“No.”
Luz glares at me, then sighs and slips the collar into her backpack. Then she lifts the rope. “Wrists bound, then? Loosely? The guards must believe you’re my prisoner…”
Silently, I raise my wrists for Luz. The rope cannot bind me. Not now that I have the Night Smoke. Still, the ropes scratching and digging into my wrists reminds me of when my animal was lost and I was weak and alone and terrified of my own shadow.
“La Mugre has hunted Stricken for centuries. Fed on their flesh. Your people call us demon-animals. Why won’t they attack me, when they see my wildborn animal?”
“Because you will murder the Mothers,” Luz says, shrugging. “They hate the demon-animals. But they’ve grown to hate their oppressors more.”
I don’t bother saying I hope she’s right. For her sake. I have the Night Smoke. No crude spear will stop me. But her—
“Keep your eyes to yourself,” Luz instructs as she secures the last knot. “You are entering the Hole as my prized possession. It’s a great and very rare honor for a scavenger to return with a living captive. We might have an audience once word gets out. In fact, I hope we do. You are a demon-animal, remember? Food.”
Luz thrusts her spear and backpack into the tunnel, then slips inside. I stand alone for a moment, listening to water drip around me, staring at the hole, thinking about something that feels strange.
I’m thinking about my sister.
Not Shiori. The other one.
The All Encompassing.
The one I haven’t met in this age.
***
I survive the narrow shaft because of Luz.
Halfway through, when my heart leaps in my throat and my breathing becomes shallow and I start scratching at the stone floor it’s Luz who talks me out of my panic and commands me to hold her ankle and concentrate on how her skin feels as she moves.
Sometimes Luz’s ambition reminds me of Tamara. But that’s where the similarities end. Compared to Tamara’s removed calculation and cold-hearted scheming, Luz is brave in a fierce, passionate way. I understand why she believes her people will follow her.
She was born to lead.
After crawling through the narrow tunnel for what feels like days Luz shouts something in a language I don’t understand. A rough male voice answers her, and soon I’m being pulled into an unlit cavern. The air is humid and warm and smells of sewer, sweat, and rotting meat.
The Hole is blacker than any night.
A trio of heavily-muscled guards inspects me. I keep my gaze rooted on the floor. The guards faces have dozens of piercings that tinkle as they move. One guard stabs his spear into my thigh, just hard enough to break skin. Luz screams at him, flings herself in front of me.
I bite back a roar as the urge to summon my animal becomes nearly unbearable.
Luz takes a swipe at one of the guards, catches him in the gut.
He doubles over, gasping.
The guard who stabbed me makes to pull Luz’s cowl from her head. She ducks him, then grips me by the elbow and thrusts me away from the entrance tunnel and the guards. The guards jeer at her, then burst into sharp, mocking laughter.
Luz stomps along beside me.
“Ignorant idiots,” she mutters.
“What happened?”
“They threatened to murder you. Said no way you were a demon. Didn’t believe a woman could capture a living demon-animal. Wanted to see your black blood.”
She’s leaving something out, but I decide not to press. We’re being followed by a steadily-growing mob of onlookers. I hear whispering and muffled conversation, a baby crying, the sound of smithy hammers forging spears.
La Mugre’s Hole is much larger than I expected.
Luz leads me around the outside perimeter of a massive cylindrical cavern dug from the earth, so tall the top is shrouded in darkness. The cavern walls have been hollowed out to form crude sleeping bunks, and a series of rickety wooden ladders are tied together up the sides of the cavern. Swinging bridges of wood and rope have been draped across the vast empty space above, and if I squint I can see residents of the Hole walking across the bridges, from one side of the cavern to the next.
“Some clans members live their entire lives without setting foot down here on the cavern floor,” Luz whispers. “The floor is considered sacred. Only high-ranking Scavengers are permitted entry.”
