The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (26 page)

Carlos stops. His cunning jackal eyes flash between Tamara and me.
 

“You fucking lying, treacherous bitch,” he screams.

Tamara smiles, raises two hands in mocking apology.

I blow the flute a third time and leap into the air, and when I land the earth gives way beneath me. A shockwave races toward Carlos and his men, knocking them to the ground.
 

The earth quiets.
 

“Bring him to the altar,” I say to the Stricken army awaiting my command. “And any who remain loyal to him.”

Carlos’ Stricken associates look at one another, then snarl at Carlos. He lifts his hands in surrender. The fool. Tamara was right: money buys allies for a time. But sooner or later a true alpha will rise, and all the money in the world won’t keep old allies from turning when they confront power such as mine.

“My Lord?” the woman named Star says, her voice soft and small.
 

I turn and inspect her. She’s stunning. Her eyes twinkle beneath her red-gold bangs. Perhaps, after I’ve eaten my fill of blood offerings, I will take this pale-skinned priestess to have as I desire. Perhaps I will take her like my brother—

I point to the ground at my feet.

Star lowers her head and approaches, then stops, hovering very close to me. I scent jasmine in her hair and cinnamon and nutmeg on her skin. She leans forward until her breasts brush against me, then says, “Do you remember when I gifted you the Smoking Mirror, my Lord? In the penthouse—I mean, in the Cloud Temple?”

“I do.”

“Do you remember your name then?”

I think for a moment, then say, “Rodas. A peasant’s name. What of it?”

“Do you remember what I told you? About how we’ve run side by side for millennia? About how we’ve hunted together?”

I reach far into the murkiness in my mind to remember. It was only a short while ago. But it feels like a lifetime. That weak, caged animal I once was…but I don’t finish the thought. Contemplating my former weakness makes my stomach churn.
 

“I remember,” I say.

Carlos shrieks as his former associates bind him hand and wrist.

“Your devoted Priest Connor and I…we have other hunting to do in your name.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“No. You will come with me to the pyramid. You will
tend
to me.”

Star places her hand on my forearm. “There are others as powerful as you, my Lord.”

I shift my arm to black smoke.
 

Star’s hand passes through me. Her eyes widen.
 

“Who?” I say, grinning. “And if so, I pray to meet them. The Night Lord fears nothing.”

A flicker of frustration passes over Star’s lips. “There are three others,” Star says. “Your packmates. Your
siblings
. The Risen. A woman named Shiori. A man named Anik. And another woman…named Lily.”

“Peasants and filth.”

Star shakes her head. “No. The woman Lily is…your sister. Your alpha…”
 

Star’s voice trails off as she sees my face shift, my animal drawing near.

The Night Stalker shrieks at me to feed on her.
 

Fuck her and feed on her and fuck her again.
 

“They call the woman named Lily the All Encompassing,” Star continues once she’s found her courage. “Order and Chaos. The Union. Her creature is…uniquely powerful.”

I lift my head and laugh, then snatch a clawed hand out, grip the pretty pale-skinned whore by the throat and lift her into the air. A bolt of red lightning smashes into the ground a few feet to our left.

Red hot electric energy surges through us both, making my priestess’s hair stand on end. The Spotted Stalker scents her terror. He’s commanding me to free her blood—

Star smacks at my hand crushing her throat, but her struggles are far too weak to loosen my grip. Slowly, like a child inspecting an insect, I bring this beautiful woman’s face to mine, then I kiss her, bite her lip hard enough to draw black blood, then drop her in a coughing and sputtering heap at my feet.
 

“You know where these…packmates are?” I ask the man named Connor while the faithful gather around me, fold onto their knees and begin begging me to offer them.

Connor looks at Star.
 

He’s trying hard to disguise his anger, and suddenly I wonder: who are these two that Tamara appointed as my priests? I have no need of them. Perhaps I should offer them—

“I know where your packmates are, my Lord,” Connor says, bowing very low. “Permit Star and I bring them to your temple.”

