The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (39 page)

I’m molting. Casting off an old skin. Being born anew.

I whirl, my many legs clicking along the floor, and catch a glimpse of my reflection in the bank windows. I’m lovely. A glistening yellow-black wasp with a curving, foot-long black stinger.
 

The Stricken men fire up at me. Their bullets hit my plated armor and bounce around the room. I sweep two men into my mandibles and saw them in half. Only their blood isn’t black. It’s red. They’re Absent, and this makes me snicker and rub my forelegs together. I step over the dead Absent and straight into the gunfire. A few of the smarter ones turn to run. I snatch the closest, pin him to the ground and lower my mandibles. He screams and writhes, and as he moves the sleeve on his jacket lifts and I see three small red disks burned into his skin.
 

The mark I carry.
 

The man is a Guardian of the Gate.

“Where is he?” I scream, my voice high-pitched and raspy.

The man, eyes wild, moans and tears at my foreleg.
 

I press a claw into his belly just hard enough to draw blood. “Where is Priest Gabriel? Tell me and live.”

“He’s on…the boat…the Arc…the
Guardian
…”

“Where?”

“Oh Guardians give me strength…” the man prays as his eyes roll in his head.

“Where?”

“I don’t know! In the ocean! Gone!”

“Why are you here?”

“Why…am I? We’re
everywhere
now. The police. The military. Everywhere! He has risen! We rise with him!”

“Who?”

“The One Without Value.”

I press my claw into the Absent’s belly. Blood pools in the hollow.
 

“Oh god no wait I’ll tell you his name Gabriel I know the priest’s true name he’s very powerful his name is—”

There’s a blast of gunfire.
 

The Absent’s head explodes.
 

I lift my head and shriek in rage.

There, walking through the smoke, is another Stricken. He’s a lean older man, tall and trim, dressed in a dark grey suit. Only a pair of glittering crystal fangs betray his true nature.
 

I shriek and leap at him.
 

The dying Absent was about to tell me Priest Gabriel’s true name, and this one silenced him.
 

Fine. I’ll simply tear it from him instead.

But as I leap toward him something happens. The Stricken man does nothing, only looks at me with his cruel blue eyes and my swarm slips away, and when I land in a heap at his feet I’m only Shiori, a weak sack of skin and bone and blood.
 

The impact sets my head ringing.
 

I struggle to my knees, blinking warm wetness from my eyes.

The Stricken man says nothing, only brings his sharp-toed boot back and kicks me straight in the abdomen, forcing the breath from my lungs.

“Please…stop…” I beg.

The man kicks me again. Pain explodes through my ribs. His face is blank as he delivers a third kick, this one in the face. A white-hot explosion blinds me and there’s a horrible cracking sound as my jaw fractures.

Where are you?
I scream at what lives within.
 

But the swarm is gone. The wasp is gone. This Stricken man stole them from me, and realizing there is one with such power makes me very afraid. Yellow smoke enters my lungs, choking me. It’s not only that my creature is gone…it’s like I never had her.
 

I can’t scent. Can’t move. Can’t heal.
 

He’s transformed me into one of
them
.
 

An Absent. A Skin. A life of fear and weakness.
 

The Stricken man leans down, grabs me by the hair, lifts me to my knees, brings his face very close to mine. He’s handsome in a cold, whittled way that reminds me of spruce trees growing in the northern woods.
 

He’s inspecting me. Scenting me.
 

His lips don’t move, but I hear the fuck speak in my mind:
I’m glad you finally found her, Shiori. She’s quite remarkable.

“Get…out…” I moan through my broken jaw.
 

The man smiles.
 

And I’m glad I found you. All of you. We were beginning to worry
.

