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

a broken spine. Mercy’s anguish and loss, her guilt, tasted like bile. As Nurin sent arrows of fire, a cage of shadows formed over their bodies.

“Pitch,” she whispered.

Her focus turned to her beloved who fought the two remaining. Mesi and Kairos, Water and Time.

Pitch raced from one end of the battlefield to the next, laughing as he went. Shadow wolves trailed along his cloak of night. They snapped at the Goddess who ran from him, tearing bits and pieces away from her as they went.

Kairos screamed his rage. “Fight me! I am the one you want. I am the one who has tormented your Goddess from the beginning! Fight! Me!”

A mad grin spread across Pitch’s face, and Lydia understood why he always said to be afraid of him. This was no man. This was not the monster she had caught glimpses of in the night. Pitch was nightmare in human form. He was the rusted sword of Heaven with a halo dripping blood.

His wolves caught Mesi. She screamed in pain and torment as they ran her to the ground. Only then did Pitch pause. He stood in silence with his back to Lydia’s corporeal form.

The wolves did not devour Mesi. They did not bite her flesh nor rip at her bones. Instead, they forced her mouth open and poured themselves in. Her body shook, flipping upon the ground. Lydia watched as her eyes snapped open and shadows swallowed them whole.

Pitch turned. Darkness warped his features until he was little more than a grinning fanged mouth and a crown of mirror shards.

“You wanted me?” he said. “My brother, you should know I do not fight.”

“No?” Kairos croaked. Like Lydia, he was not meant for battle. Time waited for all things to die. It did not force death. “Then what do you do, Pitch? Because this sure looks like fighting to me.”

Shadows pooled at Pitch’s feet, raising him into the air and propelling him forward. He waited until he was a hair’s breadth away from the brave God who stood his ground.

That grin, that uncomfortable split grin of teeth and gristle, spread across Pitch’s face. No lips formed his words, but Lydia heard him loud and clear.

“I feast.”

Kairos fell to his knees. “No. No, please, I beg you.”

“Yes,” Pitch said. “Beg. Cry out for mercy, repent and sing of your virtues. It will serve you well in the afterlife.”

He did not wait for another word. His shadows rolled in a wave over Kairos. They stretched and expanded as the God tried to beat them back.

Lydia listened to his screams but watched Pitch’s face.

This wasn’t the man she loved. This was the monster Sil had already fought, thousands of years ago. She had not killed him, nor had she taught him a lesson. The beast inside of Pitch was alive, and she worried she would never get him back.

Pitch laughed. It was the scream of a hunting eagle, a monstrous cry in the night, a beast untamed. The sound of a Demon, not a man.

“We’re losing,” she whispered.

Two of the Five were dead, but she feared if Pitch killed more that he would be lost forever. Burke and Wren were tangled with roots and thorns. Wolfgang and Lyra had yet to stand. Mercy and Jasper were holed up under a shield of fire while more battered down upon them. Pitch had lost his mind and now disappeared into shadow.

That left Malachi.

Her teeth chattered. No one had time to focus on the Void.

Lydia searched for him. Her mind twisting along the air currents and jumping through the shadows. He had to be somewhere. He wouldn’t have gone far from his masters.

“Are you looking for me?”

The voice came from behind her. Not on the battlefield at all, but here on the rise with her.

She dug her fingers into the stone. “Malachi.”

“I knew you would be here.”

“Where else would I be?”

“That’s the question I asked myself. Your God loves you far too much to bring you into the heat of battle. Especially when he knew they were likely to lose.”

“They won’t lose,” she said in a trembling voice.

“Oh, they will. You can’t see the future yet, but the writing is on the wall. Sweet Goddess, you cannot bring children to a battle of titans.”

He was right. Even without following the threads of Present, she could see they would lose.

“No,” she whispered. “I cannot have been wrong.”

“Look at me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Look at me, Goddess. Now!”

She glanced over her shoulder and sobbed.

His form had twisted. Devouring all those souls had warped his body so much that she didn’t know what was him anymore. Where Malachi had once been handsome, he was now ugly.

Shuddering faces morphed into his, screaming men and women clawing to get out of the prison the Five had created. His shoulders were hunched. Great bulbous tumors forcing him to bend forward. One hand clutched at his chest where his heart had once been. Black blood oozed from the wound.

“What did they do to you?” she cried.

“Exactly what I had always expected. They gave me power.” His mouth was so misshapen that drool dripped from his lips as he spoke.

“This couldn’t have been what you wanted? Malachi! Look at yourself!”

“I see it, Lydia. I feel it. My body is no longer mine. It is theirs.”

“You do not have to do what they want. You do not have to listen to the Five, they are cruel! They have harmed you in so many ways. Please, let me help you!”

She reached out her hands, both dripping gold.

He cocked his head to the side, his long braid touching the ground. “Do you know how I see them now?”

“No,” she choked out the sound through a sob. Her hands hovered in the air.

“They hide their true nature. Their magic is warped, darkened, angry, hungry. They are not the Light anymore and they cannot hide it for long. It’s not something they will ever admit to the world.”

She sniffed hard.

“Do you know what I see, when I look at you?”

“No.”

“You’re