The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) (29 page)

Lily’s walking toward Tornarsuk. Whispering something. Her hands stretched out toward him. Is she trying to banish the bear? Or just talk him down—

Another pained scream drifts from the pyramid. A shiver traces down my spine when I think of that child being tortured. Vuk, unguarded, looks about to slip away. I hem him in with my shadow wolves.
 

Tornarsuk looses a furious, grief-maddened bellow, turns and charges up the pyramid. Lachlan’s vultures descend from the sky, a swirling black column, and when they reach the ground they fan out, opening a pathway for the bear’s charge. Tornarsuk leaps over the blood moat and then he’s on the steps, his giant paws cracking centuries-old stone, racing for his sister, blind with rage—
 

I only hope I’m not wrong about being strong enough to murder the One Without Value, and for a moment I’m struck by the certainty that Lily’s right, that my pride has driven me to make a terrible mistake.

Lily stares in shocked disbelief as Tornarsuk charge up the steps toward the pole pyramid altar.
 

Three of five. Shiori. Lachlan. Anik.

The Becoming.

A final blood challenge to end the One War.
 

My bloodmate will forgive. As long as we survive.
 

It’s who she is.
 

***

Vuk, Lily, Trish and me race after Tornarsuk. Trish looses a few rounds to keep the Skin warriors off us. The carrion vultures let us pass. We’re joined by a swirling black smoke cloud. Rodas. I think about sending my shadow-wolves to attack him. Fuck it. Dude want’s Vuk dead. Maybe he’ll play nice until then—
 

I leap over the blood moat and onto the first step. It’s slippery with blood. The air reeks of violence and perversion. The smoke cloud shoots ahead. I take the steps four at a time, running so fast I’m nearly flying. Vuk slips on the steps and tumbles backward. I pause for a second, then let him fall. I need to make sure I’m in eye contact with Tornarsuk. I can’t have the bear rampaging out of control—

I jump onto the landing, Lily right behind me. She’s screaming at Trish to guard Vuk, which is maybe not the best idea.
 

The scene on the pyramid platform is so horrifying it makes bile rise in my throat. The entire platform is streaked in dried blood. There’s a woman, a Stricken from the scent of her, strapped spread-eagled to a stone slab. Her entire body is swollen with insect bites. The pole pyramid’s at the end of the platform. Vultures swirl behind it, their beady eyes boring into me.
 

Lachlan and Shiori are inside the pyramid, waiting. Suspended above their heads is a girl, the one I remember seeing at Connor Lerrick’s house. She’s wrapped in some kind of nasty white cocoon so only her face is visible. Her face is so badly swollen I can barely make out her features. Angry insect bites, the same as on the Stricken woman strapped to the slab, seep white fluid. The child’s eyes are half open, dull and vacant.
 

“Oh my god,” Lily breathes.

Shiori’s lips rise in a cruel smirk.
 

Fuck sakes, do I ever want to gut the bitch.
 

My wolf’s raging, driven mad by the reek of unnatural evil, and suddenly I know there can be no forgiveness. No mercy. I was right to free Vuk. The tainted Risen must die. Vuk. Shiori. Lachlan. Maybe Rodas. The only one worth sparing is my bloodmate—

Tornarsuk’s halfway across the platform. He scents his sister’s pain, rears on his hind legs and looses a mournful bellow so powerful it scatters the vultures and the stormy red-black clouds above them. His three black eyes glow.
 

“Anik, no!” Lily screams.

The bear pauses. Glares at my bloodmate. Paws at the platform, his claws raking deep gouges in the stonework.

“We’ll free her, I promise,” Lily says, her voice cracking. “Please. If you enter that altar…our brother
wins
. Vuk and Shiori win.”

“You always were a fool, Anik,” Shiori hisses, a swarm of wasps buzzing from her mouth. The wasps settle over Pimniq’s face. The girl squirms and wriggles as the wasps bury their stingers in her flesh—

A shudder courses through Tornarsuk.
 

He looses another bellow and races into the pyramid altar.
 

Shiori shrieks in victory.

***

“What have you done?” Lily whispers to me as the bear hurtles between the poles and the red-black clouds gather and an icy chill descends over us all. A bolt of red lightning strikes the pole altar, then another and another, so bright I’m forced to shield my eyes with my hand. The lightning ignites the pyramid. Flames lick into the sky, meeting the descending black clouds.

