“Maybe it’d be better if Lily was a Skin,” Nash says. “Then we wouldn’t have three dead Purebloods to burn.”
“They all die?” Aaron asks. “Fuck sakes.”
“Jacko might heal. He got here yesterday. Pretty cool guy. The other two…not so lucky.”
“Serves ‘em fucking right for attacking my bloodmate,” Aaron spits.
“She attacked them, Prez,” Blue corrects.
“Okay, okay,” Aaron says, raising his hands. He’s trying his best to stay cool. But I hear the strain in his voice.
He’s wearing thin.
A heavy silence descends on the men. No one wants to say the obvious: even if they do somehow manage to keep me in Phoenix while they ride off like gunslingers to clean up the ranch, and even if they do defeat my prick brother without me…what then?
I’m still a Risen.
Still a threat to the Purebloods.
I’m about to slip into the night when a hissing voice whispers in my ear, “Welcome home, piglet. That was quite the peep show. Wild and rough, just how I like it. You came a bit fast, but other than that you weren’t bad.” Mia nods at the men gathered around the fire. “Really worked, didn’t it? You flashing gash for the entire crew? The boys all got your back. We’re one big happy family again.”
The sneaky, sarcastic fucking snake.
“Piss off, Mia. I’m beyond tired of your bullshit.”
“Aaron looks pretty tired too. But not from the lay.”
“He can take care of himself.”
“If he only had himself and his pack to worry about, yeah. See what you’re doing to him? Your bloodmate? Since day one it’s been like this. Aaron caught between us and you. You know there’s only one way to fix it. You gotta fuck off. Forever. But you keep coming back, don’t you? I gave you the benefit of the doubt for a while. Told myself you love him, and love can do fucked up things. Make us blind to what’s really going on. But now? I don’t give a shit. You’re bad for him. Even worse for us. Plain and simple. You know that. But you’re still here. Why? Only one reason. You’re a selfish little bitch. You don’t give a fuck about Aaron Arud. If you did you’d be gone by now.”
It takes every ounce of willpower I possess not to summon my animal and bleed the slithering snake out into the dirt. But a part of me knows Mia’s right. I am bad for Aaron and his pack. I am being selfish by not letting him go. But instead I grind my teeth, ignore everything she said and say, “You bring Anik back?”
“Fuck do you care? You’re shit for him too. Stay the fuck away from my bear.”
My bear.
Shitballs. Welcome back, Lil. Now fuck off and die.
Aaron turns and glances into the desert. Right at the manzanita me and Mia are hiding behind. His eyes narrow, then he takes a pull from the bottle and returns to staring at the fire.
“Keep your fucking voice down, Mia.”
“Why? Don’t want loverboy to find out you’re eavesdropping on a club meeting? Wonder what the crew would think of that.”
I close my eyes and take three slow breaths.
My skin feels hot.
A bead of sweat drips down my brow.
“Go ahead and call her, piglet. I saw Aaron ride you into the dirt. You’re weak. At least compared to my Prez. So call her. Make the man choose between you and his pack again. You saw what happened last time. It fucking broke him. That what you want?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Then do what you got to do.”
A sense of overwhelming despair washes over me. Nothing I do makes anything right. Even me being here hurts everyone I care about. Aaron. Anik. Even this dirtbag outlaw MC I’ve grown to love. Maybe even my unborn son.
Sometimes love isn’t enough. In fact it’s never enough.
People have to be right for each other.
Me and the biker Prez? We’ll never be right.
“I’ll leave, Mia,” I say, my voice cracking. “I promise I’ll leave tonight. Just take me to Anik. He’s my brother. I need to see him.”
Nash gets up and stalks back to the party. Tate and Blue follow. Aaron stays alone by the fire, shoulders hunched low, not moving. I watch him dig in his pocket for his Zippo and light a smoke. His face is in profile as he draws a deep drag. The sharp jawline and sculpted cheekbones. The full, completely panty-melting lips. Even hurting…he’s fucking hot. His eyes catch the firelight and glow arctic blue.
