The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (10 page)

I reach my hand out, very slowly, trying not to make a sound, and flip back the edge of the blanket.

An AK-47.
 

A working man’s assault rifle. Blue collar mayhem.
 

I breathe a small sigh of relief as my fingers brush the machine gun’s cold metal.
 

Of course the thing’s fucking loaded. Dude’s always armed.
 

I hear a tiny creak from the hallway near the bedroom door, then a man’s voice says, “Yeah, you’re paranoid. But that doesn’t mean we’re not out to get you.”

A bolt of stark, totally incapacitating terror races through me, and suddenly I forget where I am, what the gun is, how to fire it. All I can do is moan and cover my eyes.
 

The voice is raspy.
 

Guttural. Sneering.
 

It isn’t Aaron-fucking-Arud.
 

But it sounds familiar.

I find the nerve to wrap my finger’s around the AK’s barrel and slide it close. My body’s pressed tight to the side of the bed opposite the door. Looking under the bed I see a man’s shoes as he steps into the room.
 

He’s wearing cheap brown loafers rimed with mud.
 

“Officer Lily Aria Thompson,” the man says. “Daughter of Sarah Thompson and Wilbur Thompson. A street-junkie whore playing at being a detective.”

The man steps further into the room.
 

“I know a game we can play. It’s called show me yours I’ll show you mine. So c’mon, Miss Rookie. Why don’t you crawl on out from under the bed and show me yours?”
 

I bury the rifle under my arm to muffle the sound of the safety disengaging.

“Too bad about your mother,” the man says. “I was there that day, you know. First on scene. I saw her head taken clean off. Heart ripped right out. Like the others. Like that stinking Pureblood animal we found in the penthouse today.”

The man laughs. Starts coughing.
 

And then I know.
 

I recognize that sick fucking laugh.
 

It’s Detective Al Kusch. He must’ve followed me here.

“Only I saw your mother as she
really
was. You didn’t even know her, did you? No. That’s a frightful shame, Officer Thompson. To not know what your own mother was? I saw her blood staining the walls. You seen that yet, Lily? The black blood? Skin’s can’t see it. Their weak eyes won’t register the pigment. Even when it’s smeared across their faces. But others can see it. Stricken bleed black. Have since the First Fallen rose to alpha and spawned us. That’s what the prick Purebloods call our kind, anyway. Stricken. The fucking stupid animals. But now? They’re gunna have to think of a new name. Because it’s the Age of Discord, and we Stricken are growing strong again…”

My heart’s beating so hard I’m afraid it’s going to leap from my chest.

“You should’ve heard your father ranting,” Kusch continues. “Screaming at the top of his lungs. Took four uni’s to hold the crazy bastard down. Your father’s an odd duck. Has the sight. But nothing else.”

“Leave me alone,” I say, my voice cracking. “You’re lying about my mother. I was there. I saw…her blood. It was red. Red! I fucking saw it!”

Kusch smiles. “But you’re not like your father. You have it
all
, don’t you? I didn’t believe. Not until this morning. I see things too, understand? And this morning…I smelled that Pureblood animal’s mark on you. The stink of wet dog. I saw the real you. The All Encompassing.”

The All Encompassing.
 

Mia called me that.
 

Down by the docks. After she and Aaron pulled me from the
Guardian
.

“I phoned him,” I say, trying to sound brave. “I phoned Aaron. The fucking biker Prez? He and his crew are on their way, asshole.”

“That’d be real nice for you, Lily.
Real
nice. But see…I know that’s not true. I would’ve heard you. I got
great
hearing.”

My tongue is a dry lump in my throat.
 

Kusch doesn’t sound afraid of Aaron and the MC.
 

Not in the slightest.
 

“C’mon out from under the bed, Miss Rookie. Put the gun down and come on out. I got half the department on their way out here. Hot on the scent of a gruesome serial killer and his rookie cop accomplice.” Kusch chuckles, a horrible gurgling sound. “You don’t want to add cop killer to your list of charges. Trust me on that.”

