The wooden exhaustion in my limbs lifts.
The nagging hunger in my belly relents.
I feel…almost like myself again.
I feel him, my animal, prowling and pacing, and his return makes me growl with joy.
I never thought I’d miss him so much.
I break from Anne’a’s kiss and stammer, “How did you—”
She silences me with a finger to her lips, then points to the amulet. “The azure stone keeps the wolf close,” she whispers. “A talisman from the time of the One War. Created to ward off the Fallen’s spirit-withering power.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Shh,” Anne’a says. “You didn’t have to invite me in. In truth, I didn’t think you would. I thought he was wrong. I didn’t think you capable of such selflessness. Such kindness.”
“He?”
Anne’a settles her cheek against my shoulder. “I was a gifted healer. The best the elders had ever seen. But proud. Ambitious. He came to me as coyote. Told me my daughter was an apenak’a. A malicious spirit escaped from the dead land. Told me if I returned her to that dead land there would be…a great reward bestowed on me in this life.”
“You were deceived.”
“No,” Anne’a says sadly. “I was willing. In my heart I knew the trickster coyote was lying. Testing my true spirit. He gave me reason to pursue my most hidden and wicked ambitions, and I leapt at it. So one night…it was a cloudy, starless night, I snuck into this abandoned cabin and kneeled over my sleeping daughter. Pressed a leather bedroll to her face. I didn’t even have the courage to see her spirit depart.”
Anne’a’s tears track down my chest. “I let my daughter lie alone all night, and in the morning I picked her up, carried her outside and buried her in the ravine. As I was marching to the rim the coyote arrived. He stood on the rim and looked down at me and my murdered daughter, and I felt my human form waver and break. Felt the animal loose. I’d never imagined such…power. I leapt up the rim, digging my sharp claws into the dirt, seeking freedom, rejoicing in my new form.”
Anne’a raises her head and looks me straight in the eye.
“The coyote observed my terrible joy and said the worst punishment a wild animal can suffer is confinement. He said I was to be imprisoned in this ravine for eternity. Said that every night I would become the bobcat and dig up my daughter’s corpse. Said her body would never age, but that mine would grow twisted and withered and rotten and still I would remain here, at my murdered daughter’s side, forced to relive my evil night after night.”
I glimpse motion in the middle of the cabin, and when I glance over Anne’a’s head I see the dead child rising to her feet. Her frilled leather dress is soiled and dusty. The girl looks down at the dirt stains as if trying to remember how they got there.
“The coyote said there was one who may free us,” Anne’a continues. “A man who has forgotten there is real choice in this world. A man who has come to believe—”
“That nothing we do matters,” I finish for her.
“Yes.”
“You don’t remember?” the young girl says. “They didn’t name you Aaron at the beginning of time.”
“Remember? No. I’ve been trying my entire life to remember.”
“Your true name,” Anne’a says, breaking from my arms and stepping toward her daughter. “Your wild name. Who you are. Why it was your mark that awakened the All Encompassing.”
“No. I remember nothing.”
“Then listen,” the young girl says, “and hear your wildborn name.”
I strain to listen. At first there’s only the sound of my own breathing. The cabin’s rotting wood creaking as the sun’s first rays warm it. Then, off in the far distance, very faint, the sound of coyote’s howling.
Anne’a smiles. “Yes. Wait.”
Other calls join the coyote’s song. The long, plaintive wail of wolves. The roar of a lion commanding his piece of the African veldt. The chuff of a mother grizzly hastening her cubs into their den. The cry of an eagle surveying his territory, and suddenly I hear a multitude of animals, each calling to me, their voices rising so loud the cabin trembles. Dust cascades from the rafters overhead and still the calls and howls and cries and songs grow louder, the voices of the wild world merged into one, a vast, teeming cacophony, and the sound washes into me, knocks the breath from my lungs, sends me to my knees, because the animals are all calling a single name, my true wildborn name, and they are calling me—
“The One We Answer To,” the girl says with a shy smile.
