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

think of them as anything other than a piece of clay we had molded into a lifelike figure.

“It was the difference between the Light Five and us. They saw themselves as Gods breathing life into the elements. We saw ourselves as scientists who could turn something on and off when we wanted it.”

Her fingers spread wide above his heart. He mirrored her actions and pressed his palm against the back of her hand.

“I was so angry with them. I didn’t want to see them die, and I didn’t want an army. And I had met her. Sil. The woman gave me so many new ideas that I hadn’t thought of before. She changed the way I saw the world, and they hated her. They ran her from our lands, they destroyed everything I secretly desired.

“So I did not want to save them. I looked into the future and I saw good coming from their deaths, and I still did not want to stop them.”

“But you did?” Her voice sounded like the shattering of glass against stone. “You must have stopped them.”

“The first time, yes. How did you know?”

“You aren’t the type to let someone die like that.”

“I have let many people die like that,” he growled. His voice shuddered with the ache of old pains. But his arm snaked around her waist and pressed against her hip.

“People you care for,” she amended. “I couldn’t ever imagine you letting someone die like that if you were invested in their future.”

“They were my family.”

“Blood calls to blood, no matter how much you try to escape it.”

Pitch shook himself. “And you? What family do you have to speak of?”

“None. I told you that before.” But that sounded so weak. So much meaning packed into those words. “My mother was a baker.”

“A baker?”

“She made bread. She was very good at it. No one knew how she could make bread that tasted like it came from the table of angels, but she’d always been able to do it. And my father loved eating her food. So, he built her the smallest little bread shop in the rundown town we lived in just so that she would be happy.

“That’s how I learned what love was. It’s not just grand gestures or flowers and chocolate. It’s building a foundation of a life you can share. Especially when that foundation is made from hours of back-breaking work building a small little shop because your wife has a talent you appreciate.”

He traced circles on her stomach and asked, “You speak of them with such love in your voice.”

“I do love them. More than life itself.”

“And yet, you have no one other than your friends.”

“I don’t.” Her teeth ground together. “On a cold autumn’s day, a man walked through the center of our town and opened fire with a gun he did not own. He was going to kill himself and thought taking other people with him was a good idea.

“I was in the hospital with an asthma attack they couldn’t control and I had an allergic reaction to the medication they gave me so I was there overnight. My mother was cleaning the tables in the front of the store and my father was sanding another that had cup stains on it. They both died instantly.”

Silence rang in her ears for long heartbeats until she felt the rush of his breath once more. “How old were you?”

“Thirteen. Neither of my parents had siblings, so I was sent into the foster system. I was lucky. I stayed with a lot of good people until I was eighteen and went to college. That was when the dimensions ripped apart. I thought, for a moment, that maybe I would finally have family again? I wasn’t one of the people who thought the creatures were monsters. I just wanted to have someone there for me.”

“And then you remained a Red Blood.”

Her words rushed out in a great whoosh of breath. “Everyone else had someone always with them. I was still alone. I was in the hospital by myself and when the nurse came in and asked who my point of contact was, I had to say no one. Every single time. For once, I just wanted to have someone to talk to. Someone to tell me I was going to live through the next episode.”

His arm curled and his body bent around her like a shield. “And when you finally got a creature, she remained silent.”

“Silent as the grave.” She could hear the warble in her voice, but that was okay. She could handle that. The tears that pricked the edges of her vision could not fall. Not for herself.

The memories were a dangerous path to walk down. She had never let herself linger on such dark thoughts. Her family had been in her life for a short time, but they had been a good memory. She wanted to remember the good things. Not the bad.

He wanted her to talk, like every other therapist she had ever spoken to. But she didn’t want to talk about them. Their faces still burned bright in her mind’s eye.

Lydia hadn’t forgotten them. She didn’t begrudge their deaths nor did she feel an overwhelming sense of hate for the dead man who had taken them. She wanted to only remember the good things.

And Lydia refused to feel bad about that.

Shifting against him, her eyes found the faint outline of his hand. Her skin was far paler than his. Strange, considering Pitch was one of the palest people she had ever seen in her life. His fingers were long and lean. A painter’s hands.

“Lydia?” His questioning murmur made her flinch.

“How far does your power stretch?”

“Pardon?”

“What are your limits?” Her voice was frantic. “I need to know. There’s something I need to have done from the last vision, but I don’t know if it’s even possible.”

He pondered her questions for a few moments before she felt his nod. “There are few limits to what I can do. But you