Silver Blood (Series of Blood Book 1)

by Emma Hamm

  E didn’t like to say that it was partial to Wren. E wanted to cause trouble and to make people laugh. Or cry, depending on the day and what side of the bed E had woken up on. It frequently said that Wren was holding it back from doing all the things that it was meant to do.

  But Wren knew how much it adored her. It made her laugh whenever it could, and it was always there to pick her up mentally when she fell. E was her best friend and her biggest advocate. Even when it didn’t need to be.

  “So who are you today anyways?” she asked quietly as a few more customers came into the store.

  “I’m channeling Cleopatra’s grandmother.”

  “That seems an odd choice. Why not Cleopatra?”

  “Far too boring, darling. Cleopatra got everything she wanted, but her grandmother… Well now that was a woman to enjoy.”

  “I don’t think Cleopatra’s grandmother was even in the history books much.”

  “You just didn’t listen when we were learning about it.”

  “Also true.” Wren smirked. She was never one who had enjoyed being cooped up in school very much. She wanted to run outside and play with whatever animals she could find.

  Back then, the school had been near a pond. Nature was always trying to take back the giant buildings that lived around them. Magic pouring into the world hadn’t helped that, in fact it had only made it worse.

  Vines had their own ideas, and trees could pull themselves up by the roots to travel to new ground. It made living in metal buildings much harder when green things could fight back.

  But she had loved the area behind the school building. There were far too many stinging nettles for anyone else to follow her, and Wren preferred to be alone. The other children were brutal when they learned she was a Curiosity. The harsh words would send her running outside the building to catch frogs and try kissing them into princes.

  E had been more forceful back then. She thought that it had tried to scare her into being frightened of it. Wren would have been easier to control if she were frightened of the beast inside of her. But she hadn’t been frightened and had given E sass right back.

  Eventually, they had learned that they quite liked each other. It only took a couple summers of puberty before E and Wren were back at that pond laughing with each other. Rather than E telling her scary stories and attempting to drown her, E had taken it upon itself to build her confidence back up.

  She could see its reflection in the water, and it liked to watch her skip rocks. E had never been able to do that back home. The skipping part always confused it.

  That was the only fact Wren knew about E’s life before her.

  “Wren, love, could I get a little Happiness please?”

  Wren blinked at the hobgoblin in front of her. He was a tiny little thing with green scales along the edges of his jaw. He wasn’t a regular in her store, but money was money.

  She turned on her heel and hopped up the ladder once more. Her heel slipped on one of the rungs, but her clumsiness wasn’t anything new to most of the other customers. They knew how she tended to trip or fall and ignored her now.

  Saving her in her time of need was only going to have to be repeated in a few moments. The woman needed a keeper more than she need a savior.

  Her hand wrapped around a large bottle with yellow smoke in it. Happiness was one of her bestsellers. It was easy to find, easy to take, and the effects lasted for at least two hours.

  The neck of the sweater she wore fell off the long slope of her shoulder. The pale skin underneath was unmarred from scars or tattoos. She handed the hobgoblin the bottle and swiped the coins off of the table.

  “You joining us?”

  She smiled at his offer. “No, thank you though. Would you like some cards?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the three men behind him. “Yeah. Yeah that’ll do.”

  Happiness always created a want for something fun. Wren loved it when people took Happiness and stayed in her booths. Their laughter was fantastic for business, and it always made her smile. She liked that one more than the other emotions.

  Once the four men were settled, business picked up as usual. She was constantly busy though her prices weren’t high enough for the steady stream of people to make much of a difference.

  Wren was well aware that Juice was usually sold for a higher price. But she couldn’t convince herself to sell it for anything other than a few coins. It took her nothing to make it. She settled down with her flowers and herbs, blew a little smoke, dashed a little water, and dreamed.

  This was not the accepted process for creating Juice. Technically, M.O.M. stated that the emotions had to be pure substances that were pulled from personal memories. But Wren found that by doing so, she dulled the memories into black and white. Eventually she would lose all emotion that was connected to that special moment.

  She didn’t want that. Wren’s happy memories were few and far between. She wasn’t going to dull those for any person or money in the world.

  Instead, E had suggested that she let it do the the work for her. She had a small pallet in the corner of her room that she laid upon during these working sessions. Bottles, vials, and flasks were arranged in a semicircle around her with herbs and incense. Wren would get everything ready that she could and then she would lay down and fall asleep.

  Her dreams would be filled with the emotions that she wanted to create. Sometimes these were bad things. Fear, anger, depression, death, all of those horrible things would torment her until she awoke. Her favorite times were when she was making good emotions. Happiness, hilarity, peace, all those emotions that felt wonderful. E was always there with her, a mirrored image of herself.

  It guided her through the good and bad dreams. Once the adventures were complete, she would wake up to a swirl of colored smoke around her. It was easy to trap the smoke once it was created, though she had to cover her nose so she didn’t inhale any of her own juice.

