The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (6 page)

B
ECAUSE
P
RIEST
G
ABRIEL
lied when he said he wouldn’t hurt Charlene, right now I am suffering drowning.
 

I chose to suffer drowning after I heard Charlene screaming when the Three Priests took her eyes.

Priest Gabriel taught us about lies and their opposite, truth. Truth is what is said in Solace when we are with our holy family the Guardians. Lies are what is said when we are not in Solace and not with our holy family. And because I have never been exposed to lies or the Absent since being Accepted, I am Blessed.

Being Blessed means I am eligible to become a sacred Vessel, like Charlene and the other Hopefuls, and have my eyes removed so I may See, and bear the Three Priests many children to assist in their struggle to Guard the Gate.

After Charlene bore her first child I was to be next. I had dreamed of that day my entire Accepted life. Fought pernicious envy as I watched the Priests lead other young Hopefuls into the Ark to be transformed. Swallowed my tainted thoughts when the Vessels emerged from the Ark many months later, blinking in the sunlight and cradling their swaddled infant children.
 

It’s difficult to understand how the Three Priests can lie, especially Gabriel, who is Truth on Earth.
 

But they did.
 

I heard Charlene’s screams when they took her deep in the Ark and performed the ceremony to scourge wickedness from her soul and transform her into a sacred Vessel. I recognized the screams meant she was being hurt because she screamed the same way, a long time ago, when she became entangled in the ship’s trawl winch and crushed her hand.
 

Earlier this morning Charlene’s screams were like that, only worse. She screamed and screamed as they burned out her eyes to help her See.
 

It is night. I’m immersed in the cold night water, drowning in rolling black waves that crash over my head and bury me in blackness.

They’re out here in the night ocean with me.
 

The Guardians. Searching for me.

Like many things the waves from the late winter storm are good and bad. Good because they make it difficult for Gabriel and the Guardians to find me. Bad because they make it difficult to swim.

I’ve been in the water long enough for my fingertips to turn wrinkly. It’s an odd thing to notice, maybe, but when swimming we are taught to return to the Ark when our fingers are wrinkly. Any longer and the Beast of the Sea will rise to claim us.

I think about that beast now. He’s in the water beneath me. I feel him.
 

I leapt off the Ark and into the Land of the Absent hoping drowning would send me to Hell quickly. Painlessly. I dove for the ocean bottom, pleased to be off the Ark and alone with my imminent death. Swam and thrashed as deep as I could, then opened my mouth and blew out the small amount of air left in my lungs and took a big breath of water.

I was wrong.

Drowning is not a painless death.

The water burned my lungs so bad I screamed. Or I believed I screamed, because deep in the ocean at night there is no sight or sound, there is only feeling, and my feeling was of a pain like I’ve never known.

I understood in that terrible moment I didn’t want to suffer drowning, and I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to go to Hell.

By then it was too late. By leaping from the Ark I had already entered Hell, the Land of the Absent. The faithless.
 

Let go
, I told myself.
Do not cling to this life.
 

But I couldn’t let go. That is how wicked I have become. I wanted to live, even though wicked and faithless and absent.
 

I forced the water from my lungs. My chest was a fire burning in me and I swam blindly, hoping to reach the surface but not knowing which way was up.
 

Drowning is not only painful. It’s
slow
.
 

Another breath of water that I breathed into my lungs without meaning to. The burning worse than before and I resolved to die and meet the endless fire and fornication and despair that waits for the Absent in Hell. But that last breath took me to the surface, and from there I swam away from the Ark, hidden in waves and darkness.
 

There is a single way to God. You must Guard the Gate.
 

To do otherwise is to be Absent, which means your soul is lost.
 

That is Truth.
 

My soul is lost now.
 

A wave rolls over my exhausted body, and at the wave’s peak I see a small aluminum motorboat racing across the water. It’s them. A searchlight on the front of the boat swoops back and forth over the waves, but by the way it keeps going from left to right I know they haven’t found me. Not yet.
 

Their path is straight to mine. In a minute they will see me and return me to the Ark and then I don’t know what happens. No one has ever chosen to leap from the Ark and join the Absent that I know of.
 

I wait a few moments, trying to make my breath slow, then dive under the water and into endless blackness.
 

I stay under until the fire returns in my chest. I would pray for this to be over but there is nothing to pray to. The Priests have lied. The Word is broken. I am not a Hopeful anymore, I am like a fish in a net: flopping, senseless, unknowing.
 

My only solace is that if the Priests can lie perhaps they are wrong about the Gate. About the Land of the Absent where I am now.
 

When my mind breaks from the pain of not breathing I float to the surface, too tired to swim. My face enters the chill air. The waves are still here, but the boat is gone.

My name is Shiori Hayashi. I have been a Hopeful for twelve of my eighteen years. Today is the first day since my day of Acceptance that I have lived in Absence, without Life or Solace.
 

Today is my first day of living alone.

***

I float on my back, rolling through the violent waves, waiting for the Guardians to find me. The stormy sky is broiling black grey. I recognize that sky. In the past few months I’ve had strange visions. Standing on the deck of the Ark, looking across the ocean at the sun setting against the water, and suddenly the sky would turn black like the one above me now. The sun would lose its glow and turn first grey, then black, until the deep blue ocean and black sky and glowing black sun merged and became one flat plane.
 

Believing I was unwell, I spoke to Priest Gabriel about what I saw. He looked at me through his thick red beard, his beautiful green eyes blazing. I enjoyed looking into Gabriel’s eyes, just as I enjoyed the thought of becoming his Vessel.

“We are at war, Shiori,” Priest Gabriel told me. “The visions you see are a gift from God. They speak of hardship, and loss, and terrible suffering. They speak of a tortured path through a dark wood. Of not knowing where to turn. They speak of the many trials ahead.”