I close my eyes. A terrible, burning heat builds in my chest and then I’m in the air, swooping over the fields and rural properties surrounding the safe house, paralleling the highway leading back to Seattle. It’s dusk, the sun fading into the horizon. There’s not much traffic out. No police squadrons. I swoop back, fly over the safe house. See the car I stole and the motorbikes and Kusch’s unmarked patrol car.

“You’re alone,” I say, inching away from the bed.

“Ha. Well. I guess I am. It’s happening quickly for you. The Becoming.”

I can’t help myself. I need to know. “Becoming?”

Kusch laughs. “There are worlds you know nothing about, rookie. You’re an ant crawling along the floor, oblivious to the boot heel coming down. But that’ll change. Everything’s changing. The old order inverted. The hunter hunted. And you? You’re gunna make it happen.”

“Get the fuck away from me.”

“Oh, don’t worry your fretful little whore self, Lily. I’m not going to hurt you. We’d never hurt you.”

We’d never hurt you.

“You were there,” I say. “On the boat. You bound my hands. Zipped me in that body bag.”

“But this is better. Without anyone watching. You and me all alone—”
 

I push myself to my knees and try to raise the AK-47 straight at Kusch, but when I see him I loose a quiet, terrified wail and my arms go numb and the AK sags onto the bed.
Oh god please no,
I pray, even though I’ve never believed in a power any higher than prescription pills and a paycheck.
 

Kusch is naked, his skin a hideous pale grey. His entire torso is covered in tiny, sharp-toothed mouths. Like the business end of a piranha. The mouths end at neck height. His face is bloated and blue-grey, and his arms end in those nasty mouths, and when he smiles a double set of snapping jaws extends from his face. Worst of all…Kusch is hard, and as he looks at me he runs his hand over his glistening grey cock.
 

There’s a tiny, tooth-filled mouth snapping at the tip.
 

“There you are,” Kusch says. “He told me to watch and wait. I did that. Waited for years. Now I know it’s all true. I figured…why should he have you? Why
only
him? You can breed with any of us. Why shouldn’t it be me?”

Kusch takes another step toward me.
 

The leering, hungry mouths snap and spit.
 

I try and lift the rifle but my limbs won’t obey.
 

Like a bird gone limp in a blood hound’s mouth.

“You’re young, Lily,” Kusch says, licking his lips. “Ripe. I feel so fortunate to have you. So…blessed.”

Kusch is right across the bed from me. I’m on my knees, staring up at him, frozen in fear and horror, and those snapping hungry jaws…I can smell their stinking breath, like meat left in the sun.

“Come on up here, little girl,” Kusch says, bending down and patting the bed. “You’re alone and afraid. I understand. This is all so new. Come on up on the bed. You don’t have to be alone. I’ll explain everything…”

I feel him in me. In my
mind
. Taking control. My legs push me into a stand. The machine gun is on the bed right beside my hands, but it might as well be on a different continent—

“That’s it,” Kusch whispers, his voice soft and soothing, and I realize his voice is coming from the multitude of mouths. “Come a little closer. Yeah. Closer…”

My entire body trembles.
 

The last of my conscious will struggles against Kusch.
 

Then something tears apart and surrenders.
 

I lift a knee, place it on the bed, lean forward, lift the other knee.
 

I’m on the bed now, kneeling, only an arm’s length away from him.

“Yes, good,” Kusch whispers. “Just a little closer, sweetheart. Come on now. A little closer…”
 

He reaches an arm out, the mouth at the end where a hand should be straining toward me, opening wide, and then I feel the mouth’s moist grey lips press against my cheek. It’s cold and wet and slightly rough, like slug skin, and the stench of rotten meat makes my stomach churn.
 

Kusch leans forward, his hideous cock swelling, the snapping mouths leaking pale white fluid, and then my chest tightens and my mind empties and I scream for more than my life.

I scream for my sanity.

For my soul.
 

W
HAT
DOES
A
man believe when he wakes to a cloud of wispy black smoke swirling in front of his face?

He believes he’s dreaming.

