Predator
T. K. Bradley
Predatory, copyright © 2021
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the author
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
* * *
Cover by EmCat Designs
Contents
Also by T.K. Bradley
1. Lori
2. Kenzo
3. Lori
4. Lori
5. Kenzo
6. Lori
7. Lori
8. Lori
9. Lori
10. Lori
11. Kenzo
12. Lori
13. Lori
14. Kenzo
15. Lori
16. Kenzo
17. Lori
18. Lori
19. Kenzo
20. Lori
21. Lori
22. Kenzo
23. Lori
24. Kenzo
25. Lori
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by T.K. Bradley
Prey
Shade: Stories from a Scorched Earth
Predator
1
Lori
“Your mother has been waiting for you.”
Trey’s words make no sense. No, my mother is dead. The only way she’s waiting for me is in the afterlife. Is that what he means? He’s going to kill me?
I would welcome death if he’s offering it. Because the only language I can understand now is… blood.
My whole world is nothing but blood. It pounds in my veins, my pulse roaring in my ears. It perfumes the air, coats my tongue.
And Trey reeks of it.
“You… you were dead,” I whisper, baffled by his presence, but my voice still seems too loud against the backdrop of night closing around us. The usual sounds of night are absent, as though even the crickets know they are in the presence of a predator.
Because that’s what Trey is. A predator. There’s nothing else he could be with his half-crouched posture and his fingers tipped in glistening claws.
“No, not dead,” he clarifies, prowling closer, his all-too-alive presence moving in front of me. “Just different. Better. Like you.”
What? No, that can’t be right. Nothing is right; it’s like trying to fit a puzzle piece in the wrong spot. The shapes don’t fit, and the picture is out of place. Looking at Trey makes my brain hurt. He’s still the man I remember, but then I blink and it’s like looking in a funhouse mirror. The images don’t match. His body is stretched to obscene proportions, his arms and legs too long. His clothes have been nearly shredded, leaving little to the imagination, like Lou Ferrigno in the old Hulk show my dad loved so much.
Dad. No.
My legs give way and I drop to the hard-packed ground in a puff of dust that glows in the silvery light of the rising moon. The memories flood my senses, forcing me to relive last night. Flashes of gore, screams rending the air. My dad is gone, dead, torn to shreds by these monsters surrounding me. Monsters like Trey.
Like me.
My own body feels like it’s been taken over by some kind of otherworldly monster, a demon from the deepest recesses of the earth. I look down to see that my body, a stranger’s body, is something out of my nightmares. My skin is peeling, the layers beneath becoming thickened and tough, my fingers are too long, and there are razor-sharp wedges of bone pushing out from beneath my fingernails. Claws.
I’m a Ripper.
“No,” I whisper, but of course Trey hears me.
“Don’t be sad, Lori. Can’t you see? We’ll be together now, this is how it was always meant to be. And your mom—”
“What about my mom?” I snap, and it sounds more animalistic growl than words. “She died. I held her hand, watching her waste away to nothing. I grieved for her. How dare you tell me that she’s waiting for me? When she died, Kenzo said…” but I trail off.
Kenzo said that she would be all right, that my mom was in a better place, that we’d be together again one day. I brushed off his words as the meaningless drivel people spout to their grieving loved ones when they don’t know how to take the pain away.
She’s in a better place… as if this desiccated wasteland could be considered better?
A bitter laugh escapes my lips. “Kenzo knew, didn’t he. He knew she was still alive,” I spit out. I don’t need Trey’s nod to confirm, but it’s one question answered. Well, there’s plenty more where that came from. I have questions lining up in a queue around the block. Like, why the hell wouldn’t Kenzo tell me about this, about my own mother still being alive?
The monsters are sweeping through the space behind me, bustling and jostling each other, but it isn’t until a slurping sound that I turn to see what they’re doing.
The creatures are hunched over, their long limbs awkwardly folded so that their faces can reach the ground. Their tongues, unnaturally long, are lapping at the cracks in the parched soil. “What—” I gasp out, but I don’t need anyone to tell me what they’re doing. Not really.
Their tongues are red as they lap at the blood from between the cracks. My stomach gives a twist, but not because I’m repulsed. Because I am tempted. The taste of blood is still fresh on my tastebuds, and it is as sweet and rich as chocolate.
There’s no way I killed those people, I scoff inwardly at how absolutely absurd it sounds. I’m practically a pacifist. But the evidence doesn’t lie. My eyes roam across the ground, glazed in carnage. The ground is soaked with blood, torn limbs and flesh, entrails…
Brent. He was there, sitting beside me all day. But I wouldn’t kill him, he’s my brother. He’s all I have left.
I sift through the images pounding inside my skull, like I would shuffle a deck of cards. It’s all flickers and flashes, a murderous killing spree in a blood-red haze. I see eyes wide with terror, hear their piercing screams, begging for me to stop. The blond woman, her flesh like paper. The burly man, his muscles useless against me. James. Their existence meant nothing, their lives, their bodies, disposable. But not Brent. I have no memory of killing Brent. Please, let him be alive.
