The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (40 page)

“Suck on that tit, douchebags!” Mia yells.

Another explosion, then another, then I feel Mia’s hands curl deep into my fur as she lays her head on my shoulder and says, “That’s it, handsome. I’m all out of boom.”

***

I know I’m dead because I’m immersed in water.
 

Cool, cleansing water. Lapping against my skin. Running over my chin and cheeks and forehead. I open my mouth and drink deep. Water flows into me. I gulp it down. My thirst is unquenchable.
 

“Okay, enough Anik. Enough.”

I know I’m dead because when I open my eyes I see a lovely woman with violet-green eyes looking at me with a sly smile.
 

Mia?

***

 
I wake to water running over smooth stones. After a while I open my eyes. I’m laying on my back in the shade beneath a gnarled juniper tree. The once-great river’s running low: its high-water mark is etched into the red and orange and tan sandstone bank.
 

But at least there’s still water.

I’m in a narrow valley. A canyon. The canyon walls rise straight up, a thousand feet on either side. The cerulean blue sky is a narrow strip overhead. The canyon is shaded: deep and dark and cool. The patient river carved this canyon over eons. Bit by bit. Grain after grain. The river made a home for itself.
 

Home. Mine is far away from this red land.
 

I try to speak. My tongue won’t move.
 

“Shh,” Mia says. “We can rest a while. Not long. But a while.”

I lay in silence, listening to the river, reaching my mind out over my body, testing for injury. I curl my fingers and toes. Shift my legs a little to make sure I can feel them. The only problem is my stomach. It’s an empty pit, the pain so sharp it makes me wince. When I’m satisfied that I’m whole I try and lift my head.
 

Dizziness crashes into me.

“I said
rest
, dumbass,” Mia says sharply.

“Where…”

“Somewhere remote.” I hear the shrug in Mia’s tone, then she says, “The desert Southwest. Canyonlands.”

Almost halfway
, I think.

Too bad I’m way more than half dead.

“Food?”

“Food’s a problem. Plenty of water, though.”

Water’s good
, I try and say. But I’m too weak.
 

“I’m going to have to leave you for a bit, Anik.”

“No…”

“You stay right here.” Mia says, chuckling. “Not like I think you’re going anywhere. I need to hunt. Got it? Even animal meat will do us both some good. There’s game in this canyon. I scent it.”

“No…”

I’m almost begging.

“There’s a jug of water by your right hip. A blanket too, for the night. Gets damned cold down here. I hope I’m not gone that long.”

I feel Mia’s lips against mine. Chapped. Cracked. Dry. But her kiss…makes something nearly forgotten stir inside me. I try and lift my hand to pull her close. She reaches down, slips her hand in mine, squeezes me.
 

Then she’s gone.

***

In my dream I’m running across the northern tundra, through a blizzard, snow blind. Icy shards sting my eyes. I’m calling her name.

Pimniq. Pimniq.

Then I see her. Standing very still. The wind roars around her, but her hair and clothing are unruffled. It’s like she’s enveloped in a quiet stillness. A kind of peace.
 

I race toward my sister, calling her name, joy filling my heart.

I’m almost at her side when my joy turns to horror.
 

It’s Pimniq. But it’s not.
 

It’s her
shell
. Lifeless skin and bones.
 

Her eyes are empty black sockets.
 

A scream builds in my throat.

Then an insect flies from Pim’s mouth.

Then another, and another.
 

A buzzing, stinging wasp swarm.

The insects ripple under my sister’s skin, and when they’ve emptied out of her Pimniq folds in on herself and settles, very slow, onto the ice. Like a punctured ballon.

Someone’s standing beside me. So close we’re almost touching.
 

I turn, expecting to see Shiori’s chill smile.
 

But it’s not her.

It’s a boy with pale skin and limp black hair.
 

“You’re near, Anik,” the boy whispers. “You’re very near.”

The boy’s face changes, and suddenly there’s a horned vulture staring at me, and when the bird opens its hooked beak I see a tiny stone pyramid suspended in its mouth, lit by red lightning—

***

I wake to flickering red-orange light.
 

Chill sweat streams down my face, stinging my eyes.

