House of Slide Hybrid

by Juliann Whicker

  I made it to the end of the alley, pushing my hands deeper into my pockets. My jeans were cold enough. It was a good thing that I’d resisted the urge to put on my new sparkly tights in the bathroom before I dyed my hair, otherwise, my knees would be frozen solid.

  The cold bit my cheeks as I stood, hesitating outside the metal door. I stared at the old gray metal slab, studying the nicks and gouges until I finally forced my numb hands to try the handle. It would be locked and if it was then I’d just turn around and go home.

  The knob broke off in my hand. I stood, staring at the slim metal bar in the dim light from the far away street while the door swung in with a creak. I stood there as a shiver crawled down my spine. I swallowed then pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped through.

  I took two steps into the darkness, inhaled one breath of air thick with the smell of motor oil then blinked as the fluorescents came on, revealing the figure of a man right before he hit me.

  It happened so fast, but I could feel the contours of every inch of his chest beneath a thin shirt as his arms wrapped around me, twisting us so that I landed mostly on him when we hit the floor. The feel of his body hitting me wasn’t only the physical shock off a massive piece of flesh knocking the wind out of me, I also felt a lurch from my head to my toes as the heat of him spread through me along with a bone-deep awareness that I lay in the arms of my soul mate.

  I clung to his shoulders as he pulled away, only far enough to look at me, to gaze at me with those burning hazel eyes that held a mixture of greens and golds that were warm and alive. I spent a million heartbeats caught in that gaze, lost in the color and heat that spun out into infinity before I gasped needing oxygen. He blinked slowly then lifted me like I weighed nothing until I sat away from him on the concrete floor, barely braced by the arm wrapped around my shoulder. I leaned forward over my knees, struggling to catch my breath as his hand absently rubbed the base of my scalp. I trembled from the heat, from the impact, or maybe from relief that he was alive, whole, safe beside me.

  I pulled him close, pressing my cheek against his throat where his pulse beat so loud and fast in my ear. I felt my own heart, ricocheting in my chest in time with his. I pushed my fingers through his hair, sighing as the strands slid against my palms. His heart sped impossibly fast while his skin burned hotter and hotter against mine.

  He held perfectly still even as his heart raced then moved his hand slowly from my head, down my shoulder, over the thick puffy coat to my wrist. My gasp as his fingers found my wrist, the wrist that the crazy Hybrid had burned, made Lewis pull back, leaving me without any trace of his touch while my skin ached, betrayed as the cold air brushed my face instead of his warmth.

  He sat in front of me, just out of reach with his legs crossed, one hand clenched around the hilt of a simple, long knife that I only noticed then. He held it casually on one denim thigh. He could have been a normal guy in a t-shirt and jeans, but there was nothing ordinary about the way he looked with a knife7 or the way he looked at me.

  I sat locked in a gaze so intense that I could hardly breathe. He looked like a Hotblood except that he had a stillness that contained the heat of his fury as he stared at me, a mixture of heat and intention that came from his dual nature, Wild, Hotblood. The room could barely hold all of his energy. There was so much of him to see and feel that I didn’t possess the capacity to capture all of him, but I wanted to try.

  He blinked then shook his head like he was trying to convince himself of something before he moved. I breathed a little bit easier when he stood up, staring at the way he moved as he looked out the door I’d left open.

  Lewis was there. What was I doing in the same room as him? I mean, besides barely breathing. The sound of the door clanging shut made me feel like his prisoner, or maybe it was the way he looked at me with eyes that held me tighter and closer than prison walls. How was I supposed to escape him when I couldn’t even look away?

  “Where is your guardian?” His words were quiet, the voice level, but I felt the words like they’d been written into my flesh, a voice that brought back a hundred memories, made my heart ache and beat a little faster. He took a step closer to me, rubbing the knife slowly over the fabric of his pants while his eyes narrowed, studying me with merciless calculation.

