The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (37 page)

The sadness hidden in his wide brown eyes is gone.

Anik’s learning to trust what lives in him, which means he’s learning to trust himself.
 

Sometimes, like when Anik returns from a hunt as Tornarsuk, carrying a moose in his powerful jaws, his brilliant white fur stained with blood, I stand in awe of him and understand why the Absent named him a god.
 

He’s magnificent.
 

Looking up at him makes me feel small and unworthy.

At night Pimniq and I sleep huddled against Tornarsuk’s belly.
 

I’m happy for Anik. But I would like to touch lips again.
 

Pimniq taught me the word for this.
 

Kissing.
 

I like the words touching lips better.

Pimniq was watching us from above the first and last time Anik and I touched lips. For some reason knowing this makes me dig my fingernails into my palms and try very hard to breathe slowly. When they are gone hunting I find myself unleashing pestilent locust clouds into the frozen blue sky for no reason other than that I can.

The locusts I free devour entire forest groves and strip the ground down to dirt. I wonder how many I can unleash.
 

I suspect…enough to strip the world bare.

When Anik and Pimniq return and question what happened to the trees I simply tell them it feels good to let what lives inside me out into the light.
 

If I answer at all.

There’s an unhappiness in me that is not only about missing Anik. I recognize I envy him his relationship with his sister, and that this feeling is wicked.
 

I also miss him needing me like he did in Sedna’s lair.
 

But there is more. Worse. I still catch myself thinking of consuming his heart. And now Pimniq's, too. I sent a horsefly to bite her while she slept, and the taste of her blood forced me to walk far into the forest. I remained away for the rest of the night, fighting the desire to open the child’s chest and feed.
 

This is Sedna’s cruel poison.
 

Oh Guardians give me Strength.
 

It must be her poison.

What else could it be?

Anik and Pimniq are my packmates. I could never harm them.

Sometimes, when I think of those weeks Anik and I travelled alone together, him carrying me across his shoulders, each unable to call what lives inside, I realize there was a time when I felt…different. Human.
 

I wonder what it would feel like to live like that all the time?

Today we freed the dogs and abandoned the sled. The dogs scamper around us, nervous and afraid, as Pimniq and I ride on Tornarsuk’s rippling shoulders. Sometimes Pimniq drops from her brother’s back and before she can hit the ground she’s a beautiful white-feathered raven arcing into the sky. Even her eyes glow white. She’s invisible in snow and cloud.
 

Pimniq scouts ahead and behind, always alert, always watching.

She’s strong. But not, perhaps, as strong as she believes.

If there are Absent hunting us, or creatures like us but with evil black hearts, I no longer fear them.

Three of my pack roam together now.
 

I scent our strength.

Tornarsuk marches tirelessly. Soon we begin crossing roads of the Absent. They’re small gravel roads at first, but eventually they grow larger and the cars more frequent. Occasionally airplanes and helicopters fly overhead, forcing Anik to cage Tornarsuk. Anik returns to us tired. His animal’s power still drains him.
 

The fear begins to grow in me as the reek of the Absent filters through the woods. Their pollution and filth. Priest Gabriel may have been wrong about many things, but he was not wrong in condemning these foul creatures.

We arrive at the largest road yet. Pimniq calls it a highway. We’re huddling at the highway’s edge, hiding in heavy brush and waiting to cross, when Anik says to Pimniq: “We need a truck. One large enough to fit the sled dogs.”

“Why?”

“Because we can sell them.”

After a while of waiting Anik says, “That’s weird,” like he doesn’t mean to say it out loud.

“What’s weird?” Pimniq asks. She’s one of those that like to know what is happening everywhere at all times, and not knowing makes her nervous.

“The traffic,” Anik says slowly. “Everyone’s driving north.”

It’s true. The road heading south is empty, but going north there’s a constant stream of traffic. The cars are filthy, caked in dirt and road salt, and many of them are loaded down with boxes, luggage, supplies. The Absent inside look worn and afraid.
 

