Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4)

by Emma Hamm

  “Yes of course. How else is he going to help us?”

  “With a diplomatic inquiry and a safe neutral territory for a meeting place.”

  “Or with a glass of port in his hand and a full belly. Go get him, darling.”

  “Go get him?” Pitch nearly shouted the words. The shadows of his arms jerked up toward the ceiling. “If I wasn’t considered a God already, I’d be begging them for help. You can’t just ‘go get’ an Illusionist!”

  “Why not?”

  Lydia stared at him through the silence. She could almost hear the gears turning in his mind as he tried to find another reason to argue with her.

  “Be-because you don’t!”

  Sauntering, Lydia reached up and patted him on the cheek. “Just go.”

  “You owe me.”

  “Yes, yes. Bring me back a hungry Illusionist and you can have whatever you want, Shadow Man.”

  Pitch snapped his hand forward, dragging her forcefully back against him. His mouth devoured hers, tasting, searching, branding. He wrenched away only to growl, “You are going to be the death of me.”

  “You keep saying that, but you’re still fighting me tooth and nail.”

  He dissolved into shadows, leaving her standing in the center of the room with her arms outstretched. Lydia didn’t have the heart to tell him that she worried he wouldn’t be the one dying. There was a sick feeling in her stomach refusing to go away.

  Every time she tried to see her own future, it remained covered in fog. The only thing she saw snippets of was a blindingly bright, white light.

  Heaven? Perhaps, if she gave it enough weight. Death was not as terrifying as it had been when she was a Red Blood. There was a beauty to it, a release she thought might be pleasant rather than horrible.

  But there was much to do here. Pitch couldn’t know she had such thoughts. The weight of the world’s guilt stood on her shoulders, she was bound to think of darker things.

  She ran her hands down her torso and stilled the ragged breaths sawing out of her mouth. Tonight, she would stay alive. Tonight, she would plan a dinner for two of the most dangerous men the world had ever known.

  It would be a good evening.

  Chapter 16

  Lydia squeezed the fork in her hand so hard she feared the metal might bend. She had never thought inviting Bones to their home would turn into a pissing contest, but here they were.

  He had waltzed into their home with the swagger of a man who was far too confident. The bones in his hair clacked as he moved and his midnight skin shimmered in her vision like the swirling magic of a scrying pool.

  Though Pitch had kidnapped him, Bones held himself with an air of grace. There was no fear in his posture. No waver in his voice. The man was coolheaded as though they had invited him to dine at a dinner party.

  Lydia made certain that they continued along that path. She murmured pretty words, simpered and flirted. Smoothing the way with a man like that was easy. He wanted to hear someone say how powerful he was, how good-looking he was, and he would do anything she wanted. Having him eat out of her palm would be a blessing, considering they needed to ask him to mend old wounds.

  Pitch was not interested in that at all. He growled, he snapped, he pawed at her until she had to send him to the other side of the table.

  Now, they compared old battle stories like that proved how manly they were. Each story grew more and more outrageous until she was certain they were lying to each other. And to what means? Bones was here, alive, eating their foot. Pitch was supposed to be a gracious host. At what point would these two realize they could be hospitable?

  “I fought an Ogre with my bare hands,” Bones was saying. He lifted his palms from the table. “Ogres are incredibly strong. He struggled, but he was no match for my illusions. I held him down until he stopped moving and the entire time he thought it was his son. It started a war between the Ogre tribes. And I got what I wanted.”

  “I’ve killed thousands of Ogres,” Pitch balanced his chair on two legs and propped his feet up on the table. “My sister created them.”

  Before Bones could start in on another species he had killed, Lydia stood. Her chair squeaked like nails on a chalkboard. “I’ve had quite enough of this. You two need to realize that we share a common concern.”

  “We’re merely talking, my love.”

  “You are not talking, you’re sizing each other up! I don’t care which one of you is more powerful. I don’t care which one of you has the higher body count.” She lifted a hand to silence Pitch as he argued. “We all know it’s you, Pitch. You’re a God! You’ve lived for thousands of years in the same body as you do now.”

  The two men were staring at her like she had grown a second head. She had the strange urge to shake her antlers at them and threaten to spear them through the throat.

  Lydia lifted a hand and rubbed between her eyes. “Bones, we need you to talk with Lyra. To mend your relationship, it might help her along the way.”

  “Me? That isn’t going to happen.”

  “Why not?” she moaned.

  “Lyra isn’t interested in talking with me. She hasn’t been for years now.”

  “Why don’t you try talking to her?”

  “Do you think I haven’t?”

  Lydia lifted her gaze to his and saw raw pain in their depths.

  “Miss Lydia,” he steepled his fingers. “Lyra was the closest thing to a daughter I’ll ever have. She’s not perfect. She’s a bitch, to be honest. But that’s partly because I made her that way. She’s a survivor, and that doesn’t mean she needs to be nice. I have tried to talk to her ever since she left, but she’s very good at evading me.”

  Pitch leaned forward. “She said there was a debt owed to you. Something about mirrors?”

  “I put that little curse on her a long time ago. She sees my reflection, not her own. I thought it was a good idea at the time. It forces her to at least acknowledge that I still exist. Now I see it was likely a bad idea.”

