The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) (17 page)

The tiger-bitch tumbles from her saddle, gets caught in the chains securing the elephant’s head. There’s a tremendous shriek as the tiger-bitch’s arms tear from her body, and then my shadow wolves are on her, ripping her throat out, and through them I taste her Minion blood, stronger than any I’ve known, more nourishing.
 

The power of the kill floods my veins.
 

The leech squirms and wriggles and slithers from me, repelled by my healing strength, and as it worms free there’s a sucking sound and then I see its horrible toothed mouth. I snatch it up, bite it in two and hurl it to the pavement while more bullets slam into my bike and my wolf roars at the scent of blood and death—
 

Nash and about forty of my boys plough into the Stricken on the right side. The entire black-blooded army shrieks. I see a good chunk of the enemy break toward the new threat, splitting a line down the right edge of their formation.
 

New plan.
 

Punch as deep into that fracture as possible, then tear the fuckers apart from the inside. Sounds like fluffy kittens.
 

Last I see of Nash is him going all animal, barking insanely, leaping from his bike at a hundred miles an hour and tucking into a roll that obliterates a pack of bitch-ass Stricken wolves like a fanged bowling ball slamming into a set of pins.

Three seconds to impact.
 

No time to glance back and see how my MC is getting on.
 

The remaining two elephants bunch tight together and charge at me, several tons of blood-mad muscle—

I lay the bike on its side at a hundred and fifty miles an hour. There’s a scream of grinding metal and a blinding shower of sparks and then I’m on my back on top of the bike while it spins and slides down the highway, the sky whirling overhead and I summon my wolf nearly all the way and slide under one of the elephants and punch my hand into its abdomen, loosing its insides. The thing flings upward as my claws rake through its tough hide, and then I’m
behind
the elephants, spinning on the bike, smashing right into the center of the Stricken army, howling and laughing, covered in all kinds of blood—
 

T
HE
FUCKING
CRAZY
wolf bastard.

If I didn’t love him so much I’d run. That’s the sane thing to do. Abandon Aaron and the MC and head south to the Pyramid of the Sun. More Stricken armies will arrive unless I can stop whoever’s sending them.

I also need to not get myself killed.

“Make the call, hun,” Trish says in a way that says she already knows the answer.

The last of Aaron’s Pureblood army roars past with a reek of burning rubber and oil and something more, a scent my animal recognizes: blood-lust, the ancient urge to protect the pack at all costs.
 

The will to survive.

I watch the riders recede down the highway toward the Stricken army, envying their courage and clear-cut purpose. A hunter hunts. But what do I do? Lead? Follow? Hunt? Try and save my family? The whole world? I don’t know anymore. It all feels like it’s crushing down, smothering me with uncertainty and sadness. My blood pounds in my ears as the riders vanish beyond a hill and then the silence hits, presses the breath from my lungs. I grip the Harley’s handlebars so tight the metal squeals and threatens to buckle. My animal paces her cage, worried, scenting my weakness and near-hysteria—

You are your own keeper.

My animal has the answer.
 

All I have to do is listen.

Vuk looks like some sort of parasitic growth latched onto Anik’s back. He must read the hard expression in my eyes, because he says, “Take me south, my dear sister. This is not our war. This is our rise!”

I ignore him and say to Anik, “You want your sister to live?”

Anik’s forehead furrows in worry or anger or maybe both, but he says yes.

“You want to live?” I ask him.
 

Anik shrugs.

“Bullshit, Anik,” I say, remembering how I dug my claws into my forearms to loose the pain inside. How awful but…
right
it felt in that moment of despair. Then I think about my unborn son. The potential for goodness there. Innocence. A chance to start over. The cynic in me says he’ll get beat down like the rest of us. But it doesn’t have to be that way. He can choose how to live his life. But not if the black-blooded triumph. No. Then the choice will be made for him. Thinking about how close I came to ending my own life…and thinking about my son…suddenly I feel stronger. More certain.
 

“I know you feel like shit,” I say to Anik. “Like there’s no hope. But that animal in you? I scent his anger. He’s not finished with this life. Not by a long shot. He’s still got some fight in him. He still understands what’s right and wrong. So. I’ll ask one more time. Do you want to live?”

