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

Pitch nodded. “I kept it safe for a long time.”

“Why?”

“That’s for Wren to know, not you.” He slowly stood and dusted himself off. “I’ll be leaving now.”

“Wait.” Burke slowly stood and held out his hand. “I don’t trust you at all.”

Pitch snorted but shook his hand. “Yeah I know.”

Then the dark haired man was swallowed by shadows and disappeared. Burke blinked a few times and tried to reconcile what happened. His brows furrowed, and he turned to meet E’s gaze.

“Did he just teleport?”

“Apparently there are a few of them around here.” E was frowning as well.

“What is he?”

“No one knows.”

E held out the chain and vial towards Burke. “Now please?”

He put it over his head and was comforted by the thump against his chest. It weighed more than he would have thought possible. Or perhaps it was the responsibility that now held his throat in a vise.

“When I get her to the top of your consciousness?”

“I’ll take it from there,” E said. “She’ll be in control of her body, and I will work on putting up the walls again.”

“Okay, so how do I do this now?”

“Do what you’re best at Dream Walker. Just dive into my mind this time.”

Burke situated himself next to the bed. He rested his hands on his forearms and slowly released a deep breath. “Let’s fly,” he muttered as he lost himself once more to the dreaming world.

CHAPTER 13

T  he air around him swirled with dark fog. Not white colors as it should have been, but black wisps that curled up from the ground. Burke shook himself as he stepped into the mind of Legion. This was not a dream, nor was it the world he was used to discovering. He would need to tread carefully.

A long curl of black rose from the ground. It brushed along his arms and down the long length of his spine. Before it could reach its destination, Burke flinched forward with a sharp shout.

Laughter echoed around him. “You’ll have to excuse her. It’s not often we have a visitor that isn’t part of us.”

“E,” he growled, “this wasn’t the plan.”

“What, having parts of me try to feel you up?”

“Just get on with it, would you?”

The long silence that followed made Burke assume that E was pouting. He wouldn’t put it passed the creature. It had a record of acting fairly childish, depending on which part of the creature he was speaking to.

Some of the shadows in front of him formed a column of darkness. Burke took one step back as a figure formed there. It did not have a face, but many faces that flickered in and out of existence.

It stepped towards him and held out a hand.

“I’m not holding onto you. Point me in the right direction, and I’ll head that way.” Burke shook his head as he took another step back.

“You want to save her, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Without a doubt. His very soul called for hers.

“Then we need to go a lot deeper than this. You’ve only scratched the surface of my mind.”

He grimaced, but reached out to hold onto the hand that was extended to him. It was more solid than he had been expecting. His mind jumped into overdrive as he tried to explain to himself that he was currently inside another creature holding the hand of a shadow. It didn’t feel right.

He wasn’t stepping into a completely unknown world. This was his reality, and he had to stay on his toes. Nerves made him uncomfortable. This place was unpredictable and out of his control.

Dreams were never fully under his control. He was always at the mercy of the dreamer to a certain extent. He could leave or disappear from the dream if a nightmare became too dangerous. But this place was different. He couldn’t yank himself out easily. He didn’t even know how to get out.

Speaking of - “E?” he asked. “How am I supposed to get out?”

“Same way you do from dreams.”

“This doesn’t feel like the dreaming world.”

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t.” The shadows raised to tap a finger against what should have been its chin. “Perhaps you just need to wake up?”

“That’s not very clear. I was hoping you might have a ideas than than that.”

E shrugged. “We’ll figure out that problem when we get there.”

“Reassuring,” he muttered.

The ground below him opened up. Not like a trap door, that would have been theatrical even for E. But it slowly opened into a vast expanse of nothing. He and E hovered above it, though Burke had a feeling if he let go of E, even for a second, he would tumble through and never return.

“What’s this?” he asked as he stared into the abyss below them.

“My mind.”

“It has layers?”

“Have you ever played chess?”

Burke slowly turned to look at the creature next to him. It asked the strangest questions at times like these. “Yes.”

“Have you ever played three dimensional chess?”

“You mean the kind where there are multiple boards stacked on top of each other?”

“Yes.”

“No, I haven’t.” But Burke was getting a bad feeling he was going to experience it first hand.

“Well you’re about to.”

Slowly, they began to descend into the darkness. Their progress was too quick for Burke to linger upon too many details. But it appeared as though most of E’s mind was dreaming. Burke knew when he was looking at dreams.

A woman floated down a river that dropped off a cliff and into a void of nothing. A man wandered down a dimly lit street where flowers grew from between the cracks in the pavement. Twin girls built a dragon out of sand, which turned its head when Burke and E passed by it.

Yet all of these dreams were slightly out of place. The dreamers were aware of him when they should not be. They watched E pass by, some waving and calling out greetings.

“Are you dreaming?” he asked E.

“In a way. My dormant creatures live out many lives here.”

“So they aren’t… suppressed or dying?”

E gave him an odd look. “When