House of Slide Hybrid

by Juliann Whicker

  I nodded although I couldn’t really comprehend what that meant, living in the woods with a monster like the curved fanged, clawed silvery beast I’d had nightmares about.

  “After my time with Old Peter, I stayed with friends of my father’s House, friends who taught me pain, taught me to control my gifts of fire and flame like your Trainer will teach you.” He shook his head. “I tired of killing for them. I don’t make a good assassin. I get distracted and don’t feel the loyalty. I acted the part of the Wild, but I remembered Hotbloods. I found Old Peter, convinced him to teach me Bloodwork, and when I’d learned all he could teach me I experimented with the possibilities. I hunted demons. I made friends some would barely call human.” He shrugged. “Someone stole my paintings. I found Old Peter once again and he pointed me towards you. I lost my soul, lost my heart, but you’re welcome to keep it. I never did anything useful with it anyway.”

  “You’re really the Nether?” I reached out and touched his face carefully with my fingers. “You can move through space and time with your Nether mists? Does it come out of your pores or what?”

  “That’s mostly Pisces,” he said, swallowing, like my fingers on his cheek made him nervous. “It takes a lot of effort to produce any kind of mist without him. He’s great if you like hunting. Have you hunted recently?”

  “All that time I didn’t want to tell you about how I took death, and you knew.”

  “You had my soul, Dari. Of course you hunted.”

  I turned away, crossing my arms over my chest. I wanted to scream, to pound on him until he hurt as much as I did, but then again he had to deal with burning veins and I didn’t. I shook my head. Vengeance wasn’t me. It would have been me if Devlin hadn’t taken my soul, but he had, and so I stood shivering and feeling alone.

  “You should go,” he said.

  I spun around, took two steps until I was pressed against him, and pulled his head down to meet mine. I drank him in, kissing him like I’d never see him again, which maybe I wouldn’t. I pulled away, his shirt fisted in both of my hands.

  “What is your number?”

  “Number?” he repeated, blankly.

  “Phone number. If I want to get in touch with you, what number do I call?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not available by phone.”

  “Don’t you have friends who I could call who…”

  He shook his head, no.

  “So, I have to find a psycho Hybrid who knows where you are if I want to see you again?”

  “You want to see me again?”

  I stared at his shirt, at my knuckles that even in the dim light I could tell were going white from holding on so tight.

  “I need to see you again. This hasn’t been enough.”

  “Nothing will be enough,” he whispered, leaning forward to smooth my back with his palm. “That is, until the bond is completed and we are forever one.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But at least now we’ve been introduced.”

  “I didn’t tell you who I am.” I pulled away from him, my head spinning and my knees weak. “I might never see you again.”

  “I could die, and then you’d never need to complete the bond.”

  I glared at him. “No dying.”

  He gave me a half smile. “You could give me your number and I could call you. That might be fun to talk to your mother. We could catch up.”

  I frowned and looked around for a pencil or pen. I saw a piece of charcoal on the floor that must have rolled off the shelf when the Aiden trashed the place. I retrieved the charcoal and grabbed his arm, glancing up at him when he turned it over, showing me the lighter skin of his inner arm. I wrote the number, having to cross out the five that looked like a two. With trembling fingers, I drew the dark charcoal over his skin, refusing to look up at him until I’d finished.

  “When will you call me?” I demanded after I’d finished, tucking the charcoal into my pocket.

  He stared at me, his eyes bright gold, intense and hot. “I’m still not entirely certain that I’m letting you leave.”

  I swallowed. “You want me to stay so that we can finish the bond?”

  “I don’t want you to get runes. It will probably kill you and you know how I feel about you dying.”

  “I’ll be fine. I saw it.”

  “In a dream?”

  I frowned. “Don’t worry about me. I’m the one who rescued you, remember?”

  “After Old Peter and I saved you and your whole family from slaughter.”

  I winced.

  “Sorry,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, the one with my number written on him. “Don’t rush into anything, all right? Hybrids with runes that take are extremely rare.”

  “My Trainer, a Wild Cool Hybrid has runes,” I said, defensively.

  “Matthew of Carve is your Trainer?” he asked, thoughtfully.

  “You know him?”

  He nodded. “For a Head he isn’t all bad. He doesn’t meddle as much as most. Of course when he does, it’s cataclysmic.” He grinned like that was fun. “He’s always had a strange alliance with Slide. He knows very interesting arcane things. Maybe I should have a conversation with him.”

  I laughed. “My parents and Satan had a ‘conversation’ with him. Satan was washing blood off his knuckles. Is that the kind of conversation you’d be having?”

  He shook his head. “No. I want to know what he thinks about your soul.”

  “My soul?”

  The main lights came on, making me blink and feel exposed as he shrugged and turned to rummage around in a shelf before he came back with a jar and a pile of gauze.

  “Your soul was fragmented. Otherwise you would have died when your brother took it out of you. He did something very dark, very forbidden. Most of the references have been destroyed.”

  “Why do you want to know how Devlin took my soul?”

  He stared at me. “Information like that could change the world.”

  “For the better, or worse?”

  He smiled a smile that I didn’t recognize. “That depends where you stand.”

