The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (4 page)

***

You don’t leave a hospital during the end of the world without stocking up on medical supplies—particularly painkillers—and that’s what we do. As soon as we emerge from the basement I realize it’s been a rough three days on earth. No sounds of a normal functioning hospital greet me as I step through a set of heavy steel doors: no nurses hurrying patients or doctors bullshitting about their golf swing or squeaking gurney wheels or low mechanical hums from ventilators.
 

Just…silence. Cold, empty, ageless silence.
 

I bury my nose in the crook of my elbow to block out the harsh smells of chemical fire, dried blood, soot and spray paint. Off in the distance, on another floor or maybe just locked in a nearby room, someone’s screaming. My eyesight’s returning, but slowly.

“Ransacked,” I say to Trish.

“More than once,” she says, her voice hard.
 

“How bad do you think it is? The violence? Local to downtown? Or…everywhere?”

“We’ll know more when we get outside.”

A door latch clicks. Faster than a cowgirl cattle hustler Trish has her Glock out and is screaming at someone to get on the fucking floor.

Apparently whoever it is listens, because there’s no gunfire, and I scent the guy: he’s late thirties, unwashed, skin dripping with cold sweat that tells me he’s very ill and very addicted, and from the sound of his thin, ragged breathing I know he’s well into the misery of withdrawal.
 

“We won’t find anything useful here,” I say loud enough so the whole group can hear. “The hospital’s been looted top to bottom by now.”

“I found some stuff,” Pimniq says quietly.

“What?” Anik says, clearly surprised. “When?”

“When you were sleeping,” Pimniq says with a mix of shyness and pride. “I couldn’t sleep so I…went out…looked around…”

“You called your animal spirit?” Anik asks.
 

For some reason he sounds upset.

“I’ve been calling her for years, you know,” Pimniq says while Trish squeezes my arm and guides me a few cautious steps forward. “I’m not afraid of her. Not like
you
.”

There’s a brief but pointed silence, then Anik says, “What did you find?”

“Please miss?” the junkie whispers.
 

I hear something being unwrapped and opened, then Pimniq says, “All this.”

Connor whistles. “Yup, that should do it. Enough to knock a horse flat.”
 

“Please miss? Please miss?” the junkie begins chanting. He sounds insane. His voice grates on my nerves. “Please miss a bit of sharing for me? Share for me? Please miss?”

Then I know. It’s his weakness that makes my stomach twist. His need. He’s pathetic. A loser. A wretched Skin. Killing him would be an act of mercy—

I freeze. Trish tenses beside me.
 

It’s my animal. She despises the junkie. She wants him dead. Silenced.

“Make him be quiet,” I whisper to Trish. “Right now.”

“Stay down and shut the fuck up,” Trish screams, tugging me to the left and leaning me against the wall. I hate not being able to see…relying on Trish to be my eyes.
 

“Hey rich boy, don’t you have a helicopter waiting to swoop us up from the roof?” Trish says.
 

“Oh yeah,” Connor sneers. “Thanks for reminding me! Give me a second, and I’ll summon my personal army—”

“Asshole,” Trish mutters.

“Please miss please miss please miss…” the junkie keeps chanting.

You fucking weakling,
I think, unable to stop myself.
You pathetic waste.
 

My animal’s stalking toward the surface. My claws and fangs lengthen. And then…shapes emerge from the darkness. It’s her. She’s banishing my blindness, healing me, and then the urge to free her becomes almost unbearable, I remember her immense power, her strength—

“Hey! I said shut—” Trish begins, but I squeeze her arm to quiet her, kneel down and say in the direction of the junkie, “Have you been outside the hospital recently?”

“Please miss…”

“Give him something, Connor,” I say.
 

“What?”

“I said give him something!”

“Christ. Okay. Just a second…”

Then to the junkie: “What did you see? What’s out there?”

I hear a cardboard box being torn open and a bottle of pills rattling. The junkie’s panicked breathing quiets while he swallows the pills Connor hands him, then he says: “Streets on fire. Ocean swollen up. People and…and…other things…running around burning and killing like crazy. Killing and burning and…and…taking what they wish.”

