Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4)

by Emma Hamm

  He had never thought she would bring him down with her.

  Distraught, she gripped the banister with both hands. “You don’t want me to see what you have done to me.”

  “It is not my choice-”

  “Who let it out?” Her words ripped through him. “Who let this soul into my body? Who kidnapped me? Took me from my family, my friends, my home!”

  Pitch wasn’t certain how she expected him to redeem himself when she refused to listen. Perhaps it was part of the problem. She didn’t want him to be good or kind.

  He knew what it was like to love a woman made of starlight. A woman so out of reach that looking upon her visage was both cold and burning at the same time. But he did not know how to be around this woman whose soul was a blooming garden that grew and died at his slightest touch.

  His hands were resting upon the railing, and then they weren’t. He hadn’t noticed he had moved. One foot stepped on the first stair that would lead him to her. His captivating creature who so was strong, so vibrant, and so very angry at him.

  “You stay where you are,” she said. “You do not deserve to be anywhere near me.”

  “Is that what you wish?”

  “I am not some fainting female in a romance novel, who falls in love with a man because he is the only option provided to her. I will rot in that room before I ever permit you to touch me again!”

  He took another step toward his own personal heaven — or hell. The stair felt weak beneath the sole of his foot. “I said nothing about touching.”

  “You think I am some goddess you used to love.” The words were cutting and cruel. “I am not her. She’s gone and I’m dying because of what you did to me!”

  “I do not think you are Sil.”

  “You do! You do because every time you look at me, I see the way you used to look at her. And I will not become this woman who you have in your memory. Nor do I wish to be! My humanity is important.”

  Pitch climbed a few more stairs. Halfway up the first landing now, he hesitated. “I will admit that you hold part of a woman I loved dearly. That within you is the last bit of her I have carried upon my person for the better part of two thousand years. Is that what you wish to hear?”

  “No,” she choked upon the words. “No I don’t want to hear that!”

  “Have you not heard of the rumors? That I am not of this world, a creature of the night?”

  “There are many creatures of the night.”

  He ascended further. Pitch kept his body carefully relaxed but each time his hand moved upon the banister he clutched it so hard he felt the wood creak.

  “But I am different, am I not? There are some who call me a god. Some who call me Trickster. Others who whisper I am the voice in the shadows of nightmares.”

  She visibly trembled. “You are just a man.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Yes, you did always tell me that. Long ago.”

  “You see?” She raised a shaking hand to point at him. He was still a story below her on the stairs, but he could see her as clear as if she were before him. “You keep saying things like that. I have never said that to you before!”

  “You did in another life.”

  “I have had no other lives!” Her shriek echoed throughout the house which groaned in response.

  He should be kinder to her. He should ease her into this life that she could not expect to understand. But they did not have the luxury of Time on their side. Time had died with the rest of his friends long ago.

  “Perhaps you should go back to your room and lie down.” He murmured as he rounded another corner of the winding staircase and paused. He was mere feet from her now. Close enough to touch.

  “I am tired of laying down. I’m tired of dreaming.”

  “Dreaming is innocent.”

  “Dreaming is dangerous for me.” She wiped her cracked lips with the back of her hand. “I see things now. Things I don’t want to see.”

  “Webs?”

  “More than just webs,” Lydia spat at him. “I don’t know how to travel them. I see connections between people and things. I see the future as dark and bloody. I am tired of watching people die over and over again.”

  “You will learn how to control it.”

  “I want it to go away.”

  He was at a loss. She looked so fragile, standing upon his stairwell in nothing but a nightgown with her vulnerability wrapped around her body like a cloak. And he, the dark creature at her feet, waiting for her to look at him with earthen eyes.

  A rumble of thunder crashed through the house and made it quake. She flinched. Her body curled in on itself as though she were being attacked. Her quaking knees buckled, sending her tumbling backward.

  He watched her fall. She crumbled onto the stairwell like the dead moths he found on his floor each morning.

  “That is it,” he growled as he swept up the stairwell.

  His shadows trailed behind him like a great cloak of night. He knelt before her, palmed her cheek in his hand, and rubbed the tears away with his thumbs.

  “Let me help you,” he begged. “You do not have to do this alone.”

  Her eyes were luminous and impossibly large. Tears glowing silver dripped in pearls down his fingers. “You did this to me.”

  His heart threatened to shatter. “I did, darling. I did.”

  “So why should I trust you to make it easier?”

  There was no good answer to her question. If she were a smarter woman, she would never trust him. Pitch was a dangerous man who never did anything other than harm those he loved.

  If he were a kinder man, he would have brought her back to her friends and let her solve the riddles of Time on her own. She was smart enough to do so.

  His chest expanded in a great inhalation of breath. He did not make the honorable choice.

  Lydia sighed as he slid his hands underneath her legs. Her spine branded his fingers as he hauled her against his chest. She was lighter than a bird. He counted her ribs with a single pass of his hand. Each ridge a broken song inside his head as he reminded himself just how much he had harmed her.

