The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1)

by Daniels, May Ellis

  The close call is enough to quell my spirit of adventure. I scream at him to slow down, but the wind snatches my words away.

  Aaron keeps the bike pinned and drops her even harder into the corners. The snowmelt on the road is smooth and glistening in spots. Frozen. I scream at him to slow down again and this time he shrugs, so I know he hears me.

  But he doesn’t let up.

  I tense, throwing the bike off balance. We blow wide around a corner, cross the yellow and into the oncoming lane. We’re alive only because the road is empty.

  I want to pound on his shoulder, but I can’t risk letting go. My ass is slipping off the back of the bike and I have to tense my core muscles and squeeze the bike with my knees just to keep from flying off.

  “You fucking bastard,” I scream. “Slow down! You fucking asshole!”

  Aaron ignores me, leans lower into the bike.

  The heat from the exhaust is scorching my leg, and I grit my teeth and hold on with all I got, promising myself when he stops I’m going to fucking walk home. What have you done, Lily, you stupid twit? Strapped yourself to a man with a death wish, that’s what.

  We crest a rise and the road drops steeply into another valley. I see headlights up ahead, a large vehicle approaching fast. We’re going way too fast to stay in our lane; Aaron’s whipping back and forth across the yellow, nearly brushing into the melting snow banks on both sides. He’s going to kill us. I scream at him to stop again, but before I can finish we whip around a blind corner, cross the yellow and—

  It’s funny about death. All that variety.

  Fast or slow. Pain free or agonizing. Peaceful or violent.

  I mean, birth? There’s basically only one kind.

  But death? That fucker’s infinite.

  And as the lights of the RV shine blinding bright in my eyes I have time—barely—to give thanks it’s going to be fast. In fact I probably won’t feel a thing, and I certainly won’t have time to feel scared. In some strange way it feels right, dying like this.

  The RV’s horn sounds and the bike’s tires lock up as Aaron squeezes the brakes and then we’re sliding, rotating to the right in a stink of melting rubber and the world collapses into a horrific spinning maelstrom of bright lights and dark trees and I hear a piercing howl and then my mind shuts down—

  I close my eyes.

  There’s a feeling like the air being sucked from my lungs. Like I’m an astronaut whose visor just cracked clean open, and then my skin is on fire, the burning searing pain making me open my eyes and see a blinding flash of red-orange light and then I’m screaming and the RV rushes beside us, inches away…or—

  We’re still on the bike. That’s all I know. It’s kicking and bucking and I have both hands clenched around Aaron’s waist, trying not to get thrown. The RV’s behind us now, its horn blaring above the sound of our screeching tires. But we’re slowing down, and moments before we smash into a snowbank Aaron leaps off the bike, dragging me with him, and I swear to fucking god he’s laughing.

  We land hard in brittle and ice-crusted snow on the opposite side of the bank, rolling downhill through frozen brush. My head hits a stone or tree root and for a moment there’s blackness, then the sound of my own panicked breathing loud in my ears.

  I wind up lying on my side, covered in snow, staring at tiny ice crystals melting in my warm breath.

  Aaron’s already on his feet, leaning against a sapling above me, panting, his moonlit face scratched to shit and at first I don’t recognize him. He looks different. His jaw more pronounced. His brow heavier.

  “You fucking asshole,” I whisper, not moving. “You motherfucker.”

  He drops to his knees beside me, begins feeling my body: my head, neck, arms, legs. Checking for broken bones and blood.

  “Get the fuck off me,” I say, kicking and hitting at him weakly.

  “I’m sorry Lil I’m sorry I didn’t mean—”

  I push up on my elbows. My head’s buzzing with adrenaline and I can’t feel my body and for a terrible moment I think I’m paralyzed. Spine snapped like a twig. A lifetime of catheters and wheelchairs. Then a blinding pain in my wrist and I tell you what: if I walk away from this with only a broken wrist I’ll consider myself very, very lucky.

  “You’re hurt,” Aaron says, trying to inspect my wrist.

  “Do not touch me,” I say, lying my head back in the snow. “Do not touch me ever again.”

