Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4)

by Emma Hamm

  “People you care for,” she amended. “I couldn’t ever imagine you letting someone die like that if you were invested in their future.”

  “They were my family.”

  “Blood calls to blood, no matter how much you try to escape it.”

  Pitch shook himself. “And you? What family do you have to speak of?”

  “None. I told you that before.” But that sounded so weak. So much meaning packed into those words. “My mother was a baker.”

  “A baker?”

  “She made bread. She was very good at it. No one knew how she could make bread that tasted like it came from the table of angels, but she’d always been able to do it. And my father loved eating her food. So, he built her the smallest little bread shop in the rundown town we lived in just so that she would be happy.

  “That’s how I learned what love was. It’s not just grand gestures or flowers and chocolate. It’s building a foundation of a life you can share. Especially when that foundation is made from hours of back-breaking work building a small little shop because your wife has a talent you appreciate.”

  He traced circles on her stomach and asked, “You speak of them with such love in your voice.”

  “I do love them. More than life itself.”

  “And yet, you have no one other than your friends.”

  “I don’t.” Her teeth ground together. “On a cold autumn’s day, a man walked through the center of our town and opened fire with a gun he did not own. He was going to kill himself and thought taking other people with him was a good idea.

  “I was in the hospital with an asthma attack they couldn’t control and I had an allergic reaction to the medication they gave me so I was there overnight. My mother was cleaning the tables in the front of the store and my father was sanding another that had cup stains on it. They both died instantly.”

  Silence rang in her ears for long heartbeats until she felt the rush of his breath once more. “How old were you?”

  “Thirteen. Neither of my parents had siblings, so I was sent into the foster system. I was lucky. I stayed with a lot of good people until I was eighteen and went to college. That was when the dimensions ripped apart. I thought, for a moment, that maybe I would finally have family again? I wasn’t one of the people who thought the creatures were monsters. I just wanted to have someone there for me.”

  “And then you remained a Red Blood.”

  Her words rushed out in a great whoosh of breath. “Everyone else had someone always with them. I was still alone. I was in the hospital by myself and when the nurse came in and asked who my point of contact was, I had to say no one. Every single time. For once, I just wanted to have someone to talk to. Someone to tell me I was going to live through the next episode.”

  His arm curled and his body bent around her like a shield. “And when you finally got a creature, she remained silent.”

  “Silent as the grave.” She could hear the warble in her voice, but that was okay. She could handle that. The tears that pricked the edges of her vision could not fall. Not for herself.

  The memories were a dangerous path to walk down. She had never let herself linger on such dark thoughts. Her family had been in her life for a short time, but they had been a good memory. She wanted to remember the good things. Not the bad.

  He wanted her to talk, like every other therapist she had ever spoken to. But she didn’t want to talk about them. Their faces still burned bright in her mind’s eye.

  Lydia hadn’t forgotten them. She didn’t begrudge their deaths nor did she feel an overwhelming sense of hate for the dead man who had taken them. She wanted to only remember the good things.

  And Lydia refused to feel bad about that.

  Shifting against him, her eyes found the faint outline of his hand. Her skin was far paler than his. Strange, considering Pitch was one of the palest people she had ever seen in her life. His fingers were long and lean. A painter’s hands.

  “Lydia?” His questioning murmur made her flinch.

  “How far does your power stretch?”

  “Pardon?”

  “What are your limits?” Her voice was frantic. “I need to know. There’s something I need to have done from the last vision, but I don’t know if it’s even possible.”

  He pondered her questions for a few moments before she felt his nod. “There are few limits to what I can do. But you should be certain of it before I harm anyone.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you to harm someone,” she muttered. She wasn’t sure that was true. In fact, what she was about to ask him could very well hurt someone for the rest of their lives. Lydia huffed out a breath. “It’s unconventional and I still don’t understand it.”

  Pitch hesitated for a moment before he spoke. “I hope I have proved that I do not pry into your visions. I would never request you tell me them regularly as I do not believe I have the capability of reading into their true meanings. But, perhaps, it may be helpful if you tell me what you saw.”

  She shook her antlers and ran a hand through her hair. “That’s the frustrating part. I’m honestly not sure. It was foggy, and the person hasn’t even been made yet. I followed her thread of life all the way to the end but everything about it was…. wrong. I don’t know how to fix it other than remake who she is.”

  “What?”

  “The soul that’s sharing her body is female. The person who she will become is female. But if she remains so, then terrible things will happen.”

  She didn’t know how else to say it and hated every word coming out of her mouth. A person was a person in her opinion. They could be born a certain way and choose to be different later on if they so wished. It was not up to Lydia to make these decisions.

  Except, in this case, it was. She was the only person capable of making this choice and guiding the future in the safest direction.

  “What are you asking me to do, Lydia?” Pitch asked. “You have to be very specific.”

  “It’s a girl,” she told him. “The life growing inside the mother is a girl. And it can’t be. The creature that has attached itself to the child is the right one, but the gender is not. The world will end in a way worse than I could imagine. She will enslave everyone, force them to do her bidding, bend a knee to evil.”

