The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (16 page)

The guy doesn’t blink.
 

In fact, his lips twist into a thin smile, the kind an asshole kid gets when sticking a hot lighter to a salamander’s belly down at the pond.
 

I growl at the fucker, thinking how best to kill him.
 

Sitting slumped beside the weird Skin is what’s left of his buddy. The guy I ripped into in the bar, and lets just say I’m glad for the Caddy’s black-tinted windows.
 

We’re tearing across Seattle, into the Cherry, heading to see a dude named Father Andres.

There’s frantic thumping sound from behind the back seat, from the trunk, and I say to Lonny: “We need them. We need all three.”

“Yeah, I think you do,” Lonny says. “Doesn’t mean you’re gettin’ them.”

The Stricken bitches. My crew and I need their hearts, and we’re going to have them whether Lonny gives them willingly or not.
 

“What do you want?” I ask, wincing, gritting my teeth as a wave of nausea crashes into me.
 

“Same as always. Patch me in,” Lonny says.

Fuck. I’d tear the bastard’s throat out if I had the strength. But I don’t, and Lonny knows it. I’m in no shape to negotiate. Truth is I’m starting to worry about how long it’s taking these bullet holes to heal over. It’s almost like I feel…
weak
somehow. My animal’s still with me, fuck yeah.
 

But something’s changed.
 

I take a long pull on the bottle as I realize I might be dying, bleeding out in Lonny’s sleezemobile, and I tell you this: someone’s having a laugh at my expense right now.
 

Lonny flicks me a sidelong glance. He scents something’s wrong.
 

But he has the smarts not to say it.

“Not up to the Prez alone,” Nash growls at Lonny. “We need to hold council to patch in a new member. All five of us. Blue included.”
 

It’s a weak-assed stall tactic, and Lonny says as much. “Blue’s tapping jailhouse honey in the Tac,” he says. “You plannin’ a conference call?”

There’s a long silence, punctuated by my wheezing breaths. The fucker’s got me by the short and curlies. I might be dying but I ain’t gunna beg for a feed, no matter how much I need it.

Then Lonny laughs and smacks me on my injured shoulder. “Tell you what, Prez. I’m buying dinner tonight. Have the fucking Stricken bitches. And if you spring Blue and hold council, maybe my time will come around.”

“Yeah. Maybe it will.”

“We’re gunna get you healed up, Prez,” Nash says. “Then we’re gunna go on a killing spree like this town’s never seen…”

There’s a choked sound, and when I turn to look Nash has his hyena jaws wrapped around the Skin guy’s forehead. Nash’s animal is an ugly motherfucker: thick, red-brown hair and small yellow eyes and a glistening black snout, but it’s those damned jaws that are truly fearsome. Nash can chew his way through two inches of plate steel, and I know how powerful his animal is because once, way back in the day, I had those jaws clamped around my leg.
 

The Skin’s mumbling something and his eyes are closed and I scream at Nash that we need the Skin asshole alive. There’s a moment when I think Nash is too far gone—maybe he can’t hear me or maybe he doesn’t want to, because his fangs are digging into the Skin’s head and twin lines of blood are dripping down and then Nash leans away and gives a long cackle.
 

“Just freshening him up for ya, Prez,” Nash says once he’s buried the animal.
 

I fire him a fuck-you glare and pass the bottle back.
 

A Harley throttles to my right and I look out the passenger window. Sorry’s flanking us, his cut whipping in the wind. He flashes me the peace symbol.
 

I almost smile.
 

The Caddy pulls up outside church. To the fine residents of Seattle it’s known as the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Its red brick facade is rain slick and looks as black as Stricken blood in the moonless night. There’s a stoop-shouldered old man standing beside the massive front doors, sheltered from the rain by the stone arch above him. Father Andres.
 

I tell Lonny he and Sorry can handle the Stricken bitches in the trunk and toss open the door before the Caddy stops rolling. Rain patters off my torn leather cut, runs down my brow, mingles with the blood streaming from my chest and back.
 

The bullets have to come out. That’s first.
 

