The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) (7 page)

I’m about to tell my sick, murdering self-deluded asshole of a brother to fuck off again when the ground shakes so violently I’m thrown off my feet, and when I look up Vuk is a dark speck retreating against a horizon of black cloud.

Aaron banishes his animal and leaps onto the dais to help me. I scent him, warm pine needles in autumn sun. My bloodmate’s naked. His ripped and tattooed body glistens with sweat. I stare open-mouthed at him. No matter how much I try to distance my heart…my body betrays me. My breath quickens as he leans down, grips the heavy chain in both hands, gives it a sharp tug. Aaron’s biceps bulge. The muscles and veins on his forearms ripple. He looses a low grunt and the chain snaps as if it were made of cheap plastic instead of forged iron.
 

I resist the urge to leap into my bloodmate’s arms.
 

Shitballs
. A fucking biker outlaw? That’s the least of it.
 

And I’m a helpless bundle of quivering need every time I see him—

The earth bucks. There’s a massive crack, then a thundering boom that reverberates through my bones. The back half of the Cliff of Cages tumbles to the ground in a massive landslide.
 

“Holy fuck,” Aaron breathes, staring at the landslide as a dust cloud rolls over us.

The mountain has fallen into an empty black space so large I can’t see the bottom, and suddenly I’m struck by the horrible sensation that everything I see in this world is
suspended
in that endless black space.
 

“There’s nothing out there,” I whisper. “The Dog God’s realm is only a few feet thick. It’s crumbling in on itself.”

Another crack, and a huge section of the wind-blown desert vanishes into the black pit of nothingness.

The Bloodless Land is caving away.

The Purebloods Aaron freed pause in killing the last remaining rabid dogs. All eyes turn to my bloodmate as the earth continues shaking.
 

Aaron growls. His eyes glitter angrily as he glares at me.

“Give me my son,” he says in the tone of an apex alpha who’s damn sure his word is law.

I hold my child to my chest and shake my head.
 

Aaron doesn’t trust me with our child. I see it in his eyes.
 

Why should he? It’s my fault our son is here.

“Give him to me, Lily.”

There’s a threatening edge in my bloodmate’s voice.

“I won’t let my son go,” I say. “Never again. I’ll hold him tight. Even if it kills me.”

Aaron looks about to protest when a chasm opens beneath us, and as we plummet into darkness my child slips from my grasp. My son’s soft blue light hovers beside me, and then a wonderful fullness swells in my belly—

***

I wake screaming. Panicked. Disoriented. I can’t take a full breath. Something’s wrapped around my head. I struggle and thrash and the wrapping loosens and I realize I’m covered in layer after layer of bloodstained blankets. Then the pain hits, so sharp it forces me to stop screaming. Every bone in my body feels shattered. I hug my arms, my shoulders, feeling for wounds. My hands fall to the slight rise of my belly.

I freeze. My fingers probe my belly. Gently.

Tears stream down my cheeks.
 

It can’t be. My son?
 

He’s in my womb. Growing.

Desperate now, I thrash against the blankets. Try and scream but my throat is too raw. I’m desperately thirsty. The last blanket slips from my head. I blink into a night of bright, sparkling stars. They seem so close I could almost pluck them from the sky.
 

I take a gasping breath of cool desert air.
 

My first full breath among the living.

I’m lying flat on my back. There’s something behind me. A shape. Motionless. And a flickering orange light even further off. I try and tilt my head to see more and am greeted by a stab of pain that shoots from my spine into the back of my head. I freak out, fearing I’m paralyzed. Lift my legs a few inches off the cold sand.
 

No. Not paralyzed. I can move.
 

But the throbbing in my head…I can’t remember…my unborn son…a grinning Doberman. I try and make sense of the shattered images floating through my head. But the more I try and remember the more fractured they feel.

“Water,” I croak.
 

Or at least I expect to hear myself croak.
 

But there’s nothing.
 

I’m deaf.
 

I touch my ears. They feel uninjured.
 

Then I bite my lower lip, steady my nerve and roll onto my side to try and see what’s above me.
 

