The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (21 page)

They’re not telling me something. Even without my creature scratching at my insides I could sense it. They want me to do their wet-work. I have half a mind to tell them both to fuck off. But what if they’re right? What if I can banish the monster inside me?
 

What if there’s
hope
?
 

“You mentioned Al Kusch,” I say to Star. “How did you know about him?”

Star shrugs. “His car was at the biker’s house when we rescued you. His wallet was inside.”

“He bled black,” I whisper. “He said my mother bled black. He was lying. I
know
he was lying. But others…I’ve seen them bleed black. Why is that? What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Star says. “I wish I did.”
 

“What about you, Connor? Do you know what the black blood means?”
 

Connor hesitates. “I’ve never seen it. But it might mean the First Fallen turned them.”

That makes sense. And it might help me decide who I can trust. Kusch mentioned other things. Names. The Pureblood. The Stricken. I don’t understand any of it.
 

But I’m getting the feeling I’m caught in a war where everyone wants something from me…and all I want is to be left the fuck alone.

“I want you both to bleed,” I say. “Right now. Only a pinprick. I want to see your blood run red. I need to know you’re not…whatever Kusch was.”

Connor and Star glance at one another.

“That’s not going to happen, Lily,” Connor says.
 

“Then I’m getting the fuck out of here,” I say, straining to kick my legs off the bed. “You can murder your own fucking father, thank you very much but piss off. And if you try and stop—”

Connor takes a few fast steps across the room, wraps his arms across my chest and pins me to the bed. Star lifts my hands over my head and slides them through some kind of metallic restraint. There’s a loud clicking sound as the restraints snap closed. The metal is smooth and cold against my wrists.

“Let me go!” I scream, thrashing and twisting on the bed, and then the creature stirs, a fear-born myth awakened. My skin begins to heat, singing the silk sheets. Star plunges a needle deep into my arm. The blackness is nearly instant, and as I fade I hear Star say, “The wolf will hunt her. I told you she can’t stay here.”

“She’s still weak.”

“He’ll help her. That is his role.”

“For now.”

“We were wrong. She’ll never see. Either she’ll ignore us and the creature will consume her, or she’ll side with her bloodmate and we Stricken will perish.”

“No, sister,” Connor says. “It’s early yet. She may come to believe. Give her time. Please? Her Risen packmates draw near. Their presence might help subdue the creature until father arrives. And when he does she’ll have no choice but to war against him.”
 

“And if not?”

“Then we die. Purebloods, Stricken and Skins alike. And a new species rises.”
 

T
HE
HUNTER
’
S
SECOND
rifle shot rings into the icy forest.
 

He’s murdered Anik.

My screaming quiets, my throat too raw for sound.
 

O Guardians give me strength
, I pray, even though the Guardians betrayed me.
 

My body is numb with cold. The pain feels far away.
 

I saw the hunter aiming the rifle at Anik. Scented Anik’s fear. I lost patience and ran at the hunter, hoping to catch him by surprise. Not stopping to scent the earth.
 

This Absent man is cunning. He’d set traps around his camp.

It is my fault the hunter shot Anik. Perhaps if I’d waited Anik could’ve convinced the hunter not to shoot. But I couldn’t wait. I underestimated how weak I am. I thought my rage would summon my swarm.
 

I was wrong, and now Anik is dead.
 

I pray the hunter murders me next. Murder me, please.
 

Free me from this Absent Land.
 

I’m clutching my bleeding leg while my blood freezes in the snow. The leg-hold trap’s iron teeth are set very deep, nearly touching through shattered bone. It’s odd, how we look at a grievous injury and do not recognize it as our own. This is not my leg. It can’t be.

But the pain speaks differently.

I wrap my blood-slick fingers around the cruel metal and pull and strain and thrash, trying to remove it. It’s no use. The leg trap is chained to a withered spruce tree. I’ve begun to hate these trees. Black spruce trees, Anik called them. Ugly, stunted things with no grace or majesty.
 

I tug at the chain securing me to the spruce. The tree sways slightly, sending a shower of ice crystals onto my head. This entire forest is ugly and cold and cruel. It makes sense to die in a leg-hold trap in this land.
 

I close my eyes, rest my head against the spruce and pray to die before the hunter arrives.
 

A bird caws in the clouds overhead, then I hear a loud snarl. Must be the hunter’s dogs. Maybe the hunter is feeding Anik’s corpse to them. I press both hands over my wound and focus on scenting the air.
 

I scent blood. Rivers of blood.
 

My own, Anik’s…and a third person’s blood.
 

That is this land: cold and blood.
 

Unremitting. Remorseless. Barren.

I want to see Anik before I die. He’s down a slight hill, hidden behind a tight cluster of trees. I firm my will and take a long breath, then crawl as far as the chain will let me, lift my head and strain to see through the grove.

But I can’t see anything.
 

I lower my cheek to the snow.

Dying from cold and blood loss…it’s like a blanket settling over my head. So different from drowning.

Every death is unique.
 

I should have consumed Anik’s heart earlier this evening. A feed would have granted me strength to summon my swarm. I should have learned by now. In this land one must put oneself above all others.
 

That truth is named survival.

It is law.
 

The bird cry continues, louder, more frenzied, and the hunter’s dogs bark and wail into the night sky. Grey clouds obscure the Blood Moon. My tears freeze against my cheeks. I understand many things now that I am close to death and it no longer matters.
 

What lives in me is a quiet buzzing in my ears. I should have embraced the swarm. What good is shame? We are what we are. Feeling shame for what we cannot change is weakness.
 

I am not a monster. I cannot change.
 

