Bloodrage by Helen Harper Read Free Book Online Page A

tight fit and I was struggling to squeeze it in when someone rudely pushed past me, jolting my body against the rows of books.  I inadvertently lost my balance and half tumbled to my knees, cursing.  Fucking mages.  At least shifters had some semblance of manners.  Even Anton wouldn’t have been so crude as to get a kick out of a move like that.
    I would have gone after the offending mage, promises to the Arch-Mage be damned, but the throbbing in my skull had transformed itself into a searing pain that was making it hard to think straight.  The idea that maybe I’d incurred some kind of serious injury at some point, and now had a blood clot or brain tumour invading my body flitted through my mind with the unerring whisper of every hypochondriac’s worst nightmare.  Squeezing my eyes tightly shut, I tried to will away the pain then, when that didn’t work, I pushed my palms against the uneven surfaces of the books to try and bring myself back up to my feet.  And that was when I felt it. 
    It was a soft tingle against my fingertips, as if one of the books was almost vibrating.  I’d felt that half-buzz before.  I half opened one eye and squinted towards where the sensation was coming from.  My jaw tightened when I realised that I wasn’t mistaken.  Without thinking further, I reached over and pulled out a dusty looking book, the now forgotten Human-Fae dictionary dangling half off the shelf above me where I’d been trying to push it back in.  I focused instead on the new tome in my hands, that was continuing to hum against my skin, and moved down and sat on the floor, carefully turning over the first page.  The familiarity of the opening image floored me: a stunningly beautiful landscape with undulating emerald green hills in the background, a shining blue river, and what appeared to be a pomegranate tree.  I turned the next page, but I knew what I would see before I got there.  It was a Fae rune, singly screaming itself at me from the pristine white page.  This was exactly the same book that I’d come across in the Clava bookshop, the one that had freaked me out so much and made me really doubt what the old woman had been up to.
    I tried to rationalise it to myself.  I’d been in a bookshop.  What else would you find in a bookshop other than books?  Now I was in a library.  Hello! And it was a vast library stocked with hundreds of thousands of titles no less.  Of course there would be copies of the same book.  But in such a large library was it really credible that I’d come across such an unusual and rare book without even looking?  I moved my hand up to my scalp to twist my fingers thoughtfully through the hair that I no longer had, and then stopped abruptly in midair and brought my fingers to my nose instead, sniffing.  Oh God.  There was a definite whiff of stale bonfire clinging to them.  I raised the book itself up to my face and sniffed again, even more cautiously this time.  The smell was even stronger.  As if the book had been in a fire and the pages had been burnt.  I flicked quickly through the rest of i t, not looking to see what was inscribed within but instead hunting for any signs of damage.  There were none. 
    I rocked back.  Okay, so it could be a coincidence that I’d come across the same book.  Coincidences happen all the time ; in fact it would be a coincidence if there were no coincidences (I struggled mentally with that one although I think I got it).  But could it really be a coincidence that a copy of the book that I last saw burning in the debris of Mrs. Alcoon’s shop now turned up here with the definite and distinctive odour of burnt paper?  I wasn’t completely stupid.  Something was going on here.  I glanced down at my blue robes and realised that they would actually have some use after all.  Taking a quick glance around to make sure that no-one was within eye shot, I hiked up the robes and shoved the book under one of my arms.  The robes would