Her spirit animal is half freed.
Such boundless hatred burns in her eyes I know I’m wrong.
Fury slams into me. Hackles rise and fangs drop—
Vuk.
Trish raises the AK. Hovers her finger over the trigger.
Vuk raises his hand, like a schoolteacher silencing a rowdy classroom.
Cocks his ear, like he’s listening for something in the distance.
Then he flashes us a snide smile. “Not far now. The black blooded on the hunt. Even some Minions. I miss my children, Lily. Does that surprise you?”
“It’s a trap!” Trish screams. “He’s calling the fucking—”
“Quiet!” Lily snaps.
I hear them now. Hundreds of them.
Their animal sounds still a fair ways off. But approaching fast—
Vuk clasps his hands at his waist. “I assure you this is no trap. Should the Stricken army our dear sister Shiori sent your way crest that rise and see us…well.” Vuk raises his hands in mock surrender. “You have your animals. You might live. Me? I’m like the negro princess. A…Skin? An insect to be tormented and crushed.”
“Negro princess?” Trish spits. “Let me shoot him, Lil. Please?”
“Pardon me. Have I offended? You’ll have to excuse my antiquated diction. I’ve been dead in this world for…how long? Several millennia. I learned a trifle of this new age through our mutual acquaintance Connor Lerrick. But I have much to learn.”
“Connor?” Trish stammers.
Lily’s deathly silent.
Vuk nods, only once. It’s a refined gesture. “I’m disappointed in the company you keep, Lily. Connor Lerrick doesn’t deserve his black blood. But no matter. I have no need of his skin now. I’m free of the Bloodless Land and that petty tyrant soul-eater. Thanks to your imbecile wolf.”
Vuk stretches his arms over his head. Cracks his knuckles. Turns his head left and right, as if appreciating the view. “I miss this land as well. The view from the Cliff of Cages grew tiresome—”
“Lil?” Trish gasps. “Tell me what to do, Lil. Please? Tell me.”
But Lily’s frozen on the spot.
Horrified. Furious. And fighting herself—
I step onto the highway beside Lil and Trish.
A deep, rumbling growl thunders from my chest.
Vuk meets my eyes. “I hear you, Tornarsuk.” A flicker of doubt shadows my brother’s eyes. “I will admit to a certain…consternation at your presence.”
“Give me Pimniq,” I growl, taking a few steps at my brother. “Give her to me and you’ll never see us again. I swear. I’m finished with the southern land. Fuck your war. I need to go home—”
“Home, yes,” Vuk says. Then his brow furrows. “I wonder, Anik, have you cleared your desire with our sister? The so-called All Encompassing?Your alpha?”
Lily and I lock gazes, and when Lily looks away I say, “I am my own pack and protector.”
“Get on your fucking knees,” Lily says to Vuk.
Vuk hesitates. Looks at me. “I would return little Pimniq to you, dear brother. I have no use for her. But the problem is…I don’t have her.” Vuk gives me an apologetic glance. “Shiori. Now. Perhaps she will listen—”
“On your knees!” Lily shrieks.
Vuk slumps to his knees in the middle of the road. Lowers his head. “As you wish, sister. I can’t summon my wildborn self. That must be clear by now. But I can still scent. Your fury. Your kill-lust.” Vuk lifts his nose toward the sky and breathes deep. “If that’s what I smell as I breath my last, it will be a priceless gift—”
“Shut up!” Trish cries. “Shut up shut up shut up! Or I will shut you up!”
“You’re right, my sweet,” Vuk sneers. “You’re hardly a princess.”
Lily takes a quick step at my brother.
“You can’t kill him, Lil,” I say, seeing what’s about to happen and beginning to understand why Vuk surrendered to us. “Shiori has my sister. We need—”
“You. You be quiet too,” Trish says, aiming her rifle at me, her eyes wide and panic-stricken. Sweat steams down her face. The AK-47 trembles in her hands.
Lily’s standing right beside Vuk. Her red scorpion tail is waving slowly in the air, a hypnotic motion, like a cobra rising from its coil. Her body’s hunched over, her back muscles straining against her leather riding jacket. Her fingers end in razor claws.