  He stood close to me as he began wrapping the bandage around my wrist with barely enough pressure for me to feel him much less hurt.

  “I still don’t know why you want to know how Devlin took my soul.”

  “I want to know who else has that knowledge and what they’ve been doing with it.”

  His eyes flashed gold while I tried to understand.

  “Jason is dead,” I whispered, tightening my grip on his arm.

  “And the Houses behind his involvement are dispersed like a dandelion puff to the four winds. But someone wanted your brother’s blood. Someone who Jason betrayed.”

  “The House of Slide and my father took care of everyone involved with Jason.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe that’s true. It’s time to get you home, or your uncle’s house anyway,” he said, turning away from me, going to grab my black puffer coat from the cold cement.

  “You keep telling me what to do. If what you told me about your life is true, the first thirty years barely even count. You’re very bossy for someone who’s not really all that much older than me.”

  He laughed as he walked towards me, holding up my coat as I reluctantly put my arms through, feeling the tug of the bandage.

  “And living without a soul, or only a fragment of one, would give you three times as much pain as an ordinary life. That makes you forty. If I’m twenty, and you’re forty, you’re much too old for me.”

  I shook my head as I fingered the bandage on my wrist that covered the burn marks from the unbalanced Hybrid that I hadn’t really noticed, not with Lewis in the same room as me. “Thank you for the bandage. You’re very neat and gentle. You should be a doctor.”

  “No. I should be a mechanic,” he corrected. “If I were a doctor, I’d have to keep everything sterile all the time. That’s not my style, even if I did spend eighteen idyllic months training wi
th Glissade.”

  “Glissade is your adopted House?” I asked, walking with him towards the door even if I hadn’t quite decided to leave.

  “They used me until I’d learned all I needed from them. I’ll walk with you.”

  I shook my head, but he slid his arm in mine, his warmth penetrating my jacket.

  “You don’t have to. It’s really close and…” His gaze made me forget why I didn’t want him walking me. I did, except that I didn’t want to leave at all, but if I stayed, he’d cut his veins open, and I’d faint, or we’d complete the bond some other way. Hadn’t I told him that’s what I wanted? What were we doing outside of the garage, walking down a dark and icy alley with a distant streetlight that glowed rosily?

  When he slipped on the ice, I laughed then clapped a hand over my mouth because you shouldn’t laugh at someone for nearly falling. He laughed with me, an unexpected sound that made my heart constrict and ridiculous tears well up in my eyes. I blinked away the moisture, focusing on the walls, the smell of fast food and not on the creature beside me, arm still firmly linked with mine.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice low as he leaned down, brushing my hair away from my face, forcing me to look up at him.

  “I have no idea what I am. I think that I needed to see you, even if I have no idea what to do with Lewis Axel Nialls, worldclass everything.”

  He grinned. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out sooner than is good for me. Just don’t lean me again.”

  “Did I lean you?”

  “You could have died back there in the warehouse when you tried to lean me. I’ve drained a few Hollows and took their skills. You might lose your mind trying to lean me. I wouldn’t like that.”

  I gasped and stopped walking. He’d drained Hollows? I stared up at him, feeling my stomach twist. I knew that he’d killed people, that he’d done Bloodworking like Jason my brother’s murderer, but the way he said it, like an aside made me feel like I was drowning.

  “Dari,” he said, leaning down with concern etched on his face. “They were not good people. They were the kinds of Hollows that started the war.”

  “My father started the war,” I said, trying to sound calm.

  “Your father, Woods, of course. He lifted the protection Cools gave Hollows, but I believe that he only personally killed one of them. The Hollow One.”

  He shook his head and started walking, looking thoughtfully at the street in front of us, dragging me along with him when my feet took too much time to move.

  “Have you killed anyone since the last time I saw you?” I asked.

  He shook his head then shrugged. “No. Not really.”

  “Not really? What does that mean?”

  “I’ve been in the presence of death, seen others kill, but I haven’t personally inflicted death on anyone. I’ve hunted of course. We should go hunting together sometime.”

  I shivered as I remembered the thrill of the chase, the taste of death, the drowning in Nether.

  “Yeah, after the concert we can get ice cream and death.”

  He didn’t answer me. I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t be judging him. He lived in a world of violence that I couldn’t begin to comprehend. He’d watched his family die when he was ten, killed the person who had destroyed them, become more animal than human, a Tarzan in the woods with a monster, drowning in death and mists every day.

  I squeezed his arm. “I’m struggling with ethics. I don’t understand why life has to be so hard.”

  “’Life is the jailor. Death is the angel that draws back the unwilling bolts and sets us free.’ That’s what Glissade told me as they sent me on my first mission as an angel of death. It’s funny what you remember.” He touched my face, the barest brush of his fingers, but it sent fire chasing across my skin. “I don’t know very much about ethics. I don’t know very much about life, either. Death. I know death. I know art. I know pain. You have taught me more about life, about love, than anything else I’ve experienced. Thank you, for that.”

  I struggled to swallow down the sudden lump in my throat. I ducked my head and studied my boots, unable to speak for the rest of the walk to Grim’s house. I found his hand, squeezing his fingers as tight as I could.

