Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4)

by Emma Hamm

  He had absorbed them. He held all their magic, all their power, and they dared to still question him?

  Gaia was working it out. He had seen it in her eyes. She knew who he was, or at least had an inclination. If she tried something, all their work would be for nothing. The Five were unpredictable. They changed their future regularly which would make Lydia’s job all the more hard.

  Lydia, who was weaker than a puppy and fragile as poorly blown glass. His hands fisted, and he picked up speed. She refused to trust him. He begged and pleaded to help her, but she refused his advances.

  Did anyone think he was capable? Pitch was a God!

  No, he reminded himself. Not a God. He had not called himself by that name in a long time, not since he demolished the realms and bathed in the blood of his enemies.

  He couldn’t do that anymore. He was not that nightmarish creature who lost control after his loved one died.

  She wasn’t dead yet.

  The dark souls of his siblings whispered in his ears. Wasn’t she close enough to death? She was a vacant body spouting out prophecies, and that was what Sil had said in the beginning. If her body wasn’t strong enough, if her mind couldn’t handle it, the power would use her like a puppet.

  What if she was already dead?

  Fear and anxiety crushed his lungs. He couldn’t take a deep breath, couldn’t force his mind to quiet. She was home alone, with no one to protect her. Even when he was home, he couldn’t protect her from the magic inside her body.

  He flung the door off its hinges as he burst into the house.

  “Lydia!” he roared. “Lydia!”

  His shout echoed off the walls, and the moths fluttered into the air. A great cloud of white and grey hiding secrets on their wings. His heart stopped until he heard the slightest sound of her movement.

  She was alive.

  Pitch couldn’t feel his feet. His knees were made of jello and his arms wet noodles when he saw her walking down the stairs. Tears pricked at his eyes though he refused to allow himself to be unmanned.

  She was alive.

  This woman was everything. Though she frightened him with magic he didn’t understand, he wouldn’t survive without her. The thought of losing her sent him into a rage. He would destroy the world if anyone dared to lay a finger on her.

  She was alive.

  “Pitch?” she asked. “What is wrong?”

  He wanted to say everything was wrong. The Five were more frustrating than ever. He was losing control over his vast well of self-control, and she still hadn’t regained her sight. How could she even suggest that anything was right?

  “You know what’s wrong,” he growled.

  “You cannot change the stubbornness of other people, my phantom. Dwelling upon such thoughts will only eat away at you.”

  “And yet, my mind lingers.”

  His nights were dark. His days lacked light. Everything was falling apart and all he wanted was one more night in her arms. One more night of silence and solitude where the stars looked down at them and they didn’t have to save anyone or anything.

  He didn’t think it was too much to ask for.

  Pitch’s thoughts shattered as Lydia reached the ground floor. Strands of silver thread hung between her tines of her antlers, tiny bells chiming as she glided to his side.

  Dry mouthed and shaking, he locked his knees. There was no doubt in his mind that he would fall to the floor if he tried to move. She was alive, and he had worried for nothing, but how long would that last?

  They had only skimmed the surface of all the things he wished to do with her. They still hadn’t walked down a sandy beach. They hadn’t drunk wine from the bottle in Old Italy. Climbed a mountain top and drifted through the clouds on wings of shadow.

  He was born for war and she to save them. They collided in times of need but were wrenched apart as soon as they helped. It wasn’t fair.

  And here he was, lost in thought, when they were alone once more. He should take advantage of every second she still drew breath.

  A gasp echoed in the halls.

  Pitch’s muscles locked but Lydia wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her soft gaze turned, eyes widening with shock.

  “Oh, you didn’t tell me you brought company, Pitch.”

  He hadn’t. Why would he bring company to this place? The only safe home for them?

  Swallowing hard, he turned and glanced over his shoulder. The blood drained from his face as he locked eyes with Mercy. The volatile one. The dangerous one.

  She could set fire to the world and he would be hard pressed to stop her. He had brought the most dangerous person he knew to this house. And she stood directly in front of Lydia who was smiling as though Mercy wasn’t a Phoenix.

  “This was not how it was supposed to go.”

  “I came with you,” Mercy replied.

  “I can see that.”

  The softest brush of white magic teased his mind. As Mercy stood up, he allowed Lydia free access to his mind. This was a new power she had yet to test. Every day she found more and more powers that she shouldn’t have.

  “She’s frightened.” Lydia whispered in his mind.

  “She should be. If she takes one step toward you-”

  “Pitch, sometimes you just need to trust that not everyone is trying to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t see what she could do.”

  Even as he thought it, Pitch knew it was foolish. Of course she had. Lydia had played with this woman’s line of Time for centuries now. She had read Mercy until her pages were torn and spotted with age.

  An involuntary sound of anger escaped his lips as Lydia walked forward. He lurched but caught himself. His body was so tense that shadows were seeping out of his pores.

  He wanted the Phoenix out of his house. She had invaded his sacred home, and it felt almost like an invasion of his body. In a way, it was.

