House of Slide Hybrid (25 page)

“That’s right. You have no idea how much I look forward to telling your Intended to be appropriate. By the way, you should have at least five inches between the two of you at all times.” He shrugged. “Personally, I doubt five inches will do it. Five miles would be a more effective deterrent to untoward advances.” His eyebrows twitched while he used the big words, looking half amused and half terrified, like the idea of keeping Lewis in line, while amusing was also life threatening.

“Extreme chaperoning,” I said, under my breath.

Lewis grabbed my hand, capturing my attention completely. His shirt wasn’t completely open anymore, only a sliver of skin still showed. He had a slight frown between his eyebrows that I wanted to smooth away, to taste the texture of his skin with my fingers, fingers that should be satisfied. I swallowed as his eyes burned into me full of a dark promise that I couldn’t put a name to.

“What does your schedule look like for the next week?” Lewis asked me, his voice low and rough.

“I don’t know. School, I guess.”

“When do you start tattoos?” he asked as he smoothed my hair away from my face.

I tried not to sink against him, tried not to notice how close his hands were.

“I’m not really sure.”

“Do you plan on going out with Satan and your friends again this week?”

I stared at him blankly, wondering when I went out with anyone.

“To kill monsters,” he clarified with a slight smile before his fingers slid against my cheek, his touch not as hot, but warm and shocking with something that had nothing to do with temperature. So warm, so careful, so terrifying.

I took a deep, shuddering breath through my mouth, unsure if I should move away from him or closer. Closer would be warmer. If Lewis was the Nether, I could go outside my back door and into his arms and the gaping jaws of his monster. “I don’t think so. I didn’t really do anything last time except be scared. I’m not sure I’m ready to face the monsters again.”

“So how long are we going to hang out here?” Jackson asked.

I blinked, hating looking away from Lewis and the delicious darkness he offered me. I glared at my cousin.

“We?” I didn’t like how that sounded. “Wait. Who made you my chaperone? I don’t need a chaperone. I’m eighteen. If I want to be alone with my soulmate, I’ll be alone with my soulmate. Who decided that I couldn’t be trusted alone?”

Jackson shrugged his shoulders. “Your mom really doesn’t like you being alone with your Intended. I think she’s afraid you two are going to, you know,” he clarified most helpfully.

“Going to, what?” I demanded.

“He’s a Hotblood Hybrid,” he said.

“And I’m a Cool/Wild Hybrid. So what?”

“Well, I come along and the two of you are half naked. What do you think?”

“I am not half naked,” I argued, fighting down my blush. “Anyway, it’s none of your business what I wear or don’t wear. It’s none of my mother’s either.”

“Dari,” Lewis said, putting a warm hand on my shoulder that immediately made my cousin and my mother much less important. I turned to look at him, his eyes glowing brightly as he stared at me. “You should go with Jackson. I’ll follow you home.”

“You want me to go?” I tried not to feel hurt, but the idea that he wouldn’t want me stung.

He smiled slightly. “Never,” he said, brushing my jaw with his scarred hands. “But I think if Jackson had not come, I would have a new scar by morning, and you wouldn’t be leaving me ever again.”

My stomach twisted from fear or anticipation, maybe both. I slid his jacket off of my shoulders, smoothing the fabric before I lay it over the back of the seat.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said then sighed and squeezed his hand. “All right. I’m going. Be good. Don’t kill anyone you don’t have to. You’ll call me?”

He smiled and nodded, an elegant formal nod at odds with his glowing eyes and messy hair.

I got out, following Jackson with Lewis beside me but like a bodyguard, two steps behind. I kept staring over my shoulder until he sighed and moved next to me. I slid my hand in his, noticing the slight catch in his breathing. Other than that tiny thing, he showed no expression although his eyes still burned.

