An Indian shaman-witch.
Once she was a Pureblood like me. But she committed a horrific crime, and now she’s cursed to hunt and murder the innocent for all eternity.
The Skinwalker’s vicious, maddened wailing continues, and the sound brings out an unusual sensation in me: raw, pant-shitting panic, and then I’m fleeing, sprinting down the narrow track as fast as I can, past the child’s grave and toward the pioneer cabin, through the shadowy aspen grove as rocks shower down and the Skinwalker follows along the rim snarling and wailing.
I reach the cabin door. My heart skips a beat.
It’s secured with a heavy iron chain and padlock.
There’s no time to worry over what might be inside.
Fucking plenty to worry about out here.
I slam my shoulder into the door.
It cracks but holds.
More rocks come down, smashing through the cabin’s rotten wood roof. I risk a glance back. The Skinwalker’s still on top of the ravine, waving her arms and spinning and screaming and shrieking, her blue eyes bright with hatred. She’s kicking up a dust-storm, crashing through scrub juniper and sagebrush, sending small avalanches of dirt and sand down the steep ravine.
I’ve violated a sacred rite by witnessing her child’s corpse unearthed.
She’s after my beating heart.
I smash the door again.
It gives a little more, and then the screeching stops and silence descends on the ravine.
Frantic, I search the rim.
The trees.
The track.
Nothing.
She’s vanished.
I work on snapping the rusted padlock. Dig my fingernails under the rotten porch wood and pry a board loose, then wedge it behind the chain and try to lever the lock open. The fucking thing holds until the brittle, sun-bleached wood snaps in my hands.
I’m breathing hard now, gasping, and I hate this feeling of weakness, of fear, of losing control. Anger thick as bile rises in my throat. Someone’s having a good fucking laugh at old Aaron Arud, that’s for sure.
A horrible strangling sound makes me whirl. The Skinwalker’s leaning over the pit in her human form, her back to me, digging and scratching, uncovering the child’s body. The same frantic, desperate movements as the bobcat. She’ll finish soon, and then she’ll turn to me.
She’s in no hurry.
She knows I can’t outrun her, and I wonder if she scents what I am.
What am I? I don’t know anymore.
The thought makes me leap at the door in blind fury. I pummel my fists into the wood, screaming and hollering, beyond all control, not fucking caring if the door gives, only wanting somewhere to lay this maddening rage. The door splinters and cracks and the top hinge begins to pull from the frame. I’m almost in, although I don’t know what fucking good it will do me, and I’ve stopped caring if the Skinwalker murders me. It’d be a quick death compared to what the Stricken will do if they scent me out.
The hair on my nape stands on end, and I know she’s there.
Right behind me.
I close my eyes. Take a breath.
Fuck her. I’m done running.
The Skinwalker rakes a single sharp claw down my spine, slowly, not deep, but her touch makes my entire body quiver.
“You shouldn’t be here, pale man,” the old hag says in a voice like stones grinding together. “You shouldn’t have witnessed.”
I slam my bleeding fist into the door one last time before I turn to face my death.
The wood shatters into splinters. My hand punches through, and the momentum carries me hard into the door. The top hinge rips from the frame and the upper half of the door collapses inward, sending me ass-over-teakettle inside the cabin’s cool, musty darkness.
Outside, the Skinwalker spits and cackles.
***
I take a quick breath and roll to my feet, my survival instincts kicking in, ready to fight the fucking hag. But she’s still outside, her head lifted to the crimson moon, her hideous, piercing laughter rolling and echoing through the cabin. She’s cradling the child’s body in her arms.
I freeze. Wait.
Eventually the Skinwalker’s laughter fades.
She peers inside, her face scrunched in concentration. Licks a long black tongue over her lips.
I smell her now. Like rotten meat.
“Rabbit found a hole,” the Skinwalker says, pacing just beyond the cabin’s tiny wooden porch, then laying the child down on the ground and settling onto her haunches. Her legs are bruised black and bone thin.
