The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (6 page)

The water hits Lily’s superheated skin and evaporates into a thick cloud of mist that floats to the ceiling. Sedna shrieks at me from within the cloud, calling my name, calling me home, but the heat from Lily’s skin quickly dries the air and suddenly the water is gone and the room is dead quiet except for Pim’s panicked, too-fast breathing.

Someone whistles, long and sharp, and for a moment I think it’s Connor being a smart-ass, but then I turn to the far door and see Wes standing there, wide-eyed, staring at Lily’s naked body.
 

“That’s it!” Wes says, his eyes blazing bright from whatever pills he’s popped. “I was right about you bunch. I
knew
you was strong! And damn fine, if I—”

“Shut the fuck up, Moth,” Trish says.
 

Wes clamps his hand over his mouth, then looks straight at Lily and says, “What’s it gunna be, boss? Water or land?”

“What?” Connor says while Trish wraps a pale blue lab coat around Lily.

“Water or land? You want out ‘a here, I know that. And I
know
you don’t want to be on the streets. I can get you out of the city. Told you I know things. Now. Which way you want to go?”

“I’ve had enough of water,” Trish says.

“Me too,” I say, rising to a stand and helping Pim to her feet.
 

Shiori’s returned to standing in a shadowed corner, staring at me, her eyes wide and pure black, her skin glowing slightly red in the hospital’s emergency lights, and for a moment I want to run to her, sweep her into my arms and kiss her and tell her how much she means to me, tell her that I…but instead I simply give her a nod.
 

She ignores me, leans against the wall, studies her fingernails.

“Land,” Lily says, her voice weak. “North.”

“North to where?” Wes asks.
 

“Why should we trust you?” Connor says.

“Why should we trust
anyone
?” Trish says, casting Connor a vicious glare.
 

I smile.
 

Lily’s friend is quick-tempered and blunt, but I’m beginning to like her.

Wes shrugs, motions at the backpack Pim’s holding and says, “Because you have the drugs. And where they go I go.”

T
HE
BERSERK
BOBCAT
whirls to face me, its hackles high, claws digging into the rocky dirt.
 

“C’mere, pretty kitty,” I say, raising the rock in my hand. “C’mere and let me brain you. You’re skinny…but I’m fucking starving.”

The cat paces to the side, glances at the hole it was scratching at, then up at me.
 

I lower my gaze for an instant, faster than a blink—just to check the ground between us for shit I might trip over when it charges—and in that moment the cat vanishes.
 

“Fuck,” I whisper, every nerve buzzing. I scan the sandy riverbed behind me. Nothing. The steeply banked ravine walls. No sign of the cat. Plenty of places even a large cat like that could hide, though. Behind clumps of juniper and sage. In a depression in the earth, invisible until I’m only a step or two away.

“Fuck sakes.”

I reach inside for my animal. Rattle his cage a bit. He’s there, but he’s not answering. He feels…weak. Distant. Then I remember the Senator. Fat Gladys. The beetle-bitch that killed my brother. How strong she was. How she mentioned the Purebloods will grow weaker as the First Fallen rises.

My stomach twists in a painful knot.

The bobcat doesn’t scent like a black-blooded Stricken. But who knows? Maybe I can’t scent anymore. Or maybe now their scent has changed like everything else.
 

I realize I’m naked, soaked in cold sweat and shivering.

The higher you go the further you fall.
 

And I’m getting the feeling I’ve barely begun falling—

The cabin’s up ahead. Through the shadowed aspen grove. That’s where the cat is. Smart motherfucker. It knows I’ll head for the cabin. It’s lying in wait, like I was for those panicked deer on the ridge.
 

“Figures,” I say out loud to my wolf. “You’ve fucked with me my entire life, and now when I really need you, you’re gone.”

I could turn around and retrace my steps.
 

But I’m curious about what’s in that cabin. And besides…it’s only a fucking bobcat.
 

Thing’s probably as scared of me as I am of it.
 