“No,” I say. “You go alone. This pretty priestess,” I nudge Star with my foot, “stays with me.”

“We don’t have time, my Lord,” Connor says. “Star and I must return to find the others immediately.”

Tamara and Connor share a glance. I feel like I always have with Tamara: like I’m enmeshed in a scheme I can’t see. Like I’m unwittingly doing her bidding.
 

The feeling makes a choking growl rise in my throat.
 

“Time for what?” I ask.
 

Tamara rushes in, drapes herself across me, strokes my chest. “Come, my Lord,” she purrs. “I tire of this Skin wasteland. Take me to your pyramid. We must celebrate the birth of your empire with a thousand offerings. We must paint your steps red with the faithful’s blood.”

I study Tamara. My animal paces, sensing a trap.
 

“Why haven’t you spoken of these packmates…these
rivals
…until now?” I ask.

“We weren’t sure they existed,” Connor says.
 

“Now you are?”

“Yes,” Connor says simply.

“Good. Then go. Bring them to me.”
 

“I need Star,” Connor says. He looks at me almost defiantly. Almost.

“Why?”

Connor smiles. Crystal fangs slip over his lips.
 

The man has never warred. Never fought for his life.
 

I scent it on him: the reek of privilege and security and full-bellied ease.

He will die without struggle when his time arrives.

Star thrusts to her feet. A lava river rolls toward us, swallowing the maimed and dying and dead in the
zocalo
.
 

My fire cleanses this foul earth.
 

O Night Wind am I unworthy? Are these deceivers making a mockery of me? Am I being led astray? Have I fallen from your grace, O One I Am Slave To?

“I’m Connor’s ride home,” Star says, unfolding a pair of red-gold eagle’s wings from her back. Her face becomes sharp and proud, then a long, hooked beak grows from her jaw and a few moments later I’m facing a magnificent eagle so large its head reaches shoulder-high.
 

“Please, my Lord,” the golden eagle named Star says. “I have no desire to prolong our absence.”

“Then leave me,” I snap. “And do not return without the rivals you speak of.”

“Of course, my Lord,” Connor says, bowing so low his nose nearly scrapes the ground.
 

The eagle leaps into the sky. For an instant her silhouette is outlined against the raging black clouds. Then she circles hard right, dives, and snatches the man named Connor between her talons. I watch them fly high over the burning city, then vanish.
 

“Come, my Lord,” Tamara says, her hands stroking my stomach and upper thigh. “We have much to celebrate.”
 

Y
ELLOW
-
BLUE
FLAMES
burst from the windows of a two-story townhouse a few blocks ahead, making me wish we’d scored a machine gun or two before jumping from one war zone to another.
 

She’s there all right, her scent’s pouring into me in sweet waves, making both my cock and my animal stir, the wolf pacing in his cage, desperate to rejoin his bloodmate, and it’s not only Lily he scents.
 

There’s something else.
 

Another side of her. Her animal.
 

It’s unlike anything my wolf’s scented before: ancient, powerful, a scent that begins in the core of the earth and radiates outward through molten stone and bedrock, into oceans and continental shelves, into the dirt of this world, into the roots of every growing thing and the blood of every living thing, into the air and atmosphere.
 

That’s her scent. The All Encompassing, and right then I know what I’m meant to do with my life.
 

I’m meant to die for her.
 

“Motherfuck,” Nash says, stomping on the pedal as the flames roll into the morning sky.
 

I take a final hard hit on the third blunt Tate’s passed up front. The van is thick with swirling grey smoke.
 

“It’s beginning, isn’t, Prez?” Nash says, sounding too far sober for my liking.

I’m not sure exactly what he senses, but I say, “I don’t think it ever ended.”
 

“What now?” Mia says, her eyes droopy as she cradles Sorry. My brother’s almost stopped bleeding, which is a good sign: it means he’s strong enough to at least partially heal.
 

“They got to her before us,” I say.

“Let ‘em have her, Prez” Mia says, giving me a mock salute.

