The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (20 page)

It’s dark. There’s a rumbling engine noise that echoes in a strange way. Men shouting somewhere far off. A swaying motion that makes my stomach lift and churn.
 

“Where am I?” I whisper, touching my wounded head and wincing at the blood-soaked wound my fingers discover.
 

Someone chuckles.
 

“You in the whale, son,” a man says.

I decide not to speak to this person. Close my eyes. Take a few long breaths. The nausea wont go away. It’s not only the swaying motion. The air is stale and too hot and reeks of gasoline.
 

I open my eyes. Scan overhead.
 

There. A small circle of light.
 

A hatch.

“I imagine this is how that rather unstable gentleman Captain Ahab felt in the belly of the whale,” the man says. His voice is quick and…certain of itself. Like he’s used to being listened to. “In the belly of the proverbial
beast
. We’ve been eaten alive, you and I. But we live on. An interesting paradox. It’s like an ancient story come true. Myth looms large in these dark days. I suppose that’s no surprise, really. We only really need myth when the days are dark.”

I glance in the direction of the voice. It’s pitch black, but I see as if it were day. There’s a man huddled in the far corner. He has a bushy white beard and a paunchy gut and the rounded shoulders of someone who spent his life leaning over a desk. He’s squinting into the darkness in a way that means he can’t see, and is probably just a human.

Mia’s Skin prisoner. But why?
 

Pimniq?
 

Where is she? I sit up, press my palm against the curving steel wall. How long have I been unconscious?
 

Questions.
 

Maybe this man has the answers.
 

Something chafes painfully against my ankles, and when I reach down I discover a cool metal chain.
 

I give it a sharp tug.
 

The chain rattles against the steel tank I’m imprisoned in.
 

“You know European slavers used to chain slaves head to foot when the galleons crossed the Atlantic? The captain made a calculation before setting sail. Squeeze the slaves in as tight as possible and more would die, cutting into profits. Give them more room and the galleon would land with healthier, more valuable cargo. Less illness and so on. After a while the slavers realized that even with the deaths that came from packing the slaves tight they still arrived with more living cargo to sell. So they packed them as tight as possible. It made perfect economic sense. Rationalizing an atrocity. Another great talent of our species.”

“This is a cell,” I mutter, trying to remember—
 

“I feel very fortunate to be in here, all things considered,” the man says. “Of course it’s still early in this New World Order, as they call it. I suppose there’s plenty of time for further regression.”

“Regression?”

The man smiles. “It’s inevitable. And completely natural. Progress never charts in a uniform line. There are…setbacks. Sometimes an unforeseen event occurs… a black swan event…that sets the line of progress all the way back—”

“Who are you?”
 

Besides another southerner who talks too much, I think.
 

“She lets us out once a day to defecate. Quite civilized. She’s truly fascinating.”

“She?”

“Admah.”

“Oh. Yeah. Admah.”

Mia. She slammed that vase into my head—

“When you consider time on a geologic scale this regression is perfectly reasonable. Human’s have existed for two hundred thousand years. We’ve had individual rights for a few hundred. Women’s and civil and sexual rights are even more recent. Western civilization existed for the blink of an eye. This,” the man taps the steel tank, “this is business as usual for our species. War. Slavery. Butchery. Superstition. Might makes right. Fascinating. Considered in this manner, the last few decades of human civilization have been a curious anomaly. A blip. Inexplicable, really.”

“Do you have any water?”

“They bring water. Two liters a day, by my estimation.”

I settle against the tank and close my eyes, willing the man to silence.
 

“The high point,” the man mutters. “We’re living at the apogee of human history.”

“It didn’t feel like the high point,” I growl.

The man’s tone brightens. He’s clearly relieved to have someone respond to his ramblings. “They never do, I suspect. To those living through them. We’re too close to the moment. We lack the perspective of historical distance.”

“You’re a scholar.”

“Doctor Nicolas Melchuck. Professor of Comparative Religion. University of Washington.”

“Huh.”

“And you are?”

