The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (25 page)

Because I see Anik looking at the bitch Mia the same way she looks at him. With attraction.

Like there could one day be love between them.
 

Oh, they’re doing their best to hide it.
 

They have roles to play.
 

But I see it.

“Stop!” Erik says. Then to the men behind him: “You hear something?”

“I heard a buzzing sound, Earl,” the boy Steven says. That he uses his father’s name makes me smile. It’s sad, some people would say. But it makes me smile. These Skins…they’re so frail. So easily broken.
 

“I heard it too,” Earl says, turning quickly from side to side, scanning the forest.
 

“You should’ve seen the wasp that bit me today—”

“Shut up, Flea,” the father Earl scowls.
 

And the boy does.

There’s a smacking sound from behind us.
 

“What the fuck?” one of the masked men says. “Fucking thing bit me!”

“A wasp?”

“Yeah,” the man says. “Huge one. Stings like a motherfucker.”

“Weather’s changing,” the fourth man says, spinning in a half circle and looking into the night. “Never used to be wasps this early in spring.”
 

I laugh again, just a little.
 

“What’s so funny, slant?” Steven says.

What’s so funny is that they’re trying so hard to spot the killer in the woods they miss the killer standing right beside them.
 

Anik growls a little. Very quiet.
 

It’s a warning.
 

Intended for me.

Poor Anik. We could have had love together.

If only he chose me instead of fretting and bowing and scraping for the failed alpha Lily.

If only he chose
strength
.

I will hunt the Guardians of the Gate. This path has been decided. The only reason I’m holding back is for sweet Anik. I guess…I care for him more than I’d like to admit. I guess this is also a deadly weakness in me.
 

Another of my wasps lands on the soldier’s neck. Sinks her stinger into his jugular. Flows her poison into him. This power. This is new to me. To murder with a single bite. The man has time to swat at the wasp before his blood turns toxic in his veins and he falls choking to the forest floor.

Welcome, death, I think, smiling into the darkness.
 

“What the fuck?” the fourth man says as his companion collapses.

Earl ignores his fallen comrade, crouches down, raises his machine gun, scans the woods and instructs his son to do the same.

Then Anik has me by the wrist. His back is to me, but he’s squeezing me.
 

Hard enough to hurt.
 

“Enough, Shiori,” he whispers.
 

His eyes are wide. But not frightened. More like…sad.
 

And perhaps a little angry.
 

I thrash against him, but he holds me fast, and the way he’s holding me against my will makes warmth flood through my midsection.
 

Poor Anik.
 

He should have held me hard like this when there was love between us.

We could have been lovers. Bloodmates.
 

“Dead?” Earl asks, his eyes never leaving the forest.
 

“Yeah,” the fourth man says.

“How?”
 

“Not sure.”

“The fucking wasp! It’s the wasps,” Steven says, panic mounting in his voice. “There’s one here it’s here the freaks they’ve found us—”

“Quiet!” his father barks, then he points his gun at me and Anik and commands his son to stuff the gags in our mouth. Steven follows orders. He approaches me cautiously. I open my mouth wide for him. He cringes, then quickly fill my mouth with the cotton gag, careful not to touch his skin to mine.
 

This boy. He senses something. He might be the smartest of them all—

 
“You two!” Earl says. “Out front. Quick now! Keep moving. That’s it!”

We abandon the dead body and push through the dark forest for a few more minutes. The forest becomes more dense, the branches low and tight, obscuring our vision and slowing us down.

Anik leans down, points to something.
 

Earl shuffles over. “What is it?”

Anik mumbles something through the gag.
 

“Fuck,” Earl says, sweat streaming down his face. He reaches down and tugs the gag from Anik’s mouth. “Not a sound. Or I swear I’ll put a bullet in your head.
 

Anik turns to study the ground again.
 

I wonder if he can scent the Stricken.

I lift my nose to the air and sniff.
 

Yes. They’re out there. Scenting us down.
 

We’re being hunted.

Anik gestures at the ground and whispers. “We’re on some kind of animal trail. See? Branches bent back? Grass worn down? And there? Scat. Lots of it.”

“Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck,” Steven says, blinking against the sweat pouring into his eyes.
 

Earl casts his son a scathing glance and tells us to keep moving.
 

An animal screeches in the distance. Steven whirls at the sound. There’s a click and a flash of blinding light and the booming roar of machine gun fire as the boy unleashes a full clip into the night forest.
 

His face, lit by the firing weapon, is a mask of stark terror.

“You little idiot!” Earl hisses when the bullets stop and Steven’s rifle begins to click. “You fucking
fool
. Do you know what you’ve done? Do you? You’ve—”

“Earl!” Anik says from a few yards ahead.

Earl ignores Anik, points his finger at his son and says, “Give me the rifle.”

“No, father, I—”

“Give me the rifle!” Earl screams.
 

Steven’s shoulders slump. He looks at the ground, then at the soldiers behind him, then slowly hands his father the weapon.
 

Earl snatches the rifle from his son’s grasp and slings it over his shoulder. “That gunfire will be heard for miles. You’re to blame if anything happens,” he says. “If anyone else dies. It’s on your idiot head.”

I take a few slow steps toward Anik, push through a tangle of undergrowth and emerge into a clearing ringed with massive boulders. The clearing’s maybe thirty yards wide. The moon’s cloud-filtered light shines down, bathing the clearing in crimson.
 

“Would you look at that,” Earl breathes as he steps into the clearing beside me.

The entire clearing is filled with the beautiful pole-pyramid structures. There must be fifty of them. Some are nearly three stories high, tied together with scavenged rope and cable and electrical cord. Some lean against one another, forming a web of interconnected structures.
 