Then hopefully I can heal without worrying about them slowly poisoning me.
 

Nash drags the creepy Skin guy out the Caddy’s back door and tosses him to the pavement. I don’t smell Stricken blood on him but still I’m curious to see what happens when we cut into him. The way this night’s going nothing would surprise me. The guy lies facedown in the mud, still as a corpse, waiting. Nash grabs his hair and hauls him up.
 

I glance around the neighborhood, searching for unwanted eyes. Seems deserted.
 

We hustle up the stone steps and Father Andres slips inside without a word, leaving the door open behind him.

The church interior is dark except for a cluster of candles further down the nave toward the altar. Father Andres is standing beside the pulpit, looking as pale and as ever. Makes sense. Dude’s one of the oldest living Purebloods, which makes him ancient. He’s got more than a foot in the grave.
 

“Father,” I say, not expecting much response.

Father Andres has baggy skin and a long, thin nose and a mouth full of blackened teeth. He gives me a nod. Good enough. I’ll have to remember to offer him some Stricken heart on our way out. The old man could use a pick me up.
 

I glance up into the domed apse, see the mural of the Big Guy sitting all self-satisfied on a bunch of puffy white clouds. I give him a silent fuck you and turn my attention to the Skin asshole as Nash throws him to my feet.

The Skin cult guy’s muttering something and eyeing the altar with a wide-eyed stare. It’s not a vacant stare, I realize. It’s full of that ridiculous bullshit the Skins call faith. On a hunch I reach down and tear open the guy’s hoodie. He’s tatted up real solid, all kinds of crucifix’s and pentagrams and other nutball shit I don’t even want to know about. There’s a symbol…three red spheres, marble-sized, arranged in a tight triangle on each of his wrists. I’ve seen that symbol before, but I can’t remember where. I shrug it off. The Skins like to flip through old books and resurrect symbols from the past. They paint themselves in signs they don’t even know the meaning to.
 

“A true believer,” I say, inspecting the guy’s ink. “How quaint.”

The Skin doesn’t acknowledge me, just continues staring at the Son on the cross and mouthing a prayer to the great douchebag in the sky.
 

I’m about to tell him he’s already in hell when my knees buckle and I have to lean into a bench to stay standing. Shit. Not the picture of mighty wrath I want the guy who shot me up to see.
 

I force a steadying breath. Apart from the pain of my wounds there’s that feeling of tightness in my chest—

“Uh, Aaron?” Nash says, eyeing me and the Skin fuck blubbering at my feet.

I lift my index finger to shut Nash up. He snarls and looks away.
 

There’s a horrible high-pitched moan as Sorry and Lonny drag the Stricken bitches onto church ground, and I’m happy to see they’re gagged nice and deep. A Stricken shriek is enough to bust eardrums. Demons. That’s what humans call both the Stricken and us Purebloods. But like usual they got the story all fucked up. We’re not from a world beyond death.
 

We’re another species. Primordial. Powerful.
 

And the spitting half-monkey skanks my boys are dragging into the church? A long time ago I would’ve ran beside them, hunting.
 

Now they’re my meal.
 

What can I say? Mother nature’s fucked.
 

I steady myself against the bench until my chest loosens. The Skin guy’s shaking now, finally showing the kind of terror one would expect. The Stricken girl’s screams are getting to him.
 

Good. That gives me an idea.
 

But first I need to get rid of these damn bullets.

I tear off my clothes, walk to the front of the altar and raise my arms to mirror Christ behind me. If I told you that beaming, all-benevolent motherfucker was a stone-cold Pureblood predator would it surprise you?

Me either. See what I mean? The Skins got it all wrong.
 

So here I am, beside the altar, naked except for the iron collar around my neck. Can’t get that thing off, and I don’t know I’d want to even if I could. It’s been eons since I’ve lived with an uncollared animal. I’m not sure I could keep him under control. Or even if I’d want to.
 

I don’t usually go in for theatre, but tonight’s different. The Stricken monkey bitches have gone quiet. Blood streams from my wounds.
 

