by Emma Hamm
Black Blood
A Series of Blood
Emma Hamm
Copyright © 2017 by Emma Hamm
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by: Mirella Santana - www.mirellasantana.com.br
Stock images by: Depositphotos & Shutterstock | Male model from ©Marcus J. Ranum
Created with Vellum
To all the fans who made it this far and to the journeys we have shared.
To my family for sticking with me through this adventure.
To my friends who let me talk (nonstop) about books.
Thank you all for believing in me.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
Also by Emma Hamm
Chapter 1
200 years ago
“Hello, Sil.”
Pitch’s honeyed voice fell dull and muffled in the silence of his office. The warm wooden hues of his desk offset rich red curtains. Bookshelves stretched to the ceiling, holding hundreds of leather bound books. Crimson light splashed upon the floor from a crystal chandelier swaying overhead.
Windows behind him provided a glimpse into the club below. Strobe lights turned the dancing bodies violent colors of red, orange, and gray. The light bounced off his body, creating a dark silhouette of midnight.
He raised his hand to hold a small vial up to the pulsing colors. A leather cord threaded through the top of the cork which was all that stood between freedom and the vial’s silvery captive. As though it heard his voice, the glow intensified.
“You’re energetic today,” he commended the soul. “It’s good to see you happy. It’s been a long time.”
The light swirled and danced. He held its vial with gentle hands, as it contained the most precious substance in the world. His beginning, his end, and his reason for existence.
Pitch leaned forward and pressed his lips against the cold glass. “You used to say we started in the middle. I still don’t know what you meant by that.” The light reflected in his eyes as he pulled away. “But I think I’m about to find out, aren’t I?”
His fist clenched around the vial as harsh banging against the ornate door of the office startled him. Whoever disturbed him was a lucky man. If the glass had broken, he would have ripped their head from their neck.
“Come in!” Pitch shouted.
The door creaked open, revealing an odd-looking man. He had the distinct whiskers of a cat drooping from his upper lip and brushing against his jaw.
Two years had passed since the dimensions collided, and Leo was affected more than most. His creature had taken to the human body, molding it like clay, until he was more cat than man. Leo's nose was a sloping bridge of bone, wide and flat, smoothing his features into feline characteristics. Slitted pupils expanded underneath heavy brows while a fine dusting of fur covered most of his skin.
Pitch thought of him as a glorious homage to the old days.
“Pitch,” the Shifter began, “the numbers you requested?”
“Yes, yes bring them here, Leo.”
Leo hesitated for a brief second before Pitch raised a hand and twitched his fingers forward. The man would never dare move without a direct command. One of the many traits Pitch admired about his assassin. He had learned long ago to be thankful for blind loyalty.
Pitch pocketed the vial as Leo dropped a stack of papers onto the desk. The assassin’s misshapen hands made movement difficult, but not impossible. His fingers were blunted nubs that looked harmless until he flexed them. He did so, and ran a long, deadly claw down the papers to point out key information.
“The numbers from the club continue to improve as usual. We’ve had almost five hundred guests tonight and those numbers will double. Most of the creatures appear amiable and I feel confident there will be no issues. Unlike last night,” Leo informed.
Pitch scrubbed a hand over his chin and nodded. “And the Juice sales?”
“They're better than most nights. People are beginning to realize Juice is not just illegal. It's enjoyable.”
“Are you partaking?”
“You know I never do.” Leo shook his head.
“All right,” Pitch cleared his throat. “And the recruits?”
“No good news on that subject.” Leo ran his finger down to a tiny list.
“Why?”
“We’re having difficulties finding people who will trust us. Word has spread on the streets you’re a dangerous man to work for.”
Pitch leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the edge of his desk. Steepling his fingers, he looked at his lead assassin with calculating eyes. “And what do you think?”
“I think I’d rather work for the dangerous man. I don't particularly enjoy being hunted.”
“And that’s why you have a job,” Pitch waved his hand. “Now go on. Watch the club tonight and take it easy.”
“Sir?”
“If the recruits aren’t coming to us, then I shall have to go to them.”
Leo turned on his heel and hurried out of the office.
Pitch waited until the door closed before he stood. His glass windows vibrated as the club throbbed with music, dancing, and emotions. People plastered against each other and ground their bodies while otherworldly music played. There were few who showed physical changes though horns and scales glinted through the crowd.
The old days were long gone. Pitch missed seeing creatures who were half monster and half alive. He remembered powerful men and women who could have burned through this dimension. But they were no more.
He pulled the vial from his pocket and held the light up to the window again. “Do you see them Sil?”
