The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (6 page)

 
“Didn’t think so. Our Miss America’s a crafty bitch. Been around a long time. Too long for a Skin. First emerges in the 1950’s in Soviet Russia.” Sorry pulls up another photo, this one black and white. She’s not quite as fat, but the woman standing out front of a Communist girl’s detention center is the same old cow. She has two women flanking her, both sturdy-looking Eastern European types.
 

“She’s collecting a following,” I say. “The queen building her hive.”
 

Sorry nods. “And here,” Sorry says, bringing up a third image. “This is her as a foreign aid worker in Ethiopia in 1984. During the famine.”

She’s standing in front of a canvas tent in the middle of a godforsaken desert. That same leering grin. The same two women standing with her. And several others.

“And now…” Sorry shows me a fourth image.
 

Moby Dick on her scooter in a wood paneled office. Surrounded by suit-wearing lackeys and yuppie underlings. Grinning like a sick fuck.
 

“Who is she now?” I ask, watching blue-grey cigarette smoke pour from my lungs.

“Besides the Countess, proprietor of one of the largest snuff porn rings in the western hemisphere?” Sorry laughs and shakes his head. “She’s the wealthy widower Mrs. Gladys Townshend. Seattle State Legislature. Upper House.”

“A fucking politician?”

“A
Senator
.”

My wolf throws himself against his cage, and before I know it my fangs are dropping and my claws are digging into the table.

“Oh yeah, Prez,” Sorry says, eyeing my wolf. “The esteemed Senator is particularly involved in issues of mental health. Spends much of her time fundraising for new facilities. How much you wanna bet she spends her evenings terrorizing the whacko patients?”

“Doctor I saw something…a horrible beast…consuming the man in the room next to me,” I say in a high-pitched, whiney tone.

“Sure you did, son” Sorry says in a booming, uptight-authority voice. “Now let’s get you strapped in…and have a hit of this here needle. There, there. Feel better now?”

I laugh and smack Sorry on the shoulder. “Good find, brother. The Olympia Legislative Building it is.”

Sorry stares at the most recent photo. “This fat bitch has been feeding on weak and forgotten Skins for a long, long time. She’s grown strong.”

“And complacent.”

“Maybe,” Sorry says quietly, then he glances over his shoulder at the crew waiting outside. “How long you think it’s been for them? Since they last fed?”

“Too long.”

“You gunna introduce yourself?”

“What? Make a fucking speech? Bake cupcakes? No. I’ll learn their names when they give me a reason to. As for speeches…tonight hunt will be my fucking welcoming speech.”

“Where we gunna nab her?”

I resist the urge to say in broad daylight, right out of her fucking office and fuck anyone who tries to stop us. “Near a dozen MC. A Senator and her Stricken entourage. We either lure her somewhere remote…”

“Or we ambush her.”

All this talk of Stricken death is making my stomach rumble. “Where’s her hive?”

Sorry spends a few minutes with his face buried in the laptop. I finish my smoke, take a few long pulls of Scotch and try not to think about Lily.

 
“Looks like she’s a horse enthusiast,” Sorry says. “Owns a hobby farm outside Olympia.”
 

“My poor shitkickers,” I say, lifting a Dayton boot. “Gunna be covered in horseshit.”

“And black blood. I’ll buy you a new pair. On one condition. I get a Stricken to myself.”

“Whatever. Sure. But Moby Dick is mine.”

Sorry smiles. “Wouldn’t have it any other way, Prez.”

***

We roll low-profile, in two beat-up repairman vans. The hobby farm, named Eight Belles Acres, is set in a rural area of gently rolling fields and forests. We case the main entry gate, all brass and wrought iron and other rich-bitch shit. The driveway into the property cuts through a stand of dense, leafless alder and cottonwood. Nearest neighbor is miles off.
 

Perfect.
 

We cruise a few miles down the road until we find a secluded spot beneath a bridge to stash the vans, then pile out into the crisp evening, stretching and scenting.
 

I feel invincible, like I’m walking on air, and I know the feeling’s infectious. Nash paces in a jittery, coke-fueled circle. Mia can’t speak without hissing. Even the bitch Soren can’t keep his claws retracted.

