The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (17 page)

Keeping me alive to torture me.

A Stricken steps up, a grinning ape-like thing with red-black hair and a rack of stag’s horns. “I remember him,” the ape says. “This cocksucker murdered my brother.” The ape lifts a giant fist. He’s sporting a set of spiked brass knuckles. “You hold ‘em good, boss. I’m gunna break him up inside and out.”

The Satan’s Spawn crew laugh and hoot and holler as the ape creature winds his fist back. The fucker’s first shot catches me hard in the face, and true to his word my skin rips open and my cheekbone shatters.

“Hit him again, Red,” the boar growls. “Fuck the pretty little Pureblood bitch up.”

Red smashes his fist into my temple.
 

The world goes black, and when I come to the Satan’s Spawn are laughing and leaping around, smacking high-fives and generally having a jolly fine time of killing me real fucking slow.

“Always knew you Predators were pussies,” the boar says, the human skulls hanging from his throat jangling as he shakes me in the air.
 

“Prez can’t even take a punch!” the ape-creature named Red screams before smashing the spiked knuckles into my ribs. A terrible snapping sound rattles through my chest.
 

The boar brings me inches from his eyes and stares into my shattered face. “You wanna say something? We can make this quick if you get on your fucking knees and beg. Or I can let Red here beat you to half to death, then drag you into the bunker and strap you to a table. I know some rich motherfucker’s who’d pay top dollar to feed from the Pureblood Predator Prez.”

I nod, and when the boar lowers me to the ground I summon the last of my strength, drop my claws and bring my hand up hard into the bastard’s crotch. My claws rake across his thigh, but I’m too weak to do any real damage.

So that’s that.
 

The boar screams and backhands me so hard I fly into the dirt, coughing blood. I can’t see out of my right eye and can draw only short, shallow breaths. But I’m alive, and I’m healing, and for the first time in my life I want to give in, stop fighting, beg and plead and scream: just kill me.

Please just kill me.

I can’t fight anymore.
 

Can’t lead a pack.
 

And I can’t face this this fucked-up world alone.

So I’m finished.
 

It’s over.
 

But I won’t give the fucking twisted fucks the satisfaction of knowing they got me beat.

I got some more blood to lose.

“What we gunna do Blunt let’s fuck him up what we gunna do lets eat him fuck yeah lets eat the pretty boy Prez—” the ape-creature screams as he hops around.

Blunt stares down at me, his boar-snout dripping snot, and cracks his knuckles real slow while he thinks on how best to torture me.
 

“We gunna eat him soon enough,” Blunt says to his crew. The Stricken biker gang cheers. “But first we gunna fuck his tight pretty boy ass. Then we gunna strap him downstairs and get paid. Then we gunna fuck his carved-up body some more. And when I finally kill him I’m gunna wear his fucking skull around my neck.”

“We gunna fuck him! We gunna fuck the pretty boy Prez!” Red shrieks, and the rest of the Satan’s Spawn MC screech in madness and bloodlust.

“Hold the piece of shit flat on his back,” Blunt says, unzipping his fly.

The Stricken swarm over me. I try and fight them off but there’s too many, and in seconds my arms are pinned behind my head.
 

“How we gunna fuck him how we gunna do it, boss?” Red says.

“Lift his legs back to his fucking ears,” Blunt says as he pulls out his wart-covered cock and begins rubbing himself. I blink through the blood and fear and pain, trying to clear the hellish vision of a half-man half-boar leering down at me, his mottled brown and green hide glowing orange in the firelight as he strokes himself hard and it takes every scrap of strength I have not to start begging at pleading the sick motherfucker for mercy—

“Don’t cover the pretty boy’s mouth,” Blunt says. “I want to hear my pretty bitch scream.”

Blunt’s still looming over me when I notice an odd red dot glowing on his forehead.
 

I grin. Close my eyes. Get a hold on my animal.
 

I’m weak as all fuck but he’s still with me, howling for black blood.
 

I take a breath.
 

Gather my strength for a fucking massacre.
 

One of Blunt’s crew sees the red dot hovering on him and manages to scream, “Blunt someone’s on you with a sco—”

Boom.