She never answered him, and he didn’t expect her to. She had no mouth to speak, no eyes to see, but he liked to pretend.
Sil would have hated being surrounded by dark creatures searching for a moment of oblivion at the bottom of a bottle. This was the world Pitch created.
“It’s not so unlike our home, is it? The bodies are different, but the people are the same,” he said. Her vial swung in his grasp. “Can you see, my love?”
He felt movement in his pocket. Though strange, it was not unexpected. A thrill of excitement ran down his spine.
His long fingers reached into the pocket of his suede black jacket, grasping a small creature which fluttered against his palm. The moth was velvet soft and delicate — a message rather than a living thing.
Pitch held it caged within his fingers until he could hang the vial around his neck. He never let her dangle too long and refused to place her on the desk where she would collect dust.
Using both hands, he pinned the moth between his fingers. It was an unusual species, one which had yet to manifest itself in this dimension. Ghostly grey, its wings curled into delicate tips. Twin eyes upon its back stared at him, eerily human. Its antennae stopped twitching as soon as he spread the wings wide.
For all intents and purposes, it was dead. Magic made a cr
eature like this, rather than carbon and substance.
While he watched, scrawling handwriting appeared stretched across the wings.
It’s time to let me go.
He closed his eyes in both sadness and anticipation.
Long ago, Sil told him he would continue to receive her messages as moths. They were her calling cards. Beautiful and fragile messages, linked to the night. They were just like her.
She stayed true to her promise. He continued to receive the messages written upon downy pale wings over the years. Too many years.
Sighing, he closed his fist around the creature and watched it disappear. No matter how many times he tried to preserve the message, he could not. She once told him holding onto material things was foolish, they took nothing with them.
He always argued.
The vial burned against his chest. He flinched and pulled it over his head as he chuckled.
“Are you impatient, my love?”
It swung from side to side, threatening to wiggle out of his grasp. The trapped soul lacked substance, its brightness dim with age. Thousands of years made a soul weak.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” he asked her. “It’s been a long time. Taking over a body is difficult. If you are unprepared, the human could die.”
The vial rocked again.
Pitch smiled, “All right. I trusted you long ago, and I’ll trust you now.”
He didn’t want to. There was a knot in the pit of his stomach suggesting he should wait. He should hold onto her for just a few moments longer.
He hated not knowing how this might end. Control was his middle name, and the reason he was who he was. He needed to know every little detail of his entire life, and order people around, to feel comfortable.
Sil had never cared for that when she was alive. He guessed she would follow that pattern when she joined the land of the living and possessed a body.
“There are many things which could go wrong,” he reminded her as he walked them toward his desk. “If you are too weak to take over a body and remove the creature, I want you to return without hesitation.”
The light blinked a few times in response.
“Don’t argue,” Pitch scolded her, “it won't get you anywhere. You can’t open the cork on your own. You promise if anything goes wrong, you’ll come right back and we’ll put you back in the bottle.”
The pulsing light agreed with a more steady glow. Albeit, this time it was a begrudging agreement.
“I know you hate being trapped, love.” He lifted a finger and ran it down the edge of the small vial. “But I cannot lose you again.”
A man’s soul could only lose the love of his life so many times before it ripped apart. This realm would not survive Pitch losing all sense of control.
Sighing, he grasped the tiny cork between two fingers and tugged. It released with a soft popping sound.
The silver swirls of her soul drifted into the air. She hovered for a few moments before him, all metallic shimmer and effortless grace.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Shock and awe overwhelmed him. But the clenching of his stomach suggested something dire was about to occur.
The other half of his soul floated toward him, bumped against his cheek, and then darted out of his office.
Pitch stood frozen for a few moments before his enraged shout made the floor quake.
“Sil!”
He charged out of the room, skidding across the hallway. He couldn’t track her now. She was such a tiny little light, she could have hidden in any manner of places. Not to mention she could have darted up someone’s nostril and taken over their body already.
Rage poured off his body in great billows of shadow. His form shuddered and quaked as he lost his immense control. Fear made him foolish as he moved too fast for any human eye to see.
One moment he was in front of his office, the next, he was standing in front of each wait staff and inhaling. None of them held her honeysuckle scent. None of them shared the overwhelming lightness of her spirit.
A few maids stared at him. They had never seen him so angry and flinched back in fear.
He continued down the hallway, blinking from existence and returning before every person he could find. No one held her distinct magical signature. She was evading him far better than any prey he had hunted since the dimensions collided.
His form splintered as panic slammed against his mind. Pitch had not begun his life in a solid form, he only held one through the sheer force of his will. Now, his body wanted to dissolve into smoke.
