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

She groaned and tried to lift a hand to her head felt heavy as cement.

“Easy,” the deep voice was unexpected and unrecognizable. “We’ve just arrived.”

That made her eyes snap open. Blinking, she tried to focus on whoever spoke. Sensations of wiry arms holding her and fingers pressed against her ribs warred with the inability to see. Wide eyed in panic, Lydia tried to find something familiar in the darkness, but she could not find any speck of light around her.

“Who are you?” she squeaked. “Have I gone blind?”

“Oh, my sincerest apologies. I forgot.”

The darkness cleared from her vision, parting like a curtain. As soon as she saw what it revealed, Lydia almost preferred to be blind.

He was beautiful, was her first thought. Not traditionally beautiful with warm skin and sun-kissed features, but pale and smooth. Carved out of marble. Skin, so pale she wondered if he had ever seen sunlight, glowed in the dim ambiance. Full lips and a hawk-like nose led to the darkest eyes she had ever seen.

She fell into his gaze. Deep into the abyss that held not only nightmares, but the universe inside of them. He held the night sky in his eyes.

Her breath caught as a lock of hair tumbled onto his forehead. The strange instinct to smooth his hair back bubbled within her. But she did not know this man. Such an action would be unusual, and she didn’t like to touch anyone.

Lydia needed to get herself back together. She focused for a few moments on filling the holes in her memory but found she had nothing to fill them with.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“You never stop asking questions.” The words said in honeyed tones were an observation, not a question.

“Can you say you're surprised? I have no idea who you are, but I woke up being carried by you. I have no idea where I am, and you won't tell me! If I stop asking questions then I might never find out the answers!”

One of his dark eyebrows lifted. “Touche.”

The soft rocking motion of his body wasn’t him breathing, she realized. They were moving. Lydia turned her head expecting the club’s blinding bright lights and her friend’s disapproving stares. She didn’t expect to focus on a door which opened on its own and led into an ancient Victorian house.

This was so much more trouble than she had thought.

“Oh no,” she muttered.

“Are you talking to yourself, or am I supposed to be listening?”

She was being kidnapped. Her heart thumped hard against her chest as she tried not to notice how opulent her surroundings were. Kidnapped by a filthy rich man but kidnapped, nonetheless.

Dry mouthed and shaking, she tried to figure out a plan. Rational thoughts evaded her as the door slammed shut behind them.

Dark colors greeted her everywhere she looked. Blacks, greys, and reds seemed to be his only color choices. Carved wooden chairs with red velvet seats surrounded a fireplace with blackened coals. The walls were covered by tapestries and expensive looking artwork that depicted scenes from what she recognized as Revelations.

Her eyes blinked to keep tears from blurring her vision. Every archway depicted carved screaming faces and damned souls. So he was a sadist. Fantastic.

A grand staircase rose up to the ceiling. Even the black banister warped with tortured souls, a detail she only noticed as his feet whispered on the red carpeted stairs. They were going upstairs.

Her voice caught in her throat until it was little more than a weak peep. “Are you going to kill me?”

“No.”

“Hurt me?”

“No.”

“Rape me?”

“No.” He said with force. Almost as though her kidnapper couldn’t believe she would dare suggest he might do something so terrible.

“Then I would like to go home.”

“I cannot grant you that.”

She blinked. Why wasn’t her body responding to her? She kept trying to lift any of her limbs, but they refused to move. All she could feel was the heat of him.

This would not do. She was not this pitiful, nevermind she had lost a lot of weight in the past months. Forgetting to eat was not a weakness, nor was not being able to buy her own food.

“I have to protest,” she said as she cleared her throat. “You need to set me down. And then you need to bring me back to my friends.”

“You wouldn’t be able to walk if I set you down.” His tone was dry, but stated what he thought of her plan.

“Then you have my permission to keep holding me until we are back to my apartment.”

“No.”

“You say that an awful lot.”

If she wasn’t so set upon painting him as an evil man, Lydia might acknowledge the hint of a smile on his lips. “You make it so easy.”

She tried to wiggle, shake, move, anything other than lay there. Even her toes refused to move despite her desperate mental pleas.

“I can’t move anything,” she murmured.

“Is that a question or an observation?”

“Observation, apparently.”

“You can still ask questions.”

“You will only tell me no,” Lydia couldn’t help but quip.

A soft chuckle rumbled against her shoulder. “Perhaps I will. Perhaps I won’t.”

She could like him. His voice was soothing, like listening to the soft crash of waves. But she also knew most serial killers were charming. The last thing she needed was to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome and fighting against someone trying to rescue her.

Rather than speaking any further, she focused on trying to move her fingers. Each tiny twitch felt like the grinding of gears, but eventually she squeezed them into a fist. Her mind was strong, she told herself. Her body was only a tool for her mind.

Nothing from her waist down would move. By the time they crested the third level, she could flex her fingers.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

He wandered past an ancient looking elevator and down a hallway straight out of a horror movie. She reluctantly admitted to herself that struggling was out of the question.

Had he poisoned her? She sucked in a breath, a