The rifle sounds.

And just like that everything changes.
 

Blunt’s fast for such a heavy fuck; he manages to duck fast enough the bullet only tears off the top half of his head. Heavy calibre. Something made to kill big game, from the size of the hole in Blunt’s head.

Blunt doesn’t go down, but he looks stunned. He stands there, cock out, the top half of his head missing, then reaches up and gingerly pokes his thick index finger into the wound.

“Fucking
bitches
,” he gasps.
 

Then the parking lot lights up with glowing white headlights and two-dozen Harleys thunder and roar as they’re throttled hard and one of the Stricken holding my arms has his face blown off and boom! boom! and everything happens in a blur, so fast my mind can’t keep up, all I know is I want to murder these motherfuckers, my animal’s sprinting full speed for the kill while the Harleys plough into the Satan’s Spawn and now I know what this is, it’s a good old-fashioned biker brawl, because the creatures leaping from their Harley’s and onto the Stricken are wearing straight-up Pureblood Predator cuts.

My MC.

Didn’t give up on me.
 

Tracked me right the fuck down.

I howl and rip the heart out of the Stricken holding me while Blunt makes a hideous bleating scream and staggers forward, a foot-long curving blade in his meaty hand and just as he lifts the blade overhead to slam it through my chest something huge crashes into him, a mountain of six-inch fangs and rippling muscle and golden-brown fur, and the sight makes me fucking howl in triumph because I know that moving mountain, it’s my old animal blood-brother Blue, one of the founding members of the Pureblood Predator MC and possibly the most bad-ass motherfucker to ever wear a cut.

Second to me, of course.
 

A blast of heat makes me wince and roll to the side. I’m dead center in a war zone, and to my left there’s the dreadlocked rasta Tate, a joint hanging loose from his lips, raising hell with a fifty-foot arc of flame from a flame-thrower that looks like it last saw action during the Second World War, and then Nash is at my side, helping me to my feet while Blue and the boar-Prez Blunt smash at one another.
 

“You shoulda waited a second,” I say, my voice garbled from my shattered jaw. “I was just about to murder the pig. Now Blue’s gunna steal my kill.”
 

“Yeah, yeah,” Nash says with his hyena grin. “The fucker looked terrified.”

Nash stuffs a sawed-off shotgun in my hands and it’s kill-time with the twin barrels smoking and the kickback slamming into my shoulder and the Stricken motherfuckers screaming and dying, their blood running like a black river under the red moon as my MC, over two-dozen strong, settle in for the slaughter.
 

Tate blasts the flame-thrower, lighting three Stricken on fire. They drop to the ground, rolling around, trying to put out the flames and my crew leaps on them and finishes them off.

I see the ape-asshole Red making a run for it, raise the shotgun and blow a hole through his back. He staggers to the ground, crawls forward, and when run over and flip him on his back and plunge my hand through his chest I smile and say, “Who’s getting fucked now?”

The taste of Red’s heart draws my wolf right to the surface, snarling and snapping his jaws. My shadow-hunters are back, hanging out near the edge of the desert, and I send all three out searching for the sick fucking doctor from the basement feeding room.
 

But it’s the boar named Blunt I really want to kill.
 

He’s the one I
have
to kill, if I have any hope of regaining my MC’s respect.

The boar Prez is facing off against the towering Kodiak grizzly Blue.

I run over, put my hand on Blue’s giant shoulder. Blue gives me a look like ‘you sure, boss?’ and when I nod and hand Nash the shotgun and Blue takes a few steps back, giving me this kill.
 

Blunt laughs, reaches down, picks up Red’s spiked brass knuckles and squares to me, grinning through the horns bristling from his snout. He’s got bleeding claw marks across his chest, but his head wound is already healed, and seeing how fast he heals makes me realize how strong he must be and I wonder, just for a second, if I’m up for the task of murdering him, and if anything will kill me it’s that creeping, poisonous doubt.

No room for doubt now.
 

No second guessing.
 

There’s only this single moment.

A death challenge. Alpha against alpha.
 

