The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (36 page)

Then heavy boots ringing on the stairs, crossing the floor toward me.
 

Someone leans over me and tugs at my wrists. I smell him. He smells different than the guy that brought me here. Woodsy. Like pine needles in the sun.
 

There’s a grunt and a cracking sound and suddenly my wrists are free from the metal pipe. Did he just…
snap
the handcuffs. No. He must’ve cut them. It doesn’t matter. He’s helping me. Please help me, I want to scream. Please help me.
 

I scoot away from the pole and nearly topple over. My legs and arms have gone numb and I’m still secured by the zip-ties and I think I’m gong to be sick, which would
not
be cool, considering the duct tape wrapped tight across my mouth.
 

“Careful now,” a deep male voice says. It sounds vaguely familiar. Commanding in a way that makes my skin tingle. Like he’s used to being obeyed.

“Hold still,” the man says. “I have a knife in my hand. I’m not going to hurt you, understand? I’m going to cut through those zip-ties. But you’re gunna feel the flat of the blade. Don’t flinch or you may get cut.”

I nod, not fully believing this is happening. Then the cold metal blade presses against my wrists, and suddenly I’m free. I moan as blood rushes into my hands.

“Steady now,” the man says. “Ankles next.”

He frees my ankles.
 

“I won’t lie. Getting this tape off is gunna hurt.”

Just get it off!
My mind screams.
Get it off!

I feel him picking at the duct tape, then a ripping noise as he begins unrolling it. The tape is stuck strong and my head jerks around as he unwraps it. Then he reaches the point where the tape is pressed to my skin.

“Slow or fast?” he asks.

I nod. Impatient. Frantic.
 

“Fast.” He tears the duct tape from my head, taking a good chunk of hair along with it. I gasp and breathe a few deep, terrified lungfuls, then look up.

At first I blink, not believing what I’m seeing. I’m looking into a pair of piercing bright blue eyes in a stern, strong-jawed face that’s smeared in blood. The blood of the men who abducted me, I know, because I know this man.
 

It’s Aaron. The MC Prez. A cold-blooded killer. And as I look into his eyes I wonder if I just leapt from one danger to another, but then he smiles, a broad grin like summer sunshine as he offers his hand and says, “Hey, Sparkles. Wanna go for a ride?”

***

Aaron helps me to my feet. I’m forced to lean heavy into him, and I remember him crashing into me in the biker bar as the first bullets flew. How good he felt. How powerful. Aaron offers to carry me. I refuse, and he kind of half-drags half-carries me up the steps.

There’s a woman waiting on the landing that I recognize from the Wilds. She was sitting beside Aaron and the rest of the outlaw MC at the back of the bar. She’s dressed in tight black leather that reveals her lean, muscled figure and I can tell by the glare she’s giving me that she and the Prez were—or are—a thing.
 

“This her?” the biker chick says, sounding totally unimpressed. “The All Encompassing? I think maybe the stress is getting to you, Aaron.”

Aaron bristles beside me. “Sparkles, meet Mia. Mia, Sparkles.”

Mia doesn’t say a word, but her green eyes catch the light in a funny way that makes them shine.

I’m about to tell Mia my real name and ask what the hell they’re doing here when I see the slaughter in the room behind her. It looks like someone gave a gorilla a meat cleaver, then poked him with a red hot iron. Blood runs down the walls, and something else, something…black. I try to look away but I can’t.
 

I’m horrified…and suddenly very angry.

“These are the men who…”

Aaron nods.

“You…did this?”

Another nod as he pulls me across the room. My bare feet tromp through a pool of still-warm blood and then we’re moving through a dark corridor. My foot bumps against something soft. I look down and see another body lying belly-down, a man’s head twisted so far back he’s nearly looking up me.

I clamp my mouth closed and bide my time. I don’t know who the fuck these people are or why they’re here, but I tell you one thing: I’m not sticking around to play biker bitch for a murderous outlaw and his posse of dirtbag felons.
 