“The cops?” Trish asks.

The junkie laughs. “Cops is cooked. Done and gone. Like what they said all along. Every man for him fucking self.”

Heavy booted steps pound along the corridor on the floor above us.
 

Three or four pairs. Moving fast.

It’s the Stricken. They’ve scented us. My animal screeches, tears at me, drawing nearer, and suddenly I’m looking into the lined, gaunt face of a very ill man. His eyes bulge out of his head. He’s balding, and what little hair remains is clustered into a sharp widow’s peak.

I can see. She healed me.

The junkie must see my animal rippling beneath my skin, because his mouth opens and he begins mumbling in terror, and I put my finger to my lips and shush him quiet, then say: “Tell me what you saw outside. Tell me exactly what you saw.”
 

The junkie trembles and twitches and nods, then says in a wheezing voice: “I seen ‘em. I seen ‘em devils and nightmares and I knew I shoulda believed in God all along because I seen ‘em murdering and eatin’ on human flesh and please miss I need some please can I have some don’t leave me you strong you people I know it I can help I can help name’s Moth ha ha really it’s Wes but everyone calls me Moth I can help if you take me—”

“Moth?” Connor says sharply. “I don’t scent you. You’re not—”

“A moth?” The junkie grins. “Nope. Just regular shitbag addict. That’s all I ever was and will be. But I know
why
you ask. I seen them things…they change. Used to love reading about them in detox. Were’s and shifters and all that. But now…now…”

“It doesn’t seem like so much fun?” Connor says.

Moth frowns. “No. I guess not. Not after what I saw—”
 

“We’re not taking you,” Trish says. “Not a chance.”

“No,” Wes says. “Don’t guess I’d take me either on first glance. But I
know
things. I can help you.”

“How can you help us, Wes?” I ask.

Wes’s breath catches in his throat. He reaches up with two bony hands and grips my shoulder like he’s drowning. “You call me Wes not Moth for real if I help you? Will you?”

“What?”
 

“Wes? Call me Wes. Please?”

“Of course. But how—”

“Lily lets fucking go,” Trish says, tapping her boot impatiently. I look at my best friend. Man do I love her, and man am I thankful I can
see
her. And she’s right, so I firm my lips and say, “We’re leaving now, Wes. I’m sorry.”

Wes shakes his head no, like he refuses to believe we’d just leave him to die.
 

Believing lies is easy. The truth never is.
 

Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to love the wrong person.
 

“I hate the name Moth,” Wes says without letting go of my shoulder, his words tumbling out of his mouth in a breathless, unbroken stream. “Friend gave it to me when I was a kid. Fucking thing stuck all these years. He was high…on acid musta’ been, it was late, we were beneath a bridge, and he looked at me and I was all pale and junked-out, like this one looks,” Wes points to Shiori, then continues, “and anyway he said I look like a moth, y’know, one of those white dusty ones you find in the back of the closet—”
 

“He’s a tweaker, Lil,” Trish says. “Can’t help for shit. He’ll only slow us down. Steal from us.”

It’s true. And I don’t like how he’s gripping my shoulder. In fact I don’t like anything about him. But the thought of abandoning him—

“I
know
things,” Wes says in the super-solemn way of a person who feels indignant about never being listened to. “Things the miss needs to know. I swear. Things could help you—”

“Wes?” I say very slowly. “You’re going to let go of my shoulder. Understand?”

Wes startles like he’d forgotten he’s holding me, then snatches his hands back and mumbles an apology.
 

“Not like we can move fast anyway,” I say to Trish. “I can barely walk.”

“But you can
see
,” Connor notices. “She healed you.”
 

I nod.
 

Connor looks at the floor. What’s eating at him? Is he sulking because he was wrong about his father being the Fallen? I don’t think so. It’s more than that. More than shame and embarrassment and grief at losing Star. Sometimes I catch Connor looking at me sidelong…like he’s calculating something. Trying to make a decision. Weighing his options. A tingle settles at the base of my spine. I don’t trust him. I never have. He only has two options that I can see: follow my lead or turn tail and join the Fallen—

There’s another long scream, then abrupt silence, then more boots thudding down the stairwell.