  There was something to be said about overprotective fathers, but this took the cake for most stories she’d heard. Lydia lowered herself back to her seat next to Bones. “So she won’t speak to you at all?”

  “No.”

  Liquid, white light bubbled inside of her. Power, so strong that her fingertips glowed, pushed out of her throat. She reached for him, her palm laid gently out across the table.

  “May I?” Lydia asked.

  He stared at her hands.

  “Bones,” she asked again. “May I touch you?”

  “What are you going to do to me?”

  “I'm trying to understand your past.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t really have a way to explain it to you,” she whispered. “But I promise it will not hurt.”

  Her words seem to do the trick. Bones reached out and linked his fingers with hers. It was so much easier to travel the threads when she was touching the person. Lydia sighed happily, drifting back into that easy place between life and death.

  Smoke swirled around her and her mind filled with his memories. Every bit of life he had lived. Every second his creature had been awake and aware. Hundreds, thousands, millions of individual moments that made him significantly different from any other person on earth.

  Lydia sorted through the memories, throwing some out of her mind as too personal or insignificant. She kept the ones which were helpful. The sweet scent of honeysuckle from the islands where he had lived as a boy. His overwhelming sense of duty and loyalty to an unnamed woman who wore bells in her dreadlocked hair. The love he felt for a little girl addicted to sparkly things.

  He huffed out a breath. “What is that?”

  “What?” she murmured.

  “I’m remembering things I haven’t remembered in years.”

  “Buzzing bees around tropical flowers?”

  “The taste of salt on my skin after surfing for hours,” he murmured.

  “Sun bleached sand?”


  “Haunting calls of whales.”

  “I’m sorry you had to leave your home,” Lydia curled her other hand over his, squeezing gently. “It’s never easy to leave the call of the ocean behind, is it?”

  “I wanted to give her the ocean she never got to see.”

  “Sirens are meant to be with the water. She will swim in the ocean, you know. It will not be on the shores of your long lost island. But she will taste the salt water, feel the sand under her toes, and make friends with Nixies. All because you taught her well and helped her stay alive this long.”

  Bones searched her gaze, his dark eyes strikingly clear in her blurry world. “What are you doing to me?”

  The white light inside her surged, pushing her forward and lifting her palm to his brow. She could see the sparkles simmering underneath her skin until all she could do was let it out. It flowed out of her like a sun sparkling river, the white flecks of waterfalls, and the soothing calm underneath the waves.

  “Healing you,” she murmured. “You are hurting.”

  “Lydia,” Pitch said as he leaned forward. “You are weak.”

  “I am strong enough to do this.”

  All the good things she had experience and held within her memories overfilled her mind. They spilled over the edges, mixed with all the happy endings she had found inside of him. Her magic poured out of her.

  Her pale pink eyes turned mottled white and trails of glowing tears streaked down her cheeks. Lips glistening gold, hair shining like a blade in sunlight, skin glittering like diamonds, she was inhuman and power incarnate.

  Bones flinched, but her fingers were already digging into his cheeks. Pain and pleasure mixed in the gifts she gave him. Lydia understood all these thoughts, felt everything he felt, but could not stop herself.

  “Please,” Bones said. “Please, it’s too much.”

  “Gifts from the Gods are rarely kind.”

  “It’s like fire in my veins. You’re suffocating me.”

  “I’m helping you.”

  Pitch’s voice cut like a dagger. “Lydia, enough.”

  “He needs this.”

  “He doesn’t!”

  She didn’t recognize herself. After everything she had endured, Lydia had thought she was done. There couldn’t be anything else to give. She lost her body, barely recognized herself in the mirror, spent years building herself back up to normal.

  Now, she was to lose her mind as well.

  Her hands shook. A million stars burned inside her, and they wanted to help. They wanted to be released into the world, providing power to those who deserved it. Whispers echoed in her ears of an ancient times when Goddesses were powerful and feared.

  Bones wrapped his hands around her wrists. His grip was gentle and his words kind. “Thank you, honored one. I have been blessed, but I cannot receive any more of your blessing today.”

  Her sun sparked vision cleared. Blinking, she lifted her hands from his face. Red streaks marred his skin.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. A pass of her hands healed any lingering blemishes, but felt as though she didn’t fit in her own skin correctly. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  Pitch’s chair fell to the floor as he jumped up. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know, Pitch. I just said that.”

  “You’re damned right you don’t know! I’ve never seen that before!”

  “Stop shouting.”

  He slammed his fist down on the table. Plates crashed together and glasses tipped, dumping their wine onto the black table cloth. Her gaze fixated on them. Red wine dripped from the corners of the tablecloth like blood.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  A midnight hand took hers, forcing her to look at him. “You did not harm me. In fact, I feel more alive than I ever have before.”

  “She didn’t?” Pitch asked.

  “No. I think she enhanced my magic, made me more powerful than before. I can feel it charging through my body where it wasn’t before.”

  Lydia ducked her head and stared down at their clasped hands. She wanted to sink into the floor. Losing control was bad for most, but even worse for her. There was so much harm she could do in a very small amount of time.