Aaron stops just before the hall ends, opens a closet door, pulls out a grey fisherman’s raincoat and tells me to put it on. His expression says he expects to be listened to, but I shake my head no and say, “It’s theirs. I…I can’t wear it.”

Aaron looks at Mia and says, “Take off your clothes. Give them to her.”

Mia’s eyes light up in fury. “I will
not
. They won’t even fit her. And I won’t fucking do it.”

Mia’s right. She’s much thinner than me.
 

Then I hear a low, rumbling growl from deep in Aaron’s chest. In spite of everything that’s happened the sound sends the hair on my spine standing on end.
 

Mia sighs and starts undoing her leather jacket.
 

“She’s right, Aaron,” I say quietly. “They won’t fit.”
 

I snatch the trench coat from him, throw it on and cinch the belt tight. Something about finally being clothed brings a wracking sob from my throat. Like it reminds me I’m human. That I have friends and a job and I still eat Cheerios from the box for breakfast like I did when I was a kid.
 

My life. Broken but still there. And I want it back.

“We have to move,” Mia says. “Quickly.”

Aaron leads me out of the boat and onto the wharf. I glance back. The boat’s named the Guardian. “Who are they?” I ask as we hurry toward the parking lot.

“Hoping you know,” Aaron says.
 

I don’t say anything while Aaron picks his wrecked Harley up, kicks it to life, and nods for me to hop on. I slide in behind him, the soaked leather seat pressing against my naked ass, the engine purring under me.
 

I wrap my arms around Aaron’s waist and almost—almost—rest my head on his shoulder.
 

“Anywhere you gotta be?” he asks.

The hospital. The cops. All the places a girl goes after she’s been violently abducted from her home and witness to a multiple homicide. Into the florescent lights and accusing eyes and leading questions. Forms to sign. Perp photographs to pore through. Counselling.
 

How’d you get free?
they’ll ask.
How’d those guys wind up looking like they went through a meat grinder?
 

Maybe I should just tell them the truth.
 

A biker Prez rescued me.

Oh yeah? How you know him?

And the look they’ll try to hide behind strained smiles. The look that says I did something to deserve this. Maybe I was drunk and invited the wrong guys into my apartment. Maybe I have a history of…oh, yup, there it is. Drugs. Petty theft.
 

You piss off the wrong people, Miss Lily Thompson? They come lookin’ for you? And you’re a cop? Hmm. Not for long.
 

A woman doesn’t live this kind of shit down. Especially in my line of work. It remains long after the physical wounds heal, like a curse.

Then there’s this guy.
 

Aaron of no AKA. The outlaw biker. And all he’s offering is…freedom.

“Take me into the mountains,” I say to Aaron before I can stop myself. “Take me fast into the curves.”
 

S
NAP
-
SNAP
.

A sound close to my ear.

Snap-snap.

I open my eyes. There’s an Absent woman right in my face. Plain, pinched features and tired skin. Wrinkles around her brow and lips. Unhappy, maybe even mean looking. Making me experience fear. I flinch, jerking my head away from her. I don’t like how she’s staring at me. Like she knows something about me. Maybe she knows I was Accepted by the Guardians.

Maybe she’s one of them. A spy sent to live among the Absent. Tasked with catching the faithless and returning them to the Ark.

I’m afraid to speak. Afraid of hearing that horrible clicking sound coming from my lips again. But my head hurts very bad. My mouth is dry, and my tongue’s swollen and stuck to the side of my cheek.
 

“Water…please…” I say, surprised how weak I my voice sounds.

The woman’s lips twitch. She snaps her fingers twice more in my ear.

Snap-snap.
 

Then she says, “Welcome back to your mind. Thought we lost you for good.”

“Who knows if the crazy bitch is back?”
 

A man’s voice. Standing behind me. I don’t like his voice. It sounds…cruel. And I really don’t like him standing behind me, where I can’t see him, but I’m too tired to turn around.
 

I’m sitting on a metal chair in front of a large metal desk in a small empty room painted olive green that reeks of the same kind of cleaner we used to clean the washrooms in the Arc. I’m wearing loose cotton pants and a long-sleeve shirt of the same heavy material. Both are bright orange.

