The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) (22 page)

My animal calls at me to focus on my prey, my brother the Fallen. The Spotted Stalker hunts alone. But I know my chances of killing Vuk are slim without help. Even if I do make it to the temple, Shiori will be there…and whoever else the Fallen has gathered at his side. A Skin army could provide a useful diversion while I slip onto the platform—

I lick my lips, thinking of bloodshed.
 

Tamara’s blood. Carlos Collazo’s.
 

My sister Shiori and my brother Vuk’s blood—

I nod in the direction of the Hole.
 

Luz smiles. Her eyes are glittering gems in the dim light. “We will need the Stalker. And the smoke. The Mothers are powerful.”

“Human?”

Luz gives me an odd look. “I believed so. For a long time. But now…”

“They’re with me,” I say, lifting my hand and dissolving it, then reaching a tendril of Night Smoke out to caress Luz’s cheek. She stays motionless under my touch, her eyes fixed on mine. “I made the mistake of trusting a woman with my life,” I say. “I will not make the same mistake again.”

“I don’t require your trust,” Luz answers. “I stood by you when you were weak. Now you’re strong. Do as you wish.”

Then she vanishes down the tunnel.
 

***

We come to a dead end.
 

“We’re here,” Luz says. “The entrance to the Hole. My former home.”

Luz pauses. Is she reconsidering her decision? Then she says, “On your stomach. Unless you summon the smoke, the entrance shaft will be a tight squeeze.”

I run my hands over the stone until I find a hole, no more than eight inches high and two feet wide. “There must be another way,” I say.

“This is it. The shaft slopes down for three hundred yards, becoming narrower as it approaches the Hole. Several sections have hanging blocks suspended overhead. One word from the guard and the blocks are loosed, crushing anything in the shaft and sealing it closed.

“You entomb yourselves.”

“
La Mugre
has done it before. Only once. We lived for years in the Hole.”

“What did you eat?”

“It was before I was born. Scavengers ate the Low. What else? It’s another way their cowardice serves.”

Luz glides beside me, nearly as silent as my animal. “I have to go first. The guards will attack anything that doesn’t know the pledge.” Luz digs a black robe with a long cowl from her backpack, puts it on and says, “This will shadow my face. Follow my lead when we’re inside. I’ll take you to the Mothers. They rule supreme. Without them,
La Mugre
will crumble.”

Luz pauses. Looks me in the eye. “Are you sure you want to do this, Rodas?”

“Are you sure your people will follow you?”

“Yes. Especially with this.” Luz pulls something else from her backpack. A bottle of something. She opens the cap and lifts it to my nose. It reeks like the roaring machines the Skins created. Like pollution.
 

“Gasoline,” I say, my voice flat.
 

“Fire,” Luz corrects. “
La Mugre
have been taught to loathe fire. They hate it. But like everything we believe we hate, they are also drawn to it. Our children have a game called Sparks. It’s forbidden. But children…” Luz shakes her head at the folly of youth. “The children hide in a forgotten tunnel or sleeping bunk in the Hole. Find two stones and smash them together to create sparks. The child who summons the brightest spark wins.”

“What does she win?”

Luz shrugs. “Whatever the gang thinks important.”

“What did you win?”

Luz smiles. “I was very skilled at the game of Sparks. You ask if my people will follow. There are many of us…Scavengers and Low alike…who have been planning to overthrow the Mothers for a long while. The Hole has become a place of repression and fear instead of freedom and security. We’re tired of living in the dark. Now is our freedom.”

Luz thrusts the gasoline in her backpack, then lifts short piece of rope toward me. “I will have to bind you. The guards need to believe you’re my demon-prisoner.”

Luz retrieves another object from the backpack.

A rusted metal collar.

My animal thrashes and shrieks at the sight of the collar. My neck and shoulders thicken and my claws drop and suddenly the Spotted Stalker is prowling very near. “No. No ropes. No collars. Never again.”

Luz grips her spear and taps her foot impatiently. “It’s the only way we get close to the Mothers.”

“No.”

