The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (16 page)

He launches at me, arms open wide, snapping mouths slamming into my skin and I feel their razor-sharp teeth and then he’s flying over the bed and rolling onto the floor, still laughing, not quite caught up to what just happened, and when he pushes to his knees and looks at me there’s a hint of worry and in his watery eyes.

He passed right through me.
 

“You like that one?” I ask, brushing a hand across the four bite marks Kusch’s mouths left in me. “Learned that last night. Right after I balled your boy Aaron.”

Kusch springs to his feet. The bullet wounds are nearly gone. He’s still burned though, and you can bet I wish I knew how to raise that fucking flame again.
 

“You did
what
?” Kusch says, his face twisted in something I’d call fear if he was human.

“Balled him. Twice. In that very bathroom. Dude’s hung like…well, you know.” I wag a finger at Kusch. “Unlike that nasty little claw you call a cock.”

Kusch does something very strange, even for a guy with mouths growing all over his body. He leans toward me and sniffs the air. Twice. It’s a bizarre, oddly feminine gesture. Then his face crumples. “You
did
. I fucking scent him in you. His seed.”

“Oh, sorry Kuschy. Didn’t think you’d mind seconds. Otherwise I’d have saved myself for you.”

“You fucking whore,” Kusch says in his best angry cop voice, standing straight and glaring at me. “You filthy fucking whore.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I say, nearly choking on my hatred. “Just another filthy whore for you to cut open.”

A bolt of pain shoots through me. It’s coming from my hips. My lower spine. My skin feels stretched tight around my midsection. There’s an awful cracking pop and then I hear a hollow rattling sound behind me. Like a tin can full of bones shaking back and forth, and then I notice I’m not standing on the ground anymore. I’m hovering a few inches in the air, which makes me laugh because I’d be pretty kick ass if I only knew what the fuck was happening.
 

But Kuschy? He isn’t laughing. His eyes are wide and he glances at the window and I know he’s going to leap out, and I don’t doubt the bastard would survive the fall and make it into the woods and the thought
really
pisses me off, because there’s a gnawing emptiness in my belly and it takes me a moment to realize I’m
starving
and that Kuschy here is my first real meal in eons.
 

The rattling sound grows louder. A shiny crimson blur flicks in front of my face, lightning quick.

It’s my tail.

Five bright red segments ending in a wicked, curving stinger as big as a man’s hand.

My tail arcs over my head and hovers between me and Kusch. I look up, mouth open wide with horror and fascination. The tail is beautiful in the way all deadly things are. The clicking, rattling sound is coming from my tail trembling and the hard, blood-red segments hitting one another.
 

I’m way beyond trying to figure this shit out. It’s like an amusement park ride where you’re certain you’re gunna die and all you can do is hold on and enjoy the last few moments of your life.
 

Go out smiling.
 

“No fucking shit,” I say, staring at my tail. Then I glance down to my feet. I’m still hovering off the floor. “A scorpion tail. No fucking shit.”

Kuschy looses a strangled moan and leaps for the window.

I’m not conscious of making my tail move. All I know is I want Kusch dead, and then the red blur whips through the air, over the bed and halfway across the room, and in less time than it takes to blink Kuschy’s lying on the floor, twitching and choking, leaking black blood from a gaping hole in his neck.

My feet settle onto the hardwood. A wet sucking sound and the sensation of something being drawn into me and then the rattling quiets.

I step across Aaron’s bedroom. Slow as fuck. I’m in no hurry. The flames have spread floor to ceiling behind me, and the smoke swirls choking and black in the air. The heat must be unbearable. But I can’t feel it.
 

I crouch beside Kusch. Peer into his eyes. He’s conscious. Suffering an agony I wouldn’t even want to imagine.

“I’m going to do you a favor, Kuschy,” I say, reaching under his arm and flipping him on his back. He’s rigid, every muscle contracting from my poison. “I’m going to put you out of your misery.”

