The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (15 page)

Gladys’ long, mascara-thick eyelashes flutter. That wasn’t what she expected. “You may also have a place in the new age, Aaron of the Mountain River. Should you choose to become more than a collared beast.”

“You mean as your lapdog? I’d rather be that sweat-stained scooter.”

Gladys turns to the right, makes a quick ‘come hither’ motion with her fingers.
 

Sorry steps beside her, and Soren and Annie and the weak-assed SoCal raver guy follow behind him. That leaves…who waiting for me outside this fucking pit? Mia and Nash at the least. Unless they’ve turned traitor as well. But I figure since they’re not here, eyeing me through this glass wall, maybe they’re still free.

Sorry’s standing with his legs shoulder-width apart and his hands clasped at his waist. It’s like I’m seeing him for the first time. His bulk. His good-boy looks hardened by the shaved head and arcing scar and tattoos coloring his heavily-muscled arms.
 

My first packmate. My baby bro.

Something withers in me. It’s like the color drains from the world.

And the only color left? Blood red rage.
 

“Your new MC?” I ask Sorry, my lips twisting in derision. “Gunna get a scarf and a tricked-out Euro-trash scooter? Buzz around, tour the wineries?”

Sorry ignores me. The motherfucker.
 

Annie steps close to the glass, leans over to expose the soft white skin of her tits and whispers, “You’re not half as good as you think you are.”

“Still makes me twice as good as him,” I say, nodding at Soren.
 

Annie blows me a kiss and returns to her man’s side.
 

Sorry stares at me with something approaching sadness, then says, “Call her, Aaron. Call your bloodmate.”

“Lily?”
 

Sorry nods.
 

“Lily’s a Skin. Has fuck-all to do with this.”

Gladys chortles again. Soren looks at her and smiles. The stainless steel Stricken breeding tables recede into the shadows behind them. A shudder of revulsion slams into me, so powerful it raises bile to my lips. I spit, try to keep cool. Keep a fucking lid on it, right? But seeing Purebloods—and my
brother
—standing shoulder to shoulder with that twisted, hideous Stricken. Fuck it. I’ve seen a lot of shit in my time. But this? It’s just…unnatural. There’s no place in the natural order for such an abomination. At least there
wasn’t
, and right then I realize everyone’s been right.

Shit’s changed.
 

But I haven’t. And now—
 

“That’s bullshit, Aaron. You know it. You sensed it on her. What she is. You marked her. Initiated her Becoming. It can’t be stopped. She’ll destroy us, Aaron. She’ll destroy everything.”

I shrug. “It was good while it lasted.”

“Yeah, brother,” Sorry says quietly. “It was.”

Sorry takes off his leather cut, hands it to Soren. The iron collar around his neck is gone, and my wolf howls in envy.
 

Sorry smiles. “It’s worth it, Aaron. To be free.”

“Is that what the Stricken offered? Freedom? Cuz from here it looks like you traded one collar for another.”

Sorry looks at Gladys and says, “He won’t do it. I know him better than anyone alive. The stubborn bastard.”

“She’ll hear him scream as he dies,” Gladys says. “She’ll come for him.”

Sorry looks at me. “Yeah. She will.”

“Then make him howl,” Gladys says. “And after we have her, bring me your brother’s beating heart. I’m famished.”

***

The window grows dark and the trap door opens above.
 

I scent my brother.

“Come on in,” I say. “Water’s fine.”

Sorry leaps down, lands without a sound. He’s naked to the waist, his tats stretching and rippling as his muscles bulge and rearrange beneath his skin. He looks at me with his grey-green eyes and drops his fucking fangs.

“You think she’s jerking off to this?” I say, nodding toward the window. “You think she can even find it?”

“Call Lily,” Sorry growls. “Call her and I swear you live.”

“I mean, you tappin’ Moby Dick? Cuz fuck, bro. You crazy dog. I knew you had low standards. But that—”

“Call her.”

Sorry’s wolf is right at the surface. Gleaming jet-black fur springs from his shoulders and along his arms, and my animal scents his freedom and howls, hating the cage I’m forced to keep him in. Hating me.
 

“I forgive you, brother,” I tell him, and I mean it. “I fucked up. I failed you. I’m sorry. I wish I could have done more.”

