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

by Daniels, May Ellis

  I recognize them. They must’ve tracked me from the tundra.

  They’re my love Sedna’s slaved souls. My people named them the Taboo-Breakers, the Kin Eaters. Now I know them as Stricken, and when they scent me close they unleash a horrible throaty scream that sounds like a drowning animal.

  The sound hits me with physical force, like a wave crashing onto shore, and throws me into the wall.

  Trish lifts to one knee, raises her handgun, fires at the Kin Eaters. Gunfire hammers through the windowless room. A wall of shimmering blue water descends between Trish and the Kin Eaters. Her bullets plough into the water and fall harmlessly to the floor.

  “Oh fucking christ,” Trish mutters. “These pricks just get less and less fun.”

  The wolf will slow them, Shiori says in my mind. Join me on this hunt.

  I ignore Shiori, tuck Pim in the shadows behind the exit door and say, “I want you to run now, sister. Run after the man who said he’d help us.”

  He’s a junkie. But he said he’d help, and right now I have no choice but to take him at his word.

  “I won’t,” Pim says, her eyes misting. “I won’t leave you, Anik. Not again.”

  “You must!” I shout, too harsh. Then I force myself to calm; run my fingers through my sister’s long, blue-black bangs. She has our mother’s beautiful hair, and now, when she’s angry and determined, she looks exactly like our mother. “Please, Pim. Promise you’ll run. No matter what? Run and…follow Lily and…”

  My voice trails off uncertainly.

  What should I tell her? There’s nowhere safe. Pim already understands this. I won’t lie and tell her there is, so there’s nothing to say…and that more than anything makes my failure hit home.

  I can’t protect her. My little sister. Fuck. I can’t even protect myself—

  Bring Pimniq, Shiori whispers. She’s safer far away from our usurping alpha.

  Usurping? The question flashes through my mind, but there’s no time to ask what Shiori means. Trish’s gun rings out again, then Connor roars. I know they won’t be able to hold the Kin Eaters—

  Pim looks at me like she’s waiting for her big bro to provide an answer, a course of action that’ll make this nightmare go away, but when she realizes I don’t have any answers, that I’m just as lost and afraid and overwhelmed as she is, she firms her lips and says, “I will not leave you. I’m stronger than you think. I’ve always been strong! I helped you once already, brother. When that hunter shot you? Or have you already forgotten?”

  “No,” I whisper, “I’ll never forget.” Pimniq is strong. She looks older to me now. Less a child. And I see something else I recognize from our mother: a deep stubborn streak.

  Pim’s not going anywhere, and suddenly, for the first time since the pale man August Lerrick captured and brought us south, the darkness clouding my heart lifts.

  You are a fool, Anik. A beautiful, broken fool.

  I whirl and lock eyes with Shiori.

  She’s pressed in a dark corner, nearly invisible.

  She shrugs, lifts her thin arm and points behind me.

  The Kin Eaters glide further into the room, bringing cold air that reeks of rotten fish and low tide and the suffering of the drowned. Connor leaps at the first creature, his wolf jaws snapping, and when he hits the Kin Eater it explodes in a burst of foul seawater that spreads across the room an inch deep.

  The water runs toward me. Laps at my toes.

  The water is calling me. My lover Sedna is calling me.

  It’s my fault the Kin Eaters are here. It’s me they want.

  “Take me,” I whisper, suddenly longing for the safety and peace and…emptiness I enjoyed as Sedna’s captive. “Take me.”

  Icy cold water runs over my shoe and down the other side.

  I can’t lift my foot. The water’s trapping me.

  Pulling me down.

  Lily’s on her feet, facing the three remaining Kin Eaters, with Trish standing protectively in front of her. But it’s not the All Encompassing they want.

  The Kin Eaters dissolve into the floor and suddenly the entire room is flooded in water six inches deep. It washes ice-cold over my ankles and then I can’t move, and the rushing, roiling sound of ocean waves and the lives they’ve claimed slams into me, and from within that haunted drowned sound I hear her calling my name, Sedna, my love, and a part of me is thankful she found me, wants to feel her warmth—

  “Anik!” Pim screams, but her voice is far away.

