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

move. His brows furrowed in concentration as he probed the strange emotion. He hadn’t been fond of a person in a long time. The feeling was delicate in his mind, lacking substance and form.

Surely it was his mind getting used to caring for another person. She was living in his house. As a comatose roommate, but she was another living body occupying the same space. It was normal for him to feel partial to her presence. He had been alone for many years.

The thoughts mulled in his mind and took a new form. This wasn’t a familial response. Pitch didn’t think of her as a sibling. He didn’t think of her as a friend.

This was a genuine fondness. He sat up and stared into the distance.

“Huh,” he grunted.

That was an interesting new development. After Sil died, he hadn’t thought it possible to care about anyone but himself.

Before the strange Goddess had come into his life, he had been empty. Blank. With nothing on his pages but rage and anger.

The youngest of his family, Pitch had always been scrappy. He fought for everything he wanted and everything he didn’t want. His siblings had been ruthless in their training of him. He would be a monster. He would be shadow and night incarnate until he didn’t know what a man was.

Then she showed up. Sil who was everything he had not experienced. Tenderness, love, a bright bubble of laughter floating over his shoulder even when she wasn’t there.

Her death had nearly killed him. Yet, he had survived to fight in battles untold until all emotion was beaten out of him.

Coming into this realm hadn’t changed that. He had created his own empire, another thing to rule even though there were no kings and queens here. Juice was his product, the people who abused it his kingdom.

The lost, lonely, downtrodden. These were the people he took under his wing.

And now he made his bed with them. Whores, thieves, junkies, all people he scraped from the bottom of the barrel and promised oblivion.

Nothing was free in his kingdom of darkness. They understood and lived happier lives because of it. He made sense to them, in a twisted way which only their demented minds could understand.

The years had not been kind. Pitch had torn through the fabric of reality with every breath. Emotions crawled back into his life. Each time he felt them raise their ugly head, he pushed them back down.

Emotions were useless. They had destroyed him once, and he thought he’d learned his lesson.

Apparently not.

The “fondness” he felt for this woman burned inside his chest. He felt it pulsing where his heart used to be. Powerful and aching, like a star. So far away that its scalding heat couldn’t touch him, but close enough that its light would soothe his nightmares.

He snorted.

“Nightmares,” he chuckled as he blew another smoke ring into the sky. “Since when do I have nightmares? I am the nightmare.”

He was soothed all the same. He did not turn his gaze toward the house or her darkened window. She was in another healing sleep. He felt the soft rise and fall of her chest as though it was his own.

Pitch would wait for her. Again.

Chapter 7

Her dreams turned dark. Lydia saw shadows move in the corners of her eyes. They were just out of reach and she couldn’t tell what they were. If they were Pitch, then she was safe. But if they weren’t… Well she didn’t want to think about what dark creatures could lurk in dreams.

Eventually, she dragged herself from that abysmal world. Awakening from sleep was different. Lydia was used to the gradual loosening of the shadows in her mind until she opened her eyes. This time, she was awake in a rush that caused her to gasp.

“Oh!” she squeaked.

Two ginormous eyes stared down at her. Bright yellow with smudges of dark brown, the pupils slit down the center. They widened, and she heard a masculine voice shout before they disappeared.

She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath to calm her nerves.

There was a man in her room. Lydia blinked. A very odd man. Two large ears perched atop his head, swiveling in all directions as he listened for something. Or someone.

Probably Pitch, she decided. The man made of shadows was always running to her rescue.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Louis.”

Lydia pulled her blankets up to her chest. “And what are you doing here, Louis?”

“I’m your maid.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is Louis ma’am, and I’m your new maid. Or well, not new. I’ve been here for some time but you’ve been sleeping. I was hoping you weren’t dead and every now and then I like to lean over to make sure you’re still breathing because…” He paused. “I should stop now shouldn’t I?”

“It might not be a bad idea,” Lydia said.

She could see this man was no danger. He wore plain brown pants hitched up to his ribs, the ugliest yellow plaid shirt she had ever seen, and a pair of worn glasses perched on his rather unremarkable face.

She had never seen a more perfect man.

“You’re normal,” she said with a happy sigh.

“Oh I don’t know about that.”

“You most certainly are. And you are the most welcome sight I have had in a very… very long time.”

He flushed, stammering and rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, that’s a high compliment from a woman like you.”

“Did you say you were my maid?”

“That’s what Pitch said.”

Lydia snorted. “Of course he would. I think he meant butler.”

“No, no I’m certain he said maid. That’s what I am.”

She didn’t know how to say Pitch had played him for a fool. “I would suggest that ‘maid’ is usually a feminine term.”

Louis shrugged. “Feminine or not, it’s what I am. I clean.”

“The house cleans itself.”

“I pick up after you.”

“I’ve been asleep,” she reminded him.

“Well,” he seemed to ponder, “I’ve been doing something all these years you’ve been asleep.”

Years. She squeezed her eyes shut and told herself it didn’t matter.