The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (22 page)

She’s about to lift the water to my lips when she says, “I saw my brother kiss you. I don’t think he’s ever kissed a girl.”

She seems a slightly sad about something.
 

It takes several moment for her words to penetrate the haze of pain and fear in my mind, but when they do I say, so quietly I’m not certain she can hear, “Pimniq?”

The girl’s lips lift into a shy smile.
 

She’s pleased I know her name. Pleased her brother spoke of her.

I nod toward Anik and try to speak, but Pimniq brings the water to my lips and says, “Only a little. I know you’re unwell.”

Water cascades cold across my lips. I drink greedily, and when Pimniq removes the flask I give her an angry glare.

“That’s enough for now. Can you eat?”

I nod.
 

Pimniq feeds me the dog liver. It’s thick and rich and coppery. The blood taste makes my stomach growl for more, even if it is only dog meat.
 

Pimniq laughs, then grows quiet and says, “I know he likes you. But I don’t think he’s scenting you like I am. I know you’re both too weak to scent properly. That’s how I was able to follow you, and how the hunter was able to ambush Anik. To me you smell…rotten. Polluted.” She quiets for a second, then says, “I’m sorry but it’s true.”
 

Pimniq's eyes flicker pure white as she speaks, and I understand I’m only alive because Anik is.
 

“No,” Pimniq answers, “You’re alive because we need you to guide us to her.”

She’s in my mind.
 

Like how Anik and I communicated in Sedna’s prison.

She strong.
 

Pimniq laughs again. She has a quick, carefree laugh that could quickly become mocking. What did Anik say? He called his little sister a trickster spirit. A raven.

“I couldn’t remove the trap,” Pimniq says, gesturing toward my leg. “It’s frozen deep into your leg. When we warm you, and if Anik recovers, maybe then. But right now we need to leave. There are others hunting us. They won’t be as easy to kill as that fat old hunter.”
 

Pimniq checks the leather cord securing me to the dogsled, then tucks another blanket around me and says, “Can you still feel her? The one you said Anik needed to see? She’ll help him, right? She’ll help us all?”

I nod, once, very slight.
 

Can she read my lie?

Pimniq studies me for a long while. Worry lines gather at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She’s too young for such lines. A child. But they’re carved into her.
 

My eyes feel heavy. Everything feels…ghostly, like life after tasting the Essence, and I wonder if that’s what this is? Am I safe on the Ark, enjoying Purification? Is this suffering a vision of Truth?

Pimniq shakes her head. “This
is
truth, Shiori. Stay with me. Please. For Anik?” Pimniq lifts her arm and points. “Is she that way?”

I shake my head no. So tired. The meat and water made me want to sleep. Blackness closes in, then a sting against my cheek that makes me open my eyes.
 

“Stay with me, Shiori. You can sleep soon.” Pimniq lifts her arm and points in another direction. “That way?”

I nod my head. Yes. That way. The All Encompassing.

“Southwest,” Pimniq says, nodding. Then she looks at me and smiles.

She’s a pretty girl. Her cheeks are full and her chin narrow and her eyes lovely and almond-shaped. But there is a hardness in her. This land demands it.
 

“I hope you’re right about this woman, Shiori. I hope, for your sake, that everything you told my brother is true. I’m going to scout now,” she says, and when my eyes close I see a lovely white raven lifting into the sky, and for the first time I think there might be deathless beauty in this Absent Land, but then I remember the butchered sled dogs who resisted Pimniq's claim for dominance and understand I’m wrong.
 

Death is everywhere here.
 

I’
VE
SEEN
A
lot of fucked-up shit in my millennia on this earth. But I’ve never seen anything as fucked up as this filthy shit-beetle luring me into her mandibles with her stinking scent.

Fortunately for me the pheromone stench doesn’t seem to affect my brother, the freed black wolf, and as I step my moron self straight into the Gladys’ clicking mandibles the wolf leaps between us, his razor teeth snapping and tearing, aiming for the beetle’s mirrored eye.
 

He hits home, sinks his fangs deep into her left eye. The beetle stops rubbing her underside, rears backward, then closes two barbed front legs around the wolf. The barbs are six inches long and pierce deep into the wolf’s side.
 

