The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) (44 page)

I open my eyes. I’m crouching on the ship deck. Naked.
 

My long black hair whipping around my shoulders.
 

The wind slowly dies down.
 

“Your brother was right about you,” Connor says, staring at my nakedness. “You’re stronger than you know. And more beautiful.”

“You ran at the failed alpha’s side,” I say, not trying to hide my disdain.

“Lily?” Connor shrugs. “I followed orders. Did what was requested of me. Unlike
you
, I might add.”

“Orders from who?”

“Your brother, of course. The One Without Value. I feel…grateful to live close to such power.”

The name strikes a chill in my heart. Have I chosen wrong? Will my brother lead me triumphant into the Age of Discord? Is he as strong as my swarm believes?

“What will you do with him?” Connor asks, nodding at Priest Gabriel.

“Something bloody.”

“Yes.”

“Our brother needs three of four Risen packmates to Become,” Connor says.

“Yes.”

“He has you.”

“He does.”

“Good. Would you like to meet your brother in this age, Shiori?”

I lick my lower lip. A lifetime of suffering and questioning. And now this. The truth. After so long. Can it be real? My brother draws near?
 

“I would,” I say, taking Connor’s hand.

Connor leads me into the pole pyramid. There are no swaying Skin corpses this time, but the symbols are there, the story of how my Risen packmates will help my brother Become.
 

Only now something is different.

“Rodas is missing,” I say, my voice lifting in surprise.

“Exactly,” Connor says. “But we have…an alternative.”

Connor closes his eyes. The air begins to cool. I hug my arms to my chest as the hair on the back of my neck stands on end.
 

“Such a gift,” Connor mumbles, his lips parting in ecstasy, “to be your brother’s presence on earth.”

Icy blue frost settles over the ship deck.

Priest Gabriel shrieks as the frost freezes him to death.

“Your brother’s still a prisoner,” Connor says as green, hooked mandibles descend from his chin. “The Dog God has him trapped in the Cliff of Cages in the Bloodless Land. But he’s strong enough to enter the gate. The red disk tattoo. The pyramid. My father gave these symbols to the Guardians, but they predate the Guardians by eons. I think he thought…they were meaningless now. Dead symbols from a dead age. My father was wrong.”

Connor’s face is changing.
 

Becoming insectile. Plated and bright green.

“My brother?” I whisper, nearly too cold to speak.

“Soon,” Connor whispers.

Tears of joy freeze against my cheeks. I’m shivering. My teeth chattering. The cold carries a memory of a slaughter so vicious and brutal it makes me tremble with anticipation.
 

The One War.
 

Led by the One Without Value.

His Risen packmates at his side.

An ascendant species.
 

Connor slips from his robe. His skin bulges and his bones crack and he screams in pain, then he begins growing into something massive. Ruddy red fur springs from Connor’s skin and his face morphs into a three-eyed mantis and I hear myself screaming a welcome for my brother Vuk.

Cold seeps into my bones, freezes my lungs, makes every breath burn. I close my eyes and try to summon my swarm, maybe I was wrong, maybe my brother is not my ally because the scent coming from him, the acrid reek of smoke and ash, is beyond all loyalty. It’s the scent of madness and brutality and bloody chaos, the scent of murder for its own sake, and suddenly I’m afraid, because my swarm is gone—

Something sharp tickles against my cheek.

I open my eyes.

Stifle a scream.

Vuk has Become.
 

A long, razor-sharp foreleg caresses me. I stare into my brother’s three reflective, black eyes. There’s nothing in them except a single, indomitable will to power at any cost.

My brother’s beautiful eagle’s wings unfurl behind him.
 

He runs his sharp foreleg down my cheek, across my neck, over my breasts, down my belly.
 

He could take me. If he wanted.

That’s what he’s telling me.

I’m powerless against him.

The girl
, my brother says, speaking in my mind.

At first I don’t understand. Then I remember, and I say, “Pimniq?”

Bring her here. To me.

I reach out and command my swarm to bring Pimniq beneath the pole pyramid. The wasps set her down at my brother’s feet, then slowly fly from her. Pimniq’s shaking, but her eyes are bright with anger.

