Greed
Wolfsgier is a novel by the German author Brigitte Melzer , published in 2009 .
action
The story takes place in Cranmoor, southern England, in August 1886.
The young Millie Harrisson runs in panic through the forest, pursued by her own villagers. She was chosen to be the next victim of the raging beast feared for 25 years. But Millie does not want to be the next victim in a long chain and falls to her death.
At the same time in London, young Emma keeps dreaming of a raging beast. When she tells her aunt about it, she puts her in the Bethlem Royal Hospital , a mental hospital on the outskirts of London, where doctors try to calm her down with morphine , but that drives her further and further into the realm of nightmares. She manages to escape in an unobserved moment. Knowing that the nightmares have to do with her past, she travels to her home town of Cranmoor.
But strange things are happening there, people are disappearing, and no one is really happy to see them return, not even their own father. The village elders have already chosen Emma to succeed Millie Harrisson. She should be the next victim of the beast. Meanwhile, your aunt has sent an investigator to take Emma back to London. Preston Styles watches men kidnap young Emma one night, shortly afterwards he is knocked down himself.
Emma wakes up tied up in a boat. When she capsizes shortly afterwards on the coast of an island in the fog lake, she sees the beast. But then she sinks and almost drowned. A stranger rescues her from the water. What she doesn't know yet, this stranger is her former lover Gabriel, and he is the beast. When she realizes that Gabriel is the beast, she accuses him of being the murderer of her mother, because she was killed by the beast. A short time later Emma is attacked by a beast, but it is not Gabriel, but his father, as it becomes clear later.
Later, Gabriel, Emma and Styles learn the origin of the beast. It was the god Naram Sin with whom Gabriel's father made a pact. Gabriel kills his father, and when Emma, Gabriel and Styles meet the other villagers, Gabriel tries to flee because the others know that he is the beast, but not that his father claimed human sacrifices for 25 years. Styles draws his revolver, inserts his lucky cartridge, shoots and hits the fleeing Gabriel. Emma mourns and makes a pact with Naram Sin. He offered her to reverse it.
The epilogue then begins with a scene in the mental hospital. It's all as if none of this happened except for one little thing.
The epilogue changes to Styles opening scene in the pub. There it becomes clear that his lucky cartridge is a blank cartridge .