I
LIE
BESIDE
my bloodmate, feeling her heartbeat, our sweat-slick bodies warm in the firelight. Win and lose. Peaks and valleys. I lost my brother. I lost my pack. And now I have…this. I don’t even know what to call it, this thing Lily and I have. It wasn’t a trade—I didn’t fucking
plan
it this way, but now that it’s happened it makes ruthless sense. Would I have fallen so hard for Lily if my pack wasn’t already in trouble when I met her? If I didn’t sense the world changing around me? If I didn’t see—in some far off, distant way—the shit storm about to hit? I don’t think so. I think I would have gone right on living as I was: blind and oblivious, believing I had it all figured out, sure of my place in the world, convinced of my superiority.

Sometimes you have to lose to love.
 

Lily has her arm over her forehead, asleep. I love the soft curve under arm. I love the scent of her skin. I love the creamy flesh of her breasts. I kiss her ribs, one at a time, gently, and she moans softly. Place her nipple in my mouth and feel it harden. I’ve never stayed more than a few minutes with any girl. Didn’t like the silence that arrives after a fuck, and the lame conversations that spring up to fill it.
 

I bury my face in Lily’s side and think of my brother. Hasn’t really hit home. It’s too recent. Feels like he’s out on a hunt, or in another room geeking on his computer. Fucking guy. Wouldn’t let her bring him back? A part of me—a mean, nasty part—wonders if he did that to spite me. Hurt me. And when I think that the self-hatred hits, because yeah, Aaron, it’s all about you.
 

You vain, self-absorbed motherfucker.
 

No. I know why Sorry did it.
 

He got ground down. A bit at a time. Over centuries. The Skins talk about living forever like it’s a fucking blessing. Nope. Living forever means you see it all, then you see it again, and again, and again, and each time you care a little less, until one day you wake up and realize you don’t care at all.
 

The body might be capable of living forever.
 

But the mind and heart? Fuck no.
 

Sorry wanted out. Simple as that. No need to over-complicate shit like the Skins do. He felt the Stricken’s poison in him and knew it could be the end. So he walked into death with open arms.
 

Does that make him a coward?
 

I push away from Lily. I don’t feel like touching her anymore. Don’t feel I deserve it. I sit up and stare at the dying fire. Was Sorry a coward? Who the fuck cares. He did what he felt he had to do. To each his own.
 

And he was afraid. I know that now, because I’m finally afraid too. Sorry always wore his heart on his sleeve. He lived large…and he
felt
large to.

Every fucking sunset made him smile.
 

I used to call him a pussy. A bitch.
 

Nagged at him to toughen up.
 

Told him the world’s too hard to put yourself out there so much.
 

Sorry wasn’t shut down inside. Like me.
 

But tell you what? Now, when I feel my death so close I can nearly taste it, I wish I’d smiled at a fucking sunset now and then. Wished I’d let the world in a little more. Because if you don’t…what’s the fucking point of living?
 

Why bear all this bullshit if you can’t even trust a sunset?

I glance at Lily. She’s going to murder me, if she lives long enough to fully Become.
 

Her creature will demand us Pureblood’s give her total submission.
 

I’ll tell her to go fuck herself. She’ll rip me open and feed.
 

That’s a fact.

No amount of fire-lit nookie’s gunna change the fact I’ll never fucking kneel.
 

And I guess I’m all right with it.
 

What I’m not all right with is the thought of Lily dying first.
 

That’s the bitch about love. It puts you out there.
 

Whether you want it to or not.

There might be another reason Sorry did it, and the more I think on it the more it makes sense. Sorry loved me. Even when he betrayed me he loved me. He saw me failing out here and didn’t want to see it anymore. Couldn’t take seeing his older bro die slow right before his eyes.
 

He wanted to go first, just like I want to go before Lily.

The fire’s burned down to orange coals.
 

I saw that three-eyed motherfucker in the sky.
 

I know me and my kind don’t have a hope against him and his army.
 

But Lily? She’s got a hope.
 

I’m gunna do everything I can to make sure she takes that fucker down. Losing my pack was a shit move. We were stronger with them, even if they drove me mad sometimes.
 

Finger’s trace across my lower back.
 

I turn to see Lily propped on her elbow, smiling up at me.
 

“What’s on your mind, outlaw?”