“Yes,” Anik says, glaring at Vuk.

“Then tell me about natural law.”
 

Vuk’s eyes gleam. “The strong over the weak,” he screams feverishly.

I shake my head. “There’s more than that. What else is it, Anik? Tell me.”

A shadow passes over Anik’s face. He doesn’t like me leading him like this. Tough shit. I’ve seen that fucking three-eyed bear. I need Tornarsuk roaming at my side—

“You have to
fight
,” Anik growls.

“For what?”

“For what you want.”

“That’s right!” Vuk screams, his voice hoarse and insane-sounding. “See, Lily? You have to fight for what you want. That’s what I did. The only difference is…I want
everything
. What they said I shouldn’t have…I wanted it! The inviolable laws? I broke them! The taboos? I trampled them! You understand. You love the outlaw biker. The rebel, living outside society’s ridiculous laws. You despise their chains as much as me. Your animal is a wild, beautiful creature, Lily. You yearn for the freedom that only arrives when we step beyond all limitation—”

“What do you have to fight for, Anik?” I say, my voice rising above my brother’s feverish rant. “What
else
?”
 

“For those you love,” Anik says.
 

“Love no one!” Vuk hisses in Anik’s ear. “Love yourself. Love your needs! Your wants. Love what you can do for yourself. The rest is weakness—”

“You ready to fight with me, Anik? To protect those you love?” I say, interrupting Vuk by pulling the bike around close beside him and smacking him across the cheek to shut him the fuck up.
 

Vuk recoils, clutches a shaking hand to his reddened cheek. “You fucking slut,” he whispers. “You’re
nothing
. A waste. You always were. An upstart bitch too stupid to kneel for her betters—”

Anik growls a warning.
 

I settle the bear with a calm wave of my hand.

For a moment I’m taken aback by the depthless fury and hatred in my brother’s eyes. He’ll never change. Never repent. Some people are just born with a lack inside them. An emptiness. In some ways he’s only partly alive. He’s missing what makes us feel—

“I’m
more
than you,” Vuk seethes, as if he’s peering into my thoughts. “I’m beyond you, as the Purebloods are beyond the Skins. Evolution’s next level. A higher form of life—”

“Yeah,” Trish scoffs. “You’re beyond
sane
.”

Vuk fires my best friend a glare so nasty it makes me want to smack him again. He wasn’t lying when he said there’s no good in him, and suddenly a profound sadness washes over me, cooling my skin. It’s not anger anymore. It’s more like I pity him. Feel sorry for him. He’s forgotten how it feels to love. Family. Friends, lovers, packmates. The one thing that makes this hard life worth the struggle. All he knows are his own fucked-up urges and needs and desires, and the fear creeping through him, the fear that maybe he’s wrong, maybe he
is
the one who’s missing something—

My brother’s truly dead to me.
 

I see that now.

I don’t believe in staying loyal to someone indefinitely while they drag you down, even a family member. Loyalty’s like friendship. It’s earned.

“Hey Trish?” I say, my eyes never leaving my brother.

“Yeah hun?”

“You got handcuffs?”

“Uh, I think Nash has them,” Trish says sheepishly.

I fire her an eye-roll over my shoulder, then say, “You stay here and guard my brother. Tie him to a fucking cactus for all I care. Keep your Glock pressed to his temple. He moves, shoot him.”

“Again?”

“Again. And this time? Kill him.”

“What if the Stricken overrun you?”

I shrug. “Kill my brother. Save a bullet for yourself.”

“You fucking whore,” Vuk whispers. “I fucked you. I fucked you in that alley. And you
liked
it. I’ll do it again. Like I did our mother—”

Anik slams his elbow into Vuk’s gut, flinging him from the bike.
 

Vuk lands hard on his ass, coughing black blood.
 

Trish slides off the bike. Looks me in the eye. She seems about to say something. A final word. Then her eyes mist up and she clamps her mouth closed. A hard line forms across her brow.
 

I know she’ll murder my brother if she has to.
 

I see it in her eyes.
 

