The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (31 page)

I swallow hard.

My vision’s fading in and out, but I think I see Trish crashing through the woods behind Mia.

“I’ll go and bring Mr. Cute-But-Dumb back,” Mia says, her body transforming into giant snake. “The bear will listen to me.”
 

“Why?” I ask.

“Because I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.”

R
ATA
LEADS
ME
through pitch black sewers and down steeply sloped tunnels and under low gated storm drains until I’m shaking with exhaustion. Every time I slow and lean my shoulder into the wall to rest I’m rewarded with a sharp pain as Rata stabs me with a crude metal-tipped spear.

I bite my tongue to silence my screams and beg the Night Stalker to join me. The thought of feeding on these Skins and exacting bloody vengeance against the whore Tamara and the filthy traitor Carlos Collazo are the only things that make this wretched life worth living.
 

This hatred will sustain me.

I’m thankful for it.

I remember what I once was: my beautiful fangs and claws, my shifting Night Smoke, how I never tired, how I healed from wounds.
 

O Lord of Near and Nigh I have forsaken you. Angered you. You who raised me up above this stillborn world, placed me on your reed mat. Take me into your strong embrace, O Lord, that I may rule in your proud name—
 

Tears slip down my cheeks.
 

I try and pray.
 

O Night Lord O Night Stalker O Night Wind—

But my prayer falters and fades.
 

There is no lord.
 

Most of the time I can’t see a thing, but now we pass under a storm grate and reddish light filters down from above and I cast a quick backward glance toward my captors. Rata is tall and lean, with taut, tightly-stretched muscles, a narrow, bony head that’s shaved bald, wide dark eyes and the pinched look of someone who feeds on cruelty. He’s naked except for a simple black loincloth. His body is caked in filth. Rata’s ears and eyelids and lips are pierced with soot-colored metal rods and disks. The disks stretch his already tight skin, making him appear skeletal—

“What the fuck you looking at, Princess?” Rata says as he stabs me in the calf. I wince and lower my gaze. Rata is skilled with the spear. He knows exactly how hard to thrust to break skin, to hurt but not cripple.

He never misses.

“Quiet,” Luz says.
 

Luz is smaller than Rata but equally thin. Her head is also shaved bald, and she’s wearing similar rods and hooks pierced through her skin. She has fine, even beautiful features hardened by the piercings. She’s naked except for a loincloth, and she’s wearing a necklace of threaded teeth. The teeth look like animal canines and incisors. Luz catches me staring at her necklace and says, “You miss having teeth like these?” She lifts the necklace between her long, narrow fingers. “Made sure the demons were still living when I plucked ‘em out. Seems to pain them an awful lot.”

Moco follows along behind the rest, carrying a sling of dead rats. He’s soft and pudgy and quick-eyed. A coward. But cunning. Moco has no metal rods or disks threaded through his flesh.
 

All three of my captors move without sound, and when we stop to listen and they press close to the sewer walls they nearly disappear. I wonder what they scent like? Are they able to blend into the sewer stench, vanish to the nose as well as eye?

We cross countless junctions in the sewers beneath Mexico City. Rata leads us by stabbing me in the back and whispering a direction. Left. Right. Left. Left. He never hesitates.

After a while we come to a spot where the sewer narrows so tight I have to turn sideways to slip through. Rata tells me to stop, then brushes past and disappears into darkness. I hear him scraping along the tunnel walls. Luz says, “Do exactly as I say,” then grips my bound wrists and thrusts me into the tunnel.
 

My heart pounds. Sweat pours down my forehead. I can’t stand this narrow space. The walls are too tight to permit me draw a full breath. I feel their weight closing in on me, imagine them collapsing, trapping me in a tomb of rock, me scratching at the stones until my fingers bleed, dying of starvation or madness—

“Stop,” Luz whispers in my ear.
 

I obey.

“You don’t like it? The tight walls? Not being able to move?”

I shake my head no. “Please?” I whisper. “Can we keep going?”

“
La Mugre
love the narrow pathways. They keep us alive. Prevent many of your kind from pursuing us.”