Good. My MC’s psyched for a hunt. They should be.
 

I order Nash to take Soren and two of the sturdier-looking SoCal prospects into the forest by the gate. The rest of us will wait for Moby Dick in the house and ambush the fuck out of her fat ass.
 

“Wait until you hear me howl, then come up from the gate,” I tell him. “Attack anyone still standing from behind.”
 

“Means I’m being cut out,” Nash grumbles. “Babysitting SoCal pussies.”
 

“I’ll save you some leftovers,” Mia promises.

Nash scowls and flips Mia the finger.
 

We stalk up a slow-moving stream in the fading light, ten strong. No one makes a sound. I like that. You can hear a Skin walking in the woods from a valley away. But a Pureblood moves silently.
 

As we walk I scent the air. I know where the beaver tunnels are. Where a raccoon and a garter snake battled last autumn. The snake’s flesh granted the raccoon another week or so of life. I smell spring buds on the alder trees. The acrid reek of worn-out tires some redneck Skin threw from his truck.

As we slip across the double-lane road it begins to rain. That’s a good omen. Rain muffles screams and gunfire.
 

There’ll be plenty of both.

Nash and the two SoCal’s slip into the woods. In moments they’re invisible. I can scent them, of course. The reek of cheap rye on Nash’s breath. The fear on one of the SoCal boys, a younger guy I think I heard Soren refer to as Whip. And the third guy, a dreadlocked black dude, name unknown, who I think might have a reptile lurking in him. They’re fairly rare, reptile Purebloods. Mia’s one. Most of ‘em have been killed off over the years.
 

Reptiles make lousy pack-mates.

We hop the fence and stroll up the hobby farm’s paved driveway like we’re coming home, then pause where the forest ends and the pastures begin. There’s a house on the hill ahead, all the lights on. Its an old Tudor-style mansion, white stucco and red brick and even ivy clinging to the sides.

It’s dark now. Good. I see even better in the dark.

“Someone’s home,” Sorry says from his place on my left.

I scent the air. It reeks of fresh Skin blood and Stricken.
 

“You were right,” I whisper. “It’s a fucking hive. Must be half a dozen Stricken in there.”

“I don’t smell her, though. The Countess.”

“Not back from another long day of eating the world’s most vulnerable.”

I study our surroundings. There’s a long stretch of open ground to cover before we make it to the house. I wanted to surprise whatever’s in there, kick down the door and scream honey I’m home, but it looks like ain’t how it’s gunna play out. I briefly consider waiting here, in the woods, and leaping out on the fat bitch as she drives in. But that might mean losing the Stricken inside, and I’m feeling greedy.
 

A dog begins barking near the house, then another, and another.
 

“Shut them the fuck up, Prez,” Mia says.

 
I reach my mind out to the dogs. Show them a new sheriff’s in town.

But I can’t find them.
 

The barking grows louder. More frenzied.
 

“Fuck,” I say, pissed at losing the first foray and even more pissed at appearing weak in front of the new crew.
 

Soren snickers behind me and says, “Darkhounds.”
 

Thanks for saying what everyone knows, asshole.

“Could be a trap,” Mia says.

Sorry give her a long, hard look.

Could be. But I don’t much care. There’s never been a Stricken hive a pack of semi-rabid Purebloods couldn’t handle. The scent of the Stricken inside the house sends my wolf pacing and howling, hungry for a feed. And besides, I’m still pissed about having to run from that jackass Collazo Cartel. Not to mention the fucking spirit-eater who about had my throat in his teeth the other day.

Truth is I need a win, for myself and my crew.
 

Fuck up as an apex alpha and the pack turns on you.
 

Law of nature.
 

Power is loyalty and life. Weakness is death. Always.
 

The house looks to be a mile or so off. The faster among us can cover that in less than a minute. I’ll do it in thirty seconds.
 

“Change of plan,” I whisper to the crew, wishing I’d taken the time to learn a bit more about my new MC. “The fast-footed follow me straight through the fucking front door. Understand? The slower sweep to the flanks left and right around the house. Catch any chickenshits who make a run.”