Luz glares at me, then sighs and slips the collar into her backpack. Then she lifts the rope. “Wrists bound, then? Loosely? The guards
must
believe you’re my prisoner…”

Silently, I raise my wrists for Luz. The rope cannot bind me. Not now that I have the Night Smoke. Still, the ropes scratching and digging into my wrists reminds me of when my animal was lost and I was weak and alone and terrified of my own shadow.

“La Mugre has hunted Stricken for centuries. Fed on their flesh. Your people call us demon-animals. Why won’t they attack me, when they see my wildborn animal?”

“Because you will murder the Mothers,” Luz says, shrugging. “They hate the demon-animals. But they’ve grown to hate their oppressors more.”

I don’t bother saying I hope she’s right. For her sake. I have the Night Smoke. No crude spear will stop me. But her—

“Keep your eyes to yourself,” Luz instructs as she secures the last knot. “You are entering the Hole as my prized possession. It’s a great and very rare honor for a scavenger to return with a living captive. We might have an audience once word gets out. In fact, I hope we do. You are a demon-animal, remember?
Food
.”

Luz thrusts her spear and backpack into the tunnel, then slips inside. I stand alone for a moment, listening to water drip around me, staring at the hole, thinking about something that feels strange.
 

I’m thinking about my sister.

Not Shiori. The other one.

The All Encompassing.
 

The one I haven’t met in this age.

***

I survive the narrow shaft because of Luz.
 

Halfway through, when my heart leaps in my throat and my breathing becomes shallow and I start scratching at the stone floor it’s Luz who talks me out of my panic and commands me to hold her ankle and concentrate on how her skin feels as she moves.

Sometimes Luz’s ambition reminds me of Tamara. But that’s where the similarities end. Compared to Tamara’s removed calculation and cold-hearted scheming, Luz is brave in a fierce, passionate way. I understand why she believes her people will follow her.
 

She was born to lead.
 

After crawling through the narrow tunnel for what feels like days Luz shouts something in a language I don’t understand. A rough male voice answers her, and soon I’m being pulled into an unlit cavern. The air is humid and warm and smells of sewer, sweat, and rotting meat.

The Hole is blacker than any night.

A trio of heavily-muscled guards inspects me. I keep my gaze rooted on the floor. The guards faces have dozens of piercings that tinkle as they move. One guard stabs his spear into my thigh, just hard enough to break skin. Luz screams at him, flings herself in front of me.
 

I bite back a roar as the urge to summon my animal becomes nearly unbearable.

Luz takes a swipe at one of the guards, catches him in the gut.
 

He doubles over, gasping.

The guard who stabbed me makes to pull Luz’s cowl from her head. She ducks him, then grips me by the elbow and thrusts me away from the entrance tunnel and the guards. The guards jeer at her, then burst into sharp, mocking laughter.
 

Luz stomps along beside me.
 

“Ignorant idiots,” she mutters.
 

“What happened?”

“They threatened to murder you. Said no way you were a demon. Didn’t believe a woman could capture a living demon-animal. Wanted to see your black blood.”

She’s leaving something out, but I decide not to press. We’re being followed by a steadily-growing mob of onlookers. I hear whispering and muffled conversation, a baby crying, the sound of smithy hammers forging spears.
 

La Mugre’s
Hole is much larger than I expected.
 

Luz leads me around the outside perimeter of a massive cylindrical cavern dug from the earth, so tall the top is shrouded in darkness. The cavern walls have been hollowed out to form crude sleeping bunks, and a series of rickety wooden ladders are tied together up the sides of the cavern. Swinging bridges of wood and rope have been draped across the vast empty space above, and if I squint I can see residents of the Hole walking across the bridges, from one side of the cavern to the next.

“Some clans members live their entire lives without setting foot down here on the cavern floor,” Luz whispers. “The floor is considered sacred. Only high-ranking Scavengers are permitted entry.”
 

The floor of the giant cavern seems to be some kind of group living area. There are no fires, but there are stones sculpted into chairs arranged around low stone tables. Citizens of
La Mugre
mill about this shared space. Some talk and laugh loudly. Others nap on tables. A pack of children chase each other, laughing and flinging small stones. Most of the people on the cavern floor carry spears and have piercings and shaved heads similar to Luz’s.