“Tired.”

“Oh. I see.”

In the belly of the beast, the professor said. I guess that’s fitting. I do feel like I’ve been swallowed up, and not only by this steel storage tank. It’s been happening gradually since I arrived in the south. I’ve lost…all sense of who and what I am. A wild animal. Born to scent and hunt and feed. To air so cold it burns your lungs. To water so cold it’s black.
 

Born to live free.
 

And now?
 

Here with Lily, my alpha, my sister, the All Encompassing?
 

I should feel at home. But I don’t.
 

Outside the steel tank I hear a woman screaming a command.
 

Mia.
 

The tanker truck I’m imprisoned in shudders to a stop.
 

“Oh, all right, excellent,” the professor mutters. “An extraordinarily fascinating ritual is set to begin…”
 

“What?”

“It’s
genius
. Admah uses her captive black-blooded shifters to scent for more of their kind. Prevents ambush. And with every successful kill her men respect her more and more. Of course she’s packaged the event in a kind of new-age meets voodoo ritual ceremony to make her power seem mysterious to the men she leads. It’s tribal leadership 101. Power must appear unattainable and unique to you. Make living under your rule the only rational choice. Consider the European kings. They granted themselves divine right to rule. Literally became representations of god on earth.” Melchuk laughs. “Disobeying a king was not only treasonous. I was a mortal sin against your everlasting soul. Now
that’s
power.”
 

“Black blooded shifters?”

“The new species? The ones that have…animals inside? Some lucky geneticist will trace the gene, I’m sure. But until then…they do seem like living myth, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Every culture has them…or legends of them. Yours as well, young man, if I might be so bold. In fact the northern animist traditions are particularly rich with stories of half-human half-animal hybrids.”

“My culture?”

“You’re Inuit. Of Canadian origin, as opposed to Greenland or Russia. Am I wrong?”

“No.”

Professor Melchuk sniffs. “Accents and regional dialects are a hobby of mine.”

“You need to tell me some things,” I say in a way I hope gets my point across. “About what happened when I got here. Did you see anyone else with me? This is
very
important.”

The professor finally quiets. After a while he says, “I can tell it’s very important. To
you
, my boy. But the New World Order is a lot like the old in some ways. Information has value.”

“Value? Fine. How about I beat it from you?”

“You could. But you won’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure. Something in your voice. Violence…doesn’t come easily for you.”
 

“But it does come.”

“Yes,” the professor sighs. “It appears that’s the case for all of us.”

The way he says the last sentence makes me perk my ears. “You were moved to violence?”

“You’re important to Admah,” Melchuk says. “Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then neither do I. About anyone who may or may not have arrived with you.”

The growl, long and rumbling, escapes my throat before I have a chance to silence it.
 

Professor Melchuk draws a sharp, knowing breath.

Fuck. Sakes.

“Young man, I—”

The professor’s interrupted by a long, high-pitched shriek, so fear and pain-filled it sends a shiver down my spine.
 

“Yes,” the professor says, almost dreamily, “the tortured sound of another day done. Admah’s ceremony is brutal, I’ll admit. But brutality has a place in maintaining a social hierarchy. Brutality, simply put, can sometimes mean survival. Well then! What shall we drink to, young man? Our survival? Or perhaps…we should drink to
mythical
secrets
?”

I’m on my feet in an instant, hopping across the tanker, the chains wrapped around my ankles clanking, the sound echoing loud in the tight space.

The professor jerks his head up to face me. I see him, wide-eyed in the darkness, fat, weak, alone, afraid. His life means less than nothing. Men like him mean less than nothing. I wrap my heavy hands around his neck, meaning to murder him.
 

He knows my secret.
 

My life depends on his silence.
 

Pimniq’s life depends on his silence.

“Silence!” I hiss, my lips close to his ear. “Silence!”

The professor’s neck is flabby and soft. My fingers crush into his windpipe. Weak and flabby and soft. Shiori’s right: the Skins are nothing. Sacks of meat and blood. Filthy. Unclean. Corrupt. Look at how they’ve spoiled the earth. Polluted it. Created weapons to destroy every living thing.

