I felt assaulted by their Wild blood but struggled almost successfully to smother out the heat in my eyes. Old Peter had warned me about the father, but he hadn’t said that every one of the legendary House of Slide brothers would be in attendance. It was the kind of thing he would have known.
The black-haired woman in the center shared their blood—I could smell it. She must be Helen, former daughter to the House of Slide who had given up her birthright for love. I held my breath as I studied the Wild woman. She looked as calculating and icy as any Wild I’d known. The whole thing made my head ache. Why was Slide making such a big show for someone who had been disowned? The man to her side opened an umbrella and covered her and the slumped figure between them. I shifted trying to make out who that was, but it was impossible.
The wind began to pick up, and I could smell the sorrow in waves and gusts as the grieving people looked yearningly towards the coffin. I’d known more than enough Wilds in my time, but I’d never been to a packed funeral where everyone felt real regret at the loss.
“Who’s in the box?” I whispered.
“Devlin, Son of Helen and Alex Sanders.”
Devlin, I had heard of. I studied the gray umbrella over the central group and felt a wave of heat as I looked at the umbrella the man held. “It’s not even raining yet. What does he think the umbrella is going to protect them from?” It wasn’t the umbrella that irritated me, how could it be, and yet, I wanted to personally destroy the umbrella and see those people, the ones who’d created someone like Devlin, a foreteller, someone who could see the future, who could have told Old Peter when I’d be coming by. Being known, being seen by a Wild, even a dead one made me really, really want to hurt someone.
Old Peter glanced over at me, and I tried to shake it off. I had more important things to worry about than a group of people under an umbrella.
“Who’s the other one?” I asked, aware of how irritated I sounded. The third figure, the one that Old Peter hadn’t even mentioned, worried me. He had a nasty habit of overlooking the things I’d find most helpful and dangerous.
“Daughter,” he said, short and to the point without actually giving me any information. If she was anything like Devlin, like her mother and the rest of the House, she was beautiful, gifted, dangerous—the kind of girl I’d spent the better part of my life actively avoiding. It was fine though, hardly something to worry about, only Devlin’s family, I thought. I breathed deeply and tried to focus on her scent, the scent I’d been unable to pick up before. It would give me something to distract me from the Wilds who made it so difficult to stay cool. It was something to do, to trace a scent while the wind blew hundreds of different smells at me. I had the strong odor of the woman Helen to guide me. I caught a flash of something enticing from the mystery girl just before the subtle scent of the man holding the umbrella struck me like a physical blow.
I exhaled and closed my eyes as the first spattering drops fell from the sky. I let my senses become blind in the smell of ozone. When I thought I had myself under control, I opened my eyes and studied the threesome closest to the casket. The man’s silver hair trailed down the back of his black suit, as much as I could see for the umbrella. His scent was difficult to pick up like all Cool ones, but he was much more than simply Cool; he had an especially high dose of Nether blood—the blood that created all of us and our gifts.
As a rule I stayed away from Cools, because I didn’t like the way that they could manipulate people. While most of them were willing to relax and embrace nature they weren’t anything like helpless. A recent infusion of Netherblood like this Cool had would make his traits stronger, his powers greater, and bring out his aggressive side. If the Cool was who I thought he was, you couldn’t let him get inside your head or he would never get out, controlling what you thought, felt, and did. Some people thought Wilds knew how to play games and scheme, but they were nothing compared to motivated Cools. Happily, most Cools were content to let things go. This one was not.
Old Peter hadn’t mentioned why he was so dangerous; if he had, there was no way I would have come. He was tall and slender like all Nether. I couldn’t be certain at this distance, but I had a strong suspicion that his face was on the deck of cards in Old Peter’s pocket. Cools lived a very long time even without the Nether blood. Did the woman beside him know what he was? She watched nothing and everything like a Wild, but she always kept her body between the slight figure beside her and everyone else. I realized that every individual was centered, not on the coffin as I’d first thought but on that threesome and the single person in the center. The daughter.
The crowd began shifting as the wind picked up speed, flapping dresses against legs. The sound of rain beating its way across the hills triggered a running exodus towards the cars. Not a lot of people had brought umbrellas and this wasn’t going to be your run-of-the-mill May shower. Old Peter didn’t flinch as we were pelted with rain that stung my cheeks. It felt good. I would have found it refreshing if I weren’t still preoccupied with the brothers of the House of Slide, a Nether Cool, and her, the unseen daughter. When the hail began, I shifted to block Old Peter from most of it, wishing I could run away or fight something. Another flash of lightning illuminated the seven Wild brothers of the House of Slide as they gathered near the grave. It grated that it was nearly impossible to see them in their nondescript trench coats even with my eyes. The largest of the brothers motioned, and two others lowered the casket.
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 on her, waiting for the moment I would finally get a clear view of the girl. It was no use; she moved with Helen. I clenched my fists as waves of fury rose inside of me.
I felt electricity gather the moment before the bright flash that 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 Cool, 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 as everything was reduced to its basic spiritual structure. The brothers and Helen were darkly burning sparks with red lines twining where their bodies would have been. 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 people's souls. It wasn’t something I was proud of however useful it could be. 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 how long, 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, but at least the hail had quit.<
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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, the most dangerous levels of heat. Irritating. “It was not just a trick of the light? She really doesn’t have a soul?”
Old Peter shook his head sadly. “Dariana Sanders was the younger sister of Devlin Sanders who you’ve heard of, daughter to Helen and Alex Sanders, and 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. 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—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 things, 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.
“What happened?” 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 with a clinical detachment that would be thinking how you would be able to keep someone alive without a soul, instead of what I wanted to do with the person who had. I burned with a fury that made clear thinking next to impossible, but I tried. 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?” Old Peter asked sounding almost sympathetic.
“Yeah. I’d like that.” My head was pounding, and although I could handle it, Old Peter made something that helped Hotbloods and the aftereffects of the furies we dealt with. “I may hang around for a few days. I’m a little bit curious.” That was an understatement. I also hadn’t gotten the information I’d come for, but now it seemed less important. “It’s not something I’ve ever seen before.” I tried 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?”
Old Peter liked his dinner to go from kicking to the table in an hour. Keeping fresh meat meant that it bleated at you when you walked up with a knife. Three hours after we got back to the house I was still in the yard packaging meat when Old Peter leaned out of the screen door to see if I’d lost the fight with the goat. It wasn’t like me to be so slow, but I was in a careful mood. The fury lurked right behind my eyes, and I couldn’t get the idea of visiting the gravesite out of my head. 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 been aware of his reputation, one of the best foretellers of his time, but I’d never imagined he had any ability with souls. Who would think a Wild son would mess around with souls, particularly his sister’s, someone he should be sworn to protect? After I’d seen his father firsthand, I shouldn’t have been shocked about Devlin’s abilities since not only did his Wild blood give him foretelling, but his father, Cool and extra Nether, would have given him the ability to bend people to his will. I still couldn’t understand about the soul. Cools were in the realm of the soul, but that meant they did soul flight, not that they stole souls from someone else. Hollows were the ones who borrowed souls, or had before they’d been wiped out.
It didn’t make sense. Puzzle it over as I might, it seemed impossible that a soulless daughter of the House of Slide would be acceptable. 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 no one in the House was 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. Now I knew. Of course, having his abilities hadn’t kept him from getting killed.
For the next few days, I woke up in the small spare bedroom of Old Peter’s house determined that it would be the last day I saw 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.
Days of lurking went on until one evening 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 to 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, dressed in gray sweats and a black hoodie, ahead of him. 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, and I closed my eyes and felt sick.
It was wrong.
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.
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