  “In bed?” My voice was hardly a whisper as my breath struggled to catch up to my racing heart but at least I’d remembered how to talk.

  “A few things don’t add up,” he said as he cocked his head to the side, bringing the knife up to absently rub the blade against his jaw. Right. Like, what he was doing in the garage when the crazy Hybrid had practically promised that he wouldn’t be there, also, how he could move the knife like that, thoughtlessly, a natural extension of his hands. He must have had it out during our entire collision without accidentally stabbing anyone. That’s because he’s Axel, I told myself, because apparently I needed a reminder. I mean, he looked like Axel all intense and powerful but at the same time, he still felt like Lewis. He stood taller than I remembered, but maybe that had to do with his body holding his awesome soul instead of my smaller, more dainty version, or maybe it had more to do with the fact that I was still sitting on the floor.

  I forced my gaze on the room past Lewis while I tried to collect myself, to get a grip. The garage was bigger than it looked from the outside. A few cars parked in front of the large garage door that I hadn’t noticed before where it took up most of the wall. Past that were a mechanic’s lift and a few machines I couldn’t possibly identify while the rest of the room held a long line of shelves. At least, it had probably been a line before the shelves were ripped to pieces then flung around the room. One long metal strip dangling over the hood of Lewis’s purple mustang like a giant spider’s leg, leaving a hole in the windshield with cracks spreading over the rest of it like cobwebs.

  The mess was as impressive as it was random, leaving some shelves perfectly aligned and untouched while others were tangled together in what looked like an intentional metal sculpture fused together. In the middle of the mess I couldn’t see the floor.

  I found my feet, barely noticing the twinge in my ribs as I stared at the wreckage. “What happened?” I asked, turning to Lewis. It almost didn’t matter, not when his gaze held me again, wrapping me in the warmth that I wanted to suffocate in. He studied me, stared into me until he shrugged then looked at the mess like he’d forgotten about it too.

  “Someone broke in.”

  “Who did it?”

  “Not a lot of people know that it’s here, maybe two people that are still alive. I think it was Aiden. I think he told you to come here after he redecorated my place so that I would be here when you came.” He turned back to look at me, his voice as intense and relentless as his gaze. “The fingerprint burns on your wrist match his large hands. I don’t like that you have been socializing with the least stable Hybrid I know, or that you’ve been sent here to me,” he said with the hint of a smile. “The second least stable Hybrid I know.” His smile became predatory as he took a step towards me then reached forward.

  My heart stopped as he pulled Snowy’s pink hat off my head, letting the blue strands of hair fall down over my face. His eyebrows rose in surprise as he blinked at me, then he really smiled, a smile that I dreamed of sometimes, a smile that warmed me more than the fury.

  I could have stood there forever basking in his perfection, but there was a little voice in the back of my head that told me that Valerie was right about him being too good for me. The idea of Valerie was refreshingly unpleasant. I had to focus, to remember what I was doing in the garage in the first place. Like, why the Hybrid I picked up in the Mall bathroom would trash the garage and then send me here to find Old Peter’s cane.

  “You think that the crazy Hybrid set us up to meet? Why?” I sounded practically rational.

  He took another step closer, and I found my knees traitorously weak. “That’s a good question. Maybe, since you’re my soulmate, he thinks that you’re goin
g to destroy me…that you’re the only one who can. Do you want to hurt me?”

  I stared at him, blank for a moment while I studied his strong features. It was laughable, particularly when I’d seen myself, tough, tattooed, and still incapable of killing him, although I had tried. Maybe it wasn’t laughable.

  “Well, since we’re talking about an unstable Hybrid, his reasons are probably not quite rational, right?” I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. “I was convinced that he really wanted Old Peter’s cane though. He felt desperate.” My leaning was practically useless if I couldn’t feel that.

