Bloodfire (Blood Destiny) (3 page)

I murmured something back at Julia and
headed for the kitchen, hoping I could find something to eat and avoid having
to sit down to pretend to enjoy Johannes’, the resident pack chef’s, cooking
with the rest of the pack later on.
 
Betsy herself was in there washing a plate.
 
She arched an eyebrow at me.

 
“You smell…
.interesting
,
Mack.”
 
She looked behind me.
 
“Is Tom with you?”

I shrugged.
 
“He was but he disappeared when Julia
started harping on at me.”

She looked oddly disappointed for a second
before returning to the sink.
 
“Are
you coming to the Hanging Bull for a jar tonight?”

I opened the fridge and dug inside for
some bread and a hunk of cheese before sitting down at the large scarred wooden
table.
 
“Nah.
 
I want to hit the library and check out
a few things.”

“Your young policeman might be there.”

“He’s not ‘my’ anything.”
 
I started sawing at the creamy
cheese.
 
I’d had a very

brief
affair with the local copper.
 
His name was, and I’m not joking here, Nick.
 
It hadn’t lasted long.
 
I’d had the feeling that he was looking for
a little wife to keep the home fires burning whilst he saved the village of
Trevathorn and its environs from dangerous washing line thieves and the local
drunks.
 
That was never going to be
me.
 
In fact, as nice as he was, I
rather felt that I’d had a lucky escape.

I finished making my sandwich and started
chewing it down.
 
Unfortunately,
Johannes took that moment to enter the kitchen.
 
He saw me eating and gave me a baleful
look.

“I…er…I’ll be here for dinner, Johannes, I
just need a little snack,” I said hastily.

He humphed grumpily and began peeling
potatoes.
 
“Dinna think that you can
pull tha wool o’er my eyes, dahling.”

“I’m not!
 
I’ve been out all day, didn’t have
lunch.
 
I wouldn’t miss your cooking
for the world,” I swore, hating myself for the lie
-
 
and
Johannes for the endearment.

Betsy choked back a guffaw.
 
“Just make sure you give her double
portions to make up for that lost lunch, J.”
 
She leaned over to him and gave him a
peck on the cheek.
 
I forced a
smile.
 
It’d serve me right, I
supposed.
 
She winked at me on the
way out and I pulled a face at her in return.

Once the door closed behind her, I rested
my head on my hands and cocked an eye up at Johannes.
 
I knew that whilst his cooking might not
tempt my palate, he was a fount of knowledge and, unlike Betsy, wouldn’t go opening
his mouth to the others. I debated whether to pump him for more details on this
afternoon’s revelations or not.
 
It
might save me a few hours of digging around in the library.
 
“What do you know about wichtleins, J?”

He looked up, somewhat appeased that I was
asking him for information.
 
“Scary
bleeders those ones, “ he said slowly.
 
“Seen one ‘ave ye?”

I shook my head.
 
“Just a…rumour.”

He sat down across from me.
 
“Wichtleins ur trouble.
 
Mah grandfaither saw one once,
doon
the mines.
 
Knocked three times befaur disappearing.
 
He
hud
enough
guid sense in ‘im tae get the hell oot of Dodge.
 
Less than ten minutes efter the roof
collapsed ‘n twenty three men were kill’t.”

That gibed with what I’d originally
thought.
 
“So they stay
underground?”

“For the maist part.
 
If’n ye see one on the surface thae,
ye’d better skedaddle.
 
‘
parently
they on’y dae that when thair’s summat big
abrewin.”

“What about tokens?
 
Do they usually leave signs behind
them?”

“Thay like tha mines and th’underground so
often stanes.”

“Stanes?”
 
I was momentarily puzzled.

“Aye, lass.
 
Wee hard pebbles.”

Oh,
stones.
 
Now I got it.
 

Johannes regarded me gravely.
 
“Stanes as smooth as silk and black as a
witch’s heart.
 
Find on o’ them and
running for the hills willna do you ony guid.
 
Cos then yer card’s marked.”

But I hadn’t found the stone – John
had.
 
I pursed my lips,
worried.
 
Perhaps I should go after
him just in case.
 
I knew he could
take care of himself but a harbinger of doom directed at him in particular was
not good news.
 

I thought of one more
thing
.
 
“What about bits of material?”

“Material?
 
Nae that Ah’ve heard, lass.”
 
He leaned back and folded his arms and frowned
at me with a serious expression on his weathered face.
 
“You teck care of yersel’ min’?”

I nodded.
 
I appreciated that he hadn’t asked my
why I was suddenly so interested in wichtleins but the gnawing worry for John
ate at me.
 
“I don’t think I’ll be
eating dinner after all, J.”

Concern flickered in his eyes.
 
“Aye, mebbe best not, love.”

I stood up to leave.
 
“It’s Mack.”

He looked puzzled.
 
“Eh?”

“Never mind.”
 

I headed for the door, checking the straps
on my arms that held my daggers as I left.
 
I did briefly consider picking up a bow and some silver tipped arrows as
well.
 
The shifters wouldn’t go near
silver, but it didn’t affect me and was a powerful weapon against anything not
wholly of this world.
 
Chances were
I’d make a mistake and end up hitting John himself instead though.
 
I was a mean shot but I knew enough of
the vagaries of
prophecies
of doom that they were as
likely to come about by your attempted actions to stop them as anything else.
 
Perhaps it had been clear that the wichtlein’s
token wasn’t intended for John though because he would surely have known what
it portended and how it worked, and acted more appropriately concerned for
himself
. He’d certainly known enough to know that it was to
be taken seriously.
 
I mean, after
all, he was calling the Brethren in for goodness’ sake. He wasn’t anyone’s
fool.
 

Yet despite taking the sudden appearance
of the stone seriously, John hadn’t appeared that immediately worried about his
own safety this afternoon.
 
He’d
been laughing and joking around in fact.
 
I paused.
 
Or had he?
 
I tried to think whether it had been
both of us laughing about the repeated bunny adventures or whether it had just
been me.
 
Damnit.

I stopped to grab my trusty hunters’
backpack and leather jacket to stave off the cold night air on my way out.
 
Hearing Julia moving about on the first
floor, I called up the stairs to her.
 
“Julia?”

There were a few thumps and I could hear
someone cursing.
 
Her head eventually
peered down from above the shiny first floor banister.
 
“Yes, dear?”

“Something’s wrong.
 
Where did John say he was going to?”

My question hung in the air for a
heartbeat and something flickered in her face.
 
Fear?
 

“He didn’t say.”
 
There was another moment’s silence
before she cleared her throat.
 
“Should I muster the troops?”
 
Her voice was quiet.

I thought about it for a second.
 
Perhaps I was just being paranoid.
 
But if I wasn’t and John was really in
danger then he’d need all the help we could give him.
 
I’d rather look like an idiot and have
him safe than risk the fact that he might be hurt.
 
“That might be best. I’m going to head
for the beach by the old cottages.
 
Get the others to fan out from here and see if they can find him. “
 

Julia lifted back her head and
roared.
 
It was unbelievable that
such a small woman could create such a racket.
 
Almost immediately the sounds of
shifters running for the hall could be heard.
 
I couldn’t wait even for them
though.
 
The fire inside me was
already rising with every moment that passed. I shrugged on my jacket, swung
the pack on my shoulder and left.

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.