  Aaron raises his hands and backs a few steps away.

  I’m trembling. I could lie here all night.

  No. I could lie here forever.

  And that thought…how easy it would be to lie down and close my eyes and never get up…that terrifies me.

  So I force myself to sit up and inspect my body, and I’m astonished to see that apart from a tender wrist and sore neck I’m unhurt. There’s a long moment of silence as the wind whips through the snow draped trees overhead. The sky is blue-black and clear, the stars shining bright. But the wind. It feels like a storm coming. Two trees grind together somewhere in the forest, loosing an eerie high-pitched wail.

  “Give me your phone,” I say, not ready to stand up and risk toppling over and having this asshole try and pick me up.

  “What? My…no. I don’t have it.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Left it at the house.”

  “Oh, that was smart,” I say, sneering. “About as smart as taking those corners too fast and nearly running us head-on into a fucking RV.”

  “We did run head-on into the RV,” Aaron says, lighting a smoke.

  Which makes zero sense, because we’re here arguing instead of smeared across the highway, and I tell him as much.

  “We hit the RV, Lily. Smashed right into it.” Aaron takes a drag of his smoke, spins out a few rings like he’s relaxing poolside, then says, “I thought we were goners. But…something happened. You did something.”

  “Fuck off. I closed my eyes and screamed. That’s what I did. Then we slid past the RV. We got lucky.”

  “No. There was that light…you saw it? That blinding red-orange light? And the heat? You remember that?”

  “No.”

  “You passed us through the RV, Lily. I don’t know how. But I remember feeling the RV’s cold grill hit my left side. Then an instant later…we were through it, skidding along the road.”

  “You’re fucking crazy,” I whisper, but a part of me knows he’s right. A part of me remembers. The unnatural heat. My skin burning—

  Aaron crouches beside me, takes a drag, looks me straight in the eye, and says, “What are you?”

  “What am I? I’m fucking pissed off, that’s what I am.”

  The wind rustles through the trees. That awful screeching sound. It feels…closer.

  Aaron lifts his head and stares into the woods.

  Drops his half-finished smoke into the snow.

  “Lily,” he says quietly. “We have to leave. We have to get on the bike. Now.”

  I pause, take a few long breaths and listen. I feel it too. Something’s wrong. It’s in the chill wind and that horrible sound. It’s in the dread gnawing at my belly. Something’s out there. In the dark. Flitting through the forest. Something deadly.

  But instead of doing what Aaron says and standing and getting the fuck out of here, which is also what my gut’s telling me to do, I say, “Fuck you. I will never get on a bike with you ever again. I promise you that.”

  Aaron offers his hand. “Stand up. Right now. Run with me. Now.”

  “Run? Why run?”

  The howling screech sounds again. I peer through the forest, the black tree trunks surrounding us like bars in a prison cell, and suddenly I do want to run. Fast.

  Because I’m certain of it now.

  The screeching wail is getting closer.

  “They’re coming for you,” Aaron says. He lifts his nose in the air and takes a long sniff. “I don’t know how or why. But they’re coming.”

  “What? Wild animals?”

 
Aaron flashes me a ghastly smile. “Yeah. Real fucking wild.”

  Maybe it’s the way he says it. Maybe it’s the sound drifting on the wind. Maybe I’m just too tired to argue anymore. But I stand, and as soon as I do I see them.

  Some are animals. Dogs, dozens of them, their fur speckled black and tan, with oversize ears and solid black eyes and long, snapping jaws. They’re flitting through the woods around the heels of another creature. A man with patches of black and tan fur and curved black claws and a hideous head shaped like the dogs running and yipping around him. A monster; a half-man half-beast, and then I remember what I saw when I looked at Nash.

  I’m too frightened to scream.

  The dog-creature is only a hundred yards off, and as I look he smiles, revealing row after row of sharp, shining black teeth. Then he unfurls a pair of black-feathered wings and leaps into the sky.

  Aaron throws his head up, clenches his fists and howls.