  “I thought I had control over it,” she muttered. “But I don’t think I do.”

  “I think it’s the opposite, honored one. I think your power controls you.”

  She curled her fingers through his, watching the strangeness of light against dark. He had tasted of sunshine and magic. Her mind had licked through his power, adding it to her own and feeding him tainted power that would fuel his.

  Lydia didn’t have it in her to tell him that she wasn’t sure what she had given him. The power was her own, mixed with his, and added to by something else inside her. Something she didn’t understand.

  A frightening beast lived underneath her skin. Even now, she could see it. Her bones were made of sunshine, her veins of glimmering gold. All that power and still she could not stop shivering.

  “Lady, are you all right?” Bones asked.

  “Thank you for coming.” The words dripped from her tongue, held nearly immobile by tangled thorns digging into her lips and the roof of her mouth. “Please, do everything within your power to speak with Lyra. It’s important.”

  “I will try.”

  He seemed confused. Perhaps she would have understood why if the wounds in her mouth weren't burning with holy water and hell fires.

  They left on quiet feet. She heard them but did not say a single word more. Her mind was unraveling, twisting into a new being.

  Her body couldn’t handle it. A human brain was so fragile. She was numb with her skeleton exposed to the air and flowers growing in her ribs. Yellow light flared behind her eyes, and her mouth twisted in words she did not know nor understood.

  The web of Time in her mind echoed with screams. Her lungs filled with ash and the acrid burn of scorched flesh. Rust formed on her fingertips from a world so ruined that even flesh was tainted.

  “You have to tell me what is happening, my love. I cannot help you.”

  A velvet fingertip wiped at her lips. Her eyes shifted, focusing upon the molten gold that now covered Pitch’s hands. It was leaking out of her, like an angelic statue crying blood.

  “The web,” she replied. “There’s something wrong with the web, Pitch.”

  “I don’t care about the future anymore. I care about you, Lydia, and something is happening to you.”

  “It’s not me. I am but a vessel. A prophet with history penned in invisible ink upon my skin. Cities fall to ash and dust in my dreams. I hear them crying out to me every moment of the day but I have never heard such terror. We have done something wrong and I do not know what it was.”

  “Bones? Was Bones wrong?”

  “We missed something and now my mind is barbed wire.” She reached out a hand, threading her fingers through his hair. “And you wear a crown of broken glass.”

  “I am not wearing a crown, my love. What are you saying?”

  She made a pained sound, coughing up more golden liquid until she could barely breathe. Pitch held his hands cupped at her chin. Waterfalls of light spilled into his palms and dripped to the floor where they sizzled and burned.

  Starlight drowned her. She smelled blood and perfume mixed with the taste of pomegranates and wine.

  “Pitch,” she whispered as she was dragged into the webs of her mind. “Pitch, I’m so sorry.”

  His life had been perfect. A woman who loved him, his soul complete once more. Pitch felt the imprint of her on his very soul.

  And then she slipped through his fingers.

  Rage was a dangerous emotion. It made him want to break things, to pick fights, to maim and kill. But he could not do that.

  All he could do, was paw through journals written hundreds of years ago and hope they might give him some form of answer.

  Lydia woke up. All the dangerous magic within her, the Goddess who had made herself known in a
splash of golden blood, disappearing to rest. Her vision slowly returned, but she was not herself.

  He wanted her to wake up completely. There was something still asleep, some vital part of her which made Lydia who she was. The house was silent where it had once rung with joking laughter. Her steps were quiet where they had once pattered like mice. Her eyes, though unseeing, were vacant of all emotion.

  The latest episode had drained her. And he didn’t know what to do.

  He followed the Phoenix whom the others had awoken. She did not trust him, nor should she. Yet, he was the one who found Jasper in his cell. Pitch was the one who let him out, who guided them and nudged them together because they seemed to fit like puzzle pieces.

  Maybe he had gotten soft in his old age. Maybe he wanted to see two people together, vastly different, proving that love existed.

  He paced at night. They did not share the same bed although they should. His arms felt empty without her weight, and he refused to sleep if he wasn’t holding her.

  Thusly, he was distracted when he teleported himself to meet with the Five. Mercy and Jasper were far more punctual than their counterparts, and they should be exactly where he expected them to be.

  He teleported into chaos.

  Frowning, he froze time to gain his bearings. Everyone was in the room, and not a single one of them paid attention to Mercy in her time of need. Nurin was too close, too handsy, and he was the last straw.

  Shadows snapped out of his body like whips. Ignes crawled out of Mercy’s mouth, perhaps to offer assistance to his host, and Pitch gave him a smack upside the head to drive the matter home.

  He stepped from the shadows and into the room.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  And it all fell apart from there. He fought, he argued, he made a point that he was still the bigger man, and he left more angry than he had ever felt before.

  Traveling through shadows lashing at his face was a kind of cathartic experience. Pain steadied him. Anger would not do, not when Lydia was at the house.

  But the Five looked at him like he was a lesser being. They hadn’t worked it out who he was, and that was an insult in itself. He was one of the greatest creators of all time! His siblings had been stronger but strength meant nothing when wit was involved.