I lean forward. The thoughts and desires swirling in my head make me dizzy and sick. Trey crouches in front of me in a gangly squat. “Don’t you dare throw up,” his voice rumbles. “Blood is more valuable than gold these days. And I can assure you, if you puke it up, no one will let it go to waste.”
He reaches out with a clawed finger and raises my chin to look into his eyes. They’re pure black the whole way around; I wonder dimly if it’s because the irises have expanded so much to allow them… us… to see in the dark.
Shit. My eyes are probably the same as his.
I pull my chin from his touch and cringe away from him. It’s a gut reaction—not because I’m actually disgusted by him, by what he has become, but because it’s the only reaction that makes sense to my addled mind. Like fear, three times removed. The distant memory of fear.
If I could cringe away from myself, I would.
Trey smirks at my weak attempt at pulling away from him. “We need to get moving,” he says. “We have to get back before dawn. The sunlight will still burn you, it’s your only natural weakness.”
His words prompt a memory to surface, of Kelly and her group of Rippers. It’s hard to switch gears in my mind. The sun saved me that day. The sun was our protection, but now it’s a weapon to be used against me.
The sun saved me from the Ripper that tried to pull me into the building too. I look down at where its claw gouged my arm, but the
re’s nothing but a thin scar where the wound used to be.
“Was that how it happened?” I ask, holding out my arm for Trey to inspect, but he doesn’t even give me a cursory glance. His eyes are scanning the horizon. “Trey? Did I turn into this thing because of the scratch?”
“Hmm?” He turns back once and then begins to walk away, forcing me to scamper after him to hear his response. “Yes, it’s in our claws and our saliva, gets into the bloodstream and starts the transformation straight away.”
I grab his wrist, his skin like the bark of a tree beneath my touch. “But what is this? What have I become? What happened to me?”
Trey’s lip raises in a snarl, exposing his jagged teeth. “Kenzo calls it portentum noctis. It’s a virus.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. The flu is a virus. Herpes is a virus, or AIDS. This is… this is something else.”
Trey’s eyes skitter away from mine. He looks guilty and sad, but it’s a bit like a mask, a parody of how he thinks guilt should look. “It was the government, babe. When the solar flares started to heat things up, they figured they could somehow create a way to thicken our skin, to protect us from the sun.” He shrugs. “They were wrong.”
“And if I hadn’t been scratched? If the sun hadn’t stopped that Ripper from pulling me into the building?”
Trey stops in his tracks and turns slowly. What am I asking him exactly? Dad, Brent, and I narrowly escaped death a dozen times since leaving the compound. But Trey is talking like our love is fated and I was always meant to join him here.
Maybe my invitation to the Ripper Club got lost in the mail.
“Ripper?” He chuckles. “Cute name. You come up with that all by yourself?”
As he walks away from me, I try not to notice that he never answered my question.
2
Kenzo
“Here I thought we were just coming for lunch. But instead, it looks like you may just be the solution to all our problems.”
“Hello, Judith,” I whisper.
My heartbeat is throbbing painfully in my throat. They can hear it, I’m sure of it, their eyes darting to where my carotid pulses too close to the surface of my skin. I’m surprisingly calm, considering my death will likely comes in the next few seconds. I might even go so far as to say… I welcome it.
This is all my fault. All of it, in one way or another. I’m guiltier than most.
Judith stands before me, a monster of my own creation. The cancer would’ve killed her, she would have been dead, if I hadn’t injected the virus into her veins, so I guess you could say she owes her life to me. Except it’s not a life most would consider living. Even though she asked for this, I can see the regret that lies in the depths of her eyes.
She’s a killer now, plain and simple. I did that. She’s physically disfigured, stretched and textured as all Shredders are, her hair jutting from her scabbed scalp in patches. I don’t even blink at her appearance. It almost seems natural to me now, and I despise myself for it, because there is nothing created by nature like these monsters.
These things are all humanity’s fault.
“The problem,” she purrs in a low voice, “is that I promised my pack a nice juicy meal. Hundreds of people just ripe for the picking, all we had to do was get inside. But you seem to have made a liar out of me.”
I look from her hands to my own, still startlingly human in a room full of Shredders. “I—I didn’t know if it would work. I’m still not sure if it did.” I gesture to myself as evidence.
“Oh, it worked,” a voice from behind Judith growls. “You’re the only human left in the entire compound.” He tries to clench his fists, but his hands can’t close around the claws.
When the Shredders started their assault on the compound, there was only one way out that I could see. Release the virus into the ventilation system and infect the whole compound, everyone at once. It was the only chance we had at survival. Except I’d only ever injected the virus, and this was aerosolized. When I woke up on the floor, I assumed it hadn’t worked. I was obviously unaffected by the virus.