The world’s better off without them.

The professor’s hands swat at me as I strangle him.
 

A bookworm’s hands. Soft and weak.
 

Fluttering like the wings of a dying bird.
 

“Silence,” I whisper. “Silence now, old man…”

The professor’s hands lower to his lap.
 

A soft, wheezing gurgle escapes his lips.
 

Not long now.
 

Not long and I’ll have his silence…

“Aargh!” I yell, tossing the professor against the tanker so hard I’m afraid I might’ve crushed his skull.
 

I collapse beside him, and when the professor begins gasping and choking my eyes fill with tears.
 

He’s right. Violence doesn’t suit me.
 

I’m the one who’s weak.

***

“If you tell me…I will help you…” Professor Melchuk says after a long while.
 

“No.”

“Then I will tell Admah what you are. You’ve heard your kind scream. You know what the orange powder is capable of.”

I say nothing.

“My proudest discovery. Potassium dichromate.”

The professor looks at me expectantly. I shake my head.

“No? Very well.
Salt
, my friend. Not simple table salt. An oxidizing agent. Common in cement. Gives construction workers a contact rash. And apparently it burns the new species quite horribly—”
 

The professor smacks his forehead, his eyes lighting up in the darkness. “She already knows what you are! Of course.
That’s
why you’re here in the tanker! Admah is a…of course. Yes! Why didn’t I see it? The gloves she uses when handling the powder. Oh, Melchuk! You silly old dupe! You thick-headed numbskull! And that’s only the most obvious clue. The nature of the burning ritual…it’s more than a ritual, isn’t it young man?
It has to be done?
To kill the ascendant species? Fascinating! Legends of revenants and changelings and superstitions about how to prevent them rising from the grave. Removing the heart. Decapitation. Burning. All based in a grain of truth, of course. All mashed together in the great grinding wheel of time, and we small, short-lived humans, we were never able to glimpse the entire truth! We’ve lived in the dark for so long. Until now!” Professor Melchuk’s voice drops to a whisper. “Why didn’t I…she is
truly
genius. If I believed in a higher power I’d pray she succeeds. The New World Order requires such a queen. Smart. Fearless. Ruthless.”

“You want Admah to succeed?”

“I’m right about that, aren’t I? About there not being a higher power? I mean, besides your kind? Because perhaps—”

“Do you want Admah to succeed?” I repeat, slow and very firm.
 

“Yes,” the professor answers in an adoring, paternal way that makes me believe him.
 

“Then stay silent! Anything else…and you sentence Admah to death.”

“I see.”

“You see nothing. You’re blind as a fucking bat. If Admah dies you die. We’re in this tanker instead of lying dead on the side of the road because we’re Admah’s
possessions
. She’s claimed us. We belong to her.”

“Bat’s aren’t literally blind, you kn—”

“Shut up.”

“They ‘see’ sound trails. Fascina—”

“Shut up! Or I swear to god I’ll rip your tongue out.”

The professor lifts his hand to his mouth as if checking to make sure his tongue is still inside. “Yes, young man. Murder…no. But tearing out a man’s tongue to save the ones you love? That I believe you would do.”

“My loved ones?”

“Three women and the child. It’s the child you care about most, am I wrong? Your…sister?”

“You saw them? When?” I ask, sitting cross-legged in front of Melchuk. The sounds of rumbling motorbike engines and men shouting at one another drift into the steel tanker from outside.
 

“Yes. I glimpsed your companions. When they lifted me from the tanker to empty my bowels. Last night.”

“Last night? How long have I…where did you…?”

“I believe you requested I stay silent.”

“You’re a smarmy little bastard, aren’t you?”

“I’m
precise
.”

“Speak when spoken to, then.”

“This interpersonal dynamic you and I have developed, it feels…rather antagonistic. Hostile, even. I wonder if we could…reformulate…the nature of our relationship based on shared ideals of respect and mutual cooperation?”