“Anyone else care to stay and manage the research department of this little Hunting party?” Matthew asked, scowling at his group of Hunters.
I felt an unexpected welling of anger towards him, that he could come here and tell me what to do, that he’d be filling in my father’s shoes, marrying my mother, running around at her beck and call, sleeping in her bed.
“Never happened,” he said, suddenly, meeting my eyes.
I stared back at him, caught off guard.
“You’re expressing yourself,” he said with a scowl. “The wedding night was less physical than stationery.”
“It’s none of my business,” I said through clenched teeth.
“How you feel is your business,” he responded easily. “You seem in a more precarious state than when I last saw you. Have you been leaning yourself?”
I took a slow breath before I gave him a forced smile. “I took up knitting. It’s very soothing. Almost as soothing as cutting demons open with my knife.”
“You’ve been using the knife on demons?” He scowled at me like only an idiot would use an actual knife on demon men.
“Only in emergencies,” I said feeling defensive.
“She’s been perfectly behaved,” Osmond said, entering the room, owning the space with quiet assurance.
Matthew nodded at him almost respectfully. “She does inspire loyalty, doesn’t she? None of us behave perfectly. It would be a dull world indeed if we were all like you.”
“We could use a duller world,” a short man said who had been silent up to that point. “I’ll stay,” he added, sniffing and crossing his arms over his barrel chest.
“Antony, excellent. Antony is the worlds most informed source on containing demon taint. He’s saved more lives than I can count, stopping the spread, sometimes pushing it back, saving a limb or two in the process,” Matthew said, sounding derisive in spite of the glowing praise.
“You’re welcome here,” Osmond said formally to the man who bowed back at him.
“Sue and I are medics,” the cigarette man said gesturing to the woman with the split in her mouth.
“I’m the scientist,” another man said, dark, shifty looking. “I worked with your mother,” he added sealing my less than luminous judgment of him.
“Does anyone else wish to stay, or should I ask if anyone wants to return with me?” Matthew asked, his scowl less foreboding than it could have been. “How about you?” he asked me, his muddy eyes searching my soul.
I swallowed and lifted my chin, but before I could say anything, Osmond broke in.
“Dariana is a necessary part of our camp,” he said with a firm gaze that made everything seem saner.
“She’s a pretty thing, shows us what we can all be like after we’ve tasted the touch of the mistress,” Marcus crooned, his dark eyes burning in his pale face.
“I don’t know,” Sue said absently. “He has a certain lyricism that tainted don’t usually have. Maybe it hasn’t progressed as far as it seems.”
“Have you seen this before, people tainted with Nether blood?”
Sue raised an eyebrow as she studied me. “Classified,” she finally said. Her answer terrified me and made me feel relieved at the same time. Maybe if we’d hovered on the brink of the end of the world before, we could come back from it again.
“A word, Daughter,” Matthew said, leaving the building, expecting me to follow.
I did, wanting to get whatever he had to say over with.
“Be careful with the Cool one,” he said, sounding disdainful of all Cools, although that was mostly what he was. “What’s between you and your friend?”
I shrugged. “There’s nothing.”
“Osmond, your friend who seems to know more about the future than any of the rest of us, who your brother must have confided in,” he said, his casual stance hiding the intensity in his eyes.
I gritted my teeth. “Are you warning me away from him or not?”
“Not,” he said immediately. “He would be better for you than whatever else you’re using to stay fixed on this world, to remember that he’s dead.”
“To go insane would be preferable to using someone that way. I have this thing called ethics that keeps me from such a convenient choice.”
“Ethics are all very well, but we’re talking about survival here. Maybe what you really mean is that he doesn’t see you the way that you see him.”
“How do I see him?” I snapped.
“Like a hero,” he said, his answer sad. “A distant hero to be worshipped from afar.”
“I guess I should ask you how he sees me, since you seem to know everything.”
He smiled at me, his smile half a sneer. “He sees you, and wishes he didn’t. But you knew that.”
