House of Slide: Wilds, Part I

by Juliann Whicker

  I opened the door of a large bedroom with an open window, white gauze curtain rustling and billowing. I ignored the movement and walked unerringly towards the cupboard where he hid.

  I opened the cupboard and into the dark blue eyes of a child. Harding couldn’t have been more than seven.

  “Hello,” I said, after we’d stared at each other for a few moments.

  “You’re Carve. The assassin,” he said with a frown.

  “And you’re Harding.”

  “How many of my people have you killed?” he asked with a panicked whine that he tried hard to hide.

  “Tonight I forgot to keep count. Dozens of bodies litter the ground in my wake.”

  He reminded me of her; innocent with those dark blue eyes. He jumped out of the cupboard, slicing at me wildly as he fell. I felt the pain on my shoulder and barely grabbed him in time. I paralyzed him, sending a wave of ice through his veins that would keep him still.

  I pressed my forehead against his and leaned him, creating a picture of me trying to kill him but him escaping heroically. It wouldn’t do for him to think that I’d rescued him. I put him to sleep and walked to the window, holding his body in my arms. Beneath the window the earth had already parted for him. Six feet under and he would be buried, captured, protected until someone else could save him. Not me. Not anyone connected to Carve.

  I dropped him and watched the earth swallow him, rolling over his body with enough of an air pocket for him to breathe for hours as long as he lay still and unconscious as I’d left him. I turned and continued to search the house.

  After ages of fighting, violence blended from one splash and spray of blood to another, one dislocated shoulder to a broken femur, not mine of course. I made certain that a lot of the fighting took place on top of the boy, packing down the crust of earth, hardening the lower pocket where I’d hidden him.

  “Where’s Harding?” Jarvais demanded, walking up to me with his golden eyes wild and unfocused. Blood did that to him, made him less stable than usual.

  “Someone beat me to him,” I said with a shrug.

  He tried to punch me, a straight shot to my face that would break my nose. I did not look good after being punched in the face. I twisted out of the way and deflected the blow.

  “If you need to strike someone, focus on one of your allies who can heal instantaneously. You’ve taken the House. Harding won’t be a threat without a House.”

  He leaned forward, smiling at me with that wholesome glow that entire misrepresented his nature. “You let him go.”

  “So did you,” I replied and turned away. “The rest is cleanup.”

  Jarvais hissed, but then an explosion on the edge of the yard caught his attention along with dozens of Hotbloods who felt like they needed to object over Harding’s fall. This wasn’t my obligation. I slipped away from the House, riding my motorbike through the streets, taking turns slow and wobbly. My vision began to blur until I couldn’t tell which lights were for my road. I kept riding, carefully. I had somewhere to be, something to do for the first time in a long time. Helen.

  I drove into the alley behind the house and sat there for a moment, the ache in my shoulder spreading as I remembered her face, her laugh. I hadn’t expected her to laugh. I’d never heard anything so perfect. I fumbled as I unlocked the gate and locked it behind me, almost as though I were drunk before I went to the back door where I’d seen her stand, hesitating, vulnerable and lovely, searching for her brother.

  I could feel her imprint through a swirl of other imprints as I grabbed the handle. Inside, I stopped in the kitchen to grab a bottle of Springtime and mix the bright green contents with the container of iced lemon rosemary tea in the refrigerator. After the drink I looked down and saw my bloodstained hands. I shook my head. I should have washed before I came in the kitchen, leaving smears of blood on the handle of the curved glass pitcher and the door. Not my blood.

  Helen wouldn’t like it. I didn’t like it. Harding hadn’t been a threat. Carve and Bliss had taken them because they could. Even Red Houses shouldn’t upset a House for no reason. My hands were stained in blood. Dried blood and gore caked the cuffs of my jacket while the white shirt beneath was pink overall with dots of red. I couldn’t touch Helen with bloodstained hands.