The animal calls peak in a crashing crescendo, then slowly fade.
I look at my hands. They’re trembling. My claws have dropped. My animal is near, pacing, waiting to be summoned, more powerful than I ever imagined.
“No,” I say, pressing my fingers to my temples and and shaking my head. “It can’t be. You’re lying. It’s fucking madness! Me? It can’t be.”
“What do you know of your lineage?”
“My…fuck it. The less the better.”
“Your grandfather was the ancestral alpha of what are now called the Purebloods. He ruled the joined alpha and beta packs after the First Fallen’s Atrocity,” Anne’a says. “Your grandfather was The One Who Struggles. A proud warrior. He led the united packs into battle against the Fallen. He sired a single son, your father, who in turned sired two sons and a daughter. Two of those three children, your brother and sister, are now lost to us. Aaron of the Mountain River is the only still living among his bloodline. You. The last of a proud lineage with roots in the very beginning.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, looking between Anne’a and her daughter, my eyes wide with horror. “My father was a useless sack of shit. A cruel bully. A shit leader. He failed as alpha. I watched my pack tear him apart. Now you’re telling me his father led the Purebloods against the First Fallen? It’s madness. A Skinwalker’s trick.”
“Now do you remember?” the young girl says in her strange, hollow voice.
“I…fuck sakes!” I shout, rubbing my temples to ease the pounding in my head. “I remember…flashes. Blurry images. A single sound or scent or feeling. But nothing…whole. You fucking get it? Nothing…that helps…”
“I am not wrong,” Anne’a says, kneeling before me. “And this is no cruel magic or snake-tongued deceit. I’ve waited for you for a hundred moons and more. The only one who could lift my curse with kindness and courage in spite of his despair. You are The One Who Struggle’s grandson. Aaron of the Mountain River. The One We Answer To.”
“My grandfather…kept the packs from scattering after the Atrocity? He fought the Fallen?”
“And died doing so, according to legend,” Anne’a says. “Do you see? Do you see how wrong you were? Everything you do matters.”
Lily. My bloodmate.
It matters. Everything matters.
She still loathes me. Believes I murdered her mother.
She’s wrong. That motherfucker Connor Lerrick lied. I remember now—
I stagger to my feet, stumble to the door, lean heavily against the cabin wall and look out into the dry riverbed and dust track and glaring sunlight. I don’t know what to say to Anne’a and her child, so instead I take a long, committed stride out of the cabin and into the light.
I don’t look back until I’m at the rim, and when I do the ravine is empty.
The cabin gone.
The open grave filled.
For a moment I think I’ve gone mad from hunger and thirst, then I feel something cool against my neck, reach down and lift the gleaming turquoise amulet until I see myself in the reflection. My eyes are wild and ringed with dark circles, my lips cracked and bleeding. I look like a fucking madman.
The One We Answer To.
I loose a long, pained laugh. Tear the amulet from my neck.
Fucking Skinwalker.
I study the amulet.
I’m about to toss it in the dirt when I remember something my brother used to say.
/> The world only makes sense when you batshit crazy.
CHAPTER FIVE
LILY
WE FOLLOW WES down several flights of stairs and through a series of cinderblock corridors with roofs so low I’m forced to bend nearly in half. Anik has to crouch on all fours and scamper along under the rotting wooden rafters overhead.
“Seattle’s really two cities,” Wes begins, then launches into a breathless speech about the subterranean tunnels constructed after the Great Fire of 1889 leveled nearly the entire downtown core. “You got your suits and squares and working stiffs shuffling along up there,” Wes pauses to flash me a broad, broken-toothed grin, “and down here you got another sort of citizen.”
“Junkies and thieves,” Trish scowls, swiping a giant spider web from her face.
“Yeah, those,” Wes says with a shrug. “Back in the day it was gambling and hookers and opium dens. Not much has changed in the Emerald City, if you know where to look.”