The floor of the giant cavern seems to be some kind of group living area. There are no fires, but there are stones sculpted into chairs arranged around low stone tables. Citizens of La Mugre mill about this shared space. Some talk and laugh loudly. Others nap on tables. A pack of children chase each other, laughing and flinging small stones. Most of the people on the cavern floor carry spears and have piercings and shaved heads similar to Luz’s.
“Where are the Low?” I ask as Luz pauses at the edge of the cavern. Something bumps against my leg. I look down and see a child of maybe four or five poking me with a stick. She has long, matted hair and filthy skin.
Luz hisses a warning and the child scampers off.
“Scavengers do not mingle with the Low,” Luz says, her gaze drifting toward the middle of the shared space. “The Mothers forbid it. The Low have their own level in the Hole. Beneath this one.”
I follow Luz’s glance toward the center of the cavern and notice a circular stone dais draped in leathers and furs and skins. I recognize bear and lion pelts, zebra and tiger, leopard and monkey. Resting on the animal hides are a dozen naked women of every size and description. Some are bone-thin and bald, with the orb-like eyes of creatures born in the dark. Others are massive, their flesh pooling like liquid in a low spot, so large I doubt they can stand. A few are lovely, with flowing golden and crimson hair, full breasts and inviting hips.
The women are watching us.
The hair on my arms rises. Something feels wrong.
Has Luz led me into a trap?
Luz lays her hand on my arm. “Steady now,” she whispers. “We’re close.”
I notice a pit nearly twenty feet wide surrounding the dais.
A single narrow wooden bridge has been placed across the chasm.
An unfamiliar scent wafts to my nose. A growl builds in my chest.
There is pollution here. Corruption.
Minds diseased from lack of sunlight.
Many of the women reclining on the fur-draped dais are pregnant.
I scent their ripe, fecund blood.
“The Mothers,” Luz whispers, her voice hushed in awe. “Do you scent them? Are they—”
“Black blooded? Yes. Your Mothers are Stricken animals. But vile. Even for Stricken they scent…unnatural. ”
“Everything in this cursed pit is unnatural. It’s what La Mugre had to become to survive. But the world has changed. The surface is near.”
“That’s why the Mother’s hate fire,” I say, keeping my voice a bare whisper. “And why they can’t summon their animals. They’ve been feeding on their own kind for too long. It weakens them.”
A rock as large as my fist smacks into the dirt at my feet.
Luz whirls, her eyes scanning upward. “Hurry, Rodas,” she says, striding out into the open. “If the Mother’s sense danger they’ll knock the bridge into the chasm and flee down stairs hidden beneath the furs.”
I smile, thinking of my Night Smoke and how easy it would be to drift over the chasm—
Luz leads me through the middle of the cavern. Heads turn as we wind through groups of resting Scavengers, and soon we have several dozen following behind. Luz quickens her steps. Her spear thuds against the stone floor as she walks. A few Scavengers call out greetings in their strangely fluid, lyrical language. Luz answers curtly, without breaking stride.
I sense the focus in her. The kill-lust. Thin beads of sweat drip from her brow. Her face is hidden by her cowl, but I can tell by how her shoulders tense and her knuckles whiten as they squeeze her spear that she’s readying for blood.
I’m struggling to keep my animal
caged.
He senses violence.
Yearns for it.
We arrive at the wooden bridge leading to the Mothers. Luz yells the same words she did when we emerged from the entrance shaft. Two guards stationed at the bridge step aside.
We step onto the bridge, leaving the crowd behind.
“Scavengers speak a common tongue,” she says. “Even the Mothers don’t understand our language. It was a mistake, their permitting us develop a unique tongue centuries ago. It has drawn us closer.”
The bridge groans and creaks as we cross.
I peer through the gaps in the rickety wooden slats.
The chasm seems bottomless.
“Close your eyes,” Luz cautions as we step off the bridge and onto the island of rock that holds the dais. “The Mothers will command you look upon them if they choose. Wait for my word...”
I close my eyes and clutch my deer’s foot amulet in my left hand and begin wriggling my arms free from their bindings. My heart pounds. Not long now, my animal. Not long—
“Esteemed Scavenger,” a proud-sounding woman says, “What is your name and clan?”