I reach my hand overhead and plunge it toward Kusch’s chest, not sure what I’m doing but driven by an ancient, primordial instinct. It’s not a question of whether this is wrong or right.
 

It’s a question of strength and weakness.
 

Red claws spring from my fingers as my hand drives down.
 

Kuschy’s chest opens like a rotten melon.

I tear his beating black heart from his chest.

And I feed.
 

***

You never know how that first hit is going to feel, and after you try it it’s too late.
 

So best not to try.

But I tried everything when I was on the street. Had a preference for stimulants that made me feel and think fast. Made me believe I could stay ahead of things. The world moves so fast now. Stand still for a second and you’re left behind.
 

I feel fast now. Faster than I imagined possible.
 

Ahead of the pack. Strong as all hell.
 

My blood surges through my veins, pounds in my temples, flows like molten metal, and as I stand above Kusch’s mangled body, the fire now burning Aaron’s entire room, I know I need another feed.
 

Soon.

I leap from the second story window. I mean, why not? I just shot a blast of fucking heat from my mouth. Twirled my scorpion tail over my head.
 

I feel invincible.

Rain hits my skin with a sizzling hiss and evaporates into steam. The packed gravel driveway rushes up at me. I land on my side and instantly know I’ve fucked up. The impact makes a loud cracking noise as my femur splits in two. A sharp piece of bone punctures my skin. My head smacks into the driveway, crushing my cheekbone.
 

The pain is instant and blinding.
 

There might be nothing better than a first hit. But there’s nothing worse than coming down from it, either.
 

Nausea twists into my gut, and then I’m clutching my belly, puking up the black heart I just ate. Any movement drags my shattered femur into the dirt, sending a fresh wave of pain that makes me thrash my head from side to side. A compound fracture like this can kill a person. Shock, blood loss, you name it.
 

There’s no shortage of ways to die.
 

There’s something worse than the pain, though. Raging deep inside me, beneath my conscious mind. Some…entity. A terrifying, brutish force. And it’s very, very angry about this lost meal. It despises this weak, corrupt body. This sack of skin and bone. It’s a feral animal. And it’s furious that it’s been locked away for so long.
 

Caged. Powerless.
 

The animal demands freedom. Wants to scent. Wants to hunt and feed…and not only on those like Kusch.
 

It wants everything dead.

I’m shaking, my skin grey and lifeless and cold. Every drop of rain feels like a hammer blow. There’s a pounding, red-tinged throbbing in my head, growing louder and more frantic, forcing all thought away. But worst of all is the empty feeling. Like the thing inside me is sucking my life from me.
 

I feel hollow. A dusty carapace buried beneath the earth.
 

I hear the sound of my screams. The burning house casts a yellow-orange glow across the surrounding fields and deep into the forest. Sparks rise into the cloudy sky. Someone will see the fire from the road. Call it in.
 

I have to get up. Have to get out of here.
 

I dig my fingers into the gravel and squirm forward, aiming for the stolen Prelude. I’ll be safe in there, I tell myself. I’ll rest. But the thing thrashing and raging inside of me won’t let me go. It’s tasted freedom and now it wants out. Forever.
 

It wants me dead.
 

I need to be somewhere safe. But where? Where do you run when the horror lives inside you? I’m cold, so desperately cold. My breathing is fast and shallow. My heart feels about to explode. I shuffle forward again, one inch at a time, every movement bringing a new burst of pain and then another scream and my head collapses in the mud and I have to rest, gasping, summoning my strength to try and do it again.

The car door is ten feet away. It might as well be on the moon.
 

I’m not going to make it.

A cold wind descends, strong enough to lift sand and gravel from the driveway and drive it hard into my skin, and in the distance I hear the frenzied sound of rabid dogs on a scent.

No. Please. Not again. Not him. I can’t face him.

The spirit-eater.

The presence inside me begins to smash and shriek and rage.

Not in anger. In fear.
 

My chest tightens until I can scarcely draw a breath.
 

