Blue Blood (Series of Blood Book 3)

by Emma Hamm

  “Relax.” Lydia sounded amused. “Just for a bit.”

  Surprisingly, Mercy did. She reached around Lydia, and the tension in her body eased. The strangest warmth bloomed and grew throughout her entire body. This wasn’t the heat of her power or flames, but something strange Mercy did not recognize.

  “It’s called Love,” Lydia explained.

  “Are you saying I love you?”

  “No, but I do love you. I’m giving you a glimpse of what it should feel like.”

  “A little bit of giddiness and a whole lot of comfort?”

  Lydia sighed and nodded, one of her horns gently tracing the peak of Mercy’s cheek. “It is the ultimate moment of trust and peace. You have not felt enough love in your life to recognize it anymore. And for that, I am very sorry. I feel terribly guilty about it. But I want you to remember this so that you will have a chance.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Mercy said, brows furrowing.

  Pitch shifted in his shadows. “Lydia, we said we wouldn’t.”

  “I know.” The deer woman stepped out of Mercy’s arms and back towards Pitch. Her face had changed from a neutral marble expression, to one of sadness. “But she needs it.”

  Mercy felt cold without the woman’s arms around her. Even more than that, she felt alone. She’d never been so lonely.

  Panic made her speak before thinking. “Ignes?”

  “Here,” he said inside her head. “That was incredible, it felt like—”

  Lydia interrupted them. “Like coming home?”

  “You can hear him inside my head?” Mercy asked, startled.

  Before Lydia spoke, Pitch stepped behind her and clasped a hand over her mouth. “No more spoilers.”

  Mercy would never forget this moment. He was merely a tall, thin man, until he stood behind her. His shadows fanned out behind him like great wings of darkness. Artisan hands smoothed down Lydia’s face until one clasped her shoulder and the other curled around her delicate waist.

  And Lydia, the glinting light, did not banish his shadows. Instead, she absorbed them and turned their darkness into silver. When she tilted her head back against him, her horns curved into the hollows of his collarbone and the strong planes of his shoulders.

  They were a couple made of darkness. Not the neverending bleakness of the abyss, but the silvery glow of moonlight illuminating the world in a different way.

  “Who are you?” Mercy couldn’t help but ask.

  Pitch raised a finger to his lips. “Secrets, darling.”

  “There are too many secrets in this world as it is.”

  Lydia chuckled. She turned within Pitch’s arms and slid her hands along his shoulders. Somehow, in those graceful movements, his coat came away. She folded it over her arm.

  “Just remember, you can always return to me, daughter of light and love,” Lydia murmured.

  “I was born to be a weapon,” Mercy told the deer woman in confusion.

  “If you truly believe that, then we’re all lost.”

  A faint fuzzy feeling in Mercy’s head distracted her. It was the buzzing of bees, or the rapid beat of a bird’s wings.

  “What?” Mercy asked as she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry you have to go through this,” Lydia said. She tucked herself into Pitch’s arms and turned her back on Mercy.

  “I summon you, Phoenix.” The voice was dark, demonic, not Ignes’s. But it echoed inside her head all the same. “I summon you to me.”

  The moths burst into flight. Thousands of them swarmed in the air and fell like snow upon the shoulders of Pitch and Lydia. He stared at Mercy with impossibly dark eyes.

  “Help me,” she cried out as her body melted away. Ignes’s power swelled as he fought the summons. This man was not their master, and yet, he was. “Help me!”

  The last thing Mercy heard from inside the cursed house of shadows was the sound of a woman weeping.

  14

  “I just want to know where she is. That’s all,” Jasper growled.

  “She’s with Pitch,” Wren assured him. “I’m sure she’s fine. No one could be with Pitch and be in trouble.”

  “So you say.”

  “I know him more than any of you.”

  “And just how much is that?”

  Burke shifted on the couch he and Wren were seated upon, stretching his arm behind her. His fingers curled into a fist and opened. Jasper understood the subtle movement for the warning it truly was.