“Pretty bitch Prez come back for more, huh?” Blunt says, smashing the spiked knuckles into his cupped hand. “What’s a matter, pretty boy? Miss me already? Miss this big cock?”

My MC gathers in a loose circle around me and Blunt.
 

“This pig motherfucker kills me, you let him go,” I say to Nash.
 

Blunt’s eyes gleam.

Things shift around inside me, bones mending, bullet wounds healing.

I feel…strong. Fast. Like I could take down an army of ugly Stricken pig’s like Blunt. I feel…fucking
unstoppable
, and then I remember the Skinwalker and what she said I was. There’s a part of me that wants her to be right. The age-old dream of power. But what if—

The One We Answer To.

The fucking top dog.
 

Am I the apex alpha not only of my biker MC but all the surviving Purebloods across the globe?
 

Blunt charges, stops, steps back. Testing me.
 

Searching for weakness.

The only injury that hasn’t healed is the fucking acid burn on my hip from when the doctor threw that orange powder on my shadow-wolf, and that’s a problem, because it’s gunna slow me down, and the only way to kill a huge fucker like Blunt will be to out move him.

Blunt’s beady little eyes study me. He’s big, but he’s not an idiot. He sees me limping left and comes in quick for that side, swinging the brass knuckles in a wide arc. I lean back, wincing against the pain in my hip.
 

The knuckles whistle inches from my face.
 

Blunt’s more than twice my size. He only needs to hit me once to knock me down, and then he’s on me and I’m dead. I need to keep my distance.

Strike, move, strike, move.
 

It’s the only strategy I have.
 

And the problem is…my enemy knows it.

Blunt takes a step away. We circle around one another, feinting, scenting for weakness. Then the fucker runs at me, a full-on charge, and I sidestep quick and lash out with my claws, catching him just below the ribs. His eyes widen in pain, but for a split second we’re close, and faster than I’d hoped Blunt reaches his free hand down, snags my wrist and then he’s pulling me toward his razor-sharp horns. I plant my right foot and wrench my torso to the side, trying to lever my wrist free before he gores me. His grip slips in the blood and sweat on my wrist and I leap backward and the knuckles land a glancing blow on my chest.

My MC grumbles. Fuck them.
 

We’re just getting warmed up.
 

“C’mere, you chickenshit pretty boy,” Blunt sneers, clearly pissed he missed that opportunity.
 

He’s getting impatient. Good.

This time I move in, faking a right cross, which would be suicide if it actually connected because no single punch of mine is going to drop this fucking monster. But Blunt takes the bait, staggers to the side to avoid the punch, off balance, and I drop and sweep a kick along the ground, catching him in the calf, snapping his ankle. The boar Prez bellows in pain, then drops an elbow that connects with my head so hard there’s a flash of white light and I think it’s over, I’m blinking, trying to stay conscious and I sense the killing blow more than I see it, the spiked knuckles falling straight for my temple, Blunt putting all his weight behind the punch, leaning way too deep into it, and right before the knuckles end me I fling myself to the side—
 

Blunt’s weight carries him into the dirt and then I’m on his back, stabbing my claws into his neck while he bellows and thrashes beneath me. I drop my fangs and latch onto his spine, the muscles and tendons in my neck straining as I grind my fangs through skin and flesh and bone, shaking my head back and forth like a mad dog, desperate to pierce his vertebrae and sink my teeth into the vulnerable thread of my kill’s spinal nerve, black blood filling my mouth, me snarling and snapping and sinking my claws into Blunt’s skull, the white of his spine visible where I’m chewing at him, the boar-giant bucking and writhing beneath me, trying to flip over, and for a second he actually gets his knees under him and lifts me into the air and that’s all it takes, there’s a horrible ripping sound as my teeth pull from his neck and then I’m sailing backward, certain I’m dead.

Blunt and I stand at the same time. Face one another.
 

Black blood spurts from the wound at the back of Blunt’s neck.
 

He makes to run at me. Lifts his left leg. His eyes widen.
 

Something’s wrong.
 

He stares at his right leg in shock.
 

He can’t feel it.
 

Blunt lifts his massive head and looses a long, rage-filled bellow.
 

The right side of his face doesn’t move.