Bloodfire (Blood Destiny) (19 page)

He wasn’t
yours,
I thought sourly, he was ours.

The blond wizard stepped forward.
 
“Hi there.”
 
He almost waved.
 
Good lord, was this the best they could
do?
 
I realized that he was wearing
a Nirvana t-shirt and ripped jeans. He wasn’t even from this decade for god’s
sake.

“So, uh, yeah.”
 
He grinned a toothy smile.
 
“I’m gonna hit the site, do some scrying
and tell you what’s what.
 
S’all
good.”

I had to pinch myself to stop from rolling
my eyes.
 
I wondered idly if
Corrigan was impressed.

Staines spoke up.
 
“We need everyone who was present when
his body was discovered to be with us so the scrying doesn’t get mixed up.
 
Get a coat and wait outside.”

The pack sprang into action.
 
I still couldn’t move fast because of my
injury
–
 
and
I noticed satisfyingly out of the corner of my eye that Anton
couldn’t either.
 
Tom gallantly
fetched my leather jacket and helped me put it on.
 
It appeared that all of a sudden
Cornwall was full of gentlemen.
 
Wonders would never cease.

There were nineteen of us in total:
Corrigan, Staines, the other Brethren members including Lucy, the mage, Anton,
Tom, me and three other pack members.
 
It felt like a goddamn school outing.
 
I wouldn’t have been surprised if Staines
had pulled out a little flag and started waving it around for us all to follow.
 
At least the crescent moon was shedding some
light down around us.
 
I’d heard
that in the cities it never seemed to get properly dark because of all the
lights, but that certainly wasn’t the case in rural Cornwall.

We headed off down the path in single
file.
 
I could feel my bloodfire
curl around me in tendrils of anticipation.
 
Despite myself, and the mage’s unlikely
appearance, I was curious to see what he would do.
  
I had to admit that I was starting
to feel confident in my ability to pull off this pretending to be a shifter
thing.
 
I’d now had a couple of
close encounters with the supposedly omnipotent Lord Shifty himself and I was
sure that, despite knowing that I was scared of him and commenting on my
un-packlike independence, he’d not actually suspected a smidgen of humanity
about me.
 
Add that to the fact that
after my fight with Anton there was virtually no point in pretending to hide in
the shadows anymore and I figured that I could get away with trying to sidle up
to the mage and find out what he knew.
 
Julia had already said that he had no interest in exposing me; the best
plan was to initiate contact with him, get the human part out of the way and
find out what he knew.

I stepped out into the undergrowth and
quickened my step to catch up with him.
 
He was sandwiched between two of the Brethren, who were marching along
with straight backs and stiff shoulders as if they were in the army.
 
Floride, by contrast, loped along with
an easy gait and a hint of a swagger.
 
I sneaked in beside him and ignored the hiss of annoyance from the Brethren
shifter behind me.

“I’m Mack,” I stuck my hand out and
grinned at him.

“Uh, Alex,” he replied, shaking my hand
back.
 
His palm was slightly sweaty
and I resisted the urge to wipe my own on my jeans.
 
He squinted at me more closely in the
gloom. “Feck me, you’re….”

“Wearing a nineties vintage leather
jacket, I know,” I smoothly interrupted before he said anything that would get
me into trouble.
 

He tripped over a root that was curling
its way across the path.
 
“Ummm…yes,
of course.
 
I was just admiring the,
er, tailoring.”

“Then we both are of the same mind,” I
stated, rather pointedly.

He cast a slightly nervous gaze at the
back of the shifter ahead of him before shrugging and smiling.
 
“I suppose we are, dude.”

Dude?
 
Jeez.

“So, how is this going to work, Alex?”

“You mean, um…”

“I mean the scrying,
dude.
 
How does the
whole mojo mumbo go down?”

“Oh, uh, I draw on my power from the air’s
energy.
 
It’s a molecular
thing.
 
If a heebie-jeebie had
anything to do with the guy’s death, then I’ll be able to spot it, scan it and
trace it.”

“Scan it?
 
So you’ll know what it was?”

“If there’s enough of a trail, sure.
 
I can raise up an image of the perp and
project it.”

“Are you ever wrong?”

“Never,” he answered steadily.
 
“As I said, if it wasn’t human,” he
looked at me again as he said this, “and there’s enough of its essence left
behind, then I’ll capture it.
 
Its
image, I mean,” he added hastily, “I don’t do actual capturing – I’ll
leave that to you beasty dudes.
 
Or
gals.
 
Or whatever.”

“Scared?”

“Sensible, dude, sensible.”

He certainly seemed sure of his magic
abilities, at least.
 
I supposed
that the proof was in the pudding and that I shouldn’t judge him by
appearances.
 
He was at least doing
me the favour of not judging me by my humanity, and was not trying to pretend
he was in any way a physical match for a shifter.
 
I appreciated the honesty and felt
slightly humbled by my earlier attitude towards him.

“What do you think of our little shifter
girl here then, Mr Mage?”

Anton.
 
Shit.

“God, do you country types ever stop shooting
the breeze?” The Brethren behind us interjected.

Anton turned and snarled at her.
 
Well, it was good to know that we agreed
on something.
 
He turned back to me,
eyes falling to my side where he’d bit me earlier on in the evaluation fight.

“How are the wounds?”
 
There was an odd lascivious gleam in his
eyes.
 
“Bleeding much?”

I scowled at him and Alex opened his mouth
to say something when all of a sudden there was the sound of hundreds of birds
flying up into the sky followed by a low rumbling thunder. The ground began to
shake.
 