  “Why?”

  “She falls in love. Isn’t that always why people do terrible things?”

  She could see the dream vividly before her. A petite Fairy, with bright wings of gossamer, staring up into the eyes of a man with questionable race. Her hand gliding up his arm and his child in her belly. The sway of his braid as she hugged him.

  Lydia hadn’t thought Malachi capable of love. She hadn’t thought that he might look at a creature of light and feel so strongly, but he would. And that would be worse for the world.

  Entire cities would fall at this Fairy’s feet. Malachi would lay waste to everything he could at her order. And although she would be raised by kind and caring people, although her heart was good, she would let him. Love would blind her to his faults until she eventually succumbed to the same madness that festered inside the Void.

  “Lydia?” Pitch’s voice broke through the darkness of the vision.

  “It’s a Fairy girl. Her mother’s name is Rosa Fairchild, they live in a small cabin at the edge of an enchanted forest. I can find more if you need it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Make sure the child is a boy. That’s all you have to do.”

  He hesitated again. “Are you sure of this?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  She hoped that her voice remained strong. He slid out from her back and melted into the shadows of her room. Lydia waited until she was certain he was gone and allowed the floodgates to open.

  A scream flew from her lips and echoed in the bedroom. Her arms wrapped around her ribs, but she was still falling apart.

  Her choice. Her end. Her decisions.

  She cried for the foolish choices she had made and for the anguish she would cause. She cr
ied for the guilt she would carry for the rest of her long life. And she cried for the girl who never existed. The girl who would have been a gentle heart, a kind mother, and a woman who aged with grace. The woman who would have caused the end of the world.

  For love.

  “Maybe we should give it a little more time,” Louis blurted as he rushed to catch up with her as she wheeled down the hall. “You’ve been asleep for a long time, and maybe it would be better if you let yourself rest!”

  “I’ve been resting for years, Louis. I will die from resting so much.”

  “Now that’s unlikely. Resting used to be a sign you were well off. Now, you slow down and I’ll get you a cup of tea. That’ll help!”

  “Tea doesn’t solve everything, Louis!” Lydia shouted over her shoulder as she shoved the door to Pitch’s office open.

  “Now it’s just appalling you would even suggest tea -”

  She slammed the door in his face.

  “That is quite enough from you,” she grumbled as she locked the door with a satisfying clunk. “I don’t need to be lectured on how to keep myself healthy, you nosy feline.”

  She should appreciate him more. All Louis wanted to do was make certain she was happy and healthy. But the reality was that she was neither.

  And tea certainly would not fix that.

  She blew out a breath, stirring the hair in front of her face. There wasn’t time to brush it away. She had a date with a journal and expected to be immersed in a world that wasn’t this one.

  Pitch hadn’t returned home in weeks. She had no idea where he was, but was certain he had forgotten about her. He was always in her room when she had nightmares, and now she was forced to deal with them herself.

  Her sleep had turned to burning. The world burning from the red woman. The world disappearing until all that was left was Malachi and his particular flavor of madness. How was a girl supposed to survive that?

  All she wanted was one good night of sleep. No dreams. No future. Just herself and peaceful black.

  Of course, she didn’t get that. Not a single night passed where she slept without dreaming. And that was when she didn’t fall asleep for months on end.

  At least she wasn’t sleeping years anymore. Now it was just the passing of a few months before she woke back up. With a sunny, smiling, chirping cat suggesting she should wake up with a smile on her face too.

  Lydia growled as she yanked a journal from the shelf. It didn’t matter which one. She had read nearly every single one.

  Together with the memories, she had watched the entire courtship of Pitch and his lovely Sil. She saw their first kiss, their first dance, their first sexual encounter. She saw the first time Pitch’s family had met her.

  Hundreds of moments only made her more and more angry. Sil was perfect. Every tiny fiber of her being had been good and kind. Even the moments when she wasn’t kind, there was something in her obviously trying to do good.

  She was impossible to hate and because of that, Lydia hated her. No person should be that perfect. Although, if one was going to be perfect, it would have to be a goddess.

  Wheeling to her corner of the office, Lydia shoved herself to her feet.

  Sometime between Pitch leaving and Lydia waking up, her legs had decided they would hold her weight. Not walking, she still couldn’t move them that well, but she could stand. Balancing was less and less difficult.

  She braced her hand against the wall, pivoting to sit on the window seat. All this should have been encouraging, but she only grew angrier. Lydia didn’t want to be this weak. She huffed out another angry breath and slapped the book down upon her useless thighs.

  Today was a bad day, and not all the days were bad. Sometimes she had moments when she realized how lucky she was to be living in a mansion where no one cared what she did. Today was not one of those days.

  Opening the page in front of her, she closed her eyes. She didn’t know why opening the journal helped anymore. She knew the threads of Sil’s history as though they were her own.

  “Pitch!”

  The screams echoed in her mind as she fell into the golden thread of history. Screaming? Her brow wrinkled before her body went slack. There weren’t a lot of these journals with screaming.

