The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (15 page)

So when I see the three RCMP trucks parked outside my house I know why they’re there.
 

They’ve come to take Pimniq.

I leap up the steps and into the house so fast the four startled cops inside reach for their handguns.

“Why are you in my home?” I shout, standing in the door.
 

The lights are off in the house. Strange. And there’s a scent, one I’ve never known before…my home reeks of it.
 

It’s coming from these men. Intruders in my home.

My animal spirit scratches at the back of my mind, teasing, threatening to break free.

“Now hold on there, son,” one of the cops says. He’s the leader, from the look of how he stands and how the others defer to him.
 

I’ve never cared much for cops. This is not their land. We’ve been here for thousands of years. Yet they strut around, hands on their handguns, trying to tell us how to live our lives.
 

“Get out of my home,” I say, very quietly.

“That won’t be possible,” the leader cop says. Then he squints at me. “Anik? Is that you? Is you’re name Anik Ujurak?”

“Please leave.”

“You…c’mon in here, son. Are you…where are your clothes? You all right? You must be freezing.”
 

Cops. Always with the questions. The leader cop is moving toward me real slow, hands held up, his words quiet and clear and kind of paternal, like he’s trying to talk down a violent madman, and the three behind him, they’re moving in too, and I know enough to see they don’t give a rat’s ass if I’m cold or not.
 

“Where is she?” I say. “Where’s Pimniq?”

“We’ll talk all about your sister later, young man,” the leader cop says. His voice isn’t so soothing now. He sounds…agitated. “But you’re going to have to come with us. Just for a while. A few questions is all. Where you been, son?”

He’s close enough now to see the blood and bruises. His eyes widen. One hand lowers to unsnap the strap securing his handgun.
 

“Where did you take her?” I say, because I know from the scent the house is empty. It’s been empty for a day, at least.

“Your sister’s safe. Trust me. Now come on here—”

Faster than I ever thought a cop could move the bastard has me by the wrist. His grip is strong and cold as he tugs me inside the house and commands one of his lackeys to lock the door. I take a swing at the bastard, catch him in the head behind the ear. A punch like that would drop a normal human. But as he grins and shakes it off and head-butts me I learn these are not normal humans. I fall back into the wall and he’s on me, grabbing my other wrist while his buddy pulls a pair of gleaming handcuffs from his belt.

“Get the fuck off me,” I scream, and lipping off earns me a sharp punch in the jaw from the pudgy cop holding the cuffs. Fucking pigs. I know what comes next. They yank my wrists behind my back and it’s all over. I don’t know who these guys are or what they think I did—

What I did. My breath stops in my lungs. I remember now. The cop in the search and rescue party. What the animal did to him.
 

But how can they know?

“You’re a real pretty piece of Indian ass,” the leader cop says, dropping his hands to my hips and reaching around to grope me. And then I see his astral spirit: he has deep blue skin and yellow snake’s eyes and twisting ram’s horns sprouting from his head and a mouth full of sharp black teeth.

I freeze, shake my head in disbelief, try and press into the wall.
 

I want away from him. I want to be left alone. Please.
 

“What,” one of the lackey cops says from behind the guy holding me, “you think you were the only one?”

Truth is I knew I couldn’t be.
 

Knew there had to be others living with the same curse. That’s why I’ve never left Pangnirtung. Not only because it’s my home…but because I was afraid of what I’d find.

Or what would find me.
 

All four of the cops standing in my house are monsters.
 

Just like me.

The fat one is almost human-looking except he has shaggy brown fur and two giant fangs descending from his mouth. One looks like a rodent with a long snout and yellow buck teeth, some kind of weasel maybe. Another has the face of a bird with a long, curved vulture’s beak.
 

I slam my eyes closed. My people’s shamans have spoken of creatures like these for millennia. Donned masks and danced around the fire, offering tokens to keep the evil spirits at bay.
 

The blue-skinned leader, the strong one with the horns, drags a sharp fingernail across my naked chest, through layers of grime and sweat and blood, then runs his tongue across his finger.
 

