The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (10 page)

He shrugs. “Just warming up.”

Me too
, I think, trying to take my eyes off him. It feels very warm in the bar. I keep meaning to go over and check on Trish, then I keep forgetting.
 

He misses the shot.
 

I sink until I’m at the eight.

“You’re a fucking shark,” Aaron says, flicking the corner of the C-note and downing his scotch.
 

“A predator,” I say, laughing. “Built for one thing. To school leather cut wearing biker dudes.”

I bring the cue back for the shot that’ll win, and right as I slam it forward Aaron says, “Not used to entertaining pigs in my establishment.”

The cue bounces off the ball and digs into the burgundy felt, tearing a three inch hole in the fabric.
 

“I’m sorry?” is all I can think to say.

Aaron reaches out over the table and runs his fingers along the ragged edge of torn felt. “I have a nose for this sort of thing. Y’know. Biker dude instinct.”

“Yeah. Well. Keep your fucking hundred bucks, bucko.” I make to leave, and he snatches my wrist, holding me so hard it hurts.

“Lets play out the game.”

“Piss off.”

“You on the clock? No. Didn’t think so. Lets play out the game.”
 

He’s holding me real close, and I smell him again, the sharp, fresh scent of warm pine needles in the evening woods, and him being so close and holding me tight and the smell…everything in my mind is screaming to tear my arm from him and run the hell on out of there.
 

But my body? The whoring little minx.
 

She wants him, and worse, she
likes
how he’s holding me. Against my will. Like if he wanted to he could—

“Let me go,” I say, my voice flat and even.
 

He does. But he doesn’t apologize.
 

“Your shot,” I say, and this time he does smile, a broad grin that shines like a star and I wonder how often that smile comes out, and for who. “Does it bother you? That I’m a cop?”

“Not in the slightest.”
 

Ok, so maybe he’s a pretty good liar after all, because it has to bother him, and yet it looks like it really doesn’t. He chalks up the cue for what is likely his final shot and asks, “Why’d you do it? Become a
lawman
?”

“Is that a genuine question?” I dunno. I didn’t mean for that to sound as bitchy as it did.

He shrugs. “I don’t ask about shit I’m not interested in.”

“A real straight-shooter. Got’cha.”

“I’ve just always been curious. About the type. You like sweatin’ out broke motherfuckers? Protecting rich assholes and their property? Make you feel like a big shot?”

“You’re political? Let me guess. Robin in the Hood?”
 

I cringe inwardly. I’m being a douchebag and I’m not sure why. He’s got my hackles up, though. I shake my head to settle down and say, “I don’t know why I’m in law.”

Aaron lifts an eyebrow. “Doesn’t seem like a career suited to drifters. And you don’t seem like a drifter.”
 

“Take your shot,” I say.

“You want to help people? They call and you come running? Guns blazing?”

Is he mocking me? I don’t know him well enough to be certain. “A lawman saved my life once.” I say it so quietly I’m sure he won’t hear over the noise of the music and the general hum of the bar.
 

But he hears.

“Is that the truth?”

I nod.

“Rescued you from the big bad?”

“Why’d you become a drug running pimping murdering criminal?”
 

I say it fast, before I can stop myself, and when I’m done I wish I could take it all back.

He doesn’t even blink. Won’t let me bait him. Just shakes his head. “What happened, Lily? Who saved you? And from what?”

“Take the shot.”

He smiles. This time it’s distant and a little bit sad.
 

He leans over and takes the shot. Misses.

I bury the fucking eight and snap up the hundred bucks. “All right, Aaron. Good game. Nice to meet you and all that. Now if you don’t mind—”

He reaches inside his cut, pulls out a wad of cash secured with a rubber band and lays nine hundred dollars on the table. “One more game. Win and you walk with the cash. I win you ride with me tonight.”

“Ride?” I say, itching to laugh, shut him down and walk away. I don’t need the money, and to be honest I don’t like being made to feel I’m being paid for my time. But somehow I can’t leave.
 

