The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (14 page)

Javier the Broken picks Star up in his twisted spider limbs and brings her to me and she’s screaming, thrashing from side to side while the dead Lord of Mictlan pins her down and begins plucking her clothing from her body—

There. Yes. Tell the faithful she must say the words.

I won’t do it. I try and stand, try and fight, but there’s something holding me down, an incredible force of will, and I feel him now, his boundless strength, his depravity and evil, and a part of me, a fragile, hidden, fearful part of me buried in the back of my mind is telling me this has to end, this must end, he must not be permitted—

Tell her!

I scream, curl in on myself, my world beating blood red and a memory surfaces from somewhere deep inside, a memory of my older brother, my packmate, much stronger than me, attacking me on a bloody plain, clawing and biting until I was near death, then forcing me to kneel in his name—

Yes, my brother Rodas. I bested you. Easily. The Night Stalker. The Spotted Hunter. The Heart Eater. The leopard. What lovely rosettes you have, my brother. But you are nothing. Understand that? Without me you are nothing. Now say it!

I slam my eyes closed and shake my head because I know what he wants, this beautiful woman, the golden eagle, he wants me to violate her in his name, wants to use me to fill her with his seed—

Say it!
 

Terrible cold spreads from my belly and into my bones, freezing my breath, a cold so deadly it burns and he’s doing this to me, murdering me—

“I offer myself to you!” I shriek, tears stinging my eyes.
 

Yes brother, you do. You always have. Because you’re weak, and you crave power. Remain at my side, loyal Rodas, and be emperor. Together we rule in the Age of Discord.

He’s lying. I know he’s lying. He needs me to return from wherever he’s trapped and he’s lying, because the moment he’s strong enough he’ll murder me and the worst part is…I don’t care. He’s my brother.
 

I think…I think he means something to me.
 

Without him I’m alone.
 

Tell her. She must say it.

My brother commands. I obey.
 

He is alpha. This is law.

Star struggles and thrashes while the Broken holds her down. Connor’s buried in a pile of worming, half-decayed corpses a few yards away. The corpses have his mouth clamped shut, but his eyes are open.
 

“Tell him,” I say to Star. “Your alpha commands you.”

Star clamps her lips closed and glares at me furiously.

I lift my head to the night sky. Strength floods through my blood, more than I’d ever imagined. In the distance a bolt of red lightning arcs to the ground and lights the slum on fire. The earth begins shaking, making the wooden pyramid buckle and crack overhead.
 

My bones twist and snap and then I’m the Spotted Stalker, roaring in Star’s face, spittle leaking from my lips, my leopard fangs caressing her cheek and she’s screaming, a high, panicked wail because my brother is with us now, his power coursing through me, commanding me, he is first son of the Primal Pair, an original alpha, the One I Am Slave To, the One Without Value, and I remember roaming the plains and forests and deserts at his side, how blood flowed like rain wherever we went, how our prey ran, how we tracked them down, young and old, weak and strong, how we bled them.

And worse. We enjoyed much worse, didn’t we, loyal Rodas?
 

Something’s in my mind.
 

Pushing me outside myself.
 

Entering me.
 

It’s
him
.
 

My brother.
 

I roar, swirl into the Night Smoke, desperate to escape him, desperate to end this suffering, but his will is too strong, the smoke vanishes and it’s only me, pressing my weight into Star and then suddenly I’m
more
than me, I watch my hands grow into paws thick with red fur and mandibles descend from my chin and feel wings sprout from my back and inside my mind my brother howls in triumph; he senses freedom and is mad for it, his power and will burning through me, searing me raw, and still in some faraway hidden corner of my free mind I want him gone, want him dead—

I laugh, a horrible clicking sound, and then I look into Star’s eyes and say, “That’s what makes you weak, dear Rodas. You don’t know what you want.”

I’ve become him.
 

The One I Am Slave To.

My beloved brother.
 

