The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (44 page)

“Anything else?” Aaron asks.

Nash shakes his head no.
 

“Good. Shit’s all fucked up right now. I know we’re…at risk. I’ll handle it. Trust me on that. But first you gotta give me tonight. I need it.” There’s a questioning note in Aaron’s voice that’s very different from the commanding tone he used moments ago. “Will my crew give me this one thing I need?”

“Sure,” Sorry says.

“Nash?”

Nash glowers at me, then lowers his gaze. “Yeah, Prez. We’ll give you that.”

“Mia?”

“Just get her the fuck out of here.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Aaron wraps his arm around me and we step outside into the damp night air and the sound of the wind rustling through cedar boughs. The burning pain from Aaron’s bite is fading. A hundred questions hang on the tip of my tongue. Why are they at risk? What’s happening tomorrow night? Why does his crew keep calling me a ‘skin’? But I don’t ask, and as Aaron throws me a leather bomber jacket and kicks his bike into roaring life I realize some questions are better left unanswered.

***

 
It’s a beautiful night. Stars peak out from behind breaking blue-grey cloud, and the moon sends an occasional ray of silvery light across the road as we rip through the last farms and into the mountains. I take deep gulps of crisp night air and eventually the nausea and pain in my head relents. We pass a car or two heading the opposite direction, then roar past a slow-moving pick-up truck like it’s standing still. I glance inside the cab as we pass. The driver, a hick-looking farmer guy, scowls and gives us the finger.
 

I flash him a smile.
 

Aaron keeps the bike redlined, not even slowing when the road narrows to two thin lanes and the pavement becomes potholed and slick with evening dew. The road’s deserted. We wind through a shadowy mountain canyon, dark stone walls looming overhead like sentinels. A river rushes through the boulders in the canyon below us; a flicker of white in the moonlight. The night smells of cedar and hemlock, and there’s something in the air that almost feels like spring might not be that far off.
 

I hold tight to Aaron’s waist, leaning into the curves, my hair whipping around my face as we twist higher into the mountains. Traces of snow appear in the ditches and north-facing slopes. The speed and sound of the bike growling and the feel of it rumbling between my legs clears my mind, makes all the shit that’s gone down in the last few days feel distant, like a dream you wake from and can’t quite recall the specifics.
 

I’ve never understood the romance of the open road. To me a drive has always been just a drive; a chore to finish as quickly as possible so I can get on with my day. But now I understand. The road has a kind of potential. It’s the possibility that you might keep on riding and not look back. The chance to leave it all behind. The hope you might begin again, start over somewhere new. And the brief freedom of not knowing where the road will take you.

Maybe tonight we’ll ride clear across the Cascades and end up in a nameless town on the other side. Find a run-down motel that doesn’t take credit cards. Order a cheap beer in a shitty bar with shitty music playing on a dying juke box. Get drunk, then head back to our room and fuck like strangers.
 

Wake up the next day and do it again.
 

I wonder if we’re like sharks. Do we die when we stop moving? Are we meant to roam, nomads on the prairie, figures on a landscape hunting our next meal? And if you drive fast enough to outrun your old life, can you outrun death as well? Do you leave him coughing in your dust, sweeping his reaper’s blade down on the ghost of what you once were?

It’s a nice thought.

My breath is tight in my throat. My eyes are streaming tears. Aaron’s punching into the corners so hard I could reach out and graze my fingers across the pavement. Only g-forces, constant gravitational pull, keep us from flying off the bike. Sometimes it feels like our lives come together like that. Like there’s something locking us in place, a force we can’t see that feels like blind chance because we don’t have a mind large enough to comprehend it.
 

I think about that girl on the shore. About the moment her killer spotted her. Chose her. Their lives were locked together as surely as two lovers. Death and love. Forces of nature. Two kinds of gravity pushing and pulling against one another.
 

This man I’m holding. What is he? Death or love?
 

Dirty snow is piled high against the sides of the road now. We speed through wet runnels of snowmelt with a whooshing hiss. It’s cold. Damn cold. I should be freezing, but I’m not. It’s like we’re caught in a little bubble of heat. Aaron banks hard left and I feel the rear tire kick out and for a moment we’re airborne, sailing through space.
 

