“How does he do it?” I muttered.
“He’s still here,” Lorenzo drawled. “Wherever his Lost Souls are, he is.”
I turned and saw Lorenzo against the wall, relaxed and ready at the same time. I was definitely underdressed in my slip. “What do you mean?”
“I see you. He sees you. I see the window, he sees the window. I see you jump out the window… You get the idea,” he said with a slight smile, but didn’t unbend from his military stance.
“He can see what you see? What all the Lost Souls can see?”
“If he’s paying attention,” Lorenzo said easily.
I rubbed my arm with its scar. It stung this morning, ever since the Hollow One had caught a bullet for me. Every time Elodie had dressed me, he’d seen? Not that there was much to see. I was mostly scar tissue, but still. I hurriedly grabbed the dress I’d worn the day before where Elodie must have left it draped over a chair. I pulled it on over the slip. Slips were for wearing under clothes, right?
The Hollow One. Had Peregrine lost the voice? I had to know and yet, I still couldn’t leave.
An explosion rocked the house, sending me to my knees while plaster rained down around my head. I looked up and saw Lorenzo, his eyes on me telling me something before he turned and left me alone in the room. The house was under attack and I’d been left alone since the first time I’d been there. Who knew where the Hollow One would be? Was it someone else who wanted to kill me? I’d put my money on someone else who thrived so well on chaotic explosions. I braced myself, took a deep breath before I moved, running as fast as I could, digging my feet into the wood floor until I jumped. I lost consciousness before I hit the window, shattered the glass and fell three stories down. One way or another, I was free.
Chapter 22
In the darkness, I saw souls spread around me, most far away, where the fighting was, but one bright beacon came towards me, flickering unsteadily as he burned and cooled, flashes of orange and blue until I felt his hands on my skin, bringing me awake.
“Aiden,” I said as I sat up, gasping, trying to breathe. I hurt from my head to my toes from the fall, from the glass. My tattered dress fluttered around me as I tried to get to my feet. I had to leave before one of them saw me. We had to be gone before anyone knew I’d left my room. I still couldn’t breathe.
“Nice dress,” Aiden said with his glowing blue eyes and an inappropriate wiggle of his eyebrows. He squeezed my wrist tight enough to make me wince, but I felt calmer as he pushed down the panic.
“Aiden,” I stuttered as I tried to walk on a broken leg. I couldn’t breathe. Had I collapsed a lung? How long would that take to heal? I didn’t have time.
He picked me up in his arms while he burned too hot for comfort, but I didn’t care. I held on tight while he ran towards the fence. He seemed to be running straight towards the metal, but when we got to it, it disappeared the second before he touched it, only an illusion he must have created for the sake of the escape.
“Nice,” I gasped as he jostled me and what must have been punctured lungs or broken ribs. Only if there was a punctured lung, it would come from a broken rib, wouldn’t it? I felt dizzy, dizzy, dizzy until we were in the shadows of the woods and Aiden finally put me down in the muddy dirt. He grabbed my body and squeezed, cracking something horrifically into place. I whimpered but he already had his hands on my leg.
“Wilds don’t heal as well as Hotbloods,” he said cheerfully. “Hotbloods heal intelligently, more naturally. Wilds just heal without making sure the bone is in the right place. Runes are unnatural. That’s what you get when you go against nature.” He grinned at me while he rebroke my leg.
I took a breath to scream and realized that I could breathe. He must have fixed my lungs. I changed my mind about screaming. The Hollow One. I rolled over and threw up instead. Peasant, quail, peacock, there was no bird I had not tasted. I would never eat fowl again.
I stood up, but the pain in my chest, in my stomach made it impossible to stand upright. I took a stumbling step away from the Hollow One’s house with my arms wrapped around my body.
“Come on, girl. Or do you want to go back?”
I shook my head, forcing down the pain and the nausea while I moved my legs, running in the ridiculously tattered gown.