That form could find her. Thousands of limbs could reach with unseeing eyes until they felt her. Only then would he pull himself together so he could wrap her in the webs of his darkness.
But he shouldn’t. People were staring, and he needed to tread carefully. He needed these people. He and Sil had worked thousands of years to see this plan come to fruition. It could not fall apart because of a few frightened sheep.
“Damn it,” he swore as he ran his fingers through hair more shadow than strands. “Damn it!”
“Sir,” Leo’s voice murmured from a corner nearby. “Do you need my assistance?”
“Find her.”
“Who?”
Pitch held an unimaginable amount of fondness for the cat-like man and his unfailing sense of loyalty. Someday, he would employ the man’s entire family and provide a lifestyle which would sustain them for centuries to come.
“Her name is Sil,” Pitch growled. “You’ll know her when you see her.”
“Sir…” Leo’s hesitated.
“Trust me, you’ll know.”
No one could mistake his love for anything other than unique. Pitch gave the assassin one last look before he burst into shadows and fled from the hallway. Color faded from his sight as he rushed into the club.
She was somewhere in this chaos. His business was dark, created for his form not hers, but he couldn’t find her sparkling light anywhere. She wasn’t hiding in the chandeliers. Their red lights cast harsh shadows upon the floor and ceiling. He would see her there.
He pulled together the long length of himself in the center of the club. Ignoring the surprised gasps of dancers, his slanted eyes narrowed further as he searched for her errant soul.
A hand stroked his chest. The woman’s forked tongue slithered out of her mouth as she appraised him. Another body pressed against his spine, male, Pitch thought. More joined as they realized the most dangerous man alive was in their presence.
He ignored the drug addicts and thrill seekers. His eyes probed every shadow, every crevice in his club, but could not find the one thing he needed. Until he saw them.
The glittering lights of Juice. Each bottle held the darkest of emotions. Lust. Rage. Power. Every dark desire fulfilled within the safe setting of a club where others could contain the pandemonium.
A small, unfamiliar bottle balanced on the highest shelf. Golden mist glowed in the red light. Hope. The most dangerous of all emotions balanced out of reach. And all around it a silver mist quivered.
“There you are,” he muttered as he pushed through the sea of people. “Time to go back into your bottle.”
Perhaps she heard him, or perhaps she found her target. Regardless, the soul of his beloved moved. Like a dancer leaping, the mist twisted and twirled above the crowd.
A voice rose from nearby. “What’s that? What is that?”
No one should see her. She was his treasure, his captive, his love. What would happen if he lost her? Concern made the blood in his veins turn to ash.
Sil traveled through the air currents and up a level of stairs. It was safer on the catwalk for those who weren’t used to the club scene. On the dancing level, where he stood, creatures of all manner took liberties with twisting lithe forms.
He snarled and shoved bodies out of his way. His palm hit a sternum and pushed hard. Pitch did not have to wonder if he had harmed the individual. A shattering sound reverberated over the music and made his
ribcage vibrate.
He closed his hand upon the railing to the second level. Women in skimpy dresses flashed provocative glimpses of skin as he passed. His eyes did not linger upon the soft skin or curves they revealed.
Sil hovered in the air above three women. One had snakes tangled in her hair. Her skin was a beautiful mocha accented by a tight dress made of what looked like scaled skin. Another glowed with an inner light he knew could blind even through the black leather suit she was wearing. A Gorgon and a Wisp.
He had money on the Wisp being Sil’s choice, even though he couldn’t see the third woman hidden behind them. Sil was likely to pick a host like her earlier form.
Power was already waiting inside the other magical creature. Sil might absorb it, if she wished, or she could shove the current creature out of its host. He hoped she was smart, and ruthless, in her quest for a physical form.
“Ladies.” He tried to sound charming as he distracted them from the hovering light. “I hope you are enjoying your evening.”
Snake eyes met his gaze with surprising confidence. The woman was daring, but perhaps she did not recognize him.
“Pitch.” Her forked tongue warped the words. “We hadn’t thought the Lord of Shadows would appear tonight.”
He was wrong. She recognized him and proved herself to be a very foolish woman. Sil undulated, so he plastered a false smile on his face and sauntered toward them.
The red silk shirt he wore split open to reveal a sculpted chest which never failed to woo women. The ladies seemed distracted by the muscles he always manifested.
“It’s your lucky night then.” His voice oozed with seduction.
“Is it?” The Wisp licked her lips. “Well, I think we can come up with a few ways to repay you for the drinks you’re about to buy us.”