Fuck me. I’m gunna miss him.
“You’re lying,” Mia says. “You’ll never walk away.”
I shake my head. “Tonight I’m gone. I can’t promise I’ll never see Aaron again, because we’re both fighting the same sick fuck. But after tonight? It’s over between us.”
Something in my voice seems to convince Mia, because she grabs my hand and leads me into the darkness.
CHAPTER NINE
RODAS
“THE SCAVENGER CLAN, like me and Rata, provide for La Mugre,” Luz says, cupping her hands in a water basin and bringing the cool water to her face. “The Low Clan, like Moco, also have a role in ensuring La Mugre’s survival.”
“The Low lure the Stricken into the sewers and tunnels for you to kill.”
Luz nods.
“Who decides who kills and who gets used as bait?”
“The Mothers,” Luz says. Then she looks at me. “Children are tested when they turn four. Cowards are sent to live with the Low.”
There’s a long pause, then Luz says, “It’s a great honor for the Low to wear the Bells. Moco died providing for his people.”
Her voice rises defensively.
She feels guilty about sending Moco into the street to be eaten alive.
“Honor?” I ask, my lips curling in scorn. “What is honor? Something you wretched Skins created? The only honor is survival. There’s no honor in being cheese placed in a trap.”
“The cheese is necessary or the mouse won’t enter the trap. And watch who you’re calling a wretched Skin, Mr. I-Lost-My-Animal.”
Luz gives me a scowl.
Splashes more water on her face.
“Moco would’ve lived if he hadn’t panicked and frozen when the demon-animals came at him,” Luz says under her breath. “That’s the truth of it. He was even lousy at being Low.”
I tried to outrun the Scavenger girl when I burst from the tunnels beneath Mexico City. But Luz followed easily. Even murdered a Stricken that leaped from the shadows to attack me. I ran in a blind terror, certain the whore Tamara and the traitor Carlos Collazo had sent the black blooded packs to hunt me down.
But no one followed.
Now we’re in a small stone villa on the outskirts of the former presidential palace Los Pinos. The once grand palace has been sacked and burned. The beautiful pine trees that whispered in the wind when I tormented President Manuel Ortiz are charred stumps. The gardens have been trampled and burned. The air reeks of fire and blood, and that’s without my animal scenting for me.
Luz has been bathing constantly since we arrived. Washing years of accumulated filth from her skin.
“So you don’t mind sending the Low to their deaths?”
“Of course I mind,” Luz snaps. “I fucking fled with you, didn’t I? I left everything…”
Luz’s voice trails off.
“You regret your choice.”
Luz wipes her face with a damp cloth. “No. I regret not destroying the Mothers. They created La Mugre, or so the legends claim. Everything we do benefits them. We hunt for them. If a male Scavenger reaches a certain rank he is required to lie with them, to impregnate them. The rest of us are not permitted…”
I take a few steps to the window and peer through the shattered glass. A feeling sweeps over me. I can’t name it. It’s been with me since I woke in the tomb beneath the Pyramid of the Sun and realized I was no longer the Spotted Stalker.
“What is the name for pain…or heaviness here?” I ask, holding my hand over my chest.
Luz straightens from the wash basin and meet
s my eyes. Her metal-tipped spear is leaning against the wall beside her. It’s always in easy reach. A small leather backpack is also close by. Her shaved head, and the metal rods and piercings through her lips, eyebrows and cheeks make her look hard, even cruel, but her features are delicate. Her olive brown skin is lustrous and smooth. Her wide eyes almond-shaped. She set aside her necklace of Stricken teeth to bathe. She’s wearing only her loincloth, as is custom for La Mugre. Drops of water slip down her chin. Neck. Across her breasts—
“There are many words for that feeling,” Luz says. “Depending on what causes it. Do you miss your animal?”
I nod.
“Then that feeling might be loneliness.”
I look out the window. Loneliness.
“What if you miss…everything?”
“Everything?”
“I miss the pine trees. Their sharp scent. I miss the grass. The bees buzzing above the flowers. I miss the pale moon. The blue sky.”