Slowly, almost delicately, my brother places a paw on my prisoner’s throat and leans so close his mandibles brush against Pimniq’s chest.

This one is new,
he says in my mind.
Unaccounted for.

I can’t tell if this pleases him or not.
 

His voice is a sharp, painful sound, like metal being dragged across stone.

Vuk lifts his head. Peers into my eyes.
 

You have doubt?

I can’t lie. He can read me. I nod my head yes.

The All Consuming. The Black Dawn. The Sun Smotherer. Such magnificent names for you, my only loyal sister.
 

Vuk pauses, rakes a black claw across Pimniq’s forehead, drawing her red blood to the surface. Then he bends down and licks the blood from her skin.
 

Natural law. The strong rise above the weak.

You’ve met our other sister. The All Encompassing?

Vuk’s voice rises. Only slightly.
 

It’s the first hint of emotion he’s shown.

“She’s weak,” I say, hoping to please him. “She’s already failed.”

You’re an idiot, Shiori.

My heart sinks.

“Will you…hurt me?” I ask.

Vuk lifts his mantis eyes to mine. Peers at me. I think…I think he’s smiling. Laughing at me. Then he says,
Your brother Rodas is lost. You are to find him.
 

“Lost? How?”

It’s almost a challenge.
 

Vuk rises to his full height, towering thirty feet overhead. The question has irritated him. I flinch away, keep my eyes rooted on Pimniq.

Kneel for your alpha, Shiori. Kneel for your wildborn brother, ascendant alpha and emperor.

I sink to my knees, praying he doesn’t murder me.
 

My power is nothing next to his.

Vuk settles onto all fours, looks at Pimniq and says,
Take this one with you. If brother Rodas fails us then we will have Anik.
 

“Don’t we need…three?”

Vuk’s mandibles click together.
 

Yes. I have you, loyal Shiori. I will have one of our brothers. And I have…my son.

T
HE
O
NE
W
AR
.

Fuck it. I couldn’t be happier.
 

I’m tearing down a deserted highway at the end of the world, my mean motherfucking posse howling and shrieking along with me, a tunnel of raging forest fire curling and sparking overhead, the faster Stricken giving chase and being shot to shit, my bloodmate’s arms wrapped around my waist, my blood a surging river of adrenaline and kill-lust—

Yeah, I never thought death would be so good.
 

A snarling bear-Stricken leaps out of the undergrowth beside the road. I lift the M16 and blaze a few rounds into the stupid fucker’s face, then I’m gone and I look back and the tiger dude Cuft reaches his clawed hand out and opens the Stricken’s throat as he zooms by.

Huh.
 

Cuft’s quick with those claws. Might have to make an effort to say yo what’s up and thanks for coming out before we all fucking die.

We ride for a few more minutes.
 

The forest fire’s dying down.

I glance over my shoulder.
 

We’ve dropped the Stricken army.

For now.
 

Lily lays her head against my shoulder. She’s still naked, but wrapped in an army surplus blanket that she has to keep clamped tight to her chest to keep the wind from whipping away. I lean into her. Try and sear this moment into memory, how perfect her skin feels pressed to mine. I remember how we fucked like animals in the woods, free, wild, uncaged. I remember what we said to one another.
 

Maybe it was just the sex.
 

An afterglow admission.

Still, her words made me…
feel
like I never have. I mean really open up and just feel. And I tell you what. The world’s maybe not such a prick after all.

Fuck if I know what comes after this life.

Hopefully nothing.

The big zero.

Blankness.

Never bought the bullshit about living this life only for the next. Fuck that. You gotta live like only now matters. Because that’s the cold truth.

And if I’m wrong? Whatever. I’ll cross that bridge.

My bike’s whining between my legs, well beyond redlined. I’m laughing and howling, shrieking at the swooping carrion vultures, daring them to come down and lock claws.

I meant what I said to Lily’s brother, the douchebag sack-of-shit Vuk.
 

Chickenshit heard my blood challenge. I
know
he did. I scented his surprise, then his fury. Little bitch tried to zap me with a lightning bolt? Well fuck him.

