The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (4 page)

I take a few slow, calming breaths. My heartbeat mellows. The mountain doesn’t care if I live or die. Neither do the sun or moon. The mountain stands without me. The sun shines without me. This is the truth of the world. It can make us strong and humble. Or weak and afraid.
 

I begin moving again, faster, more confidently, punching my hands into the crack and twisting my toes until they’re raw and bleeding. Fifty feet, a hundred, two hundred and still the summit is so far away it seems an impossible dream. But I’m making progress. One movement at a time. It’s easy to let the mind be overwhelmed by the scale of a challenge. Easy to be tricked into losing hope and standing still.
 

But that’s death-in-life. Stillness.

The crack grows thinner. More difficult. It narrows to accept only my fingers, then my fingertips, then finally it becomes so tight and shallow I can no longer find purchase.

I’m stuck.
 

I might be able to down-climb. Retreat.
 

But I don’t want to.

I look from left to right across the sweeping expanse of grey granite. There, fifteen feet to my right and twenty feet above, another crack system begins. It look climbable.
 

But between me and the next vertical path is blank, featureless stone.
 

Impossible.

Or maybe…just not as easy.

I lean out of the crack I’m in and grip an edge no deeper than my first knuckle. It flexes under my weight. But I have to commit. I spot another edge lower, slip my toes out of the crack and onto it.
 

The wind laughs.
 

I make a difficult move right to another tiny edge.

The moves are harder than the ones I was doing in the crack. More delicate. Like a well-rehearsed dance. Soon I forget where I am. Forget the air beneath my feet. Forget the consequences of a fall. There’s only my skin pressing into inches of cold stone and the motion, one movement flowing into another. There is no time. There are no roads. No machines. No poverty or wealth. No heartbreak. No Child Services coming to send my little sister Pimniq to a different family in a city far away from our home.
 

The next crack system is only ten feet above me.
 

So close.

And now, so close, I lose focus on the moment. I think: I want to be there, in the safety of that crack. Up there.
 

Where I am not now.
 

I reach up with my right hand and grip another edge. But I’m rushing. Already thinking of being finished. I commit my weight to the edge without testing its strength.

There’s a terrible cracking sound.
 

The hold shears from the wall.
 

For an instant I hang in space. Before gravity takes me.
 

For an instant I’m flying.

But no. I’m not a bird.

I’m only falling.
 

***

It takes me falling halfway down Sivanitirutinguak’s sheer granite face before I realize I’m going to die.
 

I’m facing upward, arms outstretched, Sila the wind, Breath of the World, roaring through my ears. The summit retreats above. Maybe I want it this way. Not seeing the ground approach.
 

Maybe then I won’t summon him.
 

If I was alone in the world I would let myself die as a man.
 

I’m only twenty years old but I’m already tired of this life.
 

And I know what’s coming as the land melts. Panic. Madness. Pain. Death.
 

But I’m not alone. Pimniq needs me. I’m the only family she has. Pimniq my spirited little sister, twelve years old. An ‘oops,’ my mother called her, which always made me feel kind of sad.
 

Pimniq knows me. She’s the only one who knows me.
 

Does she forgive me?
 

I think so. Sometimes.
 

I windmill my arms, trying to flip over to face the ground. The wind tosses me around, laughing at my attempts to save myself. Any second now and my body becomes like the stone and ice.
 

Raw. Senseless.
 

I give one last try, throw my hips hard right and flip over. The ground is close. Too close. I won’t have time to summon him. I made a mistake. Waited too long.
 

I decide to die with my eyes open. But it’s not death. It’s reunion.

The glacier is brilliant white and icy blue. Boulders as large as houses are stacked along its edges. The glacier will carry the boulders to the sea, and by the time they arrive at the water they’ll be sand. My body will join them on the ocean floor.

He’s close now. He sees the glacier through my eyes. Feels my heartbeat and racing blood.
 

I feel the first pain of him, the tearing, grinding deep in my bones. Then the awful stretching sensation as my skin tightens and thick white fur bursts from my skin and then he’s roaring, moving quickly to the surface of me, running to the threshold between worlds.
 

Running to overtake me.
 

I used to think we were one, he and I. For years I believed he was a part of me. But now I know I was wrong. He’s from the astral realm. An animal spirit. I’m his way to this world of flesh and blood.
 

I’m the threshold. The door.

At least that’s how I imagine it. Or maybe it’s just easier to believe he’s not truly a part of me. Like he’s a malign demon possessing my good spirit. Makes it easier to live with what he does. I don’t have to feel responsible for the death he brings.
 

My spirit animal’s leaping through the door now. My head hurts so bad it feels like it’s splitting open, which it is. My hands swell and bulge into huge white paws. I see the long, hooked black claws and think of blood.
 

The wind roars in my ears. The animal roars in my ears.
 

He’s angry with me.

He knows I remember what he did.
 

I’m screaming, my throat changing, the sound transforming from a human scream to an animal roar.
 

The glacier so close now.
 

There’s not enough time.
 

“You promised you’d never return,” I scream into the wind.

The animal snorts and growls. My vision changes. Becomes sharper. I scent the ice below. The sky above.
 

The land speaks to me through its scent.

You need me. You hate that you need me.
 

 
His voice in my ear. But not his. Mine.
 

My head split into two.
 

“You’re a butcher,” I yell as the ground rushes toward me.
 

Does the seal think the same, when you sink the harpoon into its neck? Be proud of what you are. A hunter of men.

I’ve learned how to summon him, and I’ve learned how to send him back. That’s the only thing that makes calling him bearable.
 