From side to side, like an….

“Earthquake!”
 
Someone shouted.

My brain dully registered the
impossibility of natural earth tremors on Cornwall before launching into full
self protective
mode as the ground continued to sharply jerk
from side to side, flinging Alex to the ground.
 
The trees creaked alarmingly around us
and there were sounds of others nearby becoming uprooted and crashing to the
ground.
 
I fell forward onto my
hands and knees, and then quickly covered my head with my arms, the most
vulnerable part of me should a great oak decide to plant itself on top of my
body.

Up
ahead
one of
the Brethren spontaneously shifted in blur of ripped cloth and fur.
 
I could hear growling and snapping from
more behind me.

Be
calm
,
floated Corrigan’s Voice over everyone, using compulsion to erase
the panic.
 
At once the growling
stopped but the rumbling and the shaking continued for what seemed like an age.
 
I huddled into a ball, praying that the
others back at the keep were
alright
.
 
Eventually it seemed to stop.

Stay
where you are.
 
There may be
aftershocks to come.

Alex staggered to his feet.
 
I knew he wouldn’t have heard Corrigan’s
warning and I yanked at his jeans to pull him down again.
 
He shook me off and gasped, “That’s not
an earthquake.”

“What do you…?”
 
I realised suddenly that if it wasn’t an
earthquake, and he had used his powers to work that out, then it must be some
sort of creature.
 
It must be what
had killed John.
 
I stopped
thinking, stood up with lightning speed, and ran.
 
The adrenaline pumped through me,
overcoming the pain in my side, and pelting me forward.
 
I was going to get my revenge.
 
I felt a hand stretch out and try to
grab me, and barely registered Corrigan reaching out, but I sidestepped and
sprinted faster.
 
The fire took
over,
all consuming
.
 
His Voice tried to compel me to halt but
nothing was going to stop me.
 
Red
flickered in my vision and my fingertips began to tingle with heat.
 
I neared the tree runes and slowed,
starting to stalk with intent.
 
There was definitely something there.
 
I focused all my senses on the one
large, dark shape.
 
There was only
one creature, at least, but it looked big, and definitely malevolent.
 
It didn’t matter what it was,
though.
 
It was going to die.

I came out from under the canopy of the
trees and finally saw the whole thing for real in sharp technicolour vision.
 
Whatever it was, it looked to be about
twenty five
hands high, had horns on top of its furred head
and stood on two bowed legs.
 
Steam
puffed out heavily from its nostrils.
 
The monster took a step towards the trees - towards me - but the instant
its foot touched the ground the earth began to shake again in another
tremor.
 
This time, however, I was
ready.
 
I kept my feet, barely, and
pulled out a throwing dagger from my right arm. Zeroing in on its right eye, I
aimed and then let the dagger take flight with unerring accuracy.
 
Or it would have been unerring accuracy
if the monster hadn’t flipped its head to the side with unnatural speed so it
caught it in the side of its pointed ear instead, barely scratching its skin.
 
With another heavy crunch, it took a
step, this time with murderous intent drawn all over its hideous face.
 
The ground rumbled again, shaking me off
my feet again and sending me tumbling to the sand.

I leapt up in an instant, reaching for my
other dagger.
 
The monster flicked
shimmering black eyes onto me and roared deafeningly.
 
The bloodfire was wholly in control,
however, and I didn’t flinch.
 
I was
about to fling the dagger at the creature with everything I had when a shape
flew out of the trees behind me and launched itself at it.
 
It was a were-panther, sleek and
gleaming in the moonlight.
 
It
slammed into the beast’s body, the force of its collision making it stagger
backwards slightly, setting off another surge through the ground. The panther’s
jaws snapped and snatched away at a clump of the beast’s flesh but it hung onto
its side.

From the left spread of trees, three transformed
shifters pounded out and went for its leg.
 
Three others came from the right and attached themselves to its huge
tree trunk of an arm.
 
It stamped
its feet, roared again and shook them off, sending them into the dunes with a
chorus of pained whines.
 
The ground
shook again.
 
The panther sprang from
the thing’s side to its shoulder, claws digging into it to cling on whilst it
roared again and flailed around trying to pull the cat off.
 
I saw my chance and threw again, aiming
for its hand.
 
And this time, I
didn’t miss, as the sharp pointed embedded itself in the creature’s palm. It
howled in agony and clutched at the dagger, trying to pull it out, momentarily
ignoring the panther.

Another wave of shifters attacked in
concertina.
 
The monster kicked out
at one werefox, catching it on its hind legs, almost immediately snapping the
bone with a sickening crunch.
 
Tom,
in wolf form, attacked the monster back, his fangs latching onto its
ankle.
 
I sidestepped, trying to
gain a better point with which to aid the panther, which stayed clinging onto
the massive shoulders, occasionally swiping a giant paw at the side of its
head.
 

My blood wasn’t happy.
 
Much more of this and the panther would
knock it out before I got the chance to do anything.
 
Anton’s bear joined Tom and clawed at
the tendons on its back leg.
 
The
monster picked up its foot and shook them off in one quick sudden
movement.
 
Again, as soon as
its
padded foot returned to the ground, another earthquake
hit, sending shifters flying everywhere.
 
The panther took another chance to claw the beast’s head, but this time
it mistimed and was knocked off in the rolling aftershock.
 
I saw my chance as it bent to grab the
panther and took a running leap onto its outstretched back.