“Well,” she says with a wicked grin. “I have nothing but time.”
“You can’t enter,” I say, watching how she’s wary of the cabin’s porch.
The hag lifts her head and smiles.
“It was her home, wasn’t it? The girl’s?”
She leans to the side, spits a long tendril of phlegm, then says, “You stink of fear, Pureblood. And hunger.”
Fuck her. I reach out and tear off the rest of the door, stand in the threshold and study her. She’s taller and thinner than I thought, and even sitting all bunched up I know she must reach ten feet when she stands upright. She’s naked. Her skin is bruised and sun-reddened and mottled. A nest of heavy necklaces and ornaments and amulets of sparkling stones, feather and polished bone hangs from her thin neck.
The Skinwalker catches me studying her. Flips her filthy knotted hair over her shoulder and grins suggestively. “Invite me inside,” she whispers. “I can help you.”
“You think I’m a fucking idiot?”
She scowls, bares her sharp teeth and flicks a handful of sand at me.
I turn my back on her and begin searching the cabin. There’s an old, half-rotten wooden table and a set of two chairs. A rusted single mattress, its springs punching through a mess of mildewed fabric. A few wooden crates filled with tools and parts for old machinery I don’t recognize. And there, buried deep in the last crate, is a hatchet. It has a cracked handle and the blade’s dull as all fuck, but when I arc it through the air it whistles just fine.
Better than a rock in my hand, anyway.
Something smashes onto the roof. The cabin creaks and shudders.
The Skinwalker’s up there, stomping and howling, sending dust and rotten wood and a few black beetles showering around me. She shrieks again, then leaps from the roof. There’s a nasty scratching sound as she circles the cabin, raking her claws into the wood.
Fucking bitch drama. Last thing I need.
I walk to the door.
The hatchet feels good in my hand.
When I’m a foot from the door the Skinwalker pops her head around the corner and makes to swipe at me. Fucking bitch.
I don’t even bother flinching.
“How about I bring that cabin down around your ears, wolf-man?” she spits.
“You would’ve already if you could.”
She grins, lifts a sculpted bone amulet and says, “I have something you need.”
“Food? Water?”
“Those as well.”
I smack the hatchet against my palm. “Then give them to me.”
“Invite me inside.”
It’s my turn to laugh.
“What happens if you cross the threshold?” I ask. “You catch fire? Your skin fucking melt off?”
The Skinwalker snarls and goes half-cat, fur bursting from her face, her back hunching low, then sprints three times around the cabin, mewling and scratching and pawing the wood. When she returns the cat is gone. She looks at me like she’s pondering what to say, then whispers, “We’re dying.”
I settle cross-legged on the floor and rub my bruised knuckles.
“That’s the consensus.The end of days.”
“No. We’re dying,” the old hag says, settling in the dirt a few feet from the child’s corpse.
“Who was she?” I ask.
The Skinwalker ignores me. “Our kind. Do you listen? Do you feel? Our time is done. I know you fe
el it. Your hunter has abandoned you.”
My eyes widen slightly at the mention of my animal, but I decide to let it go. “Who was she?”
The Skinwalker shrugs. “My daughter.”
“Why?”
She spits and flashes me that nasty black tongue. “Why? Because I was too proud. I wanted more.” She pauses, then says, “I answered your question. Now you answer mine. Do you feel it? The weakness?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s true? The Fallen is Becoming? The Age of Discord is upon us?”
“Yes.”
For a moment the hag looks almost frightened. “That burn,” she says, gesturing to my chest. But she leaves the question unfinished.
“Was it worth it?” I ask.
The Skinwalker glares at me with her bright blue eyes.
“The power you craved? Was it worth killing her for?”
She taps at one of her amulets for a while, and when she lifts her head her face is flat and expressionless. “No,” she whispers. “It never is.”