It’s a motorbike.
 

A gleaming Harley chopper. From this unfamiliar angle it looks…beautiful. Like a steel sculpture.
 

Sound rushes in. Mad laughter. Shrieks and hollers and hoots. Barks and cat-calls. And music. Fast-paced. Guitar-heavy. Some kind of obnoxious, testosterone-fueled death metal—

“Trish?” I whisper, digging my fingers into the dirt and trying to claw my way out from behind the bike. I look through the bike’s tires. See a cabin or abandoned shack lit on fire. Flames licking into the night sky. I blink, not comprehending. Shadowy figures are dancing around the fire. Some human. Some animal. Many halfway between.
 

Hundreds of them.

Drinking and smoking and fighting and fucking.
 

I watch, motionless, as a heavyset man leans his woman over another Harley. Her eyes close as her lover slips into her. A group gathers around to watch and cheer. They pour whiskey over the lovers. The woman tilts her head up and one of the men watching her get fucked puts the bottle to her lips. The woman takes a greedy gulp, and then her eyes glow yellow and her face shifts and I see she’s a hissing lynx—
 

It can’t be Aaron’s crew. Not the Purebloods. There are too many. He commanded only a couple dozen. Where did they all come from? Are they—

My mind reels.

Stricken.
 

They must be.
 

I clamp my mouth closed. My limbs go wooden. I was about to call out again. Shitballs. I have to escape. Terror grips my throat as I think about my son in my womb. I won’t be reunited with him only to be fucking eaten alive by the black blooded bastards ruining this world—

What’s the plan, Lil?
I ask myself.

Plan is to keep on breathing.
 

Careful, quiet, I claw my way up the Harley until I’m leaning half over it. I might me able to start the fucking thing. Zoom outta here before I’m discovered.
 

My lips open in a humorless smile.
 

That escape plan is total shit.

Maybe crawl into the desert? No.
 

They’ll hunt me down. Tear out my heart.

I spit blood. Fuck sakes I’m worried about my son. This stress. I need to rest. Need to heal. Then I remember. Who and what I am. The All Encompassing. I reach my mind into my animal. Call her name.

Please
.
I’m begging you. Please come to me.

Smoke rises from the Harley’s alligator leather seat.
 

My claws drop. My skin’s heating up, becoming white-hot. The exhaustion and pain fall away. My creature’s roaring, springing to the surface—
 

“Hey! What in actual fucking hell?” someone shouts.

Another shout, then another.

I’m discovered.

But I’m no longer afraid.
 

Three leather cut wearing bikers rush at me. I push to my feet and stand to face them. One’s a reptile, some kind of snake. Another’s a coyote. The third lifts his Glock and pops off three quick rounds right at me.
 

The bullets melt before they hit my skin.

I loose a tremendous roar, then the first Stricken, the snake dude, piles into me. I fling him through the air. He’s nothing. A waste. A dying species. The coyote motherfucker pauses when he sees how easily I tossed his bro, and in that instant of hesitation I leap over the bike and slam into his chest. My fangs punch through his sternum, loosing a torrent of warm red blood, and somewhere in the back of my mind that doesn’t sit right—

I try and reign my animal in but she’s having none of it, she’s
starving
, desperate for a feed. She’s been beat up and kicked down for too long, and she’s furious. I rip out the coyote’s throat with a single bite, then slam my red-plated scorpion stinger into the neck of the guy with the Glock.
 

My poison floods into him as I lift the poor fucker into the air.
 

The snake Stricken hisses and the air explodes as more of the Stricken MC open fire. I use the half-dead snake-dude as a shield and race at them, not caring if there’s a hundred or a thousand because my vision’s blurred to red and my animal’s nearly escaped my control and all I can think about is this overpowering instinct to kill and feed—

Someone’s calling my name.

Lily.
 

Lily.

I snarl and howl and drop the poisoned Stricken at my feet. He’s convulsing, white froth bubbling from his mouth—

Lily.

Lily!

Trish?

The word means nothing. Another dead Skin.
 

