The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (45 page)

I’m too frightened to scream.

The dog-creature is only a hundred yards off, and as I look he smiles, revealing row after row of sharp, shining black teeth. Then he unfurls a pair of black-feathered wings and leaps into the sky.

Aaron throws his head up, clenches his fists and
howls
.
 

I’m already running, racing for the bike, knowing I won’t make it but determined to try. They’re too close and too many, and suddenly I’m pulled off my feet and thrown over Aaron’s shoulder. He’s running too, ploughing up the steep, slippery snow bank, fast as all fuck as the mad barks and yips of the dogs grow louder.

Seeing us run gets them excited.

“What are they?” I scream as Aaron leaps over the snowbank and onto the road.

“A myth,” he says, his voice flat and expressionless. “A rumor born of fear.” He sets me down on the road and says, “Cursed to roam the earth, searching for the only blood that nourishes them. A spirit-eater.”

“Spirit-eater? What the fuck, Aaron? Myths aren’t real. That’s why they’re
myths
.”
 

There must be an explanation. Maybe it’s the trauma messing with my mind. The crash knocked a fucking screw loose. Maybe the adrenaline. Or maybe I’ve finally snapped. All those freaky visions I’ve been having? Yeah. That’s it. Hello? Anybody home? Little Lily’s gone AWOL. Welcome to your padded cell, and oh, look here, it’s right beside your father’s—
 

The winged dog-headed creature arcs across the starry sky, barking and howling. He settles between Aaron and the bike. Folds his wings behind his back. I blink, trying to clear the mad vision from my eyes.
 

Nothing happens.

“Give me your gun,” I say to Aaron as we watch the dog-creature. “Give me the Glock.”
 

“No.”

The dogs are making their way through the forest behind us, barking and yelping, their teeth slamming together with a loud snapping sound.

“Give it to me!” I scream. The dog-man looks at me with a vicious gleam in his black eyes. He’s only a dozen yards away. Studying us intently. He clasps his hands by his waist. Not feeling hurried, from the look of things.

“I’ll hold him,” Aaron says, “You get on the bike. You can ride a fucking bike, can’t you?”

For some reason I laugh, and my laughter has a panicked, half-mad edge to it. Tell you what: I
hope
I’m in a padded cell somewhere, because this shit…this shit is
insane
.
 

“Give me the gun,” I repeat. “I’ll keep the dogs off us while you deal with…whatever the fuck
he
is.”

It’s the moonlight. A flickering shadow. Must be. Because Aaron’s face is changing. Growing…rougher. Larger. His neck’s thicker. And his teeth…they’re longer now. Like glimmering fangs.

“Get on the bike, Lily,” Aaron says in that irritating commanding tone he used when talking to his MC. “Now. Or I can’t help you.”

“No. Fuck you. Give me the gun.”
 

Aaron glances over his shoulder, pulls the Glock from under his leather cut, puts it in my shaking hand and turns to face the dog-nightmare.

I try not to notice the inch-long claws sprouting from Aaron’s fingers, click the Glock’s safety off and climb up the embankment. The dogs are running fast beneath me, shadows among shadows. I press both hands against the gun, take a slow, steadying breath and fire.

S
OMETHING
IS
WRONG
.

My jailers locked a trespasser into the cell across from me. I heard her shrieking, pain-wracked wails and strange clicking sounds as soon as they dragged her from the elevator. Then I scented her: she smells like a feeling whose name I’ve forgotten. Her scent reminds me of someone else, a child, who was once very important to me.
 

Family
.

I try to speak the word out loud but my mouth won’t obey and I manage only a brute growl. Words feel very far away.
 

I’m sitting cross-legged in the center of my cell, listening to the trespasser’s shallow breaths, sniffing the air, trying to remember how I know her.
 

I don’t want the trespasser here. The thieving bitch.
 

She’s plotting to steal my love Sedna. I sense it.