“You might just be sad,” Luz whispers, “because the world died.”
“It didn’t die. It was consumed.”
Only the gentle sound of water cascading into the basin breaches the silence.
Then I say, “This sadness is about my life as well. When I think about…the Cloud Temple—”
“The Penthouse,” Luz corrects. “Where they made you fight in the cage matches.”
“Yes. I think about the Keeper. The cell he kept me in. And the lives I ended, believing they were offerings to the One I Am Slave To—”
“You don’t believe in your god anymore?”
“No.”
“Maybe you feel guilty. That’s a kind of sadness too. About killing all those people?”
“Maybe.”
Luz flashes me quick look. “I wonder…if your animal was with you, would you feel these things? Or are you only feeling sad and guilty because you’re like me? Weak. A Skin. I saw you in the zocolo and on the Pyramid of the Sun with your priests. The insane, power-hungry rage in your eyes.”
“I was beyond control. Rabid with power.” I think back on that power as I look at Luz. The hair rises on my arms. My breathing shallows. Sweat breaks out along my brow. “Even now…after all that’s happened…I crave such strength. It’s like the drugs the Keeper used to pump into my veins. Once you’ve tasted such glory…nothing else feels real.”
“It was you who ordered the moat of blood be filled,” Luz says, her eyes flashing furiously. “You who ordered the carrion vultures to fall from the sky and onto innocent men and woman and children. You who brought the endless fires.”
“I know,” I say. “I have darkness in my heart. I was given something beautiful but…very dangerous. My animal was used against me. Used to make others wealthy. My entire life. I think…I needed to be taught how to control the Spotted Stalker. But no one taught me. And then when Tamara freed me from the Cloud Temple…I trusted her. Even though she said not to! She was using me again. Using my animal. My power. Just like the Keeper. Now I hate knowing…such a beautiful creature was only used and twisted and corrupted and made to do—”
“Evil,” Luz says.
“Yes. That also makes my heart heavy. Because I was so weak, in my mind, in my self, that my beautiful Spotted Stalker became something horrible and ugly.”
Luz splashes more water on her face. She’s been doing it off and on the entire time we’ve been holed up in the villa.
“You’re clean now,” I say. “The sweat and blood are gone.”
“I’m far from clean.”
Bathing is forbidden to La Mugre, Luz explained when she first ran the tap. Water is a devil. It enters our minds, infects our thoughts. That’s why we crave it.
“I want you to help me with something, Rodas,” Luz says, settling into a high-backed mahogany and rattan chair. The room was looted, but no one had need of antique furniture during the end of the world. Luz lays her spear flat across her knees, then says, “Come here. Come close.”
I walk slowly across the room, eyeing the spear.
Luz studies me with her deep almond eyes.
When I’m close she says, “Do you like my piercings?”
I nod. A strange tightness builds in my gut.
Luz sighs. “I love my piercings. They make me who I am.” She bites her lower lip. “Made me who I was, I guess.”
Suddenly I want to hold her, kiss her, tell her we’ll survive.
Lie to her.
Because she is also lonely.
“Each piercing celebrates a time I returned to the Hole with a kill. With Stricken prey.” Luz lifts a narrow bar pierced through her eyebrow. “This one? It was my first. I had just competed training to become a Scavenger. I was seven years old.”
Outside, not too far off, a man begins shrieking. I hurry to the window and peer out. The grounds are silent and empty.
I scent the air out of habit.
Nothing.
“This is our life now,” Luz says. “Running. Hiding. Always afraid.”
“Yes,” I say, my voice sharp.
“That’s not a life.”
“It’s natural law. We will live the life of prey.”
“There are others who are strong. In the tomb you mentioned a war. Between black blooded and red. We could find the red blooded—”
“No,” I say, making my way around the small villa and staring out each window, then quickly covering it with rags and blankets. “The red blooded will murder us as well.”
“Why?”
I stop. Try and think. Something Tamara said? Or maybe a memory, long buried? “I’m not sure. But I know.”
