House of Slide: Wilds, Part I

by Juliann Whicker

  The door flew open and Satan entered, glowing ember at the end of his cigar casting a red light into his eyes.

  “Shhh,” I murmured, leaning him to silence.

  He stopped and stared at me, at his sleeping sister who had clearly climbed on top of me after I’d already been tucked beneath the blankets, her boots still on. He could see at a glance that nothing against Code had happened, but his brow lowered down until I could barely see his furious eyes.

  “What’s going on here?” he bellowed, his voice resonating against the walls until Helen started up, turning to look at Satan where he glowered at her.

  “You woke her up,” I said feeling a wave of anger mixed with sorrow as I sat, putting a hand on her shoulder.

  She stiffened, staring at her brother until she turned and gazed at me with large eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” Satan growled. “For interrupting my sister sleeping with you!” he ended in a bellow.

  Cami came in behind him, rolling her eyes and putting a hand on his arm. “Nothing was going on,” she said. “Clearly.”

  “My sister sleeping with a filthy Hybrid, is not nothing. You were hibernating in the library. That’s where I saw you yesterday after Jarvais left. How did you get into bed with her?”

  “I carried him,” Helen said, a husky voice, rough from sleep. “He didn’t look comfortable in his chair.”

  “Yesterday you were asking if we needed to put him to death, but then you decided to tuck him into bed instead? What’s wrong with you? Anyone who touches him while he’s sleeping gets paralyzed, anyone except you, apparently.”

  “I must have forgotten to put up my guard,” I said, brushing her arm with my thumb. “You’re intruding, Satan.” The anger was just below the surface, anger fed by years of frustration as I’d lived in the shadows, doing my duty without hope of ever becoming part of the whole.

  He looked at me, disgusted. “I said she was thinking about killing you. Don’t you think that’s a little bit interesting, Carve?”

  “We both know that’s not an issue.”

  Satan shrugged off Cami, taking two steps closer to the bed while he glowered down at his sister where she still sat beside me. “Why did you sleep with him? Did he lean you? If you think I’m going to sit by and watch a Hybrid sully my sister’s reputation…”

  “He didn’t lean me,” she said in a dangerous voice with chips of ice in it.

  “Then what possible reason could you have for sleeping with him? Did you hit your head?”

  The silence grew until she said quietly, “I didn’t want to be alone.”

  I saw a flash of pain cross his face, could feel the regret that mixed with shame before he shot a furious glance at me then turned and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “Sorry about that,” Cami said, giving us both uncomfortable smiles. “He’s concerned about you both. Breakfast is ready whenever you are.” She turned and left me alone with Helen.

  I could read her discomfort, her confusion. She held perfectly still, staring at the door until with a sigh she turned, letting her boots clomp on the floor. She reached down then handed me my silver thermos.

  I unscrewed the lid while she untied her laces. I drank a mix of herbs that I recognized as a unique blend for blood loss she must have harvested fresh from the garden. After she took off the boots, she turned to me, staring at me silently. I began to fumble under the intensity of her expression, the way she searched my face and features for some clue. My thermos. She had gotten it out of my bag. No one else could have gotten past the wards. If she’d been in my bag, she’d seen the letter.

  “Thank you for the tea,” I said softly. “It’s precisely what I need.” She was precisely what I needed. All of her. Her scent, her words, her mind, her touch, all a perfect match to my desire.

  “Not at all,” she said crisply. “It gave me something to do. For someone I’ve slept with, I don’t feel like I know you very well. Tell me about yourself.”

  This was my opening, or my closing. “My mother is Cool. My father is Wild. My mother died of taint shortly after I was born. My father remarried and sent me to live in Louisiana with another House that is closely allied to Cools. A white House, like Slide.”

  She raised an eyebrow, but that was the only sign she made.

  “She loved my father. I don’t know how anyone could love him. He’s insane. He loved her, though. Love is so destructive, don’t you think? I look at you and I see someone destroyed by love. My life is the consequence of mindless passion.”