We sit staring at one another for so long the moon arcs across the ravine. I’m wary of speaking to her, wary of even looking directly at her. Skinwalkers have powerful sorcery. The ability to enter their enemy’s minds. Control thoughts and emotions. But here, in the cabin…I don’t think she can reach me.
“What is this place?” I ask, gesturing at the cabin.
“My home.”
“Her home too.”
The Skinwalker nods.
“When?”
The hag scrapes her claws through the dirt. “A hundred moons or more.”
“But the body, she looks—”
“Recent?”
“Yes.”
The old woman purses her lips and says nothing.
“The curse prevents her from joining the land of your dead?”
The Skinwalker nods, sniffing the air. “They’re coming,” she says, very quietly.
I squeeze the hatchet handle and ignore the shiver running down my spine. “Who?”
“Them,” the Skinwalker spits in disgust. “The stinking pales. Hordes of them. Fleeing their dying cities. Pursued by the black blooded. Mad with fear and bloodlust. This was a quiet land for a long while. It was my land. The curse…turned most trespassers away before the ravine. The smart ones, at least,” she says with a pointed grin.
“Yeah. I’ve been a bit…distracted.”
“But now our power weakens, and so does the curse that binds me and mine.”
The hag points to her daughter.
The corpse’s skin is slowly changing, swelling.
She’s beginning to rot.
“What will bring her peace?”
“She needs to be brought home. Inside.”
“I see.”
We stare at one another for a moment, then I say, “I will do that for you. If you leave her on the porch and fuck off. Go somewhere I can see you. I’ll gather her up and bring her inside.”
The woman looks at me with immense sadness. “I believe you would.”
“In exchange for my life.”
“Of course,” she says with a toothy grin. “But only I can carry her through the threshold. And to enter—”
“You need an invitation.”
The Skinwalker smiles while off in the distance a pack of starving coyotes howls to the Blood Moon.
I think about Lily. About what she did to me. The unnatural white heat pouring from her mouth, burning my chest and melting the iron collar, freeing my animal. Anger tightens my throat. The fucking bitch. Trouble is, I know if the situation were reversed I’d have done the same. Murdered my mother’s murderer. Fucking hell yeah.
But can I forgive Lily? Never.
It’s just not part of what I am.
“Your own curse…is beginning to bloat and rot,” the Skinwalker whispers.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t feel you deserve her.”
“What?”
“‘I’m a nomad,’ you tell yourself. A lone wolf. A hunter. A killer. And so you run from what you need most.”
“I am those things. And worse.”
The Skinwalkers sniffs. “Maybe that was once true. But people change, Aaron of the Mountain River.”
I don’t even bother asking how she knows my name. Something tells me she’s been waiting for my arrival for a very long time. “An old dog new tricks? I don’t think so.”
My stomach growls. The hunger is becoming a distraction. Soon it’ll take over, become all I think about.
The Skinwalker leans over, brushes the bangs from her child’s forehead.
The eastern sky is a lighter shade of dark blue.
“Soon it will be dawn,” I say. “What then?”
“It’s remarkable how easy it is to believe we’re something we’re not.”
“What am I?” I ask, more to myself than to this cursed hag, “If not a hunter and killer?”
“Oh, you’re those things. And more. You’re a leader.”
I can’t help myself: I bury my head in my hands and laugh bitterly. “Try telling that to my dead brother. Or my old packmates. They’ll disagree by cutting your head off.”
“You might be right,” the hag says, flicking her hands in dismissal. “A leader fights for what he desires. Perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps you don’t deserve her.”
I smack the hatchet blade into the wooden floor, splintering it, then pluck at the splinters, lost in thought. There was a time when all that mattered was murdering Stricken and cruising on my Harley. Freedom. Not a fucking care in the world beyond my own immediate gratification.
If I was hungry I ate.
If I was horny I fucked.
If I wanted to kill I killed.
And that worked—for a while. But maybe some men reach a point in their lives when they tire of living only for themselves. Maybe they begin to think on what they’ve done with their time. What they’ve built. What they’re leaving behind. A legacy. It’s fucking bullshit…but still.