Luz fires me a suspicious glance.
“Why did you follow me?” I blurt the question without meaning to, but it’s been on my lips ever since I fled.
Luz twirls one of her piercings between her fingers. Her eyes are lost in thought. Finally she says, “I couldn’t sleep. For weeks and weeks. Nightmares.”
“Tell me.” I don’t say I also suffer nightmares, but I know she hears it in my voice.
“Strangest thing. Not like any other dream. No images. No people. Nothing. Just darkness. And then…very quiet. Off in the distance. A tiny sound. Growing louder. Slowly. Until I recognize it.”
“Screaming?”
Luz shakes her head. Her piercings chime softly.
“The Bells,” she says, her eyes blazing. “Tinkling. Louder and louder. I want the sound to stop. But the bells on the jackets keep tinkling in the darkness. The Low leap and dance and the bells tinkle in my dream and I want so bad for the sound to stop. But the bells keep chiming, so loud it hurts—”
“What happens then?”
Luz shrugs. “I wake up.”
“You hoped leaving La Mugre would make the dream end.”
“I hoped never ordering another Low like Moco to wear the Bells and attract the animal-demons to my spear would make the dreams end.”
Luz lowers her gaze.
Folds her hands in her lap.
I know she still dreams. For three nights now I’ve woken to find her sitting still and silent, her back pressed to a wall, her knees hugged tight to her chest. Not crying. Just sitting staring into the darkness—
“I want you to help me remove my piercings, Rodas.”
“Why?
“Because I am no longer La Mugre. The sewers are no longer my home. I no longer command the Bells.”
I move very near to Luz.
I want to touch her. Kiss her.
But instead I say, “Which one first?”
Luz pauses. “I could still go back,” she says. “With my piercings. I could drop into the sewers beneath this villa. I know where the Hole is from here. I could say I was captured.”
“But after you remove the piercings?”
“No.”
Luz lifts the thin rod she showed me earlier. “This one first.”
I hold the delicate piercing between my fingers. Luz’s skin stretches slightly as I twist the rod. It’s old. Rusted. I�
�m focused, barely breathing. Luz’s head is tilted at an odd angle. I study her cheekbones. Her jawline. Her smooth, shapely neck and soft, olive skin. The piercing won’t loosen. I’m straining against the rod, twisting it in my fingers, an uncomfortable feeling of needing to be very gentle and very strong at the same time, recognizing I don’t want to hurt this Skin woman, and then my gaze traces across her neck and I see her pale blue jugular throbbing with the force of her beating heart, the blood flowing beneath her tender, ripe flesh—
The piercing loosens.
Comes undone.
This woman’s jugular throbbing so close to my teeth.
Her warm blood running so close to my lips.
To drink of her blood.
Feed from her.
To drop from the trees. Onto my prey’s back. Sink my claws into Luz’s spine. My fangs deep into her neck. To feel her slump into the damp jungle floor—
“Thank you, Rodas,” Luz whispers.
A low, rumbling growl escapes my throat.
Luz freezes.
Looks at me over her shoulder. Her eyes widen.
Then she gives me a smile.
Brave and fearful at the same time.
Carefully guides my hand to another piercing
“This one next,” Luz says as my clawed fingers grasp a tiny metal ring. “And be gentle, my demon-animal.”
***
When I reach for the last piercing Luz grips my wrist and says, “Not that one. That one stays.”
“Why?”
“As a reminder.”
My claws are gone. Luz’s blood-scent drew the Spotted Stalker near. He’s still with me. Still prowling. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“What does it feel like…to change?” Luz asks while she stands and approaches the wash basin.
“It hurts.”
“Change always does.”
Luz splashes more water on her face.
My leopard hears the buzzing insect before I see it. My skin ripples.
“Luz. They’re here. They tracked us down.”
“How do you—”
A wasp, its lean body wrapped in yellow and black like the marks I once panted on my face, flies from behind the rags hanging from the windows and lands on my arm. I stare at it, transfixed, watching its antennae wave in the too-quiet air.
The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) Page 8
