Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4) Emma Hamm (popular novels txt) 📖

strength to come forward, she might still be within the human.

“Where am I?” She didn’t move, but a silvery tear dripped from her eye and rolled down her temple. The salty droplet held the power of worlds.

He caught it upon his finger. It was a clear sign that Sil was in the woman’s body. Her magic was inside this girl as clear as day. And she did not remember him.

“No,” his face crumpled as he pulled her body close with shaking hands. His forehead pressed against hers and his eyes burned. “No, no you remember me. You are Sil. I am Pitch. You named me, gave me my humanity, and you saw me." He paused. "You saw me when no one else did.”

Her ragged breath brushed against his mouth in rapid succession. “Please don’t hurt me.”

How could she say that? He would not hurt her! Sil would have known.

A moth fluttered between them. It fluttered until he pulled away, then settled upon her forehead and crawled over her right eye. The black words were stark and vivid against the pale gray of its wings.

The ultimate sacrifice is for love. Be kind to her. And yourself.

The moth dissolved into silver magic which sunk into the woman’s skin. Her eyes rolled back into her head which lolled on his shoulder.

Fainted. She had fainted in fear of him. Of Sil’s magic. How dare she? He was the one who had lost everything he loved, everything he worked for.

He tried to hold onto the endless sea of emotions that ripped through his mind but lost the battle. The body in his arms held the magic of his loved one, but not the soul. Losing control, he stared down at her as his mouth opened wide and all the rage poured out of him in a great roar.

The ground shook. The building quaked but he could not stop himself. He would destroy everything he had built. He would destroy empires for her.

But he could not. Because she no longer existed.

There it was again. That ripping feeling of his heart being torn out of his chest and shredded before him. He had waited thousands of years, and it ended like this?

He lifted the body in his arms and pushed his forehead against her sternum. She should have been Sil. She should have been holding him and saying him she was there.

That he wasn’t alone anymore.

Tears streaked down his cheeks as he clutched her to him. “Please,” he whispered against the ratty gray fabric. “Please, don’t do this to me.”

She moved. Her tiny hand stroked from the top of his head down his spine. He glanced up her body to see those dirty brown eyes looking back at him.

“I don’t know what I did to hurt you,” her voice was reedy and thin, “but I’m sorry.”

He closed all the barriers in his mind. He separated himself from emotion, from memory, from feeling anything at all. If he didn’t, Pitch was certain he would fly apart into the shadows and never again return.

In the end, Sil had chosen this strange mousy creature. And he owed it to her to finish the plan they had started thousands of years ago.

“It’s not your fault,” he told the human girl.

Her brows wrinkled. “Why does it feel like you're lying?”

He didn’t have an answer for her. There wasn’t one. The great burden of Sil's magic was already taking a toll on her body. White hair was a bad sign. It could be a physical manifestation of his beloved, but it could also be her body breaking down under the immense amount of magic unleashed within her.

Either way, he didn’t have the time to waste. If she died, so did what remained of Sil.

His arms tightened around her and his hold upon time. Her friends lurched forward and reached out for them, but they were far too late. By the time their fingers touched the space their friend had occupied, Pitch had already disappeared.

He walked upon the shadows with the mousy girl in his arms. A sheltering bubble of shadows held her close though he felt her go limp. The speed would have ripped her apart without his power creating a shield. But the darkness must have frightened her. She had fainted again.

Chapter 2

Her eyes felt heavy. She didn’t remember going to sleep. She didn’t even remember leaving the club.

Marla and Rose would be so angry with her. They had to drag her out to begin with. Lydia wasn’t a fan of bars. They were loud. They were uncomfortable. Even restaurants had a lingering after-effect that made her entire body uneasy.

She wasn’t possessed like them. Lydia was all human. A Red Blood alone in a sea of people finding new powers and meeting new people.

But she was the only one left who didn’t have someone else sharing a space in her head. When Marla told her Gorgon knew every trick in the book to get a man, Lydia nodded and smiled. When Rose showed how she could glow until she rivaled the sun, Lydia tried to swallow her jealousy.

She wanted to be like them. She wanted to experience new things. To dive into memories held by a creature who had lived another lifetime. Perhaps even multiple lifetimes.

Luck didn’t run in her bloodline. The Jensen family was a tale of sadness and pathetic qualities. Luck had forsaken them right about when her father’s generation had invested money into every business that would always fail. Lydia was used to bad luck.

So she wasn’t all that surprised when she couldn’t remember where she was, or how she had fallen asleep. Either she drank herself into a stupor, which was unlikely, or she fainted in a crowd of people and her friends brought her back to her tiny little apartment on the dangerous — but affordable — side of town.

Although, that wouldn’t explain the aching of her body. She counted every limb which throbbed and soon realized she should count the parts that didn’t hurt. Had