I think about my animal. The Spotted Stalker. Would he venture through these foul, reeking tunnels? No.

“There are others,” I say, still trying to give Luz a reason to keep me alive. “Rats and reptiles who are born of the sewers.”

A soft rattling sound. Luz is stroking her necklace. “We have ways to deal with them as well.”

I nod and say nothing.

“Can you see?” Luz asks.

I shake my head no.

Luz sighs. “All right, Princess. You need to be very careful here. Understand? You need to do exactly what I say. Yes?”

“Yes.” Press my forehead to the cold, slick stone.

“Good. Now. Take three steps forward, then lean into the left wall and take three more. Understand? Do not touch the right wall!”

“If I do?”

Luz stabs me in the ribs. “You get a hundred of these spears straight the fuck through your miserable demon carcass.”

“A trap.”

“I told you we have ways.”

“I’m not as thin as you. It might be impossible.”

“No harm then. To me.” I hear the careless shrug in Luz’s voice, then she commands me forward.

I take a deep breath. My head pounds. I exhale, trying to narrow my chest until I’m only touching one side of the tunnel. It doesn’t work.
 

“Do it!” Luz hisses.

I shuffle forward. One step, then two. On the third step I hesitate. I need to turn around. To run. I need to breathe fresh air. To see the sky—

“What the fuck’s he waiting for?” Rata says from up ahead. “Told you we should have killed him. He’s taking too long. We’re close to the surface. The animals might smell us—”

“Silence, moron!” Luz says in a vicious voice.
 

O Night Lord—

I can’t see. Can’t scent. There’s only these grim walls pressing into me. Driving the air from my lungs. “I can’t—”

Luz stabs me hard in the thigh. The pain gathers and reddens behind my eyes. I swallow a shriek and press to the left wall and fling myself forward. I take two sideways steps, face and chest grinding along the left wall, my hands behind my back. I’m almost through, and being so near makes me relax and draw a breath and in that instant my index finger brushes against the right wall, very gently, and I can’t help it, I panic and throw myself forward, expecting the spears to spring from the wall and impale me, and then I land in a heap at Rata’s feet.

“Help me,” I plead.

“Shut up, Princess,” Rata says.
 

“Gag him,” Luz orders as she slips through the corridor.

“No please…”

“Quiet!” Luz says.

Rata grips my head while Moco stuffs a bundle of cloth in my mouth, then wraps a rope around my head to secure the cloth. The gag is so tight I can only breathe through my nose. I’m going to suffocate—

“Can I cut the Princess,” Rata asks, “because he went too slow?”

“No,” Luz says. “Not yet.”

I moan, shake my head.
 

A long moment where the only sounds are the sewer water running through the tunnel and my labored breathing.

“When?” Rata asks, clearly growing impatient.
 

“Not until we get to the Hole.”

The Hole.
La Mugre’s
lair.
 

I can’t permit the Skins to take me there. I have to escape—

“Shh,” Luz says, an unusual tone in her voice. “You hear that?”
 

She sounds…not afraid. But uncertain.
 

“Didn’t hear nothing,” Moco says.

“That’s because you’re not a Scavenger,” Rata says disdainfully.

Luz lifts her finger for silence, then says, “Time to hunt. Lets go.”

Moco balks. “I can’t do it, Luz. Please? We have the Princess already. And the rats! We have the rats. The Mothers will be pleased—”

“For the love of darkness, Moco, shut your sniveling mouth,” Luz says. “Just hearing you makes me feel like a chickenshit. Now lets
go
.”

We take several more quick turns. Soon the blackness lightens. There’s a halo of light up ahead. We’re close to the surface. If I’m going to escape this will be my only chance—

Moco’s blubbering, whispering in Luz’s ear, trying to convince her of something.

Luz sends Rata to inspect the sewer grill leading to Mexico City’s streets. Rata returns and says, “Nothing out now. But I hear them. Not far off.”

“Moco?” Luz says.

Moco shakes his head.

“Put the jacket and tether on, Moco.”

