The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (13 page)

I huddle on the bench, clutching my knees to my chest, trying to regain my breath, trying to call my animal stalker—

The Stricken around the axolotl pause.
 

Spit and snarl.
 

But they leave me alone.
 

The skinless axolotl looks at me and gestures out the window.
 

My hand’s mangled and bleeding and my heart’s pounding in my chest. I watch a Stricken rodent, a weasel or rat, bury its snout into the abdomen of a screaming horse-creature and emerge with a mouthful of entrails—

The skinless axolotl offers me the mango.

I’m shaking, sweating, bleeding. I lean forward and retch. The only thing keeping me alive is this filthy Stricken axolotl and I wonder why, there’s something I can’t see, some piece I’m missing—
 

The fields have given way to a few scattered huts. The Stricken begin leaping out of the bus. I sit very still while the bus empties, then wrap my mangled hand in a burlap sack. I’m not healing.

The bus ascends a small knoll. Spread below is a vast slum built against shadowed mountains in the distance. Wood and concrete and corrugated steel buildings several stories high lean into one another. The bus slows as it descends into the slum.
 

The dirt road becomes so narrow the bus nearly brushes the buildings on either side. Tangled electrical wires lace overhead, some sparking white.
 

The streets are empty.
 

The bus lumbers on. The driver’s hidden behind a partition.
 

I glance at the open door. I could leap out—

“It’s too late for escape, Rodas,” a voice says from beside me.

I turn to face the axolotl and find only the withered old farmer digging in his burlap sack for another mango.
 

“Why?”

“Because we’ve already arrived.”

“Where?”
 

The bus grinds to a shuddering halt.

***

I glance outside, dreading what I’ll find. At first there’s only shadows and ruined buildings and the odd stray dog tearing at a pile of garbage. Then a face emerges from the darkness. A young boy’s face. I blink, straining to see in the dust and gloom. Our eyes meet. The boy stares at me from the shadows.
 

Not aggressively. Not in welcoming.
 

Just staring at me with small, black eyes.

I’m about to say something to the Stricken farmer when suddenly he stands, stretches his arms overhead and slips out the door. I remain frozen in my seat, watching the farmer disappear into the night.
 

I don’t want to leave the bus. I
can’t
leave it.
 

Every instinct tells me not to go outside, wander these alleys and empty streets—

The boy slips from the shadows. It’s difficult to see, but there’s something…wrong with him. His limbs too long and twisted into strange angles. Almost…broken. Skin stretched over awkward knobs of bone. Like he was in a terrible accident long ago and his bones fused together wrong.

Javier the Broken
, Tamara said.

This child? This tiny, broken creature rules Mexico City at night?
 

I shake my head and sneer.
 

Lies and treachery.

The boy glares at me, then takes another step into the alley. He’s invisible except for his pale face glowing in the darkness.

I grip the seat in front. Remember the Stricken falling on each other. Their screeches and snarls. Pained and bloodthirsty. The mad intoxication of a feed. I remember how that felt. The endless hunger so close to being satiated—

The Spotted Stalker has abandoned me. I’m nothing but a Skin. Those Stricken could have eaten me alive, but the axolotl stopped them. He had…power. He brought me here. Guided me to the broken boy. Perhaps the boy is an ally. Loyal to the Lord of Near and Nigh, as I am loyal.
 

Perhaps he will restore my Stalker.
 

I’m out of the bus before I can stop myself.
 

The broken boy is gone, but I limp down the alley I last saw him in, my amputated foot making me run my right hand against the collapsing buildings to steady myself. I’m still bleeding; I can still feel the Stricken’s fangs pierce my skin…the knowledge that death is near—

I offer myself—

I arrive at an intersection where three alleys meet. I whirl in the middle, looking down each, uncertain. The blood-red sky is a narrow strip of light between the buildings overhead. There are clothes on clotheslines drying in the hot evening wind, but no sign of anyone.
 

I take a few steps down a different alley, pause, scent the air, then shake my head in frustration and retrace my steps to the intersection.
 