“Lil,” I say, “Don’t. Please. Remember the forest? I might not be able to stop my animal—”
Lily’s head whips up. “I’m not afraid of you, Anik,” she snarls. “Call Tornarsuk. If two Risen packmates must die for this madness to end, then so be it.”
Vuk nods. Licks his pale lips. “Murder me, sister. Feed on my beating heart. You are the All Encompassing. Order and chaos. Life and death. Darkness and light—”
An animal roars in the distance.
The call is answered by a rumbling bellow, then a high-pitched trumpet—
“Elephants,” Vuk smiles, seeing the question in my eyes.
The earth trembles under my feet.
“They’re coming,” Vuk whispers. “The Stricken army. Murder me, my beloved sister. Murder me and they weaken. All of them. End the One War. Become chaos. Become death. I violated you. I enjoyed it. Reveled in it. I held a knife to your throat and I —”
“It was you,” Lily says, so softly I barely hear. “All along. It was only you. Just a man now—”
“It was me!” Vuk cries, his eyes blazing with insanity and triumph and twisted pride. “The Atrocity. The Stricken. The One War. All me! Because I demanded. Because I lusted. Because I could. That’s why. Because I could. For no other reason. I wanted suffering, and I had the power to bring it—”
“Shut up! Oh god please shut him up!” Trish says, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Lily caresses her claws across Vuk’s cheek. “Only you.”
“Me. Me alone.”
“And now it’s over,” Lily says, her voice flat, “I’m going to open you up. Feed on you—”
“Yes. I offer myself. Become darkness, my sister. Murder the One Without Value and reign as unrivaled queen in the Age of Discord.”
Shiori will kill Pimniq when she discovers Vuk is dead.
I know she will.
She’ll do it to spite Lily and destroy me—
“He has Pimniq!” I shout, and then I’m moving, thundering toward Lily, my spine cracking and my footsteps sinking into the pavement as my animal spirit leaps into the light—
Vuk closes his eyes.
Raises his face to the unsettled sky.
Lily’s scorpion stinger dives at Vuk’s throat.
“No!” I roar, the word torn violently from my lungs.
Lily’s stinger slams into the pavement at my brother’s side, burying a foot deep.
I roar, my animal mind slow to process what happened, driven by the need to save Pimniq. I manage to turn aside inches before I slam into Lily. I stagger a few yards into the desert, stumbling over cactus and thorn bush, and when I finally slow enough to look back Lily is on her knees, her animal gone.
Hands covering her face. Sobbing.
Vuk’s kneeling beside his sister. Studying her. That awful, thin-lipped smile playing across his lips as he basks in Lily’s suffering.
She’s broken. Shattered.
“I won’t do it!” Lily mumbles through her hands. “Not like this. I hate the sick bastard. I despise him with every fibre of my being.” Lily lifts her head. Stares me straight in the eye. “I despise him more than I thought possible. But I won’t murder him in cold blood.”
“Think what he’s done, Lil!” Trish screams. “The end of days. He’s the one who—”
“I know what he’s done Trish!” Lily says, her voice shaking. “Me most of all. That’s why I won’t kill him. Not like this. Not like stepping on an insect. He’s powerless. No. I won’t fucking stoop…I won’t let my rage make me do something I’ll regret. This is his way. The strong mu
rder the weak. Fuck that. The strong protect the weak! Maybe if we prevent my brother’s animal from Becoming…maybe there’s some good in him. He needs a chance to…choose better.”
“There is no good in me, my beautiful sister,” Vuk says flatly. “You must kill me. Embrace vengeance and retribution. It’s the only sane decision. The only just, righteous action. Prevent my rise. Kill me—”
Lily lifts her hand in Vuk’s direction, silencing him.
Lily’s wrong about Vuk.
I see it in how he’s looking at her. He’s torturing her. Even now. But she sees only this weak, pathetic Skin kneeling before her, and the choice between life and death heavy in her hands and heart.
“I am not an executioner,” Lily whispers, turning to face Vuk. “I won’t murder in cold blood. I won’t become the monster you want me to be.”