A memory arriving to haunt me.

The burning cabin sends a spinning wave of embers into the sky. Bullets zip and ping into the bikes around me, but none even make it close to hitting me. They melt into drops of lead at my feet and now I understand why I shouldn’t have summoned my creature; it’s not only her I have to fear, it’s this power, so raw and seductive, the power of life and death, the power to do whatever the fuck I want—

T
HE
WRETCHED
VESSEL
named Connor Lerrick remembers less and less of his old life each time my brother Vuk inhabits his skin.

Soon my brother and alpha The One Without Value will Become and the Stricken vessel Connor Lerrick will be no more.

It’s a great honor for such a low-born animal.

I’m standing on top of the Pyramid of the Sun, wrapped in the burgundy robes that mark me as a high priestess of the Guardians of the Gate. The thought makes a slight smile play on my lips. The natural order inverted. The weak born strong. A new species rises.

Anik’s sister is hanging from the middle of a tall pyramid constructed of poles just to my left. My wasps have Pimniq wrapped in a cocoon of sticky white spit. Only her head is visible. She’s pale and gaunt and her eyes have that odd, vacant sheen that speaks of impending madness.
 

Poor little Pimniq.

Sometimes I sting her face to make her shriek. This is as it should be. Her brother must hear her screams. She will draw Anik to his rightful place at my master’s side.

Much has changed in this world.
 

Beneath me the Skin dwelling once known as Mexico City has been reduced to mile after mile of smoking ruin. The fires are slowly sputtering out as they consume the last fuel. Lachlan, the Fallen’s son, has commanded troops of Stricken to patrol the streets and put any Skins still alive to work as slaves.

Directly across the Avenue of the Dead the Skin slaves are busy erecting another pyramid. My master’s pyramid. Already it rises hundreds of feet high. Soon it will dwarf the Pyramid of the Sun, and when it’s finished it will hold my master’s throne room, the seat of all power during the Age of Discord.

I shiver a little, anticipating the day when a third Risen joins Lachlan and I to summon Vuk our alpha once and for all. The world has never known such power. Even when Vuk lived free, roaming the steppe as an alpha during the One War, he was not as powerful as he is now.

I scan the burning city. Lachlan’s Stricken troops are not only searching for Skins. They’re searching for my third brother. The Spotted Stalker. The man with the yellow and black rosette tattoos.

Rodas. The Lord of Near and Nigh.

Such a pretty title for a weak man.
 

Thinking of my brother abandoning the Fallen makes a small swarm of biting black flies burst from my mouth. The flies hover in the air over my head, then fly to attack the treasonous whore known as Tamara.
 

Lachlan told me Tamara was tasked with imprisoning Rodas in the pyramid and keeping him secure until the Fallen needed him to Become. Rodas had grown…what is the expression? Too big for his britches? He named himself emperor of the Age of Discord. His power overtook his better judgement. He tried to usurp my master’s throne.
 

My master is just.
 

He will overlook many slights in service of raising our species.
 

But Rodas’ willful betrayal he could not overlook.
 

Through Tamara’s ignorance and incompetence, Rodas escaped. She swears she didn’t know of the secret tunnels leading from the pyramid. Now my brother roams free among the Skins. Perhaps he’s even joined the failed alpha Lily and her Pureblood pack.

Tamara failed us.
 

The idiot bitch.

I glance to where Tamara is strapped naked and spread-eagled on a stone block. My biting flies settle around Tamara’s soft places: eyes and armpits, wrists and breasts and inner thighs.

Tamara moans through her gag.

I let my flies dance over the idiot Stricken bitch, tickling her flesh with their forelegs. Anticipation of pain, I’ve learned, is almost as gruesome as the pain itself.

My master spared the jackal Carlos Collazo. Carlos still commands many loyal Stricken. But I know when he’s no longer needed he too will be punished for allowing Rodas to escape.

My biting swarm bites into Tamara’s already swollen and ravaged flesh. I feed on her as required, a little bit at a time, bringing her close to death from pain and shock and exposure then permitting her to heal, then doing it again—