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

He wanted to be there for the small bit of Sil left inside her. But the pain became overwhelming, and he realized this was a futile battle.

Bits and pieces of his body fell away into shadow. They twisted and turned until they joined their brethren hidden behind the rose bushes. They trickled across the crunchy cold grass and into the hollows of trees.

His head tilted back as his hair was swallowed into streamers of darkness. Eyes drifting shut, he allowed himself to become one with the dusk.

Here he was able to be his true self. He was nothing and everything at once. He felt the pain, the anger, the sadness. But it was all jumbled into areas that did not care for feelings.

A part of his consciousness trailed after a mouse hopping from leaf to leaf. Tiny whiskers twitched before it was swooped into an owl’s talons and carried far away from him. Pitch took that as an omen and tucked it away for later.

He trailed along the shadows. Lasting throughout the days hidden in tiny crevices until the rest of his body could coalesce in the night. Then he reigned terror upon any creature he could find.

Darkness was fearsome, and Pitch was made of it. Together, they swallowed living things whole and saw as madness tore them asunder. He was brutal, ruthless, heartless in his attempt to ease his own torment by plaguing others.

Pitch was not successful.

Throughout every moment of anger and rage, he saw her. Not his beautiful Sil who blessed his dreams for thousands of years. But the tiny woman he left alone in his house.

The woman who should never have captured his attention, haunted his every waking memory. He saw nothing but the trust in her eyes when she upset him in the club. He felt the delicate curve of her waist under his fingers though he had no fingers in his shadowed form.

She was an infection sinking into his body and tainting the memory he had held onto for so many years. Sil. Sil should have been the one he clung to for humanity. But she was not. It was her. The human girl whom he had left alone.

Days passed, so many he was unable to count them. As shadows, so many pieces of his personality were fractured. Some bits of him marked the sun rising and falling, but others did not. As such, when he finally stitched himself back into physical form, there were too many instances of memory for him to count.

Thousands of days had passed for him as thousands of shadows had seen the sun. It could have been a few days. It could have been months.

He pulled hard at the black velvet jacket he manifested. He would find out, eventually, how long he had been gone. The Cat assassins always counted the days for him, and continued to keep his business going.

Harsh clacks echoed around him as his boots struck the wooden stairs leading to his house. It was foreboding even in the light. The pink sunset appeared bloody as the silhouette of jagged spires and broken windows swallowed its light.

His house, like him, was made of darkness. He imbued it with his magic the day he bought it, and in turn, the house had come alive.

The front door opened without him touching it as it always did. The tails of his coat trailed behind him as he swept through the door.

And immediately caught himself upon a clear wire nailed down by his ankles. Hopping to keep from falling, his eyebrows slashed down in a frown.

“What?” he rumbled as he stooped.

A wire. So thin it was nearly invisible, it had been carefully wrapped around twin nails hammered into the frame of the door.

“So she’s trying to trap me. How quaint.”

Reaching his hand forward, he hovered over the nails until his magic could wiggle them free from the old wood. The house seemed to sigh, and he felt it’s relief deep in his bones. New nails were difficult for the structure. Especially when they were placed where they should not be.

Pitch lifted the wire into the light. “This came from my office.”

So she was awake then. Not only awake, but the magic had released its hold enough for her to start poking around his things. How long had he been gone?

Suddenly nervous, he straightened. His magic strained to be set free, to find the traps she had laid out for him in his own home. But there was another part of him, a much more curious part, which was excited to see just how intelligent his little mouse was.

There were no echoing sounds for him to guess where she had hidden herself. Nor did he look for her. Pitch could find her immediately if he wanted to.

She deserved a little privacy. This space was new to her, and she had been frightened when he left her. Leaving her for such a long amount of time was unlikely to have endeared him to her.

So rather than bellow or show his anger, he simply allowed the door to close behind him and stepped carefully. The kitchen was his desired destination.

He rarely found himself hungry, but after such a long time his physical body could use a little sustenance. The knee high boots he wore were now impractical. He wouldn’t be able to feel the wires until they tripped him up.

The thoughts were proven correct as he discovered another in front of the door to the kitchen.

“Did she put them on every door?” he muttered as he carefully stepped over it and waved a hand to free the house from its confinement.

“Wine,” he asked the house as he strode to the fridge. “And something light.”

His requested food and drink sat upon the first shelf of the fridge. Sometimes, an enchanted house was useful.

Usually he had it place the food in the dining room. But today, he felt it important that he wander. The girl was here somewhere, and she needed to see he wasn’t going