“Is there a point to this conversation? If not, I need to go prepare for tonight.”
“Your mother sends her love.”
“I’d rather she send a cure for taint.”
“There’s no such thing,” he sneered.
“That’s because she hasn’t created it yet.”
“You have so much confidence in your mother,” he said softly. “Maybe her focus could be directed that way. She’s trying very hard to create an alliance between White and Red Houses against the demon mistress.”
“Mistresses,” I corrected, licking my lips.
He raised his eyebrow. “What an interesting development.”
“Isn’t it? Three at last count.”
He stared at me, his scowl darkening. “I’m glad I brought my friends,” he said finally. “Don’t let them Hunt. I leave them in your custody,” he said, turning towards the woods where he’d left his helicopter.
I stood there watching him go, hope warring with exhausted fear.
Chapter 17
All night we waited, tensed and anxious, all of us exhausted and on edge, but nothing came but the moon, a little less full than the night before, fat and heavy. Some people dozed in the shadows while they waited for the attack that never came. I sat crossed legged, feeling the cool breeze chill the right side of my body, but where I sat, back against a strong tree, I felt better when the sun rose, spilling warmth across the camp and the drawn, haggard faces of the Hunters.
Matthew’s friends had worked through the night, arranging tents, treating everyone who had gotten injured during the hard battle. They knew what they were doing and gave the camp a sense of stability it hadn’t had before.
I went to the hut where Orrin and Marcus had been and found a well-runed perimeter that I couldn’t cross until the man with the cigarette came out and nodded me through, somehow triggering a portion of the rune down so that I could cross over.
“Morning,” he said pleasantly.
“How are they today?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“The girl is trying to talk to Orrin,” he answered. “The Cool/Wild. She thinks she might be able to lean him. I doubt it, otherwise Carve would have done it already.”
“You know Matthew pretty well,” I said, frowning.
“As well as most people know him,” he said and then smiled around his unlit cigarette. “I’m Stand,” he said, extending his hand. “Congratulations on your mother’s wedding. Too bad none of us were invited. Some people doubt it really happened. You were there, right? You actually saw the untouchable Helen accept our Carve?”
I gritted my teeth and rubbed my arm where Molly had kissed it. “They were married. Shelley did the honors less than a day after my father died.”
He nodded, but his smile was replaced by a scowl. “I swore Carve was only on about Helen to keep the kittens at bay. I owe Sue fifty bucks.”
“That’s what you get for not betting on the power of love,” an unstable voice said from inside the hut. I saw the door open, heard Marcus’s voice, saw the blood on his hands as he stumbled out into the sun.
“What have you done?” I whispered at the same time Marcus raised a hand and stared at the blood stupidly.
“She shouldn’t have gotten so clos
e,” he whispered, rubbing his fingers before he looked up at me. The madness had been replaced by stark horror.
I moved him unresistingly out of the way, into Stand’s hands. I ducked inside, searching the room. My eyes met Orrin’s as he sat, strangely peaceful, but when his eyes met mine, I lost it.
Is short-lived happiness worth the price of the world? Of course not, but how can I stop them? I see her, finding herself, being alive and real, and him, my friend whose goodness tempers her wildness, centers her, but now, now I must decide. Do I allow their happiness to become more important than the world? The end comes. I see it every day. The end and she comes for me and I can’t resist. I see her face when I sleep, changing from one set of features to another, but it’s always the same, calling me. I could stop the Hollow One if I answer the call, but the world would still end. I would end it. What hope do I have? What hope when I become the darkness? Every time, when I lose them all, I lose myself, and then I’ll be the one who destroys my sister. Then or now, what difference does it make? I’m the end of the world.
I gasped as I blinked back the room, Orrin’s face, his eyes now drooped closed, and Chloe stretched out on the floor, eyes blankly open at the ceiling. I closed my eyes and searched for her soul. It spread out of her body, like a pool of light spilling towards the ceiling, hanging onto her body by an ever-thinning thread.
