Red Blood (Series of Blood Book 2) by Emma Hamm (rm book recommendations .txt) 📗

She snorted. Eye candy indeed. The man might be pretty, but it was highly unlikely that he wasn’t going to be good in a battle. She had always had a good eye for potential soldiers, and he had a feral look about him. Wolfgang could deny that fact all he wanted, but the glint in his eyes was excitement.

Lyra knew bloodlust when she saw it. She could feel the same dangerous feeling flowing through her veins as she clenched her hands.

“You know who they are?” Lyra asked.

“No clue.”

“They aren’t sent from a Lord?”

His eyes glanced towards the window as though he could see them through it. The men were hiding, as they should, but Lyra knew once they stepped out of the door that all hell was going to break loose.

“They are not from a Lord I recognize.”

That was a relief but also created yet another problem. If these attackers weren’t from a Lord then there was another rat’s nest for her to figure out. Lyra hated having to use her brain to figure out problems like this. She was a fighter, not a philosopher.

She threw her hand out as a warning to Wolfgang. “Just stay behind me so I—”

The large glass window they were standing beside exploded. Shards of glass flew into the air all around them, and Lyra curled into herself to avoid it. She had been beside a window such as this long ago. The pain would be excruciating, and she would be picking tiny slivers out of herself for days after this.

She could hear Wolfgang shouting as fire burst through the window and engulfed the two of them. He would be fine. He had to be fine because he wasn’t even in the room with her, not really. But she could feel the cold whisper of a touch against her back as though he was covering her body with his.

Didn’t he know that would do no good? That no matter how hard a ghost tried to save her, fire would always win. It was a terrible way for a Siren to die. Heat and flames would consume a creature meant for the weightless safety of water.

“Lyra!”

Her name was shouted by a familiar voice. She didn’t want Jasper to see her like this. She didn’t want his last memory of her to be a charcoaled bit of flesh and bone gasping its last breath.

But the heat wasn’t touching her. Not really. There was a slight pleasant warmth against her cheeks but no flames eating at the body she meticulously took care of every day.

She inhaled a gasping breath. Her first in a while as she had been holding her breath. The air tasted like soot against her tongue.

Eyes blinking open, she stared at the scene around her as though she was looking through water. Warped figures jumped over the window frame and ran towards them. One man was removed forcibly by Burke who had his arm around the man’s throat. A woman was held frozen in place on her knees as Wren’s white eyes stared down at her. Smoke was trailing from Wren’s mouth and pouring itself down the woman’s throat. That was a new trick, Lyra noted. Jasper tossed aside another man and woman as he ran towards her.

All of the images weren’t right. They were warped and blurry. She blinked a few times to try and bring clarity to her vision, but nothing changed.

“A shield,” she whispered.

Of course it was a shield. She had seen magic like this in books but never in person. There weren’t any creatures left that could naturally create shields such as this. She felt a cold touch shift as though an arm was sliding around the delicate curve of her waist.

“Wolfgang?” she asked.

“Still here.” His voice sounded strained.

“Are you doing this?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Magic.”

Lyra could hear the sound of teeth grinding as Wolfgang’s hand raised. Palm up, he held his concentration upon keeping the shield around them. Shockingly, no matter how many times someone threw something at it or their attackers threw their bodies against it, the shield wall held.

“I thought you said you were a Red Blood,” she questioned.

“I am.”

“But you don’t have a form, and you’re using magic. You must be lying.”

There wasn’t a Red Blood in existence that could use magic. Humans weren’t capable of it. They never had been before. Lyra wondered if perhaps he did have a creature inside of him but simply did not know it.

“I rarely lie.”

She snorted. “And you would tell me when you were lying? I’m not so gullible.”

“No, you are bitter,” he grumbled in response. His hand trembled, and the shield shrunk towards them.

Lyra felt him grunt against her back. The deep sound growled through her conscious, but she could have sworn she did not hear the sound with her ears. “I’m not bitter.”

“You are bitter. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.”

A man slammed against the shield. Her eyes locked onto the hand pressed against Wolfgang’s shield. The strange warped orb around them bent towards them like a bubble being stretched. She felt another grunt, and Wolfgang pressed his hand firmly in the direction of the man.

The fire swirled over the wall and continued to grow. She could see the beauty in the orange licks of flame but found that anger was once more growing inside her body. How dare he? She was having an intelligent conversation with a man who had suddenly grown even more interesting.

This other man thought he could interrupt her? He thought that somehow he could distract her? A irrational part of her brain was convinced that this man wanted to separate her and Wolfgang. That simply would not do.

Lyra’s eyes flicked towards the door as yet more men streamed towards them. Five, ten more. She couldn’t tell how many, but she knew what that meant for the people she cared about. Death. Only death would await them if she didn’t do something.

The heat upon her neck cooled as a slow drip of