Black Blood (Series of Blood Book 4) by Emma Hamm (scary books to read .TXT) 📕

Other than steal her from the only place she called home and force her to live with him in a decrepit house. But he wasn’t going to think about that.

He could feel eyes on him as he stepped over her hidden trap. A deep breath stilled his mind, and he told himself not to search for her. She would find him when she wanted to.

The plates he carried clacked hard against the dining room table. He eased onto the cushioned seats and began to eat. Alone. She did not appear, which only managed to make him even more angry at her. She lived here. She set traps. And then nothing?

The food settled into a pit at the bottom of his stomach. Was she still frightened of him? Had he slipped so far from knowing what humanity was that he didn’t recognize the scent of fear?

Leaving his food, he stalked out of the dining room and paused at the base of the stairs. There it was again. The static feeling of eyes on him.

Slowly, he turned his head to stare up the grand staircase of tortured souls to see her pressed against the balusters with her fists wrapped around the rails. She was curled in a ball on the landing, and her eyes burned.

“You’re still here, I see.” He called out to her.

“As if I could go anywhere else.”

“You are well enough to walk around and leave traps for me.”

He watched her swallow hard. “What did you do to me?”

“I gave you a magical creature to share your body.”

“Then why can’t I hear it?” she murmured so quietly he almost didn’t hear the pain in the question.

“It’s the way she desires it,” Pitch said through the spike of angst in his chest. “I believe she gave you her magic but not her soul.”

“That seems cruel.”

He wanted to tell her she did not know the meaning of cruel. Only once she had everything ripped away from her and replaced with emptiness would she be able to comprehend true cruelty. But he refrained from stooping that low. Instead, he stiffened his spine.

“Have you made yourself at home?” he asked formally.

“This is not a home. This is a prison.”

“I have endeavored to provide everything you might need.”

“That does not make me any less a captive, nor you less a captor. A prisoner might be provided fare to stay alive. And they still might wither away behind their locked doors.”

He glanced up at her hiding spot and saw how pale she was. Her face had drawn gaunt in the long days since he saw her. Her bleached hair did not help her complexion, which appeared more grey than he remembered.

And her lips were ashen too.

“You have not been eating,” he commented. “You need to keep your strength.”

Her eyes widened. “I will take care of myself the way I want to, thank you very much. You have no control over my body.”

“That is where you are wrong.”

“You’ve been gone for over a month,” her words made a shiver dance down his spine. “This house has provided for me, and I can see it is enchanted. Still, that means very little when I can’t even walk out the door.”

His patience was wearing thin. Brows drawn into a frown, he placed a foot on the stairs. “You have no knowledge of where I go or what I do-”

She feared him? He hesitated when she drew away from the banister and receded into the shadows. Sticky tendrils of darkness drew her toward them when they should have responded to him.

Since when had his shadows not behaved as he wanted them to?

Sighing, he dragged a hand through his hair. “My apologies.”

He backed away from the stairwell of screaming souls. She followed him as though a short string was attached between the two of them. Her face appeared between the slats of the banister once more. Shadows cast slashes across her face, and light reflected from the dark pools of her eyes.

“I want to go home,” she told him.

“You will remain here.”

“Then you should bring me to a hospital. I am not well.”

He shook his head. “Your body will accept the magic or it won’t. Neither hospital nor healer will do you any good.”

Her gasp echoed in his mind. “Then why do this to me?”

There was no answer to her question. He wanted her safe, or he wanted the magic inside her that tasted so familiar to remain safe. It was the same in the end. He had to keep her alive. And he would.

That meant getting close to her. He was not capable of that when twilight ran through his veins.

“I will be in my office if you need me,” he finally said. Scaring her any further would only result in angering him. He needed her to trust him.

He turned on his heels to make his way back to the office which likely overflowed with paperwork from Leo and his team. He had to sign everything, and the shipments of Juice were going to be affected by his disappearance. There was much to think about besides the little mouse hiding upstairs.

Her voice scraped nails down his spine as she called out, “You mean the office where I found the wire?”

So she did have some fight left in her. And he had been assuming she didn’t have a spine.

Pitch glanced over his shoulder. “I am certain I will find some things missing.”

“Who has wire lying around in their office?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

He wasn’t going to tell her the answer to that. He saw the darkness flit in her eyes when she asked the question. She already thought he used the wire to tie up victims, likely thinking he enjoyed the sight of it biting into their skin.

He didn’t have it in him to say she was correct. “Go back to your room, darling. It’s safer there.”

“I don’t think there’s a room in this house where I’m safe from you.”

“Then perhaps you should leave your light on when you go to sleep.”

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