Gladys screeches in triumph at the kill, sending my animal fucking insane with rage, and I roll under the fat bitch and stab at her belly, aiming for the soft grey-blue skin between her armored plates. My claws rake against her plates with a shrill scraping sound, then sink into her belly, showering me in burning black blood.
 

Gladys is a Minion. Like the one that burned Nash.
 

Either that or all Stricken blood burns now that—
 

The beetle leaps back, stabbing her razor-pointed legs down, trying to impale me. I roll out from under her and dive to the side. She still has my brother clamped between her front legs, jerking him from side to side, setting him deeper on her barbs. He’s biting at her one good eye, trying to blind her, but there’s a red pool on the basement floor and I know the barbs have shredded his insides.
 

My brother’s injured. Dying.

I duck one of the beetle’s spear-like legs, then make to leap on her back when something slams into my head. I whirl. Soren’s behind me, grinning, holding a steel pipe. Good thing I got a thick skull. I snarl and swing at him, but he steps to the side as one of the beetle’s legs slices into my arm. The wound burns. She’s poisoned, and I can only imagine the poison coursing through Sorry’s veins.
 

Then I spot Soren and his bitch Annie and that chickenshit motherfucker wolf, the three of them circling behind the Stricken beetle. Hiding. Waiting for an opportunity to strike. So that’s what it takes to be alpha to the SoCal crew.
 

It takes fighting like a fucking bitch.
 

So be it. Let the bitches hide. And when I’m done with Moby Dick you can bet your ass I’m roaming for them.
 

I snatch one of the beetle’s legs from the air, bend it back until it snaps, then use the leg as a spear to stab between her plates. The beetle shrieks again, which is good, although I can see another leg, pale and pink, already growing from the wound. Fast-healing Stricken are irritating as all fuck, and my wolf agrees, he’s straining against my collar, howling with fury and kill-lust.
 

Hungry for a feed.

And I’m going to get him one.

The black wolf’s spitting blood from his mouth. He’s stopped trying to gouge out her eye. He’s weakening fast. Soon the beetle will catch him in her clicking mandibles and saw him in half.
 

A woman’s scream makes me turn in time to see Soren’s head pop like a fucking melon between the constricting coils of a giant blue-green snake, and I tell you what, I
never
thought I’d be this happy to see Mia. She’s fully uncollared, and that’s a concern given she nearly killed me last time I tried to call her back, but I have other shit to fret about right now.

Annie’s watching her boy’s brains leak out his eyes, shrieking and waving her hands in front of her chest like she wants to calm Mia down and talk girl things.
 

She doesn’t notice she’s backing right into my bro Nash.
 

Fuck knows how my MC got in the basement, but it’s a pleasure to see Nash’s thick jaws close around Annie’s tender white throat. Bitch was no good in the sack anyway. The hyena flips Annie’s rag-doll body high in the air and snatches her in its jaws, toying with her.
 

There’s a third guy behind Nash. Fucking creepy looking dude, and that’s saying something for this crew. Long nosed, covered in black scales, with a flicking yellow tongue.
 

It takes me a second to realize it’s the dreadlocked black dude I told to hang out in the woods with Nash and the other SoCal boy. The scaled reptile dude’s running at the wolf that stayed loyal to Soren and this beetle bitch, and I bet the stupid motherfucker’s rethinking that decision right about now.

Backed the wrong horse, hey asshole?

I leap onto the beetle’s back. Her razor-legs follow me up, slicing and stabbing. She gets me deep in the shoulder, and again in the thigh, but I manage to stay on her. I punch my fist between two of her plates, grab a handful of stinking flesh and use it as a handle to keep her from bucking me off.
 

I’m right behind her head, staring at the plates between her skull and neck. The black wolf is only a few feet away. His howls and shrieks drive right through me.
 

His eyes are dulling fast.
 

Gladys is killing my brother. And it’s my fault.

