The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (41 page)

“Curfew?” Aaron laughs. “Looks like the good citizens didn’t get the message.” He jerks his thumb out the window. I look down off the overpass and into the side streets, see a ragged band of a thousand or more marching down the middle of a four-lane road, smashing and burning everything in sight.
 

“I hope they annihilate each other,” Tate says. “The world’s better without them.”

“Shut up,” I say, thinking of Trish in the back.

“It’s only been a few days,” Aaron says, his voice oddly pensive. “The weather changes. The storms. The oceans. It’s happening quickly.”

“What is?” I ask.

Tate flicks Aaron a nervous glance.
 

Aaron shrugs and says nothing.
 

We descend off the overpass and into the city, making sure to steer clear of the riot. The streets are mostly empty. I pick up the cell phone Connor gave me. His number is programmed first on speed dial. I call him, then hang up after it switches to voicemail.

“Still no answer?” Aaron asks.
 

“No.”

“Fuck.”

Aaron doesn’t need to say what everyone’s thinking.
 

We’re running out of time.

I’m about to give Trish a little pep-talk when Aaron screams, “Watch out!” and Tate hits the breaks so hard I rocket into the dash, smacking my forehead.

“What the fuck, Tate?” I yell. Then I look out the window. At first I don’t see anything, just deserted streets and smashed storefronts and burning glowing around us. Then I notice the dark chasm only a few feet from our front tires.
 

“Oh my god,” I whisper, sliding open the side door.

“Lily! Stay in the car,” Aaron warns.

But I have to see.
 

I step outside.
 

A few shadows drift across the alley, only twenty paces away.

“Get in the car, Lily,” Aaron yells, raising the M16 and setting it on the windowsill. “Get in the car right fucking now!”

I ignore him, walk to the front of the van. The chasm stretches across the road, nearly fifty feet wide. The pavement’s cracked and buckled around the chasm edge. I step gingerly through the broken ground.
 

Aaron’s still screaming at me, but he sounds very far away.
 

I’m only a step or two from the edge.
 

On the opposite side of the chasm I see a layer of pavement, then gravel under it, then hard packed clay, then a layer of bedrock. Looking at the layers of sediment is like peering into earth’s history. What layer was exposed when the dinosaurs roamed? When the Skins first drew on a cave wall to summon the spring rains?
 

I inch closer to the chasm, stumbling over broken pavement.
 

A wound in the earth. History rent open.
 

Something’s drawing me toward the chasm’s darkness.
 

Pulling me close.

A high-pitched buzzing sounds in my head, like an engine redlined and about to implode. My skin feels on fire. My clothes begin smoldering, then burst into flame and fall to the ground as ash. My teeth…my
fangs
…slip over my lips, and when I breathe thin wisp of grey-blue smoke rolls from my mouth. I taste ash and scorched aluminum and melted rubber and seared flesh.

The scent of my prey’s black blood fills the streets.
 

They’re everywhere. The unnatural ones.

My brother’s corrupt bloodline.

The Stricken.
 

I lift my head to the sky and howl while the earth shudders.
 

I’m only distantly aware of my surroundings, like I’m watching events from an airplane. Far, far away. My rational mind will never accept what’s happening. But my instincts understand.

The animal, the winged she-wolf, demands absolute control.
 

She’s surfacing. Becoming.
 

She scents the city’s chaos. Looting and burning and mad, fear-driven anarchy. She scents hunting season. A land bountiful with easy prey.
 

I should resist. Fight to keep her caged.
 

But I don’t.
 

I’m tired of being beat down and busted up. Tired of being hurt. Tired of losing.
 

Tired of struggling and fighting tooth and nail—

The thought makes me laugh. Tooth and nail. Fuck yeah.
 

This animal in me.
 

She’s an answer to a question I haven’t even asked.

Most of all I’m tired of being
me
. Lily Thompson. Another twenty-something going through the motions. Not even really living. Just waking up and grinding out another day—
 

Quick popping bangs echo behind me.
 

More screaming from voices I no longer recognize.
 

My toes are inches away from the chasm’s edge. A hot wind rises from the pit, lifting my hair and tickling at the silver fur that’s growing along my naked body. My animal intends to leap into this chasm. She wants to leap and spread her wings and soar.
 

The earth shakes.
 

Rocks and chunks of pavement tumble into the dark pit.

More popping behind me. Gunfire.

Skin weapons.
 

The earth trembles again, more violently. I raise my arms to my sides and lift my head back. There’s a massive shudder and the chasm widens, splits the foundation of a four-story apartment building across the street.
 

Shouting and pained screams from the pathetic Skins.
 

The weakened building shakes, then the lower floors gives way. It seems to hover for an instant, then jerks to the left and tips toward the alley. It collides with the building beside it with a thundering roar while the earth continues shuddering. Choking dust washes over me, stinging my eyes…and making me smile.

Another chasm opens further down the street, perpendicular to the one in front of me. Pavement swells and cracks and tumbles inward. The city’s being swallowed.
 

Red-orange lightning flashes from black clouds.
 

A hollow ping of bullets piercing metal.
 

I could leave the Skins behind.
 

Trish. Aaron. Even my son Lachlan.

All of them.
 

Leave them to die.
 

Nature demands the weak die. It’s law.
 

Their bodies become another layer of sediment coating this world.

Dirt. Nothing more.

People like to talk about nature like she’s all maternal and shit.
 

But she isn’t. She’s a stone cold killer.
 

I try and remind myself that these Skins…these
people
…are important to me.
 

That their lives mean something. But it’s a lie.
 

They mean less than nothing.
 