“Stay in the van with Sorry,” I tell Mia as we roll up to the burning townhouse. “Tate. You hop out and press from the front. We’ll meet you in the alley.”

Tate flings the van door open just as a snarling monkey creature leaps over a white picket fence in front of the burning building. The Stricken sees Tate and instead of turning and running like a smart Stricken bastard he runs right at Tate. Tate’s skin goes black and shiny and his jaw stretches out and he releases a short hiss and then the two of them slam into one another right in the middle of this uppity Seattle street.

There are about two dozen Skins milling around. They see the animal-monsters going toe-to-toe and begin screaming and running.

I crack a wide grin. Shit’s getting real fucked up now. Good. Nothing like a little mayhem in the morning.
 

The Skins have lived blind for too long. Soon they’re gunna know they’re not alone in this world. Our kind will emerge from shadows and nightmares and the Skins will do what they always do in their terror: they’ll start killing one another.
 

The Stricken's momentum carries Tate backward over the hood of a parked car. The monkey-thing sinks its fangs into Tate’s chest while Tate struggles to get his hands around its throat.

“Welcome to the party, jah rasta,” I say.

“You want me to hop out? Give him a hand?” Nash asks.

“What do you think?”
 

We tear around the alley. Lights are on everywhere. Neighbors milling in the early morning light, pointing at the fire, half of them on their phones. We got ninety seconds, maybe less, before we’re swarmed by pigs.
 

“She likes the fire, doesn’t she?” someone says, real quiet.

“Enough talk, Sorry. Rest,” Mia says, smoothing the sweat and blood slicked hair from my brother’s forehead.

Sorry’s eyes are open. They look brittle and too-sharp, like he’s not seeing what we’re seeing. “She senses it unnerves us. Knows it weakens us.”

“Who?” Mia asks.

“Lily.”

“The Skin bitch?”

Sorry smiles and closes his eyes.
 

Mia fires me a look like you better start talking, asshole.

But I got no time or patience for more talk, and that’s a relief, because Mia will understand sooner rather than later, and as Nash screeches the van to a stop behind the burning townhouse there’s a long scream from the yard behind, then a second Stricken, this one gone full into his animal, some kind of nasty bird-lizard cross, comes crashing through the back fence and nearly hops straight into the van.

I leap out while the van’s still rolling, get an arm around the Stricken motherfucker’s neck and get to work tearing its head off.
 

There’s some run-of-the-mill terrified crying and screaming from the backyard that I don’t pay much attention to, then the sound of gunfire and I glance up to see a scowling black chick unload her Glock straight into Lily’s chest.

I roar, completely overtaken with rage, drop the Stricken in the dirt and leap at the black chick.

Which is when shit goes from weird to fucking wild, even for a bastard like me, because Lily’s standing only ten feet away when the black chick shoots her, and there’s a…a fucking
ripple
in the air around Lily, like you see above baking hot sand in the desert, fast and near-invisible, and the bullets…I don’t know what the fuck happens to them, but they sure as shit don’t make it to Lily.

The black chick looses a frightened yelp.
 

She’s shaking, her chest heaving, still clicking the trigger on the empty Glock, when Lily says, “Please Trish I’m sorry I didn’t mean for this I didn’t mean for you to see you gotta run now girl please run,” and even though her face is turned away from me I can tell Lily’s crying.

But the black chick doesn’t run, and from the look in her eyes I know it just ain’t in her nature.

I’m a step or two away when something hard hits me blind from the side, tossing me like a paper doll into a big, thorny-as-fuck rose bush.
 

When I look up Lily’s standing over me, looking sad in a way that makes me want to hold her. She’s dressed in tight fitting jeans and a black jacket that’s melted in the front. Her skin’s glowing red and she looks…fucking stunning, and I don’t even want to know how fast she can move and how bad she wants me dead.

Lily looks at me and says, “Stay down, Aaron, and stay away from my friend. Stay the fuck away from us
both
.”

Don’t care what the fuck she is. I won’t stay down until my heart’s ripped from my chest, and as I stagger to my feet I think well fuck maybe that’s already happened.