  “Go!” I scream. “Please Pim! Just…fucking go! I don’t want…I can’t…”

  I want my sister safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Or so I believed.

  Then I met Sedna. And I realized it’s her love I want more than anything.

  More than life itself—

  The water’s pouring up my calves. Soon it will run up my chest, over my neck, down my throat, and I’ll be reunited with Sedna in the watery grave of Adlivun. I’ll cut myself open for her, feed her my flesh as loving offering—

  “My god Anik what’s happening?”

  Lily’s voice. So quiet I can barely hear it.

  The water’s moving up my skin. It’s reached my hips. It circles around my crotch, caresses my balls, makes my cock throb and swell and I see her now, Sedna my love, in her true home at the bottom of the Arctic ocean. Her house is a whalebone frame stretched tight with the clothing and skins of my drowned people. I’m looking down at her from above, I’m sinking to her, she’s crouching over something, her back turned to me—

  “She still has him,” Shiori says. “He hasn’t forgiven himself.”

  Shiori’s standing beside me.

  The water parts around her, concentrates around me—

  My eyes can still move and I can turn my head a little but the rest of me is frozen. I try and plead for my packmates to help, please help me but only a watery moan escapes my lips—

  “What?” Lily screams. “Who?”

  “Sedna,” Shiori answers. “She captured him. Seduced him. He feels he deserves to be punished for…what he did. We broke free together but…he must still…want to be with her…”

  Shiori’s right. I need Sedna.

  My animal spirit murdered my parents. I murdered my parents.

  I’m a Taboo-Breaker. A Kin Eater.

  A living curse.

  I deserve this suffering.

  Sedna’s there below me, I see her through a shimmering haze of icy blue-black water, her hair waving in the ocean currents, long and thick and matted, every broken taboo a knot or piece of filth in her black hair, and she’s consuming something, I can’t see what, but I hear the watery sound of my own screaming. The water runs over my hard cock, caressing me, urging my seed forward. Thin rivulets of the Kin Eater’s watery bodies run over my ribs, across my heart, chilling my blood and when I look down I see my skin is bloated and pale blue, like a corpse rotting on the ocean bottom—

  Something smacks into me. Lily.

  She’s shouting, trying to knock the water away. But it’s like trying to stop a surging tide propelled by a blood red moon. Some things are simply meant to be. Like Sedna and me.

  I am meant to be hers.

  “We have to help him! Shiori! Help him!” Lily cries.

  A loud buzzing fills the room as the first drops of water reach my lips. The water tastes salty and too-sweet and its touch is so cold my breath freezes in my throat and I open my mouth to drink deep of her, swallow her down, my love Sedna, but instead of her comforting touch something flutters down my throat, or rather many things, buzzing, angry, and through the watery haze obscuring my vision I see a cloud of yellow wasps swarming around my head, pouring into my open mouth.

  Shiori.

  No. I’m hers!

  Let me be Sedna’s. Please.

  The wasp swarm fills my mouth, nostrils, ears, sealing me closed from the sweet ocean water.

  Warding me away from death, Princess of Adlivun.

  But I’m still floating down into the m
urky ocean depths to greet my love. Sedna lifts her head from what she’s eating, turns to me, and beneath her I see a stretched-skin kayak and a male corpse draped across it, one arm already gnawed to bone, the other partially consumed. Sedna’s cradling the arm in a pair of small, delicate flippers, and when I look at the man’s face I see it’s me—

  Welcome home, my love, Sedna says, lifting my arm and taking a bite from my wrist, pulling and tearing my flesh from my bones.

  The wasps mass around my face, a solid ring of buzzing insects, then work their way down my jaw, pushing the Kin Eater’s watery shape away from my mouth, forcing the water down to my shoulders, and as the water builds up against this living dam the wasps start drowning; they fall from my shoulders to land in a ring at my feet, and now Sedna shrieks at me from her watery palace, telling me I deserve this, that I’m hers and hers alone, that I must suffer for violating the taboo, for killing my kin, murdering my parents, and I know she’s right.

  She’s right.

  I am a monster.