Telly, his remains still strewn across the floor from when Ellis had torn his throat out, told me that everyone was infected, but how am I supposed to believe what he said? It doesn’t make any sense.
The world I live in is so surreal, it makes my head spin.
The doorway ahead of me, and the hallway beyond, is packed with Shredders. It’s impossible to tell how many of them are stacked behind Judith. Is she their leader? They seem to be looking to her for instruction.
She cocks her head in a reptilian way, analyzing me. She’d always been a smart woman—not just book smarts, but clever in a way that most people would never understand. She could see a situation from every angle, and I feel like she’s watching me in the same way she measured the levels of moisture and minerals in the soil of the garden.
“Screw this,” the creature to her right says, shoving past her. “If no one else is gonna make a move, then I’ll be the first. I’m starving.”
Before he can take three steps into the room, Ellis has moved into the space between us, lithe as a jungle cat. “No,” he says simply. Just one word, but it carries so much meaning.
“What, you think you can stop me?” And he has a point. If taking measure of the two figures in front of me, it would seem an unfair fight. One is a monster, straight-up, towering above us at seven feet tall. Wide enough to fill the entire doorway and with muscles rippling beneath his armored flesh. Ellis looks like a man and very little else.
The stranger’s confidence is misplaced, however. His nostrils flare, testing Ellis’s scent, but he must not smell edible, because the beast raises a lip in distaste then pulls back his arm to knock Ellis aside. He only has eyes for me.
Ellis darts to the side, quick as lightning. He reaches out and just brushes his hand down the monster’s face. It’s almost a tender gesture. The Shredder pulls back with a snarl, a line of black blood oozing from the slice now opened in his flesh.
The roar he emits is too loud between these close walls. Ellis lowers into a crouch as the Shredder bares his teeth and rears back.
“Enough,” Judith says calmly. “Alex, stand down.”
You can put a muzzle on a rabid dog, but it doesn’t make him any less dangerous. Ellis is coiled to spring, waiting for this other man, Alex, to make his move. The standoff lasts interminable seconds.
Judith gives a small growl, and Alex slowly unfolds himself from his crouch. His limbs are quivering with pent-up rage. His eyes dart between Ellis and myself, weighing his urges against the unknown risk.
“What are you?” Judith turns her attention to Ellis, her eyes narrowed.
“I’m… different.” He looks over his shoulder at me and our gazes meet. How much information do we give them? These are government secrets, but at the same time, there doesn’t seem to be much of a government left. I may be the last of it. A token colonel, a token doctor. I can’t start wondering what part of me is real or I’ll drive myself mad.
“You’re different, all right.” Judith gestures with one hand, and the Shredders behind her begin to disperse. If having them here made me uncomfortable, then seeing them leave and not knowing where they’re going is ten times worse. The people of this compound are my responsibility, but… they may not even want my help anymore, not with where I’ve left them stranded.
Inhuman.
When there’s only Judith and Alex remaining, they move forward into the lab. It’s not threatening; at least I don’t think she means it to be. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling trapped when Alex closes the door behind them.
Ellis is too still in the glow of the emergency lights. I can’t even tell if he’s breathing, as there’s no apparent rise or fall of his shoulders or chest.
Between us lie the bodies of Telly and Eleanor. She had the misfortune of trying to help Ellis when he first turned, and she paid for her mistake with her life. The air is thick with the coppery tang of blood
, and Alex can’t stop himself from staring down at her.
With his eyes fully black, it’s hard to tell exactly where his gaze is focused, but it’s clear that he’s agitated. He clears his throat in an oddly human gesture of filling an awkward silence. “May I?” he finally asks, pointing a claw down at Eleanor’s body.
“May you what?” I ask, but before the words have even left my lips, I realize what he’s asking. May I have a snack, like she’s some kind of cheese platter. “Wha—no! You may not!”
Ellis, however, hisses at me, cutting off my reply. “Perhaps you could take her to another room,” he directs to Alex. “He doesn’t need to watch.”
Alex eagerly rushes forward, snatching up the delicate body of my assistant. Her once-blond curls are soaked and matted with congealed blood, flopping heavily as he sweeps her from the room.
“How could you allow him to do that? She was our friend!” I snap at Ellis, but I freeze when he turns to glare at me.
“I can’t protect you forever, Kenzo. Eleanor is already dead, there’s no saving her. But if her blood can satisfy his thirst, then she could still save you.” The shadow of guilt flits beneath his expression. Eleanor’s death weighs heavily on his conscience.
Now that it’s just the three of us left, I allow myself to relax a little. Well, maybe relax is too strong a word, because I am by far the most breakable, but I at least take a full breath. “Judith, what happened to you?” I ask sadly. “When I gave you the injection, you said you would leave. Don’t you care about the people here? They’re innocent, dammit! Your friends!”
The Shade Chronicles | Book 2 | Predator Page 1