Mr. Connor Lerrick’s loyalty will have to wait. For now.
 

“Lil?” Trish flashes me a frustrated glare, takes a few steps down the corridor.
 

Now that I can see the ruined hospital I’m even more afraid. Blood’s splattered across the walls. Pools of it leak from under splintered doors. Garbage and half consumed corpses are strewn down the hall. No way I’m leaving anyone behind to face dying like this alone.
 

“Get up, Wes,” I say. “Quickly.”
 

Wes nods and scrambles to his feet. He’s actually quite tall. Rail-thin and tall, like a medieval torturer stretched him on the rack. “Act of kindness, miss,” he says in an obsequious way that makes my skin crawl.
 

The hurried boot steps are approaching our floor. My hands begin trembling. My skin feels hot and sticky and there’s a foul taste at the back of my throat, like aluminum and ash, and I feel her rage and hunger and blood-lust. She’s being awakened by my fear and the—

“Scent,” Anik says, sniffing. “You smell that?”

“Wasn’t me,” Wes says.
 

“Uh-huh,” Pimniq says, almost sadly. “They’re coming.”

“And they’re
strong
,” Shiori whispers, a slight buzzing sound in her soft, ghostly voice.

“Lil?” Trish asks again.
 

 
I pause. Listen. Three or four of them. Stricken. And if we smell them that means they smell us. I’m far too weak to fight them, and I know the rest of my pack, except maybe Shiori and Pimniq, are as well.
 

“We gotta bounce,” Wes says, his voice tight with fear. “Follow me, miss. Right now. C’mon yeah? Follow me!”

Trish shakes her head. “We’re not following you fucking no—”

There’s an odd cracking popping sound, and suddenly I’m shivering from cold. The floor beneath me ices over and the soles of my bare feet go numb.
 

My breath becomes visible in the suddenly chill air.
 

Wes turns to flee down the corridor.
 

Trish aims her Glock at him and says, “You don’t move unless we do.”
 

“Take a bullet over what’s coming any day,” Wes says, panic lifting his voice into a high squeal. “You go on and shoot me. Please! But save a bullet for yourself, pretty police woman. You gunna need it.”

I
MOVE
BETWEEN
my sister and the stairwell where the boot steps are thumping down toward us as the hospital room frosts over and the gaunt, sketchy druggie-looking guy Lily’s talking to hops to his feet and disappears through another door down and to the right.
 

Pimniq and I don’t feel the cold, but I see the others suffering from it. Shiori in particular—her skin’s even whiter than normal and her lips are blue like they were when we were stranded in the boreal forest.
 

I have no idea what’s thumping down the stairwell, but I know I don’t want to find out.

Gripping Pim’s hand, I race after the druggy guy before Lily has a chance to stop me. When I step through the door I see him sprinting across a room full of beakers and microscopes and low steel tables—some kind of medical research lab, probably—then through another door on the opposite side. Guy moves quick for a junkie. Pim’s having trouble keeping up, skipping her little legs along, me half-dragging half-carrying her.
 

If my hunting spirit was with me I wouldn’t bother running. There’s enough anger in me after what the Stricken and their cult followers did to my little sister…well, lets just say for once I’d relish the opportunity to free the killer.

 
But he’s gone. Not chained.
 

Just…missing.
 

Maybe it was my being murdered in this land and banished to the Land Above the Stars that sent him away. Maybe it’s simply my being in the south, so far from home, in this desolate, razed wasteland, a land without wildness or truth. Either way there’s an emptiness in me larger than the winter ocean at night, larger even than my love for Pimniq.
 

Lily and Trish scream at us to wait.
 

I press forward without knowing why.
 

Driven by blind fear, I guess.
 

Like a Skin.
 

The junkie could be leading us anywhere. Right to them.
 

A vicious blast of cold air slams into my back as Pim and I reach the other side of the lab. The cold burns into my skin and I turn to see Trish and Lily, arm in arm, stagger and collapse in a heap. Connor’s there as well, struggling to pull the women to their feet, a man I’ve vowed to murder when he’s no longer useful. The sight of him touching Lily, my sister and alpha packmate, makes me crave blood—