Before I slid into the big, black car, a car I’d spent seemingly years of my soulless life, Devlin’s car, I turned to Lewis, opened my mouth to say something when he pulled me against him, the lines of his hard body pressed against mine more intensely than ever before. I wrapped my arms around him, breathing in his heat, his scent while his heart pounded so loudly, so quickly, I could feel it through my shirt. His throat beneath my cheek curved so beautifully, the veins pulsing beneath my lips. I opened my mouth and bit his skin, barely a brush of my teeth, but everything vanished. His soul, gloriously alive exploded around me, surrounding me, absorbing me until it seemed I could never escape, would never want to, but then he pulled away, leaving me gasping, off-balance, nearly falling into the passenger’s seat. Jackson promptly closed the door, shutting Lewis away from me. I wanted to scream, to beat on the window like an irrational child. Of course, I could have lifted the latch of the door and stepped out. My hand tightened on the handle. If I went to him now, I would never go home again. I knew in his eyes, in his soul, that he’d come to the end of his endurance. I wasn’t ready for forever.

I closed my eyes and practiced my breathing, practiced not opening the door and going to him. I sat beside Jackson, trying to ignore the fact that we drove away.

“He’s tailing us,” Jackson said as we bumped over the uneven frozen mud.

I spun around, staring out the back window. Lewis’s dark purple car followed half a car length behind us.

He waved at me, and I sank down in the seat, trying not to be quite so obvious when I craned my neck to look at Lewis.

“So, you’re a chaperone,” I said, glancing at Jackson.

“Finally, the House has recognized my immense skills. Seriously, don’t let him eat me, okay?”

“Like I could stop him.”

“Actually, I think you’re the only thing that does stop him. He seems to listen to you, which is good because he certainly doesn’t listen to anyone else, well, maybe your dad. Stanley is so mad at Lewis. Apparently he broke a billiard stick inside of his shoulder where he’s had some joint issues, so now it’s healed up but there are remnants of the cue. Grim had to go digging around in his shoulder, and Wilds who heal like Stanley aren’t very good at being operated on because you have to recut the same thing over and over again. Also, Stanley hates losing.”

I nodded glancing back at Lewis. “I shouldn’t have cut myself. I didn’t mean to, and it wasn’t his fault. I know, he’s supposed to be able to keep accidents from happening, but it was very stressful. Why are you the chaperone if you know that you couldn’t stop Lewis from trying something inappropriate?”

Jackson scowled, glancing at me sideways. “I don’t know, but I think it might have something to do with your brother because you’re probably less likely to do something stupid when you feel like he’s watching you. It’s a little bit insulting that my major abilities seem to have more to do with looking like your brother than anything I can actually do.”

“What can you do?”

He gave me a long-suffering sigh and apparently became insulted, because he didn’t speak to me for the rest of the drive, which was okay. I was completely occupied by the rear guard.

I spent the next hour and a half with my feet on the seat, my arms wrapped around my knees, noticing how itchy tulle was, and that my sparkly tights had a hole in them, probably from scrambling around on the floor with the tea stuff, and getting a sore neck from staring at Lewis. I tried not to notice my arm, the way it ached all the time. It was nothing, I knew that, I mean, Wilds were about pain and all, bring it on, so a little gash was nothing. Still—it hurt.

At home Jackson pulled into the driveway. Lewis slowed down and I thought he’d stop, but then his engine revved and he took off into the darkness, leaving me with the glowing red tail lights that reminded me of demons. I got out of the car feeling hungry, cranky, and alone. Jackson followed me into the house, still in the kitchen when I came down in Devlin’s old sweat pants and a hoodie. I didn’t care what Snowy said, there was something really cute about comfortable.

“I can’t get over that Axel is your Intended,” he said, biting into an apple.

I shrugged as I piled my notebooks and schoolbooks on the table. Homework never ended however weird my mother’s House was, however tired I was.

“Does he really love you?”

I stared at him, wondering where the question had come from. His voice was casual, but there was something calculated about it. This was the kind of question Slide would ask, not Jackson. What did he care what Lewis thought of me, other than what would help me not die? I couldn’t forget that Jackson was an almost Son of Slide, even if my dad was filling the current position.

“I don’t really know about love. What do you think? Your dad really loved your mom, right? That’s why he didn’t touch up his tattoos, isn’t it? What was it like to have parents that loved each other like that?”