Moco’s soft, weak-looking face goes white. “I can’t, Luz. Not again. Please? We don’t have to—”

Luz points her spear at Moco’s throat. “You
do
have to.”

Moco swallows hard, then reaches inside a burlap sack and retrieves a jacket sewn with hundreds of bells and odd scraps of metal. The jacket tinkles softly as Moco puts it on. Then he retrieves a coiled rope. There’s a metal cuff on one end of the rope. Moco attaches the cuff to his ankle, then hands the rope to Luz.

“I am
La Mugre
,” Luz says as she ties her end of the rope to a steel pipe.

“I am
La Mugre
,” Moco stammers.
 

Luz tells me to sit against the wall, then binds my ankles. “You make one move and I’ll have Rata open you, understand?”

Then she does something very strange.
 

She leans close to my ear, whispers, “Take me with you,” then kicks a sharp stone toward my feet.

Bells rattle and tinkle as Moco makes his way to the sewer grate.

The knots Rata tied around my wrists are tight.
 

But the sharp stone is close.
 

If I could get it under the rope binding my wrists—

“Now, Moco!” Luz yells as she and Rata move into position in the darkness beside the sewer grate.

Moco takes a long look at his companions, then slips through the grate and into the city streets. A few seconds later I hear him wailing and shouting and singing at the top of his lungs, and when I look out I see him hopping and leaping and dancing through the city streets, making as much noise as possible—

He’s trying to attract the Stricken.

Draw them in.

Rata and Luz are poised in the darkness, spears ready.

I don’t have much time.

I kick at the sharp stone to draw it close.
 

Miss. Try again.

On my fourth kick the stone lands close enough for me to cover it with my bare feet and pull it under me. I shuffle around until the stone’s behind my back.

“Don’t you fucking move, Princess!” Rata shrieks from down the corridor.

I rub the rope binding my wrists across the sharp stone.

The stone flips over. I right it, try and find the sharp edge.
 

I’m breathing hard. Force myself to slow down.

Moco’s screaming and dancing, the bells on his jacket tinkling and I know it won’t be long before something hears him—

A strand of rope cuts through.
 

Hope soars through me.
 

I begin rubbing my wrists against the stone more quickly.

Suddenly there’s a long, guttural roar.

Out on the street, Moco freezes.
 

“Moco run!” Luz shouts. “You have to run—”

Rata laughs and screams and cheers.

Another section of rope looses, then a third, and now there’s only a few more. I look up, suddenly uncertain about what Luz whispered, fearing I’ll find her spear hovering at my neck.
 

I look up and see pudgy, filthy little Moco running for his life.

He’s leaping through the garbage and broken pavement and corpses littering the street. The bell jacket jangles madly. His face is twisted in terror.

Because there, on the other side of the street, two lizard-like Stricken are racing at him.

“We got two demon fuckers!” Rata shrieks.

The last rope holding my wrists gives way.
 

I stifle a triumphant scream

Lift the sharp rock to my ankles. The bindings Luz tied are much weaker, and in seconds I’m free.

Moco’s twenty paces from the entrance to the sewers.
 

He’s not going to make it.

Luz and Rata have gone silent.
 

I stand, holding the sharpened stone in my right hand. Something surges in me, some force, a will to live I never thought I’d know again. I could run back into the stench and darkness of the sewer. But that’s
La Mugre’s
home. My animal craves light. Air. The jungle.
 

So instead I start running toward street level, the rock held high.

One of the lizard Stricken pounces on Moco’s back. Its green-blue scales glitter as it sinks its fangs into Moco’s neck and then the two are falling—

I’m sprinting down the corridor.

Rata and Luz’s attention is focused on Moco and the Stricken.

I’m trying to stay quiet, hoping to cave Rata’s skull before he knows I’m there.

Outside, the lizard Stricken has dragged Moco to the ground. It’s pressing its long, curling black claws into Moco’s chest—

I’m twenty paces away when Rata, hearing or sensing something, whirls to face me. I see the emotion flicker across his face, each lasting only an instant. Incomprehension. Shock. Anger.

Rata’s quick with the spear.