“So, two demon men? And we’re in Louisiana? All the Sons are here? Doesn’t that seem stupid to anyone else to leave the House completely unprotected?”
“It’s not defenseless. Houses are never defenseless. Having everyone together is actually a good idea, particularly here with Carve. No one knows demons like Carve.” He sounded slightly irritated by that even as he smiled.
“Yeah. He knows them almost as well as Mother. Were you ever going to tell me about how the two of you really met?” I reached down and pulled my knife from the sheath on my thigh beneath the voluminous skirt. I held up the beautiful weapon, noticing how the light shimmered on the sharp edge. “Did you really agree not to kill her for a knife?”
My father sighed. “She wasn’t ever evil. She never destroyed innocence. It’s very difficult to come back from that. However dark she became, however addicted to Nether, she never touched Matthew’s blood.”
“Good times,” Satan growled, reminding me that he was there. “So, you were the Old One who hunted down my sister.”
My dad shrugged one shoulder as though it hardly mattered. “I didn’t expect to love her.”
Satan snorted. “You’re soul-mates. You always knew that. Slide’s always been tied to Woods.”
“I never dreamed I’d have children,” my father said tersely. “Love yes, but…” He trailed off when he saw how uncomfortable I was. “It exceeded my every expectation. I would give Matthew back the knife if things had ended up differently with Helen.”
“You think she’s going to divorce you and marry Matthew?”
He smiled, but still seemed sad. “I don’t know. I think I’d be happy if she were happy. I don’t think she’s capable of being with someone else as long as I’m alive. Matthew will wait forever for her. I’ve rarely seen anything like him. He’s not pleasant, but he is constant.”
“He’s a pain, but you’re right. Constant. She’s got his heart nailed down. He’s also one of the best Hunter’s I’ve seen. Gives Axel a run for his money. Sorry,” Satan growled to me, as if just remembering that Lewis was dead. “May he rest in peace. You sure he’s dead?”
I nodded tightly as I clutched my knife in my fist. Pressure built up in my head. I needed Lewis so much. I felt certain that he was outside the French doors behind my dad, standing on the terrace.
“After the ball, do we go back to the city and take out the demon men? Do we have a plan because I really want a plan, the kind with an escape clause,” I said.
“You wish to return to the city and fight demon men to protect Slide?” my father asked, frowning.
I blinked at him. “Of course. I trained so that I could defend those I love. My uncles might be insane, but that’s what’s adorable about them.”
“Insanity runs in the family,” Satan said with a grin while he wiggled his bare eyebrows. “You’re in good company. I’m glad you’ve developed some skills.”
I stared down at the knife and my white hands around the handle. “It wouldn’t do for me to be useless in a fight. I’m here to protect the people that I love, although I am not a Daughter of the House. I didn’t argue with grandpa, but if he thinks that I’m going to any more balls, he’s out of his mind. I’m not Wild. I’m a Hybrid and I will never have another Intended. I won’t stab somewhere fleshy, either.”
My dad smiled and put an arm around me, his hand cool, his touch relaxing, soothing, making it possible for me to take a deep trembling breath.
“No one will ask that of you, I promise,” he said.
“That’s right. Because you’re going to take over Slide, if you haven’t already done so,” Satan growled.
My dad smiled at him. “No. Helen is.”
Something about the way he said that gave me chills, as though he were promising the future.
He opened his mouth to say something else but his words were cut off by an earsplitting crash of thunder. I jumped and stared at the window where rain slammed against the glass.
“Your mother…” he said at the same time we all moved, running towards the ballroom.
Chapter 8
Everyone stood strangely still as we burst through the doors and into the vaulted hall. A figure stood on the pedestal on the far end, a figure that I wanted so much to be Lewis, he almost had his face when he turned around to greet the hall, if glass-like skin and translucent eyes could look like Lewis.
“What a beautiful gathering,” he said, his voice harsh and dry, but still sounding like my Lewis. His words curled through the air with so much power my runes ached.
I took a step forward then stopped when my father put a hand on my arm.
