The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (18 page)

I pull out my phone and text Trish, tell her I’m all right and that I’m sorry and we’ll get caught up later this week. Then I turn the phone off. I give the cabbie an address I know by heart, then put my coffee in the cup holder before I lay my head back. I’m asleep almost instantly, and in my dream there’s a child swinging under a cherry tree while pink blossoms shower around him.

***

“Lady. Hey. We’re here.”
 

I startle awake, looking around wildly. In my dream I was running through a black wood, being chased by something I couldn’t see or name.
 

A presence. And it was gaining on me.

I tell the cabbie to wait while I slam back the coffee and breakfast bar, then pop two Adderol. That’s a girl. All freshened up for another day. The cabbie’s watching me in the rear-view with something between concern and disgust. I know what he’s thinking. I don’t look like a working girl, not even the expensive kind.
 

And I’m not. Not really.

Connor Lerrick’s father, August Lerrick, is one of the wealthiest men in the state, which is saying something in a state that includes Bill Gates as one of its residents. Connor and I met in our late teens. His mother Evelyn bankrolls a citywide charity that provides safe havens for street kids. Places they can hang out and stay warm or watch some TV and just stop looking over their shoulder for a minute or two.
 

I was playing ping-pong with a kid whose name I forget when Mrs. Evelyn Lerrick and her entourage strolled into the Happy Valley Youth Center one afternoon. Connor was with her, a rich boy forced to tag along while his mom played Mother Teresa to the world’s downtrodden. He looked bored as all hell. Connor saw us playing ping-pong, walked over, looked me straight in the eye and said, “Do you mind if I have this dance?”
 

I know. Beyond cheesy. But it didn’t take much to woo me in those days, and I laughed and we played three rounds of ping pong, then snuck out back and fucked in his mother’s limo while she did her good samaritan thing.
 

The driver didn’t even look up from his newspaper.
 

That pretty much sums up the nature of our relationship going on…oh what feels like forever now.

I didn’t expect to see Connor after that afternoon in the limo. I was horny, not stupid. I enjoyed some fancy bottled water (I blame my current Vitamin Water addiction on that limo’s wet bar) and some rather impressive sex and that was the end of it.

But he came back to the shelter a week later, describing me to the councilor and saying he forgot my phone number and leaving his. That made me laugh when I phoned him that night from the shelter.
 

I didn’t have a phone.
 

“You want me to wait for ya, lady?” the cabbie asks.
 

I tell him no but to wait until the gate opens and I’m inside. I stare through the rain smeared window at Connor’s house. I’ve been in a few times, though never at five in the morning and never unannounced. It’s built into a hill overlooking Lake Washington, and from above you can’t see the extent of it. Lets just say it’s large enough to require an elevator, made of cantilevered polished concrete and panes of glass two stories tall and imported hardwood. And this is Connor’s house, not his parent’s—they gifted it to him when he turned nineteen.
 

Nice, huh?
 

But I hate it. My voice echoes inside. It feels cold and cavernous. Unwelcoming. The entire place reeks of old money, and I always end up feeling like a trespasser. Connor usually meets me at my apartment in the University District. Stops by during my lunch hour or after work.

Yeah, that’s how we roll.
 

I pay the cabbie, gather up my few things and head out into the rain, flipping my jacket hood over my head. I must look like a drowned rat. Or something uglier and wetter than a drowned rat. I approach the gate and press the buzzer.
 

No answer.
 

I press again, then again, then finally a sleepy male voice answers.
 

“Hey Connor it’s me Lily will you let me in I need to see you…”
 

It comes out in a breathless rush. Damn. I meant to sound more…
together
than that. Nothing like the reek of desperation to get a guy going. I’ve been holding shit inside pretty good until now, but the events of the evening are straining against my self control, threatening to burst through. Who the hell knows if Connor has someone in there with him? In fact now that I think about it a text might’ve been nice. You know, give him a chance to boot the high-class whores out. But I didn’t want to hear my phone buzzing with angry messages from Trish.

“Lily?” Connor says, clearly not quite awake.

I tap on the camera mounted into the gate panel. “Lily Thompson. The one and only. Your on-again-off-again.”

“Holy shit, Lil,” Connor says, and he must be looking into the surveillance monitor because his voice hits a note of fear and worry. “Are you okay? Wait a minute I’ll—”

The gate slides open without a sound.
 

I’m in.
 

I wave the cabbie goodbye and tromp down a slick stamped concrete driveway. The rain’s coming down hard enough to create little rivers that carry leaves and sticks from the road above. Before I drop behind the house I see Lake Washington out in the distance, a flat black plane that looks like the end of the earth.
 

Then Connor’s racing through the rain toward me, dressed in boxer shorts with little sailboats on them and nothing else. Rainwater runs down his naked skin and suddenly I feel like shit, stopping in unannounced and waking him.
 

Sometimes you don’t have to love the person you want to be with.
 

Sometimes its easier that way.
 

I make it into Connor's arms before I start crying, and I’m pretty damn proud of that.
 

I
SIT
ON
the sharp boulder for a long while, my knees clasped to my chest, staring at the ocean as the hunger to know the Divine Essence sinks deep into my bones. Rain pelts my skin so hard it hurts. Sometimes a wave crashes over me. I feel its desire to pull me back to sea, and I beg it to, please take me please take me away from this Absent Land, but I only slide across the sharp rock, cutting my buttocks and legs, and then the wave releases me.

I think I see a light once, very faint and distant, and wonder if it’s the Guardians still searching for me. I worry over my family of Hopefuls. Will they be punished for my weakness? Will they suffer Priest Gabriel’s lash? Or worse, will they be denied the Essence for so long their skin begins to crawl with the sensation of insects and no nourishment stays in their bellies?

