The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (46 page)

“No,” I say. “Only Sedna can command me.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

I feel something tickle my leg and swat at it. There’s a loud crunch, then another tickle, and another, and I realize the floor of my cell is swarming in biting ants. I scream and leap to my feet, stomping madly, but there are too many, the ants swarm up my leg, a clicking black tide pouring over my skin.

The ants march up my thigh, over my groin and belly. Their weight drags me to the floor. They swarm over my chest and I beat at them, scream at the trespasser, beg her to stop, the fucking bitch, but the ants march over my throat, crushing my windpipe, silencing my screams, and then I’m being lifted off the floor, the mass of horrible ants bearing my weight and carrying me toward the cell door.

Toward her.
 

The ants pour over my eyes, blinding me, into my ears and nose, suffocating me, and I know that if the trespasser makes them bite my skin will burn and they’ll kill me.
 

But they don’t bite. Instead they drop me at the iron door and march across the corridor toward the trespasser’s cell, a long, twisting black column. The trespasser is lying on the floor, naked, arms and legs spread wide. The ants march over her prone body and disappear into her open mouth.
 

I clamp my teeth tight to stifle a scream.
 

I don’t want her to hear me scream again.

When the last ant marches into her mouth the trespasser’s body begins shaking so violently her legs and arms lift from the floor, and when she eventually quiets she sits up, turns to me, her black eyes glowing even darker than the surrounded blackness, and says, “Please listen to me next time.”

“Who are you?” I whisper.

The question seems to bother the wraith-girl.
 

“I don’t know,” she says slowly. “But I’m learning I’m not what they said I was.”

***

I’m changing. Slowly. Implacably.
 

I don’t want to but I am.
 

Like Seqinek bringing light and Tatqim chasing her with darkness.
 

I can’t stop it.
 

I feel my spirit in me again. Hovering at the threshold, waiting to pounce, thrilling for the a bloodhunt.

The animal.

Sedna! Where are you, my love? Don’t abandon me to that monster.
 

Please don’t leave me to him.

The animal snarls in me.
 

It must be her. She’s doing this.
 

She’s bringing him back. The trespasser.

***

“It’s you,” the trespasser says into the darkness. “You must be doing this to me.”

I lift my head and stare across the corridor. I can see through the darkness as if it were daylight, but the trespasser is tucked behind her cell wall. I sniff the air. I can almost name her scent.
 

“Leave us now,” I plead, angry at these changes I didn’t ask for. “Leave me alone with my love. I’m happy here.”

The girl shakes her head. “That’s not true. You’re like I was on the Ark. Lost and alone. Mistaking enemies for friends.”

“What’s your name?” the trespasser asks.

“You can enter my mind. Find out for yourself.”

“I can’t read. I can only…write.”

The trespasser emerges behind the iron bars. We stare across the corridor at each other. Then she says, “Try and remember.”

“No.”

Th trespasser sighs. “They made a mistake, bringing me here. Bringing us together. A terrible mistake. Being near to you helps me remember. They can’t hold me. Not now. But I need you to come with me. I’ll be lost in this land without you. I sense it. Can’t you sense it too?”

“I am hers. I am devoted.”

I lift up my fingerless left hand. The wounds are seeping and bloody and leaking foul fluid.
 

The trespasser studies my ravaged hand. A shadow flickers across her face. “Yes. I see your devotion.”

I slide my hand behind my back, ashamed of the trespasser knowing the depth of my love. A growl builds in my throat.

The trespasser smiles. There’s sadness in her eyes.
 

She’s not as hideous as I once believed.
 

“He’s not so frightening,” she says. “Your spirit animal?”

“You don’t know him. He’s a killer.”

“Killing isn’t wrong,” the trespasser says, “if you’re killing that which deserves to be killed.”

***

Anik. My name is Anik.

The word leads to another word, and another and another, until the words arrive in a breaking flood, and I hear myself weeping in the darkness, and the trespasser says, “Do you hear truth calling you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Tell me truth’s name.”

“The All Encompassing.”