  The burning guilt made him wish to wipe the feeling of her from his fingers. It ate away at his form until his hands no longer had flesh, but were darker than night and made of shadows. They held their substance so his precious cargo would not drop and were tipped with claws capable of shredding anyone who dared take her.

  Her head lolled against his chest. White hair caught upon the collar of his shirt, leaving webs of silver across his body. As Pitch looked down upon the strands which ensnared him, he realized another, sharper, change.

  His clawed hands of shadow were not made entirely of darkness. Instead, touching her had sent sparks of white light echoing through his magic. The cloak of shadows trailing up the stairwell and into the corridor behind him also showed the effects of her magic.

  A man made of shadows was a man made of the night sky when she was in his arms.

  “How far gone are you?” He asked as they walked toward her bedroom.

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “What changes have you seen? What are you capable of?”

  “I don’t-” she stuttered. “I don’t know. It started a few nights ago. I could…. see things. In the shadows of my room that I shouldn’t be able to see.”

  “What were they?”

  “They looked like people I once knew. But they were wrong, twisted, and furious.”

  He toed open the door to her room and paused. “Angry?”

  “Like they wanted to hurt me.”

  He didn’t want her in this room. She had been rotting away in here for too long, to use the words she had shouted at him. Though it was a beautiful room filled with the most valuable things he could find, it was still a bedroom. And only sick people were confined to such a place.

  She would not linger here. He turned on his heel and left, walking toward a much more pleasant place.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.
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  “Somewhere else. Tell me more of this dream.”

  “That’s it. They wanted to hurt me and when they bent over my bedside, I woke up.”

  “Were you yourself in the dream or someone else?”

  Acknowledgment sparked in her eyes as she looked up at him. “You think I’m dreaming prophecies.”

  “It is as good a place to start as any. Many Oracles believe themselves to be the people whom they dream of.”

  “So Sil was an Oracle?”

  “She was much more than that.”

  The next door swung open for them at his request. The house had swept most of the dust from its corners and set a roaring fire ablaze to heat the chilled room.

  “What is this place?” She asked him as she looked around.

  “I suppose it would have been considered a living room.”

  An opulent one at that. And rather outdated. Victorian furniture bled red splashes of color lined by golden frames. The walls were plastered with red wallpaper and white roses that seemed to peel from their 2D origins and trail onto the ground. It was a royal’s chambers, red, gold, and rich mahogany.

  He settled her onto the couch. “Ask for anything you wish, and the house will provide it.”

  “How?”

  “Magic.”

  “I suspected that,” her voice was grim. “But whose magic is it?”

  “A Summoner’s. And an old friend before you accuse me of kidnapping him as well.”

  A crooked grin spread across his lips as he turned to the fire. It did not need his help, but he grabbed the poker all the same to adjust the logs.

  “Why are you being so kind to me?” she asked.

  “It is as you said. You hold the last bit of a woman who was very dear. I will guide you through your changes, and in doing so, she will remain alive in you.”

  Because Sil’s magic never made me King of the Stars as well as of the Night. Because I did not realize I was dying before I met you. Because my hunger is cavernous and just the sight of you fulfills my every desire, he wished to say. But he did not.

  Obsession was a dangerous game. The past and present were melding together for him. He remembered her clearly. His Sil. A firecracker of starlight who was both brutal and unforgiving. He saw the goddess of old inside Lydia, the never-ending well of power growing beneath her skin.

  She was not Sil because there was more to her. Sil had been a warrioress where Lydia was delicate. Sil had been the tempered blade, Lydia the finest thread of steel. Both strong. Both capable. And yet infinitely different.

  Lydia chattered away while he dwelled upon the differences. Sil’s voice had been like thunder and lightning, crackling, booming. Lydia’s like softest of bells, the beginning strains of a violin, the jubilation of a hymn.

  “Pardon?” he asked.

  “I said, I don’t think you’re telling me everything.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Why would you admit to that?”

  “Because I am not lying to you, Lydia.” Pitch did not miss the way she flinched when he spoke her name. “There are some things you do not need to know yet. When it is time, I will tell you willingly. My focus is keeping you alive through your transitions.”

  Her brows furrowed the longer he spoke. The firelight danced across her features before she shook her head firmly. “I think I hate you.”

  The words lanced through him. They were not unexpected, he had captured her against her will, but they hurt all the same. He was doing everything in his power to make her comfortable. He was kind to her. Surely, there was some gratitude owed?

  Echoes of her voice played through his head and fed his anger. She had no right. She shouldn’t be so ungrateful. She shouldn’t hate him.

  A snarl escaped his lips as he surged forward. Both his arms bracketed her against the couch she shrank into. Cloudlike billows of darkness swirled around them and his teeth grew sharp against his lips. Shadows coiled through his form until he was little more than a monster.

  “Never forget this, darling,” his words sounded tainted with violence and anger, but his touch upon her forehead was soft. Shadows petting a creature made of light, “it is only my touch which will ease your pain.”