A forest lies behind me. How large it is I don’t know. This is the Land of the Absent. That’s all we were told.
 

A place of sin and suffering and despair.

It’s the hunger for the Essence that eventually drives me to stand. My legs are wobbly and weak. I stumble off the sharp stones as the waves crash and roar. My toes sink into the sand as I cross a narrow beach. I hate the feeling of this land against my skin. I miss the sound of the great engines rumbling deep within the Arc and the warmth of my narrow, windowless room.
 

I miss giving thanks for nourishment with my family.
 

The wind arrives fast now, its roar matching the waves, bending trees back, whipping branches across my face hard enough to draw blood as I stumble into the wood.
 

This place is a Hell. Of that I’m certain.

I stagger from tree to tree, leaning heavily into each, gasping for breath, panicked of what lies in the wood. My hair tangles in the dense undergrowth, tears from my head as I stumble onward. Occasionally I bend at the waist while my belly expels yellow fluid into the moss at my feet.
 

When I have a burst of strength or an especially overwhelming fit of fear I run, often only for a few steps before I fall to the ground. My white dress is torn and filthy, and I’m happy Priest Gabriel isn’t here to witness me in such disarray.
 

Then I see something that makes me freeze. The forest glows up ahead. Like a vision. Has He found me already? Is He coming to collect this newly born Absent?
 

Then the glowing light fades.
 

I listen to the sound of the rain filtering through the forest. I stand very still for a long while, waiting and watching and listening. There it is. A hiss like a thousand snakes, then the forest glows again.
 

An eerie yellow light.
 

It lasts for a few seconds and disappears.

I want to run back to the ocean and fling myself against the waves. Want to stand on the shore and cry for the Guardians to take me back. But I know they won’t. I know they’ll make me scream like Charlene when they took her eyes.
 

So I walk through the forest toward the light. It comes randomly, and always with that horrible hissing sound. The light grows brighter and the hissing louder as I approach. Suddenly I’m very close to something that looks like a river made of a hard material I don’t know the name of. There’s a twin yellow line painted down the middle of the hard river, like the lines painted on the deck of the Arc. I stare at this strange thing.
 

It looks…familiar somehow.
 

Like something I understood from before my Acceptance on the Ark. I shudder, hoping I continue not remembering that sinful life.
 

I won’t step on this strange thing.
 

It’s sure to carry me to Azazel.
 

Then swooping from the forest to my left comes a blazing yellow light so bright it blinds me. I fling my arm over my eyes as the hiss of snakes assaults my ears. Oh Holy Guardians give me Strength and Will to remain at the Gate, I pray, and the white light fades and the hissing recedes.
 

A cloud of mist passes over me.
 

It reeks like the engine room in the Arc.
 

I open my eyes and see two glaring red eyes staring back at me from far down the hard river. The eyes are set in something that looks like a shining metal coffin.
 

I flee a few steps into the woods as another white and red-eyed beast speeds toward me. This time tree branches shadow my eyes and I’m able to keep them open despite the glare. I see another metal coffin speed past, and inside there’s a person that looks like me, facing forward and sitting very still.
 

I gasp and cover my mouth, afraid something will hear me scream.
 

The coffins carry the Absent.
 

I’m trapped. Behind me lies the forest and ocean and the Guardians. In front is this horrible hard river glistening with rain and delivering speeding coffins of the Absent.
 

I need to get across the strange river. I see more forest on the other side. Perhaps if I walk long enough I’ll find a place where the Absent reside. If we ever found ourselves stranded in this dead land, or if we were blessed to be sent to murder one of Azazel’s Guises, the Priest’s taught us to find a place where the Absent reside, murder any Absent inside, take nourishment from their food, take their clothes and any weapons and then continue into the night.
 

That is what I’ll do.
 

Maybe the Absent will have Essence as well.
 

The insects are beginning to crawl beneath my skin.

The hard river is on a raised platform slightly above me. The bank is steep and slippery and choked with weeds, but I manage to make it onto the same level as the hard river. A white line marks the edge. I hover my toe over the hard river, afraid to step on it. Then I find my will and step across the white line. The hard river is cold underfoot. I take another step, then another, and when I’m only a few steps away from the yellow line one of the coffins screams around the corner, its horrible bright white eyes bearing down on me.
 

I scream, throw my arms over my head and freeze.
 

The hissing snakes give way to a terrible piercing screech, like a sound the demons in Hell must make when a new soul joins them.

The screeching continues for a long while. It is enough time for me to regret leaving my family and joining the Absent. Then there’s a moment of silence and the smell of something burning which reminds me of the smell that filled the Arc when we burned the bodies of the Absent we Bled.
 

Flee into the woods,
I scream at myself.
Run. Run!
 

But I can’t move.
 

My knees give out and I crumple in the middle of the hard river. They have me now. They know I’m here. There will be no chance to seek nourishment in one of their foul residences. I’m sobbing, and the warmth between my legs tells me I’ve soiled myself.

Something slams. I hear boots approaching.

Oh Holy Guardians give me Strength.

“Jesus fucking shit, lady,” a man yells.
 

The Absent speak the same language as the Priests. I spoke a different language long ago that is now lost to me.

“You nearly…here. Let me help you…oh my god, lady! What…what happened to you? We have to…here.”

My eyes are slammed closed. I flinch, feeling the Absent man touch my shoulder. We’re not supposed to speak to the Absent. Speaking is a channel of deceit for the Absent. They can enter a person’s mind with words. Corrupt an everlasting soul simply with the sound of their voices.