Shiori’s face shifts. Her eyes go wide and black and her jaw distends and then Tornarsuk is on her, snarling and lashing out with his massive paws and the bear carries Shiori over the edge of the pyramid and out of sight while red lightning crashes down around us, melting stone to black glass, making my fur singe and my heart pound in my chest and for the first time in millennia I feel his power unleashed, the One Without Value, and his vile scent sends my wolf berserk.

“What have you done, you arrogant bastard?” Lily keeps whispering, over and over. “What have you done?”

I don’t answer. I’m falling into my wildmind. Into the commitment and discipline of a creature who kills to survive.
 

“He’s here, mother,” Lachlan says, his voice high-pitched with excitement and fear. “I’ve waited so long. And now he’s Become.” The boy’s in human form. Pale and sweating. He looks terrified.
 

“Come close, my son,” Lily says, holding out her hand. “He can’t hurt you. Not with me. You’re safe with me. I swear it.”

Lachlan shakes his head. Tears slip down his cheeks. “I’ve come too far, mother.” He glances at Pimniq. “Some things can never be forgiven.”

“I forgive you!” Lily screams.
 

Her son’s face hardens.
 

Lightning dances around us, followed by the crushing boom of malign thunder.
 

Several things happen at once. A smoky black blade forms over the Stricken woman strapped to the stone slab, then knifes down, cleaving her head from her shoulders. The woman’s head rolls to the edge of the pyramid and is about to topple over when a leering, heavily-inked jackal Stricken steps up from the lower level, picks up the severed head and looses a cracking bark.

Carlos Collazo. Shoulda figured he’d be in on this.
 

The smoke-blade shifts and then Rodas is crouched on the stone slab, roaring down at the jackal. Seems I’m not the only one Carlos has pissed off. Fuck it. Rodas can have him. I got bigger fish…

Carlos steps onto the platform. Following close behind are dozens of Stricken, all carrying heavy-calibre assault rifles. The Stricken fall into formation behind Carlos and aim at us, fingers hovering over triggers. The bullets won’t kill me. But they will injure, and the energy I’ll need to heal could make or break me. I grind my clawed toe along the seam between the stone blocks at my feet, loosing the block—
 

Somewhere, from far below the platform, Tornarsuk the Indestructible looses a pain-filled bellow.

“Something’s killing him,” Lily says, her voice barely audible above the booming thunder. “We have to help—”

“I’m sorry, mother,” Lachlan says, his arm raised in signal to the Stricken. “You should have murdered me when you had the chance. I’m not who you want me to be. I never was.”

“Son, I—”

Lachlan’s arm falls. He leaps into the air, changing into the horned vulture, and vanishes into the clouds.
 

The Stricken open fire.

Lightning cracks down.

I pluck the stone slab from the platform and leap in front of Lily. A wall of bullets pounds into the stone while more zip past my head. A few slam into my thighs, but I seal the wounds up real quick. Lily lays her hands on my shoulders, moving with me as I charge. We burst into the pole pyramid. Pimniq’s above us, right in the path of the bullets.

Trish pops up from the edge of the pyramid, the AK blazing. She takes out a few Stricken before they realize she’s there, then ducks out of sight.
 

Fuck sakes. I’m about to snatch Pimniq out of harm’s way when something digs into my thigh. The pain makes me drop the stone. It lands with a thud at my feet. I expect the bullets to tear into me, but they don’t come, and when I glance up I see the black smoke enveloping the Stricken army, gutting them one by one—

No time to think about Rodas getting his kill on.
 

There’s a curved dagger sticking from my thigh and a worm-like creature grinning up at me—

“Missed,” the creature rasps. “Meant to ball you, cockbrother.”

My chest tightens. It can’t be. Connor Lerrick?

But it is.
 

Connor looks like a terminal patient in his last hours on earth. He’s lost all his hair. His face is sunken, his eyes bright with fever. Pestilent sores cover his skin. He’s lost more than half his bodyweight. Every bone in his body is visible beneath his taut skin. His teeth have rotted out.
 

“He was in me,” Connor mumbles. “The One Without Value. I felt his power. You’re nothing but a whipped dog—”

Lily steps forward. “Connor? Oh fuck oh fuck. What have they done?”

