Dreaming Of A Blood Red Christmas (Kindred, Book 8.1) by Nicola Claire Read Free Book Online Page A

sound echoing in the corridor we are in.
    Stop this! Let me in! I shout, but Lucinda, ever capable of walking her own path, ignores my demands.
    "Tell me , " she's saying to Petra. "What did you do?" My kindred has worked it out. Or at least she has a fair idea. I feel her agony, her heartache, but also her determination to get the woman to say the words aloud.
    Oh, my wife is clever. She knows this admission will make Petra's claim hard to prove.
    "We threatened his family's lives."
    Lucinda stills, trying to work the time-line out from what I have already told her. My immediate family were murdered by Amicus, in an effort to lure me to him in order to assassinate me. He changed his mind once we met, and turned me instead. Lucinda knows this, so how could he and Petra have held my family's lives over my head after I was turned?
    "What family?" Lucinda asks, and I swear she is holding her breath. I will Petra to answer quickly. Rather a band-aid removal than slow torturous blade to the stomach. Lucinda needs air to breathe, I do not. So I hold my breath for both of us.
    "His cousins, aunts and uncles. His village, all considered family back then."
    "And he agreed?" Lucinda asks.
    "No," Petra replies, opening the wound in my heart fully.
    "No?" I cannot stand to hear the surprise and shock in Lucinda's words. I turn my back from the door to the cells and come face to face with Gregor and Amisi.
    Amisi looks concerned. Gregor looks pained. He has heard Lucinda's thoughts. I hold his gaze, magenta softly infusing the space between us. Silver and platinum flash back in answer to my unsaid plea. Please, do not tell a soul.
    I thought I was no longer ashamed, but I am. I chose my freedom over my extended family. I had lost so much already, but I planned to seek my revenge. The turning had been difficult, making me into something I am not, in more ways than one. I had regrets left over from my human years and more accumulating within hours of being turned. Only amplifying as the hideous first few days passed.
    I was not myself. But that is not an adequate excuse.
    "Then what happened?" Lucinda presses, and I feel a delicate hand rest on my arm.
    I glance down and Amisi is offering comfort, having felt my emotions, no doubt. I smile, but I am sure it does not reach my eyes.
    "I'm going to try something," she says in that lilting Egyptian accent. At this stage I will let anyone, who is willing try anything they so care, have free reign. I nod my head once and she steps around me, placing her hand above the keypad, letting her Light accumulate.
    The scene in the cells has become more desperate. Petra fights the glaze actively now, Lucinda has had to resort to sitting on a stool. Her legs no longer able to support her.
    I am a volatile cocktail of differing emotions. Anger that she is pushing herself this far. Desperation that I cannot reach her. Shame that she knows my most humbling secret. And lastly, fear that she will come to harm.
    Lucinda wins the battle of wills for now, Petra finally answers.
    "I killed a dozen of his family members while Amicus held him down to watch."
    Silence. In the cells. Out here in the corridor. Not that everyone on this side of the door can hear what is transpiring within the prison block, but as I have fallen to my knees, blood red tears streaking down my cheeks, they do not need to hear to know my heart bleeds.
    Lucinda finds the strength to ask one more question.
    "Under orders from Amicus or of your own volition?"
    "It was my suggestion, my plan. My undertaking. That is why Amicus loved me so."
    I feel Lucinda sag on her stool, my eyes dart to Amisi to see if progress has been made. Gregor sees the outright distress on my face.
    "How much longer, ma ange ?" he asks Amisi.
    "Almost there." Almost. Will it be soon enough, though?
    "Well," Lucinda is saying, "You really are a chip off the old block. Couldn't stand Amicus, really don't much like you either. But here’s the thing, in case you haven't