She made a sound, a sob or a gasp, a slight inhalation that showed she was still alive.
I knelt beside her and took her warm hand in mine.
“Dari?” she whispered as she tried to bring me into focus. I squeezed her fingers.
“I’m right here. Don’t worry. We’ll get help…”
“Don’t let me die. You can’t… Promise me,” she gasped as blood welled from her neck.
“Calm down. I won’t let you die. I won’t. Chloe! Stay with me,” I ordered, but her body was limp, and her soul, when I checked was thinning out. I had Hollow blood. I could stop that, could put her soul back in her body. Grim had done it for my mother. I tried to move the soul through sheer effort of will, but the only thing that happened was the soul coalesced into a ball; that’s all I could do.
I dropped my head on my knees beside Chloe’s body, holding her hand, holding her soul there with effort that made me light headed. I took a deep breath as I studied her body, her neck slashed so that blood covered everything.
“You took too long,” I said in a strange voice as Stand came in. “Sew up her wounds.”
“She’s already gone,” he said gently.
I turned my head to look at him, to really see him. I dove inside his eyes, inside his mind, and bent him so that he moved, pulling out the med kit he’d stashed under the cot and set to work on Chloe without another word as I held her hand, holding her there, holding her hand, holding her soul.
He stitched together layers of arteries and flesh until she was left with only a jagged line on her smooth, brown throat.
I picked her up and carried her out of the hut, leaving Orrin, Stand and Marcus where he sat outside, bound by Stand, terror in his eyes when he saw me.
“Did I kill her?” he whispered, sounding sane.
I glanced at him. “No. The demon mistress killed her. All you did is embrace the taint.”
I ignored his anger towards the demon mistress. I had enough of my own to deal with. The runes parted for me, Stand’s doing or my own, I didn’t know and didn’t care. One person could bring Chloe back to life. I ran through the woods following the slight tug I’d always feel towards the Hollow One. Chloe felt too light in my arms, like her soul buoyed her up as it struggled to fly away, home to heaven or wherever free souls went.
I hadn’t gone more than a mile from camp when the wind blew the scent of death around me. The cloying rotting odor that wrapped around me, filling the air, was nearly incapacitating, but then came the sound, the ping of carapace against tree bark, more and louder until suddenly the swarm engulfed me, buzzing, flying insects, striking flesh like small bullets, leaving welts behind them while the wind rose higher.
The darkness that filled the air around me was not the smoke of Nethermist, but an absence of light, as though the day was siphoned away creating an aching nothingness that wanted to pull me apart and absorb my molecules.
I knelt down, squeezed Chloe’s hand for a moment before I stood and faced my enemy. The darkness took shape, and then I saw her, breathlessly perfect, pale skin like ceramic, hair like a raven’s wing, eyes dark, so dark and full of negative energy my skin prickled and my runes ached. She looked like my mother.
Fear closed my throat as I unsheathed my knife, holding it loosely in my hand.
“You brought the knife this time. Good girl,” she whispered, her voice sliding over my skin like cobwebs, the same accent as Raoul, my former Intended.
“And you picked somewhere there wasn’t an airplane, but your brother didn’t paralyze me this time,” I said with an impressively bored voice.
“Give me the knife and I’ll bring your friend back to life. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she said, her large eyes becoming even larger as she gazed at me.
“Tainted? No.”
“But you’re tainted,” she said with a smile that made me think of grinning skeletons. The sun was blocked out by the darkness which grew thicker every moment.
“Not by choice,” I said quietly. “Let me through or you will die this day.”
She looked hurt, as though my words could affect her. “But I offered to save her. You don’t see clearly what you truly need. You have so much pain, so much sorrow, all of that could be forgotten. All you have to do is…” she took a step forward and I cast a rune at her, sparks of green making her draw back with a slight gasp.