Connor shakes his head. Slinks away from Lily. “You stupid bitch. You still don’t see it? I called the Fallen. I put the two of you together. I set events in motion. His rise…because of me. His glorious reign in the next age…because of
me
!”

“Because of you,” Lily says, her voice flat. “It was you. In that alley. When I was only a child.”

“You felt like a woman.”
 

“I was a
child
,” Lily says, taking a step forward while lightning arcs from the sky, showering us with stones. “You stole that from me. You stole everything.”

“I did as I was bid,” Connor says, scuttling to the far corner of the pyramid. His back is bent at an odd angle and his right leg’s dangling uselessly. He’s been eaten alive from the inside. Used up and spit out. Fucker deserves every minute he’s suffered.
 

Lily has Connor backed into the corner. She reaches out and lays her hands on his cheeks. It’s a tender gesture, like she’s about to plant a kiss on his forehead.
 

“He was supposed to embody me,” Connor says, speaking so quickly his words arrive in a breathless stream. “But you and that fucking mutt. The One Without Value would’ve assumed my skin if you hadn’t freed him from the Bloodless Land.”

“He doesn’t need you anymore, Connor. You’re nothing now. A corpse.”

“You’re wrong. All this. Because of me.”

“My brother would’ve found some other fool to use,” Lily whispers. “You got played, Connor Lerrick. Played for the small-minded, power-hungry prick that you are.”

A high-pitched, insectile shriek erupts from below the pyramid. The sound raises my hackles and makes Connor quiver with anticipation. “He’s Become,” Connor moans, his face softened in ecstasy. “He’s here with us now. You will feel his power, you ignorant bitch. You’ll feel it while he mounts you—”

“Lil you need to get over here!” Trish screams.

Lily’s hands glow red hot. They burn into Connor’s face, sinking into his skin. He shrieks, his entire body convulsing as Lily burns the flesh from his cheeks.

“Is this what I’ll feel?” Lily says, her voice raspy.
 

Connor can’t answer.
 

The reek of Connor’s burning flesh fills my nose. I glance over my shoulder. Rodas has murdered Collazo and his Stricken douchebags. He’s standing at the edge of the pyramid, his back turned to us, looking down, his hands drifting in and out of the black smoke. Trish is beside him, digging in her jacket for something. Connor’s right. The Fallen has Become. My world’s narrowing to a single instinct.
 

“I only wish I could make you suffer longer,” Lily growls while her wings break from between her shoulders and her wolf emerges. “But this will have to do.”

Lily twists her hands in a vicious, lethal motion, rips Connor’s head from his shoulders and howls. Connor’s decapitated corpse slumps to her feet. She hurls Connor’s head over the pyramid, then turns to me and says, “You wanted this fight, Aaron Arud. Well you fucking have it. Hold my brother off while I free Pimniq. Together…maybe we have half a chance of murdering the sick motherfucker.”

That’s my girl
, I think as I turn toward the insectile shriek.

***

“You’re powerful,” Rodas says as I approach the edge of the pyramid. “But you’re still going to need the Lord of Near and Nigh at your side.”

“What do you want?”

Lord of Near and Nigh? What a crock of shit.

Trish has a small leather satchel cradled in her hand.
 

No time to ask what the fuck—
 

Rodas turns to face me. He’s an ugly bastard, no doubt. His skin’s slick with black blood and his leopard’s swollen his jaws wide. For the first time I notice the bandaged stump on his right leg and the glinting black amulet around his neck. Rodas catches me staring at the amulet and says, “It provides the Night Smoke. Much like yours provides the wolves, I suspect.”

I nod, stand at the edge of the platform and look down, expecting to see Vuk in top form. Instead I see a headless white bear, half his body slumped into the blood moat. As I watch the bear shrinks, his fur vanishes and then there’s the mutilated corpse of the Inuit man.

A slow breath escapes my lips.
 

Truth is I thought Anik would make it.
 

I knew it was possible he wouldn’t. But I still believed. You don’t worry about failure when you’re struggling to succeed. Heaviness settles into my gut. For a split second I weaken. Regret leaches its cool poison through my blood. Maybe I should’ve murdered Vuk when he was a weak Skin. Ego got the better of me.
 

“Shiori weakened the Indestructible,” Rodas says, looking at Anik’s corpse. “The Fallen took care of the rest.”