  I walked up the flight of stairs and paused in front of the third door on the second floor. I leaned my head against the wood and could sense her presence, calm and steady. My heart pounded, the world swam, and my eyes couldn’t focus very well. I continued to the shower, hot water stinging on multiple wounds I’d forgotten about. The small cut the child had given me had become the worst of them all, cutting through muscle and tissue too deep for me to use that arm much until it healed. If it healed. The wound already smelled off, festering.

  I wrapped a towel around my waist and staggered up the stairs to the third floor where I’d get to interrupt Satan and his bride on their wedding night. If he didn’t kill me, we might be able to save Harding.

  I knocked. I heard an expletive. I knocked again. This time Satan’s roar came at the same time Cami opened the door, her bright green eyes glowing in fury her body loosely draped in a provocative robe.

  “Cami,” I said, passing her and entering the room. “You look incredible. I’ve never seen such eyes.”

  Her mouth dropped open as she stared at me.

  “Carve?” Satan said, his anger interrupted as he looked at my festering wound. He rotated on the bed and pulled on his pants.

  “This isn’t a good time,” Cami hissed, a few heartbeats away from ripping off my head with her bare hands.

  I smiled at her and leaned her emotions. I didn’t have to touch her, not when I knew her so well. She liked me. Not like Bliss liked me, but like she liked anyone who had saved Satan as many times as I had. He didn’t fear death or taint nearly enough. The heat gradually faded from her eyes until she tightened the robe and looked down at my towel pointedly.

  “I can’t put on my pants. Helen’s sleeping in my bed.”

  “What?” Satan growled, not his usual roar, but more dangerous.

  “Helen, your sister. She is so beautiful. All women are beautiful. I’ve never seen so many beautiful women in my life. I wanted her to sleep in my bed so that I can have her imprint there while I sleep. Such things should last forever.”

  “Are you trying to get me to kill you?” Satan growled, grabbing my shoulder, the one with the puss oozing out of it. I would have winced, but everything seemed so unimportant, other than Helen, of course.

  I patted his head, feeling the metal swirls under my fingers. “You have beautiful runes. Did you know that I leaned Helen into my bed? I’m not sure why I did that. I leaned her there. She might get into trouble wandering around London tonight. Harding fell.” I leaned Satan’s bare head, showing him the havoc, the destruction, and most importantly, the patch of earth where Harding was buried.

  “On my wedding night,” Satan growled, pulling away from me. He looked from me to Cami where she watched me with concern in her green eyes, then back at me. “How bad are your pants?”

  “My pants will never be the same again. I believe that after a good cleaning they may be wearable, but they’ll always be stained with death and despair.”

  “That’s too bad,” Satan said shaking his head. “I dislike having men in my room without pants. Sit. You’re going to need something on that shoulder.”

  “My shoulder is fine,” I said, dropping down on the end of the bed. My shoulder began to throb, as though mentioning it had reminded it to hurt. Dull pain intruded on the strange Helen fueled euphoria, unless it wasn’t Helen but something else, something to do with knives and wounds and infections. I couldn’t die from a scratch, not when Helen was sleeping in my bed. I should die for doing something worthy and important, like running away with her to Argentina. She’d kill me if she woke up in my bed with me. Wouldn’t she? She’d been so warm and uninhibited when she wanted to annoy her brother.

  “Stop smiling,”
Satan growled as he cleaned my wound with straight alcohol that burned. “You’re thinking about my sister.”

  “Did you see her dance?” I asked, ignoring the pain. “It wasn’t very good, but it was very good.”

  “What does that mean?” Cami asked.

  Satan growled. “Everyone saw her. She should be locked up in a nunnery.”

  “Didn’t you decide to become a Hunter because the rules of your House were too strict?” Cami asked, crossing her arms. She was beautiful in the way of Hotbloods, overblown and sensual.

  “Satan, you are so lucky to have a beautiful woman at your side. If my heart weren’t already taken, I would have fallen for Cami long ago. Seeing Helen, it makes me want to be electrocuted and eat flowers every day.”

  “He’s completely delirious,” Cami said, staring at me intently. “What poison did they use on him?”

