Red Blood (Series of Blood Book 2) by Emma Hamm (best short books to read .TXT) 📕

water slid out of her ear and down her neck. Did they think they would win? Did they think that she was helpless against them? Did they think they could hurt Wolfgang?

The drip quickly became a leak. The ends of her hair grew sodden with water as a primal part of her welcomed the possessive side of her Siren abilities. No man was ever going to take away something that was hers.

Lyra didn’t stop to think that Wolfgang wasn’t hers. He was off limits. They were working together. Her entire being knew without a doubt that he was an object she liked. A perfect shiny little coin that she was going to add to her collection no matter what anyone said to her about it. A strand of sodden hair fell in front of her face.

“Lyra?” It was almost as though Wolfgang knew what was going through her mind.

Lyra wouldn’t be surprised at this point; he had proven to be a very unpredictable little Red Blood. Something inside of her hummed happily at the thought that her man needed her to take care of him. Her Siren had always adored pampering men.

“Let the shield down, Wolfgang.”

She could see him stare down at her in shock. “Excuse me?”

“Now.”

He reacted to that tone. He stepped away from her as his calculating eyes glanced up and down her body. “You’re dripping.”

“I know,” she growled.

His eyes met hers. Lyra didn’t know what he was searching for, but he must have found it. His hand shook once before he slowly lowered it.

A sense of relief nearly dried the terribly emotions that were running through her. Everything was ruined when the man now covered in flames ran towards Wolfgang. Not her. He didn’t run towards the tiny woman who was now dripping significant amounts of water onto the floor. He ran towards the man.

“Enough!” she shouted. Laced with her voice was a darker sound. A scream. An inhuman sound that vibrated from deep within her person and pierced through the air like a blade.

She could hear the word she was waiting for. The shout that Jasper screamed towards his teammates was a warning they had only recently realized they needed.

“Ears!”

Those who knew what she was and worked directly with her reached into their pockets and slammed their hands over their ears. Their palms were covered with reflective sheen. The substance was the only thing that Lyra knew could block out the scream of a Siren. Luckily, the Black Market had plenty of it.

She waited until she knew she wouldn’t harm those whom she cared about. Wolfgang was an anomaly she could only hope wouldn’t be affected by the scream she was about to unleash. He wasn’t real. Certainly that would help?

But he was real. He wasn’t a ghost, or so he said. If he had a physical body somewhere she couldn’t be certain that he wouldn’t be harmed.

Worry couldn’t stop the sound from spewing out of her mouth. Her lips parted to release a sound that started too high pitched for humans to hear. Then the tone changed and a scream unlike any scream heard before shattered the remaining glass around them.

A Siren’s scream wasn’t really a scream at all. It was a nightmare locked inside a sound. Men fell to their knees around her as they clutched their heads. Blood leaked from between their fingers in slow drips that mimicked the water dripping from her fingertips.

Eventually, she ran out of breath. A single scream had rendered everyone near her immobile as they laid upon the ground. Perhaps she had held the sound for a few moments too long.

One of the men near her groaned but quickly silenced himself as even that small mumble was too painful to hear. She stumbled as she tried to step over one of the men towards Wolfgang.

She had expected him to be horrified. They all were when they first saw what she could do, if they weren’t on the ground in pain. She was scared to look at him.

Movement made her look up, and his eyes caught hers. Held. Those mismatched eyes were so difficult to read as they reached inside her soul. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, couldn’t tell what he thought of her.

“The cemetery on Ripper Street in three days. Midnight,” he said.

And then he disappeared.

She blinked away the tears that made her eyes prick. There was nothing in those words to let her know if he thought her a freak. He had not given her any reason to consider herself unwelcome; in fact, he appeared to have invited her somewhere. But all she could remember were the hundreds of people who had deemed her unworthy.

Siren. Bitch. Whore. Husband stealer. All the names that were associated with her race that had been thrown at her for her entire life. Like bullets, the words had left wounds upon her soul.

He left. He simply left, and she felt as though something had been torn from her.

“Lyra?” Jasper’s voice cut through the fog of her mind. His hand touched her shoulder and left a sticky residue on the leather. “We have to go.”

“Did you see him?” She couldn’t help but ask. Maybe he was a figment of her imagination. Maybe he was a result of her mind trying to punish her.

She looked up in time to see the angry expression upon Jasper’s face disappear.

“Yes, I saw him. That’s no Red Blood.”

“I don’t think so either,” she murmured as she turned to go back home to Haven.

Chapter 5

10 YEARS AGO

Lyra walked down the streets of the Black Market as though she owned the place. In a sense, she did. Every man here wanted to be with her. They would do anything for just a smile from the Siren who had made a name for herself.

She was only a teenager, but she had the body of a woman. More than that, she had the mind of a woman. The cocky way her mouth would quirk