The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (28 page)

T
HE
ROAD
WINDS
through the forest beside the ocean. Occasionally the trees part to reveal the stormy sea and white crashing waves. There are not many other cars and Absent, which is good. Sometimes a car comes up very close and fast behind me, flashes its lights and makes a loud beeping sound, then zooms along beside me before speeding ahead.

When this happens I do not look at the Absent in the car speeding beside me. I hold the wheel in two hands and concentrate on trying not to crash off the black road.
 

I’m afraid of what is happening to me in the car. Is it drawing my Faith from me? Turning me into an Absent? I fear this because driving the car down the winding road at night makes me happy in a way I cannot remember ever knowing.
 

That’s how I know the car is evil.
 

Only Solace and Guarding the Gate should cause such happiness. Or maybe being a Vessel, too, if you’re a woman. Anything of this world that causes such happiness is an illusion, a deceit of Azazel.

There is a red button on the car and when I press it warm air blows across my freezing skin. I smile, then a bolt of fear shoots through me and I quickly try and turn the warm air off. It must be Azazel’s breath in Hell. It makes me feel pleasure. I tell myself I’ll leave it on until I stop shivering. But already I am in deceit: I’m not shivering only because of cold, but because my body is hungry for Essence.

Still, I leave the warm air on.
 

Frightening moments are when another car approaches and I’m blinded by its horrible lights. I think of the Absent sitting in the car approaching me. How easy it would be to kill us both. There is something about the thought of ending this life in a car crash that I like. I liked how the car the woman drove leaped off the road and smashed through the trees. It was almost delicate, like the car sighing a last breath. I liked the crumpling sound the car made. The shattering glass. The smell that came from it.
 

Killing that Absent man. Hearing his neck snap.
 

I liked that also.

For years I lived as a Hopeful, dreaming of becoming a Vessel and bearing the Priest’s children to repopulate the ranks of Guardians. That dream is lost.
 

But another dream is being born.

***

 
Soon I begin passing residences of the Absent. One every few minutes. The residences are dark. I consider stopping the car, turning the engine off, entering one of the residences. But I like being in the car. It feels warm and…safe. I like knowing I can leap the car off the road at any moment and die. There’s safety in having death so near.
 

If I’m dead Azazel and the Absent can’t take me.
 

The road widens. Lights grow alongside it, and awful trees with endless wires instead of branches. I pass more and more cars. Many make that loud beeping noise at me.
 

I pass residences that look active, lit by bright white lights. Inside I see row after row of sustenance. I’m surprised to see many items of sustenance I recognize from the pantry in the Arc: fruits and vegetables and breads. Some things are the same here. The thought makes me experience both suspicion and relief.
 

There are Absent everywhere now. Walking on the side of the road, shoulders hunched against the wind and rain. In the brightly lit residences. In the cars around me. More Absent than I thought possible. Realizing there are so many Absent makes my skin crawl.
 

My dream begins to change.
 

It will not be possible to kill them all.
 

But there are important ones to kill. Guises of Azazel. Perhaps I will search for those. If I murder the Guises will my soul be saved? Will the sin of betraying my family and the Three Priests be absolved?
 

I think it might.

Soon the wire trees have boxes with colored lights that hang over the road. Red and yellow and green. The cars around me are behaving oddly. Stopping and starting for no reason I can see. I don’t want to stop, so I drive across the yellow line to get around the stopped cars. Many of them make angry-sounding beeps at me.
 

I press the gas pedal and make the car go faster. Going fast makes me feel safe; no Absent will be able to open the door, hop in the car and take me.

I speed around a line of stopped cars. Out of the corner of my eye I see bright lights coming very fast and then a tremendous booming crashing sound and my body’s thrown against the inside of the car. My head hits the glass with a thump and the pain is blinding and the wheel in my hands won’t obey and I’m rolling upside down, being killed by the car which has chosen to stop obeying me and decided to kill me.
 

The pain makes me understand I am being punished for the happiness of being in the car.
 

The car stops rolling. I’m upside down, my knees crammed against my chest. The wet road presses against my head. The car is on its side. I squirm and scream, trying to free myself from the car. A white-hot pain shoots up my arm.
 

Something’s wrong. My arm or wrist is broken.
 

I smell my blood and something else, a smell like the engine room of the Arc. What did Priest Gabriel call that smell? Gasoline? I manage to get my feet under me and stand in the car between the seat and steering wheel. The door is above me, and above that the sky.
 

I need to get out. The car hasn’t finished killing me.
 

I bite my teeth together, lean my broken side against the seat, hook my left foot into the steering wheel and use it to stretch tall enough to reach the door handle above. I try and push the door open. It’s very heavy. It won’t open all the way. But I’m able to open it wide enough the wriggle through. I lift myself through the door and into the open air.
 

When I’m halfway out of the car I look around. The glowing lights above the street shine down through the rain, lighting a vision of hell.

Cars are piled around the road. All of them broken. Some are on fire. Screams are coming from many cars, and that loud beeping sound too. Maimed Absent are crawling from the broken cars, like me. Others run toward the crash. Absent come in all shapes and colors, I see.
 

I know the Absent running toward the crash want to take me. I drag my legs through the door and fall onto the road. I lay there for a moment, stunned, hurting, shaking with cold and fear, then my stomach cramps and I throw up more yellow fluid.
 

I feel hands on me again.
 

Don’t touch me, I want to scream, but my tongue is swollen in my mouth, making it impossible to speak, and instead I simply look up to see what’s touching me. It’s a woman Absent. She’s saying something over and over but I can’t hear. Her eyes are wide. Her teeth yellow. Her skin saggy and grey. She’s hideous.
 