  Yelling at Wren wouldn’t fix the fact that Mercy had disappeared on the tails of Pitch’s magic. It didn’t change that he was worried about her. But it felt better to release some of the pent up rage threatening to turn his vision red.

  “She has to be fine,” Bluebell muttered. “We’d know if she weren’t fine.”

  “I don’t think we’re that connected to her,” he said quietly, so the others would not hear.

  “No, but I still think we’d know.”

  He didn’t want to entertain the thought that Bluebell was talking about soulmates. The Fairy was all too obsessed with the idea of souls being interconnected in this dimension. He had listened to her prattle about fate and how lucky humans were more times than he could count. In the end, reality had always smacked him in the face, reminding him that he was still alone as he chased after a woman who didn’t love him back

  But, Mercy might. He was convinced she could offer him the same kind of love the others shared. Maybe even more. From where he was seated in the only recliner in the room, Jasper had a perfect view of the newest lovebirds.

  Wolfgang was seated a handspan away from Lyra. His feet were perfectly placed on the floor so that they were parallel, and his hands were a mirror image of each other atop his thighs. The man was into details, apparently.

  “I see this is still a thing.” Jasper gestured at them. He wanted to be happy for them, but a spark of jealousy still burned whenever he saw them together.

  Lyra was next to Wolfgang, leather pants wrapped around her body like a second skin. Her hair was high in a ponytail, and elaborate makeup painted her face. Jasper knew exactly what she looked like without that makeup. He didn’t want to remember, but it wasn’t likely he would forget.

  He remembered every wrinkle and groove. Not in an obsessive way, as it once might have been, but because he savored the memories they shared. She was family. He had told her that, and he still believed it.

  “Still a thing.” She smiled as Wolfgang touched her knee. “Is that going to be a problem?”

  Jasper heard the steel edge to her question. “No.”

  “What changed?”

  “Everything.”

  Lyra stared at him a few moments longer. Her eyes traced over the burnt hair on one side of his head, the unruly mess of his beard, the dirt that still streaked his skin.

  “You look like shit,” she finally declared.

  “Feel like it, too.”

  The grime was wearing on him. He wanted a real bath. Not a dip in a freezing cold river before tromping through the woods. Just having hot water on his skin would change him into a different man.

  He couldn’t until Mercy was here. Then they could share the heat of that shower, since he hadn’t managed to get her into the fire as he had promised.

  Jasper shook his head to clear his thoughts. “She’s the next part of the prophecy. Mercy is.”

  There was a pause before Lyra blinked and said, “You’re sure of that?”

  “As sure as any of us can be.” He pointed at Wolfgang. “Did you know immediately with him?”

  “I’m still not sure about him,” Lyra replied with a smirk.

  The subject of their conversation scoffed loudly. “I don’t think anyone questions what I’m capable of.”

  Jasper wasn’t going to argue with him there. They had all seen what the Magician could turn into. Part Black Magic, part Lich King, there wasn’t a sane person in the world who would challenge Wolfgang.

  “I think it’s in the power,” Jasper said
quietly. “We’re gathering people capable of doing things that no one else can do.”

  Wren leaned forward. “It makes sense. E has more knowledge than anyone in the world. Wolfgang can raise the dead into an army, and his power is almost limitless in his other form. If Mercy truly is another part of our prophecy, then what is she capable of?”

  “She’s a Phoenix.”

  Wren’s voice warped into that otherworldly voice of thousands as her eyes turned white. “I thought they were all dead?”

  “There was one left. Ignes was a baby when the dimensions combined. They grew up together, in a way. But there’s more.”

  “More?” E’s voice deepened. “What is she capable of?”

  “It’s not quite what she’s capable of but what she can be ordered to do.”