  “As though your life were not a positive consequence,” she murmured, cocking her head. “A bit self-effacing or are you genuinely your own worst enemy?”

  “I am never self-effacing,” I said with a smile. “You read the letter. You must suspect that I am somehow involved with the debacle of your youth.”

  “You mean the debacle I can’t remember?” She touched my cheeks with her fingertips, the physical contact distracting me from my purpose. I had to make her understand, hate me, and leave. For her own sake as well as my own.

  “Your skin is so soft,” she murmured leaning forward and brushing my cheek with her mouth, more a taste than a kiss. I felt her breath over my skin, her imprint burning into me. I clenched my hands to keep from holding her, taking her into my arms and never letting her go.

  “The gift of the un-runed is delicate, baby soft flesh,” I snarled, but she ignored my voice, still travelling my face until my eyelashes tickled her lips.

  She finally pulled away, her eyes heavy and confused. “I’m trying to unsettle you, but it’s not working as well on you as on me.” She smiled wryly. “I feel connected to you. Are you the author of some of the letters sent to me under Jarvais’s name?”

  “Some of the letters?” I demanded, trembling from holding still when I wanted to explode. “Have you met Sons of Wild Houses? Have you ever met one who wrote letters that weren’t a laundry list of demands and compliments in predictable patterns and designs intended to achieve their results without the slightest breath of poetry or even prose?”

  She looked a little taken aback. “Considering that I can’t remember the letters, and the fact that I’ve never written to another Son of a House, I assumed they are deeper than they appear. My brothers, at least Shelley could certainly write a beautiful letter, so don’t assume I’m facile simply because I didn’t realize that a Hybrid Cool/Wild was in charge of Son of Carve’s correspondence.”

  I took a deep breath. “I apologize. You had no way of knowing that I was not Jarvais. I knew you were not Camilla with the first word of the first letter.”

  “I didn’t try. I was so irritated that she blackmailed me about the goat that I wanted you to realize right away that I was not her, so she’d be reprimanded and forced to write her own letters.” She frowned. “But then your letter back was so perfect. So alive and real and I remember holding it in my hand until it grew blurry from tears. Your letter made me cry.” She stared at me, bewildered.

  “You were going through some difficulty,” I said. “And my letters always make people cry. Heads of Houses weep.”

  “Right before you kill them mercilessly,” she said coolly.

  “No. I do correspondence for the entire House, except Camilla. You have that pleasure. I don’t kill Heads of Houses. That’s a job for Jarvais and other overly ambitious while mutually uncreative Sons of Houses.”

  “You take care of business for the whole House, as in Carve? You control Carve?”

  I stared at her then shook my head rapidly. “That’s not what I said. Carve is unstable at best, insane at times. In his more lucid moments, he gives authority where he sees fit.”

  “You’re Carve’s right hand man in spite of Jarvais being Son.”

  I shrugged, uncomfortably. “My father gave my brother authority to destroy Harding. It’s his first carte blanche and it has gone very well for Jarvais. I see him taking over more subtle aspects of the House at any time.”


  “Your father?”

  I stared at her. Had I said that?

  “Your father is Carve? Your brother is Jarvais? That would make Camilla your sister.”

  She took a shaky breath, then another, too shallow to give her much oxygen as her chest rose and fell. She slapped me, her palm striking my cheek, knocking me back on the bed, laid out. I put my arms under my head and stared at the ceiling. She would be leaving, furious with me and herself. I tried to recover an iota of defense against the pain to come. I would cushion it with the knowledge of her presence.

  “Why did you stop writing? If you’re an unconscionable Hybrid who will continue a flirtatious correspondence with a child, why did you stop when I needed you the most? You got my letter. I begged you to give me your words. Why did you leave me alone?”

  I sat up, slowly, cheek still stinging. “Would you like to see? It’s not for everyone, but if you’d like to know, unbutton my shirt.”