Yes
.
 

The trespasser speaks this word in my mind.

“Stop doing that,” I say.

“I’m sorry, Anik,” the trespasser says. “I’m still learning.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I just do. Like when I feel warmth on my face and know the sun is rising.”

“What’s your name?”

“Shiori Hayashi.”

“Shiori?”

“Yes. Does my name help you remember?”

I close my eyes. Late afternoon sun glinting on ice. An animal running ahead. Fleeing from me. It’s a caribou. Old. Weakened. I scent my prey’s fear driving it forward, beyond exhaustion. I’m loping, conserving strength for the kill. The old caribou will tire long before I do.
 

“I’m beginning to remember,” I say.
 

“When we leave, it’s important that we reach the sun quickly. You cannot see Sedna again.”

“I have to,” I say. “Once more. I’m not finished with her.”

“There’s no use trying to change your mind?”

“No. I’m stubborn. I think I’ve always been very stubborn.”

“You must be swift, Anik. Do not falter. Do not hesitate. This is Sedna’s lair. She knows the truth of us now. It’s only because you have something she wants that she’ll risk summoning you.”

“What if she doesn’t summon me?” I say, my heart withering at the thought.
 

“Then the creatures who brought us here will arrive, and we’ll die in body as well as spirit.”

“Shiori? How do you know?” I’m suddenly suspicious of this girl again. It was so easy before she arrived. So peaceful.

Shiori looks at me through the iron bars. “I…I don’t know. It’s like how I know I’m thirsty. The knowledge is simply there. It came from you, Anik. We’re stronger together. I don’t think they realized that. Even in separate cages we’re stronger. These…things? The insects? I’ve never brought them before. Not like this. And I think…if you weren’t trapped in this place…you would know how strong you are as well.”

“But I
don’t
know,” I say, growing angry. “I only know you arrived and Sedna stopped needing me. What if you’re lying?”

Shiori shrugs. “You must trust me. Trust what your animal knows. His instinct.”

“I can’t feel what he knows. Only his rage. His bloodlust.”

“He’s imprisoned as well. Frightened. We all are. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

I hook my thumb under my iron collar and slice it from my hand. It falls to the floor. I run my bleeding hand through the dirt, moaning and searching desperately.
 

“Lie down when they reach you,” Shiori says. “And for your life, do not move. I can control them, but it’s draining, and you swatting at them doesn’t help.”

Shiori lies down on her back, motionless. Her breathing slows. I squint into the darkness, clutching my severed thumb.
 

She looks dead.
 

Then an odd scratching-clicking sounds fills the prison. “Aeei-click. Aeei-click-click.”

The sound makes my spirit animal pace and paw at his cage.

Soon Shiori begins shuddering, and after a while her mouth drops open and the first ants march from her lips. They swarm over her cell door in a thick black mass. I hear a crumpling sound, like a tinfoil being ground into a ball, and then the iron bars are gone, consumed by the hungry ants.
 

The ants march in a twisting column across the corridor to my cell, and after they consume my iron door and I feel them climbing up my toes I lay on my back and permit them wash over me.

Shiori told me to hold very still. But my animal loathes these biting things. A growl rumbles through him, and I clench my four remaining fingers into a fist and plead with him to stay calm. A few ants sink their teeth into my skin, and I have to focus very hard not to swat at them.
 

Shiori’s clicking wail grows louder.
 

The weight of the ant swarm presses into my chest, making it hard to breathe. They run over my cheeks, my nose, my eyes, moving faster now, frenzied, driven by a command I can’t hear. They concentrate around my neck and in moments the iron collar is gone.

My animal draws close to the surface, threatening to break free, his heart pounding. The ants are driving him mad. There’s a terrible snapping sensation in my spine and a bone-on-bone grinding sound. My chest swells. My arms and legs lengthen and twist.
 

He’s furious with me. He demands a feed for his misery—

“Not now, Anik,” Shiori says. She’s standing in the corridor. The ants are gone.

“He’s famished. Maddened. I can’t…he won’t obey…” My voice trails off into a guttural growl.