Star’s shrieking that she offers herself to me, screaming for mercy as I rake my wolf claws into her arms, her chest, her black blood running into the moving corpses beneath us. I bask in her terror. This is dominance. This is alpha strength. Then Star’s expression changes, becomes welcoming, needful. Her eyes glow bright with pain and rapture and I hear her whispering my name…only not my name, she’s whispering my brother’s name over and over, a single rough syllable, and this is the power I’ve always craved, power to take what I demand, to have the faithful kneel beneath me, and I feel my brother’s will, his ravenous need, and the quiet voice in me fades, the frightened one, the lost one, the one that says this terror must stop—

That voice is gone.
 

I am wholly his slave.

Star looks at me with misted eyes.

I
WAKE
UP
crumpled on my side.
 

It takes several seconds to lift my head, and when I do a rush of dizziness and pain slam into me. I moan, clutching my head, feel a baseball-sized lump sticky with blood. I close my eyes and lower my head, too weak to do anything but lie on the ground like a broken little bitch.

The thought sears strength into me and a few moments later I try again. The pain is still there, but I manage to keep my eyes open against the glaring fluorescent light.
 

I’m in a room that looks like an interrogation cell in a maximum security prison. Cinder block walls painted dull grey. A rose pink linoleum floor. A single large window set in one wall. A video camera, its red light blinking down at me.

Cages and machines. The Skin’s contribution to life on earth.
 

I lift my hand, flip the video camera the finger.
 

I know what this is.
 

It’s a kill room.

I roll onto my back, wincing as the lump on my head presses against the linoleum. Fifteen feet above I see the inset trapdoor frame. And then I remember.

Sorry.
 

My brother.
 

I throw an arm over my eyes to block out the glaring light.

And so my captors don’t see me weeping.

Grief comes first. Raw, unfettered. I’m not ashamed. An animal feels what he feels. There’s no shame in being true to yourself. No shame in living whole.
 

No. I’m hiding because they might mistake my tears for weakness.

And then I think, well, so what if they do?
 

Let my captors think I’m weak. Let them think I’m broken.

I uncover my face. A wracking sob tears through me. Tears flow down my cheeks. I try and remember the last time I wept. Wonder if my life has been one long, mournful dirge. Wonder if it’s possible to live a life in tears and not even know it.
 

My brother. My beautiful baby brother.

How we roamed.

***

 
After grief comes sickness. I push to my knees, crawl to the corner of the cell and retch until I’m spitting clear fluid, then dry heave and shake until I can barely draw a breath.
 

It feels like my body is trying to purge itself of something.

Like love.

But I won’t do that. Won’t let them take that from me. The memories of the twilight hunts my brother and I shared. The times long ago, before cages and machines, when our pack roamed across the central tundra, moving as one mind undivided, brittle hoarfrost crackling beneath our paws, scenting a mastodon herd.
 

The stinking Clovis tribes had just learned how to flake ivory to a point. They were nothing to us then. We ignored them and their weak, pathetic packs. We should have hunted them down. Destroyed them one by one. Exterminated them. But their blood had a foul taste and left us thirsty, so we let them alone to scourge the earth.

I remember the times, much more recent, when me and my brother roamed across the Cascades, letting our animals as free as the iron collars would permit us, reading the words written in wind and soil. Me sprinting ahead, charging through thick slide alder up a mountainside, immune to exhaustion. I was always the one charging ahead. Sorry, even though he was bigger, was more cautious. Smarter.
 

He could have challenged me for alpha.
 

He might have won. But he let me have it.
 

Knew I wanted it more.

I failed him. It was me who turned him against his animal’s true spirit. I see that now, and the pain the realization brings makes me dig my claws into my wrists until I bleed.
 

My shitty leadership. My arrogance and pride.
 

Winning a little is dangerous. Winning a lot can be deadly.
 