“Nothing worth talking about.”

Lily’s smile fades. Damn. I’m done thinking about my brother, so I say, “Guess I’m thinking about that mark I gave you. Why it happened. How it all started.”

Lily rubs the red wound on her shoulder and winces.
 

“Fucking thing still won’t heal,” she says.

“It’s not supposed to.”

“You called her,” Lily whispers. It’s not an accusation. Just a statement of fact. “You called the animal into being.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Shush. You didn’t know.
I
didn’t know.”

“Someone did.”

“Yeah.” Lily stares at me for a minute, her eyes bright in the glimmering orange coal, then says, “Come here. I want to feel you in me.”

I ignore her and say, “I guess I want to know why you haven’t marked me in return. Sealed the deal.”

Lily’s face turns grim. “Seems early. You need a ring? We in a rush?”

“Hell yeah. Faster is
always
better. No sense over-thinking this shit.”

“I didn’t think it was important to you.”

“It wasn’t. Until tonight.”

“Then what’s the hurry?”

The fucking hurry is I’m going to die, I almost say.
 

But there’s no use being a buzz kill.
 

“You’re right,” I say, smiling. “There’s no rush. Forget it.”

Lily rises, shrugs a green army surplus blanket over her shoulders and settles beside me.

“You think they’re fucking?” I ask with a sly grin.

“Trish with the rasta reptile? Never.”

I chuckle. “Yeah. She’s probably lecturing him on the evil influences of cannabis.”

“She probably has him bound and gagged to keep him from hitting on her. Now, if it was Trish and Nash alo—”

Lily interrupts herself, stares at her hands, picks her fingernails and says, “I’m sorry.”

“What for? It’s not like he’s dead too. Fucker pissed off. Can’t say I blame him.”

“You really think you did that bad?”

“Worse, if it wasn’t—”

I forget what I’m going to say, because suddenly Lily’s eyes flicker bright red, just once, and her expression goes blank. A moment later she’s back with me, holding her hands to her chest, gasping for air like she just ran a minute mile.
 

“Lily?” I say, throwing an arm around her waist and pulling her close. “You with me? What’s wrong? What happened?”

Lily looks at me. “They’re gone.”

“Gone? Who?”

“The others. The ones you called my…packmates. The ones in the dream.”

“Fucking hell.”

“I’ve been…feeling them for a long time now. Like an ache. Growing sharper every hour. I think…as they got closer I felt them more. I could even feel…what they were feeling sometimes. Fear. Rage. Hunger. Desire.”

“The basics.”

“Yeah. Nothing specific. No words or thoughts. Just a kind of…melting pot of raw emotion. And I felt them getting stronger. The three closest at least. The other one…he’s growing more distant. Fading. I’m afraid of losing him entirely.”

“And now?”

“Nothing. Like someone turned out a light. They’re just…gone. Like they never were.”

“Dead.”

“No. I don’t think so. Their deaths would feel different than this. They
were
dying, though. That’s for certain, when I last felt them a few moments ago. The fear and pain was…overwhelming. Horrible. I don’t even know these people and I’m afraid for them, Aaron. How fucked is that?”

“You’ve known them longer than you’ve known anyone.”

“I think that’s true. They feel familiar, you know? Like a very close friend from childhood you haven’t seen in years. You spend a few minutes together and suddenly its almost like it was before you were apart.”

“You mentioned maybe knowing who the First Fallen is.”

“Someone told me.”

“Do you trust him?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”
 

“Who is he?”

Lily sighs. “His name is Connor Lerrick. Son of August Lerrick.”

“The businessman? The rich prick? Dude’s a fucking Seattle institution.”

“Yeah. He is.”

Damn. I don’t like where this is heading, and the animal in me? In the wild you fight to claim something, and you fight to keep it yours. It’s instinct. Law. So I stare at the fire and say, “How do you know the rich prick’s son?”

“We…were together. On again off again. Nothing serious.”

“On or off now?”

“Off. Way off.”