I put my hands to my sides and try and thrust into a sit, but my limbs won’t obey and the best I can do is roll onto my back. The dogs are closing in. The barking louder. The clouds open above me, revealing a million uncaring stars. I don’t need to be reminded of how small I am in the scale of the universe.
 

I already know that damn well enough, thank you.

I refuse to turn my head and watch the spirit-eater approach. I keep my gaze riveted on the distant stars. Clouds swirl and thin in the breeze. Something presses against my leg, then something else.
 

Cold. Wet. Snouts.
 

The spotted black-and-tan dogs are gathered above me, snapping and howling and spitting and then a hideous dog-headed face leans over me, blocking my view of the night sky.

The creature in me shrieks. My entire body convulses.
 

“Take me,” I whisper when I can speak. “Just fucking
kill
me. I’m…so tired. I’m fucking ready.”

The spirit-eater hesitates. A fierce wind whips the flames rising from the house, bends cedar and hemlock nearly to the ground, but here beside this monster the air is dead calm.
 

“Take me!” I shriek, pounding my fists in the dirt, sending a white-hot bolt of pain through my broken leg.

“I have not travelled for murder,” the spirit-eater says in a quiet but firm voice.

I freeze. Stare up at him. Try to read the truth in his black eyes. “But Aaron…out in the mountains…he said—”
 

“Not all stories are true, Lily. Especially the old ones. Time twists truth.”

The spirit-eater settles beside me, folding his legs like he’s about to meditate. His vicious-looking dogs race and leap around us, their teeth flashing in the firelight as they snarl and nip at one another.
 

But they don’t attack.

The thing inside me is fading. Fleeing.
 

“Why are you here if not…” I ask. “I fucking
killed
you,” I say, my voice rising in anger. “Your dogs…attacked me…and you nearly gutted Aaron—”

“Aaron of the Mountain River is not your ally.”

“Oh, I fucking
get
that. Mr. One-Eight-Seven? Trust me.”

The spirit-eater flashes an empty smile, then says, “You didn’t kill me. You banished me.”

“To where?”

The spirit-eater reaches out, pets one of his dogs under the chin and says nothing.
 

“And you are what, exactly?” I spit, wincing against the pain in my leg. “My ally?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“I came to deliver a warning,” he says simply. “About which stories you choose to believe. I want you to understand history is written by the victors. Keep that in mind when you choose who to trust. When you take a side.”

“Take a side? What fucking
side
? How do I know which side is which?”

“You don’t.”

“Then whose side am I on?”

“Your own. That’s all that matters. Always. You are your own Keeper.”

My laugh is tinged with hysteria. I wipe the rain from my eyes and say, “Not doing a very good job of it, am I?”
 

“It begins with you, Lily. Every story. Every legend and myth. With you. The All Encompassing. Light and dark. Deceit and truth. Growth and decay. Sanity and delirium. Life and death. You are the Unity. All and none. That’s why they fear you. Why they will use you as they require, then destroy you.”

“Who?”

“There was a time when pack names mattered. Stricken. Purebloods. Skins. Risen. Millennia of suffering for those names and the meanings they once carried. That time has passed. The old names mean nothing now. Everything is in flux. All will harm you. All will gain if you fail.”
 

“You’re a cheery bastard, aren’t you? Is that cuz you’re dead? Or because you have a fucking snout for a nose?”
 

I’m not looking at him, but I know he’s smiling. I want to tell him to go fuck himself, but I bite my tongue and say, “Do you know…what’s happening to me?”

“The more you rely on your animal the more powerful she becomes.”
 

“She’s not…she wants me dead, doesn’t she? I feel it. Her ill spirit.”

“Keep her inside. As much as you can in the war ahead. Keep her locked and caged.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Remember what I said. About stories. About who wrote them, and why. Remember whose side you’re on.”

“My own,” I whisper.
 

The creature inside me is raging, calling him a liar.
 

Which makes me think he might be telling the truth.

She’s not on my side. And I’m not on hers.
 

The dogfaced man stands, turns to leave.

A single word flashes in my mind.
 

“War,” I stammer. “You said…war?”