“How do we know who’s fast?” Mia asks.

I grin in the darkness and drop my fangs. “We race.”

I
T
’
S
NOT
PISSING
horizontal rain, so I tell myself it’s a nice morning for Seattle and decide to walk from the condo to the station instead of phoning a uni to come pick me up, but the truth is I don’t have my cell phone and the thought of asking the snooty building manager if I can borrow his office phone makes me shudder.

I pass through the condo’s opulent ultra-modern glass and steel lobby. It reminds me of an operating room in a hospital. It also reminds me of Connor Lerrick’s house. Damn. A fucking ring? Whatever. Maybe I should just marry the guy. He did send a car for me last night. I saw it drive by my apartment several times while I hid in the bushes across the street. I know Connor cares about me. And he’s
loaded
. Most girls would leap at the chance—

But I don’t love him. Pure and simple.

I wonder if you can teach yourself to love someone? Over the years?
 

I doubt it.

I hop down a double fight of steps and into the fray of Seattle’s morning rush and immediately begin to doubt the wisdom of walking.

I’ve never been a self-conscious girl. Never been overly concerned with what others think of me. Hell, you spend three years on the street, not knowing where your next meal’s coming from, and you learn to readjust your priorities real quick. But this morning I feel…exposed. Like everyone I pass is watching me. Like I have something awful on my face that I can’t see. My breath quickens as I shove through a group of power-suit wearing businessmen who reek of lifelong privilege and forty-dollar shampoo.
 

One of them mutters, “Watch it, nut-job,” as I pass.
 

I’m carrying a plastic bag full of surveillance CD’s that knocks against my leg as I walk. It’s nothing, a tiny annoyance, but suddenly I’m pissed beyond all reason.
 

I feel like I did when my mom was murdered: like my life was stolen right out from under me. Like the only things we control are the little things that don’t matter. What we eat for breakfast. What shoes we wear. How often we floss.
 

But the big things, the ones that count, we have no say in at all.
 

I cradle the plastic bag like a shield and storm through the crowd, head down, one panicked thought or two away from breaking into a flat-out run.

I know I look like shit. Maybe even—like the suit said—like a nut-job. After Aaron dumped me I spent the last few hours of the night huddled in a stairwell in a multileveled parking lot, afraid someone would hear the sound of my sobbing and call the cops.
 

No. I was afraid of worse.
 

Afraid these things I keep imagining would come for me.
 

At dawn I crept from the stairwell and headed to the cop station, praying no one would see me arrive in my torn and stained clothes. Changed into a spare outfit I keep in the bottom drawer of my desk, washed my face and under my arms and called it good.

I lost everything in the fire. My phone, my purse and ID and badge, even my beloved Glock.

That’s gunna mean paperwork. A lot of it.
 

My stomach rumbles as I pass a coffee shop full of chatting suits. I remember this feeling well from when I lived on the street: of being surrounded by food and being constantly hungry. Of seeing money everywhere and having nothing. Being homeless is like being a ghost. You’re only partly real. Able to see and smell the world but having no access to it.

Being a ghost means yearning.
 

Fuck it. I need something to eat. Need a place to stay tonight. Need to buy a phone.
 

Which means I need money.
 

I make a sharp turn into the coffee shop. It’s packed. Good. Busy enough no one notices me slip in and settle in line among the impatient suits. Half of them are on their phones. The other half are blathering on about this stock or that start-up.

Stealing is all about meeting expectations.

I set the bag with the CD’s on the ground, then forget to pick it up as the line moves forward. It doesn’t take long for a Mr. Helpful to arrive, and with a practiced, generic smile he asks if the bag’s mine. I smile and say thank-you, and as he passes me the bag I stumble backward into another man, apologizing as I hold up the plastic bag and slip my other hand into his jacket.
 

His wallet is calfskin. Another good sign.
 

There’s a long moment where I’m trapped between the two grinning men and think maybe the first guy’s onto me. But they both turn toward their phones, not wanting to prolong an already slightly gauche situation and then I’m out the door, the wallet safely tucked in the plastic bag.