  So he told them. He told them everything that had happened from the moment he had woken up in a cell, to the massacre that had happened in the camp. He told them of impossible creatures, Giants and great winged beasts. And when all the words had finally tumbled out of his mouth, Jasper looked up to find them all staring at him in disbelief.

  “What the hell have you been smoking?” Lyra was the first to speak.

  “I’m not smoking anything.”

  “What you’re saying is not possible. Humans can’t grow twenty feet tall. And they absolutely don’t have horse halves. What did she do to you?”

  Jasper held his hands up. “Nothing. I swear that’s really what happened.”

  He didn’t expect any of them to believe the story. Hell, if he’d been listening to one of them tell it, he would have laughed and called them crazy. But he’d seen it all himself. His life had been changed by meeting those magical creatures.

  Wren’s eyes flipped back to their normal coloring. “E says it’s possible. Apparently there’s some small chance that magic may be changing this world.”

  “I’d have to see it to believe it,” Lyra grumbled.

  Surprisingly, it was Wolfgang who came to Jasper’s rescue. “I exist,” the Magician said. “And if that’s possible, then I would very much like to meet this woman who is not entirely human.”

  “She’s not the nicest of people,” Jasper said with a smile. “But she’s got a good heart. She has a great capacity for love. I’ve seen how she was with those creatures, her people. I believe she is the one we’re looking for in the prophecy.”

  “If you believe it,” Burke spoke up for the first time since Jasper began his tale, “then that’s good enough for me.”

  “Now we just have to ask Pitch to bring her back,” Wren said with a laugh. “I’m certain he will. He’s a painfully secretive person. I can only imagine the look on his face when he realized she went with him. I would have given my left hand to see that.”

  They would have all laughed if Pitch’s quiet voice hadn’t echoed from the shadows.

  “I’ll keep that in mind for the next bet I make with you,” Pitch said as he stepped from the corner of the room. “I’m not sure what I’ll use your left hand for, but I think it will be an entertaining new toy.”

  Jasper looked at the corner, but no one else emerged from the shadows. Mercy should have been with Pitch.

  He had always thought Pitch looked out of place inside Haven. His shadows stuck to the walls like inky tentacles. The golden walls and red ceiling did little to compliment the man’s natural shade of pale. In fact, it made him look sickly.

  “Where is Mercy?” Jasper asked.

  Pitch remained silent.

  “Where is Mercy?” he repeated as he slowly stood.

  “I believe she may be with Malachi.”

  Anger darker than he had ever felt before stilled the blood in his veins. Jasper straightened to his great height and squared his shoulders, fists clenched.

  “She was with you. She was supposed to be safe.”

  “Even I cannot stop Malachi.”

  “She was supposed to be safe!”

  Jasper was a vessel filled only with rage as he charged towards Pitch. His wings flared out behind him, and Bluebell did not dissuade him from the fight.

  On the contrary, she shrieked her own little battle cry. “Rip out his teeth!”

  Jasper planned on doing so, until a wall of blue light stopped him in his tracks. Wolfgang held a hand out, guiding his runes in their aerial dance. Try as he might, Jasper could not push past the magic. Pitch hadn’t moved.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Jasper growled. “You should have been watching her. Instead you gave her back to that monster!”

  Pitch shrugged nonchalantly. “Just thought you’d like to know.”

  The shadows reached for him, and he disappeared into their loving grasp.

  “Jasper!” Lyra screamed. “Jasper, what has gotten into you?”

  “He should have been watching her.”

  “Because she’s part of the prophecy? This isn’t the first time someone has been kidnapped because of that. Wren was too. Remember? Jasper, we’ll get her back.”

  His wings clacked together in agitation. “We almost didn’t get Wren back.”

  “But we did. Wolfgang, drop the damn shield.”

  “He might hurt you.” The Magician kept his magic where it was.

  “He wouldn’t hurt me! It’s me! It’s him! It’s…Jasper.” Lyra turned towards him. She stood on the other side of the shield and stared up at him. “What is going on?”