“He’s not your son,” Trish says, taking a few steps toward Vuk with the AK raised. “He’s not a child. You don’t need to protect him. He’s fucking filth. He’s playing you, Lil. He wants something—”
“Maybe,” Lily says, looking at her brother with fear and suspicion and hatred tightening her features. “Maybe he is playing me. Even now. But I won’t murder him. I’d never forgive myself…and my son Lachlan would never forgive me.”
“Time away from the wilds has made you weak, sister,” Vuk says sadly. “Dulled your once-glorious predator instincts.”
“My instincts are as sharp as ever,” Lily snaps. “They’re telling me if you seek death…that alone is reason enough for you to live.”
The trembling under my feet is growing more pronounced. Over the hills in the distance a hint of red dust spins into the broiling red-black sky.
“You love me,” Vuk says with awe in his voice. “Despite everything I’ve done. The horrors I’ve committed. You love me.”
“I’m willing…to give you another chance. In this new era. A chance to repent. I won’t nurse hatred in my heart. Won’t let it eat me alive from the inside. I won’t give you that power over me.”
“Love is weakness, my sister,” Vuk says, standing and brushing his palms together as if he had simply kneeled to tie his shoe. “Shall we? The black blooded draw near.”
I’m pacing back and forth, confusion drilling into my mind, tearing at my fur when a clear voice rings out, “Love might be weakness, hun. But unlike my girl, I sure as fuck don’t love you.”
I turn toward Trish.
The AK lights up in her hands.
***
Lily leaps to shield her brother from Trish’s gunfire. Bullets thud into the pavement and then I’m charging Trish, my animal half loose, throwing myself into the line of fire, fearing for my sister and needing Vuk alive to convince Shiori to return Pimniq.
Trish’s face is a mask of hatred and murderous need, but when she sees me step into the line of fire her face pales and the AK goes click-click as the cartridge empties into my heavy chest. The bullets barely pierce my animal’s fur.
Trish looses a quiet moan of defeat and says, “He has to die. He has to die,” over and over, like she’s chanting—
A man’s pain-wracked scream fills my ears.
Vuk.
I swat the AK from Trish’s grasp and banish my animal.
“I want the killing to stop,’ Trish mumbles, looking past me, staring vacantly into the desert. “I want the next age to be…better…”
Lily’s crouched beside Vuk, her hands pressed hard to a bullet wound under his right shoulder. Black blood pulses between her fingers, runs down Vuk’s pale skin.
Vuk licks his lips. Studies our sister.
His eyes blaze bright with pain and madness.
“The power,” Vuk says. “The strength to rule. I know your animal craves it, Lily. I scent it in her. Not this,” Vuk looks at his bleeding wound with an odd mix of disgust and horror, “this intolerable weakness. Your choice is unnatural. It violates law. The strong over the weak. That is the balance. I was only doing…what was right…what my pack…needed…”
“Anik?” Lily says. “Bring me a tourniquet.” Then she turns and glares at Trish. “You done shooting an unarmed man? Or do I need to handcuff you to the bike—”
“I’m sorry, Lil,” Trish stammers, raising her hands. “I don’t know what…the anger…my fucking mind, it’s not…I can’t take this! And here he is! The motherfucker that started it all—”
“I know, Trish,” Lily says while her brother’s black blood seeps through her fingers. “I know. Calm down. Take a breath. Let it go. I should have seen it. It’s not your fault. I should have seen…but I was too wrapped up in my own shit.” Lily turns and looks at her brother. Her eyes flash red. Then she says to Trish, “Don’t think for a second I don’t want this asshole to pay for what he’s done. He will pay. But not like this. He wants me to murder him. Fuck if I know why. But we can’t give him what he wants. This is too easy—”
I rummage through the bikes until I find a towel, conscious of the Stricken army rapidly approaching. Then I help Lil bandage our packmate.
Vuk winces as we tighten the wrapping across his wound. There’s something in the two of us helping a third packmate that feels…right somehow. He’s still family. No matter what he did. Still a packmate, and a part of me is thankful I still have the goodness in my wild spirit to recognize Vuk as one of my own. It means the hatred and anger hasn’t consumed all of me.
Not yet.
But if my little sister dies because of him?
Unlike Lily, I won’t hesitate to take my brother’s head off.