I gnaw at the finger stubs on my left hand. Three of the stubs have healed. The fourth is raw and seeping. I dig my teeth into the healed stubs, tearing them open again, relieved at the pain. My healing comes very slowly. I can scarcely scent anymore, and my night vision is fading.
 

Sedna has a necklace of four fingers and still she demands more of me. During my last visit I glanced at myself in a vanity mirror in Sedna’s lair and didn’t recognize the man staring back: pale grey skin sagging from too-prominent bones, hollow cheeks, once-fine black hair now balding, face covered in angry red boils and half-healed scabs.
 

Soon I won’t be strong enough to leave my cell. I’ll have to be carried into Sedna’s lair.
 

Or perhaps she’ll simply keep me there, at her feet forever.

The thought makes me smile.
 

 
I won’t look in the trespasser’s direction. Her presence will upset everything. This prison is a sealed world, perfectly balanced. Fragile. I give and Sedna takes. It’s natural law. I no longer begrudge Sedna for stealing my spirit. She deserves this happiness for what was done to her.

The trespasser is wailing, “Give me strength…give me strength…” over and over. The sound carries across the corridor, echoes through my stone cell, drills into my mind, interrupting thoughts of Sedna’s long legs wrapped around me, pulling me tight—

“Oh Holy Guardians give me strength and will to remain at the Gate…” the trespasser screams. Her voice is fervent. Panicked. Then a loud buzzing sound followed by a series of quick clicking noises.
 

How I crave silence. The rarest gift.

I will bleed her for silence.
 

The trespasser continues rambling for what feels like hours. I console myself by gnawing at my fingers. There was something in me once, something powerful. I feel his ghost in me now, haunting me. But I’ve forgotten his name. All that remains is his hunger. I bring my forearm to my lips, press my teeth into my skin, resist the urge to feed on myself.
 

The trespasser is driving me mad.
 

“…give me strength…”

Silence. Silence!
 

I stand, begin pacing the six steps across my cell, first whirling when I brush the cold stone wall, then slamming myself into it. Silence! Silence! My head smashes into the stone. I turn, run at the wall, slam into it, wince at the pain, then whirl and run at it again. I do this until I’m slick with blood and my legs give out and I topple to the floor.
 

Sedna will sense the trespasser’s reek on me.
 

She’ll turn me away. Refuse me.
 

The thought makes me shriek: “Silence!”

The girl moans, then quiets.

I settle onto the floor once more. Close my eyes.
 

I remain that way for a very long time.

***

I’m woken by the grinding metal-on-stone sound of a prison door rolling back. My love Sedna. She’s summoned me. But when I bend down and look I see the trespasser’s door opening. It’s a low, barred door like mine. The trespasser crawls out of her cell. She’s alone in the corridor. She’s naked, small and pale, with flat black hair clinging to her sweat-stained brow and dark circles under eyes and long, skeletal limbs.
 

She appears weak, like a newborn bird.
 

A ruse. I scent her strength.
 

She’s a wraith. A wicked spirit come to harm my love.
 

I dig the fingernails on my good hand into the dirt and filth on the floor and loose a bloodthirsty growl, overcome with blind rage.

The trespasser pauses in the corridor. Turns in my direction. I don’t think she can see me. I’m cloaked in shadow. But she peers into the darkness for several breaths. Her gaze slithers over me. Her nose and chin are pointy and sharp. Her eyes thin little slits. She’s disgusting.

The trespasser opens her mouth.
 

The hair on my neck rises.
 

An insect, a blue-black fly, buzzes off the trespasser’s tongue.
 

Then she looks into my cell and smiles.
 

She’s going to harm my love Sedna.
 

The bitch.

Sedna is all I have.

***

I pace my cell until the trespasser returns, then drop to all fours and study her. This time the trespasser isn’t alone: two men in blue uniforms hold her elbows and drag her naked body along the corridor. The sight makes me choke with jealousy. I thought Sedna and I were alone. Believed this was our world. But the trespasser…and these men…they exist here as well. What does it mean? Have I fallen out of favor with Sedna? Does she no longer want me? Have I displeased her?
 

