The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (29 page)

The sexiest thing about me right now is the Ruger.
 

Tate sits up, brushes himself off, then ties a matted tangle of dreadlocks into a loose ponytail.
 

“Sorry,” I say, sheepishly.

“Forget it,” Tate says, and from his flushed cheeks I know I’ve embarrassed him.
 

“You were screaming, Lil,” Trish says.

“I was…dreaming. It was nothing.”

“Didn’t sound like nothing,” Mia says, shifting her long legs under Sorry. “Sounded like you were dying.”

“Maybe I was,” I say, trying to remember. “How long was I asleep?”

“Fifteen minutes at most,” Mia says.

“I could sleep for days,” I tell her.

“You will, hun,” Trish says. Then to Nash: “Hey! You driving us across the country? Where the fuck is this place?”

“About an hour more,” Tate says.
 

Then I remember. I was walking across an endless frozen waste. Only it wasn’t me. I was
inside
somebody. Somebody who thought enough of my name to whisper it as they froze to death.

“You sure you’re good, Lil?” Trish asks, a note of fear creeping into her voice. Then it hits me: I’m all Trish has. If the world outside this van is as fucked up as she says, then yeah, I’m it. Just me and a pack of wild animals who care less for her than they do their Harleys. Much less.

“I’m good,” I say. “Only I think…I think we’re not going to be alone at the cabin. Not for long, anyway.”

“What?” Aaron barks, whipping around in his seat.

“I can’t see them clearly…there’s two of them. They’re searching for me. They’ve been searching for a while, only they’ve just realized it. They don’t want to hurt me. They’re following an…instinct. To be at my side. And they’re in trouble. Being…pursued.”

“Balls,” Nash says.

“Fuck sakes, Lily,” Aaron says. “Whoever they are…they’ll lead the Stricken to us.”

“I know,” I say quietly. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Aaron gives me a look like he’s thinking I’m more trouble than I’m worth.

“You want to say something?” I say.

Aaron fires me a hard glare, then turns and faces the front, silent and brooding.
 

Grumpy bastard.

You keep seven of anything—animal or human—cramped in a van long enough and there’s bound to be static. And with these guys I’m surprised there hasn’t been a fistfight. Plus they’re all mostly sober, and that can’t be a good thing.
 

“Oh, biiitch,” Nash says, slowing the van while he peers at the dash.

“What now?” Aaron snaps.

“Gas, Prez. We’re running low.”

“Fuck sakes.”

“There’s a town up ahead,” Tate says. “Can’t remember the name. Armpit-ville. Honkey-land. Something like that. There’s a gas station.”

I stretch my legs, looking forward to fresh mountain air and cheap gas station coffee and food-like products sealed in plastic with sell-by dates for the next decade.

We drive for a few more minutes, then Aaron whistles through his teeth. I hop up front. Thick black columns of smoke rise above the evergreen forest ahead. “That the town?” I ask.

“What’s left of it after the locals decided they’re getting theirs,” Aaron says.

“Redneck preppers,” Nash mutters. “Looking for a reason to get their gun on.”
 

“Gas is gunna get real precious real quick,” Aaron says. Then to Tate: “You got fuel at this cabin?”

“Ten fifty gallon drums,” Tate says with a smile.

“Guns. Provisions. Fuel. Sounds like popular shit. You got a standing army guarding your stash?”

“You’ll see.”

“Pussy gunna be real precious too,” Nash says. “If it really is the end of the world.”

Mia makes a disgusted sound.

“And cock,” Trish says. “Tough to find decent cock in the best of times.”

Nash fires her a grin in the rear-view. “Plenty of fine cock up here, gorgeous.”

“I said cock. Not asshole.”

Nash howls.

We pass the first of the fires: burned out cars and piles of garbage and tires scattered across the road, forcing Nash to slow even more. Smoke sits low and thick in the trees, blurring with the rain. I cough at the acrid reek of burning rubber. A few dull-witted camouflage-wearing yokels glare at us from behind makeshift barricades.
 

“Take me to your leader,” Nash says in a weirdo alien voice.