“What do you want?” my mother asked, stepping through a trail of fallen bodies like a crimson swan through black water while outside a storm raged.
“You,” the man who looked crystalline said, leaning forward and jutting out his chin at her. “And you,” he said, spinning to point at a Wild on the other side of the room who shrank back as though bitten. “All of you. I’m a little disappointed no one’s started screaming. Doesn’t anyone want to try to destroy the Hollow One?”
“Excuse us,” Matthew said, cutting in front of Helen. “We’ve been waiting such a long time for the Hollow One to come and destroy us all, we’re in shock. Is this your first manifestation?”
The Hollow One looked at Matthew, leaning forward. “Hybrid. Your Wild blood will be considered in time, but my first must be Wood. He’s here. I can taste him.”
My father stepped in front of me, walking forward as energy wrapped around him, filling the space with shimmering air.
“Aric,” my father said as he neared the dais. “Are you the voice?”
The Hollow One’s head whipped around as he searched until he saw my father. “You’ve gotten old,” Aric who looked like Lewis said, smiling eerily.
“Lewis?” I whispered, but no one heard me, not when my father called all the attention to him.
“How many Lost Souls reside?” my father asked, his voice filling the room with his question. It was as though he interviewed Hollow Ones every day and yet I felt the pressure from him, subtle, the need to edge away from the Hollow One, the threat, to run instead of fight.
“Do you think I don’t see the Wilds on the perimeter slipping away like rats from a sinking ship? You would like to interview me, Alex? You would like to count the Lost Souls? Count the number that have died since you spilled my blood,” the Hollow one said, raspy but powerful.
“Lewis?” I asked a little louder, stepping forward before Satan put a massive hand on my shoulder.
“Dari, that’s not Lewis,” he growled in my ear, low, roughly pulling me back towards the doors.
“You want to kill me first? I’m honored,” my father said, bowing elegantly. When he stood he had a short sword in his hand, held low with a fierce smile on his face showing teeth that glistened like silver.
Eric clumsily leapt off the dais, landing in the now cleared area surrounding him. He didn’t move like Lewis. He had no grace and style. He stumbled around like he had no idea what his body was capable of and yet when they moved together a shock-wave expanded, blowing through the room and the people, knocking me back into Satan who’d braced himself, like he’d expected it. When I blinked them back into focus, my father had pulled back, watching the Hollow One intently, his neck streaked in blood.
My father lifted his chin as he stared at the man who looked like a glass sculpture of Lewis. “So it begins,” he said in a voice that filled the room and sent a panic wave through me. This was the Hollow One. Danger. Run. Escape if you could.
The ballroom erupted into confusion as part of the Wilds attacked the man who looked like a see-through Lewis and the rest ran, except the bodies that didn’t do anything besides lay there on the ground.
“Come on darlin’,” Satan growled, pulling me away from my dad and Lewis who was not Lewis.
I couldn’t stop looking at them. What if my dad hurt him?
My dad moved like qu
icksilver, drawing lines across the Hollow One that didn’t bleed. Didn’t he have any blood? How could we defeat the Hollow One if he was already dead? The Hollow One bent to take a weapon from a fallen Wild and then they began to duel in earnest. Any other Wild who attacked, fell when they got in arm’s length of the Hollow One.
The Hollow One smiled as his body moved faster, tighter, like it was remembering how to do it. The duel went on for what felt like years until my dad brought the weapon around in an arc that should have cut through his neck. A dull clash, like the sound of metal on metal, while the Hollow One lunged forward and grabbed my father by the throat. They stared at each other, battling wordlessly, the weapons of their thoughts and intentions filling the room with confusion and panic, my father’s sword stuck in the Hollow One’s neck. The floor began to rise and fall, sending my dad and the Hollow One to the ground, out of sight behind a scuffling swarm of Wilds.