  She frowned at me, glanced down at my buttons then up at my face. “You want me to take off your clothes?”

  I smiled, thinly. “It will be less exciting than it sounds. My intent is not seduction.”

  “Why not? What is your intent, exactly? I don’t understand you. Why would you write to a fifteen year old girl?”

  “I didn’t know that you were a Daughter of a House for a long time. I thought you were something else, a maid or poor relation who Camilla brow beat into doing her duty for her. Your letters amused me.”

  “Amused you?”

  “Entertained, touched, interested, intrigued, tantalized, teased, whichever word you use, there was never any intention of anything other than an entirely appropriate correspondence. You were a child. I was a killer. What could we possibly have in common? I may be a less savory character, but I’m half Cool. Seduction of infants is not in my programming.”

  She put her trembling hands on my shirt then proceeded to unbutton the top button. “What did we have in common?”

  I swallowed as he fingers brushed my chest as she tugged on my shirt. “Plants. We both liked plants. And poetry. And music, and we both felt torn in two by our mixed blood. You didn’t feel at home anywhere you were. Always the Hollow, the poetry had to self-mutilate, so that no one suspected.”

  “Poetry was my obsession,” she said, pulling open the next button of my shirt. “But you’re right. It never was respectable how emotional I got about it. I think it’s bizarre being unemotional about obsessions. What is the point of them if you can’t be passionate about it?”

  I smiled, I couldn’t help it when her face lit up like that, emotion for something she loved infusing her features with life. “In this world it isn’t safe to care too much, to open your soul for the daggers of the world. I was vulnerable at that time, forced to kill for a House I would never truly be part of when every kill destroyed me, my music, my soul. I’d grown apathetic. Your letters saved me.”

  She inhaled sharply as she undid another button. She was certainly taking her time. “But you stopped.”

  I nodded and brushed her hands away, unbuttoning the shirt rapidly. Otherwise, I’d be forgetting the purpose of the strip tease, instead burying her in duvet and kissing her until we both forgot about the Code. She was too close, too soft and sad.

  I shrugged off the shirt and turned, pulling my hair to the side so that she could see my back, the scars beginning at the base of my neck that went down to my waist. I felt her hands against my skin, tracing against the spirals and whorls that were scars instead of runes.

  “Who did this to you?” she whispered in a trembling voice, so dangerous and dark that I closed my eyes, memorizing the sound of her, the feel of her touch as well as absorbing her imprint. No one else had touched my scars and lived.

  “My father persuaded me that anything was possible. If I had runes, no one could dispute my place as Son of Carve. I could have it all, a place in the House, and you.”

  I felt her shock, horror and something else, something soft that made her wrap her arms around my body, across my stomach and chest while she wept against my back. I covered her hands with mine, holding onto her. She wasn’t supposed to have empathy. She should be appalled that I’d be audacious enough to question my place as Hybrid. I was, but of course she did understand. She always had. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t control myself, not when I’d done my best for so long to do what was the only way. To keep her safe, apart from me, happy in a way, but she wasn’t happy, not when she sobbed like this, my own wounds matching her own internal ones.

  I closed my eyes and leaned her, so slightly and carefully, easing back her sorrow, her misery, but what could I replace it with? Hope? What hope did we have? Her best safety was within the House of Slide. I could not give her what she needed. I had to let her go. I had to before it was too late.

  “You were trying to get runes during those months? You couldn’t write to me?”

  “I’d decided that if I could offer you a future, I could continue our correspondence. Otherwise, I would maintain the farewell I sent where I explained how sorry I was for entering into an unethical and inappropriate as well as unintentional alliance. I wrote the letter. I sent it. You ignored it completely. I sent another one, an apology, a farewell, and then I drowned in pain for weeks. I couldn’t read your letters, not when my eyes were swollen closed from the pressure.”

  She nodded and pulled away. Reluctantly I released her hands before turning to look at her. She had her arms wrapped around her body, as though holding herself together. “I see. That explains it then. If you were determined to follow through on your entirely appropriate dismissal of me, why did you join my brother?”