“I don’t need you to help me forget. That is not my choice. I want to remember Lewis, because I love him. If I forgot, who would I become? Nobody. That’s what you want, for me to be an empty shell that you can possess the way that you possessed Raoul’s sister, and whoever else you have. But you’re not going to take me.”
She cocked her head as her eyes burned at me. “You think that we want you? Silly girl. You think that you’re so special. All we want is your blood. And your blade, of course,” she added with a peculiar smile that made my stomach tighten in terror.
They could not have my blood. I tried to compact Chloe’s soul tighter, pushing it closer to her chest as I lay her down on the ground, barely standing before the first attack came.
Poisoned darts exploded in green sparks as they hit the rune ward I’d built at the same time I’d thrown one at her. I closed my eyes and tried to center myself. I moved without opening my eyes, tearing through her darkness with my knife until I got on her inside. She blocked me with her own knife, a mirror of my blade, its twin before her fingers grazed my skin shooting agony through me that made my veins burn and my runes ache.
She moved so quickly, her knife low, a knife that would take my gifts with my death if her knife was the same as mine. She shouldn’t have been able to hold it with the taint that ran through her veins and swam in her eyes. I shrank away from her, more terrified of her touch than her knife. Either death would be unacceptable. Her black metal runes gleamed in the darkness as she raised her arm to thrust the blade across my throat.
Something made her hesitate, something threw her off for a moment that was all I needed to drive my knife through her black silk blouse, the expected crunch of bone nothing as the knife melted through her body, her eyes bright and staring at me as I held her hand above me, knife in her strong grip as the taint bled out of her eyes, running down her white cheeks.
“Finish her,” the hard voice of her brother with his French accent came from the darkness that still swelled around me.
I couldn’t do it: cut out her heart, cut off her head. I twisted her wrist, taking the knife in my other hand. I closed my eyes and saw Chloe’s soul drifting, saw the hole-ridden soul of the demon mistress, Raoul’s sister still clinging to her frame. Stabbing her
in the heart, even with a Netherblade would not be enough. I gritted my teeth as I moved fast, pulling out her heart and slicing through her neck with the other knife I’d taken from her, feeling my own soul tear inside of me as her mangled soul fell free of her body.
The darkness faded away, but I felt it cling to me even when the sun resumed its position in the sky. Raoul stood across the clearing, his eyes hard and haunted as he stared at me, jaw clenched as he struggled not to see the fallen body.
“Why?” I asked him, looking down at his beautiful sister, a crumpled broken doll instead of the ominous force. She was just a girl, a little older than me, like my mother must have been after tragedy tore her apart, left her susceptible to the darkness. I should have done something else, something other than ending her before she had a chance to change.
“I didn’t want to do it,” he said in a tight voice. “I didn’t want to take her life, but she’s betrayed her House, her very blood. She died long ago.”
I felt the world tilt around me as darkness swam in my vision for a moment, darkness that seemed to come from inside. I couldn’t deny the rush, my rapidly beating heart, the exhaustion long gone from my limbs as the girl’s death fed me, the power of the two knives taking one death overwhelmingly, sickeningly euphoric.
“Why did you give me to the demon mistress?”
“I thought you would kill her.”
I opened my eyes and took in his swarthy skin, his dark scowl, elegant in his black shiny boots and neat suit. “I thought I did.”
He gave me a bow, short, brief before he turned and disappeared into the woods, leaving me with a body that had begun to disintegrate while I watched, eaten away by taint, blurring with ooze around the edges. I searched my pockets for the powder that I shook onto her body, turning my head away at the bright flare that took her and the taint away.
I stumbled to Chloe, falling down beside her and pushed her soul back towards her body. I’d no sooner picked her up than I heard Osmond’s familiar voice.
“Dariana, what’s going on?”
I froze and tried to understand what was happening. Was I really off to confront the Hollow One with a dead body and demand that he bring it back to life? What price would he ask? I hadn’t thought this through.
House of Slide: Hunter Page 21