Mia’s kneeling over a small fire, roasting chunks of meat. A half-dressed dear carcass is spread out on a large flat stone beside her.

“Is that safe?” I say, watching the firelight play against the canyon’s red walls like a beacon.

“Safe? Probably not. But we need to heal up, and quick, or we’ll die for sure. Being warm and full-bellied helps. We’ll move on after we eat. A smart hunter never sleeps where she feeds.”
 

I consider this, then the dream. “This is what he wants,” I say, digging my elbows in the sand and sitting up as Mia hands me a piece of meat roasted on a stick. “The Fallen wants me at the Pyramid of the Sun.”

“You dreamed it?”

I nod.

Mia tells me to eat.
 

“I have to find Pim. Even if…it’s what he wants.”

“I know.”

“You think she’s already dead?”

Mia gives me a long, hard look, then turns to her task without a word.

“What if the Risen defeat the Fallen?” I say, more to myself than Mia. “If we lose…nothing matters. We die. But if we win? However that might happen?” I look to the narrow strip of night sky overhead. “Will the moon turn pale? The oceans recede?”

“You mean: will everything return to normal?”

“Yeah.”

Mia lifts her meat from the spit, sniffs it, takes a bite, chews and gulps it down, then says, “You know what I miss most right now?”

“What?”

“Salt.”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re starving.”

Mia smiles and digs into her meal. I wait for her to finish. When she’s done she throws the grease-stained stick aside and says, “You don’t remember much, do you?”

“About what?”

“Your wildborn life.”

“No.”

Mia puts another piece of meat over the fire, blows life into the coals and settles on her heels. She’s taken her boots off. Her feet are swollen and bloody with blisters. I look at her ankles. The tender skin leading up her calf, then the hem of her jeans—

I startle, raise my eyes and find Mia staring at me with a gleam in her eye. “You gunna eat or what?” she asks, gesturing at the roasted game.
 

I tear off a piece of meat and swallow, barely bothering to chew. It settles in a lump in my stomach. I’ve known hunger before. Winters are long in the north, and game scarce. But this flame-blackened deer tastes better than anything I’ve eaten since arriving in the south. It tastes…wild. Free. I use both hands to lift the meat to my mouth and attack it, gulping down huge bites.

“Slower,” Mia cautions. “We don’t have enough for you to make yourself sick.”

“You want to know if things will return to normal?” Mia says while I eat. “Well. This
is
normal, handsome. Everything changes. Species come and go. Continents shift. Moons and suns rise and fall. Only Skins believe different. Only Skins believe in
permanence
. And the only reason they believe in that is because their lives are short and their memories shit.”

“So even if we win—”

“Yeah. The world’s changed forever. No turning back the clock. Best learn how to deal. If you don’t…well. You wouldn’t be the first—or even the most fearsome—apex predator driven to extinction because it couldn’t adapt.”

“Your Skin crew,” I say. “The New World Order? You mentioned using them to claim a territory?”

Mia nods. Stares into the fire. After a while she says, “No one survives alone. Even apex predators have prides and packs and…mates.”

“I’ll never trust anyone ever again,” I say quietly.

Mia flicks a stone in the fire. “Trouble is, sooner or later, we all have to trust someone. Especially when we don’t want to.”

I listen to the night sounds. Small, hurried movements. Rodents scurrying along, eager to snap up food scraps but wary of the flame.
 

“You trusted me,” Mia says after a long silence. “At the motel?”

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

“Why?”

“I had to. I was nearly dead.”

“Exactly. It’s easy to be alone when you’re feeling strong. Fuck the world and everyone in it, right? I’ve been there. But it’s different when you’re weak. Hurt. Questioning shit. That’s when you wish you’d made more of an effort to reach out to people. Because it’s possible, you know, that if you really work at being alone, one day you might realize you are.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

Mia hands me another chunk of meat. I devour it, wash it down with cool river water. I feel the nourishment working through my blood, my body absorbing the dead animal’s strength. Death is a gift our prey gives to the needful, my people say.
 

I mouth a quiet prayer of gratitude to the deer.

Mia watches me, then says, “That doe didn’t go quietly, you know. She fled. I chased her. Boxed her into a canyon. Brought her down with a fucking rock. It wasn’t quick.”