Trish giggles. Not laughs.
Giggles
. Is the stress getting to her? I turn and glare. She shrugs her shoulders. Chick does have odd taste in men, but come to think of it Nash is cute in a twitchy, thick-necked sort of way.

“How many of us are packing?” Aaron asks.

“Trish and me,” I say.

“Good,” Aaron says. “When shit goes down, I want you both inside the van. Guarding Sorry. Open the side door and shoot if you have to, but stay inside. Got it?”

“
When
shit goes down?” Trish says. “I’m a cop, remember? Not even these honkey motherfuckers are dumb enough to fuck with a police.”

“You sure about that?” Aaron says, motioning out the window.

“Damn,” I say.

Trish hops up, peers out the back of the van, sees the burning cop car and the two blackened bodies smoldering inside and says, “Yeah. I’ll stay right in here, thank you.”
 

“Fried bacon!” Nash hollers, nearly vibrating in his seat.

“Asshole,” Trish mutters.

Nash fires her a surprised expression, then shrugs.
 

“Could do me good, blow off some steam,” Tate says.

“Easy, dragon,” Aaron says. “Just because I think we’re fucked doesn’t mean I
want
to be fucked. Lets all keep it inside and focus on getting the gas we need to get my brother to this fucking cabin so we can heal him up, all right? And Nash? That means you let me do the talking.”

“Yes sir, Prez,” Nash says, rubbing his hands along the steering wheel while his neck thickens in anticipation of a kill.

“Lily?” Aaron says.

“Yeah,
Prez
?”
 

Aaron rolls his eyes, then says, “Keep her caged. Understand? Keep her locked the fuck up. Remember Sorry—”

“I’ll do as I like.”

Mia snickers and flicks her snake tongue at Aaron.

Aaron digs his claws into the dash and doesn’t say another word.

I unholster the Ruger and slip it in my front belt.
 

“Gas station’s ahead on the left,” Tate says.

Nash weaves around the burning cars at crawling speed, and when the gas station comes into view I realize Aaron was right about fuel being a precious commodity, because the good old boys have already staked their claim.

I
N
DEATH
I hear my little sister Pimniq singing.
 

She used to sing while playing on the swing set in the backyard during the too-brief months of an arctic summer. I would open my bedroom window and let her song filter inside. I remember she used to swing so high the chains would slacken and she’d crash back down. She’d laugh and ask if it’s possible to swing right around the bar, and when I told her no she smiled and said I might be right but half the fun was in trying.
 

This was before she watched me slaughter our parents.
 

After that she never sang, at least not where I could hear.
 

I don’t blame her. I don’t deserve her song.

I’m sorry, Pimniq. I don’t know why you’re with me in death, but I’m thankful you are.

***

In death I feel cool water against my lips. I open my eyes. I know I’m dead because I see a vision of my sister’s face peering down at me. She looks worried.
 

I’m sorry, Pimniq, I try and tell her, but the words won’t come.

She smiles like she understands.

***

 
There should not be such persistent pain in death.
 

I open my eyes, irritated at the nagging, scratching pain in my left shoulder. I see a low overcast sky and a few snowflakes drifting around me.
 

“Pimniq!” a voice I almost recognize shouts. “Pimniq he’s awake!”

I stop moving, and only now that I’m motionless do I realize I was moving to begin with.

“Untie him,” a girl’s voice says.
 

My sister.

I feel something slip across my wrists. The feeling of freedom in my arms brings a deep, primal instinct to move. I try to sit up, but a wave of pain keeps me flat on my back.
 

I look to the side. My sister’s standing there, smiling in her mischievous way, and behind her a woman named Shiori. Shiori is important for a reason I can’t remember.

“I’m dead,” I say. It’s not a question.
 

Pimniq shakes her head no.
 

“He shot me. The hunter. I remember his rifle. The Ruger Hawkeye. Once here,” I lift my right arm and nearly touch my injured shoulder, “and once in the head. I remember.”

“The second shot missed, Anik,” the girl named Shiori says. “Pimniq swooped from the sky to murder the hunter.”

I close my eyes.
 

Swooped from the sky?
 

The pale woman is talking nonsense.

I strain to sit up and this time I manage to lift my head a few inches before crashing back down.