I saw a glimmer of metal behind a veil of green that had me pulling back, but Aiden went straight to the bush and reached through, revealing a large wheeled vehicle with soft squishy tires that almost surrounded the small cockpit that Aiden climbed inside.
“Come on,” he said, his bright blue eyes burning a hole through my forehead until I climbed in, coughing as I tried to fit on the seat beside him. He wasn’t as enormous as your typical Hotblood, but tall, and burning up. I liked the heat. I liked the feeling of being in an oven. It distracted me from the issue going on in my stomach that hopefully would heal at some point.
“You’re coughing up blood,” Aiden said without glancing over at me.
I looked down and saw red. “Huh. I guess so.”
Aiden made an irritated sound, in between a snort and a growl. A snowl. I smiled at him, leaned over and kissed him on his cheek, before slumping down in agony, but still happy. He must have been leaning me fiercely to make me so content, but I didn’t mind. Of course I didn’t mind. I was only leaving Lewis, at least as much of him as existed that he hadn’t stuck inside of his paintings with his bloodwork.
I sat up and hit Aiden on the chest hard enough that he grunted.
“The paintings. Lewis painted his soul into his paintings, not just some ephemeral energy, but his actual soul. If we could somehow gather up all the paintings and get his soul off of them and into the Hollow One…” My voice trailed off. How would we do any of that?
“Ambitious,” Aiden said with a nod. “Also insane. I like it. Where do we start?”
I shook my head and winced as I slumped down further and had a coughing fit that burned. “What’s wrong with me?” I asked, wiping a streak of blood on the skirt of my dress. Gross.
“I’d say you’ve got glass embedded in your guts,” he answered with a frown in his bright eyes.
“Lovely. That explains it. Can you cut it out of me?”
“No. I don’t do that. I kill people, I don’t do anything disgusting like that. We’ll take you to your uncle. He can tell you what Slide did to the paintings they impounded after the gallery fiesta.”
“What uncle?”
“The doctor, you know, the one I stuck to the wall.” Aiden grinned at me, a smile that made me smile even as I elbowed him in the stomach.
“You shouldn’t do that,” I said sternly and grimacing as my movement made the glass cut deeper.
“I’ve lived so many lives. Doing what I shouldn’t do is what makes it all worthwhile. Tell me, girl, what was it like, living with the Hollow One? Do you know the name of the Voice?”
“Peregrine,” I answered, trying to hold very still. It didn’t help that the vehicle bounced through the woods on the overblown tires, crashing through trees and bushes while Aiden didn’t seem at all concerned with not knocking me against him and the door.
“Peregrine. He’s a good dancer from what I remember. Liked to dance and dice. I can’t imagine he’ll make it easy for us to take the paintings.”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” I said, scowling.
“Peregrine would be setting up spies in Houses, getting all the intel he can, and he could get a lot with his resources, they being of the infinite variety. He would know everything about you, your House, he’d certainly know who you’d been Intended to that died or disappeared shortly before the Hollow One returned. He’s not a full frontal kind of guy, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m talking about his attack methods, but I don’t suppose he came on to you very strong, either. He’s Hollow,” he added like it was an insult.
“I’m Hollow.”
He snorted. “If he were a Hotblood, he’d know what t
o do with a soulmate, even if he was the wrong soul.”
“Would you please stop talking. I’d like to pretend that none of that happened.”
“You don’t want to talk, you should probably sleep then.” He put an enormous hand on my face. Before I could swat it away, I fell down into blissful, dreamless slumber. Aiden could keep the nightmares away.
I blinked awake in front of a familiar row of bushes where Aiden had parked, half on, half off of the sidewalk in the ridiculous in the city off-road vehicle.
“Go ahead,” he said, nodding towards the bushes that hid Grim’s house.
“MmmHmm,” I said as I tried to straighten up and get out of the little cockpit without embedding the glass deeper. No luck. I straightened on the sidewalk coughing up blood. I wiped my mouth on my arm before I turned and looked at Aiden.
“Are you coming with me?” I whispered.
He shook his head, no. “Let’s meet up at the garage before we go chasing down the paintings.”