But I have felt shame my entire life. From the moment I saw the horror in the faces of the children on Odaiba Beach when the flies flew from my mouth. Maybe father and mother should have held me, that day on the beach. Should have said, “It’s okay, we love you.”
 

Even if it wasn’t okay.
 

Maybe then the shame and sadness wouldn’t have taken me so young.

“You don’t have to be afraid with the Guardians,” Priest Gabriel said when we first met at the Truth Everlasting Orphanage in Tokyo. “We understand what you are.”

We understand what you are.

Such powerful words, spoken without malice or judgement.
 

Especially for a girl of twelve years old who doesn’t know what she is. I remember smiling as Priest Gabriel took my hand. And the hope and need I felt in that instant. Maybe someone could love a creature such as me? Maybe I didn’t have to experience shame?
 

“You can live in the Ark in peace, Shiori,” Priest Gabriel said, his emerald eyes shining. “You will be safe in the Truth. Among your own.”

“I want to be safe,” I told him.

“We all do.”

The Purification Ceremony and the Essence kept the creatures at bay. Me with my insects. Charlene with her beautiful hawk’s eyes. Allie with spotted leopard skin so soft we Hopefuls used to gather around her late at night, when the Essence was weakest in our blood and we could call a little of our hidden selves, and run our finger’s through Allie’s pretty black-spotted fur.
 

“Does it hurt?” one of the Hopefuls asked me when I sent a caterpillar inching from my tongue and onto the palm of my hand.
 

“Only when they die,” I answered.
 

Priest Gabriel was telling half a lie.
 

We were among our own. But we were not safe.
 

I have never been safe. What is safe?
 

I think it’s something you must experience to understand.

I turn on my back in the snow, hoping the clouds part so I can see the stars when I die.

What did the hunter call Anik before he murdered him? A changeling. Yes. A changeling. The word is as good as any. Is that what I am? It’s nice to finally put a name to what lives in me.

I should have said to Anik thank you for carrying me through this terrible frozen wood when I was too weak to walk. Maybe that is what safe means. How I felt in his arms. I should have told him I liked the touching of lips.

Then I should have consumed him.

Anik would not have understood.

But somewhere, deep down, his animal would have.
 

***

Someone is dragging me through the snow. My shattered leg catches in snow-buried branches, making me moan and flail.

The hunter. He’s decided not to show mercy and kill me quickly.

I would beg him to kill me but I’m beyond words.
 

The hunter has other plans.

I hear him singing as he labors.
 

Quiet and slow, in a language I don’t recognize.
 

He has a different voice than I remember.
 

Younger. Softer.
 

Like a young girl’s.
 

***

I’m being tied to something.
 

A leather strap secured around my wrists and uninjured ankle.
 

The feeling of being tied down is telling me I should open my eyes.
 

See what’s being done to me.

But I don’t want to see.

The hunters dogs are yipping and barking. With my eyes closed and the dogs snarling loud in my ear and the agony burning through me it’s easy to imagine this is hell.
 

It
is
hell.
 

A part of me still believes I’m being punished for abandoning the Truth Everlasting. Since the moment I set foot in this terrible Absent Land I’ve been punished.
 

The dogs are fighting. I sense their confusion and fear. Something’s wrong. They’re attacking one another…or they’re being attacked. A low snarl. A bird cawing, then a rush of air overhead and the sound of wings flapping. Squeals and yelps of pain.
 

Whatever’s happening is life and death.
 

The reek of fear-tainted dog blood rises to my nose, making me hungry.
 

Feed me
, I say to the hunter.
Feed me dog flesh.
 

But no sound leaves my lips.

The dogs quiet.

I hear that singing again. Soothing. Lilting.
 

Someone moans beside me.
 

Anik!

I smelled his blood but assumed his body lay nearby.
 

He’s strapped next to me.

Anik!
 

Alive?

The thought provides strength to open my eyes.

I’m strapped across the hunter’s dogsled, on my side, facing away from Anik. I try to turn and see him but the straps are too tight. My mangled leg is bundled in animal skins and held immobile by more straps crossed just above my knee.
 

There are three dead sled dogs in the snow, and a stocky young girl leaning over one, carving into its body with a long, slightly curved blade.

She must be the hunter’s daughter.
 

Her long black hair is braided and tucked over her shoulder, and she’s wearing only thin snow pants and a leather and fur jacket. She must be very cold, but she’s singing as she butchers the dog.
 

I watch her work. Her movements are practiced and swift.
 

Beautiful…in the way everything touched by death is beautiful.

When the dog’s belly opens the girl thrusts her fingers inside, searching, and emerges holding the animal’s liver. She lifts her bloodstained hand to her face, cradling the liver in her palm, and sniffs it.
 

The girl’s fingers are long and narrow, covered in mottled yellow skin and each ends in a yellow claw two inches long.
 

Her fingers are talons.
 

I gasp, not wanting to believe.
 

The bird cawing overhead.
 

She’s like Anik and me? A…changeling?
 

The girl snaps her head up and stares at me. Her eyes glow brilliant white. Her face is round and soft, but her lips are badly cracked and there are dark rings under her eyes.
 

I strain against my bindings.
 

Is this the hunter’s daughter? And where is the hunter?

“Dead,” the girl says, shrugging. “He tasted gross.”

The girl walks to me, slowly, retrieves a flask of water from beneath her jacket, then pauses when she’s in arms reach.
 

She hasn’t retracted her talons. She doesn’t trust me.
 

“I want to give you these,” she says, lifting the dog liver in one hand and the water in the other, “but I’ll have to hand feed you. Promise you won’t hurt me?”

I smile. It’s all I can do.