“Having parents like them, family is the best curse you could wish for. Having them gone makes me almost wish I never knew them, because then I wouldn’t feel like this, so alone, not a part of anything.” He shook his head. “The way my dad looked at my mother, it’s kind of the way you look at Lewis. Him, I know that he’s a Hotblood and wants you, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking. You,” he said with a large grin. “Are in trouble. Do you think if you didn’t look back at him five thousand times he’d disappear?”

I rolled my eyes, and that was the end of serious talking. It made me think though, that all of this faking made it hard to know what you really felt, wanted. Who knew what future Devlin saw that led him to do what he did? What future did he want? I could check out more of the rocks and that way I might know something, bits and pieces of possibility, but how would I know that I knew? And also, would that help me know the end, and did I want to know if it was Lewis dying, or killing because I wanted him to?

The next day passed like most Sundays except Satan was grouchier than usual. In the afternoon I realized that I had school the next day and my hair was still blue. I was really going to do something about it when my mother called me down from my room because I had company.

“What happened to your hair?” I asked Smoke, his reddish hair now flaming red with black tips. I circled him to take in the grandeur of it while he stood in the middle of the wide hall with a pleased grin on his face.

“I heard that you were kicked out of school for your hair, so I’m showing solidarity.”

His smile was so honest. He wasn’t a Wild, or any other type that had an agenda. I tried to keep my smile from going wobbly. It wasn’t a big deal, only blue hair, but Smoke was here, in my house, with flaming hair because he cared.

I wrapped my arms around his skinny body and tried not to cry.

“Um, Dari, you okay?”

“You dyed for me.”

He laughed as he stepped away from me, running a hand through his hair. “You know I was looking for an excuse to dye my hair. Let me know when you’re getting a Mohawk, because that would be awesome!”

I laughed and felt the laugh all the way to my feet, feet that had an incredible urge to dance. “Come on!” I dragged him into the music room. There was a stereo there in a cabinet that I never used. I threw open the doors and stared at it for a moment less excited to get music going.

“Allow me,” he said, pulling out cords with the experience of someone who played video games way too often. In less time than I thought possible music blared through the room and he grinned at me while he held out a hand.

It had been ages since we’d danced and everything was different now. For one thing, I kept going in the wrong direction.

“Loosen up,” he coaxed, jiggling my arm. “Where’s your focus?”

I punched him on the shoulder. “Your fantastic hair keeps distracting me. I haven’t danced with you since I had this soul and it’s kind of weird to touch anyone besides Lewis.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Are you dissing my danceability? Are you saying you’d rather dance with someone without flaming hair? Are you saying…”

I giggled as I twirled him, stretching so that he could go under my arm. “You twirl so pretty.”

“Don’t I though.” He grinned as he spun again, wrenching my shoulder a bit as he spun on the dark polished wood floor. “You know what we need?”

“An audience?” Osmond’s voice carried across the floor through the music and I had an automatic stomach twisting response, clinging to Smoke’s hand while I talked myself out of feeling guilty for no reason.

“Osmond,” Smoke said, turning to gesture him across the floor towards us. “What is that, teal?”

I forced myself to focus on Osmond and saw that his short hair was tipped with dark blue-green. I didn’t know what to say, only stood there stupidly in my dead brother’s sweats and wondered where the nice boy had gone who wouldn’t ever dye his hair for fun. He looked edgy and interesting; not as nice, but twice as fascinating, like the guy from the vision who had kissed bad girl me like a Hotblood. This version of Osmond scared me, made his friendship a little bit different, dangerous.

“Hi, Dari,” he said, coming further into the room, followed by my mother. My mother. Nothing inappropriate was going to happen with her in the room.

“I didn’t know you were having a dance,” she said politely, like a formal dance in our house, in my sweats wasn’t irrational. “I haven’t danced for so long.”

“Allow me,” Osmond said, all chivalrous. I stared as Osmond began dancing with my mother.

“Come on,” Smoke hissed, pulling me against him, making me move when I definitely felt petrified. Staring at his chest and his flaming monkees T-shirt made me feel better, remembering something I knew in my bones. I could dance, whatever soul I had.

After two songs, I wasn’t feeling uncomfortable about Osmond dancing with my mother, wasn’t feeling weird until Satan came into the room, looked around at us then walked back out.