  I sighed and shook my head. “That, you’d have to ask Grim.”

  “You know Grim?”

  I shrugged. “We’re both killers. We have so much in common, except for everything else about us. He’s a bit mad, if you ask me.”

  “Darling, aren’t we all,” she said, capturing my face in her hands. “Grim knows about the letters?”

  I nodded only slightly, held by her grasp.

  “He’ll be coming for you when he hears that you’ve been entertaining me.”

  I shrugged. “That’s low on my list of concerns.”

  “It shouldn’t be. Grim is very good at what he does.”

  “But you’re better,” I replied, turning my head and kissing her hand.

  “At what?”

  “You make me forget my limitations. I don’t care about death or pain or anything beside you. It’s as thorough an obsession as any man has ever had, fueled by the constancy of my Cool blood. If I have to die so that you can go on with your life, so be it. This has been worth more than a million deaths.”

  She pulled back as though I’d insulted her, fire springing into her eyes as she thrust my shirt at me. “Is that supposed to flatter me? No. If anyone kills you, it will be me, and only after you remove my blocks and join Slide.” She stood and smoothed down her clothing.

  “That’s not a very well-envisioned plan,” I said delicately.

  She lifted her chin. “If you’re trying to say that it’s impossible, then you don’t know me very well. There are millions of possibilities that include something other than you dying heroically and romantically to save me, or some other such rubbish. I do not accept your sacrifice, however charming it might sound to a fifteen-year-old, I’m not that person anymore. From you I’m going to demand practicality and intention.”

  “Intention?” I asked, frowning at her.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t mean it like that, but maybe. Otherwise, you’ll be my illicit lover. You’ve ruined me for any other man. You know that, right? You seduced me with yucca fronds and mango juice at my most impressionable age. You owe me a little follow-through.”

  “If you put it that way,” I said feeling a little bit like I’d gotten hit by a truck. “You have exceeded my every expectation. Again. How do you do that?”

  She smiled slightly as she got up and went to the do
or. “You should have met my mother. You would have loved her.”

  She left the room, leaving me stunned and numb. The numbness changed as the seeds she planted in my heart began to swell. Hope. Hope would kill me if Grim didn’t get to me first, but how it felt, like wings, like flight, like anything at all in the world was possible.

  Chapter 9

  Helen

  I felt like someone else, like I’d been half asleep for years and only now opened my eyes all the way and looked at the sun, shimmering rays illuminating the world around me. I didn’t know what to think. I was Helen of Slide, Daughter to the House of Slide. But I also had Hollow blood and a weakness for poetry and plants. I’d gone to sleep uncertain and woke up beside Matthew knowing. I didn’t know what I thought, but how I felt overwhelmed my reason and left me with a certainty that had no practical basis.

  I went into the green and white study, alone with a chessboard that I played against myself while I paced. He’d tried to get runed. He’d suffered for a dream that had shattered. I still didn’t know everything, know anything it felt like, but that dream had been resurrected when I’d seen him, felt him, known him. We had both suffered, but the pain diminished when we were together to the point of shifting to the other side, becoming bliss, peace, and hope. Hope. What hope could we have? Would I give up my place as Daughter, abandon Slide, my father, my heritage, all that I’d been born for simply because I felt something for a conflicted Hybrid, a killer, a soulful, musician who loved plants and guitars and me?

  My heart pounded as I picked up a queen, smoothing the ivory in my fingers. I picked up the ebony king and closed my eyes. I felt more whole with him than I’d ever felt at the House. Could I go back to living a half-life out of duty? I shook my head and went to the phone on the desk, the glossy green receiver in my hand as I dialed with trembling fingers.

  “Helen,” my father answered on the first ring.

  “I’m safe,” I replied, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice.

  “You’ll be safe when you’re home.”

  I tightened my grip on the king. “I can’t come home.”