I flinched as a hailstone struck me on the neck through my hood. I could hear the steady slopping sound as they shoveled mud onto the coffin. The seven of them made quick work of the job until there was a mound. The other guests would be disappointed when they emerged from their cars and found the service finished. Helen stepped forward, and I kept my eyes trained waiting for the moment I would finally get a clear view of the central figure. It was no use; she moved with Helen. I clenched my fists as wave after wave of frustration ripped through me.
I felt the gathering of electricity the moment before it came together in one bright flash and exploded into the earth. Helen kept her feet but the girl fell to her knees. For a moment I saw an outline of her but then the uncles and Helen blocked me as they helped her to her feet. Alex Sanders, the Nether, walked with her towards his car. At the last second the girl held back and turned to take one last look at the grave. I stopped breathing when I saw her face.
Seeing her was so unbalancing that I reached out to that other sense, the one I avoided using if I possibly could. The world around me disappeared into a blurry melding of inanimate and animate. Everything was reduced to its basic spiritual structure. The brothers and Helen were darkly burning sparks with red lines wrapped around their bodies. Where the girl had been was nothing. I stared blindly in front of me, hardly noting the flashing silver fire of Alex before he ducked into the car. I turned to Old Peter and stared at him dumbly as the sparkling of his soul faded and I could see him with my eyes.
“Huh.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I stared into the distance instead. When I looked at the world through that sense, I could see what people really were. I could see a person’s energy. Some people can see auras, but I could see souls. Every living person has a soul, well, everyone except for this one girl apparently.
Old Peter turned and started walking back home. “Well?”
I started after him and felt a building fury that would no doubt leave me with a headache. “Well, what? Not that it wasn’t an enjoyable afternoon, but I have no idea what I was supposed to learn from that sermon. I feel like I’m dealing with Wilds again. I’ve successfully avoided Wilds for years, and now I have to go right back to the beginning. Do you know how frustrating that is? I don’t even know who she is. I don’t know why I care. Every time I run into you, things get complicated.” I realized that I was pointing a finger at him, and I shoved my hands in my pockets and focused on my steps across the unstable graveyard. Water streamed beneath my feet towards the road. At least the hail had quit.
Old Peter shuffled along with me and put his hand on my arm when he slipped in the mud. “You didn’t see it. No, you’re not losing your mind. You didn’t see it because it wasn’t there. So the question now would be where is it?”
No one liked to talk about this kind of thing. It was brave of Old Peter to bring it up, and I should appreciate his efforts at clarity. I should not want to pound him into… I slumped slightly and tried to submit but the fury wasn’t hot enough. It was burning steady just below submission. Irritating. “It was not just a trick of the light? She really doesn’t have a soul? What happened? Who is she?”
Old Peter shook his head sadly. “Dariana Sanders was the little sister of Devlin Sanders, daughter to Helen and Alex Sanders, current Daughter of the House of Slide.”
I looked at him waiting for more, then impatiently prodded him. “And she’s missing her soul? Did anyone check the lost and found?” I winced when the words came out of my mouth while he scowled at me. I had a tendency to make bad jokes under stress. “Sorry. Did she lose it when her brother died?”
He shook his head. “She’s been soulless for a decade or so.”
I stared at him then looked forward through the driving rain. There wasn’t anything to say to a statement that impossible. I knew souls. For as long as I could remember, I’d been able to see people, know what they really were. Good people, bad people—the one thing they all had in common was that they had a soul. Some people’s souls were barely alive. Some people fed their souls to demons, but there was always something. People couldn’t live without their souls, at least not long. I recalled the image of her face, burned indelibly in my mind. I pushed past the impression of shocking beauty and recalled the sunken eyes, the pallor of her skin, and the way she’d trembled as she moved. It was possible to survive a few days without a soul, a few weeks if someone knew what he was doing, but anything longer than that was impossible.
“Huh.” We walked along in silence while I considered my options. Old Peter was usually right about everything, but he couldn’t be right about this. There was absolutely nothing right about a girl, who looked to be about seventeen or eighteen, to have had no soul for a decade. I realized that I was rubbing the scar across my chest and forced my hand back to my pockets. I glanced at Old Peter and his lowered head covered in sodden white hair, his scalp visible beneath the thin strands. He moved slowly, more slowly than I’d ever seen. For a moment I felt concerned that he might catch a chill in the rain before I reminded myself what he was capable of.
“Aren’t you going to ask how she lost her soul?” Old Peter finally said.
“How?” It surprised me that he knew, and if he knew that he’d tell me.
“Her brother took it.” He looked at me and gave me a gummy smile. “Yep. Her brother took it and kept her alive. I don’t think she’s had any human contact besides him since then. Not that she’d care,” he finished glumly.
I slowed and let him get ahead of me while I struggled to understand why I was anything other than vaguely interested. I burned up with a fury that made it difficult to be entirely in control of myself, but I wasn’t quite hot enough that submitting would do any good. I had an irrational urge to turn around and do something with the grave; what exactly, I had no idea, but I was sure I could come up with something. I wasn’t used to digging up graves and messing around with corpses, but I had a few friends… I took a deep breath and let the fury fill me and dissipate. It would do no good to bring someone back from the dead just so I could kill him again.