“You think he’d stick you to the wall this time,” I said with a grin.
He shrugged.
“You’d deserve it, but since I’d rather he was cutting glass out of me, and I don’t need you to distract him when you lose it and do something idiotic. Okay. We’ll meet at the garage. One more thing,” I added before he’d taken off. “Thanks for rescuing me.”
“It was the suicidal Hotbloods who really did anything. I just dragged you into the woods.”
“Suicidal Hotbloods?” I asked, glaring at him. “Are you saying people died trying to rescue me?”
He grinned as he cranked the engine to life. “They wanted to die. You’d be surprised how many people get excited about dying at the hands of the Hollow One. You and me, we’ll not die no matter how interesting that might be. Give my regards,” he said before he revved the engine and took off, rolling down the middle of the dark road, luckily free from cars in the middle of the night.
“Sure,” I muttered before I turned and followed the sidewalk around the house to the side door by the kitchen.
I hesitated outside the dark door before I knocked sharply, one arm wrapped around my waist, like that would help.
It took less than the count of ten before Grim swung the door slowly open and looked at me with his familiar dour expression. “Dariana. What brings you here?”
I took a step up and winced, bending down and trying to breathe normally. “Glass in my stomach, I think,” I wheezed.
“You smell of Hollow. How would I know whether or not someone was still themselves?”
“You think I’m a lost soul?” I asked, putting a hand on his arm. “You’ve got enough Hollow blood to bring my mother back to life you certainly can check out my soul and see if it’s mine.”
He gave me a half smile before he picked me up, scooping me up in his long arms with his spidery fingers wrapping around my arms and legs, holding me very precisely so that it hurt only a little as he carried me through the gleaming white kitchen to the bedroom, the white one that looked like a hospital room where he’d put Aiden when I’d tried to rescue him.
He set me gently on the hospital bed, concern in his dark blue eyes. “Do you mind if I examine you?”
I nodded while I bit my lip, and tried to relax as he checked my stomach, slicing through the flimsy fabric with a scalpel until I felt like a shipwrecked pirate in my wrecked pale blue ballgown.
“Do you know what a circle of seven is?” I asked, my words making his eyebrow flicker as he worked on me.
“Hollow term.”
“I’m asking my Hollow uncle,” I responded, putting my hand on his shoulder. “I think I know how we can stop the Hollow One, bring back the original voice, but I’ll need everyone, even Shelley, and I’m fuzzy about the details.”
“Dariana, you’re safe.” My mother’s voice came from the doorway, her smooth low voice sending a wave of comfort and awkwardness through me.
“Well, darlin’, looks like you’ve been having a good time without inviting me. That hurts my feelings.”
“Satan,” I said smiling up at my enormous uncle in his slouchy hat and soggy cigar. “Mother,” I added feeling more uncertain when I looked at her, gorgeous, power rolling off her in waves, Head of Slide and former demon mistress.
Her dark eyes softened as she looked at me, smiling gently while she put a hand on my forehead. I felt my body relax, then Matthew from nowhere took my wrist, his contact paralyzing me so that my eyelids were frozen open.
It hurt while Grim cut me open, pulling half a dozen chunks of glass from my body and arm while I lay there unable to blink. It hurt as my body healed up while he cleaned his scalpels, rinsing off the blood in alcohol then setting it on fire.
“A circle of Seven?” Matthew drawled as he reached forward, stroking my wrist lightly until I could move again.
I blinked rapidly until I could sit up without the unpleasant agony spiking through me. I jerked out of his grip.
“Calm down,” my mother commanded, brushing her hand for a moment on my forehead.
“I’m calm,” I said, trying not to pull away from her touch. “I’m great. I just don’t see why he had to paralyze me if he didn’t take away the pain.”
“How else were you supposed to heal?” my mother said, sounding exasperated. “You can’t heal if you don’t feel.”
