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

Lydia pressed her hands to her mouth. She held back the whimpers as Pitch stood to his great height. A crown of mirror shards jammed into his skull, reflecting his own shadows upon his siblings.

“We have destroyed this world,” he said. “That is my gift to you.”

One of his siblings coiled up from the crowd, a thick strand of darkness pressed against his cheek in a mock caress. “And our gift was removing that woman who made you so weak. You are stronger because she is no longer here. Look at what you have done! Look at how much power you have.”

It was the wrong to say. Pitch lurched forward, wrapped a hand around the shadow, and all hell broke loose.

A storm erupted from her shadow man. No, Lydia decided. Not a storm at all, he did not control the elements. Pitch became a celestial body of ragged bones and nebulous clouds which swirled around his siblings. He created a cage of his body and the key was his power.

His voice echoed around them. It was the harsh beat of an owl’s wings, the steady rhythm of a drum, the cracking ache of metal striking stone.

“A life for a life. The end of all things for the destruction of my world. I rip from you power. I tear from you control. I claw from you life. I consume everything you are!”

“No,” Lydia moaned. “No, please tell me you did not do this!”

She watched his magic shred theirs. Bits and pieces of inky darkness flew into the air only to be caught by Pitch’s night sky magic. The Dark Five had never died, she realized.

He had eaten them.

She spun away, her mind splintering with the knowledge she should not have. The shadows she had seen sinking into his skin. The pain on his face when he allowed them to tear into him. The taste of ink on her tongue.

That was not him. None of that was Pitch, it was his siblings. They were harming him even now.

Lydia couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t take in a complete breath and she didn’t know if it was the overwhelming horror of his moment or if she was dying. Her physical body was still weak. She could die in Time and be stuck reliving this moment over and over again.

“I can’t do this!” She screamed.

A feeling compelled her to turn around. Though she didn’t want to see this madness any longer, she also knew she had to see this through to completion.

She loved him. Every twisted, mangled piece of him. Every bit that had been torn apart by time and life and love. He needed her to see this, to bear this burden for all of eternity with him.

Lydia turned and looked his last remaining sibling in the eyes. The swirling mass was a weak column before her, but she heard its voice loud and clear.

“You will never be strong enough.”

Pain exploded behind her eyes. In the Past, she’d reeled, plummeted off the edge of the cliff. In the Present, Lydia pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets and screamed.

Pitch wandered through the twilight, the street quiet all around him. Wolfgang settled into the crypt as though he had preparing to live among the dead all his life. Magicians always were a strange lot. He shouldn’t have been surprised that the boy was pleased with the living arrangements.

Still, a little surprise had seeped through his veins. The crypt hadn’t been cleaned in years. Skeletons lined the walls. It was a dangerous place with grave robbers always wanting to see if a beloved had left a priceless heirloom behind.

Wolfgang hadn’t minded at all. He shrugged when Pitch mentioned the dangers and said it would be a good way to practice his dark arts.

“Magicians,” he said with a snort.

One of these days, he would give up trying to understand magical creatures. They took on minds of their own after they were created. Pitch couldn’t control them if they didn’t want to be controlled.

It was too soon for him to return to Lydia. Pitch didn’t have a reason why he felt that way, every fiber of his being wanted to see her. But a gut instinct told him to stay away if only for a few moments longer.

The strength of the emotions he felt for her made him nervous. He had been bitten many times over although Sil had been the worst of all. And that woman was inside her, a constant reminder of love lost and his own failure.

She had taken his darkness. She had pulled away his angst and pain, absorbing it into herself. The blackness had oozed out of her, dripped down her chin, and he felt himself break.

Pitch didn’t want to corrupt her. He hadn’t wanted to corrupt Sil either. She was meant to stay golden and bright although Lydia was different. She had taken Sil’s power and turned it into something else. Where Sil had been the sun, Lydia was the moon.

He rubbed his hand over the space where her vial once had swung. He still missed it. The closeness of having another soul against his skin had been comforting. It had helped keep his own nightmarish desires at bay.

The city streets were strangely quiet. Perhaps families had felt danger in the air. Pitch could. It was the strange combination of static leftover from Wolfgang’s rage, and the foreboding taste of Pitch’s magic.

Most of the creatures left over were made by the Light Five, and they had always sensed a predator in their midst.

He wandered the city, his feet finding their own path as his thoughts tangled. He might have continued aimlessly if he hadn’t recognized a charge of power.

It wasn’t strong, like Wolfgang’s. It wasn’t sweet, like a Blue Blood. It wasn’t even dark like a Black Blood.

It was his own magic that called out to him.

Brow furrowed, he made a sharp turn down a street he did not know. He rarely