“Mmm,” he says. “Red blooded like the Skins and Purebloods. But you don’t taste like either. And you’re not one of us—”
 

“Where is she?” I scream, panic thick in my throat. “What have you done to Pimniq?”

The cops laugh. All of them.
 

A thin trickle of black blood oozes from where I cuffed the leader cop. They’re not the same as me, I realize. “You fucking freaks,” I yell. “What
are
you?”

 
“Us?” the lead cop says. “We have many names. And our names are changing—”

The leader cop grins, then leans down and bites my shoulder hard enough his teeth grind into my collarbone. I shriek and bring my knee hard into his crotch and call my raging spirit animal.
 

Fuck these fucking things. They want blood?
 

I’ll drown them in it.

The leader cop takes my knee with barely a grimace, then squeezes my wrists so hard it feels like he’s going to snap my hands off.
 

“Whats the matter, you filthy Indian punk?” the weasel cop says, his voice suddenly deep and raspy. “You don’t like being hunted by Stricken? We’ve been hunted and massacred for millennia. Now it’s our turn to hunt.”

“Nah,” the leader cop says. “This little Indian’s no Pureblood. Blood’s wrong. And look at his neck. No collar.”

The weasel cops sucks in his breath and his eyes go wide in a way that makes me think he knows something about me that I don’t.
 

“It’s not…he can’t be…” the weasel stammers.

“He
is
,” the leader says. “Why do you think the First Fallen wants him so bad?”
 

Stricken? My kind? The First Fallen? What insane mind-fuck of a trip are these guys on?
 

I
know
what I am.
 

What the sacred animal spirit inside me is. My people have a name for those like me.

Adlet.
 

Half man half animal.

But I prefer what the southern tribes call us. Skinwalkers. Cursed to live battling the animal prowling beneath my skin.
 

Trouble is, I don’t remember what I did to deserve this curse.
 

My skin ripples and bulges and for once the pain makes me smile, because I know soon this will be over. I only hope the animal’s satisfied murdering these spirit-creatures and doesn’t go on a killing tour through Pang.

My fangs and claws drop and the weasel cop screams, “He’s Becoming!” which makes me wonder how he knows what I’m doing, and there’s fear in the ugly bastard’s voice…as there should be.

But something’s wrong. My animal won’t cross over. I’m stuck halfway, a hideous man-beast. And I think I know why. I’m too weak from the fall and the healing. The change would kill me, and the animal knows it. He’s snarling and spitting, because the scent coming off this freak is making my animal mad with hunger.
 

That’s what it is.
 

The cops might have the advantage right now, but they’re still my prey. I know this like I know the scent of an arctic hare, or the wind that carries the first coolness of an approaching winter.

“What’s the matter,” the leader cops says, staring into my eyes. “He won’t come when you summon him? You can’t reach him? Well that’s—”

His words become a choking gurgle, as my claws bury deep in his throat. I may not be fully changed, but my animal’s still half with me. I lift the asshole cop into the air, his black blood showering over me.

The creature’s black blood flows into my mouth and suddenly my animal roars and leaps and thrashes inside me, and the kill-lust sweeps my rational mind away and I realize these creatures are my true prey, not the humans I’ve been slaughtering for as long as I can remember, and if that’s true, if my animal really thirsts for the blood of these sick creatures, then maybe—

I’ve been wrong about my spirit bear all along.
 

The blue-skinned cop’s not grinning now.
 

I give him a shake, then say, “Where is she? Where’s Pim?”
 

One of the cop lackey’s unloads his handgun into my side. The shots are deafening in the tiny house. Bullets tear through my ribs, blinding me with pain. I scream and drop the half-dead cop and fall to my knees, hoping I’ve unleashed enough of the animal so the bullets won’t kill me.
 

The lackey pigs pile on top of me, one of them screams to use the iron restraints while another wrenches my arms behind my back and click there’s the fucking cuffs. The cop with his throat half torn out rises from the floor, and as I watch his wound stops pumping filthy black blood and heals over.

