The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (45 page)

“Jackasses,” Trish mutters as she leans against a Harley beside Lily, her lip curling in a caustic sneer.

“There’s worse,” Lily says. “Remember the New World Order?”

Trish shudders. “Been trying to forget, girl.”

Trish studies her friend for a long while, then says, “Something the matter, hun? Besides the obvious? You want to talk alone? Just us girls?”

Lily shakes her head. Rubs her forearms. I’m thankful for the jean jacket. I can’t imagine what Trish would do if she saw the scars on Lily’s arms.
 

Trish and I haven’t spoken more than a few words since she and Lily emerged from the woods. She’s still pissed for what the douchebag Connor Lerrick said I did to Lily’s mother. That, and…oh, I guess she just doesn’t like me. I take a deep drag of my smoke and say, “The boys are blowing off steam, Trish. We came damn close to having our hearts ripped out of our chests. Case you didn’t notice.”

“Oh, I fucking
noticed
,” Trish says with a derisive laugh “So your crew celebrates like meathead frat boys on a spring break bender?”

“Nah. Frat boys can’t handle mixing booze and drugs.”

“Asshole.”

“To each his own, Trish. Haven’t you learned that? Live and let live? Oh no wait, your a fascist cop. It’s your
job
to stick your nose up other people’s asses. You think you’re entitled to tell everyone how to live.”

Trish crosses her arms and glowers at me.

“Hey,” I say, scanning the crew. “Where’s professor whats-his-hame?”

“Melchuk,” Trish says coldly.

“Yeah. Him.”

Trish nods to a blacked out SUV my crew stole from the New World Order. “He’s in the backseat.”

“Alive?”

“Barely. We got him painkillers and antibiotics. But the infection’s bad. At least he’s not in any pain.”

That’s more than I can say for us, I think, glancing at Lily.

There’s a thought hovering at the edge of my mind. Wanting to break free. But I’m forcing it down. Acting more and more like a Skin everyday. But this thought…keeping it out of my mind is the only way to stay sane, because somewhere in the Bloodless Land there’s an ugly dogfaced motherfucker leering at my unborn son—

Lily, who’s kept her eyes rooted on the ground for most of the conversation, suddenly cradles her belly and stares at me with fiery intensity. Like she’s in my fucking mind, and let me tell you…that’s gunna be a problem.
 

“What the crew could really use is some tight trim,” I say, needling Trish as a distraction to take my mind off heavier shit. “This sausage party’s gunna get old real quick.”

Trish rolls her eyes.

Damn, the bitch is easy to bait.

I watch as another fight breaks out among my MC. This time it takes both Blue and Nash to separate the assholes. Blue gets a claw across the cheek, just missing his eye.
 

I lift the M16 and blast off a few rounds, and when everyone’s looking I tell them the next Pureblood to throw a punch will be squaring off against the Prez.

They all cheer.
 

“See?” Trish says once my guys return to their drinks and drugs. “Jackasses. Aren’t you afraid of…I don’t know? Alerting those fucking Stricken monsters that we’re here?”

“They know we’re here,” Lily says.

“They do? Then how come—”

“Because the Fallen
wants
us here,” I say. “He practically lit a runway for us to follow by leaving that unburned track. Lily was right. She needs to be here for some reason we can’t see.”

“He’s winning, isn’t he?” Trish asks Lily, real quiet.

Lily doesn’t say a word.

I take a bottle of tequila off a prospect, slam half of it, then say, “We’re down but not out.”

Trish looks me square in the eyes and says in a perfectly flat, emotionless voice, “You’re a loser, Aaron. I knew it since I first saw you. Lil deserves better.”
 

Leave it alone, I tell myself.
 

The bitch is venting, just like my boys, but in her own catty, overly protective fascist cop way.
 

But like my MC I’m feeling the adrenaline buzz and thrum through my veins and I’m having a fuck of a time keeping my tongue in check, so I say, “You a little pent up, copper? Need a line or two? I hear Cuft has some uncut straight-up Bolivian—”

“Fuck you,” Trish says, flipping me the bird.
 

Which makes me laugh.

“Aaron, c’mon,” Lily says.