“Do you want dinner before you head back to the city?”
“Yeah. I’d like that.” My head was pounding, and although I could handle it, Old Peter made a fine concoction that helped Hotbloods and the aftereffects of the furies we had to deal with. “I may hang around for a few days. I’m a little bit curious.” That was an understatement. “It’s not something I’ve ever seen before,” I said, trying to justify myself as Old Peter gave me a wry look that seemed to understand my motives better than I did. “She has no soul?”
Old Peter shook his head then shrugged. “We’ll slaughter something. What are you in the mood for?”
That meant I would do the killing. I would also be standing in the yard packaging meat three hours later when Old Peter leaned out of the screen door to see if I was making a mess of it. It wasn’t like me to be so slow, but I was in a careful mood. The fury was lurking right behind my eyes, and I still felt like a visit to the gravesite might be a good idea. It wasn’t a good idea. It was one of the worst ideas I’d ever had, and I’d had some bad ones. The girl’s uncles would be hanging around for at least twenty-four hours. They had sealed the grave with lightning. That wasn’t an ordinary precaution most people took to keep a dead body in its grave. Of course, they were Wilds with traditions that were actually relevant. It was in everyone’s best interest that a body with those capacities stayed where it was.
I’d heard of Hybrids like Devlin and had heard something about his abilities, but I’d never imagined he had the power to take a soul. After I’d seen his father firsthand, I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was. How could a thing like a soulless daughter of the House of Slide be acceptable to anyone? Sure Helen might be disinherited, but her blood was still precious to the House, and the son had been working with the uncles. He’d made a splash in the year he’d been one of Slide’s boys. He’d moved up the ranks until even the brother with the nickname
of Satan wasn’t as feared as Devlin. I’d heard about his abilities to manipulate situations and always be in the right place at the right time and had wondered how any Wild could be that powerful, that good at what he did; with a Nether father it made sense. Not only could Nether mess with souls; they also enhanced whatever you were. Wilds were wilder, Cools cooler, and Hotbloods hotter.
Nothing that I’d heard about Devlin had prepared me for the fact that he’d siphoned his sister’s soul. How had it happened, and what was the point? A Nether’s first duty was to protect the innocent. Children, even Wild children, were innocent. What kind of depraved creature could do that to his own flesh and blood? It didn’t make any sense. How could the House of Slide accept a son who had done such a thing? I knew Wilds. Wilds were all about family ties, old blood, and loyalty to the Head of the House. A son of the House who stole a sister’s soul would never be welcomed into the House; he’d be institutionalized.
For the next few days, I woke up determined that it would be the day I saw the last of the town Sanders, but every evening I was still there, waiting. When I saw Old Peter he’d say, “Well?” In that gruff voice of his, and I’d find a reason to get out of the room without admitting that I’d spent all night camped outside the Sanders residence. Of course, he knew, and I could see the intense amusement he got out of the situation. I was not amused. I had better things to do than watch her die. She was dying. Every glimpse of her verified that fact. No one seemed to be doing anything, but what could you do with someone who had no soul? The Nether blood was keeping her alive, but not even that would keep her for much longer.
I sighed as I pushed a branch away so I could get a clearer view into the house. I sat perched forty feet off the ground, spring growth exploding around me, thoroughly camouflaging me but making spying on the Sanders’ mansion difficult. It wasn’t really a mansion, not in Wild terms, but it stuck out from the modest housing of the rest of Sanders. The lights were coming on one by one, and I could see through the glass doors as the uncles gathered in the white modern living room.
Helen stared out the window oblivious of her brothers. It didn’t seem possible that all those men could fit into one room, however large it was, but eventually they took seats leaving the couch empty. Satan, the biggest brother, came in wearing his slouchy hat but not the trench coat. He prodded the slight figure of Dariana Sanders ahead of him dressed in gray sweats and a black hoodie. Her eyes looked enormous in her lifeless face. Even at that distance I wondered how she had lasted so long.
She sat curled around a cup of tea, looking like it was the only warmth she’d ever known. Eventually it cooled, and the cup fell limply from her fingers as she stared at nothing.
Hours passed, and a thick fog clouded my view. I minded more than I should have. Nothing was happening besides the brothers talking and gesturing while Satan sat and watched Dariana. The mother never looked away from the window. Suddenly Dariana jerked twice and stumbled to her feet. She said something and walked from the room. The discussion went on without her.I closed my eyes and felt sick.
I slipped out of the tree and started walking in the direction of Old Peter’s, determined to leave the town for good. I hesitated when I heard raised voices for a moment before the sound cut off. Someone had opened a door or window of the Sanders’ residence.
I was grateful for the fog as I slipped out the backyard and through the gate that led to the front. I couldn’t see anything but heard the sound of something dragging in the road. I nearly ran into her when she stopped to stare at the bare feet that poked out of the bottom of the worn trench coat. After a slight shrug she kept going not noticing me where I stood two short steps away from her. I stopped breathing until she was at a safe distance. For days she’d been in the house surrounded by the Slide Brothers. The idea that if I wanted I could reach forward and lift a strand of hair off her shoulder made me tremble. She was so close. She was not close enough.
