The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (13 page)

And looking at the rest of my life, the fury and death, and realizing how fucked up it is—
 

More explosive pops and Skins shrieking and glass shards cascading around me. I look under the table and see a bearded kid with his hand shot off. He’s looking at it like it’s not his, his face pale and sweaty, his lips trembling.

Six seconds. That’s how long the shooters have been in my club.

They’ll be dead by ten.

Whatever the motherfuckers are using is fully automatic, probably a modified TEC-9 or a straight-up MAC. The bullets hit the slate on the pool table, ricochet off and bury in the walls.
 

There’s blood everywhere. Red blood, and I’m surprised to realize it’s not the cop girl’s.

It’s mine.
 

The pain hits. My animal howls in its cage. It’s a good thing the cop girl’s out cold, cuz if she looked up now she’d see one ugly half-formed hell-wolf looming over her. I think I caught two in the back as I dove for her. One’s hit a nerve, making it damn hard to lift my right arm.
 

In fact my claws won’t even drop out on that hand.

Fucking bullshit of a night this is becoming.
 

My neck bulges tight against the iron collar, making it difficult to draw a breath. There’s a pounding red haze in my eyes and the scent of blood—even my own—is driving my wolf right the fuck out of his mind. He’s pacing and scratching at the cage I’ve made for him, throwing himself at it, and this is the closest I’ve ever come to losing it, to letting go and letting the motherfucker free to murder me.
 

I dig my fingers into the hardwood floor, barely holding shit together. My claws sink an inch into the wood. The popping sound continues for what seems like hours. I feel the bullets in me, their strange, foreign metal, and I know my body’s doing its best to push them out and heal.
 

I try and think what the bullets mean. This a standard gangland hit? By who? My mind is a fractured whirlwind of hate and instinct and rage and all I want to do is stand and rush whoever these motherfuckers are that would take a go at me in my second home.

In my den.

Surrounded by my people.

The Skin bitch beneath me—what’s her name?—moans and rolls onto her side.
 

So she’s not dead. Good for her.
 

The bullet-popping slows. I glance under the table and see two pairs of shoes by the door. White sneakers and track pants. Not another MC crew.
 

The bar is still packed with Skins and a couple cops. I finger the collar. It’s fucking half-choking me, and what I wouldn’t give to be free, to summon my killer and let him at these two fucks.
 

But I guess I’m rolling new school.

I stand up and in one swift motion grip the edge of the pool table and toss it toward the door. It doesn’t go far; I’m bleeding everywhere, weak from an already fucked up day and besides, I’m strong but I ain’t a superhero and I sure as shit ain’t immortal.
 

The pool table toppling over makes the shooters pause, and that’s all I need. I tear around the table, half-wolf, neither man nor beast but a warped nightmare vision of the two, wondering how many Skins are seeing me and wondering if my crew is around yet. I see a few shot-up and bleeding half-dead dead Skins out of the corner of my eye but give them absolutely zero thought. I’m blood and rage-focused on the assholes at the door, both of them in black hoodies and wearing some kind of Halloween goblin masks, which, I have to admit, is a nice touch.
 

Shooter number one is quicker. He gets to the door first, whips around, fires a few badly aimed shots in my direction.
 

Pop-pop-pop.
 

A bullet catches me in the right shoulder and I stagger a bit, feeling lucky for not catching it full in the face and then I’m howling, a high-pitched rage-filled wail that makes everyone in bar still alive turn and stare. My nostrils are flaring and my mouth is open and my fangs are dripping spit and all I can thin about is how good it’s gunna feel to plunge my hand through these asshole’s necks, then rip out their hearts—
 

A thick, glistening blue-black snake wraps around the first guy’s neck and through the holes in his mask I see his eyes widen to white. Mia. Must’ve come down through the outer exit. I wonder if she’s shifted completely, and if so if she’ll have the strength to keep it together and shift back.
 

I doubt it. Not with the anger and blood and pain and fear this night’s delivering. She’ll be gone, slipping into the street and down into the sewers, a nightmare vision.
 

So this is goodbye.
 

There’s only one smell in the room right now: fear.
 

It smells like fucking roses.

Guy number two is closer, about ten feet away. He lifts his gun; yup, a MAC 10, aims it at my chest and all things considered I’m pretty impressed by the composure these Skins are showing given my current half-fucking-animal state. I should probably be taking, y’know, some kind of defensive action given the dude’s about to unload a clip in my chest but my animal’s rage is searing through me I leap onto a table and raise my arms out at the shooter and
roar
, fucking daring him to shoot me because fuck defensive action and fuck ducking and hiding and most of all fuck this guy.
 

I’m gunna paint the walls with his insides.
 

The glass around the bar and in front of the building shatters when I scream and the Skin is only eight feet away now. Close enough: I crouch and spring. I’m in the air when the bullets loose. I catch one straight in the chest and another and another and as I fly through the air there’s a thought, a doubt, buried way back in the throbbing hate and fury-filled redness of my mind, that I might not live through this and wouldn’t that be a treat, after all these years of slinging Stricken, to be brought down by a couple punk Skins on a weeknight in my own club?

I land right in front of the Skin. My legs give out but my momentum carries me forward into him. We crash backward together. The gun goes flying. His fear is thick in my nose and he’s screaming now, damn straight he is, because he has this…
thing
…crawling up him, this bleeding, busted open half wolf creature that’s all snapping jaws and scratching claws and howling bloodlust.
 

Tell you what, though.
 

I always wanted to die a wolf in the woods. Not a half-formed monster in a dive bar in a shithole city, but a wolf in the woods, fast and free, the forest loam crisp in my nostrils and the trees whispering overhead and the sky heavy with stars to remind me there’s a gift called natural beauty in this world. The Skin’s have nearly forgotten that, haven’t they? Dying in the woods with my wolf body rotting into the dirt and a roaming night animal or two plucking at my whitening bones.