It’s
her
time. Her world.

The Age of Discord.
 

The weak have no place in it.
 

The second chasm is several feet wide, splitting a zig-zag pattern as it winds down the street toward me. It’s opening fast. The ground bucks and shudders. My toes hang over the first chasm’s edge. This is how she wants to be born. Falling into endless blackness. Rising from destruction to birth chaos.
 

Aaron’s mark burns on my neck.
 

My claws drop.
 

Something stretches against my jacket, near my shoulder blades.
 

I want this. Please yes! I want to be born new.
 

She’s shrieking at me, her will forcing mine aside.
 

Come to me
, I think.

And that’s all she needs.
 

The ground gives way beneath my feet, tumbles into blackness and then I’m falling. The animal howls and tears at me and there’s a loud splitting sound and suddenly the falling rocks and concrete speed past and I’m hovering in midair, peering into inky blackness, watching them fall.
 

The top of the chasm is twenty feet above me.
 

How perfect it feels to be transformed.
 

An ageless dream.
 

To become more than you are.

My wings beat behind my head, raising me out of the chasm.
 

She’s almost here.
 

Come to me
, I say.
Come to me.

My beating metallic wings lift me over the lip of the chasm and into the sky. I see the van. Aaron’s crouching behind the passenger door, the M16 blazing in his hands, a spike of orange-white flame lighting up as he fires toward the alley. His wolf is half out, straining against the iron collar around his neck.
 

The collar makes me spit and hiss in hatred.

It’s a vile object. Corrupt. Unnatural.
 

The collar reminds me of my brother.
 

Vuk.
 

The One Without Value. The First Fallen.

Aaron’s face is twisted in fury and bloodlust.
 

My animal pauses.

She’s studying him. There’s a feeling buried in her. An instinct. Something that makes her scent the air. She’s trying to remember what Aaron is.
 

His blood scents…
powerful
. Stronger than the others—
 

Trish leans out the side door, her face grim and determined, and fires her Glock at the creatures rushing from the alley.
 

Tate’s on the ground on the other side of the van, clutching his shoulder, bleeding and rolling in pain.

But my world has gone silent.
 

I’m watching this drama unfold from up high. Everything’s narrowed, become tightly focused. I see sweat ringing Aaron’s brow. I remember how he tasted only hours ago, but it feels like eons now. Trish ducks as bullets fly into the van. I watch them battle and war, entranced by this brief spectacle of death.

They don’t see me yet.
 

Don’t see the chasm opening wider, moving to swallow the van. In seconds they’ll vanish into that bottomless pit. They’ll become what they always were: dirt.
 

Their lives like a dream.
 

Over in a flash, and without lasting consequence.
 

Then I look to the side. See what they’re shooting at. Not Skins, but an army of hideous malformed creatures with the bodies of men and the heads of goats and insects and monkeys, an army of black-blooded Stricken summoned by my animal’s scent and driven mad with the desire to feed on her. Their ugly faces twisted and snarling as they circle the van and press in for the kill. Intent on murdering the ones I used to roam with.

The ones that might still mean something—

I’m forty feet in the air now, my wings rustling and beating, and then the sound hits: the rapid crack of gunfire. Aaron roaring and Tate screaming. Even Trish’s panicked breathing. Every sound distilled and crystal-clear. And the smell of my bloodmate, his courage and anger…and deeper, his readiness to die.

For me.
 

I look at my hands. They’re covered on soft silver fur.
 

My fingers end in wicked curved claws, but they’re still human hands.
 

She hasn’t taken me completely.
 

Not yet.

I turn to the approaching Stricken and roar.

My shriek peels up the pavement and sends it flying into the black-blooded army, smashing and crushing them, smearing the streets with their corrupted blood. My shriek burns the skin from their bodies, leaving their charred corpses littering the ruble strewn street.

My shriek is death.

A few Stricken flee and cower in shadowed alleys, hands clamped over their bleeding ears, and now Aaron, Trish and Tate pause and look up at me in awe and horror.

That look on my bloodmate’s face.
 

He’s terrified. Of me.
 

What have I become?
 

Is this what I want?
 

My scream fades. My animal. Her power. It’s weakening—

I beat my wings quickly, trying to stay in the air, but suddenly I drop several feet, whip over sideways, and when I right myself I see the Stricken army advancing—
 

Aaron and the rest. My natural prey. The desire to feed on them slams into me, making me choke and gag—

Get the fuck out of me
, I scream inside myself.
Get the fuck out!

My fangs and claws retract. My animal’s pissed at being banished when she was so close to Becoming. She scratches and slams into the cage I’ve created for her.
 

It feels like I’m being torn open from the inside.

My wings weaken and fold into themselves.

I flip upside down and plummet—

Hit the ground hard a few feet in front of the van.

Darkness.
 

The earth stops shuddering.
 

There’s a choking, burning taste deep in my throat.

Get up
, I command myself.
Open your eyes and get up!

Gunfire. Roaring. Screaming.
 

This is madness. This is war.

I open my eyes to see Stricken emerging from the alleys.
 

Grinning and howling and snarling and spitting.

The nearest creatures leap onto crumpled and blackened cars.
 

Raise their arms and howl. Leap and pounce in wild abandon.

The Stricken scent my creature is gone. They know our weakness.

We’ll never stop them. It’s too late.
 

The Fallen’s too close. His pack has grown too strong. Too many.
 

I clutch my head in my hands and then I’m sobbing, I didn’t ask for this, what did I do to deserve this nightmare…and then I remember what Connor said about killing the First Fallen and banishing the animal creatures eternally and suddenly I understand that’s my only hope.