They stare into the woods with suspicious eyes.

“The Blood Moon,” I say.

Anik nods. “It could be very bad. The newcomers…when they panic…”

“They’re fleeing the cities,” Pimniq says. “Afraid it’s the end of the world.”

Anik sniffs the air. I know what he’s thinking.
 

They might be right.

A large truck passes so close to a smaller car the car has to slam on the brakes. The car’s tires sink into the soft shoulder and for a moment I tingle in anticipation, hoping there will be a crash like the one when I first crawled from the ocean.
 

But the car manages to stay on the road and soon it’s gone.
 

“This could be very bad,” Anik says again. Then he twists his head from side to side, slowly. It’s what he does when he’s confronting something he doesn’t like. “Or it might…we’ll see how bad it’s become.”
 

We wait for a suitable truck for a long time, and when Anik sees one he sends Pimniq onto the road, waving her arms.
 

The truck slows, then stops.
 

The driver, a fat man wearing a jean jacket and baseball hat, rolls down his window, and while he’s distracted Anik slips around the side, punches the man hard across the chin and drags his limp body into the ditch, where I’m waiting with leather cord to bind his hands and feet.
 

The sight of the unconscious Absent at my feet makes me shudder in revulsion. I slip the leather cord around his neck, wrap it three times around my wrists so it won’t slip between my fingers, and begin strangling the life from him.
 

Anik, busy loading the sled dogs into the truck, doesn’t notice me for a few moments, and when he does his eyes widen and he screams for me to stop.

I glare at him. The crawling under my skin is very bad, and I feel an odd sensation, something that’s never happened before: my jaw shifts, then…grows. There’s a loud popping sound and a bolt of pain, and then more shifting around the back of my skull and the rippling under my skin is so bad it feels like something’s feeding on my insides—

“Shiori…you’re…release him! Now!”

“You are not Her,” I say, my voice raspy.

Anik leaps into the ditch. His fists are clenched. His eyes wild. He could summon Tornarsuk to stop me.
 

But he won’t. He’s weak.

The Absent man makes a choking gurgling sound.
 

“Shiori!” Anik screams. “You’re killing him! Stop!”

“I
am
killing him,” I say without a hint of emotion, and now my voice is buzzing, and my vision changes…becomes…fragmented, like I can see in a million directions at once, and the fear of this new Wickedness makes me release the Absent man.
 

He moans and sputters and coughs. Injured. But alive.

“He will die out here anyway,” I say. “Your weakness robbed him of a quick death.”

Anik says nothing. Just stares at me.
 

I don’t like the look in his eyes.
 

Like he’s seeing me for the first time.
 

Like I’m…repulsive.

A car drives by, very slowly, their occupants peering out the window at us.

“Fuck,” Anik says, watching the car recede down the highway. Then he lifts his palm to me and says, “Give me the cord.”

I drop the cord in his hand without a word, turn and enter the backseat of the truck. The inside of the truck stinks like the Absent man. I watch out the back window as Anik binds the Absent man, then covers him in furs and leaves a flask of water beside him.

Maybe the Absent man will live. Or maybe the wolves will find him.

Either way he matters not at all.
 

I settle deeper into the seat as Anik and Pimniq enter the truck.

We drive for a long time in silence.

***

“You can’t murder them like that,” Anik says, glaring at me in the rear-view.

“Why not?” I ask. I’m interested in hearing why. Perhaps if Anik has a good explanation as to why I shouldn’t murder and feed on the Absent I will have a desire to stop. But my suspicion is he has no good reason, and any reason he does have is simply an excuse to explain his own weakness.
 

“Because it isn’t…right.”

“Why not? They mean nothing. They’re like…leaves. Worse than leaves, since leaves fall and nourish the earth. They’re a disease.”
 

This is true. Being with my pack has helped me remember.
 

I roamed once, too. We all did.
 

A very long time ago.
 

Before the Absent arrived.
 

“They have meaning in their own lives,” Anik says. “It’s not right to take that from them.”