The circle of life. That’s how I wanted to die.

Not like this.

But oh well. Dreams be dreams.

So I’ll settle for plunging both hands into the Skin motherfucker’s stomach and tearing out his stinking insides, which I do now. I’ll settle for clawing and biting my way up his chest, worming my way toward his neck because I can’t feel the lower half of my body. I’ll settle for his throat in my jaws, grinding and tearing, severing his carotid artery and the blood flowing like a fountain where wild things make their last wish.

Yeah, I’ll settle for that, because that’s all I got.
 

T
HERE
’
S
A
SOUND
in the darkness. Distant, blurred. A sound I nearly recognize. A sound that makes me wonder if there’s something beyond this blackness.
 

Go away,
I think.
Leave me be. It’s quiet here. Maybe I’ll finally get some sleep. Maybe I won’t see any more visions. Maybe I’ll stop thinking about the son I abandoned—
 

But the sound continues, growing louder, coalescing in the darkness into something I almost recognize.

Lily.
 

Lily.
 

Lily!

Someone’s repeating that sound over and over, like a chant.
 

Go away.

The darkness feels good. Wonderful, even. I don’t have to think about my mother. How she died. How she looked when I found her. How my little girl mind was so curious about the red paint spreading across the entryway floor. Where did it come from?
 

Momma, you made a mess. Get up, Momma. I’m hungry. Please, Momma.
 

The three days I spent in that house with her, too afraid to leave even though Momma told me what to do if anything bad happened. Told me over and over, bending down to look me in the eye, gripping my shoulders and saying—

Run.

“Why?”

But she only clamped her lips closed and wouldn’t answer.

I’m sorry Momma.

I didn’t run. I stayed in the house with you. Waited for you to get up and clean the sticky red mess. Waited to help, hoping you’d let me use the mop to show you how I knew how to use it properly. Waited for dinner, and when that didn’t happen climbing on the footstool, reaching up into the cupboard and eating Cheerios from the box while you were lying dead in the next room.

I’m sorry Momma.

I was so hungry.

But I should have run.

I know that now.

Because they found me.

They found me and they took me away from you. Took me to a room with bright lights and hard chairs and a lady who asked me questions I didn’t want to answer.
 

There’s a a patch of something soft in the blackness.

Leave me alone. Some mistakes you can’t outrun.
 

A kind of light: dim, fragile. And the sound again.
 

Lily. Lily. Lily.
 

It means something important.
 

I just need to get to it. Need to see.

That’s what Momma said.
You need to run, Lily. Please.
 

Lily.

My name.
 

There’s a whooshing noise, like the air being sucked from a room, and with it the darkness goes and something else fills the the empty space that remains: pain.

Now there’s a second sound.

Screaming.

I open my eyes. I’m lying on my side in a wreck of broken glass and pool balls. There’s a hundred dollar bill next to my face. Stained red, the color that pooled out beneath my mother.

Blood.

“Lily! Lil! Get up! Get up
now
!”

Someone’s shaking my shoulders. Hard.
 

The screaming begins again. My throat hurts. I want the screaming to stop. And it does, and I realize it’s me screaming.

Hands lift me from the floor. My head feels so heavy. The world flops and spins and all I want to to lie back down.
 

Let the darkness take me.

“Get up Lil! Stand up! We need to get out of here. Now!”

I look into a face I don’t recognize. A black woman, very pretty, almond eyes wide in fear and pain or both, forehead splattered in red, hair matted and wet with something dark and sticky.
 

Trish.

“You’re a mess,” I try and say, but my tongue won’t co-operate and the words come out all garbled.

Trish has her arm wrapped around my waist. She’s counting. One…two…and for some reason that seems really funny. Reminds me of being in school. The kids counting while the teacher points to the numbers on the chalkboard.
 

But at three Trish heaves me to my feet. The blackness is still there, hovering in the corners of my vision, threatening to swoop down and take me again.

Let it.

“Is she all right?” I ask.

“Who?” Trish says.

“Momma. My Momma.”

Trish doesn’t answer. Drags me a few steps to a table, leans me against it. I waver, my head falling forward so my chin hits my chest and my knees buckle.

“Whoa,” Trish says, pressing her shoulder into my chest to keep me upright. Then she grabs my chin and squeezes. I blink against the tears in my eyes.
 

“Take three breaths with me, Lil,” Trish says, looking into my eyes. “Take three breaths and then we move.”

Sound seems more real than what I see right in front of me. Sounds of glass crunching and people shouting and moaning and then, off in the distance, the sound of police sirens.
 

I breath. There’s a stabbing pain in my chest and the breath gets cut short.

Trish nods. “Broken ribs. Okay. You’ll be fine. Your ma—that fucking biker prick. He took the bullets. We got no more time now. You ready?”

Ready?
I think.
Ready for what?

Trish throws an arm under my armpits and around my back and pulls me off the table. She has my purse slung over her shoulder and that’s weird, why does Trish have my purse?

Then we’re staggering toward the back door, me leaning heavy into my friend. Trish is swearing, telling me stand up, that she can’t carry me, that I have to walk. Move.

Run.

Because they’re coming again, aren’t they?

They’re coming, and there’ll be another too-bright room and more questions I can’t answer—

I try and ask Trish what happened but manage only a strangled moan.

Other people stagger to their feet around us. A few leather cut wearing bikers. A few underdressed women. A college kid or two. They blink slowly, like they’re just waking up, trying to remember what happened as well, or like they’re trying to come to terms with the fact that they’re still alive.
 

In shock.

The words pound through my head. From my Seattle P.D. training.