Priest Gabriel’s words made me feel fear, and I told him this.

“Who is the Light in the Wood?” Gabriel asked, reaching to caress my cheek.

“You are the Light,” I answered, as I always did.

Gabriel sighed. “Yes. And here you enjoy Solace and Light. Be grateful, and when the visions arrive give thanks. Not everyone is as close to the Truth as you.”

Usually I would have kneeled and excused myself, but that day the vision was particularly troublesome, and so I said, “Am I? Close to the Truth?”

“Closer than you know,” Gabriel said, smiling in a way that did not reach his eyes. “Now hurry. Purification begins soon.”

I left, not satisfied but understanding the Truth contained answers I did not. I made my way through the Arc to where the rest of the Hopefuls were gathered. I stripped naked at the door, said a cleansing prayer, and joined my family kneeling in a circle in the center of the room.

In the middle of the circle stood a small alter, and on that altar burned candles and incense around three pictures in simple wooden frames of people who looked just like me on the outside. A girl with sandy blonde hair walking in a place I can’t name but know is not the Arc. A man whose dark skin is covered in scars and strange black marks, screaming in a cage like the ones we sometimes keep the Absent the Priests capture in until they are Bled. And a third man, young and handsome, with soft, sorrowful brown eyes, taken in a place that looks like the learning room we have downstairs in the ship.

The people in the photographs looked like me. But they weren’t. They were the many guises of Azazel, leader of angels, who returned to earth and lusted after the absent and deceitful women there, and so created the Land of the Absent in his lust.
 

The Purification ceremony began. The Hopeful on my right, Harmony, whose turn it was to lead the ceremony, tied a yellow scarf around the upper arm of the girl on my left, a shy girl of twelve years named Gwen. Then Harmony retrieved a needle from a medical kit, drew yellow fluid into the needle from a bottle supplied by the Priests, and injected it into Gwen’s vein.

Gwen slumped to the floor, her eyes far away.
 

Harmony continued around the circle, injecting all twelve of us Hopefuls with the Divine Essence.
 

I was to be last that day, and waiting for the Essence made my stomach churn. Cold beads of sweat broke on my brow. The Priests permitted us to receive Purification six times a day. Every four hours.
 

But it was never enough.
 

We Hopefuls faced the many Guises of Azazel as the Essence raced through our veins, making us immune to the monster’s power over the mind. One day we would face Azazel in one of his unholy guises, the Priests said, and return the fallen angel to his rightful place: Hell everlasting.
 

Now, floating in the stormy night ocean, my body tells me it has been much longer than four hours since I last tasted the Essence. My bones ache, even though my skin is numb with cold, and my stomach feels like Azazel himself is stomping inside me.

I close my eyes. I could do it now, I think. Drift underwater.
 

I don’t want to be taken by the Land of the Absent.
 

Don’t want to become one of Azazel’s human whores.
 

Something brushes against my leg. I scream, believing the Beast of the Sea has risen to take me. But it’s only a floating piece of wood, and when I turn to brush it away I see something that terrifies me more than the thought of being consumed by the Beast.

Land.

The rocky shore is so close I’m afraid if I put my feet down they’ll sink into the accursed soil. I haven’t been this near to land since my Acceptance. The thought makes my breath come fast, and I swallow a bit of water and begin choking and coughing.
 

I’ll swim back into the sea.
 

I can’t be here. Not among the Absent.
 

They’ll sense me, and they’ll know I was once a Guardian, and they’ll carry me to Azazel. He’ll violate me, force me to breed more Absent offspring for his unholy army.

My bare feet tangle into something slippery and soft. Seaweed. I try and swim away but a powerful wave carries me close to the rocks, and when the water recedes I’m lying on my side on a jagged boulder, soaked and shivering in the night air.
 

There was malicious intent in that wave, I realize.
 

Azazel knows I’m here.
 

He sent the cursed wave to carry me to His land.
 

T
HE
LATE
U
-turn is unplanned. We usually do a drive by of the Wilds to scope shit, make sure there’s no pigs nosing about, but then I see her and spend two blocks trying to make up my mind what to do, which is worrisome because the one thing I need to do, always, is act. Best way to waste a life is to worry and fret about what you should or shouldn’t do, or could or might have done. It’s also the best way to have your pack swarm over you as they fight for the privilege of killing their weak-assed former alpha.
 

Act first and keep moving. Always.
 

That’s the law of predation.
 

I’ve got a fucking wolf inside me, for fuck sakes, with a survival instinct honed by a millennia on the hunt, and what do I do when I see the Skin bitch standing outside my door?
 

I dither.

Means we haven’t even met and she’s already under my skin.
 

I brake the Harley into a speed that’ll manage the u-turn, then crank the handlebars and lean so hard my shoulder nearly grazes the pavement and there’s about half inch of tire rubber keeping me locked into the road. A momentary pause while I crank the throttle back, and in that instant Mia tosses me a look that’s all slither and hiss.
 

Thinks I’ve gone off the rails? Her womanly instinct all a-tingle?
 

Fuck her.
 

Fastest way to get a woman’s opinion is to not ask for it.
 

I punch ahead of my crew. The Skin girl isn’t outside the bar anymore, and I wonder if I’ve lost her. It’s a damn unsettling thought.
 

Not losing her…but that I even bother thinking she might be gone.

She’s no knock-out. Wouldn’t have noticed her unless I was scoping the bar and ended up going for a quick eye-fuck of the black chick standing beside the cab.
 

Then I saw this one, and I forgot all about the black chick.
 

The one that caught my had rain flattened dirty-blonde hair and a baggy coat that showed zero chest bounce and a face that tended to plain in a smarmy, too-smart-for-her-own-good kind of way.