“Yes. A ride. On my bike.”
 

“You mean…like your bitch?”

“Sure. My cop bitch. You in?”

My cop bitch
. That would’ve got anyone else a kick in the balls. But it has kind of a hot ring when he says it. I look back at Trish. She’s on her phone. I think about walking over, telling her what’s up. Then I turn to Aaron and tell him to rack.

“My turn to break,” he says once the balls are racked.

“Sure. Yeah.”

Aaron lifts an arm back. Settles in for the shot. Cradles the cue tip. His posture is suddenly perfect: graceful and powerful and athletic. The cue shoots forward so fast it’s a blur. The sound of the cue ball striking the formation is loud and sharp.
 

I know instantly I’ve been hustled.

Three, four, five balls slam down. Four highs and a low.
 

The fucking bastard.
 

Aaron shrugs. “Warming up now. You
feel
me, tool?”

Oh, I feel him all right.
 

“Asshole,” I say as my face drains of color.

“A predator,” he says, laughing. “A fucking shark. And you didn’t even spot the dorsal. Hope you have sharper eyes when you’re on the job—”

“Fucking asshole.”

“You missed something in your not very imaginative summary of an outlaw biker’s life.” Aaron sinks a ball, looks straight at me with absolutely nothing resembling flirtation in his eyes, and says, “Booze? Check. We got that.” Another ball pockets. “Bitches? By the dripping dozens.” Another shot down, this one a pro-level cross-table bank, the kind of long shot you see on TV. “Blow? Fuck yeah. We got mountains of blow.”
 

Plunk goes another ball.
 

He’s hitting every shot short of actually hopping the fucking cue ball: long shots, angles, banks, doubles.
 

“You forgot one important thing though, Lily Miss Bacon. You forgot
pool
.”
 

Aaron continues the run until he’s sitting at the eight.
 

It’s a piss easy shot for him.

I sip at the ice water in the bottom of my empty scotch glass, telling myself there’s no way in hell I’m getting on a bike behind this asshole.
 

Aaron flubs the final shot on purpose, lifts his hands in a mocking ‘well-whaddya-know?’ gesture, and says, “Your shot.”
 

“Fuck. You.” I breath, clenching my pool cue so hard my knuckles are white.
 

“Aw, don’t be like that. Consider it a free life lesson.”

Finish the game
, I tell myself.
Then get out of here. Bastard’s right. Lesson learned.

“Hey Charlie,” Aaron yells to the bartender. “You smell something?”

“Mmm, boss. Smells like bacon!”

The bar quiets. A few of the smarter hipster kids head for the door.

“Sure does, Charlie,” Aaron says, turning to me. “Sure does. Mind getting our squeaky friend another scotch?”

“No thanks Aaron I’m not—”

“On the house, boss?”

“Yeah,” Aaron says, his voice a razor parting skin. “On the fucking house.”

The waitress saunters over, sets my drink on the edge of the pool table. Whispers in my ear: “You know his name now, pig?”

I knead my hands together and stay quiet.
 

Trish pockets her phone and stands. A burly-looking shaved-headed dude moves out from the table next to her, blocking her path. She looks at me, clearly worried. I wave her away and she settles into her seat, clutching her phone like it’s a weapon.
 

I take the shot.
 

Manage to sink three before my nerves get the best of me and I flub an easy one.
 

Aaron lifts my untouched scotch and downs it in a single gulp. “What’d ya think, Sorry? We have some high-class squeaky clean bitches in the house tonight…or what? Makes me a bit uncomfortable. Like, kind of
on edge
. Between all the hipsters and cops hanging out in our joint I’m worried we’re losing our outlaw rep.”

“Yeah,” the beefy dude named Sorry says. “Sparkly clean bitches. Maybe they need dirtying up.”

Aaron looks at me. “Sparkles! Congrats, po-lice girl. You just got yourself a genuine outlaw AKA.”

Sparkles? Could be worse.
 