Vuk’s blood, blackened by the Atrocity when he violated my mother, seeps through the bandage almost instantly. The smell fills my nostrils, makes my animal roar with rage and hunger.
“What are we going to do with him?” I ask Lily.
“Yes, alpha sister,” Vuk says, wincing. “What will you do? I’m quite curious as well—”
“First we make sure he doesn’t die on us,” Lily says, her jaw set in determination. “Then we find Lachlan and Shiori and free Pimniq—”
“Our son,” Vuk says, his eyes glowing. “I’m so happy you mentioned him. A fine young lad. Don’t you agree, mother?”
Lily’s hands begin trembling.
“Why do you need him to do that?” Trish says. “Shouldn’t we just murder him now and face the others without having to worry about him Becoming?”
“Shiori will kill Pimniq if she senses we harmed Vuk,” I say. “We need to placate her. Perhaps even trade him for her.”
“Trade? Oh, hell no. Then he Becomes?” Trish says, her eyes widening. “Isn’t that what this shit is about? You have to stop the motherfucker from Becoming?”
“He doesn’t have the three he needs,” Lily says, looking right at me. “That’s why he’s here. He has Shiori. Lachlan. But the third?” Lily turns to face Vuk and says, “The third is missing, isn’t he? Rodas? Tezcatlipoca? He refused you—”
“You believe you lead as alpha,” Vuk sneers, staring at Lily with a thin smirk. “After all your failures. You still believe.”
“Who leads then?” Lily says, cinching Vuk’s bandage so tight his back arcs in pain. “You?”
“I waited for you. In the middle of the road. I gave myself to you. Think on that, dear sister, when you question who is in control of our Risen pack.”
My chest tightens.
Lily and Vuk stare at one another. He’s still taunting her. Baiting her. Trying to make my sister bend to his will—
Finally Lily says, “Can you walk?”
Vuk nods.
I pull my Harley from the thorn bush where I laid it down hard and kick her to life. I hate these loud machines. The stink of oil. The rumbling engines. The pollution. Lily commands Vuk to hop on behind me.
“You strong enough to hold on?” I ask.
Vuk nods. He’s even paler than he was before Trish shot him. A network of thin blue veins traces through his cheeks and forehead.
“All right. But I gotta warn you. I have
n’t ridden much—”
Lily throttles her bike, interrupting me. She leaves a thirty foot long patch of melted rubber and roars down the road, toward whatever is hunting us over those hills—
“We may as well save ourselves the trip and remain here,” Vuk says dryly as we watch Lily and Trish recede into the distance.
“Why?”
“Because when our beloved sister sees what’s rampaging beyond those hills…she’ll turn around and race right back this way.”
It’s only the two of us. I could run with him.
Summon my animal and take him to the Pyramid of the Sun on my own.
Trade him for Pimniq.
“Anik?” Vuk says, very softly. “What’s troubling you?”
“Nothing,” I snarl over my shoulder.
“Is that so? You’re not considering…abandoning your failed alpha? Offering me to Shiori in exchange for Pimniq?”
“No,” I lie.
Vuk chuckles. A pained, wheezing sound escapes his lips. “It’s a good plan. This ruined Skin body…the bullet wound…I won’t live long. All Shiori wants is me. Our sister the All Consuming will reward you. I will reward—”
“Shut up,” I growl, maneuvering the bike onto the road.
But I don’t leave to chase after Lily.
I’m hesitating, idling the bike in the center of the road, unable to decide—
“You hear her,” Vuk says. “You hear Pimniq’s pained screams. Our sister Shiori is beyond heartless in this regard. The longer Pimniq remains at her mercy, the more your little sister suffers.”
He’s right. I do hear Pimniq screaming.
In the quiet moments, like now. And in my dreams when I sleep—
“You scent our history in my blood, Anik. I saw your anger. It took much discipline and will to quell the instinct to murder me. When Lily sees what’s marching from over that rise she’ll have no choice but to return to her Pureblood lover and his mangy, rabid animals. Do you think the Pureblood pack will display such…restraint…when they scent my blood and realize who I am?”
“Lily won’t let them harm you.”
The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) Page 11