  Lewis shook his head, still close enough that I could have touched him if I stretched out my hand, but I didn’t. “Aiden always wants the cane, but Old Peter made sure that Aiden can’t touch it with the runes he put on it.” Lewis touched my arm with warmth I could feel through the coat, but it only made me shiver more. “So you don’t feel any violent urges towards me? No, you don’t,” he said and sounded almost disappointed as he studied me intently then turned away, setting the knife on the nearest unbroken shelf.

  Wait a minute. He was talking about the blood bond. Were my veins burning even if I couldn’t feel them? How was he doing with the discomfort? He seemed so in control, not like he wanted whatever he wanted when his veins burned for me. I felt heat in my face as I thought how unlikely it was that he burned for me.

  “How well can you lean?” he asked as he bent to retrieve a metal bar that had rolled to the edge of the mess. He acted so normal, like me showing up while a momentary surprise wasn’t a very big deal.

  I watched him place the bar beside the knife then I stepped forward to help with the cleaning. Maybe that would be the most normal thing to do. I picked up a weird metal thing with tubes coming out of it that seemed to hum in my hand. Lewis turned to me, looked at the strange tool then up at me, eyes widening slightly.

  “I don’t know enough. I spend a lot of time blocking my unintentional leaning. I don’t know how you leaned so well with my soul. Where should I put this…thing?”

  His smile was a sudden thing, a flicker of impossible beauty that quickly disappeared. “That is a bloodworking instrument. Where do you think those should go?”

  I felt a little nauseous as I looked down at the innocent if strange looking object. “Probably on shelves further from the cars since you’ll need those for the normal tools. You’re going to need new shelves.”

  “That is a good point,” he said slowly reaching for the thing, carefully pulling it out of my fingers without touching any of the tubes, but the feel of his hands on my skin made me shiver again. “It has occurred to me that cleaning my garage might be dangerous for you.”

  He tossed it onto the shelf beside the knife and the pipe then took a step towards me that made me stumble back. His hand caught my arm, steadying me even as he took another step that forced me away from the mess. The next step was more like dancing since I finally expected the direction and force of his movement. I forgot everything else as I moved with him, sharing his energy if only for a moment. He took another step and another until we were beside the counter that ran along the end of the room before he let go of my arm and turned away.

  He dropped down to open a cupboard and search inside for something while I stood there, staring at him. Even the top of his head was stare-worthy.

  When he stood with an old pot in his hand I jumped. He kept moving so suddenly, changing direction, acting instead of talking. He filled the pot with water from his sink, a sink with a long gooseneck spout that would be much better for washing hair than the sink in the mall.

  I remembered that it wasn’t polite to stare by the time the pot was full and he turned away to place it onto a heating coil with a thick black cord leading to the wall. If this room had been all white like Grim’s the cord would have stood out but here the counter was discolored gray instead of white, the cupboards below a mishmash of doors that didn’t match or even seem like the same material. Paint colored everything, streaks and splashes that reminded me of my Axel painting, that Lewis was the master, the bloodworker that I didn’t know. I seemed to forget everything when he looked at me.

  “Are you making me tea?” I asked to fill the vibrating silence between us. I studied his broad shoulders beneath his t-shirt fabric as he stood in front of the coil, paying close attention to the water that wasn’t boiling. The sizzling as the coil heated and evaporated water from the damp pan filled the air.

  “Not tea. Hot chocolate. Have you heard of the Dissonant Porpoises?”

  I blinked as he glanced over his shoulder at me. “Dissonant what?”

  “They’re a band that I think you’d like,” he explained, turning to lean against the counter with his arms crossed. He looked relaxed, but it seemed studied instead of natural. “I really liked them when I had your soul. Without it, they’re still okay but not the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. They’re having a concert next week. I could take you.”

  My mouth went dry and my hands trembled. If Lewis, the old Lewis had asked me, I would have understood that he’d asked me on a date, or just a friends thing, but this person, Lewis Axel Nialls wasn’t the kind of person to ask me anywhere, much less to a concert with lots of people and lights to blow up. I couldn’t wrap my brain around the idea of dating this monstrous ball of heat and life. Sitting beside him in a movie theater would make my date with Osmond look like a walk in the park. I turned my head and saw the sink again.