He’s like me in some ways, I realize. But he’s different as well. My animal kills because he’s a natural predator. These black-blooded monsters kill for the sheer joy of it.
 

I’m on my knees, cuffed, two asshole cops holding me by the elbows.

“You see these?” the blue-skinned monster cop says, pointing to his black steel-toed boots. “This is respect.” He raises his left boot an inch off the floor, “and this other one here…this is pain.” He leans over me and whispers, “Now think real hard, pretty-boy. Which you gunna give your betters? Respect…or pain?”

I spit a mouthful of blood and say, “Pain.”

The cop smiles, his yellow eyes gleaming. “That’s right. I knew I could count on a filthy fucking Indian to make the wrong choice.”
 

The asshole kicks me straight in the ribs, right into one of the bullet wounds. An explosion of colored light blinds me. When I open my eyes I’m facedown on the floor.
 

The creatures circle above me, snarling and spitting and kicking.
 

Pimniq
.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

I promised to protect her. Promised my animal would never hurt her. Promised nothing in the world would ever hurt her.
 

But I’m learning about promises.
 

Especially ones you can’t keep.

The cops don’t stop kicking until the lights go out.
 

L
ONNY
’
S
C
ADILLAC
REEKS
of incense, cheap cologne and aging leather, but I ain’t complaining, because it also reeks of my blood.

“Fuck, Aaron,” Lonny says for the hundredth time, glancing over at me bleeding all over his tiger print seat covers. Dude’s gripping the chrome steering wheel between two tattooed hands and pressing the pedal to the floor, sending the engine into a red-lining shriek. My adrenaline surges and the pain of being shot to shit makes me punch the Caddy’s dash, cracking it all to hell.

“Damn,” I say by way of apology. “American-made ain’t what it used to be.”
 

Lonny flashes me a glare out the corner of his eye.
 

The fucker does love his ride.

The Caddy’s gear shifter has been swapped out for a chrome panther’s head. Lonny says, “You wanna stop bleeding soon, bro? I’m gunna need a fucking snorkel.”

“You snorkel?” I ask him, cupping a hand over a bullet hole to slow the blood and trying to manage a laugh. “Figures. Snorkling’s for yuppie tools on vacay. Prolly drink…fucking fruity…cocktails…”

Yeah, okay. So the streetlights are all blurry, and I can’t feel much of anything in my arms and legs, but—
 

“Quiet, Prez,” Nash warns from the back seat. “Rest up.”

“…talking about…your timeshare and which…cleaning girl…gives the best head…”

“Doesn’t sound half bad,” Lonny says, eyeing the blood pumping from my chest.

“Quiet, both of you,” Nash says.
 

I almost tell Nash to go fuck himself. But he’s right. It’s not like Nash to sound so reserved and…
sober
…and that makes me realize what a total fuck-up this is.
 

Me getting shot? Whatever. I’ll heal.
 

But that some motherfuckers had the stones to attack the Purebloods in their own bar?
 

That doesn’t bode well for anyone: the MC, my inner circle…or me.

“Thanks for the lift,” I say to Lonny by way of apology for ruining his ride.

Lonny says nothing, only reaches over and pops the glove open. There’s a full bottle Wild Turkey sloshing around in there. I smile as I crank off the cap and bring the whiskey to my lips. I can still taste that fucking Skin’s blood in my mouth. Too salty. I lean forward and spit, craving a meal of fresh Stricken heart like never before, then turn and look in the back seat.

Nash’s burned arm is bandaged up and his eyes are all straight black pupil from the painkillers he took upstairs at the bar—at least there was time for him to get cleaned up before the bullets started popping. He’s got his uninjured arm wrapped over the shoulders of one very odd looking Skin dude.

At least I’m pretty sure the guy’s who shot up my bar are Skins. They bleed red. This particular human should be pissing himself right about now, but the guy’s eyes are wide and vacant. Empty. His arms are tied behind his back in a way I know must hurt, but he doesn’t look like he’s in pain. He meets my gaze and we stare at one another for a second. Then I stretch my lips back, revealing blood-stained incisors nearly as long as a man’s finger.