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

“It’s not so unlike our home, is it? The bodies are different, but the people are the same,” he said. Her vial swung in his grasp. “Can you see, my love?”

He felt movement in his pocket. Though strange, it was not unexpected. A thrill of excitement ran down his spine.

His long fingers reached into the pocket of his suede black jacket, grasping a small creature which fluttered against his palm. The moth was velvet soft and delicate — a message rather than a living thing.

Pitch held it caged within his fingers until he could hang the vial around his neck. He never let her dangle too long and refused to place her on the desk where she would collect dust.

Using both hands, he pinned the moth between his fingers. It was an unusual species, one which had yet to manifest itself in this dimension. Ghostly grey, its wings curled into delicate tips. Twin eyes upon its back stared at him, eerily human. Its antennae stopped twitching as soon as he spread the wings wide.

For all intents and purposes, it was dead. Magic made a creature like this, rather than carbon and substance.

While he watched, scrawling handwriting appeared stretched across the wings.

It’s time to let me go.

He closed his eyes in both sadness and anticipation.

Long ago, Sil told him he would continue to receive her messages as moths. They were her calling cards. Beautiful and fragile messages, linked to the night. They were just like her.

She stayed true to her promise. He continued to receive the messages written upon downy pale wings over the years. Too many years.

Sighing, he closed his fist around the creature and watched it disappear. No matter how many times he tried to preserve the message, he could not. She once told him holding onto material things was foolish, they took nothing with them.

He always argued.

The vial burned against his chest. He flinched and pulled it over his head as he chuckled.

“Are you impatient, my love?”

It swung from side to side, threatening to wiggle out of his grasp. The trapped soul lacked substance, its brightness dim with age. Thousands of years made a soul weak.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” he asked her. “It’s been a long time. Taking over a body is difficult. If you are unprepared, the human could die.”

The vial rocked again.

Pitch smiled, “All right. I trusted you long ago, and I’ll trust you now.”

He didn’t want to. There was a knot in the pit of his stomach suggesting he should wait. He should hold onto her for just a few moments longer.

He hated not knowing how this might end. Control was his middle name, and the reason he was who he was. He needed to know every little detail of his entire life, and order people around, to feel comfortable.

Sil had never cared for that when she was alive. He guessed she would follow that pattern when she joined the land of the living and possessed a body.

“There are many things which could go wrong,” he reminded her as he walked them toward his desk. “If you are too weak to take over a body and remove the creature, I want you to return without hesitation.”

The light blinked a few times in response.

“Don’t argue,” Pitch scolded her, “it won't get you anywhere. You can’t open the cork on your own. You promise if anything goes wrong, you’ll come right back and we’ll put you back in the bottle.”

The pulsing light agreed with a more steady glow. Albeit, this time it was a begrudging agreement.

“I know you hate being trapped, love.” He lifted a finger and ran it down the edge of the small vial. “But I cannot lose you again.”

A man’s soul could only lose the love of his life so many times before it ripped apart. This realm would not survive Pitch losing all sense of control.

Sighing, he grasped the tiny cork between two fingers and tugged. It released with a soft popping sound.

The silver swirls of her soul drifted into the air. She hovered for a few moments before him, all metallic shimmer and effortless grace.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Shock and awe overwhelmed him. But the clenching of his stomach suggested something dire was about to occur.

The other half of his soul floated toward him, bumped against his cheek, and then darted out of his office.

Pitch stood frozen for a few moments before his enraged shout made the floor quake.

“Sil!”

He charged out of the room, skidding across the hallway. He couldn’t track her now. She was such a tiny little light, she could have hidden in any manner of places. Not to mention she could have darted up someone’s nostril and taken over their body already.

Rage poured off his body in great billows of shadow. His form shuddered and quaked as he lost his immense control. Fear made him foolish as he moved too fast for any human eye to see.

One moment he was in front of his office, the next, he was standing in front of each wait staff and inhaling. None of them held her honeysuckle scent. None of them shared the overwhelming lightness of her spirit.

A few maids stared at him. They had never seen him so angry and flinched back in fear.

He continued down the hallway, blinking from existence and returning before every person he could find. No one held her distinct magical signature. She was evading him far better than any prey he had hunted since the dimensions collided.

His form splintered as panic slammed against his mind. Pitch had not begun his life in a solid form, he only held one through the sheer force of his will. Now, his body wanted to dissolve into smoke.

That form could find her. Thousands of limbs could reach with unseeing eyes until they felt her. Only then would he pull himself together so he could wrap her in the webs of his darkness.

But he shouldn’t. People were staring, and he needed to tread carefully. He needed these people.