“You still don’t get it,” Sorry snarls. “You stupid, arrogant fuck. There’s nothing you can do. There was
never
anything you could do. As soon as you marked her it was already over. The world changes. Those who don’t adapt die off. Just like the weak. You’ve seen it over and over. Century after century. But you didn’t learn. You’ve had your head in the woods. Caught up in dreams of roaming free. Nostalgic for a past that ended eons ago. The dinosaurs. The dodo. Gone. Powerful or weak—it doesn’t matter. Faded to memory. That’s what’ll happen to us. We can scarcely breed, and when we do the result is hideous and lives only days.”

“What are you now, if not a Pureblood?”

Sorry’s head is swelling, narrowing into a long, pointed snout. “I’m something new. Something…different.”

“Bullshit,” I say as Sorry and I begin circling one another. “You’re free from the collar, but I still scent you. You still bleed red. A wild wolf prowling the steppe. You’ve abandoned your pack is all. Like the First Fallen. You’ve forsaken what makes us who we are.”

Sorry smiles in a way that’s sad and condescending all at once, then says, “The Stricken. They’re our brothers and sisters.”

The words slam into me, more violent than any physical blow, and I stumble backward, clutching my head in my hands, trying to tell myself he’s wrong, he’s lying, they’ve fucked with his mind.
 

The Stricken. My brothers and sisters? My
packmates
?
 

It can’t be.
 

“The Stricken have filled you full of lies,” I say. “They’re corrupt. Unnatural. Weak. They’re
prey
.”

“You have to remember,” Sorry says. “I know you’ve tried. I’ve seen your sketchbook. Heard you howling and rambling in your sleep. Think back, Aaron! To the time before the One War. Do you remember?”

“No.” I can’t help myself. I’m listening to him. I should murder him. But I can’t. Not before I hear him out. He deserves that much.
 

Sorry nods. “Yeah. I know you don’t. I didn’t either, until recently. I couldn’t…see through the fog. It’s been so long. Our animals have short memories.”

“An animal has no use for the past. There’s only now. This moment. Why remember?”

“Because it
matters
. The First Fallen murdered his alpha father and raped his mother. The offspring of that Atrocity are the Stricken. But we share ancient blood. Think about it. They can sight. They have animals living in them as sure as we do.”

“Horrible, twisted things. Monsters.”

“That’s what the Skins call us. Monsters. Demons.”

“Stricken feed on Skins. We feed on Stricken. It’s natural law.”

“Not anymore,” Sorry says, his face grim. “The old law is dead.”
 

“Call them what you want. Packmates? Fuck if I care. They’re your new masters.”

“He’s here,” Sorry says with an awe in his voice I’ve never heard before. “He’s Becoming. He will mate. Species adapt. Evolve. Or die off.”

The words send a chill through me. The First Fallen. The One Without Value. The ancestor whose unnatural hunger spawned the Stricken we’ve hunted since—

“That’s why the Stricken grow strong,” I say. “How they feed on us. How they breed. Because of
him
?”
 

Sorry’s eyes gleam. “Do you see it now, brother? Why she’s so important? Why we must have your bloodmate the All Encompassing?”

I’m beginning to.
 

My little brother’s right: I’ve had my head up my ass.

“She’s his…”

Sorry nods, real slow, and says, “Yeah. Lily’s the First Fallen’s sister. There are three more. Offspring of the Primal Pair. Now they return as the Risen.”
 

I shake my head, trying to separate truth from lies. Myth from reality. But if what my brother says is true, and the First Fallen is Becoming, and Lily is his sister the All Encompassing…then that means there’s hope for the Purebloods.
 

But only if these pricks don’t get to her first.
 

I flash my brother a rueful smile. “I gotta say…it
does
feel fucked up, no longer being top dog.”
 

“She’ll destroy us,” Sorry says. “The Risen will exterminate us all—Purebloods and Stricken alike. Her packmates draw close. She must be killed before she Becomes her true animal.”

So that’s it. Turn Sparkles over to Fat Gladys and wave my flag for the First Fallen, or watch as the Risen slaughter us to take our place at the top of the food chain.
 

“You need to think about this, brother,” Sorry says. “You need to think
very
carefully.”