  The house was imbued with his magic. Even though he had harmed it, shadows still created its form. The screaming souls were straight from his memories, they were just a few of the many victims he punished himself for. The red walls were streaked with his blood and the artwork nightmares from his mind.

  Mercy had no right to be here. Not without invitation, and he never would have invited her.

  Lydia stepped closer to her.

  He growled, “Lydia, now is not the time.”

  “She needs it.”

  Her tone was eerily familiar. The painful ringing of the Goddess inside her, the whispers of prophecies and burning light.

  The women hugged, and he waited for the building to fall down upon their ears. Chest rising with rapid breaths, he counted to one hundred and back down. Maybe, just maybe, this could end well. This was what Lydia had always wanted.

  These people were as much a part of her as he was. She had watched them through their entire lives, and before they were even born. This was her purpose, to guide them, to heal them, to create them.

  He fisted his hands. There was something wrong. A dark magic stuck to Mercy that he didn’t recognize.

  “Lydia, we said we wouldn’t.”

  They couldn’t interfere. No one involved in the prophecy could know it was all a ploy that Lydia had made it up while they lay in each other’s arms. It was almost done. He wouldn’t see it fall apart just when they were ready to end it.

  “I know.” Lydia’s voice rang with such sadness that his eyes stung. “But she needs it.”

  He reached out with a tendril of his own awareness, smoothing the ache from her mind. “She does, my love. But we are so close. Let this play out the way it needs to.”

  Lydia almost walked to him, but she paused and cocked her head to the side. “Like coming home?”

  For a moment, he thought she was talking to him, but then realized she had been eavesdropping. Talent after talent was being revealed. His Goddess was growing more powerful by the second. He had to stop her.

  Pitch lurched forward, wrapping an arm around her waist. “No more spoilers, da
rling.”

  He loved the way she leaned back into him. As if she trusted him. He had spent years convincing her that she could, and finally, finally, he got the satisfaction of knowing he had won.

  Her antlers settled into the hollows of his collarbone. Bells jingled in his ears and the static electricity of her power danced along his shoulders. She fit into him like the missing piece of a puzzle.

  How had he ever lived without her?

  “Who are you?” Mercy asked.

  “Secret, darling.” He raised a finger to press against his lips.

  The darkness stuck to her swelled. The buzzing sound of bees and a vile acidic scent rose in the air. He could see it, hovering around her like a lurking shadow.

  It wasn’t a normal power, but it was one he recognized. Malachi. The Void’s magic was as black as his soul.

  Flashbacks burned his retinas. His siblings shrieking in the winds of sand they created, enjoying the way it tore into the eyes of their victims. Their horrid laughter as they choked people to death and move on to find their next victim.

  Their magic had looked similar to Malachi’s. If he hadn’t swallowed them whole, he might have worried that one of their souls escaped him. But he could feel their presence pushing at the dark mass hovering above Mercy. They wanted to taste Malachi’s power. They wanted to feed off of him, hoping that maybe he would be strong enough to release them from Pitch’s grasp.

  Mercy shimmered. Flames licked up her legs and twined around her arms.

  “Help me!” she screamed.

  He could not. Would not. There was too much to risk.

  “Pitch,” Lydia whispered in his mind. “This is too much.”

  It was. It was far too much for all of them. He tightened his arms around her waist and whispered in her ear, “I’m so sorry.”

  She echoed his words, crying out as Mercy disappeared.

  “Oh, Pitch!” She spun in his arms and buried her head in his neck. An antler sliced his cheek open with blinding pain. “I can’t bear this! I can’t do this anymore!”

  “You can and you will,” he said. “You have to.”

  “I’m so tired of having to do anything!”

  “We’re the only ones who can do this.”

  She was falling to pieces and his mind threatened to follow. They were making choices that Gods should make. This had to be the right choice because it was what they decided. Right?

  He couldn’t afford to think anything less. The world could unravel but he would standby their decisions.

  “We can only do our best,” he murmured into her hair.

  “What if our best isn’t enough? What if we fail and all these people die because I didn’t see the right future? Because I was too weak?”

  The same thoughts had danced through his mind more times than he could count. Pitch shook his head, flinging droplets of black blood into the air. “Then we will go to the next dimension. We will follow Malachi and stop him. We will try again and again until we get it right.”

  “Is that really how you want to spend the rest of your life?” She lifted her tear streaked face to stare up at him. “You want to devote our entire existence to stopping one man?”

  He wiped the tears away with his thumbs, framing her beloved features with his hands. “Saving the world is worth giving up our own lives, isn’t it?”

  “Haven’t we done enough? Is two lifetimes not enough?”

  “Not if we haven’t saved the world yet.”

  Lydia sighed. Her fingers dug into his shoulders but she swallowed audibly and nodded. “Then there’s more you should know.”

  His stomach dropped. Pitch sighed. “Of course there is. Why wouldn’t there be?”

  “I don’t have to tell you.”

  “Yes you do, I need to know what’s going on. How else am I supposed to help you?”

  “You might not want to hear it.”

  “Lydia.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging on a few of the fine silver threads. “It’s not just Malachi. He’s working with someone else, someone who’s calling the shots.”