“Luz of the Shadow, Mother.”
“What have you returned to provide La Mugre?”
“This man,” Luz says, kicking my shoulder, “is no ordinary man. He was once a demon-animal.”
A collective hush of breath.
“By what wisdom do you bring this beast into our midst?” the woman asks.
“His animal is lost to him.”
“Lost?”
“He cannot change.”
Luz prods me with her spear.
There’s a long silence, then another woman speaks. Her voice is soft and melodious. “Throw him to the dark. His animal blood will bring the demons to us.”
A third voice, rough and deep. “No. We must learn from him.”
The women begin arguing over my fate.
Luz says nothing.
Soon a decision is reached. “Flay him for what he knows,” the first woman says in a commanding tone. “Then throw the beast to the dark.”
“I am the dark,” Luz says solemnly.
“I am the dark passages,” the Mothers answer in unison.
There’s a heavy silence, not just from Luz and the women on the dais, but throughout the entire cavern. The Scavengers have quieted. The hammers have stopped ringing. Even the children are silent.
“Throw the animal to the dark, my esteemed Scavenger,” one of the women hisses, clearly displeased at having to repeat herself.
“I hear the Bells, Mother,” Luz says, her voice soft but firm. “When I close my eyes I hear them. Ringing through my mind. Plaguing me.”
“You are hunt-sick. Rest, my child. Your mind will clear.”
“It doesn’t clear. I’ve tried everything. They’re always with me.”
“Perhaps the coward girl should wear the Bells,” a throaty voice booms out.
“Make her wear the Bells!” another woman shouts.
“No,” Luz says. “Not this time. No more Bells. Never again. No more…for anyone!”
I hear a wet thwack. Luz looses a tremendous battle-cry. My eyes fling open. Luz’s spear is buried deep in one of the Mother’s necks. Black blood spills from the Stricken’s wound. She’s pawing at the spear, trying to tear it from her throat but Luz leans into it, thrusting it deeper—
“No more bells!” the Scavengers lined around the chasm scream.
There’s a hissing sound as a hundred spears launch across the chasm.
The spears arc over my head and then he’s with me, the Spotted Stalker, and as the spears cut into the Mothers I leap onto the dais and pounce on the nearest Stricken. A single swipe opens her chest and suddenly her heart beats in my hand.
Spears slice through the air around me. Huge stones thunder down from the bridges above. One of them smashes a Stricken’s head in. She collapses with a heavy thud.
The guards, realizing they’re caught in a bloody revolt, either join the Scavengers or leap headlong into the chasm. The Scavengers shriek in fury, maddened by their long-simmering desire for freedom.
I remember what it felt like to be freed from the cage in the Cloud Temple. How my heart soared. How terrified I was, facing the unknown.
La Mugre is uncaged.
Luz shrieks at me to move, and right as I leap from the dais, snarling and spitting, she hurls the gasoline onto the Mothers.
Luz grins. Strikes a match.
I shift into my Night Smoke and smother Luz in a protective embrace.
She flicks the match into the gasoline.
The Hole, ancient lair of black-blooded cannibals, erupts in flame.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AARON
YEAH, I CAN turn the Stricken motherfuckers.
But it kicks the shit out me. Easier just to kill ‘em.
Nash and Blue drag me away from the screaming crew and set me down by my bike, then form a protective ring around me. No good letting the boys see me like this.
So weak I’m shaking. Pissing cold sweat.
Every muscle in my body aches. Even my hair hurts. Worst of all is the dizziness. The entire world’s spinning so fast I have to close my eyes, and then I get that awful free-fall feeling you get when you’re drunk and lie down too quick. My stomach lurches and the next thing I know I’m on my side, dry-heaving, spitting yellow fluid.
“I need to see him.”
“It’s not a good time, Lil,” Blue says.
“Oh? Well please ask Mr. One-Eight-Seven when he’d like to pencil me in. Not that there’s any rush.”