  “Pitch!”

  The voice was familiar. Why would Sil be screaming for Pitch?

  Lydia fell onto the smooth black floor of the ballroom with a harsh crack. Her knees ached. Another first. Usually in these time threads she didn’t feel any injury to her body.

  Wincing, she rubbed at the pain and stood up. First, she had to get her bearings. Where in the castle was she and where in the castle was Sil?

  It didn’t take long to find her. The doors busted open behind Lydia and Sil spilled through them. Silver hair hung off of the tines of her antlers, broken diamond strands wildly swung around her face, a panicked expression twisting her features.

  Lydia whirled as another door opened and Pitch rushed forward, catching Sil in his arms. Even in a state of panic, the black cloak of shadows trailed behind him like the night sky.

  “What is it, my love?” he cried out. “Why are you here?”

  “I saw it. I saw the end and I am so sorry!”

  “You aren’t speaking sensibly, Sil. Darling, please, tell me what is happening?”

  “I saw the future,” Sil whispered. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry my shadow, I never should have come here. I brought death with me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My world is gone. It was my fault, I could not find the future which would prevent the end of so many lives. I came here hoping I could redeem myself but I only set things in motion. I was good for you that was it. Pitch, I brought about the end of your world and I cannot stop it!”

  Sil’s scream echoed in the hall. Dumbfounded, Lydia sat her butt down on the floor next to them.

  It was Sil who had started the end of this dimension? She saw the realization dance across Pitch’s face.

  “My siblings,” he murmured.

  “In a way, they were right. The Light will snuff out the Darkness, and they will not stop until they control the world. I cannot prevent this from happening, but I can show you how to fix it.”

  “No, I will stop them.”

  “This world is going to die. You have another waiting for you. You will save that one, my love.”

  “Are you leaving me?”

  Lydia recognized his tone. He had spoken to her like that before when he poured Juice between her lips. The tone sounded angry, but it was not.

  Pitch was falling apart. He was breaking into a million stars before her as he stared down at the woman he loved. He knew he was going to lose her, she realized. Maybe he had always known since the moment he set eyes on her.

  And he loved her anyway.

  His thumb skated across the plane of her forehead and trailed down to her lips. “A moment with you was worth thousands of lifetimes.”

  “You will have to live thousands of lifetimes to find me again.”

  A tear trailed down Lydia’s cheek as she watched the two of them press their foreheads together. It was Romeo and Juliet all over again, except Romeo never kills himself. Instead, his soul waits for her.

  She knew the words Sil was going to say before she said them. A pinprick of pain made Lydia’s brow crease, and she whispered with the Goddess, “We started in the middle, and that is the most difficult place to start. I will see you again at the beginning, my phantom.”

  The words unlocked something inside her. A blasting force of white light blinded Lydia until she fell onto her back and stared into the nothingness of her mind. She knew nothing. She was nothing. She was light and justice and brightness and…

  Silence.

  The pain from the light faded. It took with it all aches. All worries. All terror and fear. It left in its wake a sense of righteousness.

  A puzzle piece shifted inside her head and fell where it should have been all along. Edges locked in
place.

  She looked down at her arm and saw the sparks of life running through it. Not veins of blood, air in lungs, or beat of heart. She could see the actual life force that set her aside from everyone else.

  Gold shimmered in her body. Not white nor silver as she had expected. She was made of gold fibers filling her body with magic.

  Not just magic, she realized with awe. But memories. She could remember everything.

  Sil’s world was made of magic. People were made of silver and gold, unknowing they were kin to the stars.

  A mother.

  A father.

  A world ending in a great battle, blood, and loss.

  Then nothing but overwhelming guilt.

  “I remember,” Lydia whispered as she settled back next to Pitch and Sil. “I remember everything and I am so sorry.”

  She glanced at the couple still crouched upon the ground. Sil met her gaze.

  “Now you know,” Sil murmured.

  “I do, my love.” Pitch replied.

  But Lydia knew that Sil was not speaking to him. They were now the same. Time was not linear. Sil could feel her lungs expanding in tune with a reflection of herself and Lydia felt her heart beat with another.

  “I will carry on your work,” Lydia told her. “I will save this dimension because we could not save others. I will take what you learned and I will learn more myself.”

  A wash of warmth bloomed over her body and mind. Sil’s voice echoed but her lips did not move.

  “Love him. Show him what I could not. Bring him the peace I could not. And if all else cannot be gifted, then love him as he deserves to be loved.”

  The words rang in her ears as she was jerked out of the memory by a painful grip upon her physical arm.

  Chapter 10

  “What are you doing!”

  Lydia shook her head to clear the lingering strands of magic holding her in the past. Her eyes focused slowly upon the pulsating darkness that surrounded her.

  “Pitch?” she questioned.

  “What book were you reading?”

  His tone was harsh, ragged and breathless. If she didn’t know him, she would say he sounded frightened. But he was not the type of man to fall prey to fear.