Satan dragged me away while I tried to stay in control. I couldn’t lose it, not here. Lewis was dead. I couldn’t forget that I’d burned him. I needed to help my dad, but what could I do against the Hollow One? What could anyone do? Run. I knew that. My father had leaned everyone. You couldn’t fight the Hollow One. Everyone who died trying to destroy him would rise as his weapons. The leaning felt so strong, like his voice in my head, calm but firm, that I must go, and then with a gust of wind, I lost him.
I stopped, spinning around to find him while Satan growled at me. Bodies of fallen Wilds began to rise, stumbling before lurching towards the nearest Wild. One Wild with pale blue eyes caught my gaze, seeming to search inside my soul before he turned towards the pile of bodies in the middle, pulling away limp Wilds, throwing my dad’s body to the side until Lewis stood on shaky legs, pulling my father’s dagger out of his heart in disgust to throw it across the floor.
My dad didn’t move. He just lay there like a beautiful elven doll, his silver hair spread around his face and his eyes closed while his mouth had a serene smile on his lips.
“Dad!” I screamed as Satan grabbed me. I could barely hear myself through so much noise while something else, a deadness or absence of sound grew in my ears, filling my head with an empty silence that deafened the world, sucked out the color and light, until my sight was as patchy as my hearing.
I felt Satan’s arms around me, pulling me while I struggled to get to Lewis and my father, to stop him, to understand why he would hurt my father.
From my dad’s body I saw red. I saw his sweet lifeblood swell around him, filling the air with a scent more rich, poignant and nauseating than any other scent.
“No!”
I heard other screams, distant, felt Grim grab me by the shoulders, dragging me out of the room with Satan, Grim’s slender fingers brushing my pulse, slowing it down, making me weak and docile.
“It’s not your Lewis,” Grim said, his voice full of the sorrow in my heart. “We have to go before it’s too late.”
“We can’t leave Slide,” Satan growled, holding back suddenly.
“Slide?” I looked up at my bald uncle’s face and saw the paleness, the sheen of sweat across his brow.
Fear. My uncle had never been so scared.
“He’s holding the Hollow One back while we escape,” Grim said calmly, keeping us moving. “It’s House orders,” he said sharply to Satan who struggled almost as much as I did to leave my father, Lewis, Matthew’s House.
“House orders. Who’s next in line?” he asked.
“We need to go now,” my mother said, running up beside us, her hair flowing around her as she hit the doors to the terrace, holding them open for us. “Move.”
Matthew already had the helicopter started, the whirring blades and the sound nowhere as loud as the wind and the lightning that crackled around us.
“I can’t go in that,” I whispered.
My mother took my face in her hands, looking deeply in my eyes. “I will stay with you. But if we stay, we will die.”
I pulled away and squeezed my eyes tightly closed as I nodded and ran towards the helicopter, pulling Satan along with me. I couldn’t be responsible for her death.
I jumped into the helicopter and took a seat, forcing my hands to work the seatbelt without hesitation as the helicopter rose in the air.
Wilds came after us from the house, but they didn’t move like Wilds. Satan took out his gun and began calmly shooting them, but they didn’t stay dead very long, and they shot back.
“Helen,” Matthew said, his voice terse.
My mother raised her fingers and lightning crackled, an explosion that knocked back the Wilds who were nearing us while tornadoes twisted from the sky, striking the roof of Matthew’s house.
“He let us go,” she said as we gained altitude, her calm words belied by her trembling fingers. “He only came here for Alex. He didn’t possess any bodies until he had his death. He can’t possess Alex.”
“Why not? Why can’t he possess dad? What happened? Why did all those bodies just lie there until they started killing everybody? Why did the Hollow One want to kill dad so much?”
“The voice, Aric must have had a personal feud with your father,” Grim said, his voice sounding mechanical. “The Voice is the Lost Soul in control of the body of the Hollow One. It changes periodically. Aric died from his need to destroy your father. Let that be a lesson to you. Vengeance rarely pays.”
“But the Hollow One isn’t dead.”
“It has a new Voice, one that was eager to fill the Wilds that Aric had ripped the souls out of. Now we have a new Voice, one that finds itself in the middle of a bloodbath and jumps right in.”
