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

The battle raged below the mountain peak. Screams of anger and pain echoed through her mind.

“Malachi,” she said. “Do I have a name?”

“Lydia.”

“Lydia,” she repeated. And with the word, memories came. She remembered a haunting house, a fortress of night and darkness. A man with a soft touch and kind words.

She stood, a beacon of light and hope.

“Come,” she said. “It is time to stop this.”

“Can you?” he asked.

“I have seen the end.”

Malachi stood, dusting his knees and pulling his coat jacket straight. He was once more tall, but his shoulders hunched forward still. With his hatred gone, Lydia tasted the bitter regret in his aura.

“How are you going to stop them?”

“I am a Goddess of Time,” she said with a smile. She lifted her hands and closed her eyes. “And it is time to remind these children what a real Goddess can do.”

Lydia lifted her hands over her head and cracked her palms together. From her fingertips, a rift in Time ripped open. Eyes glowing, lips moving in a spell, she dragged everyone with her into a place between Time.

This was a place of judgment, and it was time to burn a kingdom down.

Chapter 18

Mist swirled around Lydia’s ankles. This place between worlds was vacant of many things. Light blinked where she willed it to, the ground solid because she asked it to be. Each tiny detail of this space was a blank canvas she painted upon. For now, there was little she needed.

Her bare toes dug into the spongy earth. Lydia narrowed her eyes and flexed the immense power within her, turning the ground to soft moss. A softer surface would be easier for conversations.

Others blinked into existence. Her children knelt on the ground, shock and awe on their faces as they stared at her. Pitch walked out of the darkness, his cape billowing behind him.

“Where are we?” Jasper asked.

“A place between places. A time between time.”

“So this is…. Like purgatory?”

“More than that. It’s where all the dimensions are first created, a small thought in the mind of a God.” She gestured with her arm. “We paint our dreams, our desires, our will into the world here until it grows so big it can exist on its own.”

Burke made a soft sound. “Like an infant’s dream.”

“Very similar to that, yes.”

“Why are we here?” Lyra asked. A drop of blood dripped from her temple and landed upon the moss-covered ground.

At Lydia’s urging, it grew into a curling vine that reached to dab at the wound. “There are more conversations to be had, more choices to be made.”

“We have to make them?”

“Yes,” Lydia inclined her head. “But first, I have to make mine.”

She lifted a hand and snapped her fingers. The remaining three Gods appeared. Their arms stretched behind their backs, craning at an awkward and uncomfortable angle. Rope twisted between their wrists and ankles. Red welts stood out angry and painful.

Gaia snarled, “I’m going to kill you!”

“No, you are not.”

“You have no right to bind us, you pathetic little whelp. You are nothing but a child, a Goddess first born. How dare you -”

Gaia’s mouth snapped shut so hard her teeth cracked. She had said quite enough, in Lydia’s opinion, and there were no more words to be said. At least Aether and Nurin were smart enough to stay silent. Their sister, and lover, had yet to learn the same.

“Lydia,” Pitch shifted at her side. “What are you going to do?”

“What someone should have done a long time ago.”

“Is it your place?”

She always forgot how perceptive her love was. Smiling, Lydia grazed her knuckles along his jaw. “You never told me you were younger than I.”

“Younger than your power, by far.”

“I’m robbing the cradle staying with you.”

“Are you complaining?”

“Never.”

Her fingers lingered upon his skin even as she walked away. Lydia counted her footsteps as she approached the bound Gods. They had no idea who they dealt with, nor would they care if they knew. She had seen creatures like this before, drunk on power and their own self-confidence. They didn’t understand the effect they had on the world. It was always their downfall.

Lydia knelt in the moss, her golden dress pooling in rivers and melding with the silver of her hair.

“I am no young Goddess, children. I have been alive for millions of years. I have created dimensions and had them created for me. The creature before you has sat upon the council of Gods for thousands of years and only left it when I found a man who changed everything for me.”

Aether closed her eyes, turning her head to the side as though in pain.

“You were given the opportunity to create a world. I know what kind of honor that is, and how many Gods must have had high opinions of your family line. But you failed. Your world died, and when you realized what was coming, you fled to a new world. That was not yours to destroy.”

Her lips pressed together as she felt Gaia fight against her magic. She snapped a hand out, grasping the other woman’s jaw with an iron grip. “You were not given the permission to speak.”

Lydia waited until she stilled, then tossed her aside.

“It is within my power to judge your decisions. I have looked into your future and seen the terrible deeds you would complete. How do you plead?”

She looked first at Aether, the fun loving sister who had always caused them to laugh. There were many memories of this Goddess teasing Lyra, pranking Burke, teasing Jasper’s hair into knots.

Aether coughed as Lydia released the hold on her jaw. “I plead guilty, ancient one. I wish to return to my ancestors honorably.”

“What honor could you bring them?”

“I have brought joy. I did not use my power for evil until the bitter end. My family’s decisions were not my own.”

Though Lydia wanted to smite the youngling, she tasted truth in the air. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Aether’s forehead. “Go to our homeland in peace then. Pay