CHAPTER Two
Practically speaking, there was a limit to the number of places that John could have gone to. We’d been east that afternoon so he wouldn’t be there again now. Having little patience with the local humans, he generally avoided the village so that was probably out. North of the keep was the road and south was the forest then the coast. It was usually the case that any nasties around would try to avoid being inadvertently run over by a heavy goods lorry and stay in the opposite direction. And where there were nasties, that’s where I’d find John so south it was. I kept my mental fingers crossed that I was just over-reacting but made sure that I stayed fully alert and engaged anyway, and that my daggers were easily accessible and wouldn’t snag on my clothing when I needed them most.
One of the inexplicable skills that I had, and could boast about to, er, no-one, were a few parlour mind tricks. I could hear and respond to the alpha’s Voice in the same way that a real shifter could, which admittedly might just be a side-effect of living with the pack for most of my life, much in the same way that women’s periods aligned themselves if they lived together in close quarters for a long period of time. It was just too bad the Voice didn’t work both ways, in my case or in the shifters’ cases. Unfortunately only alphas could initiate mind to mind conversation and although I shouldn’t by rights be able to hear him because I wasn’t a shifter, the rules for me were the same. I couldn’t contact him, he could only contact me.
But I also did have superior tracking skills – for a human at least – and was often able to sense when I wasn’t alone. At this particular point in time it was all I could use because, without the shifters’ superior sense of smell, I had little else to rely upon to find John as quickly as I could. I was pretty sure at the moment that there was nothing out there hiding in the darkness and shadows though.
Carefully checking the enveloping darkness around me as I went, I jogged steadily down through the worn forest path. I heard other shifters call out to each other in their animal voices from some way behind me. So far, nothing. The overhanging branches of a nearby tree caught my hair and pulled at it, catching some of the strands and yanking my head back. I cursed and stopped briefly to untangle myself when my gaze caught something gleaming on the leaf-strewn ground. I bent down to take a closer look before using the cuff of my jacket to scoop it up. It fell into my palm and heat started to rise in the pit of my belly. A wichtlein stone. Was this the one John had found earlier or was this one destined for me? I rolled it into my hand. It felt the same as the one from earlier but I had no way of knowing whether that was usual or whether it really was the same. I was about to bring it up to my ear to test it for the chiming sound when I realised it felt unpleasantly damp. I picked up it up gingerly between my thumb and forefinger and brought it closer. It looked like blood. I sniffed cautiously, then reached into my backpack without taking it off my shoulder and rummaged through its contents blindly. I kept my eyes trained on the stone.
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. F*ck. 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…f*ck…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 f*cking 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.”
“F*cking 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.