Trish casts me a glare that says, You know this is a lousy idea, right?
As if on cue Wes pauses beneath a grimy glass skylight in the roof of a corridor. The thick glass is lavender, and the purple-tinged daylight streaming in makes us all look surreal and slightly alien.
“Listen,” Wes says quietly. “We’re out from under the hospital now. That’s a sidewalk above.”
At first I hear nothing, then screaming, a burst of automatic machine gun fire and a booming explosion, then more screaming.
Wes looks at Trish, points to a rickety-looking ladder that leads to a trapdoor above and says, “Pretty police lady care to go on up? Take a snoop around since she doesn’t like it down here with the lowlifes?”
Trish fingers her Glock and tells Wes to go fuck himself.
“Yeah,” Wes smiles. “Thought not.”
We hurry forward. Newer cinderblock walls give way to crumbling red and brown brick. The air becomes stale and dank. “They fixed up some of the tunnels for tourists,” Wes says, hopping over a three-foot wide black pit. “But most haven’t been touched for nearly a century. A man who knows these tunnels…he knows something all right.”
“You used them to break into the hospital,” Trish says.
Wes laughs and shakes the pill bottle at her. “Hospital’s like a big vault full of my kind of bling.”
There’s a tremendous boom from the street above, then more gunfire.
Dust settles around us.
“Last I was up top the street gangs were warring for whatever they could steal. Aiming for the heavy artillery locked inside the cop shop and army bases. Seems like they found what they was after.”
Dizziness washes through me, forcing me to stop and lean into the wall and catch my breath.
“Lil?” Trish says?
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“Boss lady don’t look fine,” Wes says.
“No, he’s right,” Connor says, offering me his arm. “You need to stop a while? Rest?”
Something roars on the street above us. An animal. Something big and mean and black-blooded that can probably scent us scurrying down here like frightened rats.
Shitballs.
I shake my head, allow Connor to slip his arm around my waist and nod at Wes to keep moving.
Wes takes off with Trish close on his heels and Connor limping me along. It’s the hunger, I think. This weakness of body and mind. I can’t keep a thought straight. I can’t…concentrate.
Everything’s jumbled. Blurry.
The tunnel walls feel too close, pressing in, the weight of the city above like the weight of responsibility crushing into me. Forcing the breath from my lungs.
The All Encompassing? Me?
The thought makes me want to scream.
Run.
Anything to escape the future they’ve written for me.
You are your own keeper.
Opiyelguabiran. The Dog God’s words. The creature who stole my unborn child from my womb. I cradle my hands under my belly and resist the urge to shriek.
I feel it in how my companions look at me. Their fear and distrust. Connor wary and calculating. Pimniq awed. Shiori resentful and suspicious. Even Trish looks at me differently now. Yet they wrote this future for me.
I sure as fuck didn’t want it.
I stumble, nearly pulling Connor down. I remember Connor’s father August Lerrick ordering the robed Guardians to slit my packmate’s throats, then August leaning over his daughter, tearing her heart from her chest. A surge of bile rises in my throat. I remember Aaron, my bloodmate, stumbling backward as I burned him alive.
And worst of all…I know this is only the beginning.
The Age of Discord. The One War reborn on earth.
My brother Vuk is Becoming, and with him the Stricken armies—
“Steady, Lil,” Connor says as I begin shaking.
“I can’t…I won’t…make it…” I whisper.
“You have to.”
Connor. A few weeks ago he was my rich-guy boyfriend.
On-again off-again.
I wonder what he is now.
A fucking Stricken, for one thing.
“Connor?” I say, keeping my voice low and struggling with every word. “If it doesn’t…if something happens to me…will you promise me something?”
“Anything,” Connor says. He’s sweating in the tunnel’s sweltering, stale heat, but his eyes are clear and his grip around my waist is strong and I’m suddenly very grateful he’s here.
“Find Lachlan,” I say. “Find him and take him somewhere…safe?”