“Satan, come back here,” my mother ordered, her voice low and resonant.

He returned with a sigh, like he had been surprised to see us dancing although why else would we have the music playing?

“You used to dance rather well,” my mother said, holding out a hand to him imperiously. “Shall we see if any of your finer instincts remain?”

He showed his teeth, and I worried for a minute about my mother, well, less than a minute because it was obvious once they were moving together that there were no tricks she wouldn’t see coming. Their dance was intricate, calculated, so precise and controlled it didn’t seem possible that I could feel anything, but their dance managed to convey emotion, power struggle was obvious, but there was also tenderness and care in the way they danced with each other.

I turned away when I realized what it reminded me of: Devlin, of course. I couldn’t go a day without being reminded of him. We’d danced like that, well, not me, because I’d only gone through the motions, technical precision without any of the soul that my mother had.

“Do you want to dance? I don’t think I’m as good as Smoke, but maybe you can take it easy on me.”

I turned to look up at Osmond. I’d been so caught up in my mother and her brother’s dance that I’d forgotten to be paranoid about him.

“False modesty,” Smoke said, rolling his eyes. “Everyone knows that you are Snowy’s preferred partner because while you might not have my fantastic energy, you are a seriously solid lead. Go for it, Dari. Your soul might like dancing with him more than me.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but oh well. I took a deep breath then nodded, holding my arms up in the beginning position with my eyes tightly shut.

He took my hand in his, firmly, like he was showing me how to throw a football or something then put a hand on my waist and pulled me into the music. After a few awkward steps I opened my eyes and found his chest intimidating to stare at, but so was his dimpled chin and smooth, soft mouth. My hands were sweaty by the time the dance was over but he didn’t seem to mind, only gave me a friendly smile and turned to say something to Smoke, leaving me to hyperventilate and stare at his back alone. At least, I would have been alone if Satan didn’t sidle up beside me.

“Osmond’s a good fighter,” he said pleasantly, like that was the best compliment there was to give people. Of course, for him it probably was.

“Yeah, and he has teal hair.”

“So…” he said with his arms crossing his chest as he looked at Osmond and Smoke. “I take it you’re staying blue so that you can match your friends.”

I nodded and found myself smiling, nodding in time to the beat while Smoke asked my mother to dance. It was the weirdest thing I’d seen for days, well, one day anyway, his flamboyant energy and her icy cold perfection. It made me wonder how he’d look dancing with Snowy.

A jarring crash, a sound and physical shudder swept through the room, freezing my mother for the split second before she and Satan were moving, leaving us behind. I only had a moment to blink before Osmond ran, not as fast as my mother or Satan, but still, much faster than Smoke or I could get across the room and to the door, while cha-cha played. I was halfway across the hall when the front door opened and my mother came in with Satan, both of them carrying a very pale Grim where he wasn’t bloody.

I stood stunned, unable to move while his head lolled and the smell of something not dead, worse than dead, filled the hall. They took him to the kitchen. In a daze I followed, trying not to smell, think, feel anything, focused on the scuffs on the bottoms of his shoes.

In the kitchen they lay him on the island, Satan ripping off his clothes like they were made of paper while my mother reappeared with her medical kit, spreading the skin of his chest as though it wasn’t oozing what looked like motor oil, too black to be blood.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be here,” Osmond said, putting a sturdy hand on my shoulder. I opened my mouth to say something but then Grim jerked and gasped, his hand tightening on Satan’s lapel as his eyes opened, staring into space for a moment until his other hand slowly raised, fingers moving rhythmically, not in time to the distant cha-cha but something else.

After a burst of green sparks I could see in a dark sphere above Grim an image of a road, a turn, dark woods, explosions of darkness and then Grim’s hand fell and with it the image faded, the sparks drifting through the kitchen to disappear when they touched something solid, like green soap bubbles.

“They’re breaching the rune wards,” my mother said, her voice icy cold and furious, eyes flashing even as she ran a hand over Grim’s wound. “There aren’t very many of them, but they will do irreparable damage if we delay. Come, Saturn. There’s nothing you can do for him.”