She unholsters her Glock and for second she’s the woman I used to know, the girl who always stayed one step ahead of me in the academy, a talented cop and a crack markswoman and an all-around good fucking person, someone I admired and looked up to and was proud to call my friend. She had her whole life in front of her. And now here we are: sunburned in the middle of the desert while a hot wind blows sand in our eyes and the Blood Moon glares down and a nightmare army charges at us.

“Trish,” I say, my voice cracking. “I’m sorry. About all of this.”

Trish’s eyes light up. “Let her loose, Lil. Let her right the fuck out. I only wish…” My friend’s voice trials off. She checks the cartridge of her Glock. “If it was me, I’d make the motherfuckers pay.”

Then she’s gone, dragging my brother into the shade of a saguaro. Vuk’s pissing sweat. Shaking. His eyes sunken in his head. Black blood’s still seeping through the bandage. But he looks at me, and he smiles.
 

Love is weakness
, the prick said.
 

My animal surges beneath my skin.
 

My brother’s dead wrong.
 

Love is the only strength there is.

***

I don’t have to ask Anik if the bear is with him. By the time we get within striking distance of the black-blooded Anik’s bulked up so large the Harley looks like a toy beneath him, and when the first few Stricken hear our engines and race at us Anik leaps off the bike, rolls through the dirt and emerges the magnificent three-eyed bear, Tornarsuk the Indestructible, and when the lower-level Stricken see him they drop their weapons and run.
 

I stay on my bike, my skin burning into the custom alligator leather seat, fighting to keep the All Encompassing from bursting out until I command her to. A wave of shimmering heat radiates from my body. The Harley’s heating up red-hot, a fucking demon bike, and the bullets and rockets the Stricken fire our way explode as they hit my heat shield and then I’m laughing, my mind fucking shattered by the insanity of it all…and more, the sweet-as-fuck next-level power surging through my veins.
 

My creature’s shrieking for a feed.
 

The Stricken and Purebloods have broken into several warring clusters.

The sky darkens with smoke and the air rumbles with booming explosions as the Stricken unload their artillery. I see a giant Kodiac bear lift a squirming green snake over its head and tear it in two, then use half of the snake’s corpse to whip a skinless goat-monster to death. A pack of hunchbacked, rat-faced Stricken fall onto a Pureblood cougar and consume her alive. The single elephant still standing charges in a blind panic, ploughing through Stricken and Pureblood alike. A huge dust cloud rises from the battle, obscuring who’s winning.
 

Then I see Aaron of the Mountain River.
 

My heart leaps.

He’s standing in the center of the fighting. He’s in half-wolf form, his body human but his head a beautiful wolf with silver-black fur and piercing blue eyes. His fur is matted with black blood. He’s charging through the Stricken, spinning and roaring, his fangs and claws glinting in the harsh light. The Stricken fall like grain beneath a scythe. Seeing my man at war…it’s the most terrifying, awe-inspiring and beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed, and I realize I’m seeing my bloodmate truly for the first time.
 

This blood is who he is. This violence and death.
 

He was born for it.
 

The thought makes my breath catch in my lungs.

My son’s father.

A warrior. A killer. A leader.

Aaron rips the head off a grinning monkey, tosses the head to the ground and howls. His Pureblood pack answers, and then a sensation builds in my belly and bones and bursts from my lips and the next thing I know I’m howling as well, answering my alpha’s command, and as I leap from the Harley and unfold my wings and take to the sky Aaron pauses.

Look up. Meets my eyes.

Breaks into a boyish but impossibly-hot grin.
 

He’s like a kid in a candy store down there.
 

Or maybe a wolf in the hen house.

Then the dust closes around him and the last thing I see is a pair of massive, heavily muscled orange and black-striped tigers closing in on my bloodmate—

***

The Three Sisters. The Ravishes. The Minions who nearly defeated Tornarsuk. I growl, tuck my wings tight and dive at the spot where I last saw my bloodmate.
 

I punch through the dust and turn hard left, my lowest wing scraping the ground. Open my jaws and loose a rolling blast of heat into a group of Stricken. They explode in flame, shrieking as their flesh melts to bone. My animal screams in triumph. I snatch a lumbering Stricken warthog in my talons, stab him three times in the face with my poisoned scorpion tail.