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

her hands on her hips and directed all of her pent up anger towards him.

He stepped into the room like he owned the place and completely ignored her. That only served to make her more angry, but she had to admit he knew her. If he had indulged her for even a second, they were likely to have been there all night.

“Are you two done mooning around? We have a battle to fight,” Pitch growled.

“We?” Lyra wildly swung her hand around her. “Where did you even come from? Why are you here? You’re fighting now?”

“Oh, I’m not fighting.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Her face twisted into an unimpressed look.

“I don’t fight for you. I fight for myself. This battle has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with the skeleton you just created. Nice touch by the way. Added a little definition to his eyes.”

Now she really wanted to punch him. He had no right to talk about Wolfgang like that. He had no right to talk to her at all. But still, she couldn’t help but ask, “Did you see him?”

“Oh yeah, all strung up for battle too. Old armor, blazing eyes.” Pitch held his hands up and pointed with his fingers from his own eyes. “Real overkill if you ask me.”

“I’m not sure he controls that,” she muttered.

“He controls it, sweetie.” Pitch seemed to notice Jasper’s wings at that moment and blinked a few times. “Nice wings.”

Jasper immediately turned bright red.

“Thanks, they’re ah…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re pretty shocking.”

Pitch smiled. He didn’t have a kind smile in him, Lyra thought. This smile was all teeth and daggers. “Yeah, shocking. Want to see mine?”

Shadows stretched out around him. Feather light, they stretched impossibly far on either side of him until they touched each side of the wall. If she stared hard enough, she could make out the edges of these wings that seemed to alternate between jagged and soft.

Her jaw dropped open and even Jasper seemed to flinch. The shadow wings drew back towards him and shrunk back into the mass of moving darkness that always seemed to accompany Pitch.

“What are you?” Lyra couldn’t help but ask again.

He smiled his thorny smile once more. “You’ve asked me that before, love. I’m still not going to answer it.”

“You make me thoroughly uncomfortable,” she told him.

He didn’t seem to care. In fact, he ignored her all over again. He gave them both a once over and shook his head. “You aren’t prepared for what you’re walking into.”

“And you know what we’re walking into?” Jasper asked.

“Yes.”

Lyra tsked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you work for Malachi.”

“I work for no one.”

“So you have an allegiance to no one,” she said.

He pointed two fingers at his eyes and then one back at her. “I watch everyone, and I know everything. That’s the most important thing to remember about me. Now, you’re needed at the graveyard.”

“At the battle you’re not fighting in?”

“Nah.” He shook his head and stepped back towards his shadows. “I’d rather watch.”

Once he disappeared from view, she made a face at the corner he had stood in. “Yeah, I bet you’d like to watch. Sicko.”

She was tired of all this nonsense. She wanted to go to bed with a mirror and stare at herself until she went to sleep. Like any other normal Siren.

But she couldn’t, because she had responsibilities and a conscience. Both were things that any other of her species wouldn’t have. She shouldn’t have them either, but she’d always been the odd one.

Jasper stepped up to her. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” she replied as she looked up at him. “You going to put those bad boys away and teleport us or are we off to the races on a winged horse?”

He groaned. “Please don’t call me a winged horse.”

“You’re the same size as one!”

“I knew you were going to say that.” He glowered at her. “Just shut up and get ready to fight, yeah?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

She reached out for him and tangled her fingers in his. It didn’t matter that he might be in love with her, and it didn’t matter what Pitch thought of them. They’d watch each other’s back until the very end because that was what they did.

Lyra just hoped that everyone she loved made it out of this alive.

Chapter 13

They materialized into chaos.

Somehow, in the small time they were arguing, Malachi’s forces had struck. Jasper pushed Lyra’s head down as a firebolt was immediately thrown at the them. This time, Wolfgang was not there to shield them.

They were both thrown to the ground as the resulting explosion rocked the stones beneath them. She hit hard, and her elbows cracked. Already she was in pain, and the fight hadn’t even started for her yet.

“Lyra?” Jasper shouted.

“I’m fine!”

She wasn’t fine. She was in hell. Lyra’s eyes devoured the sight before them. The ground was on fire; everything was on fire. People grappled on the ground and fired arrows blindly through the air.

Her team had brought fighters. Or perhaps those were Wolfgang’s meager army.

It didn’t matter who they were; there were so many dead bodies littering the ground like fallen leaves from an oak tree in autumn. Her breath sawed out of her chest as she watched a Minotaur impale a Troll on his horns. At the last moment, the Troll twisted firmly and both creatures fell to the ground dead.

She was flattened on the crushed gravel in the middle of the graveyard. The remnants of what used to be a headstone dug into her ribs. She reached forward to hold the last fragment that was still legible.

“Mungus,” she whispered. Charlie’s grave had been destroyed.

Jasper had crawled to her side. He pulled the stone out of her hand and placed his palm against her spine. “We have to move, Lyra; we can’t stay here.”

“Why are we doing this?” she asked him.

“Because we have to.”

“Why is he doing this?”

Jasper was already looking