“C’mon, Aaron, c’mon, c’mon,” I mock in a whining, high-pitched bitch voice. “Be a good guy, Aaron. Be supportive. Be a fucking role model—”

“What a dick,” Trish mutters.

She’s right. I am being a dick.
 

And it feels great.

“That’s not what I’m asking for,” Lily says. “Just leave her alone is all.”

I flick my smoke to the curb, grind it out with my heel, then say, “Y’know, Trish, you might be the only Skin left alive on the West Coast.”

Lily fires me a shut-the-fuck up glare.

Trish looks horrified, then her eyes narrow as she realizes I’m fucking with her. She ignores me, looks at Lily and says, “I can’t imagine what you see in this redneck idiot.”

“Sure you can,” Lily says, nodding as Nash strolls up.

“Spent some time in there once,” Nash says, taking a long hit off the joint Tate passes him and completely oblivious to the tension between me and Trish.

“Oh yeah?” Trish says. “For what?”

Nash sucks his breath in tight to hold the dope-smoke, then says, “You know. The usual. Not towing the line. Not buying their freedom-hating bullshit.”

“Yeah,” Tate says. “Fuck the Man.”

“Exactly,” I say, loosing a rolling pale-blue cloud toward Trish. “Fuck
her
long and hard.” Then I smack Nash on the shoulder. “You’re all better now, right bro? All sorted out? Ready to take your place as a productive upstanding citizen of this fine nation?”

Nash flashes me a wicked grin, lays a rail along someone’s Harley seat and sucks it up, then says, “Oh yeah. I’m
all
sorted out.”

“He’s sane,” Blue says in his booming baritone. “Or maybe…sane-ish.”

“Sane-ish!” Nash barks. Then he raises his hands at the brightening morning sky and screams, “Sane-ish, motherfuckers! So come and get me!”

“Sane-ish is more than enough for this crew,” I say, laughing while Nash passes me the joint.

Trish glares at me.

It’s my turn to flip her the bird.

Fucking Skin chick. Truth is I can’t believe she’s lasted this long.

I’m about to gather up the crew and announce we’re heading into the nuthouse when Tate’s face goes all weird and he points at the complex and stammers, “You guys? Hey! Guys? You see that? Something in there—”

***

I’m half expecting a Stricken army to tear out of the psych complex. At first I don’t see anything, and I’m about to tell Tate to lay off the dope. Then a flicker of motion in a window on the second story draws my attention.
 

It’s a child. A young boy.
 

Glaring down at us.
 

“Yup,” Nash says, rubbing his nose and stepping closer to Trish like he’s keen to play the hero. “Ghost. Bet lots of horrible shit went down behind those walls.”

Blue chuckles. “You still afraid of ghosts, Tate?”

“Don’t believe in ghosts,” Tate says. “But yeah. If I
did
believe—”

“Quiet,” I snap, still watching the boy.

I don’t think it’s a ghost.

“Could be a kid or a whole family hiding in there after shit went down,” I say, not really believing it.
 

The boy has black hair and skin so pale it nearly glows. He’s maybe…nine or ten? He’s standing in the window, but a little ways back, so he’s partially shrouded in darkness and I can’t really see his face. But he looks…familiar. Something about his chin. And the way he’s staring out the window at us…
 

It’s fucking strange. I sure as shit don’t spook easily. But something about how that kid’s staring…it makes the hair rise on my neck and my wolf snarl.

“You want me to shoot him, Prez?” Nash asks. “I can get a bead on him from here. How ‘bout you let me shoot him?”

“No. Let’s wait—”

We don’t have to wait long.

 
A few seconds later a screeching cawing sound descends from the sky. A massive black cloud of carrion birds is moving over the still-smoking hills and toward the complex.

Nash begins barking and spitting and pacing in a frenzied half circle while he screams obscenities at the carrion flock.

So maybe Trish is right.
 

Nashy
does
need to lay off the blow—

“C’mon, you chickenshit asshole,” Blue growls at the vultures. “C’mon and join the party.”

I keep my eyes on the horizon. The vultures just keep on coming, so many they blot out the light to the east. My wolf howls and scratches at his cage, and the boys in my MC turn their attention to me and wait for my command.
 

“We’re exposed out here,” Blue says, flashing me a look of concern.