There’s a ringing in my ears now, blocking out all sound. I stand, lean against the broken car, gather a breath. The woman tugs at my shoulder, harder this time. Don’t touch me! I scratch at the Absent’s face, hoping to take out her eye. Her mouth opens in a scream I can’t hear, then she folds in half, holding her injured face and staggering away from me.

I look around, frantic, needing escape. I see a dark space between two of the residences. A space with no lights overhead.
 

That is my escape.
 

I run away from the broken cars. Through a group of Absent. Hop over pieces of plastic and metal and a man lying on the road with his femur sticking through his thigh.

The buzzing in my ears continues as I flee across the road and into the dark shadowed space between the residences. When I’m far enough away I leap behind a metal box and turn to see if I’m being followed.
 

Two of the Absent, both men, are chasing me. They are big men, one muscular and one simply fat, both too big to kill without a weapon, so I turn and continue running, following the shadowed space. I turn left and right as I can, avoiding the roads with lights and cars and Absent, and after a while I believe the men have fallen behind far enough for me to stop and catch my breath.
 

I duck into a dark alcove beside a door, whisper a prayer for strength over and over and try to breathe. My heart hammers in my chest. My broken arm throbs, and I cradle it in my good arm and pray for death.
 

I’ve never been so afraid.
 

I should have leapt the car off the road and into the trees when I had the chance.
 

Where am I? I’m in the lair of the Absent.
 

Their smell is everywhere: the foul reek of their garbage. The buzzing in my ears lessens enough for me to hear the beeping cars and, off in the distance, a wailing mechanical sound that sends a shiver down my spine. It must be some Absent creature, a hunting animal trained to sniff out Guardians. This is a truly evil land.
 

“I’m ‘a run with you, little girl. I’m ‘a run from dem goddamned pigs.”

There’s an Absent huddled in the alcove, so bundled in rags and garbage I didn’t even see him. His skin is pocked and covered in sores, his eyes are too-large and filmed in white, and he has a beard larger even than Priest Gabriel’s. He reeks of garbage and filth and wickedness.
 

The Absent reaches out and grips my ankle.

I scream, tear my ankle away and continue running through shadows.

***

The truth is I am frightened, but I like the shadows.
 

There’s a darkness in me.
 

A darkness that has nothing to do with the Three Priests or the Absent or Azazel. This darkness existed before my Acceptance into the Guardians. It’s one of the few things I remember from my life before Acceptance. Even as a young girl in Tokyo I knew this darkness was in me. Knew it in the way the world smelled. And when my parents were murdered and Priest Gabriel arrived at the Mission to spread the Truth and select a few Chosen to join the Hopefuls on the Ark I wanted nothing more than to leave with him, hoping the Priest would help rid my soul of…this dark hunger.

But the answers the Guardians provided did not satiate my hunger. I believe in evil Azazel and the Absent and the Guardians who are fated to sacrifice themselves to prevent the All Encompassing from rising. I remain steadfast in my faith during this time of trial. But even the Priests only know part of the story, and what they do know is fragmented into thousands of tiny shards, and their story is like trying to piece the shards back together again.
 

Pieces are missing. Others are arranged wrong.
 

Maybe knowing only part of the story is enough for some. But not for me. I want to know more. I want to know what I hunger for.
 

Want to know the name of the creature that dwells inside me.
 

The Guardians are right to say there is a war on. An endless, secret war, fought for so long no one remembers why. The Guardians might even be right that the Absent are the enemy.
 

But there are other, older enemies.
 

I’ve seen their ancient, animal faces arranged in storm clouds above the Arc. Heard their wild, raspy voices in the wind.
 

Calling me to them.
 

Being isolated on the Arc helped. Not being frightened all the time helped. And I think the Essence helped as well.
 

But the darkness and hunger remained.
 

Quiet. Dormant. But alive.
 

That’s why I leapt from the boat. Not only because of Charlene screaming. Because I knew I’d chosen wrong. The Guardian’s don’t have the power to free me from hunger.
 

Now, racing down the stinking black space between the residences of the Absent, I feel the hunger waking from its long sleep. It’s in the very act of running for my life.
 

It senses I need it to be born.
 

It’s coming. And it’s very, very hungry.

I turn right, completely lost, my feet growing heavy as I tire. A few more steps and I can’t run anymore. I’m so tired. I stumble forward, more out of instinct than anything else.
 

The sky is brightening through the clouds. It’s morning.
 

The beginning of my first full day in the Land of the Absent.
 

I realize I’ve been scratching at my shoulder as I ran, so hard I’ve scraped the flesh bare. A million worms are squirming just beneath my skin. I feel them consuming me. Sucking my blood and gnawing at my bones. I try and stop scratching but the itching sensation only gets worse. It’s not just my shoulder now: the itching spreads across my chest, over my neck, down my belly to my crotch and things.
 

I stop in the middle of the shadowed space, itching madly with my uninjured hand, digging my nails into my skin, peeling it back, making myself bleed, and it feels like my skin wants to pull away from my bones, wants to slough off and reveal what lives beneath. Is this a virulent affliction the Absent have infected me with? Has one of the sorcerer’s of Azazel diseased my mind? Or is this me requiring a needle of Essence?

No. I don’t think so. I remember this feeling. It hasn’t happened in a long while. Since I joined the Guardians. But I remember it from my life as a young girl Tokyo. I don’t want to remember.
 

Please don’t let me remember. Please.
 

I tear my ragged dress over my head, throw it aside and stand naked in the rain in the dark space. Cars screech around a corner and speed toward me, their headlights banishing the comforting shadows. The cars have spinning red and blue lights on their roofs and make a high-pitched wailing noise. More screeching sounds and more cars come fast from behind.