  “He is. And who is it?”

  “The Five.”

  His tongue tangled into a knot. “Ex-Excuse me?”

  “It’s the Five.”

  “The Light Five? Not the siblings I swallowed?”

  “Wouldn’t you know if it were your siblings?”

  Pitch stumbled backward, catching himself on the piano. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t hear anything other than her words repeating themselves back to him.

  It’s the Five. It’s the Five. It’s the Five.

  “But why?” he asked.

  “This is why the web was shattering. Time, whatever his name is, has been fiddling with the threads in an attempt to hide from me. They thought this world would bow to them, like the days of old. But humans don’t like to bow. The creatures are bonding with their hosts and people are forgetting that the Five exist. They don’t like that.”

  “So they’re going to… what? Destroy the world to fix that? How does that fix anything?”

  Lydia’s expression twisted with pity. “They’re going to try again. Hit the restart button and shed their blood, to create new creatures.”

  “That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work like that here in this realm. I’ve bled thousands of times, and no new species have popped out of the ground.”

  “They think if there is nothing left, that something might grow. It’s why they like Mercy so much. Why they tried so hard to keep her captive in that jail. She would be the perfect bomb to set off and destroy everything.”

  Lydia’s body went rigid. Her head snapped backward and her hands shook. “No, no no no…” she muttered over and over again.

  “Lydia?”

  “They have her. They have her and they’re already trying to destroy everything. They think if they control her that she will do their dirty work.”

  “What? Now?”

  “It’s happening so soon, I didn’t see this. He hid something from me!” She whipped her head down, staring at him with lightning eyes. “He hid from me!”

  The house rocked with the force of her rage. A stone shingle slid from the ceiling, crashing to the floor. Pitch ducked to dodge the sharp pieces as they ricocheted off the walls.

  He almost lost his balance as the floor warped. The earth itself was shifting, rolling, rumbling as her anger awoke the ancient veins.

  “Lydia!” he shouted. “Lydia stop! We will stop them!”

  The air fell still and silent. Her ragged breath sawed through the air which pressed against him with the heavy weight of a tomb. “We will?”

  “That’s what we were created for. We’ll figure something out, but first, we need to save Mercy.”

  She exhaled. “I can do that.”

  “You need to gather your strength. You can’t push yourself so hard, you’ll burn out.”

  “I have to do this.”

  He furrowed his brows. “Why? We cannot save the world if you end up killing yourself.”

  “I’m connected to all of them.” Her voice rang with the power of an avalanche and the gentleness of the first falling snow. “It’s my fault, everything which has happened to them. It was my choice to lock her up. It was my choice to manipulate who Jasper became. I was the reason why Wren was tortured by Malachi. The wheel keeps spinning and I keep hurting them, Pitch.”

  If anyone else could understand that feeling, it was him. Pitch had hurt his home original dimension so badly they fled to a new world.

  He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Okay. Okay, fine. What do you need me to do?”

  “Watch over my body?”

  “I can do that.”

  “If I have a seizure or…” she hesitated. “Or if I look like I’m going to die, pull me out.”

  “What will that do to you if I rip you out of the web of time?”

  “I don’t know. Can you do it though?”

  “I can
.”

  “Then I’d rather not have my body die and be stuck wandering the webs forever.”

  This was the most dangerous thing they had ever done. He rushed to her, yanking her into his arms and plundering her lips. There was no chance he would forget her taste, the scent of her skin, the feeling of her comforting weight in his arms. This might be their last moment together, and he refused to waste it.

  She fisted his shirt in her hands. “I love you.”

  “And I you.”

  “I’m sorry this isn’t what you wanted, that we aren’t what you wanted. I’ve tried so hard to make this right, but there’s just so much-”

  He pressed his hand to her mouth. “Stop worrying about us on top of everything else. Let me worry about us.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  She nodded again and tucked her head underneath his chin. Her body relaxed, sinking into a deep dream-like state which she might not return from.

  Pitch sank to the floor and cradled her. He wouldn’t let anything harm her.

  Chapter 17

  Her mind wandered through the threads. She shifted and twirled, distracted by all the glowing bits and pieces of history. The past and future were mysteries. Their haunting calls sang of midnight trysts and secrets untold. They wanted her to play with them, to see what they hid.

  The white magic surrounding her pulsed, fighting away Time with light and raw power. There was no time to waste on new knowledge. She needed to find the Present, something she found difficult on a good day.

  Lydia could feel her body growing more and more distant. She hadn’t been entirely honest with Pitch. Her limbs were always cold, her stomach unsettled, and her heart beat in irregular rhythms.

  She was dying. Sil’s magic, Lydia’s own magic now, was burning her from the inside out. The world didn’t need saving less just because she was unwell, and Lydia was reluctant to pause. They were close, she could feel it. Although the visions still evaded her, she knew this deep in her soul.

  Her toes curled as she stepped onto the battlefield near the statue where Jasper hid. All the possible endings flashed in her mind, filing away like books sliding onto a shelf. She knew the right choices to make, the way she wanted it to end, and how to guide it there.