“So?”

“So that deer didn’t give shit to us. I
took
it from her.”

I take a bite of gristle and say, “Is that how you feel now? Like you wished you’d made more of an effort to reach out to people?”

“Lets put it this way: I understand why you have to find your sister. And if the tables were turned, yeah, I’d like to think I’d do the same for someone I love.”

“You came after me.”

“I was gunna try and stop you.”

“You changed your mind.”

“Yeah.” Mia smiles. “That fucking bear. Doesn’t seem like the type to change his mind.”

Tornarsuk the Three Eyed. I used to despise him. But now, when I feel my strength returning and the mighty spirit stirring in me, I feel nothing but relief he’s still with me.

“That was smart,” I say, letting a growl rumble in my throat and opening my mouth to reveal my fangs. “Not trying to stop him.”

Mia flutters her hands in the air in mock terror. “Oh, put those terrible teeth away, you brute,” she says, laughing.

 
I smile, then burst into laughter. I can’t remember the last time I laughed. It feels good. No…it feels
great
.
 

After a while the fire dies down. Mia stands, strolls to the river, leans down, cups her hands, brings the water back and douses the fire. A sharp hiss and a final burst of steam and smoke and then the light is gone. It’s dark and cool in the shadowy canyon.

“C’mon, handsome,” Mia says. “We should get moving.”

***

The canyon floor is easy walking, sandy and flat, and we cover ground quickly. My stomach’s full. My wounds healed. And I can tell by the sureness in Mia’s stride that her blisters are gone. For a while—maybe it lasts a second, maybe an hour—I wish Mia and I could just keep on walking through this sandstone canyon. Mark out a territory and claim everything in it for ourselves. The landscape is surreal in its beauty: curving red and orange towers and twisted juniper groves and razor-edged yucca. Moonlight barely penetrates the canyon bottom, but up above, near the rim, the colored stone seems to glow. The air is fresh and cool. I’m so caught up in the joy of simply moving quick through a wild land that it’s almost easy to forget where we’re going. And why.

After a while the canyon begins to narrow, and soon we’re forced to tromp through muddy red-brown river water simply to get through. We squeeze through a spot in the canyon that’s so narrow I reach out and touch my hands to either side. The sandstone’s been worn into a whirl of holes and depressions and odd shapes, as if some potter placed the rock on his spinning wheel and carved away at it. We end up sliding down slick stone watersides and splashing into deep potholes. Our progress slows, but I don’t mind.
 

My spirit animal’s with me.
 

I’m not worried about much.
 

The canyon widens after the waterfalls. Mia scrambles out of the water and onto a silty beach that formed in the river’s eddy when it was running at full strength. I wade after her, feeling the water lap against my chest. Mia wrings her hair out onto the sand. Slips off her leather jacket. Turns and faces me as I emerge from the river, and then a couple quick motions and she’s naked, standing in the filtered moonlight, her tattoos dark against her lovely smooth skin and her piercings gleaming. She’s so beautiful it stills my breath, and I don’t know if it’s only because we nearly died together, or because we both know we’re likely going to die together, but suddenly I see her for the first time, truly
see
her, and my spirit animal surges beneath my skin and then I realize he’s known all along—
 

“Piercings must’ve hurt,” I say, trying to play it cool.

“In a good way,” Mia says, tapping her foot impatiently.
 

Her voice has lost its hard, defensive, cynical edge, and that more than anything makes me gather her in my arms. I run my hands down the small of her back, gently caressing her skin, and then her hands are over my shoulders and we’re kissing one another, hard and fierce, kissing with the need of two people who’ve been lonesome for a long while, and Mia runs her hands across my pecs, grazing my nipples and I reach down and cup her ass and pull our hips together and my swelling cock presses into her and she breaks from my lips long enough to release a happy little sigh and then she says, “Fucking
finally
, you idiot.”

***

We lie together for a long while, panting, shivering with aftershocks. Red blood drips from several small puncture wounds where Mia’s fangs pierced me. I scent our blood, our come, our sweat lingering in the night breeze. Mia wraps her arms around my shoulders and says, “I love feeling your weight on me.”