Spin in a half circle.

Which alley was it? That I came down?

I can’t tell. I can’t scent.

I’m lost.

I loose a despairing scream and race down the closest ally, not caring where the broken boy is. I need out of this foul slum. My breath quickens and I whirl right at an intersection, then left, then another right and soon I stop trying to keep track, I’m simply running, fleeing, because a horrible suspicion is creeping into my mind.

I’m being chased.

Pursued.
 

My amputated foot pains me so bad I have to lean against a wall to gather my strength. Where am I? I lift my head and scream and there, far off in the distance, a lone wolf howls.
 

I stagger onward, bend over and retch bitter yellow fluid. Notice a strange construction hidden in the shadows. It’s a bundle of wood, tied with string or rope, about as tall as my knee. It forms a rough pyramid, and resting on top of the pyramid is a single, still-bloody eye.
 

Looking at me. Watching.

I scream and the wolf howls, closer now, on my scent. I leap down another alley, running blind, my strength fading. The wooden constructions are everywhere. In the shadows beside the hovels. On the balconies overhead. Tied to the electrical wires. All pyramid shaped, with a single lifeless eyeball peering at me. I kick one of the pyramids over. It clatters to the ground and the eyeball rolls underfoot and I stomp at it. The eyeball squishes beneath my heel and something in the…
fleshiness
of it, the rotten
weakness
makes me laugh.
 

My laughter echoes in the dark alley.

The wolf howls in answer.

A winged creature swoops low. I cower, fling my arms overhead, moan in fear. The creature flies around a corner and vanishes.
 

Rise, Rodas
, a clicking, insectile voice says.

I stop. Whirl. Search the buildings and dark corners. But there’s only the strange wooden pyramids and the watching eyeballs—

Rise, Rodas. My loyal brother.

It’s him. The One I Am Slave To. It must be.

Hope, a tiny, frail light, warms my chest. Gives me strength.
 

“O Night Lord,” I whisper, clutching my deer’s foot and mirror amulet, “have you mistaken me for another? I who am a commoner, a laborer. In excrement and in filth my life is lived…”
 

I sprint down another alley. The wooden pyramids are taller now, looming over me, and soon the eyeballs tied on top become limbs, then entire bodies, rotting and half-consumed.

Rise at my side, loyal brother.

The wooden pyramids grow until they spread across the alley. I thread my way through them, Skin and Stricken and Pureblood bodies draped overhead, all staring a single direction. My prayer spills from my lips, a breathless rush: “My Lord I am unreliable. I am filth. I am an imbecile. I am stillborn. Why do you darken the sky for one such as me? For what reason do you offer such a wondrous gift?”

Because you remained at my side,
the voice answers.
Because you alone stayed true.

I collapse to my knees, sobbing. “The One I Am Slave To?” I whisper. “Please, my Lord. Rescue me from this waste? Please? Lift me on your reed mat?”
 

Silence except the sound of my tears.

Then I see the boy up ahead. The same blank, youthful face and piercing dark eyes. But something has changed. The boy’s wearing a necklace of human eyeballs. His arms and legs are long and twisted and he uses them to crawl, like a spider—

Follow the boy,
Rodas,
the insectile voice whispers in my mind.
Follow the Lord of Mictlan.

I rise to my feet, no longer afraid. He summoned me. My Lord of Blood summoned me to this dead land. He has need of me.
 

The wooden pyramids are everywhere now, so thick across the alley they’re like bars on a prison, forcing me to slow and slip between them.
 

We roamed
, the voice says.
We roamed and hunted and fed and ruled. Do you remember, my brother? Do you remember how it felt to rule?

I don’t. But I want to.
 

I want to remember more than anything—

The alley opens up into a broad courtyard. I stagger into open ground. There, in the center of the courtyard, is a massive wooden pyramid. It towers six stories tall, looming over the broken concrete slums, a knife piercing the red-black sky. Bodies ring the pyramid, so thick they obscure the ground.
 