The One We Answer To is on the hunt.

I reach back, grab Lily’s hand, set it on my hardening cock, then lean into her as she strokes me through my soaked jeans.
 

Close my eyes.
 

Lose myself in this insane, perfectly fucked-up moment.

Let the bike find its own way for a while.

Sometimes you gotta let go.
 

Just
drift
, you know?

And fuck whatever happens next—

***
 

The Monroe Correctional Complex looms behind us, an ugly grey and pastel green cluster of industrial concrete buildings secured behind several razor-wire fences, each more formidable than the last. There are a few burned-out cars and half-eaten corpses in the parking lot, but otherwise the place seems deserted. No guards at the entry gates or towers. No visitors or custodial staff or shrinks hurrying in and out, fretting over how creepy the place feels.

Madness. Insanity.

It’s big business.

The fires stopped about ten miles behind us. There was no reason they should—the forest was still plenty dry. But they just withered and went out.

My MC thinks we won that round.

Beat the Stricken army and tore the fuck out of there.

Me? I don’t think it’s that simple.
 

Lily hops off the bike, digs around in a backpack one of the prospects hands her and finds a black leather skirt and a jean jacket. She slips into the skirt. It hugs her hips real nice and tight, makes her curvy ass pop.
 

I take her in appreciatively. Lily sees how I’m looking at her and blushes, which is funny. She tosses the jean jacket on, then slips a Glock in the small of her back.

Pretty fucking fine, yeah.

“What do you think, outlaw?” she says, smiling and posing like a runway model. “Retro bar babe? Or just plain white trash cougar?”

“You look totally fuckable.”

“That’s not saying much, coming from a slut like you.”

I shrug. Flash her a quick grin. Part of me’s glad she’s feeling good enough to joke and put on a brave face, and I can’t help but admire her grit. Part of me just wishes she’d be quiet. There’s a lot of bullshit fogging up my mind. The image of Lily slicing into herself is haunting me worse than those Stricken motherfuckers or the Fallen materializing in the sky.
 

Her wounds are healed.

At least the visible ones. But the ones onside? The ones that made her hurt herself in the first place? I know those are still there. I scent the despair and desperation in her.
 

Lily tells me to stop looking at her like that or she’ll be forced to drag me into the woods again.

“Who dragged
who
in the woods?” I ask.

“It was a tie.”

“Bullshit it was.” I toss a smoke between my lips, light it, yell for someone to bring me a fucking bottle, then turn to Lily and say, “You feeling anything abnormal about this place? Your pops in there?”

Lily looks at the concrete block buildings. Her smile fades.

“I think so. Yeah.”
 

This nuthouse gives me the creeps too.
 

But for a different reason.
 

The Skins are terrified of their minds. Their unconscious urges. So they lock it all inside. What they should really be frightened of is each other. This perverted…will the Skins have to waste and consume and pollute whatever’s around them. No matter the cost. That’s a fucking sickness. That’s
true
madness. A kind of death-wish throbs through their blood, and not for the first time I wonder how the world would look with them gone.

A few more years of the Stricken roaming the earth and who knows?
 

I might find out.

“Woo-hoo!” Nash screams, leaping off his bike and tucking down into a roll, then leaping up, dusting his jacket off and bowing while his bike crashes into a concrete divider. “What a fucking
laugh
that was, huh Prez? How many Stricken motherfuckers you kill? Me? I got nine or ten.” Nash puffs out his chest. “And a solid feed to boot.” He turns to Lily and says, “You keep the sick bastards coming, cop-girl. My animal’s fucking barking for blood—”

The rest of the MC hops off their bikes and ambles over. A few pound fists. A few lick wounds. Out comes the booze and blow. Blunts fire up left and right. Someone pours a can of gasoline on a wooden fence and lights the fucker on fire, which is not the slickest move, considering its the end of the world and gas is a precious commodity. A wrestling match breaks out between Tate and the new guy Cuft, and in about three seconds it goes from fun to fucking deadly. Nash runs in, breaks up the brawl, smashes ‘em both in the face and tells ‘em to straighten up—