The woman crouching beside me lifts her head, yells for water, and few moments later a door opens and an Absent man wearing a blue jacket and a blue hat comes in, carrying a small paper cup of water. As the door closes I see outside into the corridor. There are many Absent dressed like the man wearing blue, and others wearing white gowns.
 

I shudder, thinking of what they’ll do to me.
 

I no longer desire to experience death.
 

Not at the hands of the Absent, at least.

“…no…English…” I say, like Priest Gabriel told me to if I don’t want to speak to the Absent. My voice is tiny and soft.
 

Meek, Priest Gabriel said.
 

The man standing behind me laughs in a way that makes me shudder.
 

The woman sighs, hands me the water. It might be poison. The Priests said the Absent love poison. Said we have to be careful. But the sight of the clear water sloshing in my shaking hands makes me ignore their warning. I drink it in one long gulp.
 

The water is better than any I’ve tasted. On the Ark we had to purify our water and store it in plastic drums. It always tasted of chemicals.

I hand the empty cup to the woman. She tells the man at the door to go get more, and when he does she says to me, very clear and slow, “What is your name?”

“No…English…”

The man behind me laughs again. It’s a wheezy, almost choking sound that quickly becomes a cough.

But the woman frowns. “This isn’t going very well. For you. Understand? Because the first thing out of your mouth is a lie. I
know
you speak English. How do I know? Because you’ve been in hospital for twenty-four hours, ranting and raving about all kinds of shit…in
English
.”

The man laughs again.
 

“…hurt…me…”

“We’re not gunna get a fucking thing from this one,” the man behind me says.

I shrink toward the table, as far away from him as possible.

The woman looks at me oddly. With sadness?
 

The second man returns with more water, which I drink. The woman settles into a chair close beside me. She has a tight, barely contained energy. I flinch away from her, too, and keep staring at the floor.
 

The itching sensation beneath my skin is gone, and with it the feeling of being more powerful than the Absent. I’m kneading my hands together, I realize. Then I notice my arm is in a cast and I’m covered in white bandages.
 

The woman must see me looking at the bandages because she says, “You do that often? Hurt yourself?”

“Course she does,” the man says. “She’s a fucking junkie.”

The woman turns her angry eyes to the man and says, “Kuschy. Should I take this one? You want out of the box? Got the hangries? Maybe go get us a couple breakfast burritos?”

“No,” the man says, sounding ashamed and also angry.

“Good.” The woman turns to me again. I don’t look at her directly, but I’m watching her in my peripheral vision. “Now. Let me ask you once more. Do you have a name?”

I can’t tell her my real name. Names give the Absent power. They’re pathways to the mind and soul.
 

“Emma,” I say, giving her the name Priest Gabriel told me to give in just this situation.
 

“Emma? Huh,” the woman says, sounding like she doesn’t like my answer. “You’re from Seattle, Emma?”

Seattle. The name of this place. I shake my head no.

“No? Where you from?”

“I don’t…know.”

“You know. Tell me.”

“I don’t remember.”

“You remember. Tell me.”
 

She has barbed hooks, this woman, and once she has them set in something she never lets go until she’s satisfied, and right now her hooks are set in me.
 

“I’m from…the ocean.”

The man makes another choking sound.

But the woman reaches out, quickly, and pushes my black hair behind me ear. I flinch away, but too late: I feel her fingertips brush against my temple. Then she says, “The ocean? Like a mermaid?”

I don’t know what that is, so I don’t say anything.
 

“Tell you what, Emma. Lets start over,” the woman says. “Do you know where you are?”

“Seattle?”

“Oh, she’s a quick one,” the man says.

“Seattle. Yes. Do you know
where
in Seattle?”

“No.” Then I look into the woman’s eyes for the first time. She has cool grey eyes that are hard and soft all at once. She doesn’t like me. Doesn’t believe me. But I don’t think…I don’t think she wants to hurt me.