  I’m already running, racing for the bike, knowing I won’t make it but determined to try. They’re too close and too many, and suddenly I’m pulled off my feet and thrown over Aaron’s shoulder. He’s running too, ploughing up the steep, slippery snow bank, fast as all fuck as the mad barks and yips of the dogs grow louder.

  Seeing us run gets them excited.

  “What are they?” I scream as Aaron leaps over the snowbank and onto the road.

  “A myth,” he says, his voice flat and expressionless. “A rumor born of fear.” He sets me down on the road and says, “Cursed to roam the earth, searching for the only blood that nourishes them. A spirit-eater.”

  “Spirit-eater? What the fuck, Aaron? Myths aren’t real. That’s why they’re myths.”

  There must be an explanation. Maybe it’s the trauma messing with my mind. The crash knocked a fucking screw loose. Maybe the adrenaline. Or maybe I’ve finally snapped. All those freaky visions I’ve been having? Yeah. That’s it. Hello? Anybody home? Little Lily’s gone AWOL. Welcome to your padded cell, and oh, look here, it’s right beside your father’s—

  The winged dog-headed creature arcs across the starry sky, barking and howling. He settles between Aaron and the bike. Folds his wings behind his back. I blink, trying to clear the mad vision from my eyes.

  Nothing happens.

  “Give me your gun,” I say to Aaron as we watch the dog-creature. “Give me the Glock.”

  “No.”

  The dogs are making their way through the forest behind us, barking and yelping, their teeth slamming together with a loud snapping sound.

  “Give it to me!” I scream. The dog-man looks at me with a vicious gleam in his black eyes. He’s only a dozen yards away. Studying us intently. He clasps his hands by his waist. Not feeling hurried, from the look of things.

  “I’ll hold him,” Aaron says, “You get on the bike. You can ride a fucking bike, can’t you?”

  For some reason I laugh, and my laughter has a panicked, half-mad edge to it. Tell you what: I hope I’m in a padded cell somewhere, because this shit…this shit is insane.

  “Give me the gun,” I repeat. “I’ll keep the dogs off us while you deal with…whatever the fuck he is.”

  It’s the moonlight. A flickering shadow. Must be. Because Aaron’s face is changing. Growing…rougher. Larger. His neck’s thicker. And his teeth…they’re longer now. Like glimmering fangs.

  “Get on the bike, Lily,” Aaron says in that irritating commanding tone he used when talking to his MC. “Now. Or I can’t help you.”

  “No. Fuck you. Give me the gun.”

  Aaron glances over his shoulder, pulls the Glock from under his leather cut, puts it in my shaking hand and turns to face the dog-nightmare.

  I try not to notice the inch-long claws sprouting from Aaron’s fingers, click the Glock’s safety off and climb up the embankment. The dogs are running fast beneath me, shadows among shadows. I press both hands against the gun, take a slow, steadying breath and fire.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  ANIK

  SOMETHING IS WRONG.

  My jailers locked a trespasser into the cell across from me. I heard her shrieking, pain-wracked wails and strange clicking sounds as soon as they dragged her from the elevator. Then I scented her: she smells like a feeling whose name I’ve forgotten. Her scent reminds me of someone else, a child, who was once very important to me.

  Family.

  I try to speak the word out loud but my mouth won’t obey and I manage only a brute growl. Words feel very far away.

  I’m sitting cross-legged in the center of my cell, listening to the trespasser’s shallow breaths, sniffing the air, trying to remember how I know her.

  I don’t want the trespasser here. The thieving bitch.

  She’s plotting to steal my love Sedna. I sense it.

  I gnaw at the finger stubs on my left hand. Three of the stubs have healed. The fourth is raw and seeping. I dig my teeth into the healed stubs, tearing them open again, relieved at the pain. My healing comes very slowly. I can scarcely scent anymore, and my night vision is fading.

  Sedna has a necklace of four fingers and still she demands more of me. During my last visit I glanced at myself in a vanity mirror in Sedna’s lair and didn’t recognize the man staring back: pale grey skin sagging from too-prominent bones, hollow cheeks, once-fine black hair now balding, face covered in angry red boils and half-healed scabs.