I take a few steps up the riverbed, then onto the side of the dirt track. The pit the cat was digging is only a few yards away.
 

I wipe my sweaty palm on my thigh and grip the rock tighter.

The hole’s maybe four feet wide. The freshly dug dirt is cool and soft and silty under my bare feet. A warm wind picks up, whistles through the riverbed, collects dried leaves and tumbleweed into a brief whirlwind against the side of the ravine.
 

The leaves sound like old bones clicking together. Or a death rattle.
 

I’m close enough to peer into the hole when a loud, high-pitched screech descends down the ravine from the rim above. I turn and look.
 

My blood freezes.

I’m fucked.

There, perched on the edge of the ravine, backlit by the crimson moon, her long, knotted hair glowing blood red, is a tall, bone-thin old woman with bright blue eyes. She’s on her knees, waving her fists, shrieking down at me, and the sound is so awful and tortured it makes my mouth go dry.
 

The hag lifts her hands into the night sky like she’s calling something down. Her fingers are twice as long as normal and end in vicious curling claws.

My wolf’s not with me. I’m alone. With that…thing.

I understand why he fled. This is
her
territory.
 

Her power’s strongest here. She sent him running.
 

I risk a glance into the pit.

The old hag howls, scoops up a handful of sand and stones and showers it down on me. Then she leaps to her feet and sprints along the edge of the ravine, screeching and howling and snarling. Running forward and back. Her movements wild and frantic. Flinging anything she can get her hands on. She’s furious. I’ve interrupted a sacred ceremony. Something…ancient and evil.
 

There’s a half-buried body in the pit.
 

A child’s body.
 

The rock slips from my grasp.
 

Lands in the dirt at my feet, forgotten.
 

The hag is a Skinwalker.
 

Another legend I never believed in.
 

An Indian shaman-witch.
 

Once she was a Pureblood like me. But she committed a horrific crime, and now she’s cursed to hunt and murder the innocent for all eternity.
 

The Skinwalker’s vicious, maddened wailing continues, and the sound brings out an unusual sensation in me: raw, pant-shitting panic, and then I’m fleeing, sprinting down the narrow track as fast as I can, past the child’s grave and toward the pioneer cabin, through the shadowy aspen grove as rocks shower down and the Skinwalker follows along the rim snarling and wailing.
 

I reach the cabin door. My heart skips a beat.
 

It’s secured with a heavy iron chain and padlock.

There’s no time to worry over what might be inside.
 

Fucking plenty to worry about out
here
.
 

I slam my shoulder into the door.
 

It cracks but holds.
 

More rocks come down, smashing through the cabin’s rotten wood roof. I risk a glance back. The Skinwalker’s still on top of the ravine, waving her arms and spinning and screaming and shrieking, her blue eyes bright with hatred. She’s kicking up a dust-storm, crashing through scrub juniper and sagebrush, sending small avalanches of dirt and sand down the steep ravine.
 

I’ve violated a sacred rite by witnessing her child’s corpse unearthed.

She’s after my beating heart.
 

I smash the door again.
 

It gives a little more, and then the screeching stops and silence descends on the ravine.
 

Frantic, I search the rim.
 

The trees.
 

The track.
 

Nothing.
 

She’s vanished.
 

I work on snapping the rusted padlock. Dig my fingernails under the rotten porch wood and pry a board loose, then wedge it behind the chain and try to lever the lock open. The fucking thing holds until the brittle, sun-bleached wood snaps in my hands.
 

I’m breathing hard now, gasping, and I hate this feeling of weakness, of fear, of losing control. Anger thick as bile rises in my throat. Someone’s having a good fucking laugh at old Aaron Arud, that’s for sure.

A horrible strangling sound makes me whirl. The Skinwalker’s leaning over the pit in her human form, her back to me, digging and scratching, uncovering the child’s body. The same frantic, desperate movements as the bobcat. She’ll finish soon, and then she’ll turn to me.
 