“My friend and I would like to leave now,” I say, keeping my voice as steady as possible.
 

“Am I keeping you against your will?”

“You’re a fucking asshole.”
 

Aaron shoots the eight, unhurried, nice and soft toward the corner pocket, with just the right amount of backspin to keep the cue ball from tumbling in behind it. I watch the eight teeter at the edge of the pocket.
 

It pauses, as if to ponder before taking the leap.
 

And in that moment the Wilds lights up with heavy calibre gunfire.

T
HE
K
EEPER
SENDS
me living sacrifice and I return the offering to blessed death.
 

That is all I am in this wretched life.
 

The Keeper’s men are dragging another lifeless offering across the concrete floor right now. I ignore the applause and settle cross-legged in the corner of the metal cage that is sacred to The One I Am Slave To.
 

In minutes the Keeper will deliver me another sacrifice.

The Cloud Temple is a building so tall it scrapes the sky and angers the sun god. In the center of the Cloud Temple there is this bloodstained metal cage. There are the living sacrifices the Keeper brings. The audience clapping and cheering or booing and hissing. The pen the Keeper houses me in beneath this building.

And there is the Keeper.

All my life. Only these things.

The Keeper and his men transport me from my room in the basement to this penthouse cage on a private elevator. I know how many lilies are embroidered in the plush, flower-patterned carpet in the elevator, but I do not know where I am.

It doesn’t matter. I know my role. That’s enough.

The audience doesn’t like it when I sit quietly in the cage after a killing sacrifice. They think I should pace around, scream and curse, flex my muscles. They came for a show. I am not giving them a good show. I delivered the second offering today in only fifteen seconds. Sometimes the audience jeers when I deliver the dead too quickly.
 

When this happens the Keeper stabs me with an electric cattle prod to remind me what the audience desires.

I’ve learned to make the sacred sacrifice bloody and loud and slow instead of quick and silent as it should be.

Learned the audience loves compound fractures. An offering’s shattered white femur sticking from a fleshy thigh. A femoral artery pumping blood.

Learned they love seeing a man’s insides. His blue-grey intestines spilling from his belly to trip him face-first to the floor.
 

The audience changes from day to day. Sometimes there are two dozen men in shining suits and high-ranking military outfits and sometimes there are only one or two, and these ones I understand are the most powerful. Leaders of nations and industries. They natter and gossip and bargain in between the sacrifices. Decide which governments will rise and fall. How many will die, and how often, and for how much.
 

Sometimes there are even women.

I’m curious about the women. I’ve never touched one. I’m curious about what it feels like to offer a woman. How does a woman like to be freed from this life? Strangled? Stabbed? Neck broken?
 

I close my eyes.

This is not a curiosity I should be thinking about right now.
 

Breath is life, I remind myself, trying to slow my pounding heart.
 

Breath is life.
 

Breathe. Focus. Free.
 

I like to see the faces of the men I return to the dead. The moment when terror leaves them and they realize I am freeing them from the horror of this life. They want to thank me. I see it in their eyes. The sacred transformation from bright and alive to dull and dead that marks the beginning of their freedom.
 

In this life I am both captive and captor. I hold the key to sacrifice. The men sent to me beg release from this prison of flesh and blood.
 

I feel this when they die.
 

This life is hell, their faces say.
 

Deliver me from this hell. Please deliver me.
 

And I do. Day after day, year after year.

Their red blood stinks. But it is needed. They serve a higher purpose in death than they ever did in life.

In death they serve the One I Am Slave To.
 

The man arriving soon is no different.
 

He wants to be free.
 

We all do.

I’m cradling a deer’s foot amulet in my cupped hands as I try to slow my breath. The bottom toes of the deer’s foot are black, hard, smooth and slightly cool. In between the toes the dried yellow-gray pads are rough. There’s a bit of hair between the toes and up toward the dewclaw. The stump of the foot is sealed with a silver cap.
 

The deer ran before it was brought down.