  Satan grabbed the back of my head and dragged my face to his so that our gazes were level. For a moment I thought he would kiss me. “She’s going home. You won’t ever see her again. Put her out of your mind.”

  “It might be easier to do when she isn’t sleeping in my bed. What poison?” I added when he squeezed my neck so tight I wondered if he might accidentally pop off my head. It would be a fairly painless way to die, but messy. Cami would hate it if my blood stained her bed.

  He gritted his teeth before he backed off, glanced up at Cami and said, “Babe, run down and get the big green box, please.”

  She left, knowing that if we needed the big green box, she’d have to move fast for it to be any use.

  “Harding cut you? It’s a rare, slow moving toxin called Featherbane. I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”

  “Ah, Featherbane.” I nodded. I’d used it a time or two. It would infect a victim without any symptoms until it was too late. That would not be a pleasant death. “How can you tell?”

  “The scent. Also the coloring of the wound and the fact that you’ve been hitting on my wife in front of me while professing your love for my sister. You know Featherbane. Gets in your head. You know, Carve, I don’t know if I shouldn’t let you die the death you deserve for touching my sister.”

  I smiled at him taking in his haunted dark blue eyes, so much like hers. “Of all the things I’ve ever done, touching, dancing, kissing your sister is better than I deserve. Yes. By all means. You should kill me. It’s either you or Grim at this point.”

  “Grim?” he frowned at me, not the blustering anger, but the Wild cunning and analytic skills he used so rarely. He studied me then raised his chin like some mystery had cleared up. “You’ve been stalking her.”

  I felt a wave of agony in my heart, guilt, despair, futility. “No. I just killed her. But,” I said, patting Satan on his shoulder, “Grim brought her back to life, so it’s not a problem. I think I’m going to faint.”

  He gripped my chin, holding me upright. “She used to be different. Years she’s been out of it, a shell of who she was before my mother died. Are you what happened to her?”

  I frowned at him and felt all the irritation I’d carried for years well up around me, blocking out the pain like a warm cocoon. “If you can’t be clever, I’m not up to this conversation. I saw her. She didn’t see me. I helped your brother bring her back from the dead. I couldn’t save her, but I could save you. I hope that draws the picture clearly enough for you because while being poisoned I lack motivation to elaborate.” I slipped through his fingers down onto the bed. The imprint of their passion had me groaning. I did not have the energy for that.

  “Here,” Cami said, entering breathlessly with the green box filling her arms. “What’s the poison?”

  “Featherbane,” Satan growled, opening the box and rifling through the contents. He took out a small vial in the very bottom with what looked like mercury in it.

  “Featherbane? No one uses that anymore. Isn’t the plant extinct?” she asked as I slid off the bed bonelessly onto the floor.

  “How long since you were cut?” Satan asked, holding my head back before he dumped the silver contents in my mouth.

  I swallowed the strands of death and life, so fresh and crisp it burned my nose but also so dark and dank, like swallowing sewage. There was nothing else like it in the world, thank all that was holy.

  “I’m not certain. I rode my motorized bicycle back here, but it took such a long time. I drank, showered, stood outside of the door where Helen sleeps, and of course before that we were fighting Hunters and not killing Jarvais. It takes so much energy to not kill Jarvais.”

  “I could never manage it,” Satan growled.

  “I couldn’t either,” Cami agreed, nodding. “You shouldn’t let him treat you like that. Just because he’s Son of the House doesn’t mean that he has the right to treat you like an indentured servant. You could take him.”

  “I have no desire to take Jarvais anywhere. There’s only one person I’d like to take out. Do you think your sister would like a jazz club, or the circus more?” I asked Satan.

  He only growled in response.

  “But doesn’t your father want you to take your place as Son? That’s what your scars are from, right, from trying to rune you?” Cami asked, her face alight with fascination.

  “I’m delighted you noticed,” I said, smiling at her until I felt my veins burn. I closed my eyes and only thoughts of Helen kept me from screaming and clawing out my own blood. The Nether would either kill me or save me.