“We camp here,” Pimniq says, turning from me, her lips tight.
 

She’s still angry with me.
 

“They…they took you,” I say to Pimniq's back as she leaves. “In Pangnirtung? The creatures with black blood?”

Pimniq glances over her shoulder. “They tried.”

The woman named Shiori unties my midsection, then my legs. I’m wrapped in layer after layer of animal hides and furs, like a cocoon. A sour reek wafts from the hides, and suddenly I’m embarrassed.
 

“We’ll clean you,” Shiori whispers.

I don’t want this woman to clean me, and I tell her so.

“Do you remember me?” she asks.

“No.”

Her face falls, then she takes a deep breath and says, “You will.” She looks at the ground for a moment, then says, “I can’t carry you. But if you can stand I can help you walk. Can you stand?”

“I want to be dead.”

“Yes. And you will. We know this for certain, don’t we? But not now.”

The woman leaves me while she arranges some firs and hides beneath a large fir tree. The sun is warm. There are fir and even cedar trees. We are much farther south than I remember.
 

When the woman returns I ask, “How long was I dead?”

“Several days.”

“Where are we?”

“Close enough to scent the Absent. One of their roads is about four miles away. We’re following it south.”

“To what?”

Shiori shushes me and repeats, “Can you stand?”

Fuck you, I want to say.
 

I want to be dead.
 

But instead I nod, and Shiori slides her thin arms under my back and lifts me. My injured shoulder is bound tight with leather and rawhide. I touch my stomach, my chest. I’m very thin. Scarcely more than skin and bone.

The sunlight is too bright in my eyes, but the woods smell wonderful. Warm. Sweet. It must be nearly spring.
 

The season of hope.
 

I slide from the dogsled and my knees give out and Shiori pins me backward, holding me against the sled while I wheeze and gasp. She’s much smaller than me, bur surprisingly strong.
 

“You can do this,” Shiori says, and something in the way she says it, filled with so much
faith
…it makes me believe it too.
 

I push from the sled and take my first step among the living.
 

***

I watch Pimniq collect wood and kindling from the sled and a few dead branches from the surrounding forest. Watch her stack the kindling and light the fire with a single match in the way our father once taught us both. I’m in awe at her every move. I never thought I’d see her again. I want to ask so much, but from the way she keeps her shoulder turned to me I know it isn’t time.
 

I must let her approach me when she’s ready.

Shiori brings me water and dried meat and hard salt biscuits and, when those stay down, a piece of fresh red meat as large as my fist. I’m ravenous, and when the fresh meat vanishes and I ask for more Shiori says no, I need to rest again.
 

She’s right. I lay down in the bed of fur and hides and sleep, and when I awake it’s dark.
 

For a moment I’m terrified, fearing I’m alone.
 

Then I notice Shiori sleeping beside me, and the soft flicker of a fire a few paces away.
 

Pimniq is there, hunched into the fire, her back to me.

I rise from the bed, try and stand, then decide it’s best if I crawl. I throw a black bear fur over my shoulders and crawl to my sister. It’s hard, slow work, crawling on one arm, and by the time I make it to Pimniq I’m sweating and exhausted.

“That was dumb,” Pimniq says, not turning to look at me.
 

I settle on the fur and let the fire warm me for a long while. Red coals pulse and glow as the breeze plays on them. Pimniq hands me a flask of water.

“I’m sorry,” I say, my gaze leaving the fire to meet my sister’s eyes.
 

“You didn’t know they were coming.”

“Not about them. About…mother and father. I’m sorry, Pimniq. And I’m sorry I never apologized until now.”

Pimniq sighs, purses her lips. “You’ve never seen me,” she whispers.

“What?”
 

“Even after you murdered them and I saw your animal spirit. Even with that great nose of yours? You never scented me? You never knew? For years I hid from everyone. Even you. The one person who was like me. Because you never acknowledged me. I thought: maybe he truly can’t scent me. But you could. Couldn’t you? You’ve known for a long time. I
know
you have. You just didn’t want to admit the truth. You preferred the lie. Preferred me to live in your mind as little helpless Pimniq. Your baby sister. Not a person. A thing. An idea.”