My wolf already knows. The past us dead. The future is an illusion. There’s only now: the truth of the gut and blood and nose and…heart. Whatever Lily is, we shared something. I held her in my arms and marked her.
 

“I won’t call her,” I say. “And I won’t fight you.”

“You’ll fight. It’s what we are. It’s law.”
 

We resume circling one another, cautiously, eyeing for weakness. But I’ve fought alongside my animal-brother my entire life. There was no weakness in Sorry with the collar on…and now…

Sorry’s already heavy shoulders bulge and grow. His thigh muscles lengthen into taut sinewy fibers. The bones in his chest snap and rearrange themselves.
 

“It’s beautiful to see you free, my brother,” I say. “I’m glad it’s you.”

“I only wish it could happen outside,” Sorry says, “under a night sky.”

I try and sight into the future. There’s only darkness.

Sorry stands a full two feet taller than me. Thick black fur covers his body. His jaws are nearly a foot long, lined with jagged, razor sharp teeth. “I think we know how this ends,” he says, his voice rough and slurred as the wolf takes him. “Mia and Nash are gone. The Pureblood packs are scattered across the globe. Isolated. Vulnerable. Unable to bear offspring to carry the species. Still believing they’re the hunters. But one day they’ll wake up and realize they’re prey.”

“You cut off Mia’s head? Burned it? Feasted on her heart?”

Sorry pauses, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

I throw my chin up and laugh. “You of all people should know how hard that bitch is to kill.”

“We’ll find her. And if not? It doesn’t matter.”

“What happens? When the last Purebloods are gone? Look at that Stricken bitch out there. Look at her! No law. No pack loyalty. Only corruption and greed and all-consuming hunger. Those who remain after the Purebloods will turn on themselves. A mad dance of anarchy and despair.”

“I’ll cross that bridge—”

Sorry comes in faster than I ever dreamed possible.

A
SOUND
BUILDS
from deep within my chest, a high-pitched, piercing shriek. The window behind me and the mirror over Aaron’s dresser shatter into razor-sharp fragments. The shards lift into the air, caught in the power of my scream and whirl around the room to slice into the creature that was once Al Kusch.
 

He staggers backward, the mouths in his flesh screaming with me. My lungs are on fire, and then the heat comes, the same heat I felt on the bike with Aaron, bursting from my lips, an unnatural heat born of terror and hatred, an orange-white wall of shimmering flame that lifts Kusch into the air and slams him against the far wall and immediately sets the wall on fire. Flames lick upward to curl against the ceiling. Black smoke settles against the roof and begins filling the room.

The bite-mark Aaron left on my shoulder is stinging and burning like mad. I scratch at it and feel the patch of fur. It’s longer now. More coarse.
 

Kuschy’s front is burned black. The overwhelming reek of seared flesh hits my nose, gagging me, stopping my scream and the heat with it.

Kusch, well, he doesn’t look so pretty now.

I grab the AK from the floor, press it hard against my shoulder, squeeze the trigger and hold the fucking thing down until the heat in the barrel burns my hand and Kusch’s ugly black blood is spread across the burning wall.
 

He’s still standing, though, and as I pause I see the bullet wounds begin to heal over faster than I’d like.

Flames twist around the doorframe leading to the hall, their flickering light casting shifting patterns across the room. The house is going up. Soon Aaron’s bedroom will be engulfed.
 

The thought makes me grin.
 

Asshole deserves it.
 

I don’t care if I’m insane. I don’t care if I’m dreaming or already locked away in a lightless cell and this vision is the product of some nasty drug cocktail.

I’m going to murder Al Kusch.
 

The sick, kidnapping, wannabe rapist bastard.

And after seeing that biker beheaded in the condo this morning I know how to do it.

I slam the trigger down, emptying the clip, then walk right up to Kusch and scream murderous fire at him.

Except nothing happens.

No wall of heat. Just my own voice, husky and raw and growing weaker by the second. I muster my strength and scream some more, then I hear a sound that silences me.

It’s Kusch. He’s laughing. Staggering away from the wall.
 

Healing right before my eyes.

“Ah, not bad, rookie,” Kusch says, his voice unrecognizable because half his jaw is blown off. “Not a bad effort. For a fucking infant.”