“Tell him he will have his feed,” Shiori says, kneeling beside my cell and speaking very slowly and softly. Her voice is soothing. Melodic. “Tell him he will feast on beating black hearts.”

Something in Shiori’s voice placates the animal.
 

He hesitates. Slows. He’s retreating.
 

He
listened
to her—
 

I sit up, rubbing the skin chafed by the collar, then slip from my cell.
 

Shiori and I stand facing one another in the corridor. I have the odd, overwhelming sensation I’ve stood beside this girl before. It was long ago, in a lost time I no longer remember, before the newcomers arrived to strangle the earth. I stood beside this girl and we hunted, because we were—

“Packmates,” Shiori says.

I slip Shiori’s hand into mine. She winces, lifts my hand, inspects the thumb stub. “He can’t heal you here?” she says.

I shake my head no, then say, “You said we should wait until Sedna calls me. Why did you change your mind?”

Shiori smiles. “You’ve been trapped in this prison long enough, don’t you think? The All Encompassing needs us.”

She turns to face the long corridor and says, “Can you scent to her lair?”

I lift my nose to the dank air.
 

I could scent Sedna across the world.
 

Shiori might be my sister, but Sedna is my love.
 

She’s calling me now. Asking me to bring her the trespasser’s heart.
 

A final gift.
 

I
DIDN
’
T
TELL
Lily what the spirit-eater feeds on.
 

Purebloods and Stricken…and a third species.
 

A species that doesn’t exist. A legend from the long-forgotten past.
 

The Risen.

 
I didn’t tell her because it wouldn’t make sense. She’s a Skin. She has her own heaven and hell. Her own life-after-death fairy tales.
 

I didn’t tell her because until now, when I’m staring the ugly dog-faced motherfucker down, I didn’t believe the spirit-eater existed.
 

Apparently I was wrong.
 

Been wrong a lot lately. Starting to piss me off.
 

I snarl and flash my fangs at the dog-dude. He makes a show of inspecting one of his curling black claws, then waves his index finger at me in a smart-ass ‘come here’ gesture that makes my animal scream.
 

He’s fucking with my head.
 

Problem is, I think he’s strong enough to get away with it.

I can scent a Pureblood or a Stricken from miles away. But I couldn’t smell this guy until he was right on us. Not with that wind he arrived on. And now that I smell him I know some myths are based in truth. The spirit-eater reeks of rotting flesh and death. He’s not living flesh and blood like the rest of us.

He’s already dead.
 

But as I smash into the motherfucker and it’s like getting hit by a tank you can bet your ass I’m beginning to question just what the fuck is real and what isn’t. My animal shrieks and paws at me, howling for freedom. The dog-faced bastard grins as he catches a punch I throw, squeezes my clenched hand until my finger bones snap, then dips his head down, aiming to take a bite out of my neck.
 

I dodge just fast enough to make him miss, but he’s still holding my fist. His hand’s brutally cold, and the cold begins spreading up my arm, blackening my skin with with frostbite.

The cold burns bone-deep. It’s crippling me.

The dog-faces fucker grins, watching me suffer. This asshole likes seeing the living suffer. He fucking
feeds
on it.

Lily screams and the dogs bark and howl as the Glock echoes through the forest. I bring my knee up, hoping to catch the spirit-eater in the balls. A cheap shot, yeah, but I’m well past caring. He twists to the side, carrying my arm with him, and then I’m sailing through the air as fast as when I got tossed off the bike.
 

I smash into the road and roll into a snowbank. Being tossed hurts, but the blackened skin on right hand and wrist hurts far more. The pain is a needle drilling into my skull, driving me mad.
 

I’ve never felt such power. Never even imagined it.

The ugly dog motherfucker strolls across the road. Unhurried. His nasty dog face is cool and relaxed. He looks almost bored. I know that look. It’s the one I have when I’m murdering Stricken and Skins. The fucker’s certain killing me will only take a second or two. Then he’ll be on
her
, stripping the flesh from her bones.