  The cure Satan had given me was moving through my body, a rare substance that would kill most of the people who took it. It was undiluted Nether taken from those with inherited Netherblood and distilled to this potent substance that those with less already in their blood could not assimilate. It was a form of poison in its own right. I gasped and jerked while agony spread from my chest and through my veins. So fast the burning, the agony.

  I bent over my knees, fingernails scratching the wood as I stared at the cracks in the floorboards while the iron bed creaked behind me.

  “I think that you should bury him,” Cami said, her voice coming from far away.

  “He’s wearing a towel.”

  “I sent his clothes out to be cleaned.”

  “Thoughtful of you.”

  “Wasn’t it? Seeing Matthew like this makes me feel all maternal.”

  I heard sounds of kissing and could feel their rising ardor. Helen. If I were to die this night of this wound, it would be a good end to a life only briefly lit by moments of glory and wonder, those moments when our lives were intertwined.

  “Come on,” Satan growled, pulling me on my feet and slinging me over his bare shoulders. Cami got the door for us, holding it open while we passed, her worried face upside down from where I could see her.

  “I need your consent,” I said, as Satan carried me down the stairs, past the second floor where she slept. Helen. My love. I couldn’t breathe. The burning went on and on. If I only saw her again, one more time, my life would have meaning.

  “You don’t have it,” he growled as he stalked down the stairs. “If anyone sees us like this I’ll tell everyone that you busted in on us looking for a ménage trois. That will get the men and women crawling out of the cracks for you.”

  “I think that’s only fair,” I said, solemnly. My legs hit a plaster bust and knocked it down the stairs where it smashed into a million pieces.

  “Be careful!”

  “You’re the one driving,” I replied, glad when he put me down in the kitchen and proceeded to drag me across the room and out the back door by my elbows. “Why are you having your way with me?” I asked when I stumbled to my knees on the grass, littered with bottles and the odd piece of clothing.

  He lifted me up beneath my armpits. “If I were having my way with you, my fist would be impacting your face.”

  “I can walk.”

  “Right. Featherbane. You can walk. You not dying is about all we can expect from you. I wish it had shut you up. You’re not usually so chatty.”

  “She�
�s glorious. She stepped into my life. My life is a dream. No reality could contain such perfection, even if my veins are filled with lava and acid.”

  Satan growled as he frowned down at me, his face an ugly scowl set off by the black metal runes above his eyebrows. “I’m going to dig you a hole. If you get out of this hole and find my sister before morning, I’m going to dig you a permanent hole. Understand?”

  I sighed. “How can death be a threat to me? My life is empty, meaningless other than her. I’m the music, she is the lyrics. That’s what she is, lyric. Every movement, every expression, all so lyrical.”

  Satan shoveled dirt beneath the oak tree while I waited for death, or Helen. My angel. Satan grabbed my arms and dragged me into the hole, filled the dirt up, but left my head above ground. Having soil press around me released some of the pressure in my veins.

  “If you bother me again tonight, I’ll put you in cement,” Satan growled, walking off with the shovel slung over his shoulder, glinting in the faint moonlight. His digging had only begun. Perhaps I should have killed the child as Jarvais wished. I didn’t want to kill him. I’d killed enough. And Helen wouldn’t like me killing innocent children, even if they did poison me.

  I let my head flop back, staring up at the moonlight. Music flowed over me, music that I hadn’t heard for too long. Killing desensitized you. I’d never intended to play at Satan’s wedding, but when the guitarist didn’t show, I played until the alternate could make it. I wanted to play, to write the music of the moon, the touch and taste of Helen, music that didn’t need words, or if they did, she could write them. How would she write our kiss? I closed my eyes and relaxed, letting the tree above and the earth beneath pull out the poison, exhaustion and pain.

  I barely heard footsteps before my brother slapped me. I opened my eyes, frowning at Jarvais. He liked so much physical contact, but all of it violent.