  The wasps and the water push against one another while Lily and Trish and Connor, now in human form, watch helplessly, eyes wide in awe and horror and I see Pim peaking from behind the door, frozen, afraid and I can’t leave her, she’s forgiven me for what I did…but why can’t I forgive myself? The swarming wasps have driven the water down to my belly. They march from my throat and I draw a long gasping breath as the water recedes down my legs, the dying wasps pushing Sedna’s Kin Eaters down, saving me—

  “She won’t be able to hold the water for long,” Lily says. “Help me get him through the door when the water releases his feet.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumble, meeting Pim’s eyes. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”

  Pim stands, approaches me, reaches out and holds my hand, and when she does I feel the water weaken and recede even more, it’s at my shins now, and the watery crash of waves against stone and the screams of the drowning rise to meet Sedna’s furious shrieks, the sound piercing my skull, and I squeeze my little sister’s hand tight while Shiori’s wasps work against the Kin Eaters and then the wasps reach the floor, form a small protective circle around me, the water damming up around them.

  “Now!” Lily screams.

  Connor slams into my back while Pim tugs me forward, over the pooling water and through the open door, and I crash in a heap beside my brave sister, shivering and retching, then turn in time to see the wasps fly across the door’s threshold, holding the water back as it rises, growing deeper, a foot now, two feet, building up against the door and the dam of wasps, remorseless, cruel, unstoppable, while Sedna laughs and screeches in my ear, telling me how delicious my flesh is, how she longs to consume me for eternity, how I deserve this suffering for what I’ve done, and then the wasps form a wall a foot thick across the entire door, holding the water back, bulging and straining against the mounting pressure, their buzzing growing louder, more frantic—

  Lily walks close to the door and the buzzing wall of wasps and reaches her hand up. A single wasp lands in the center of her palm. She passes the wasp to Pimniq, then says, “All right, Shiori. Just a few seconds more.”

  Lily’s skin begins to steam and smoke. Her clothes smolder, then burst into flame and fall to the floor. I shield my eyes against the terrible heat and lean over Pim while Trish and Connor leap behind one of the steel tables.

  Lily’s skin glows white-red, so hot it shimmers. The linoleum floor blackens and melts beneath her while the pink-painted walls bubble and burn.

  I scuttle backward, dragging Pim with me, the heat making the soles of my boots melt and then the wasps fall to the floor and the pent-up dam of ocean water bursts into the room with a tremendous crash.

  Inside the wall of water I see the Kin Eaters, their thin, drowned forms and black, ravenous mouths, and then the water slams into Lily with a thundering hiss.

  The water hits Lily’s superheated skin and evaporates into a thick cloud of mist that floats to the ceiling. Sedna shrieks at me from within the cloud, calling my name, calling me home, but the heat from Lily’s skin quickly dries the air and suddenly the water is gone and the room is dead quiet except for Pim’s panicked, too-fast breathing.

  Someone whistles, long and sharp, and for a moment I think it’s Connor being a smart-ass, but then I turn to the far door and see Wes standing there, wide-eyed, staring at Lily’s naked body.

  “That’s it!” Wes says, his eyes blazing bright from whatever pills he’s popped. “I was right about you bunch. I knew you was strong! And damn fine, if I—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Moth,” Trish says.

  Wes clamps his hand over his mouth, then looks straight at Lily and says, “What’s it gunna be, boss? Water or land?”

  “What?” Connor says while Trish wraps a pale blue lab coat around Lily.

  “Water or land? You want out ‘a here, I know that. And I know you don’t want to be on the streets. I can get you out of the city. Told you I know things. Now. Which way you want to go?”

  “I’ve had enough of water,” Trish says.

  “Me too,” I say, rising to a stand and helping Pim to her feet.

  Shiori’s returned to standing in a shadowed corner, staring at me, her eyes wide and pure black, her skin glowing slightly red in the hospital’s emergency lights, and for a moment I want to run to her, sweep her into my arms and kiss her and tell her how much she means to me, tell her that I…but instead I simply give her a nod.

  She ignores me, leans against the wall, studies her fingernails.