Steven moans, drops to his knees, empties his stomach in the dirt.

Dead Skins are everywhere. Suspended in twos and threes from the pyramids. Arranged in orderly rows in the moss below. Piled in heaps as tall as a man. All headless, their chests torn open and their hearts removed.
 

I’ve never seen anything so marvelous.
 

“So many dead,” Earl says, his voice shaking for the first time since we’ve met.

I take a slow step into the clearing.
 

“How many? A hundred?” Steven asks.

“More,” Anik says, his face grim. He points at the structures, then says, “Look at their heads. All facing the same direction. North.”

“Father please! We have to turn around. Run! Please? Admah will listen! Once she sees this she’ll know—”

I glide deeper into the clearing. My skin buzzes and hums with an uncontainable energy. My creatures ripple right beneath me, and for a moment I wonder if Earl and the rest can see the creatures that live inside, and then I realize I no longer care, because the structure is
speaking
to me.
 

The ugly little man Mia called the professor was only partly right.
 

The structures aren’t simply road signs marking the way.

They’re an ancient language.

His
language.

I step over a decapitated corpse, and how it’s arranged to the corpse beside it forms a shape, and another and another, and as I enter the pyramids the shapes coalesce into a three-dimensional vision written in blood and sacrifice.
 

And triumph.
 

“Shiori?” Anik says, his voice uncertain.

Poor, silly Anik.
 

He can’t read death’s ageless language. He’s as blind and helpless as these decapitated Skins. Wandering lost and afraid through the forest.
 

Unable to understand the truth written right in front of him.

But I can read this truth.
 

This is
my
truth. My place.
 

I step into the middle of the towering pyramid constructions. Corpses sway in a strengthening breeze, wooden poles creaking under their weight. I lift my head and peer through the pyramids and into the sky, and for a moment the grey clouds part to reveal glittering stars, and then the energy building in me concentrates in my groin and heart and throat, a power beyond any I’ve ever imagined, and in the swaying structures and shapes arranged to form symbols I read the history of the future.

My future.
 

The future is a vast, empty desert.
 

Wind-scoured rocks and stinging red sand.
 

A cruel sun that never sets. Water more precious than gold.
 

I’m looking out over this vast, empty plain from somewhere high above the sun-baked ground. At first I believe I’m flying, but there are massive stone blocks under my feet and I realize I’m standing naked atop a stone pyramid so large it lifts me nearly to the sun. A narrow set of steep stairs is carved into the pyramid. The steps are slick with red blood, and as my eyes trace down to the base of the pyramid I see the lifeless bodies of those who have offered themselves to me, and a long line of more faithful snaking far into the distant desert.
 

The faithful have dug a moat around the pyramid.
 

Red blood runs down the pyramid steps and drains into the moat.
 

The faithful have travelled long to pay their respects in blood. Crawling through burning sand on all fours. Their hearts thrumming, their blood pounding in that odd mix of terror and ecstasy called religious fervor.

Only We Who Rule are permitted to walk upright in one another’s presence.
 

Only We Who Rule are permitted speak in one another’s presence.

This is natural law.
 

The bodies of the faithful are piled high against the pyramid, a mountain of decaying flesh, and when I see them I breathe deep. The cloying scent of rot fills my nose, making me smile.
 

This is my home. A pyramid ringed by a moat of blood.
 

My temple.

One of the faithful wades through the moat, then carefully crawls over the decaying bodies piled at the base of my pyramid and up the blood-slick stairs. The man’s face is blank and calm and peaceful. His eyes are softly focused and serene. He’s naked, his body painted in red ochre and black coal patterns.
 

He has prepared himself for this sacred death.

The man arrives at the pyramid’s uppermost level. Sinks to his knees. Reaches his fingers out, slow, reverent, and caresses the edge of the top step, his fingers tracking though the blood. He keeps his eyes downcast, but I notice him peeking out over the desert plain, marveling at the last view he’ll ever see in this world.

Suddenly, from close behind me, a child cries.

My heart fills with joy.

My firstborn.
 

This sacrifice is a celebration.

I turn and see my infant child lying on a stone altar, swaddled in black robes. I walk to him, lift him into my arms, my antennae clicking, my multifaceted, fractal eyes shining in the harsh sunlight.
 

My child.

“Why is my son crying?”
 

A man’s voice. Hard. Ruthless. Imperial.
 

I lift my head and stare at the speaker. The man is tall and lean, with a powerful jaw and burning black eyes and dark, straight hair that hangs just below his ears. His face is painted in yellow and black stripes. He’s naked, his muscular body covered in small yellow and black tattoos that look like flowers or stars.

The Lord of Near and Nigh.
 

My brother. My bloodmate.

Rodas.

“He’s hungry,” I say, my voice clicking and singing through my insect throat.
 

“Then feed him,” Rodas says, walking to the living sacrifice perched at the edge of our platform. Rodas lifts his hand over the sacrifice’s head. His hand dissolves into swirling black smoke, and a second later a shining black blade appears.
 

The sacrifice trembles and moans like one does when joined with a lover for the first time.

Rodas brings the swirling smoke-blade onto the sacrifices neck.
 

Gently.
 

Not so much a blow but a caress.
 

The sacrifice’s head tumbles onto the blood-stained stones at Rodas’ feet.
 

Rodas lifts the offering’s head and flings it from the pyramid. It arcs into the sky, then smashes into the stairs and tumbles into the pile of decaying bodies far below.
 

“Bring my son to me,” Rodas commands.

I hesitate. Only for an instant.
 

No one commands me. Not now. Not ever again.
 

Rodas’ face ripples. Black fangs descend from his upper jaw.
 

My antennae click and snap, their razor-sharp barbs slicing though the air inches above my bloodmate’s head.