What does he believe when the black smoke coalesces into a one-legged man with yellow and black stripes painted across his face and glowing yellow eyes and jaguar rosette tattoos inked in his naked skin?

The man believes he’s gone mad.

Begins screaming.

I clamp my hand across President Manuel Ortiz’s mouth, silencing him, and say, “Be calm. You have not gone mad. I am very real. I’ve come to offer you the lives of your family.”

Family men. Of course when the choice is given between his or children’s lives this stinking Skin will choose his own. But for now…it’s a good place to start.

“Scream and I murder your wife Rosa first,” I say, nodding to the woman sleeping in the bed beside the President. “Then I’ll execute your children while you watch. Then you. The executions will be slow. Understand?”

The President nods.

“Good. Now. Silence?’

Ortiz nods again.

I lift my hand from his filthy, slobbering mouth. I was isolated from the Skins while the Keeper had me in the Cloud Temple. But now that I walk this earth among them I realize how polluted they are.
 

How hideous and obscene.
 

“What do you want?” the President whispers.

A man who doesn’t stand on ceremony. Good.
 

I motion toward the verandah. Ortiz slips from bed, runs his hand across his wife’s bare shoulder when she stirs. The gesture makes me think of Tamara, and for a moment I envy the man his wife and family. But faith leaves no room in my heart for mercy. This is a vile world, a gutter, a world of filth and excrement.
 

O Night Wind O Lord of the Near and Nigh raise this unworthy commoner, place this wretch onto your reed mat. Release me into your freedom and raise me into your wind, O Heart Eater Wind Eater Slave Maker.

I summon the Night Smoke, command it swirl up my legs to my hips, making half my form immaterial, then I glide across the room, pause at the glass doors leading to the veranda and inspect the President.
 

My amputated right foot bothers me less now

Ortiz is suitably pale, wide-eyed and breathless as he watches me become the Night Smoke.
 

Terrified.
 

Outside the night is warm and the wind brisk, whistling through cedar and juniper hedges and pine trees surrounding the presidential palace,
Los Pinos.

“Sit,” I say, directing the Manuel into a plush armchair.

I settle across from him and we stare at one another in silence for a few moments, each listening to the wind and trying to judge the other’s intentions. I raise my right hand, dissolve it into black smoke and reform the smoke into a curving blade, then drag the smoke-blade across the iron banister.

The blade makes a grating metal-on-metal screeching sound.
 

The President watches the blade, then squeezes his eyes closed.

“When you open your eyes I’ll still be here, Mr. President,” I say while scraping the smoke-blade across the banister. “I am not a nightmare.”

“You are,” the President whispers, his eyes still closed.

I smile. He’s correct of course. “Open your eyes, Manuel,” I whisper. “There remains hope for you and yours.”
 

The President swallows hard, opens his eyes.
 

He avoids looking at me. Clenches his hands together on his lap.
 

He’ll listen now.
 

Tamara was right. It becomes easier to command the sacred Night Smoke the more I use it. He lives close to me now. The Spotted Stalker. I feel him prowling through me.

“What…do you want?” Manuel asks, his voice hardening as he discovers his anger.
 

“Your family doesn’t have to die tonight,” I say. “Neither do you.”

“Who took your foot?” Manuel says, leaning close, his eyes flashing. “Because I swear: I will take you apart piece by piece for this outrage.”

I stab the blade through the air until it’s resting against the President’s Adam’s apple, then shift my entire body into the black smoke, leaving only the blade solid, hovering in the air, pressed to Manuel’s neck.

The president is smart enough to remain very still.
 

I wonder if he’s had a blade pressed to his neck before.
 

The Mexican President? I believe he has.
 

But never like this.

“You don’t have to die,” I repeat from within the black smoke, my voice thin and whispery, like the night wind through tree boughs, “but you must bleed. The One I Am Slave To demands a blood offering.”

I slip the black smoke-blade across the president’s Adam’s apple just hard enough to cut him.

A trickle of red blood runs down his neck, staining the collar on his baby-blue silk pajamas.