What we do matters.
My brother’s death taught me that.
Losing my pack and my bloodmate taught me as well.
Bet your ass it did.
What we do matters.
My legs are cramping up. I stand, stretch, motion the Skinwalker to her feet and say, “You want inside? Fuck it. If it’s my time it’s my time. I’m done dithering. Come on in.”
***
There’s a moment when we do something dangerous and reckless and foolish. It’s the moment just before we know how things are going to turn out. Before we know how bad we fucked up. It’s a moment ripe with potential. With…energy. Too many moments slip by unnoticed. A life can be lived in a kind of waking trance, going through the motions of living, the day-to-fucking-day, and the only moment some people really live is the one before their last breath, and that’s a damned shame.
But moments when you risk it all?
Just hang it right the fuck out there?
You notice them.
It’s like everything narrows: I’m conscious of each breath, the feel of sunbaked and splintered wood under my bare feet, the stars shining through a hole in the roof above, chill wind whirling through the cabin door, the ache in my legs from sitting for so long, the infected burn stinging my chest, but most of all I feel a heaviness deep in my heart, a sense of loss and loneliness unlike any I’ve ever known, the sadness of missing my brother, my pack and my bloodmate, and deeper still, the growing realization that I’m not entirely what I thought I was, a loner, a man who needs no one.
I need them.
The people who are important to me.
And I’ll fucking fight for them.
The Skinwalker gathers her murdered daughter in her arms and stares at the porch as if suspecting a trick. I invite her in again, louder, just to make sure she gets the hint.
She steps onto the low wooden porch, and when nothing happens she looses a choked cry, rushes through the threshold and past me in
to the center of the cabin. She might still feed on me, but she has some rather important business to attend to first.
“I’m leaving,” I say, turning my back and heading for the door as the old hag sets her daughter’s corpse down in the middle of the room.
“No,” she says, her voice oddly changed. “Stay. You gifted the cursed and undeserving this joy. Stay. Please?”
I turn, and what I see rips the breath from my lungs. The woman in the center of the room is young and slim, dressed in a leather tunic hung with sparkling silver and turquoise, her long black hair pulled into a loose ponytail. She has beautiful almond eyes that shine blue-black and glowing skin and a sculpted, flawless beauty.
“You were a princess,” I say.
The woman smiles and takes a step toward me. “My name was Anne’a. Morning Flower.”
Dawn’s pale pink light filters into the dusty cabin.
Out there it’s the end of the world. But in here? Something beautiful’s happening.
Anne’a takes another slow step toward me.
I lift my hand, warding her away.
“You must trust me,” she says, folding her hands at her hips. “You’ve lifted the curse. Freed my daughter. I am in your debt.”
A smart man would sprint on out of there.
But I was never that smart.
Anne’a lifts a glittering turquoise and silver amulet from her neck, approaches me slowly and drapes the amulet over my head. I flinch as the amulet’s cool stone settles against my tender burned skin.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“Trust me,” Anne’a says with a smile that must’ve charmed entire tribes.
I flash her a smile in return. “I’m not the trusting type.”
Anne’a steps so close I smell sage and lilac in her hair. Her breasts settle against my naked chest. I wrap my arms around her waist, and when she lifts her lips to mine I lean down and kiss her. She tastes sweet as honey, her lips warm and giving, and I pull her close, knowing how deadly this kiss might be but not caring. Our kiss is tender and questioning at first, then grows bolder and stronger with passion. I try and remember the black-tongued old hag this woman really is, but the image is faded, like a photograph from another century.
I’m about to pull away when I feel an odd tingling sensation in my chest, like a thousand ants swarming over me. I flinch, expecting pain, expecting the Skinwalker witch to steal my spirit, but instead the pain from my burn slowly fades and disappears. Anne’a presses closer, our hips tight, and without having to look I know she’s healing my wound. Something’s flowing from her into me…an energy, a strength.
The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) Page 5