What do they say? Flying’s easy. Landing’s the hard part.
 

There might be a warning in there about love.
 

About loving the wrong man.

Good thing this isn’t love.

We come in hard and the bike’s suspension compresses and for a moment I’m certain we’re going to die. The bike’s front end jerks dangerously, threatening to spit us off, and as I freeze and yelp Aaron lays on the gas and hunches forward, squeezing the handlebars tight as all hell and riding us out of it. He could’ve braked and killed us. But he bent his head down and gave her throttle.
 

The close call is enough to quell my spirit of adventure. I scream at him to slow down, but the wind snatches my words away.

Aaron keeps the bike pinned and drops her even harder into the corners. The snowmelt on the road is smooth and glistening in spots. Frozen. I scream at him to slow down again and this time he shrugs, so I know he hears me.

But he doesn’t let up.
 

I tense, throwing the bike off balance. We blow wide around a corner, cross the yellow and into the oncoming lane. We’re alive only because the road is empty.

I want to pound on his shoulder, but I can’t risk letting go. My ass is slipping off the back of the bike and I have to tense my core muscles and squeeze the bike with my knees just to keep from flying off.
 

“You fucking bastard,” I scream. “Slow down! You fucking asshole!”

Aaron ignores me, leans lower into the bike.
 

The heat from the exhaust is scorching my leg, and I grit my teeth and hold on with all I got, promising myself when he stops I’m going to fucking walk home. What have you done, Lily, you stupid twit? Strapped yourself to a man with a death wish, that’s what.

We crest a rise and the road drops steeply into another valley. I see headlights up ahead, a large vehicle approaching fast. We’re going way too fast to stay in our lane; Aaron’s whipping back and forth across the yellow, nearly brushing into the melting snow banks on both sides. He’s going to kill us. I scream at him to stop again, but before I can finish we whip around a blind corner, cross the yellow and—

It’s funny about death. All that variety.

Fast or slow. Pain free or agonizing. Peaceful or violent.

I mean, birth? There’s basically only one kind.
 

But death? That fucker’s infinite.
 

And as the lights of the RV shine blinding bright in my eyes I have time—barely—to give thanks it’s going to be fast. In fact I probably won’t feel a thing, and I certainly won’t have time to feel scared. In some strange way it feels
right
, dying like this.

The RV’s horn sounds and the bike’s tires lock up as Aaron squeezes the brakes and then we’re sliding, rotating to the right in a stink of melting rubber and the world collapses into a horrific spinning maelstrom of bright lights and dark trees and I hear a piercing howl and then my mind shuts down—
 

I close my eyes.
 

There’s a feeling like the air being sucked from my lungs. Like I’m an astronaut whose visor just cracked clean open, and then my skin is on fire, the burning searing pain making me open my eyes and see a blinding flash of red-orange light and then I’m screaming and the RV rushes beside us, inches away…or—

We’re still on the bike. That’s all I know. It’s kicking and bucking and I have both hands clenched around Aaron’s waist, trying not to get thrown. The RV’s behind us now, its horn blaring above the sound of our screeching tires. But we’re slowing down, and moments before we smash into a snowbank Aaron leaps off the bike, dragging me with him, and I swear to fucking god he’s
laughing
.
 

We land hard in brittle and ice-crusted snow on the opposite side of the bank, rolling downhill through frozen brush. My head hits a stone or tree root and for a moment there’s blackness, then the sound of my own panicked breathing loud in my ears.

I wind up lying on my side, covered in snow, staring at tiny ice crystals melting in my warm breath.
 

Aaron’s already on his feet, leaning against a sapling above me, panting, his moonlit face scratched to shit and at first I don’t recognize him. He looks different. His jaw more pronounced. His brow heavier.
 

“You fucking asshole,” I whisper, not moving. “You motherfucker.”

He drops to his knees beside me, begins feeling my body: my head, neck, arms, legs. Checking for broken bones and blood.
 

“Get the fuck off me,” I say, kicking and hitting at him weakly.
 