  “She’s important to me.” He looked down to meet her gaze. Lyra would understand. She had to see the truth in his eyes. Mercy was more than just a piece of a puzzle to him. She had become much more important than that.

  She squinted at him, shook her head, and furrowed her brow. “Jasper, you’ve only been gone for a little while. I know that what happened between us was disappointing, but this is just a rebound. You’re too attached for such a small amount of time—”

  “Now this is where I get to be the adult,” he growled. “When you’re put in a life or death situation with someone else, you get close pretty quick. And before you ask, no, I don’t know her favorite color. I don’t know what her parents names are, and she doesn’t either. There’s something wild and untamed in her that calls to me.”

  “That’s called infatuation, Jasper.”

  “I think there’s a different name for it that you might not be able to understand.”

  Lyra’s expression twisted in shock. “Excuse me? Are you trying to say that I’m not in love with Wolfgang? He’s the only person I would never question my feelings for, you overgrown lunk of—”

  “This isn’t your kind of love,” he interrupted. “What is between Mercy and I isn’t fairytales and happy endings. She is fire and ruin. When I’m with her, I can feel myself burning. She will be my downfall, and I will willingly walk into that fire someday to be consumed by it.”

  “That sounds like addiction.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” He ran his hand over his beard. “Look, everything’s twisted. She isn’t human, but then again, neither are we. Wings sprouted from my back when I was five, and I hear voices in my head! She can survive being burned alive and doesn’t have a heart. So why should we be constrained to human ideals of love and what is normal?

  “I don’t want that,” Jasper continued. “I want her. I want the wild abandon. I want enchanted forests and dark nights lit only by the fire in her eyes and the glowing light between her ribs. I don’t want the human. I want the Phoenix.”

  Lyra stared as though she didn’t recognize him. Her eyes widened with each word, and she seemed to fade before him. Jasper found that he didn’t want to see a woman with dark hair and dark eyes. He wanted the pillar of light that had become part of him.

  “I just don’t understand,” Lyra finally said. The shield between them melted, and she stepped closer. “I think you’ve been through a lot. I think you might need to clean up, clear your head, and put yourself back into the right frame of mind.”

  “I need to find her.”

  “And we wil
l. But right now, we need to get ready. Running into a battle half-cocked is only going to hurt us and her. You used to know that.”

  He did. He used to know all the pieces of battle that made both him and Lyra a machine while together. No one had been able to break through their walls when they stood side by side. They hadn’t needed strong magic. All they had needed was each other and trust.

  Somehow, that had disappeared. All of it. Now he was thinking like Mercy. He was all anger and no logical thinking.

  That scared him.

  He stumbled back a step, then another, until he found himself at the door. He would clean up. He would put on his own clothing and let warm water cool his anger.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Don’t leave without me.”

  The others remained staring at the door long after he vacated it. There was a lingering tension in the room.

  Finally, Wren shook her head. “Do you think he’s really going to his room? Or is he teleporting somewhere stupid, and we’re about to lose both of them?”

  “I think he’s really going to get himself together,” Lyra replied.

  “Are you sure?”

  Lyra shook her head. She watched the door with furrowed brows. “Not really. I’ve never seen him like that before.”

  “Do you think there is something he didn’t tell us?” Wolfgang’s deep voice grated. “He certainly doesn’t seem like the man I remember. There’s something else there. Desperation maybe.”

  “He’s never really been in love before,” Lyra told him.

  “He was in love with you.”

  “He thought he was,” she corrected. “I was always worried it would be like this. Fairies are highly possessive. There was only the smallest amount of obsession when it came to me, so I thought maybe he would be logical enough to tamp down that tendency.”

  Burke squeezed Wren closer to him. The foot he had propped up on his knee began to bounce. “Jasper’s always had a good head on his shoulders. Let’s just say he’s been through a lot recently, and he needs some time to recover.”

  “I don’t think it’s that.” Lyra said. “I wish it were. That would be easier.”