I waited until she was far enough I could only hear the coat dragging on the pavement before I continued after her.
She followed the road through the town, seeming oblivious to everything around her until she stopped outside of town near the bridge. She stood still then took a step off the road and into the woods. I hurried to catch up with her. She was nearly invisible in the uncle’s coat, and the fog didn’t help. She walked forward without looking to the left or right. I began to get nervous. This girl was going to be missed at some point, and I would have more uncles than I wanted to deal with coming down on me. While nothing like the darkness that inhabited the other side of the river, the woods were probably hiding things that wouldn’t do Dariana any good. Some would argue that you couldn’t do anything to her that wouldn’t be a mercy. Some would say that she needed to be put out of her misery. It bothered me that I would have been that someone a week before.
As I followed her, I knew where her direct route would take her. There was a ledge that hung over the river where the drop was fast and far to the cold waters below. It was a nice grassy ledge where some people liked to picnic. It was also where a few notables had taken that final leap. However lifeless she was, I couldn’t stand the idea of her committing suicide. I winced at the thought that you could call death after soullessness a suicide.
I smelled the scavengers before they came into view—at least the view of their heads lit by the torches they carried. They looked like they were floating along in the fog, but scavengers couldn’t float, not even when their heads were unattached. Scavengers were harmless against anyone who would fight back, they didn’t like losing their loosely attached body parts. Dariana wouldn’t fight, and they would no doubt want bits of her to add to them. I started running glad that the coat camouflaged her. If she could stay hidden for a few minutes…
When the scavengers were disassembled, I turned back to Dari. I searched the woods feeling the panic grow inside of me. Scavengers should not be able to get on this side of the river. They should be bound in the wild woods where all the other nightmares slept. Perhaps the scavengers were a diversion for something worse. I inhaled deeply smelling the wet woods but nothing human. I began to move faster towards the clearing hoping that she hadn’t changed direction. When I reached the end of the woods before the ledge, I let out a breath I hadn’t noticed I’d been holding. She sat still, perched on the ledge to look up at the moon; it had broken through the mist enough to light her pale face. I slowed down. Even if she did fall, I would manage to pull her out of the river in time.
I heard an ear-shattering scream from the other side of the river. A certifiable nightmare wanted some company. I should get Dariana back home. How was I going to get her attention without startling her? I could have grabbed her and carried her home. She couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds, but she might get the wrong impression if I threw her over my shoulder and hauled her off.
I stared at her, watching through the fog, and wondered if I’d been mistaken the first time. Did she really have no soul? I concentrated, and through the fog could make out the life that flickered from the plants and across the river the red brand of the eager nightmare. Everything else, all the life in the world disappeared when I saw her soul hovering around her. She had a soul, or at least she’d had it at one time, but it was outside of her now, a quivering iridescence of perfect purity and breathtaking beauty. I stepped forward without thinking and snapped a stick. I blinked her back into focus and saw her staring in my direction as if she could see me in the dark. I took a few steps forward until she could see my outline.
“What are you doing here?” I asked and realized how gruff I sounded. She opened her mouth but nothing came out. “It’s probably not the best idea for you to wander around in the woods at night.” She looked down and hunched deeper into the trench coat. “You look cold. Maybe I can make a fire for you.” A fire was a terrible idea but I couldn’t stand to watch her shiver. A fire would draw her uncles. It would draw all sorts of unwanted attention but in the meantime it would get her warm. It see
med like the least I could do. She nodded, and I started moving. In a few minutes I was crouched over some pine needles blowing on a spark when I looked up, and her hair brushed my cheek she was so close. Why hadn’t I heard her? I looked down and realized I’d dropped my lighter. What was wrong with me? I couldn’t help but look up for a glimpse of the soul hovering above her. I forced myself to focus on the fire and finally got it lit. As I fed twigs to the flames, I noticed how heavy the silence felt between us.
“Do you come up here often?” I wasn’t sure if she could even answer questions.
“With my brother Devlin.” Her voice surprised me. It was a little like hearing a corpse talk, only corpses probably didn’t have such nice voices. It was husky but sweet. When I looked up at her she looked confused like her voice had surprised her as well.
“Good. It’s good to have family. At least that’s what they say. So do you go to high school here? It’s a beautiful building. It’s always nice to see old architecture so well preserved.” I paused for a moment then kept talking, mostly to distract myself from her soul. “I love woods. I love to walk around in the darkness never knowing what kind of dangerous thing I’m going to run into. I like fast cars too. Do you… never mind. I saw you at the funeral; that was quite a storm.” Even as I said those last words I realized what I should have already noticed. The wind had picked up, and the fog was thinning out. I heard lightning from the direction of Dariana’s house. Her mother had found out that she was gone. We probably had some time; she would not be easy to track as I knew from experience. Of course, I had a bright fire that would draw them right to me.
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