“Where are the Low?” I ask as Luz pauses at the edge of the cavern. Something bumps against my leg. I look down and see a child of maybe four or five poking me with a stick. She has long, matted hair and filthy skin.
 

Luz hisses a warning and the child scampers off.

“Scavengers do not mingle with the Low,” Luz says, her gaze drifting toward the middle of the shared space. “The Mothers forbid it. The Low have their own level in the Hole. Beneath this one.”

I follow Luz’s glance toward the center of the cavern and notice a circular stone dais draped in leathers and furs and skins. I recognize bear and lion pelts, zebra and tiger, leopard and monkey. Resting on the animal hides are a dozen naked women of every size and description. Some are bone-thin and bald, with the orb-like eyes of creatures born in the dark. Others are massive, their flesh pooling like liquid in a low spot, so large I doubt they can stand. A few are lovely, with flowing golden and crimson hair, full breasts and inviting hips.

The women are watching us.

The hair on my arms rises. Something feels wrong.
 

Has Luz led me into a trap?

Luz lays her hand on my arm. “Steady now,” she whispers. “We’re close.”
 

I notice a pit nearly twenty feet wide surrounding the dais.
 

A single narrow wooden bridge has been placed across the chasm.
 

 
An unfamiliar scent wafts to my nose. A growl builds in my chest.

There is pollution here. Corruption.
 

Minds diseased from lack of sunlight.
 

Many of the women reclining on the fur-draped dais are pregnant.
 

I scent their ripe, fecund blood.

“The Mothers,” Luz whispers, her voice hushed in awe. “Do you scent them? Are they—”

“Black blooded? Yes. Your Mothers are Stricken animals. But vile. Even for Stricken they scent…unnatural. ”

“Everything in this cursed pit is unnatural. It’s what
La Mugre
had to become to survive. But the world has changed. The surface is near.”

“That’s why the Mother’s hate fire,” I say, keeping my voice a bare whisper. “And why they can’t summon their animals. They’ve been feeding on their own kind for too long. It weakens them.”
 

A rock as large as my fist smacks into the dirt at my feet.

Luz whirls, her eyes scanning upward. “Hurry, Rodas,” she says, striding out into the open. “If the Mother’s sense danger they’ll knock the bridge into the chasm and flee down stairs hidden beneath the furs.”

I smile, thinking of my Night Smoke and how easy it would be to drift over the chasm—
 

Luz leads me through the middle of the cavern. Heads turn as we wind through groups of resting Scavengers, and soon we have several dozen following behind. Luz quickens her steps. Her spear thuds against the stone floor as she walks. A few Scavengers call out greetings in their strangely fluid, lyrical language. Luz answers curtly, without breaking stride.
 

I sense the focus in her. The kill-lust. Thin beads of sweat drip from her brow. Her face is hidden by her cowl, but I can tell by how her shoulders tense and her knuckles whiten as they squeeze her spear that she’s readying for blood.

I’m struggling to keep my animal caged.
 

He senses violence.
 

Yearns for it.

We arrive at the wooden bridge leading to the Mothers. Luz yells the same words she did when we emerged from the entrance shaft. Two guards stationed at the bridge step aside.

We step onto the bridge, leaving the crowd behind.
 

“Scavengers speak a common tongue,” she says. “Even the Mothers don’t understand our language. It was a mistake, their permitting us develop a unique tongue centuries ago. It has drawn us closer.”
 

The bridge groans and creaks as we cross.

I peer through the gaps in the rickety wooden slats.

The chasm seems bottomless.

“Close your eyes,” Luz cautions as we step off the bridge and onto the island of rock that holds the dais. “The Mothers will command you look upon them if they choose. Wait for my word...”

I close my eyes and clutch my deer’s foot amulet in my left hand and begin wriggling my arms free from their bindings. My heart pounds. Not long now, my animal. Not long—

“Esteemed Scavenger,” a proud-sounding woman says, “What is your name and clan?”

“Luz of the Shadow, Mother.”

“What have you returned to provide
La Mugre
?”

“This man,” Luz says, kicking my shoulder, “is no ordinary man. He was once a demon-animal.”