Bloodfire (Blood Destiny 1) - Helen Harper Page 0,10

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.”

“You will do as I say. Until we know what we are after, we cannot afford to let this happen again.” She reached out and gently touched my shoulder. I fought the urge to not pull away. “You will get your revenge, Mackenzie. As will we all.”

“Amen to that,” murmured Tom.

From somewhere inside the keep the phone rang. Julia seemed to slump ever so slightly. “That’ll be the Brethren. I called them and left a message as soon as John was found.” She tightened her grip on me for just a second and then left to answer it.

I sat back down. I couldn’t avoid the Brethren now, no matter what happened. The Way stated that whenever a pack alpha passed away, the Brethren had to be present to ensure that the move of power to another was without incident. Way Directive number forty-three. Apparently, in years gone by, there had been bloody battles between potential successors, with candidates whose Voice manifested being mysteriously bumped off at appropriate – or, depending on whose side you were on, inappropriate - moments. The rites and formalities to properly acknowledge a new alpha traditionally took three days. I could only hope that the Brethren wouldn’t stick around for longer to try to investigate into John’s death. I could probably fool them for a short period of time with Julia’s lotion but I doubted I’d be able to keep up the pretense for any length of time, especially when sooner or later I’d be expected to shift. But I was damned if I was going to be run out of my home before I found out who had murdered the only father figure I’d ever had. One plus side was that they had a new Lord Alpha, because Xander Brandy, who’d been alpha up until recently and by all accounts was a vicious bloodthirsty werebear, had retired. I wasn’t exactly a celebrity follower but even I’d have had to have been hiding under a rock to have not noticed the chatter on the Othernet about it. I didn’t know much about who his replacement was, in fact it seemed few did, but a newbie might be easier to fool.

For several minutes, nobody made a sound. Shifters were, as a rule, pragmatic about death. When you spent your time chasing after nasties, killing them yourself and often seeing your friends killed by them too, you tended to become somewhat inure to nature’s most reliable outcome. But we hadn’t had a death by unnatural causes for almost 13 years, which was virtually unheard of amongst the shifter world, and the fact that it was John, the alpha, made it doubly hard for everyone. Eventually one of the younger shifters broke the brooding weight and unearthly stillness by reaching over to her friend and hugging her. It was if she had released everyone. Suddenly there were tears and exclamations and hugs happening all over the hall. Tom pulled me to him and wrapped his arms tight around me, then Betsy, then Johannes, then almost everyone. It felt briefly cathartic, and whilst I knew that for most of the shifters it genuinely was, it didn’t waver my resolve to hunt