  Soon I won’t be strong enough to leave my cell. I’ll have to be carried into Sedna’s lair.

  Or perhaps she’ll simply keep me there, at her feet forever.

  The thought makes me smile.

  I won’t look in the trespasser’s direction. Her presence will upset everything. This prison is a sealed world, perfectly balanced. Fragile. I give and Sedna takes. It’s natural law. I no longer begrudge Sedna for stealing my spirit. She deserves this happiness for what was done to her.

  The trespasser is wailing, “Give me strength…give me strength…” over and over. The sound carries across the corridor, echoes through my stone cell, drills into my mind, interrupting thoughts of Sedna’s long legs wrapped around me, pulling me tight—

  “Oh Holy Guardians give me strength and will to remain at the Gate…” the trespasser screams. Her voice is fervent. Panicked. Then a loud buzzing sound followed by a series of quick clicking noises.

  How I crave silence. The rarest gift.

  I will bleed her for silence.

  The trespasser continues rambling for what feels like hours. I console myself by gnawing at my fingers. There was something in me once, something powerful. I feel his ghost in me now, haunting me. But I’ve forgotten his name. All that remains is his hunger. I bring my forearm to my lips, press my teeth into my skin, resist the urge to feed on myself.

  The trespasser is driving me mad.

  “…give me strength…”

  Silence. Silence!

  I stand, begin pacing the six steps across my cell, first whirling when I brush the cold stone wall, then slamming myself into it. Silence! Silence! My head smashes into the stone. I turn, run at the wall, slam into it, wince at the pain, then whirl and run at it again. I do this until I’m slick with blood and my legs give out and I topple to the floor.

  Sedna will sense the trespasser’s reek on me.

  She’ll turn me away. Refuse me.

  The thought makes me shriek: “Silence!”

  The girl moans, then quiets.

  I settle onto the floor once more. Close my eyes.

  I remain that way for a very long time.

  ***

  I’m woken by the grinding metal-on-stone sound of a prison door rolling back. My love Sedna. She’s summoned me. But when I bend down and look I see the trespasser’s door opening. It’s a low, barred door like mine. The trespasser crawls out of her cell. She’s alone in the corridor. She’s naked, small and pale, with flat black hair clinging to her sweat-stained brow and dark circles under eyes and long, skeletal limbs.

  She appears weak, like a newborn bird. />
  A ruse. I scent her strength.

  She’s a wraith. A wicked spirit come to harm my love.

  I dig the fingernails on my good hand into the dirt and filth on the floor and loose a bloodthirsty growl, overcome with blind rage.

  The trespasser pauses in the corridor. Turns in my direction. I don’t think she can see me. I’m cloaked in shadow. But she peers into the darkness for several breaths. Her gaze slithers over me. Her nose and chin are pointy and sharp. Her eyes thin little slits. She’s disgusting.

  The trespasser opens her mouth.

  The hair on my neck rises.

  An insect, a blue-black fly, buzzes off the trespasser’s tongue.

  Then she looks into my cell and smiles.

  She’s going to harm my love Sedna.

  The bitch.

  Sedna is all I have.

  ***

  I pace my cell until the trespasser returns, then drop to all fours and study her. This time the trespasser isn’t alone: two men in blue uniforms hold her elbows and drag her naked body along the corridor. The sight makes me choke with jealousy. I thought Sedna and I were alone. Believed this was our world. But the trespasser…and these men…they exist here as well. What does it mean? Have I fallen out of favor with Sedna? Does she no longer want me? Have I displeased her?

  My love, how can I please you?

  Tell me. I’ll do anything you ask.

  I’m delivering Sedna my fingers like I know she needs. One by one. I watch her thread them on her necklace. There was a reason for it once. But I’ve forgotten the reason. I only know it’s what I do. After my fingers I’ll give her my toes. Then my ears. Then my feet. I’ll carve the flesh from my bones and bring it to her. Last will be my hands, and when I’m done Sedna will wear my devoted body threaded around her neck, and I’ll finally be wholly hers.