The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (17 page)

“Of course. Everything destroyed to be reborn. Think of it like… a terrible wildfire. An all-consuming inferno. Horrible. Fascinating. Ripe with potential. That’s what destruction is: raw, unfettered potential. That’s what you are: destruction and its opposite, rebirth.”

Yup, he’s fucking batshit insane.
 

But I realize if he leaves I’ll be alone with the creature in me.
 

The thought makes me shudder.
 

“Don’t leave,” I plead. “Help me. Please. I need…to get out of the rain. Can you help me?”

The spirit-eater shakes his head and looks at me with something approaching tenderness. He cares about me. Why? Fuck knows.
 

But I sense it.
 

“I’ve already helped you more than I should. And if I touch you in this land…”

Without another word the spirit-eater walks across the driveway and vanishes into the shadowy forest. The howling wind returns, carrying the sound of dogs, and when it finally stills everything is quiet.

I lay my head down and weep.
 

Fucking lot of good that guy was.
 

I’m going to die out here, in the muck, in a fucking outlaw biker’s driveway, alone, afraid, and the thought of my son Lachlan being abducted makes me dig my fingernails into the gravel and kick my uninjured leg and move forward.
 

Only and inch.
 

But it’s more than I thought I could do a moment ago.
 

An inch at a time.
 

That’s how the impossible is accomplished.

The fire hits the gas line in the house. There’s a burst of blue flame and an explosion that sends sparks and burning wood showering onto me but I’m almost there.
 

One more effort and I reach out and touch the car door.

Rain drips from the car, down my frozen fingers.
 

The door handle is way above me.
 

Too far. Too far.

The hollow feeling inside me becomes a cold, inky-black pit, an empty hole drawing hope and desire and the will to live into it.

Try and remember.

I don’t know what’s happening to me.
 

I never asked for this. I don’t want this. Any of it.

I felt the same when my mother was murdered. Just…empty. Cold inside. I ate. I smiled at the detectives and counsellors. But I wasn’t there. And the truth of it is I didn’t want to be. I hit the street believing I would die in a filthy alley somewhere. In every way that matters I was already dead. I just needed my body to catch up with that fact.

The door handle’s there. Way up there.
 

I lift my hand a few inches. It weighs a hundred pounds.

Help me. Somebody. Please.
 

That must be what my son is thinking right now. If he’s still alive. Help me. The thought brings another round of wracking sobs. I was so young. A thief, a junky street-kid. Raise a baby? I was a baby myself. Fifteen years old. I couldn’t do it. It was the right decision.
 

But it doesn’t matter.
 

I’ll hate myself forever for letting him go.
 

Some instincts are hardwired into us. The need for love. For belonging. For a family. A parent’s instinct to protect.

These truths are buried deep in the secret spirals of our DNA.
 

The thing inside me is gnawing at my flesh, worming its way through me. I was wrong. I don’t care what power it gives me. I hate having it inside. Eating away at me. I feel broken, split in two, and I’m already forgetting what it feels like to be whole.

A spark lands on my neck, burns into me.
 

How long since I landed in the driveway?
 

Minutes or hours? I have no idea.
 

But there’s someone out there who needs me. My son.
 

I lift my hand toward the door handle. Make it halfway.
 

That’s better.
 

A few gasping breaths and I try again, throw upward at the last moment, latch two fingers on the handle. I hang there, bent at the middle, my busted lower half dragging me down.
 

Oh god no. I’m not going to make it.
 

Even if I get inside the car…what then?
 

I can’t drive. I’ll bleed out in the back seat.
 

But maybe it’s better than dying outside in the muck. I dig my toes into the gravel and push forward again—

The door clicks open.

I close my eyes. The darkness is instant. Something’s laughing at me. The creature. She’s enjoying this misery. It’s not a wild animal. Animal’s don’t enjoy another’s suffering. This thing is worse.

I wake up shivering, soaked, still clinging to the door handle. I haven’t been out that long, but now I’m strong enough to claw my way into the back seat. The stolen car smells like fast food and the former owner’s cigarettes.
 

I use both hands to lift my shattered leg inside, then collapse into the back seat, breathing dangerously fast.
 

Maybe he’s already dead. My beautiful baby boy.
 

But I don’t think so.

The car is as damp and cold as a grave. I reach around to the passenger seat. Find my cell phone. Turn it on. The glowing light it emits burns my eyes. I stop, not knowing who to call.

It can’t be him. Connor? Not like this.

But there’s no one else.

It takes forever to dial. My fingers are shaking and numb. I mess up three times, have to start over, but finally it rings.
 

“Yeah?” Connor’s voice fills the car. He sounds…normal. Just doing his thing.
 

Living his normal fucking life. I try and remember what that felt like.

“Hello?”

“Con…” I croak. My voice is too weak.
 

My fingers refuse to obey.
 

The phone nearly slips from my grasp.
 

I panic, snatch at it, almost hang up by mistake.

“Hello?”

“It’s Lil...”

“Lily?”
 

I lick my lips. They’re cracked and bleeding, maybe blistered from heat.

Try to speak.
 

But no words come.

“Lily? Is that you? Where are you?”

“Dying…”
 

My voice like leaves settling into a stream.
 

A quiet swoosh and they’re carried away.

“What? I can’t hear you. Lily? You need to speak louder. Speak louder! Where are you?”

“Tell him…I love him. Please? Tell him I’m sorry.”

“Lil—”

“For what…I did…I’m sorry.”

The phone slips from my fingers. Lands on the floor beneath the front seat. Connor’s still speaking, his tone frantic, demanding to know where I am.
 

Where am I? Please someone tell me.
 

Where am I?