My voice trails off as I realize how ridiculous my request sounds.
The moon rises red. Oceans are drowning the coastal cities. And the fires—
No where is safe.
“Of course, Lil,” Connor says, his face blank, his voice low and grim. “But we’ll find him now. Together. We’ll find him. I promise.”
We make it a few paces when I realize Shiori, Anik and Pimniq aren’t following, and when I look back down the corridor I see them huddled under one of the purple skylights.
“Anik!” I yell, hissing to keep my voice down. “Let’s go!”
“Shiori…” Anik’s soft voice answers.
“What’s the creepy bitch doing now?” Trish says, grabbing Wes by the shoulder to stop him.
“Gotta keep moving, boss lady. Can’t stop here. Too many—”
“Shiori!” I yell, desperate for her to keep moving but conscious of the many ears on the street above.
Inhuman, finely-tuned predator ears.
“We need her,” Connor says in reluctant way that tells me if we didn’t he’d have dropped Shiori long ago. “She’s a Risen,” he says, as if he wishes it wasn’t true.
So Trish and Connor are getting an off vibe from the Japanese chick as well. It’s not only her black, orb-like eyes and ghostly skin. It’s in everything she does. How she she looks at me when she thinks I’m not looking. How she walks, dragging her heels in an odd shuffle. It’s in her animal. Her swarm. A kind of…unnaturalness. Like something’s not quite right in her head, you know? I think…if I could…I’d cut her loose. Just tell her to fuck right off. That’s the kind of vibe I’m getting. Like we’d be better off without her. And when I look at Trish I know she’s thinking the same damn thing.
Still. The girl’s my sister.
In some fucked up, ancient animal way. My packmate.
And although I don’t know her story, one look in her haunted eyes is enough to tell me she’s lived through a lot. So I’m willing to give her a chance. Not only that…but I know losing Shiori means losing Anik. The dude’s absolutely smitten with her, that much is obvious. And judging by how Shiori used her swarm to fight off those…fucking water Stricken-things…I’m guessing she’s sweet on him as well.
“C’mon,” I say, motioning to the group. “She’s tired too. We all are. Let’s wait a minute.”
“Bad idea, boss lady,” Wes says, stuffing a handful of pills in his mouth. �
�Keep moving to live. Keep running never stop.”
Shiori’s standing directly under the skylight, staring upward, her arms hanging limp at her sides, her eyes wide.
See? Fucking strange.
“Smell him?” Shiori whispers. “I do. And I can taste him…his beating black heart…”
“Shiori, let’s move,” Connor says. “Now!”
Shiori ignores him. “A feed…I scent him…his warm black blood…”
Anik and Pim are tugging at Shiori, trying to pull her down the corridor, but she’s rooted to the spot.
There’s a burst of gunfire overhead, then a spine-chilling animal shriek.
Shiori begins humming. It’s a frantic, high-frequency hum that makes goosebumps rise on my arms. She sounds like a wasp swatted from its nest, and then her entire body’s vibrating and long tendrils of spittle leak from the corners of her mouth and down her chin and her skin begins to change under the surreal purple glow of the skylight, becomes shiny and plated—
“No hunting, Shiori,” I say, trying to keep my voice measured and remain calm. I’m supposed to be her alpha, for fuck sake. She has to obey. Isn’t that how this works?
Then I realize: I have no idea how this works.
“We’re all hungry,” I say. “No hunting. Not now! We don’t know what’s up there—”
“I scent what’s up there,” Shiori says. “And I will feed.”
Something heavy drags along the sidewalk above.
I reach out to grab Shiori’s shoulder. I’ve barely touched her when something awful lifts from the back of her neck, a hooked leg or antenna, and swats my hand away. Tiny stinging barbs pierce my skin, drawing several drops of blood.
“Do not touch me,” Shiori says in that horrible humming voice while still staring up at the skylight. “None of you. Ever again.”
So much for being the all-commanding, all-awesome alpha of everything.
The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) Page 6