  “I really like your sink.” I swallowed, hating my awkward words. “It’s much better than the one at the mall. I don’t think I did a very good job washing out the dye, or the bleach.” He could see how bad my hair looked. Snowy was right. I never should have messed with my nice brown hair. It had been pretty if boring.

  “Do you think my hair will fall out? Snowy thinks it will, or maybe she hopes it will, you know, karma’s punishment for me doing something so weird. That would be fun though, I mean, I could hang out with Satan and smoke cigars. We’d be practically twins.” I choked on my laugh, daring to glance at him over my shoulder. He had no smile to soften the intensity of his gaze. I quickly faced the sink, turned on the water and thought of my father, so much like that water, pure, clear, knowing exactly what direction to run, except that he’d run away from his family, his soul mate, me.

  I ducked under the faucet, needing the water to drown out my thoughts, the awareness that Lewis my soulmate was so close but impossible for me to really understand or know. I shouldn’t be here with him, even if I wanted to so much that I could barely hold myself together. When he put his hands on my head, warm, strong hands, I shuddered and closed my eyes, trying to picture my mother rubbing her hands over my scalp like she used to do when I was little, but his hands were different, larger, warmer. He tugged my coat off brushing my too small t-shirt at my shoulders. The heat spread down my arms to my hands where they clung to the edge of the counter.

  I focused on breathing, in, out, in, out while Lewis pushed his fingers through my wet hair, rubbing my ear, the top of my forehead where I’d stained it blue. He shouldn’t have touched me like that, not when I could barely breathe, trapped between the counter and him while his heat pressed into me.

  My back ached from bending, from staying so still until he finally turned off the water. He ran his hands over my hair, squeezing out the water before he finally stepped back, giving me a chance to get it together. I stayed there for another moment, blinking the water from my eyes before I straightened, still hanging onto the counter.

  The sound of clinking turned my head. He dumped brown powder into two cream colored mugs, both of them chipped and cracked. I’d forgotten about the boiling water. He moved with ridiculous grace for someone making hot cocoa, the muscles beneath his T-shirt fascinating as he poured the boiling water into the cups.

  I gave him my most cheerful smile when he handed me my cup.

  “Thanks. You didn’t have to wash my hair.”

  He didn’t look like the kind of person wh
o washed hair and went to concerts. He looked like a dangerous Bloodworker who had no business asking me on a date. Snowy was right. He was not Lewis, not some dreamy crush-worthy classmate, he was dangerous, deadly, older than most Hotbloods and seriously invested in my blood after I’d given him a sample.

  His eyes when they focused on me burned a little more golden than before, but maybe it was just me. He took a quick sip then put the mug on the counter. “You’re freezing.” He stepped towards me.

  I jumped, sloshing on my hand. I barely registered the pain before he had my mug away from me and my hand back under running water, cold this time.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered, too close to his chest as he reached past me, seeming to focus on my hand, but his side brushed mine, only two t-shirts separating skin. How was I supposed to think, to keep space when his t-shirt intoxicated me?

  “I move too fast without thinking,” he said in a low voice beside my ear.

  I shivered as his warm breath heated my skin. My teeth chattered as I stood, unsure whether I was too hot or too cold, too close to Lewis.

  He turned off the water as he held my hand loosely in his warm grip. “I want to warm you up before you leave. Can I touch your hair?”

  I opened my mouth to say no, but instead gave a jerky nod and held my breath as he ran his hands through my hair, slowly and methodically until steam wisped up, swirls that rose as he combed my hair with his fingers.

  “You’re drying my hair,” I said to his chest as steam rose around us. His focus stayed on my hair, the blue against his strong hands strangely appropriate, like my hair belonged in his hands whatever color it was. No. I couldn’t think things like that. Not when I didn’t really know him. Not when I couldn’t trust him.