Another razor-leg slams into my back, narrowly missing my neck. I manage to grab the leg before it can strike me again, lift it high overhead and drive it hard into the beetle bitch’s eye. The beetle drops the wolf, lets loose a horrible high-pitched scream and starts flailing and spinning around wildly, trying to throw me off. I hold tight to her flesh with one hand and the leg buried in her eye with the other, driving the it further into her eye, hoping to hit her brain.

But no luck. Beetles have tiny brains, and this one’s no exception.

The beetle flips onto her back, crushing my legs. The pain makes me howl and snap may jaws into her armor, snapping a tooth, which is bullshit, because I thought there was a lifetime guarantee on those motherfuckers.

I’m still clutching the leg that’s buried in her eye. I wrap my other hand around it and begin twisting, forward and back, like I’m stirring a bucket of concrete. Black blood and a variety of nasty unknown shit spills from eye, and then the leg slips a foot deeper into her head and she shudders and twitches in a way that tells me I’ve struck gold.
 

The beetle’s weight crushes me into the floor, forcing the breath from my lungs, but I push the razor-leg deeper still and then like I found the off button the bitch suddenly stops moving.
 

The lair is completely silent. I’m pinned under the beetle corpse, barely able to breathe, her burning blood searing into my arm, and then the beetle shifts and I’m stuck under a very overfed former senator.
 

“Will somebody get this fat bitch off me?” I shout, flapping my one free arm.
 

There’s a howling laugh, a mad barking sound that makes me grin even though I’m in serious danger of suffocating.

‘I dunno, Prez,” Nash says through his laughter. “I think you make a cute couple.”

“Seriously, motherfucker. Get her off.”

“We should leave you there to rot,” Mia says, and I’m damned surprised to hear her voice. Thought she’d have slithered off by now.

There’s a grunt and the Stricken's corpse lifts high enough for me to crawl out from under her. I stand and take a bow.

“You’re an idiot,” Mia says.
 

“She dead?” I ask.

“Not dead enough,” Nash says, drawing a serrated hunting knife from his belt. “Let me take care of this. See to your brother.” He spits the last two words, and I know if it were up to Nash—

But it’s not up to him.

Mia and I run to Sorry. He’s in bad shape. His guts are half hanging out, bulging blue-grey. His eyes are dull and threatening to close. I lean down and hold him, tell him to open his eyes, tell him to look at me, tell him he’s going to be all right. He smells of burned fur and Pureblood blood, but beneath that there’s more: he smells of the first spring sun warming a high altitude steppe.

“He’s going to make it,” Mia says. “He’s going to be fine.” But the look in her eyes says she’s lying.

“Bitch’s barbs pierced his heart,” I say, knowing the wolf can understand my tone but not my words. “He’s bleeding out.” I turn to Nash. He has the Stricken's head half sawed off. “Bring me her fucking black heart,” I tell him. “Hurry!”

I cradle the black wolf in my arms. My brother.
 

“He fought for us,” I say. “That’s all that matters.” I look into Mia’s eyes. Her expression says that’s
not
all that matters. “He fucking fought for us!” I scream. “That’s how we remember him. The betra…the other thing, what he did…that was nothing. It was fuck all! Understand? That wasn’t my brother. You hear me?”

“Everyone fucks up,” Mia says. “It’s what we do after realizing we fucked up that matters.”
 

“Yeah,” I say, choking up. Sometimes I love that damned woman. “And everyone pays the price. This isn’t on him. This is on me.”

“No, Prez,” Mia says. “It’s on all of us.”
 

Nash plunges his fist through the Stricken's chest. It takes some work, getting through the blubber, but eventually he surfaces with the prize. Black fucking gold. He walks over and hands me the heart. I put it to the wolf’s nose. He sniffs. His eyes open, but only a little.
 

“That’a boy,” I say. “Have a nibble.”

The wolf takes a tiny bite, then another, and another. The Stricken's heart is huge, the largest I’ve ever seen, and it takes an incredible amount of willpower for me not to devour the thing myself. I look up and see Nash and Mia looming over me, spittle hanging from their lips, and I know they’re thinking the same thing.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I say, nodding toward the corpses of the SoCal crew. “There’s plenty to go around. Finish killing them and feed.” Nash and Mia look at one anther uncertainly. “Go on! Now!”