She turned her back on Grim, but I was still by the door and could see her face as she walked towards me, her focus past me, on whatever duty called except there was something bright in her eyes like unshed tears, tears for her brother who she’d already written off as dead.

Satan stayed where he was, one hand clasping Grim’s wrist against his chest even though Grim’s long fingers dangled limply, long past gripping anything, including Satan. Satan looked up at me, his dark blue eyes narrow and glinting while he took in me, Osmond beside me, Smoke behind looking awkward, then looked back at his brother before he put the pale hand down on the granite island, gently, like he was touching a child.

My stomach twisted, and I turned, ducking between Osmond and Smoke to the living room, cold, white, with the glass doors that looked out into the woods. I stood by the glass, seeing nothing until a hand fell on my shoulder again, but this time not Osmond’s hand, Satan’s, and the look in his eyes when I looked up at him as his hand slowly squeezed was dangerous and desperate.

“The Nether might be in the woods, waiting like he used to do. Grim has fifteen minutes, tops. He’s not dead yet, and if he has Nethermists there’s a chance he could come back, could beat the demon taint. You have to find him, talk him out of some of his darkmists and come back before Grim’s past the point of return. There’s still hope.” He said it like he was telling himself more than me. He turned, dashing back through the house to follow my mother into whatever fight I was too stunned, weak and helpless to join.

“Dari?” Osmond asked, standing in the doorway.

“Go with them; you can fight and I can’t. I can do something though. Help them,” I said, looking at Osmond and Smoke, thinking that I couldn’t worry about whether or not I was sending them to their deaths.

They nodded and turned like they’d been practicing together.

I unlocked the sliding door, pushed it open, for a moment letting the cold air swirl around me while I closed my eyes, took a deep breath then plunged into the yard and the woods beyond. Lewis didn’t know Grim, didn’t like Grim, but he liked me. Didn’t he? Would he give up some of his mists, his darkness for my uncle? Maybe if I went to the darkness, I wouldn’t come back, would leave Grim without another though as I lost myself to the blood lust and finished the bond.

The snow was icy on my bare stocking feet, but it didn’t matter. Fifteen minutes wouldn’t kill me, but they would kill Grim. The woods were too far away, but finally, I was in them, looking around wildly for a direction, for some hint at where the darkest shadow lurked, where my personal nightmare and soulmate waited.

I ran in the general direction of the river, thinking that I could hear sounds of fighting, but it was hard to tell as the wind picked up and my own labored breathing filled the air. My throat burned as I gasped, wishing I’d practiced running before that moment, when I ran for someone I loved, someone who always looked a step away from death, but now was closer, much closer.

Time ticked away solidly as I raced, wondering if he was even there or if Satan had made a mistake, if there was no hope for Grim, and instead of spending his last minutes with him, I was out here chasing shadows. One step, ice, snow, a branch as it whipped me in the forehead leaving a sting I barely noticed, another step, then another, on and on until darkness curled around me, like mist, sudden and directionless.

I spun around with a sob of relief.

“Lewis, you have to help me,” I gasped, my words barely intelligible as I reached towards him, searching the mists for a trace of flesh. “Please. He’s lying there, like Stephen only maybe I can do something this time, something good. He said you could help me and that your mists could bring him back. I don’t know what else to do; I’ll do anything if you’ll help me, just please…”

His hand caught mine, cool fingers weaving through mine as the mists pulled together, showing the outline of his bent head above me. “Slow down.”

“There’s no time!” I pulled against him, managing to drag him a few steps towards my house. “Fifteen minutes, Satan said. I don’t know how long I was running, but I need to get back before it’s too late.”

“Who has fifteen minutes?” he asked in a slow drawl that nearly killed me.

“Grim is lying on the kitchen island with demon taint. Please!”

For a moment he let silence fill the air before he sighed then pulled me into his arms, his slick shoulder beneath my cheek for a moment while the mists surrounded me until direction became meaningless, gravity pulling me towards him instead of to the ground beneath my feet. The scent of him, the pulse that I could feel in his neck, throbbing in time with my pounding heart nearly eclipsed the panic, the knowledge I had of Grim, of the death he lingered so close beside.