Bloodfire (Blood Destiny) (4 page)

My hand finally found what I was looking
for when it curved round a cold metal canister.
 
It never to hurt to
come fully prepared.
 
I pulled
out the hydrogen peroxide, twisting it so the nozzle faced the stone, and sprayed
a tiny portion onto the black surface.
 
As soon as the chemical hit the shiny surface it began to foam.
 
It was definitely blood.
 
The curling heat inside me rose higher
and my insides felt as if they were starting to burn.
 
The feeling of panic matched the
bloodfire but I did my best to push them both back down.
 
Neither would help me right now.
 
I put the stone carefully into a side
pouch where it wouldn’t get lost.

The moon continued to shine steadily down,
casting shadows amongst the heavy trees.
 
I could hear the distant hooting of a night owl out searching for prey
and
the skitter
of a small animal somewhere
nearby.
 
I ignored them all and
concentrated on the signs I could see at my feet.
 
There was something else there.
 
Reaching into my pack again, I found my
torch, and clicked it on to look closer.

He had been this way.
 
John was light on his feet and left
little trace of his presence but I knew him well and knew this area.
 
He’d disturbed the bush to my right, brushing
past it as he ran.
 
And judging by
the distance between his steps, he’d been running fast, as if something had
been after him.
 
I frowned and arced
the torch over the
area,
first close by then further
along the path.
 
There was something
up ahead.
 
Stepping forward, I tried
separately to sense what it might be, but I was no shifter and came up short.
 
Fuck.
 
Where had he gone?

I pushed on the hydrogen peroxide nozzle
again and began to spray liberally on the ground in front of me, hoping it
wouldn’t work. All I could smell was the damp, musk night air, with the deep
smell of the earth rising up.
 
I
peered down squinting and holding my breath.
 
The peroxide foamed in a few spots.
 
More blood.
 
It didn’t mean it was John’s
though,
it could belong to any kind of wild animal.
 
It might even be days old.
 
Despite these thoughts, the
ever–present fire inside of me began to heat up even more and I could
feel the flames licking up the sides of my stomach.

Mackenzie?

I almost jumped for joy before realising
that something was different.

Was that…?
 
Julia?

Yes.
It’s me.
 
Defeat laced her words.

I felt my legs buckle under me.
 
Only alphas could use the Voice to
communicate and if Julia had found hers that meant that John’s was gone.
 
That John was gone.
 
I gulped in air and felt the pain
blossom through me.
 
From the other
side of the forest, a keening howl and followed by caterwauling began.
 
They were swiftly
joined by others
as the pack hunters came together in sudden horrifying grief.
 
I couldn’t breathe and fell forward onto
my hands, barely registering the damp moss beneath my palms.
 
One huge sucking sob sprang from my
mouth.
 
It couldn’t be true, it just
couldn’t.

No.

I forced myself up.
 
The bloodfire wouldn’t allow this.
 
He might still be okay.

I pushed forward with the torch in front
of me like a ward, spraying as I went, moving faster and trying to ignore the
hard knot of tears forming inside my chest.
 
The foaming was getting heavier and the
tracks were becoming clearer.
 
It
was definitely John’s trail; I was beginning to recognize the heavy gait that
slightly favoured his left knee.
 
But if he was bleeding and in danger, why hadn’t he shifted?
 
Then he could have
fought
,
he could have regenerated
…

Until I saw it for my own eyes, I wasn’t
going to believe he was dead.
 

A cobweb brushed my cheek but I didn’t
even bother to lift my hand to shake it off.
 
The trail was leading down towards the
beach and away from the keep.
 
Whatever had been chasing him, if anything had been chasing him, this
creature that left no trail, he’d made sure that we were not going to be
targeted by it too.
 
He was a
weretiger though.
 
He was powerful
enough to beat off almost any of the otherworld creatures that ever made it
through to Cornwall.
 
It didn’t make
sense.
 
I gritted my teeth and kept
going, up over the final rise that led to the dunes.
 

And that was when I finally smelled the
iron rich stain of blood myself.
 
It
had to be in a large enough quantity for my weak human nose to pick it up.
  
I took another step and saw
him.
 
Or rather what was left of
him.

His hat lay in a pool of blood that
glistened darkly and wetly in the gloom.
 
What I first thought were creepers reaching out from his belly I
sickeningly realized were his intestines trailing away from him for what seemed
an impossible distance.
 
John’s
usually bright eyes were open, glassy and staring.
 
A milky caul had already begun to form
over his pupils.
 
His mouth was open
wide, and for one horrible moment I thought that he was laughing at me.
 
It wasn’t a laugh though.
 
It was a scream.

I collapsed then and there, unable to
move.
 
The torch, and hydrogen
peroxide
 
canister
dropped from my hands.
 
I felt
rather than heard something come up behind me and shove me roughly out of the
way.
 
I barely registered the shape
of a bear taking a step forward then clumsily falling back.
 
Part of me realised that it was Anton
but I couldn’t even move.
 
Others
came up from behind but none of them moved past the border of blood. Finally a
pair of arms grabbed me from the ground and pulled me up and back.
 
