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