“Pimniq murdered the hunter.”

“That was different. He was going to kill us.”

“Pimniq fed on the hunter. I wanted to feed on that Absent. That is their purpose. Like the purpose of the hare is to feed the wolf. You know this, Anik. You hunt to survive. It’s law.”

“Did you intend to feed on him? Are you that hungry?”

“Yes,” I lie. “I am hungry.”

“Me as well,” Pimniq says.
 

Anik twists his hands on the wheel. “All right. Let’s say there’s no reason we shouldn’t kill them. Except this: sometimes it’s right to kill and other times it’s wrong. We didn’t have time to feed on him. There were too many people around. You saw that car slow down? Maybe the people inside will remember us once the truck is reported stolen. Maybe they’ll give the cops our description. We still have a long way to go, if the one you tell us we need is where you think she is.”

“She is.”
 

Why does he doubt me all of a sudden?
 

What have I done to lose his trust?

“Right. And if we didn’t have time to feed, then killing the Absent doesn’t make sense.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s
unnecessary
,” Anik says quickly. “No animal in nature except humans kills without reason, unless it’s sick in the mind.”

Sick in the mind.
 

Is this what I am?
 

“Have you killed without reason, Anik?”

“No. Tornarsuk is always hungry. That’s why I never…why I hated him. I couldn’t control his hunger.”

“And now you can?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good,” I say, folding my arms and staring out the window.

“It’s not control,” Pimniq says, quietly correcting her older brother. “It’s
respect
. You know him well enough now to understand what he needs. And to provide for him so he doesn’t have to war against you.”

“Yes. That,” Anik says, sounding tired. Then he looks at me in the mirror again. I shift so I’m out of sight. “It’s going to to get much harder for us now, Shiori. Understand? More…complicated. We’re in the world of humans. We need to be careful, and we need to act together. That means no killing unless we’re hunting together and it’s safe to kill. Yes?”

You never hunt with me, I almost tell him. But instead I say yes, very quietly, then lay my head against the window and watch the landscape become tarnished by garbage-strewn parking lots and ugly steel and wood buildings and abandoned or burning cars.
 

The Absent are a disease, polluting everything they touch. The All Encompassing will make Anik understand this. And if she won’t, she is not who I hope she is.
 

***

We drive until Anik mutters he’s worried about running out of gas, then we drive some more. The highway winds through a few Absent villages. The streets are empty. Many of the stores have smashed in windows. Sometimes, when I look down side streets, I see fires burning in the middle of them and Absent milling around. Sometimes we pass the smoldering remains of a house fire. The Absent Land is even uglier and more wretched than I remember from my time when I crawled from the ocean.

Cars make the angry blaring sound that I’ve learned is called ‘honking’ as we drive past, as if they don’t agree with us driving in this direction. Occasionally an Absent, always a big man with a fat face and simple but kind eyes leaps across the road and tries to wave us down. When this happens Anik accelerates the truck and the fat stupidly helpful Absent leaps out of the way.
 

“How bad is it?” Pimniq says.
 

I’ve learned she’s never been this far south. For some reason this is something she is embarrassed about.
 

“It’s early,” Anik answers, pointing to a line of blue and white cars. “There. See that? Cops. If we were further along they’d have run like the rest of them. Or been killed.”

“There’s been looting,” Pimniq says as we drive past a series of boarded-up stores.
 

“They might have a curfew in place. Martial law. But right now most people are still convinced everything’s all right. The people in the cities haven’t swarmed north yet, or else this highway would be a solid line of cars. So the people leaving now are the ones inclined to do so, the ones who’ve always waited for a reason to.”

“The city people swarming north will die?” I ask.

“Yes,” Anik says.

“Then why go?”

“Because for them north is like…hope. An idea. They think the north is freedom. Peace. They don’t know what it means to be cold. When their cities become unlivable, they figure the north will save them. They believe if they ruin one home they’ll simply move to another, like they have for centuries. But this time there’s nowhere else.”