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

for deaths which had yet to happen. Sometimes Pitch was there. He would gather her into his waiting arms and rock her while she sobbed. He never asked what she had seen, and she never told him.

Tonight as she awoke, the dream lingered. She could see the faintest edges of it and groped at the edge of the bed.

She cast her pleas to the high heavens and hoped that someone would take her hand, reaching out in the darkness. Being alone would shatter her mind into a million pieces which could never be put back together.

Warm fingers grasped hers. Smooth and strong, they tangled around her shaking hand and eased her fear away.

The edge of the bed dipped. Heat seeped through the blankets as he leaned over her. Pitch. Her silent shadow who was always there when she needed him most.

“You know,” she whispered into the darkness, “it’s really fucked up that I’m relying on you this much.”

He stroked sweat tangled hair off her forehead. “Why is that?”

“You kidnapped me. You’ve been holding me captive for years in this house and you still haven’t let me out of it. You gave me this power that’s eating me alive.”

There were too many things to count. Reasons for her to hate him and yet, she found she could not. He was darkness and no one could hate what was naturally made.

“True,” he told her. “I did all of those things to you, and I cannot promise that I will not do more.”

“Are you ever going to let me go?”

He did not respond and continued to stroke her hair. The soothing rhythm pulled her from the nightmare and into reality. It was still dark. The shadows still moved. But these shadows touched her body with soft caresses rather than harsh jabs.

She knew was he was going to say. She was here for a good reason, to save the world.

What girl didn’t want that?

Lydia turned her head away from him. “It wasn’t a dream this time.”

“It was more?”

“I can’t describe it. It wasn’t like with the red woman.”

“Sil’s visions never were very consistent,” he quietly replied. “Either way, they should not be ignored.”

“Why am I dreaming of these people?”

“They are the puzzle pieces you are fitting together.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” Lydia grumbled as she forced herself into a sitting position.

Her head was aching, throbbing with her heartbeat. Would she never return to herself? She couldn’t even control when she saw the visions, saving the world was far beyond her reach.

All she wanted was one day where she didn’t feel tired. One day when she could stand on her own two feet, walk out the door, and sit in the sun.

His hand returned, rolling her to her side, and digging strong fingers into the tense muscles along the edge of her protruding spine.

“I do not know how her magic works,” he murmured. “It is vastly different from my own. She not only saw the future, but read it like a book.”

Lydia buried her face in her hands, her voice muffled as she spoke, “You can see the future?”

“All of us could.”

“All?”

“The dark Five,” he amended. “We were the ones who created creatures of oracular gifts. Limiting them, of course, as we saw fit. But we could all walk the strands of time.”

Lydia lifted her head from her hands and tried to find his eyes in the darkness. “You could? Then why didn’t any of you see… sorry. That was rude.”

“Why didn’t we see our deaths? We did. That was why they killed themselves.”

She shifted on the bed. Her back hit his chest with a thump. She felt his sharp inhalation and thought he would push her away, but he did not. Pitch leaned against her headboard and settled her more comfortably against him before he continued.

“What do you know of my siblings?”

“Just what I saw in the visions.”

“So, very little.”

Lydia nodded.

His breath stirred the hair above her ear. “I wish I could say they were good people, but they were not. Dark things can so easily shift to evil. It’s in our nature. But they had swallowed too many lies and unpredictable futures. They saw assassins in their own shadows and murderers in their own siblings.”

“What a terrible way to live.” Lydia’s heart broke for them, in the same way it had broken when she had seen the fragile expression upon Pitch’s face.

“It was how they would have wanted it. They would have preferred to look a killer in the eyes before he struck. To die without knowing that someone was going to murder them would have been the ultimate disgrace. But, in the end, they all died.”

He sighed, “They were always too cocky. Too prideful. So when they saw a future full of Light creatures, they saw an army bearing down upon them. They did not see a group of people who were farming, building families, creating art. This was their first mistake and their downfall.

“I still remember that moment,” he ruefully shook his head. “The night I walked down the stairs and saw the knives in their hands. There was no calling them back from their desire for murder. My eldest sister had two blades anchored in her shoulders and she was laughing. My brother had stabbed himself so many times in the stomach he was no longer standing, but he still held his arms out and called for me to join them.”

The memories poured out of his mouth like water from falls. Perhaps, she thought, this was his way of healing from a wound that had long been open.

Instead of interrupting, or telling him her opinion, she reached out to hold his hand. He hesitated for the briefest moment before lifting it to press against his heart.

“They were my heroes. They had created so much life and allowed me to run wild with freedom and abandon. I created whatever I wanted and they would critique it. Tell me how lovely it looked or how I could make the creature better. We didn’t