  Chapter 6

  Once we got to Grim’s house, I stopped, staring at Lewis and gripping his hand tight.

  “We’re here,” I finally said.

  He raised his dark eyebrows and smiled. “I’ll walk you to your door.”

  I shook my head. “It’s a window.”

  “I’ll walk you to your window,” he said with a grin that showed a flash of teeth in the shadowy night.

  “It’s all right. You don’t have to…”

  He started walking, pushing through the hedge in the exact spot where I’d fallen through. I sighed and followed him, muttering thanks when he pushed back the shrubbery for me to pass. He walked unerringly to the window I’d left ajar, sliding his hands around my waist, under my coat against my shirt.

  He froze in that position instead of lifting me up like I knew he’d been about to do.

  “I guess this is good-night,” I murmured, sliding my hands up his shoulders and around his neck.

  I leaned forward, brushing my lips against his before I lost my nerve. His mouth burned against mine, spreading warmth through me as I tangled my hands in his hair, pressing against him in sudden urgency. I needed to remember this, the way he tasted, the feel of his lips and hands against my back, because who knew when he’d call me. He had to call me. I had to see him again. I couldn’t wake up not knowing if he were alive or dead. I pressed my mouth against his, desperate and wild until he responded in kind, one hand sliding up my back beneath my puffer coat while the other gripped my hip, pulling me against his body in a way that made the rest of the world fall away. I kissed Lewis, felt warmth, home and desire that grew from my stomach and spread through my limbs.

  I gasped when he pulled away, steam filling the air between us.

  “That’s a little passionate for a Cool girl,” he said, sounding almost as shaky as I felt.

  “Sorry. Let me try again,” I said, pulling him against me.

  He shook his head slightly then lifted me up, sliding my body against his until I perched on the windowsill. When he let go of me, I fell over backwards, hitting my head against the floor. He climbed in after me, smoothing my hair as he hung over me before he slipped his hand beneath my head, cradling the bruise. His eyes glowed in the darkness.

  “You’re in my uncle’s house,” I whispered as he traced a path over my skin with his fingertips.

  “Lying on the floor,” he agreed.

  “I’ve never kissed so much in my life. You’d think it would get boring.”

  “Would you?” he asked as he leaned over me and then a centimeter from my lips I heard a thump. He pulled away, glaring at the door.

  “What was that?” I asked following his gaze. The dark room showed nothing out of the ordinary, lit dimly through the window by city lights.

  “Shhh,” he murmured against my ear, his breath spreading over my cheek like a tropical breeze.

  “Like being on vacation,” I sighed, settling against his warmth and weight, like a big, hot, hard, Hotblooded blanket.

  “Wait here,” he whispered as he moved, sliding away from me like a shadow, leaving me alone on the cold, hard floor.

  I scrambled to my feet and followed him out of the room, a few steps behind him as he edged into the hall. I strained my eyes in the dark, but all that I could see was a line of light under the kitchen door past Lewis’s boots. I gasped and covered my mouth as Lewis neared the door. I hurried as quietly as I could to grab Lewis and get him out of there before Grim saw him, barely noticing that the door to the Hybrid’s room was wide open, the bed empty. I felt something twist in my stomach when I saw the messy sheets tangled over the bed.

  Grim would not have left that mess there. I reached Lewis at the closed door where he stood, listening. I wrapped my arm
around his chest while my heart pounded. I looked cautiously behind me but there was nothing to see beside the open door to my room with a cold breeze from my open window.

  Lewis covered my hand with his, squeezing my fingers before he sprang forward, knocking the door open and landing inside the room, dragging me behind him. I stared around at the all-white kitchen, all-white, that is, except for a human sized black spider smashed on the wall.

  The spider turned his head and managed to raise one eyebrow curiously, like he wondered if I would stay staring at him all day. My uncle was spread-eagled against the white wall like a bug on a corkboard, in fact, as I looked closer I could see steel protruding from his wrists and ankles, like someone had nailed him there. I spun around, searching for the psycho who stuck people to walls, but besides Lewis, Grim and I, the room was empty.

  “Good evening,” Grim said, calmly. “He’s gone. It seems you missed all the excitement. I have to admit that I’m relieved. So that’s where you’ve been. I take it that you’re the mysterious Axel who helped Dariana find her soul.”

  Lewis walked over to Grim and pulled a butter knife out of his wrist slowly while Grim held his breath and turned white. Lewis held the wrist against the wall, holding him in place instead of taking out another knife.

  “What happened?” I asked, wrapping my arms around my stomach as I forced myself to walk towards him instead of running away from the sight of steel poking out of his wrists and ankles.

  “The Hybrid burned hot enough to heal more quickly than any Hotblood I’ve ever seen. His Cool abilities kept me from defending myself while he stuck me here.” Grim shook his head slightly, like it was a shame to waste so much talent on such bizarre behavior. “The Cool/Hot combination must give him an extremely unique ability set although it doesn’t seem to do much for his overall happiness. I was afraid he had kidnapped you but perhaps you’d already left on your nocturnal wanderings.”