Go now, little boy. Let the predators roam.

He’s taken me. I’m still inside, listening, watching. But it’s like peering through the wrong end of a telescope: everything is distant. It was like this when he lumbered into my father’s hunting camp one night, over a decade ago. Tearing open canvas tents and igloos, mad with hunger. I was inside him when he opened my father’s throat and feasted on his flesh. I was inside him when he tracked my terrified mother across the ice. Nearly cut her in half with a single swipe of his massive paw.
 

I was there, too, when he spotted little Pimniq fleeing. By then the hunger in him was satiated. He didn’t need to chase her. But he did. He couldn’t help himself: the sight of her warm body running across the tundra pushed him beyond all thought. Into ancient instinct.

I was screaming at him, first commanding him to yield, then begging. And that night, after he slaughtered and consumed my parents, he listened. I felt him calm. Felt his hold on this world slip. He was hovering at the threshold, uncertain, and I pushed him through and returned him to his realm.
 

Pimniq watched him leave me. Saw the mad bear become her broken, grieving brother.

I was lying on the ice, covered in my family’s blood.
 

My sister walked to me, laid her tiny body over mine. Such courage!
 

She didn’t have to tell me she forgave me.
 

At first I thought I’d done it. Controlled him.
 

But now I’m not so certain.

I think it was her.
 

I think Pimniq sent him home.

***

I smash into the glacier with the force of a granite boulder as large as a truck. Ice rockets into the sky. The ground shudders. The glacier buckles and cracks. The pain is blinding. My body crumples and breaks, my bones snap, my head splits open, and for an instant I think I’m still a man, already dead. Then I roar, and the sound echoes off the granite walls and I know I am him.

Darkness falls. I’m buried in an icy tomb, far away from my sister who needs me, my heart beating with fury and hunger.
 

I’ve unleashed him.

That means only one thing.

Death.
 

I’
M
RIDING
SLOWER
than normal because Nash can only hold one hand on his bike. The burned one is tucked inside his cut. He’s doing not bad considering how much it must hurt, which means any normal motherfucker would be screaming and blubbering and sure-as-shit not riding a fucking Harley through Seattle’s rain-slick streets.
 

We’re blasting through red lights. I’m out front, using my wolf sight to see a few seconds into what the Skins call the future so I know we’re not about to get t-boned in an intersection. Using the sight like this for a long period is so draining it makes me want to vomit, but it has to be done.

Nash needs to get off the streets.
 

Stricken can smell that hurt he has. A Pureblood’s pain. Drives ‘em mad. So I got one eye in my rear-view, watching for any pigs dumb enough to give chase, and another on the future.
 

Yeah, being an MC Prez is nothing but peaches and pussy.

The streets are hemmed in by buildings and the roar of our bikes echoes around us like a landslide crashing down a canyon. Everyone on the street turns and stares as we blast by. I personally prefer to roll low profile, silent and fast, but the outlaw MC thing does provide a useful cover for hunting Stricken. We don’t get fucked with much. Course occasionally we gotta deal out some human suffering to keep our image intact and the fear and respect levels humming high, but generally we let the lower level members handle that shit. The inner circle, the real Pureblood Predators, there’s just five of us in the chapter, and four are riding along this fucking filthy cesspool of a street right now.
 

Our fifth member, Blue, is in jail. That’s a bitch, considering what just happened with Nash.
 

I could use Blue.
 

I throttle the Harley, hoping to leave the thought behind. She purrs through another red so fast the streetlights trace and blur.
 

A Minion. That’s what that frog-headed thing was.
 

One of the first generation of Stricken.
 

Welcome to the next level, asshole. Still a minor motherfucker in the grand scheme of things…but nevertheless. Things are happening faster this time. Progressing more quickly. I don’t know exactly how I know that, only that I do. The details are all fuzzy. But the slate hasn’t been wiped completely clean. I get feelings, images, memories like sketches without the color filled in.
 

I know I’ve been here before. And I think I know what it means.
 

It means I’m going to die.

Worse, it means
she’s
going to die.
 

The bitch who’s been calling me. Waking me from sleep.
 

I slam on the brakes because a semi-trailer would’ve creamed Sorry if we blasted through the red. My pack skids to a halt, their engines chugging and sputtering. It feels good to be surrounded by people you trust. That’s rare in this world: trust, and the shame is you only really miss it when its gone.

Nash is pale and sweating and gritting his teeth. Looks about to pass out, so I reach in my cut and hand him a little black ball wrapped in tinfoil. He smiles, unpacks it, pops in the corner of his mouth. The Skins used to call it the Immortal Smoke, which always made me laugh. Now it’s just straight-up uncut raw opium. Enough to kill a human. Sure as shit won’t kill Nash, but it might take the edge off the hurt until we can get to the club and fix him up with something stronger.

I’m about to throttle through the light when a lowrider pulls up beside me. It’s a slammed seventy-two Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, one of the largest luxury vehicles ever made. She’s baby blue with a crisp white ragtop, twelve fucking cylinders of pure American power under the hood and a trunk big enough to hold half a dozen dead bodies.

The window slides down with a slick mechanical sound and then I’m looking into a pair of cool, flinty eyes.
 

“Sup whitey?” the driver says, leaning a heavily inked arm out the window. Dude’s rolling tats showing Christ not only nailed but gutted on the cross, a pack of hell-hounds nipping at the heels of a fairy princess and a bunch of rune-like symbols I’m not familiar with.
 

So the usual Catholic-meets-pagan idolatry.
 

“Sup spic?” I answer with a grin. It’s my bro Lonzo. AKA Loco AKA Lonny.