“I’m not his secretary. And besides. You’re the one who fucked off. Give the man some time. You saw what he just did.”
I raise my hand. Try and speak.
Let her through. You stupid fuck.
But the only thing I get out is a soft wheezing breath before I’m face-first in the dirt again, clutching my gut. It feels like someone’s stabbing me in the belly—
“That’s why I need to speak to him. Now. Not in a little bit. Right fucking now. You dig? Now get the fu—”
There’s a snarl and a roar and Lily cries out in pain. “You fucking asshole. You try that again and I swear—”
“C’mon, hun. Leave him be.”
Trish.
I spit something nasty. The pain in my gut is working its way up my chest. I think I’m having a fucking heart attack. I smack at the dirt, trying to get Blue’s attention. My heart’s beating way too fast, and the pain’s spreading up my shoulders, into my neck—
“See?” Blue says. “He look like he’s fit to talk?”
Let her through. You fucker.
“Aaron? Aaron?!” Lily shouts. “He’s fucking dying, you meathead. Look at him! He’s—”
The pain gathers in my neck. Drowns out all sound. Then it shoots into my mind, and fuck sakes this makes my hangover feel like a fucking pleasure cruise, and then—
Boom.
Lights out.
***
It’s dark when I come to.
Stars are out. Looks kind of nice. Blood Moon either hasn’t risen or is tucked behind the foothills. A night like it was before the end of days. Could make a guy feel nostalgic, if nostalgia wasn’t just another way of hiding from what’s really going on.
Which is: I feel okay. Not great. But okay.
Better, my bloodmate’s lying beside me. Tucked close. Sleeping.
We’re lying on a blue tarp in the desert. Tucked under an army surplus blanket. I smile, thinking of how she pushed her way through Blue.
Damn. Sparkles is stubborn.
I like that about her. She gets something between her teeth…
I make sure to lie real still. Lily’s chest rises and falls with the rhythm of her breathing. I look down, imagine I can see a gentle swell in her belly. Mother of my son. She’s curled in the crook of my arm, her head on my chest. I run my fingers through her hair. Gently.
She stirs a little. Presses close
r to me.
Sometimes the world cuts you some slack. Gives you a moment to think, hey, thanks world, this is right fucking on. Thanks for tossing me a bone.
That’s how I’m feeling now. Thankful.
Just grooving on the moment.
Feeling damned lucky to have it.
A crackling sound makes me slowly turn my head. Three fires are burning about forty yards off. A few of my crew are huddled around the fires. Guarding us. Nash is no idiot. He’ll have even more men stationed out in the desert, waiting in the shadows for whatever’s stupid enough to try and sneak up on a Pureblood army.
I close my eyes. Take a deep breath.
It’s rare for me to have a moment where I don’t feel threatened. Where I can let my guard down. An apex alpha is always on task. Even when I’m with my crew, partying, blowing off steam…I still have to be on. They’re watching constantly. Judging me. Was that weakness? Is he slipping? Should I demand a blood challenge?
Motherfucking biters.
My MC has my back, sure. As long as I remain strong.
But start to slip, even a little…
Alone with Lil there’s none of that bullshit. I can just be me. Maybe I feel like shit today, cuz I just turned a Stricken’s blood red. Fine. She can let me feel like shit. She doesn’t want to be alpha. Not in the slightest. I can relax around her. Let her in.
The One We Answer To.
I used to hate leading. Used to resent the crew under me. Thought it was their fault I was so stressed all the time. The pressure.
I’ve realized it wasn’t my crew stressing me out.
It was only me. I wasn’t ready.
Now I am ready. More than ready. I know I was born for this. Know I’m stronger than any motherfucker out there. Even the sack of shit First Fallen. But you know what? Now that I know I can do run as alpha…it’s losing its charm.
We’re gunna win this war. Not a doubt in my mind.
A predator has no room for doubt.
But after?
What then?
I think of rolling with my crew. Claiming a territory. I got good people on the ruling council. Blue and Nash and Mia. They’ll steer me clear of most of the bullshit.
The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) Page 17