“She’s right,” Satan growled. “He let us go.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Hollow blood,” Grim said with a frown. “We’re amusing to him. I saw his contempt. He will decide what to do with us later. Right now, his focus is on possessing as many Wilds as possible in as short a time as possible. You must admire his focus.”
“I’m sorry,” I muttered feeling the weight of how idiotic I’d been, thinking the Hollow One was Lewis, stumbling around instead of doing anything intelligent. I should have fought with my father, or helped someone else escape, or do something besides standing in the middle of the ballroom bleating for Lewis like a stupid sheep that had lost her shepherd. I couldn’t lose it again.
“He really looked like Lewis,” I said and bit back a sob. My dad was dead. Lewis was dead. We were flying in a helicopter through stormy skies when the last time I’d been in the air I’d come down in flames.
Satan grabbed my shoulder, painfully, but gentle for him. “Same height, different soul,” Satan said.
I looked up at him where he stood, gripping a bar while he chewed on a cigar.
“You think that he looked like Lewis?”
“He had different eyes,” Grim said mildly. “He fought in a different style.”
“We’ll fly to the airport and take a jet to Slide,” Matthew said tersely. “Helen, how are you holding up without Alex?”
I looked at my mother, at her wild eyes, and her hair the way it danced around her unblinking face.
“Mother?” I asked, putting my hand on hers.
She blinked as though she just noticed me.
“Slide is dead,” she said in a strange voice then winced as though she’d been stabbed in the stomach. She tried to sit up straight, but she had trouble breathing. She sobbed raggedly with every breath as she wrapped her arms around her body, looking suddenly frail and delicate in her lovely gown.
“Saturn?” she whispered as she reached out to him.
He shook his head and turned away. My mother recoiled as though he’d slapped her.
“Grim?” She half extended a hand to him as if afraid he’d slap it away.
He smiled at her but shook his head, not taking her hand.
“Stanley and Seth are the only ones who would take it,” he said sadly. “It falls to you.”
“But you have the most blood,” she arg
ued, her desperate plea making my heart ache for her although I didn’t understand what she needed.
“Mom?” I asked, taking the hand she offered Grim.
She pulled away with a hiss and I saw her eyes darken for a moment as she stared at me before she put her hands in her lap and took deep even breaths until she could smile.
“I’m sorry, Dariana,” she said in a breathless voice. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. Slide did. Devlin did. I see that now. I’ll try to be kind.”
Matthew laughed, but the sound held no humor in it. No one else smiled while my mother bent her head to her chest and wept.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to Satan.
He sighed. “Slide passed the House to your mother. She didn’t expect that.”
“You’re Son of the House. The House should fall to you. She wants nothing to do with the House of Slide. She hates them.”
He shook his head. “It’s done.”
“Why? She’s miserable. Someone else needs to step up.”
“Your mother is our best chance at survival,” Grim said quietly, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Slide passed on the title to your mother who was there, at a Wild function.”
“It’s not fair. She never wanted the House. She’s just trying to help me survive.”
“No offense, but there’s more at stake than your life. Everyone has to work together if we’re going to see this through.” Satan swore under his breath. “We have a lot of work to do, most of it diplomatic. Your mother has a reputation in spite of her retirement from the games. If anyone can corral Heads of Houses into uncomfortable alliances, it’s her.”
“She’ll roast us all alive,” Matthew said, his voice sing-song and slightly more insane than usual.
Chapter 9
After the short helicopter ride, we all boarded a lush jet with engines already revved, manned by an unseen pilot. After we were inside, my mother gave me a bundle that I saw was my leather and feather outfit. I took it into the small bathroom to change out of the strangely untouched ball gown. I stared at the reflection in the mirror, at my face, still made up to accent my blue eyes with silver streaks. My dark pixie cut had silver streaks where it grew in around the silver runes. I looked hideous, a mix and match of different heritages that didn’t fit together at all. The scar down my face didn’t help. Didn’t hurt that much, either. I turned away from the mirror, remembering my father in my silver streaks.
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