Silver Blood (Series of Blood Book 1) by Emma Hamm (bill gates book recommendations .TXT) 📕

“What is happening?” he asked her.

“Death,” she whispered. Her eyes remained on the city as though it was necessary for her to bear witness. “They used to eat souls.”

He could hear the screams then. Soft, the sound started with the low wail of a child. Even high on the cliff, he could hear the pathetic sound. Then another scream, and another, joined the sound of the child until it reached a crescendo of anger and pain.

The shadows were swallowing people whole. They had gathered together into a wave of pain and anguish that devoured the city before them.

“Wren,” he moved away from the edge. “Wren, we should go. Take us away from them.”

“Have to watch,” she said quietly. “They’re mine to watch.”

“They aren’t!” he replied fiercely.

She looked at him then. Burke stopped breathing as he saw that black sludge stained the pristine white of her dress. It looked like blood but dripped like sap off of a wounded tree.

“This is my nightmare,” she whispered. The lavender hair floating around her slowly turned black as ink.

Burke refused to listen to her rambling. He wrapped his arms around her and stood up with her. He used his back as a shield against the horrors that were happening in the city below and turned her face towards his neck.

“Wren, darling,” he whispered into her hair as she shivered in fear. “I need you to focus on getting control of this dream. We aren’t here. This isn’t real.” He knew how real this would feel to her. Burke was beginning to fear that this was a memory they were locked in.

Dreams were fragile things. They were created usually from an experience that the dreamer experienced during the day. But sometimes, a rare dream bloomed from a long buried memory. Those were much more difficult to control and much more dangerous to a Dream Walker.

“Did you hear me, Wren?” he asked her.

Her hands clenched harder around the fabric of his shirt before she nodded.

“Don’t open your eyes. None of this is happening if you keep your eyes closed.”

It was happening. Of course it was happening. Burke needed to stall. There was always a key to a dream. He simply had to find the one thing that had triggered this memory. A button, sort of, that could be pushed which would propel the dreamer out of the dream.

He just had to find it.

A shadow formed passed her shoulder. Unlike the others, this one did not immediately jump down the cliff. Instead, this one looked directly at the two standing at the edge of the cliff.

Of course it wasn’t going to be this easy. How did one fight a shadow? Jiminy had been in many situations in dreams, but he hadn’t been in this one.

“Jiminy.”

He glanced down at her, and the strong column of his throat convulsed as he saw her eyes were open. She wasn’t looking at him, but through him. Once more, Jiminy had become part of her dream.

“What did I say, Wren?” He held her chin between his fingers and forced her to look at him. “Keep your eyes closed.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t.”

The shadow started to walk towards them. He could see now that it was made of an inky substance that glistened in the moonlight. A wide mouth of teeth was the only feature on its vaguely human head. The mouth was gnashing as it stepped forward.

“Don’t hit me for this,” he told her.

He curled his body around her in hopes that he could startle her out of the nightmare. His much larger body molded to hers. Heated flesh pressed against heated flesh She blinked and stared up at him. An inhale pressed her chest against his, and her mouth opened as though she was about to speak.

He wasn’t going to give her time to think. Burke leaned down to press his mouth against hers. She was even softer than he had imagined. Suddenly, the dream became one of his own. His hands tunneled into her long strands of curls and pulled her towards him.

A dream is not reality. A dreamer can only be what they think themselves to be. Yet she was everything he had imagined. He could not taste her, but he could feel every inch of her skin that was pressed against his. He could feel the heartbeat that thumped against his chest. He could feel the way her muscles softened as she leaned into him.

Reluctantly, he pulled away from her. A blush stained her cheeks a becoming red. Her lips were a glistening strawberry red that he wanted to taste again.

It was too late for that.

He felt the shadow move more than he saw it. The slow stumbling walk had been easy to ignore when he had her warm body in his arms. Except now it wasn’t stumbling anymore. Rushing forward, it swallowed all the light around them. He felt heat against his side. Pain bloomed along with a bright flourish of blood that splattered past them in slow motion. Surprised, he pressed a hand against his side and felt how cold the skin was around it.

He would be bleeding in the physical world as well. For a Dream Walker, any harm in a dream was reality. “Wren.”

She flinched away from him.

“Wren, you have to make them disappear.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide, and her chest heaved as she sucked in great gasps of air. He had lost her to the nightmare once more. “I can’t do it.”

“You can, and you must. I am wounded in the real world if I am wounded here.”

She shook her head. “Then you should leave. You’re already hurt.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone with those things.”

“You should,” she whispered before flinching again when one of the shadows brushed by her. Its hand trailed down the long length of her arm as it passed. His eyes widened as she saw the bright line of silver blood upon her flesh.

“Wren, why is your blood