“Oh, because it rhymes it’s supposed to be okay?” I fought down the irrational panic. Yes. They had to hold me still so Grim could cut glass out of me without me jerking and making a bigger mess, but being unable to move, to blink, it reminded me too much of the demon mistress, of the Hollow One, of the world I felt caught in without the power to do anything. But I did have power. The circle of seven, the paintings, put it all together in a bag, shake it up, and voila, we’d save the world. We were all going to die, or worse, be dressed like dolls for the Hollow One to play with. I struggled to get my hyperventilating under control.
“A circle of seven?” my uncle Grim asked as he finished scrubbing the blood from beneath his fingernails. Water dripped to the floor as he watched me, as all of them watched me. They seemed to be waiting for me to validate what they already knew.
I shrugged while my mother wrapped a heavy blue robe around me. “To fix the Hollow One’s soul inside his body. He won’t remember much, but I think we might be able to work with him. Better than Peregrine, anyway. He’d rather ally with demons than Wilds.”
“Peregrine?” My mother asked, cocking her head to the side.
“I’ve heard of that Hollow,” Satan growled. “Had style. Wore white so you could see the blood better when he came for you.”
“That’s him,” I said feeling nauseous.
“You found that out from the Hollow One?” Matthew asked, frowning at me. “You should have stayed away from him.”
“But then I couldn’t have him bring my friend back to life, could I? Yes. I’ve been with him for months or something. I don’t know. Lost track of time.” Lost track of my stones, too. I bit my lip as I fought down the need I had to escape the looks on my relatives faces, and Matthew, he frowned at me like he knew everything I thought and felt.
“Circle of seven,” Grim said in a low voice while he nodded. “We’ve been studying out the problem of the Hollow One. I’ve been researching in Matthew’s library.” He frowned and I knew the reason for the deep circles under his eyes. No one should read that stuff, not when it was half demonic and half insanity.
“There’s a procedure which if done correctly,” my mother said in her no-nonsense scientist voice. “Can result in a Voiceless Hollow. It won’t last very long. I believe two minutes is on the long end of it. All we have to do is find the original soul, and fix it in place.”
Matthew scowled. “I still think that the risk is greater than the possible reward.”
My mother turned to him, her gaze sharp. “The possible reward is life instead of complete annihilation. It’s a calculated risk instead of simple futility.”
�
��Just because you know the process for a circle of seven to paralyze the Hollow One, fixing its soul will be impossible without a full-blown Bloodworker to help you. None of them will.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” I said slowly. Everyone turned their focus on me. I swallowed and tried to look slightly less crazy than I was. “We need the paintings. Lewis took care of that part before he turned. I know just the Bloodworker we need to reverse what he did.”
Satan guffawed. “You think you have an incredibly skilled bloodworker we can trust?”
I shrugged. “Trust isn’t exactly the word I’d use, but crazy enough to try.”
“You have a Hotblood picked out for this?”
“I think Lewis picked him out before he turned. He rescued me from the Hollow One.”
“Who is this Hotblood?” my mother asked with her arms folded across her chest and a tight smile on her perfect mouth.
“Aiden. If you know how to get the circle of seven, and he knows how to do the Bloodwork, the only thing left is to lure the Hollow One.” I froze as I realized my role in all of this. He would come for me, and if we didn’t take out his voice, he’d take me. Forever.
“In the Hollow Hall,” my mother added.
I shivered as I remembered Hollow, or Hallow Hall.
Matthew said, “And all the Axel paintings…”
“Sounds like a scavenger hunt,” Satan growled. “Typical Hollow, making games out of what should be serious business.”
My mother raised an eyebrow. “All the effort we have put into finding a way around the coming bloodbath, what’s a little scavenger hunt, Saturn? Particularly one where we have the clear advantage.”
“Against who?” Satan said, scowling.
My mother smiled. “Against this Peregrine, naturally. If he’s had Dariana, if she’s found out about the need for Axel’s paintings from him, he’ll be searching for all the Axel paintings.” A shadow fell over her face. “And her. I’ll retrieve the one in Sanders. The rest of you…”
House of Slide: Hunter Page 26