at my packmate. She flinches and retreats into the shadowed hall.

I lick my lips. Think about murdering this packmate. Something about her…how she smells, the tone in her voice…makes me want to open her up.

But in the wilds the doe is thrashing her way across the water. She catches a lucky current that takes her far into the wide blue river and my wolf paces along the sandy shore, eying his prey, losing her, too weak to face swimming into the current.

I sprint to the door at the end of the hall. Sniff the air. There’s a feed behind this door. A black-blooded animal.
 

My lucky night.
 

I scratch my claws across the metal door nice and slow, not giving a fuck if they’re readying a cannon in there.
 

Frantic scurrying from behind the door. A muffled shout.
 

I scratch again. Grin and howl. Fear-scent spills out from under the door. I take a good, long whiff. Then I knock. Three times, loud and quick, laughing at what a bastard I’m being.

Shattering booms as bullets unload into the door, a few of the higher calibre ones winging through the metal and thudding around me. One grazes my cheek and I don’t feel a thing. The redness has spread across my eyes, tinging the world the color of blood. I dig my claws into the door and tug it off its hinges, then charge into the room using it as a shield.
 

There’s four motherfuckers inside: three gun-toting morons and one wearing a cult-priest’s long burgundy robes that are like a sign that reads, ‘Hi there. I’m batshit insane!’
 

I hurl the metal door. It smashes two of the Skins to death like a flyswatter smacking down. The third guy I snatch up, lift above my head and throw into the looney-tunes robe-wearing doomsday prophet.
 

Things slow. My blood pounds in my ears. The Skin girl’s mountain scent is strong in this room.
 

The one Skin guy still alive is moaning and pleading. I slam my shit-kicker boot into his face, not quite killing him but silencing him, then lift the whack-job prophet by the hair and there’s his animal: a rotten-looking weaselly thing that refuses to look me in the eye.

I roar right in the Stricken's face, then throw him into the Skin. They fall in a tangled heap and I pick up the metal door and slam it down on them both, over and over, until black and red blood paints the walls and I feel my packmate’s snake wrap around my arm, holding me back.

The redness behind my eyes falters.
 

“Didn’t want to take one alive, Prez?” my packmate hisses in my ear. “So we can find out what the fuck is happening? Nash told me about that thing swirling over your head at the church. The First fucking Fallen? Would’ve been nice to clue me in.”

I pull my arm free, snarl at her, then drag the dead Stricken weasel into the middle of the room, tear its black heart from his chest and feed. I inhale most of the heart in three bites, relishing its power, feeling satiated and full.

Mia. My packmate’s name is Mia.

And the bitch does what I say.

“That was fucking
hot
,” Mia says. “Haven’t seen you get that worked up in…a long while. Was beginning to wonder if you still had it in you.”

I don’t even bother looking up from my meal.

“We’ll make it through this,” Mia says quietly. “Whatever
this
is. We’ve been through worse—”

I lift my hand and give her a dismissive flick of my wrist.
 

Mia slides to her knees and coils around my leg while I eat, rubbing my cock, pressing her face into my thighs and crotch, pleading to feed. I decide to save her a bite and hand it to her. She plucks the remaining Stricken heart from my fingers and smiles at me, her lips smeared in black blood. I push her forehead toward the ground until she’s staring at the floor.
 

Making her submit for her meal.

But Mia’s not the one I want.
 

I know where she is. The girl who smells like mountains. Like freedom. The late autumn doe has made it to the other side of the river. She scrambles onto shore, her legs bucking and wobbling, and my wolf lifts his head to the sky and howls.

S
OMETHING
’
S
HAPPENING
. O
N
the boat up above. I tilt my head, trying to listen. The sounds are muted by the thick metal door and the engine whirring and the duct tape around my ears, but I think I hear a popping noise like gunfire. Then something else.
 

A scream…or more like a howl, wild and needful.

My breath quickens.
 

It’s the cops. They found me somehow. Maybe found a clue that led them here at the right time for once. Before it’s too late.

The door above the metal stairs slams open, letting in a gust of fresh air that smells of blood and gunpowder.
 

I scream and bang my wrists against the metal pole I’m secured to, trying to tell them I’m here.
 

Please help me I’m here!

A light-switch is flipped on. There’s and electric buzz of industrial lights.