My feet dragged on the ground.
 
Everything went dull and the air itself
seemed to pause.
 
There was silence
while the world slowly spun into a black nothing.

*

When I came to, I was lying some distance
away from the body.
 
John’s body.
  
I could still smell the salty drying blood, however.
 
I gagged and retched, sitting up to
empty my stomach of the earlier half-digested cheese sandwich.
 
Before I’d even finished, a hand cuffed
me round the side of my face spinning me back to the ground.

A nearby wolf snarled.

Anton’s face swam towards me.
 
He must have shifted back to human.
 
“What…the…fuck…did…you…do?”
 
His dark eyes fixed on me unwaveringly.
 
He cuffed me with his other hand.

The wolf snarled and knocked into him,
forcing him to stagger slightly to the side.
 
It stood in front of me, fangs bared,
growling.

“She might be your fucking friend, Tom,
but she knows something about this.”
 
He stepped forward again, trying to get past Tom’s wolf form.
 
Tom snapped at him warningly.
 
“You don’t get to do this, you piece of
mange.
 
I knew we couldn’t ever trust
a human,” Anton spat.
 
Another
figure joined his, backing him up by assuming an attack position.
 
Their eyes were both covered with a
yellow sheen.

I leaned on Tom and pulled myself up to my
feet.
 
I looked at the three of
them, completely numb.
 
A wave of
freshly decaying flesh hit my nostrils again, but this time I felt almost
clinically detached from it.
 
“There
was a stone.
 
A wichtlein
stone.
 
He found it today
over in the east.
 
That was the last
place I saw him.”

“Fucking ape!
 
You’re lying through your teeth!”

“It’s the truth,” I said dully.

Betsy padded over to me and sniffed.
 
She gave a feline nod of her head
acknowledging the truth of my words and padded softly away.
 
Julia’s Voice flared over all of
us.
 
You all need to return to the keep.
 
I’m sending a few others out with a
bodybag.
 
They’ll get all…they’ll
get John and bring him home.
 
It’s not
safe for the rest of you to be out.

Anton growled.

This
is not under negotiation.
 
You will
do as I say.

I vaguely realized that her Voice didn’t
quite have the ring of compulsion that a true initiated alpha’s would have.
 
Even Anton seemed to understand what
disobeying her would mean for the pack, however, and drew back.
  
“This isn’t over, human,” he spat
again.
 

I just looked at him, unable to
respond.
 
I turned back to the keep
and started to walk.

Chapter Three

“Red?
 
Red?
 
Mack?”
 
A hand shook my shoulder roughly.
 
“Mackenzie!”

My eyes moved up towards Tom.
 
Part of me noted the panic and fear in
his eyes before I looked back down again at the flagged floor of the great
hall.
 
I could barely remember
getting here.

A hand slammed into the side of face,
slapping my cheek with a stinging crack and half knocking me off the
chair.
 
What the…?
 
“Get a grip of yourself, dear.
 
This isn’t helping.”

I raised my eyes to Julia and stood up,
kicking the chair behind me, eyes blazing and blood firing.
 
I took a threatening step towards her
and she smiled dispassionately.
 
“That’s better.
 
Now tell us
what you know, Mackenzie. Focus.”

I shook my head to dissipate the slight
ringing in my ear and stopped, slowly looking around the hall.
 
Everyone was there, the whole Cornish
pack.
 
Some looked frightened,
others angry.
 
Almost all their eyes
were turned to me, waiting for some kind of explanation.
 

Focus.
 
Focus the fire.

I took all my grief and anguish and locked
them away deep inside, allowing my bloodfire to flicker and bring me back to
life.
 
If only it could be that easy
with John. Taking a deep breath, I told them all what had occurred that day,
trying not to leave any detail out.

“We have no proof that any of this is
true,” Anton barked once I’d finished.

“We have the cloth,” said Julia, smoothly,
“Alexander has been looking over it outside but has found nothing remarkable
about it other than the smell of death.
 
And Larch has confirmed the time of death as around 7pm.
 
Mackenzie was still here in the keep
then.
 
In fact everyone was here in
the keep then because it was almost dinner.”

“So whoever did this to John wasn’t one of
us,” Tom mused.

“Yes,” nodded Julia.
 
“At least we don’t have to go through
the rigmarole of needlessly accusing each other.”
 
She looked at Anton as she said this.
 
He held her gaze for a beat before
looking away and I knew then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Julia was the
only person who was right to be alpha.

“So what’s next?” asked Betsy.
 
She scratched at her neck awkwardly and
looked scared.
 
“Are we all
targets?”

I picked up the chair I’d kicked and
calmly set it back on the ground, before looking round at each and every
shifter.
 
“What’s next is I find out
who, or what, did this, and then I’ll garrotte them.
 
I’m going back to the site.”

Julia took a step forward, asserting her
authority.
 
“No-one is going
anywhere until we know it’s safe.”

Anger sparked inside me.
 
“I’ll go where I fucking well
please.
 
I’m not letting that thing,
whatever it was, that killed John spend even one more minute alive than
necessary.”