She’s in no hurry.
 

She knows I can’t outrun her, and I wonder if she scents what I am.
 

What am I? I don’t know anymore.

The thought makes me leap at the door in blind fury. I pummel my fists into the wood, screaming and hollering, beyond all control, not fucking caring if the door gives, only wanting somewhere to lay this maddening rage. The door splinters and cracks and the top hinge begins to pull from the frame. I’m almost in, although I don’t know what fucking good it will do me, and I’ve stopped caring if the Skinwalker murders me. It’d be a quick death compared to what the Stricken will do if they scent me out.

The hair on my nape stands on end, and I know she’s there.
 

Right behind me.
 

I close my eyes. Take a breath.
 

Fuck her. I’m done running.

The Skinwalker rakes a single sharp claw down my spine, slowly, not deep, but her touch makes my entire body quiver.
 

“You shouldn’t be here, pale man,” the old hag says in a voice like stones grinding together. “You shouldn’t have witnessed.”

I slam my bleeding fist into the door one last time before I turn to face my death.
 

The wood shatters into splinters. My hand punches through, and the momentum carries me hard into the door. The top hinge rips from the frame and the upper half of the door collapses inward, sending me ass-over-teakettle inside the cabin’s cool, musty darkness.

Outside, the Skinwalker spits and cackles.

***

I take a quick breath and roll to my feet, my survival instincts kicking in, ready to fight the fucking hag. But she’s still outside, her head lifted to the crimson moon, her hideous, piercing laughter rolling and echoing through the cabin. She’s cradling the child’s body in her arms.
 

I freeze. Wait.
 

Eventually the Skinwalker’s laughter fades.

She peers inside, her face scrunched in concentration. Licks a long black tongue over her lips.
 

I smell her now. Like rotten meat.
 

“Rabbit found a hole,” the Skinwalker says, pacing just beyond the cabin’s tiny wooden porch, then laying the child down on the ground and settling onto her haunches. Her legs are bruised black and bone thin.
 

“Well,” she says with a wicked grin. “I have nothing but time.”

“You can’t enter,” I say, watching how she’s wary of the cabin’s porch.

The hag lifts her head and smiles.
 

“It was her home, wasn’t it? The girl’s?”

She leans to the side, spits a long tendril of phlegm, then says, “You stink of fear, Pureblood. And hunger.”
 

Fuck her. I reach out and tear off the rest of the door, stand in the threshold and study her. She’s taller and thinner than I thought, and even sitting all bunched up I know she must reach ten feet when she stands upright. She’s naked. Her skin is bruised and sun-reddened and mottled. A nest of heavy necklaces and ornaments and amulets of sparkling stones, feather and polished bone hangs from her thin neck.

The Skinwalker catches me studying her. Flips her filthy knotted hair over her shoulder and grins suggestively. “Invite me inside,” she whispers. “I can help you.”

“You think I’m a fucking idiot?”

She scowls, bares her sharp teeth and flicks a handful of sand at me.
 

I turn my back on her and begin searching the cabin. There’s an old, half-rotten wooden table and a set of two chairs. A rusted single mattress, its springs punching through a mess of mildewed fabric. A few wooden crates filled with tools and parts for old machinery I don’t recognize. And there, buried deep in the last crate, is a hatchet. It has a cracked handle and the blade’s dull as all fuck, but when I arc it through the air it whistles just fine.

Better than a rock in my hand, anyway.
 

Something smashes onto the roof. The cabin creaks and shudders.
 

The Skinwalker’s up there, stomping and howling, sending dust and rotten wood and a few black beetles showering around me. She shrieks again, then leaps from the roof. There’s a nasty scratching sound as she circles the cabin, raking her claws into the wood.
 

Fucking bitch drama. Last thing I need.

I walk to the door.
 

The hatchet feels good in my hand.
 

When I’m a foot from the door the Skinwalker pops her head around the corner and makes to swipe at me. Fucking bitch.