  Then she could shake the smoke with some water or alcohol to turn it into whatever form she wanted. It was magic, Wren knew this. She had a talent for magic ever since she was little. Unfortunately, she had never been able to use it for anything useful.

  The only thing she could use or create were these emotions. She was lucky she was able to create that.

  Wren was exhausted halfway through the night. It was busier than usual because the night had turned to rain. She closed sometime around 3 a.m. but really was open as long as the money was coming in.

  As she worked, she made a list of things she had to fix; light bulb, ceiling, broken windows, get a real bed. The list when on and on until it had become a weight on her shoulders.

  “Stop worrying.”

  “Not possible,” she murmured as she climbed up the ladder once more to reach for a thick grey liquid.

  “Good things will happen.”

  “To those who wait? Yes, I know, E.”

  She couldn’t quite reach the bottle. It was on the highest shelf, and every time her fingers touched it, she pushed it back even farther. Ridiculous that she even kept these vials like this. She mentally added better shelving units to the never ending list.

  “You never know!”

  She knocked the bottle even farther back, which made a frustrated growl erupt from her mouth. “I know that if I don’t get this bottle in my hands, I’m going to hurt someone.”

  The bells on her door jangled again, and she let her head rest against the top ladder rung for a moment. Tonight had been longer than most, and all she wanted to do was rest. Not dream to create more Juice but just sleep in a black void of nothingness.

  She snatched the bottle in her fingers and turned on her heel with the Juice in hand. The night was going to be busy.

  His knees were aching. Sharp pricks of pain spread from his numb feet into his thighs. Burke refused to allow it to distract him. He knelt on a cold stone floor that was far beneath the earth with his eyes closed and his breathing slow. The pain was not a distraction but an addition t
o his existence.

  There were no lights in the room and no sound other than the echo of his own breath. Slow and steady, the sound helped to focus his thoughts and his mind.

  His palms rested against the strong cords of muscle on his thighs. His spine remained straight and solid. His chest expanded with each great breath. If not for his breathing, many would have assumed that he was made completely of stone.

  The dreaming world was a difficult one. It required more concentration to navigate than most could manage. There were so many winding labyrinths of sound and colors that it was easy to disappear into another person’s wonderful dream and never come back out. Burke would know, he’d been lost in the dreaming world before.

  The meditation process was important to center himself before he was in danger once more. He was always in danger in the dreaming world. There were many people who wanted to kill him and even more that wanted to use him for their own purposes. If he even thought of them for a few seconds, he would find himself in their dreams.

  He was here for a reason, here in this room, kneeling on the cold floor until his legs went numb and his fingers turned blue with cold. He was here to find a person who fulfilled a certain list of oddities. He wasn’t precisely certain who it was or even where they were..

  Burke was one of honored few that worked with a group known only as the Five. They were powerful and old creatures that had awoken only when they felt the rumblings in the earth. An old enemy had risen from his grave and was stirring the pot.

  He didn’t know who this enemy was, nor did he care to know. Burke had always been a fighter, and he would continue to fight until he found someone who could best him. But the Five were worried, which was why they had gone into a deep sleep to find the answer to the war they felt was coming.

  They had returned with a riddle that was neither explanatory nor helpful. Seemed more like a shopping list to Burke than anything else.

  L ost in a crowd is the creature that binds,

  It is they who have lost all of their minds.

  Beneath the ground is the creature who protects,

  Carved and scarred by all it detests.

  F orgotten in moss is the creature that sees,

  One who destroys, ruins, and decrees.

  Hidden in smoke is the creature that kills,

  Riddled with boxes, magic, and pills.

  F lesh and blood connects them together,

  It is they who stop the rising aggressor.

  T he Oracle had whispered these words over and over as she woke from her sleep. The Five had pooled all of their energy together to seek the future while draining themselves of magic and power.

  And that bullshit was what they had exhausted themselves for.

  Now it was up to Burke to find these people and figure out where they were. These four people were more important to the Five than even their own lives. Which meant Burke had to find them or die trying.

  Another deep breath expanded his chest, and he slowly exhaled until his chest stopped moving altogether. This was how he slipped into the dreaming world, and part of the reason why it was so dangerous. His physical form was vulnerable and nearly dead while he was projected into other people’s minds.

  Burke was inhabited by a Dream Walker. They could step into other people’s dreams without magic and could change the dreaming world around them. However, he could only control other people’s dreams so much before the other dreamer would start to control him.

  He flexed his fingers one more time before sinking deep into the recesses of his mind. “Lost in a crowd and insane,” he muttered as though the words were a focus point.

  “Alright, time to fly.”

  He said the same thing every time he launched himself into the Dream World. Every time he dropped out of the pit of his stomach and into the blank space of dreams.

  There was no form to his body when he was in the dreaming world. He was nothing more than black smoke until he stepped into a dream. There, he could choose what he wanted to look like. He tended to choose something in the background, a tree or some animal that the dreamer wouldn’t notice.