“I hear you, brother,” I say, real quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Lily whispers.
 

She hasn’t taken her eyes off the boy in the window. She’s kneading her hands together and her face is blank and she keeps whispering something over and over.

She looks fucked up, in other words.

Like maybe she could use a pink padded cell for a year or ten.
 

“Lil?” I ask. “You all right?”

No answer.
 

I take another long swig of tequila and watch my bloodmate.
 

There’s something she’s not telling me—

“Give me that,” Trish says, eyeing my tequila.

Nash chuckles and I hand Trish the bottle and watch her drain it.
 

The cawing and screeching grows so loud it’s painful.
 

The forest begins on the other side of the parking lot. It’s dense enough to keep the fuckers from swooping on us. I scream a command at my MC and in a heartbeat everyone’s on the move, snatching artillery from their bikes and sprinting for the forest.
 

I’m running beside Lily, maybe ten yards away from the woods when the cawing sound becomes so loud it shakes the ground and a shadow darkens the land and I look up.
 

The black flock is directly overhead, maybe a couple hundred feet in the air. A million or more hideous hook-beaked carrion birds. Their wings flapping and whooshing a chill wind down on us.
 

The vultures spin and dive and swoop in their black cloud, and as I fling myself under the cover of the woods the bird flock begins descending, a giant blood hungry mass—
 

They’ve spotted us.
 

They’re huge birds, with mottled pinkish-red skin hanging loose on their bald heads and even from down here their hooked beaks gleam in the waning light.
 

The air cools as the carrion flock approaches and their shadow thickens.
 

“That has to be—” Blue says.

“Yeah. It’s the Fallen,” I say, scenting the air. “Or it’s
of
him.”

A thin layer of frost crusts the ground beneath my feet.

The vultures come in low over the forest, their wings whooshing, sending blasts of frigid air onto us. My M16 cools, begins to frost over, and soon its so cold it burns my hands.

“What in all fuck?” Nash says, his eyes glued on the black cloud, his breath visible in the freezing air.

“I’m sorry,” Lily says, leaning against a tree and closing her eyes.

“Lil?” Trish says. “What’s happening? What
are
these things? What are you sorry about?” Trish steps to her friend, grabs Lily by the shoulders and begins shaking her. “What the fuck’s happening, Lil? Tell me! What are you sorry about? Huh? Tell me!”

Damn. Shit’s even getting to Trish. I nod at Nash and he steps over and pulls Trish off Lily and tells her to back off, that it’s gunna be okay, and when Trish looks at him I know she knows he’s lying but it’s all right, everyone needs to be lied to now and then.
 

Life would be unlivable if there was only truth.
 

“Steady now,” I say as a few of my crew begin summoning their animals. “Wait for my word.”

The leading edge of the flock passes over us, then drops toward the mental hospital. The grass in the field between us and the parking lot freezes an icy blue-black as the birds pass. I’m looking into the flock, squinting against the cold.

It takes minutes for the flock to pass overhead, and during that time there’s only a cold that burns my skin and a chill, unnatural wind and the sound of a wings fluttering and that horrible high-pitched screeching that sends my wolf howling and thrashing.

“Wait for my word to fire,” I scream at my MC.
 

My boys are getting twitchy; their animals driven mad by the reek of Stricken blood—
 

A few vultures come in low, darting through the trees, their eyes bright in the shadows. I roar, leap up and snatch one by the neck.
 

Bad move. The thing’s fucking freezing. Bitter cold spreads from my claws to my fingers, through my hands and into my arms.

The cold’s aiming for my chest. My heart.

The vulture caws and tries to gut me with its razor-sharp talons, then we crash through the trees and my claws dig deep into the fucker’s flesh as I bite its throat, loosing a torrent of chill black blood while we plummet to the forest floor, and when we land I wrench the bird’s neck to the side and snap its spine, then hurl the unmoving corpse on the ground for my MC to feed on.

My arms are burning with cold.

“Never took you for a birddog, Prez,” Blue laughs.
 

“Least they die,” Nash says, eyeing the black cloud.
 

I nod, but don’t bother stating the obvious: there’s a million or more of the ugly motherfuckers, and if they’re commanded to attack—
 

“He’s still there,” Tate whispers.

I don’t have to ask who.