“I’m sorry Lil I’m sorry I didn’t mean—”

I push up on my elbows. My head’s buzzing with adrenaline and I can’t feel my body and for a terrible moment I think I’m paralyzed. Spine snapped like a twig. A lifetime of catheters and wheelchairs. Then a blinding pain in my wrist and I tell you what: if I walk away from this with only a broken wrist I’ll consider myself very, very lucky.
 

“You’re hurt,” Aaron says, trying to inspect my wrist.
 

“Do not touch me,” I say, lying my head back in the snow. “Do not touch me
ever
again.”

Aaron raises his hands and backs a few steps away.

I’m trembling. I could lie here all night.
 

No. I could lie here forever.
 

And that thought…how easy it would be to lie down and close my eyes and never get up…that terrifies me.
 

So I force myself to sit up and inspect my body, and I’m astonished to see that apart from a tender wrist and sore neck I’m unhurt. There’s a long moment of silence as the wind whips through the snow draped trees overhead. The sky is blue-black and clear, the stars shining bright. But the wind. It feels like a storm coming. Two trees grind together somewhere in the forest, loosing an eerie high-pitched wail.

“Give me your phone,” I say, not ready to stand up and risk toppling over and having this asshole try and pick me up.
 

“What? My…no. I don’t have it.”

“Bullshit.”

“Left it at the house.”

“Oh, that was
smart
,” I say, sneering. “About as smart as taking those corners too fast and nearly running us head-on into a fucking RV.”

“We did run head-on into the RV,” Aaron says, lighting a smoke.

Which makes zero sense, because we’re here arguing instead of smeared across the highway, and I tell him as much.

“We hit the RV, Lily. Smashed right into it.” Aaron takes a drag of his smoke, spins out a few rings like he’s relaxing poolside, then says, “I thought we were goners. But…something happened. You did something.”

“Fuck off. I closed my eyes and screamed.
That’s
what I did. Then we slid past the RV. We got lucky.”

“No. There was that light…you saw it? That blinding red-orange light? And the heat? You remember that?”

“No.”

“You passed us
through
the RV, Lily. I don’t know how. But I remember feeling the RV’s cold grill hit my left side. Then an instant later…we were through it, skidding along the road.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” I whisper, but a part of me knows he’s right. A part of me remembers. The unnatural heat. My skin burning—
 

Aaron crouches beside me, takes a drag, looks me straight in the eye, and says, “What are you?”

“What am I? I’m fucking pissed off, that’s what I am.”

The wind rustles through the trees. That awful screeching sound. It feels…closer.

Aaron lifts his head and stares into the woods.
 

Drops his half-finished smoke into the snow.

“Lily,” he says quietly. “We have to leave. We have to get on the bike. Now.”

I pause, take a few long breaths and listen. I feel it too. Something’s wrong. It’s in the chill wind and that horrible sound. It’s in the dread gnawing at my belly. Something’s out there. In the dark. Flitting through the forest. Something deadly.
 

But instead of doing what Aaron says and standing and getting the fuck out of here, which is also what my gut’s telling me to do, I say, “Fuck you. I will never get on a bike with you ever again. I
promise
you that.”

Aaron offers his hand. “Stand up. Right now. Run with me. Now.”

“Run? Why
run
?”

The howling screech sounds again. I peer through the forest, the black tree trunks surrounding us like bars in a prison cell, and suddenly I do want to run. Fast.
 

Because I’m certain of it now.
 

The screeching wail is getting closer.

“They’re coming for you,” Aaron says. He lifts his nose in the air and takes a long sniff. “I don’t know how or why. But they’re coming.”

“What? Wild animals?”

Aaron flashes me a ghastly smile. “Yeah. Real fucking wild.”

Maybe it’s the way he says it. Maybe it’s the sound drifting on the wind. Maybe I’m just too tired to argue anymore. But I stand, and as soon as I do I see them.
 

Some are animals. Dogs, dozens of them, their fur speckled black and tan, with oversize ears and solid black eyes and long, snapping jaws. They’re flitting through the woods around the heels of another creature. A man with patches of black and tan fur and curved black claws and a hideous head shaped like the dogs running and yipping around him. A monster; a half-man half-beast, and then I remember what I saw when I looked at Nash.