Bleeding Demons: The Dark Bloods - Book III ✓

Prelude

Dedicated to angelanm for helping me find typos! ...that I still make all the time. Thank you. Haha. 

Prelude

The orb was cold in his fingers. Usually there was warmth when first plucked, but this was the third time he had taken this particular sphere. The heat of life had long disappeared. He studied it. It was the size of a golf ball, tendrils of white and black wrapping and spinning around each other.

Ram frowned.

It was supposed to be a pure white, but he was not surprised. All of them were tainted like that now: side effects of the breaking balance. It was also why they were escaping. He released the orb, guiding it into the air. As Ram followed its passage, the lightning infested, black sky came into full view. The orb disappeared and Ram felt like he erased one less lightning bolt from the darkness.

A figure passed by him. It was another Spirit. He gave chase, stretching his body across the grass like a bridge to land in front of his prey. It was easier to move like this. He felt lighter and more flexible now that the tattoos had covered most of his body. The only areas still not touched by the blackness were parts of his face.

The Spirit was half his height kept afloat by arms that were hybrid wings with brown, yellow–spotted feathers. They ran down under her arms and sides, connecting together at her midsection. She stared at him with pink eyes and smiled, showing rows of filed teeth.

Ram returned the gesture. “Well hey there, Harpie Girl.”

She laughed, pleased at what he had called her.

“This is what? The fifth time I’ve had to get you? You really are a naughty girl. You come on now.”

Ram placed a hand on her feathery head. He lifted it, curly mist following his palm as if the Spirit was an image made of fog he had disturbed. The threads of Harpie Girl swirled and packed under his hand until a small sphere of black and white tendrils floated between his fingers. This one was cold too. Ram released it, sending it back to the spirit world.

“Too many,” Umbra’s voice said as she appeared next to him.

Ram knew what she meant. There were too many Spirits escaping from the realms. With the balance breaking, it was waking them, making it simple for them to leak into the worlds. The demon realm was their preferred place to roam. Its grassy plains were littered with the Spirits, some appearing as human, others taking on an animalistic or even demonic form, but all had to be gathered and returned to their slumber. It not only helped provide relief and temporary, but delicate, stabilization towards the balance, it also helped keep Lys busy.

“How many did you encounter this time, Ram?”

He turned to her. She was more transparent now. When before her body was an impenetrable black, it now resembled a thick veil that covered everything but hid nothing. Ram could see her nude bronzed skin and the dark hair that fell over her shoulders and between her legs. When he had first seen her body he thought Egyptian.

When he had told Umbra such, she nodded and said he would know the backgrounds of past lives of all souls he would come in contact with. It would grow stronger as he went through his transformation. The more the darkness ate him though, the less it appeared on her. Her face was a dominant black only because Ram’s was still pale. Once he fully became Umbra, he would pluck her soul as well. If the balance decided to let them see that day.  

“Hundreds,” Ram answered her question, “and that was only within the few hours I was here.”

“Yes, and still more come. Still more are seen.” Her green eyes looked up above. They were still their usual solid green circles. “The sky has settled for now, but—”