  “For how much longer?” she asked him. “How much longer before I come into my own, and you are not the only thing providing me some kind of relief?”

  “For as long as I wish it.”

  Her lips curled into a snarl that rivaled his own. “I think you are some kind of demon.”

  “I have advice for you then,” his shadows grew so large they were swimming around her throat as if she were in a pool of black water. “Don’t try to tame demons with pretty words or batting eyelashes. Keep them close, keep them in a cage if you must, but keep them wild.”

  “Why would I do that?” She swallowed hard. “It seems more reasonable to destroy them, before they bite the hand which feeds.”

  “Someday you will need a demon to do your dirty work.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “You always have, darling.” Pitch pulled his shadows away from her milk white skin. “Because the things we’re going to do are so dark they will turn your soul cold. Our future is not a bright thing. Not until we walk through Hell first.”

  He swept from the room, leaving her curled in a ball because he could no longer look upon her as she condemned him. Not when he knew she was the only person who could tear his soul apart.

  Chapter 4

  She lay on her bed staring at the sparkling ceiling. Had she been here for weeks? Or months? The passage of time was difficult to calculate when she was in such agony.

  Thankfully, her body’s changes had slowed. She could think like a normal person again. Except thoughts lead down dangerous paths. Every time she closed her eyes, she could see the webs of time.

  They made little sense. There was no one capable of explaining to her how she should walk the paths. Lydia frequently wandered aimlessly until Pitch shook her awake with frantic hands.

  The dark man never let her forget to eat. He alone could bring her from the visions. His cold touch was soothing. Lydia did not know when she had become so attached to him.

  She was afraid of the visions. She was afraid of becoming lost in the Future and not being able to find her way back. Somehow, he always pulled her from those tangled strings. He held her in his arms as her body shook and her mind reeled. And when she finally calmed, he spoon fed whatever food he could get into her.

  He was kind, in his own way. He continued to refuse her any contact with her friends. She had been gone so long, Lydia was certain they thought her dead.

  She winced and ran her fingers up to the prominent antlers which now curved out of her head. Perhaps it was better they thought her in the ground. At least they wouldn’t see her like this.

  Not that she had seen herself yet. Pitch still refused to allow her any access to mirrors. She fought against his decision, but he did not want to upset her.

  It only served to make her think she looked worse than the image her mind had conjured. At least she had felt no fur growing. Yet.

  “Why me?” She whispered. Lydia had never given up attempting to speak to the spirit inside her although she agreed it was likely not there. “Why did you force me into this form? Into this path I do not understand?”

  The silver creature inside her answered for the first time.

  Lydia lost her sight. She burned from the inside out as she traveled down the webs of time. She saw intricate lace folding and bending in on itself. Every tiny thread an individual choice although some threads were much thicker as they required many people to make the same choice.

  This much she understood. How to effect these choices had proven to be much more difficult.

  Speeding through time, she raced down large tendrils that threatened the end of the world. Down the thinnest of threads that led to happiness for a single person, or more sorrow than she could comprehend.

  Finally, she slowed. Lyd
ia knew she had been guided to this place, this instant in time she needed to see.

  The shadows returned. Dangerous creatures with black minds and evil hearts. They stood all around her with torches in their hands. Panic. Fear. Betrayal.

  “What do I do?” she pled. “I do not want to watch another person die. Please. I need help.”

  And so help was provided. She felt another force place gentle hands upon her shoulders. They pulled her backward until she stepped out of the person whose future she watched.

  Lydia was herself again. Her mind stopped whirling with emotions that were not hers, and she could breathe. But the scene continued to play as though she were not watching it at all.

  A man stepped forward. Bulky and strong, he held his torch high, casting his sharp features into harsh edges. “Monster.”

  His voice echoed in what she recognized as a forest. Lydia did not recognize this place. Her vision sharpened as she tried to catch details until the guiding hands tilted her chin to the figure she had stepped from. It was a woman.

  She had stepped out of another woman.

  Lydia looked up at the Amazon before her. The woman’s bright red haired flashed in the torchlight. No, she realized, not the torchlight at all. The woman was glowing as fire trailed through her hair.

  “I am no monster!” the Amazon cried.

  “We will not have your kind in this village.”

  “Then I will leave.”

  Lydia felt a tug, her heart aching as something in her mind said this woman was important. Something terrible would happen if she did not survive. It was a spider’s web Lydia was weaving, and this woman could not afford to become a fly caught in it.

  Her hands were shaking. Keeping hold of the vision was taxing both her mind and her physical body. But she had to watch. She had to know where this woman was going so she could find her.

  The pressure in her chest eased. Yes, that was it. She had to find her. To bring her to safety and home so that Lydia could meet her. There was strength in this woman that the world needed.

  She was not offered the luxury of relief. The crowd surged forward. Their hands were harsh and hungry as they grasped whatever flesh of hers they could find.