  “Land,” Lily says, her voice weak. “North.”

  “North to where?” Wes asks.

  “Why should we trust you?” Connor says.

  “Why should we trust anyone?” Trish says, casting Connor a vicious glare.

  I smile.

  Lily’s friend is quick-tempered and blunt, but I’m beginning to like her.

  Wes shrugs, motions at the backpack Pim’s holding and says, “Because you have the drugs. And where they go I go.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AARON

  THE BERSERK BOBCAT whirls to face me, its hackles high, claws digging into the rocky dirt.

  “C’mere, pretty kitty,” I say, raising the rock in my hand. “C’mere and let me brain you. You’re skinny…but I’m fucking starving.”

  The cat paces to the side, glances at the hole it was scratching at, then up at me.

  I lower my gaze for an instant, faster than a blink—just to check the ground between us for shit I might trip over when it charges—and in that moment the cat vanishes.

  “Fuck,” I whisper, every nerve buzzing. I scan the sandy riverbed behind me. Nothing. The steeply banked ravine walls. No sign of the cat. Plenty of places even a large cat like that could hide, though. Behind clumps of juniper and sage. In a depression in the earth, invisible until I’m only a step or two away.

  “Fuck sakes.”

  I reach inside for my animal. Rattle his cage a bit. He’s there, but he’s not answering. He feels…weak. Distant. Then I remember the Senator. Fat Gladys. The beetle-bitch that killed my brother. How strong she was. How she mentioned the Purebloods will grow weaker as the First Fallen rises.

  My stomach twists in a painful knot.

  The bobcat doesn’t scent like a black-blooded Stricken. But who knows? Maybe I can’t scent anymore. Or maybe now their scent has changed like everything else.

  I realize I’m naked, soaked in cold sweat and shivering.

  The higher you go the further you fall.

  And I’m getting the feeling I’ve barely begun falling—

  The cabin’s up ahead. Through the shadowed aspen grove. That’s where the cat is. Smart motherfucker. It knows I’ll head for the cabin. It’s lying in wait, like I was for those panicked deer on the ridge.

  “Figures,” I say out loud to my wolf. “You’ve fucked with me my entire life, and now when I really need you, you’re gone.”

  I could turn around and retrace my steps.


  But I’m curious about what’s in that cabin. And besides…it’s only a fucking bobcat.

  Thing’s probably as scared of me as I am of it.

  I take a few steps up the riverbed, then onto the side of the dirt track. The pit the cat was digging is only a few yards away.

  I wipe my sweaty palm on my thigh and grip the rock tighter.

  The hole’s maybe four feet wide. The freshly dug dirt is cool and soft and silty under my bare feet. A warm wind picks up, whistles through the riverbed, collects dried leaves and tumbleweed into a brief whirlwind against the side of the ravine.

  The leaves sound like old bones clicking together. Or a death rattle.

  I’m close enough to peer into the hole when a loud, high-pitched screech descends down the ravine from the rim above. I turn and look.

  My blood freezes.

  I’m fucked.

  There, perched on the edge of the ravine, backlit by the crimson moon, her long, knotted hair glowing blood red, is a tall, bone-thin old woman with bright blue eyes. She’s on her knees, waving her fists, shrieking down at me, and the sound is so awful and tortured it makes my mouth go dry.

  The hag lifts her hands into the night sky like she’s calling something down. Her fingers are twice as long as normal and end in vicious curling claws.

  My wolf’s not with me. I’m alone. With that…thing.

  I understand why he fled. This is her territory.

  Her power’s strongest here. She sent him running.

  I risk a glance into the pit.

  The old hag howls, scoops up a handful of sand and stones and showers it down on me. Then she leaps to her feet and sprints along the edge of the ravine, screeching and howling and snarling. Running forward and back. Her movements wild and frantic. Flinging anything she can get her hands on. She’s furious. I’ve interrupted a sacred ceremony. Something…ancient and evil.

  There’s a half-buried body in the pit.

  A child’s body.

  The rock slips from my grasp.

  Lands in the dirt at my feet, forgotten.

  The hag is a Skinwalker.

  Another legend I never believed in.