You come to believe you deserve it. Like you’re better than everyone else. And maybe you are faster or stronger or smarter. But the moment you think you’ve won, that you’re entitled to winning—that’s when you lose.

Everything.

My beloved brother, I’m sorry.
 

I accept this is on me. I own it.
 

I won’t blame you. That’s a fucking coward’s escape. That’s how the Skin’s live: never accepting responsibility until they’re dying and finally understand they have only themselves to blame.
 

Fuck that.
 

I won’t let them corrupt love into hate.
 

The memories of what my brother was before I failed him will remain. That’s what I
choose
to remember. No matter what happens, I will choose to remember Sorry as he once was. They can’t take that from me, either: that ability to choose how he lives in memory. I can’t let the truth of who my brother once was die.
 

Or else he’s truly gone.

I push to my feet, lean agains the cinder block wall, squinting against the light, my head throbbing. I stagger to the video camera, reach up, tear it off the wall and throw it into the window.
 

The smashing sound makes me grin.

I want to smash and destroy and maim and murder and feast.
 

A light flicks on behind the window, permitting me to see outside the cinderblock cell. I’m in the basement of that fat Stricken bitch’s mansion. What’s her name? Senator Gladys Townshend.
 

Yeah. Moby fucking Dick.
 

The basement’s empty except for row after row of stainless steel operating tables. There must be a hundred of them. And on top of each one are those body bags we found in that shithole building down by the docks. It’s another Stricken breeding lair.
 

I hear a soft whirring noise like a small engine and then Gladys comes into view. She’s even larger in person, spilling over her teetering mobility scooter, a mass of sagging loose flesh that bulges in all the wrong places. She’s wearing a long black gown. It’s too tight around her arms; the skin puffs up out of the sleeves, balloon-like.

Gladys has one hand on the joystick used to control the scooter. Her face is painted with rouge, crimson lipstick and purple-blue eyeliner, her hair wound into a tight bun, and even through the thick walls of my cell I scent her reeking, too-sweet perfume.

 
We look at each other for a moment through the glass.
 

Her eyes are dull and without color. Perfectly emotionless.

Sorry was right. She’s ancient. A leviathan on earth.
 

“Such a brute,” Gladys says, pursing her wrinkled lips in distaste and nodding at the destroyed video camera. “Smashing and raging. I wonder, Aaron, if you understand what it’s like to create? To build? To craft something one is proud of?”

“I wonder,” I say, laying my palms flat against the glass and dropping my claws, “what it’s like lifting your gunt so you don’t piss on yourself?”

She smiles, that same, broad, yellow-toothed grin she had in the photos.
 

“Charmed, I’m sure,” she says. “At least you don’t disappoint.”

“I never leave a woman disappointed.”

“I’m glad you mentioned that. A woman. That’s why you’re here. Well, that’s not entirely true. But that’s why you’re still alive.”

I have no fucking idea what she’s talking about, but I don’t mean to let her see that.
 

Apparently she does anyway, and I worry over how deep she can peer into my mind.

“You thought this was about
you
?” Gladys says, smiling and waving a hand toward the room behind her. “All this scheming and planning and brotherly betrayal? For a worthless, mangy dog like you?”

Okay, yeah, I kind of did.

Gladys chortles in a way that makes her fleshy neck jiggle, says, “Typical alpha hubris,” then zooms her scooter right up to the glass. A thin sheen of sweat glistens on her brow. “For centuries we’ve been hunted. Tormented. Chased down and slaughtered. Now it’s
our
turn. At last. The lamb becomes the lion.”

“Nah. It becomes an ugly slug.”
 

“He came to me of his own accord, you know. Your brother. Said he understood the world is changing. Rather perceptive of him.
Adaptive
. Said he wanted a place in the rising empires.”

I grit my teeth to keep from snarling at the bitch. My wolf is frantic and furious in his cage, but I don’t want her to see that. Not yet. “I failed him. I’ll die with that truth.”