Red Blood (Series of Blood Book 2) Emma Hamm (the beginning after the end read novel .TXT) 📖

He was starting there. That was the only plan they could glean from their spies. He would kill the humans first. Only once they were all gone would he turn his gaze towards the magical creatures.

Lyra shook her head firmly. “We won’t let that happen. How are we doing this?”

“We?” Jasper stood from his corner and immediately opened the door. “I won’t do this.”

“Why?” she had to ask him. She needed an answer from the man she had always considered family.

“Because we don’t know him, Lyra. This could be a trap.”

“I know him. And you know me. That should be enough!”

“After six weeks, you know him? You don’t know a thing about this man.”

With his words ringing in her ears, he left the room. Lyra lifted a hand to rub at the spot on her chest that suddenly hurt. He couldn’t imagine how well she knew this man next to her. Perhaps she did not know his history. Perhaps she did not know what he would say or do or think. But she had felt his soul and knew that Wolfgang was a good man at his core.

He was unlike any man she had ever been with before. He considered her to be special simply because she existed. He had found light in every part of herself that she had considered to be dark.

Long, thin fingers found their way to her shoulder and squeezed. He did not shame her by asking if she was all right. He did not linger upon the moment that had caused her pain. Instead, he looked towards the other two remaining in the room.

“In the next step of this adventure, we must part. I trust the two of you are capable of gathering all that may be needed to protect my people.”

Burke spread his arms. “Just us I’m afraid.”

“Then I will advise you to find your way to the cemetery on Ripper Street. Underneath the graves is where I call home. There you will find my manservant, Mungus. He will come when you call. Tell him to awaken the golems. All of them. And wait for us there until morning.”

“What will you be doing?”

Wolfgang seemed to hesitate. He searched for Lyra’s gaze and held it. She did not recognize the emotion that shadowed his usually comforting gaze.

“What is it, Wolfgang?” she asked.

“We’re going to make a monster.”

Chapter 11

“Will you tell me where we are going now, please?”

Her voice seemed to echo as they stepped through her portal into a completely different part of the Black Market. He had asked if she still had one, and of course she had. Lyra had enough portals to this place to bring a hundred people here. But she wasn’t focused on their location. Instead, she was focused on the words he had said only moments before.

Making a monster? Why did that make a pit form in the base of her stomach?

He walked away from her. Wolfgang acted as though he didn’t hear her question at all. Instead, he was walking down the street as though she hadn’t just asked him a very important question.

She was instantly flustered. Perhaps he hadn’t realized it was important to her. Perhaps he thought it was a rhetorical question and he didn’t have to answer her.

“Wolfgang. Did you hear me?”

When he didn’t answer her again, she knew he was ignoring her. He had certainly heard her shrill voice. How dare he.

Water leaked out of her ears as she was overwhelmed with the anger that surged into her body. She was panicking, wondering what they were doing, how they were going to do it, and why there were shadows in his eyes. Her fingers curled into fists. Her teeth grit together until she could hear a creaking sound.

“Listen to me!” Lyra shouted.

He continued to walk down the street.

She was going to murder him. She was going to wrap her pretty fingers around his scrawny throat, and she would hold on until he remembered who was truly in control. He had no right at all to ignore her. Her! She was the Siren. She was the one who was supposed to have men wrapped around her fingers.

“Am I losing my touch?” she muttered under her breath as she stomped after him. “Wolfgang!”

Reaching, she grabbed onto the edge of his robe and gave a quick yank. The fabric bled from his figure as though it had been made of water. Great chunks of it floated towards her, and others simple dissolved into the air. Fragments of dark cloth drifted around them for a few moments until they fell to the ground.

She was unimpressed with the show. Lyra didn’t even allow herself to be pleased with the rare sight of his form. She did not linger upon the long legs that were carefully wrapped in velvet. Nor did she wish to reach out and touch the crisp white lines of his shirt. She certainly wasn’t tracing the lines of scars and tattoos that were revealed clearly upon his hands and throat.

“There’s no need for theatrics,” Lyra grumbled before she shook herself back into her unjustified anger. “I will not take another step without you explaining yourself.”

Wolfgang met her gaze with a quirked eyebrow. “Now who is guilty of theatrics?”

“Enough.”

He glanced down the street as though it might offer him an escape. He should have known better, she thought. To his credit, he did sigh and look back at her. A shrug was her answer.

“Why are you being secretive about this?” she asked. “I need to know what we’re doing. And if it’s dangerous.”

“Everything we do together is dangerous,” he replied.

“What are you talking about?”

He reached for her then. Long fingers traced the arch of her brows and trailed down her cheeks until his thumbs could trace the pout of her lips.

“We are creatures made of teeth and claws. Every time we are near each other, we are infinitely more dangerous.”

“Wolfgang,” she whispered as she leaned into