My love, how can I please you?
 

Tell me. I’ll do anything you ask.
 

I’m delivering Sedna my fingers like I know she needs. One by one. I watch her thread them on her necklace. There was a reason for it once. But I’ve forgotten the reason. I only know it’s what I do. After my fingers I’ll give her my toes. Then my ears. Then my feet. I’ll carve the flesh from my bones and bring it to her. Last will be my hands, and when I’m done Sedna will wear my devoted body threaded around her neck, and I’ll finally be wholly hers.

No one will touch Sedna once I am with her. Those who want to harm her will see my body threaded around her neck and be frightened. We’ll live together like that, each needing the other.
 

The trespasser’s body is limp. The two men lay her down on the floor of the corridor. I gnaw at my fingers and watch as they take a needle from a small bag and inject her with something. She winces at the needle prick, then moans quietly and goes still.

Perhaps she’s dead.

Sedna is smarter than the trespasser. Sedna sees through the trespasser. I should have more faith in her. I shouldn’t doubt her. Perhaps it’s because of my doubt that the trespasser is here. Perhaps my doubt brought the trespasser into being.

The men drag the trespasser into her cell.
 

The door grinds closed and the men leave.

I wait, huddled on all fours, listening to the trespasser sleep. If I concentrate I can almost see her dreams, but I don’t.
 

It might be a trap.

Instead I hook my thumb under the sharp iron collar and begin sliding it slowly back and forth…
 

***

Why isn’t Sedna summoning me?
 

Please. Please summon me my love. I have a gift for you.

***

The trespasser is not well. She’s choking in her sleep.
 

Good. Perhaps she’ll drown in her own foul bile.

You will not come between Sedna and I, you wretched witch.
 

Nothing can come between us.
 

***

“What have you done?” I whisper across the corridor. “What have you done?”

Sedna hasn’t summoned me in ages. I was wrong. The trespasser has done something to drive a wedge between my love and me. I need to speak to Sedna. I will explain, prove my worth and devotion.

“What have you done? Tell me!” I say, louder, and this time the girl wakes. I can’t see her—she’s tucked deep in her cell—but I can tell by her breathing that she’s awake.
 

“What have you done?” I ask again, surprised at the ferocity in my voice.

It’s happening already. I knew it.
 

The balance has been broken. The trespasser is a poison.

I hear her scampering to the barred door of her cell, then see her face: pale, moon-like in the dark, framed by iron bars.
 

She’s staring at me with her ugly black eyes.
 

I lower my head, afraid. I don’t like how her eyes make me feel.

“I know who you are,” the trespasser says, her voice very soft and hesitant. “I know your name.”

“He Who Is Sedna’s,” I hiss.

Of course that is my name.
 

The girl shakes her head. “You’re a Guise.”

Ha! The fool bitch. A guise of what? I’m He Who Is Sedna’s. That’s all I am and will be. But I say: “Don’t touch her. Don’t you dare harm her.”

The girl’s lips don’t move, but in my head I hear her say: “You deserve one another, Azazel.”

The evil spirit-girl can enter my mind.
 

I throw a hand over my face and fling myself to the furthest corner of my cell. She’s stronger than me. I’m suddenly cold, shivering. She’s much, much stronger than me. There’s a buzzing sound as something smacks into my cheek, then a terrible sting when it bites me. I smack at the pain, crush something under my palm, lift it to my eyes.
 

It’s a wasp.

The trespasser says: “Leave me be, Azazel. Or I will send more.”

The trespasser might even be stronger than Sedna. We’re in terrible danger, my love. Summon me! Please? We’ll flee together.
 

The trespasser was sent to murder.

***

“Your blood doesn’t taste right,” the trespasser says after she lets me shiver in my cell for a while. “You taste…different than the Absent.”

I ignore her. She’s a wicked spirit. Soon Sedna will summon me, and we’ll flee from this place to…I pause, trying to remember what lies beyond.

Is there a beyond?
 

“Come to the cell door,” the trespasser says. “Come to the door and let me see you.”