I stagger into the courtyard. Fall to my knees. Rise and fall again.
 

Javier the Broken is standing on the bodies, his misshapen spider-like limbs stabbing into their flesh. He stares at me, black eyes set in that boyish face, leans down, rips an arm from the pile and begins feeding.
 

And there are others.

A wolf-creature, white with a patch of light brown on its back and shimmering crystal fangs. The wolf sees me and lifts his head to the pyramid and howls, and then the wolf vanishes and I’m staring into the brown eyes of a handsome man dressed in a finely tailored black suit.
 

I’ve seen this man before. But where?

Then a giant golden eagle settles beside him, and moments later there’s a lovely woman kneeling amid the decaying bodies, running her hands through her red-gold hair. She has delicate features and pale skin and I remember her touching me, whispering in my ear, I remember her scent, like sun-warmed mountain wind, and how desperately I wanted to fuck her—

“Star?” I whisper, not quite believing.

“Welcome, Rodas the Heart Eater,” Star says with her glowing smile.
 

“What…what is this place?” I ask, still not trusting any of them.

“A temple hidden deep in Mictlan,” Star says, gesturing at the wooden pyramid. “It is the
first
temple. It has existed for a very long time.”

My loyal brother—

The voice in my head. The One I Am Slave To.

I hurry forward, step onto the pile of bodies. I stare into the pyramid, half expecting some…shape to emerge. But there’s only raw wood and rope and a few corpses suspended and swinging in the breeze.

“I don’t…where is he?” I ask.

“He’s there,” the man says, nodding at the temple. “But lost to us. Trapped in another land. For now.”

Connor. The man’s name is Connor. Star called him that when she touched me in the Cloud Temple. She also called him…brother.

“I hear him in my mind,” I say.

Star nods. “You are fortunate to live so close to him. He favors you, Rodas. He favors you above all others.” She casts her brother a quick glance, then says to me, “Where is your bloodmate?”

“Tamara?” I growl.

“Yes. Where is she?”

“She sent me alone.”

Another quick glance. Then Star asks me why.

“She is with…Collazo.”

“The Jackal?” Connor says, sounding surprised.
 

Rage and shame burn through me.
 

I watch Javier the Broken feed on the corpses at his feet.
 

I demand her.

The insect voice slams into me, so powerful I shriek and fall to my knees.

Star’s eyes widen in alarm. “What did he say?” she asks. “What did he want?”

I shake my head. The pain too great to speak. Such power.
 

More than I’d ever imagined—

I demand her!

“Yes my Lord!” I scream.
 

“Tell me,” Star asks. “Tell me what the Fallen requests.”

The Fallen? I don’t know. Who is this First Fallen? Is he the One I Am Slave To? I can’t think. He calls me brother. But I don’t remember. There’s something missing, some truth I can’t see…but the power, it’s unlike anything I’ve dreamed of, and a part of me yearns for that power, needs it—

Yes, my loyal brother. We’re stronger together. Guarding one another’s flank. You feel it, don’t you? So tell her. Tell the faithful what I demand.
 

“He wants…he says he demands…you,” I say to Star.

“No,” Star whispers. “Not like this. Not now.”

Javier the Broken lifts his head from his feed. His child’s face is smeared in blood. He stares at Star, his face empty of expression, then clicks his twisted limbs together.

“No,” Star whispers. “Please. Connor? Not like this. Please?”

Sister and brother share a single glance. No words are spoken, but suddenly Star understands. She makes to run. Connor leaps in front of Javier the Broken, trying to protect his sister. Connor’s claws emerge and he lashes out, catching the Broken in the chest and cutting him open.
 

Javier’s boyish face registers no pain.
 

Connor’s eyes widen.
 

Star makes it three steps before the corpses beneath us ripple and moan and a decaying hand reaches up, grips her ankle and drags her to the ground. She screams and fights against the hand and now the bodies are rising around us, pulling Connor down and holding him and dragging Star toward Javier—

Prey always flees,
the voice in my mind says, sounding immensely pleased.
That’s what makes them prey.