The Skin guy looks at me, then up at the Son, then back at me.

Something falters in his eyes, and for an instant I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard.
 

Almost.

Because everyone falters. You just have to press the right buttons.
 

I smile at him in a way I hope is kind and benevolent but is probably hideous and terrifying, then close my eyes and mutter some bullshit Latin-sounding mumbo-jumbo and fall into myself, focusing on the foul human metal buried in me, my mind seeking it out, my will a kind of white-hot energy focused on expelling that impure shit from my flesh.
 

Everything the Skins create is impure. Everything they touch they pollute. Forests torn down and burned. The earth dug up and raped. Oceans slick with oil, a whirling gyre of filth and waste spinning in its currents, the sky burned open from their chemicals, the greed and vanity and self-interest they covet as if they were virtues, their garbage spinning through space and piled on the moon.
 

On the fucking
moon
.

And the animals in the woods hunted down and killed.
 

We’ve been hunted for so long.
 

I’m trembling, streaming sweat, and for a second I don’t think I can do it. I’m too weak. I’ve lost too much blood. It’s been too long since a feed.

Bitch
.

My animal snarls and smashes against its cage. He wouldn’t let the pain and hunger stop him. He’d snarl and snap and tear at whatever’s in his way, and that’s what I do, and I’d like to say its love and faith and all the decent shit in the world that saves me.
 

But it isn’t. It’s anger. Raw, uncaged, vengeful anger.
 

It always is.

I got plenty to be angry about.
 

The first bullet falls from my back and lands on the marble floor with a quiet metallic plop.
 

The Skin cult fanatic sucks in his stinking breath.
 

The first one’s always the hardest, and after that they come quick, falling from my flesh like rain, flattened bullets tinkling around me. I open my eyes and the Skins on his knees, thinking who knows what?
 

Thinking he’s witness to a miracle.
 

Stupid fuck.
 

You gotta love the old stories, lies and half-truths the Skins devote their lives to. An elaborate excuse to war and rape and butcher. As if they need an excuse.

Then it’s done. The last bullet falls from my wounds. A wave of bone-deep exhaustion washes over me, and for a moment even my animal is quiet. It’s a strange, almost empty feeling, and I wonder is this what it feels like to live as a Skin, with nothing real inside?

The Skin’s quivering, all sweaty and wide-eyed, you bet your ass, and I walk to him, slowly, because a man like me is never in a hurry, and I reach down and grip his filthy chin and whisper, “Welcome, my son. Who sent you to murder your Lord?”

I dunno. Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say. You never can tell with these types, who’s good and who isn’t, what symbol means what, the insane shit they’ve latched onto to give meaning to their brief little lives.
 

The Skin’s eyes narrow.
 

“Who sent you?” I ask again, deciding not to beat around the bush.
 

“The One Without Value,” the guy whispers, his glance flicking around the darkened corners of the church as if he expects Lucifer himself to stroll out and offer him a smoke.
 

Damn. The fucker’s speaking in batshit-crazy code.
 

Doubt I’ll get a useful thing out of him.
 

But the Stricken bitches are doing something strange.
 

Cowering.
 

And not from fear of me or my crew.

“Does this guy who sent you have a name? Like, a
real
fucking name?” I ask the Skin, catching a glimpse of that odd triple sphere tattoo on the guy’s wrist again. Feels like I’ve seen it before—
 

“The One Without Value.”

The Stricken girls shriek and flinch.
 

I squeeze the Skin’s chin until his jaw almost snaps. “Yeah. I heard you. Now who the fuck
is
he?”

“The One Wi—”

My hackles rise. The air in the church is suddenly cold. Ice crystals form along the marble floor, burning the soles of my feet, and before the Skin can say the name a third time I clench my hand, dig my claws into his neck and tear his fucking jaw clean off. His tongue flops out and he collapses backward to the floor, twitching and spurting blood.

In the air above us there’s a shape, an icy blue form swirling in an inky black cloud, and for an instant I see a long, hooked insect jaw and three eyes staring down at me, and there’s a chill in my heart like I’ve never felt before—