  Formless, he traveled past the thousands of dreamers that were near him.

  “Something insane. I’m looking for something insane,” he muttered to himself as he touched the edges of every dream that he could. Every single person in each dream appeared to be perfectly sane. Some of them were afraid, even terrified, as they battled nightmares.

  But that was not the same thing as insanity.

  He traveled throughout the night and touched nothing that seemed to fit into the prophecy. He didn’t know who he was looking for and frustration was distracting him.

  Burke also hated to be so far away from his body. His mind had drifted so far that he worried he would tire too quickly and lose the connection to his physical form. This had happened before, and it had taken him nearly a month to get back. He was lucky he hadn’t died that time.

  He turned to go back and disappointment made him angry. He hated coming back with nothing to show. The Five didn’t take failure lightly, and Burke was the only one that could find these people that they needed. Otherwise, they were on a wild goose chase across the world.

  Just as he was about to leave for good, he felt it. A slight tingle raced across his form as though he had walked by something electric. That, right there, was a clear sign of insanity.

  Though he was exhausted, he turned and prepared himself for a battle. The insane rarely liked people inside their dreams, and he never knew what kind of dream they would have. Their minds came up with the strangest of circumstances.

  He flowed into the dream and pooled his smoky form into a shadow to gather his bearings. The dream was far different than anything he had expected. This made Burke nervous.

  The dream was rather peaceful. A small pond was placed in the center of a large field. Flowers were growing in the emerald green grass, and butterflies worked their wings as they rested upon the larger than life blossoms. There was a dock on the lake that looked worn and old. Even from so far away he could see that there were a few holes in it that could break an ankle.

  It was the figure at the end of the dock that caught his attention though. A very small woman sat with her feet dangling off of the edge. A white dress billowed around her that was nearly as frothy as the foam at the edges of the lake. Her hair was a deep blood red that seemed to have a life of its own as it floated around her. She wasn’t underwater, and yet her hair appeared to be.

  There weren’t any animals he could mimic as the butterflies appeared to stay away from her. She would notice if something of her own creation wandered towards her.

  Dreams had a delicate balance. If he startled her in any way, the dream could change on him. Something so fragile as a happy dream could turn into a nightmare if he lost control of it.

  Burke reached into her mind with the barest caress and managed to pluck out a form from a recent memory without her knowing. He recoiled from the insanity of her mind. It rolled within her like a serpentine creature trapped inside a cage. Never in his life had he felt something as powerfully wrong as this.

  He didn’t know what she was, but Burke hadn’t been frightened by a mind in a very long time.

  Taking a deep breath, he wrapped himself in the form of the man in her mind and stepped out of the shadows. He had gotten a name as well, though he didn’t know if it was hers.

  “Wren.”

  She stiffened for a second and glanced over her shoulder.

  He was struck by how unusually shaped she was. He hadn’t seen a woman with so many freckles on her skin or the glinting metal in her nose. Her forehead sloped downwards into a long nose that pointed directly at full pink lips. She was unusually beautiful and startling at the same time. A strand of red hair stroked against her cheek as though comforting her surprised response.

  She narrowed her eyes at him and swept her gaze from his toes to the top of his head. For a moment, Burke thought that he had made a mist
ake. When he was very young, he had sometimes forgotten to put feet on his new body. He managed to not look down and arched an eyebrow in response to her.

  “Hmm,” she said quietly.

  Confused, he repeated the sound to her. “Hmm?”

  “You aren’t right.”

  “I’m not what?” Burke was shocked. No one had ever looked at him in a dream and responded so lucidly. They were usually slightly disoriented or so focused on their own dream that they couldn’t distinguish him from the world around them. Was she another Dream Walker?

  “You aren’t Pitch.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “No, no you’re not,” she said with a short laugh. One of her legs shifted to place a knee on the dock as the other foot dangled above the water.

  “What makes you say that?” He paused in front of a hole in the deck that he would be forced to jump over.

  “Your eyes aren’t right.” She rolled her own eyes. “Also, I would never dream about Pitch.”

  He didn’t know where to go from there. She knew he wasn’t what he was supposed to be, but she hadn’t responded badly. In fact, she had responded as though she wasn’t phased by this at all. “You’ll have to excuse me if I keep this form then.”

  “Why would I excuse you for that?” she replied.

  “Perhaps I do not wish you to know what I look like.”

  “This isn’t a romance novel, and I highly doubt you’re a serial killer in my dreams. There’s no reason for you to hide your form from me.” She turned her back towards him and stared out over the pond again. “You can keep whatever form you like, I suppose.”

  And then she ignored him. She shut him out as easily as if he wasn’t there. Burke didn’t know whether to be insulted or intrigued by this woman who controlled her dreams as easily as he did.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Dreaming.”

  “Wha-” he stuttered for a moment before blinking rapidly. “You know you’re dreaming?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”