I
SHOULDN
’
T
HAVE
kissed Shiori.
 

It was wrong. We’re both so weak.
 

If my feelings have merit they’ll still be there when we’re both well.
 

I won’t do it again.

And I
definitely
shouldn’t have fallen asleep beside her.
 

We got very lucky that the cold didn’t take us.
 

Or something worse.

I hate leaving her alone. But she doesn’t have the strength to walk, and I can’t carry her and hope to get close enough to these men to see if they have anything worth stealing.

The snow has stopped falling. There is no wind, which isn’t good. Sound carries in the brutally cold northern air. The frozen creek is so cold it crackles when I walk on it, so I keep to the bank, every nerve in my body tingling, my nose in the air, my breathing slow and muted.
 

I suspect they’re camped along the creek bank.
 

When I get a little closer I climb out of the ravine and circle into the woods, flitting from tree to tree, trying to stay upwind and find a vantage from where I can see them and still be a ways off. Their fire is out. The fact there are hunters here means we can’t be far from a road. Unless it’s a trapper with a snowmobile, in which case a road could still be many miles away.

Cold air bites into my cracked lips and burns my lungs as I inhale.
 

Even the air wounds in such cold.
 

Shiori was right. I’m warmer in her company. Stronger.
 

I keep pushing through the snow. It’s nearly waist deep now. I pause often, both to breathe and listen. The crimson moon is beautiful but too bright. Why can’t there be a storm when I need one?

Soon I’m close enough to see the camp. There’s no snowmobile. Only a mushing sled laden with frozen animal pelts and supplies. Choosing dogs over sleds in this bitter cold is a wise decision. A snowmobile can break down or refuse to start. Sled dogs never refuse to labor.
 

And they can be eaten.

This was a bad decision. We should’ve fled when we first scented the fire. What kind of man hunts alone in the boreal in winter?
 

A fearless, formidable man. Or perhaps not a man at all.
 

But we need his provisions.
 

The choice is possibly die now or certainly die from starvation and exposure in a few days. Not much of a choice at all.
 

I creep closer, then crouch behind a spruce tree bowed low under its load of snow. The tree’s bark is crisp and sweet in my nose, but I can smell the hunter’s team. Peering around the tree, I see the dogs, curled in the leeward side of the stream bank, partly obscured by snow. I count ten, but that can’t be right. Most dog teams have an odd number: eight or ten team dogs and a single lead dog.
 

There must be more dogs buried in the snow.

I know there’s food in the sled. Clothing. Rifles.
 

But where is the hunter?

Clammy sweat runs down my spine.
 

I press my forehead to the tree and exhale slowly.
 

How could I be so stupid?
 

How did I not scent or hear him?

“Please,” I say, not ready to turn and face him. “We mean no harm. We’re lost. Looking for a road.”

“You’re lost all right, boy,” the hunter says. His voice is cool and unafraid. He’s seen many things in these frozen woods and survived them all. He knows why I’m here. To raid him. To murder him.
 

Even if I didn’t kill him the theft would still be murder.
 

Without his provisions he’ll die out here as sure as we will.
 

I try and summon my animal spirit. He’s like a cooling coal deep in my chest. The coal flickers slightly when I call him but doesn’t spring to life.

I’m too weak.
 

Drained by my battle with Sedna and the spirit she stole from me.
 

My spirit animal is like a storm that never arrives when you need it, and I never thought I’d say this but I’m beginning to miss him. I feel…hollowed out without him raging in me.
 

The quiet is too deep.
 

There’s too much time for thought.

It’s lonesome.
 

I steel my will to face the hunter.
 

He’s leaning against another spruce tree twenty paces away, bracing his shooting shoulder against the tree, sighting down a Ruger Hawkeye like he knows what he’s doing.

“That’s a grizzly rifle,” I say, turning slowly and lifting my hands in the air.

“Sure the fuck is,” the hunter spits. He’s draped in leather and animal hides, a cylindrical fur hat like Russian trappers wear perched on his head. Even without the animal skins he’s a big man. Three hundred pounds at least. His nose is swollen and pocked, from booze or cold I can’t tell, but his eyes shine sharp and crystal blue.
 

“I’m no grizzly,” I tell him.

“I know what you are.”

“Let me keep walking,” I say, “and I promise you’ll never see me again.”

The hunter hoarks and spits. “Not how this works, stranger. You creep up on me in the dark. Aiming for harm. Think I didn’t know you’d scent my fire? Think I didn’t leave it burnin’ special for you?”

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“I’d like that very much. Been a long time since I bagged an Eskimo.” The man pauses, settles his shoulder into the tree and says, “Even longer since I bagged a changeling.”

I growl, low in my chest, without meaning to.
 

No use denying it now.

The hunter’s eyes widen slightly, but he recovers quickly. “Complaining about being shot? Well, maybe if you’d walked up in daylight and asked I’d a helped ya.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The hunter laughs. “No, boy, you’re right. I seen you walking to me in the daylight wearing nothing but a fucking t-shirt in minus forty I’d have shot you dead right quick. Cuz like I said I know what you are. Killed one of your kind near thirty years back. A wolf. Out hunting me, just like you was tonight. I cut myself, let myself bleed out to make the monster think I was wounded, then sat with my back against a tree, tucked my Colt behind me and waited for him. He came. The stupid bastard. He came at me only half-changed. Sloppy and too sure of himself.”

The hunter pauses, maybe to let his bragging sink in, then he says, “Let me ask you something: can your kind be killed? If you change all the way to animal?”

“Some of us.”

“Takes a lot more hurt though, right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I figured. Stupid bastard. Anyway, I shot this wolf changeling straight in the face. You think that killed him?”

“No,” I say.