House of Slide Hybrid

by Juliann Whicker

  “If that’s your answer…” He flipped the knife in his hand so the blade was pointed towards himself. “If you don’t mind coming over here and adding your efforts to the thrust, I’d appreciate it. It goes against my extremely strong sense of self-preservation to stab myself,” he said walking slowly towards me.

  I edged backwards, holding the teacup between us. “Wait. You think that I’m going to stab you? I don’t want knives to be what define our relationship. I’m not going to stab you. You know what happens when I see your blood. Is that what this is about, completing the bond?”

  “It’s about defending you with my life,” Lewis said, still walking towards me until I hit the tea table with the back of my waist. “If you’d rather have someone else stand between you and the darkness, all you have to do,” he said quietly, soothingly, like he was taming something wild. “Is touch the handle—I’ll do everything else.”

  “I don’t care how pretty your blade is, I’m not touching it while you stab yourself again,” I said, sternly.

  He stopped for a moment to frown at me. He bit his soft bottom lip as he thought. What would his teeth feel like against my lips? Why did everything come down to violence? Couldn’t he see that a relationship should be based one something other than how many people you were willing to kill for someone else? How could I trust him and know him if he did things because Slide made him.

  He moved suddenly, nearly faster than I could see, taking my hand away from the teacup before he wrapped his hand around mine with the handle beneath my fingers, and with a jerk, plunged the knife towards his own chest.

  I grabbed the handle with both hands as I twisted, pulling away from him then kicking him in the instep in a move that I must have stolen from Uncle Stephen which left my back hard against his hot chest while his breath warmed my neck, the knife now in front of me, clutched in both my hands and one of his, his other hand still holding my teacup. Being so close to him was a shock, the kind of sensation that proximity to Osmond didn’t prepare me for.

  I hung on desperately to the knife but the rest of the world disappeared as I struggled with the heat as it sank through my skin, deeper until I closed my eyes, biting my lip as I struggled with the knife, struggled with the craving that sprang in my throat, a craving that was eclipsed in a moment when everything I’d known disappeared and a different world unfolded in front of me as something else became tangible, more real than blue hair.

  Only a flicker and only for a moment my sight vanished leaving me in the darkness with a flaming streak of crimson wrapped in deepest, darkest velvet black that pulled at me like an atom that required my charge to be whole. It was beauty, fear, passion, but at that moment and most of all, it was desire. The blatant, raw, all-encompassing need was beyond reason, beyond fury or hope, beating at me, striking me with the force of a thirty-foot wave. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see anything past the end of the darkly burning flame. That was the only thing—one bright, burning, terrifying brilliance in a void that was going to consume me.

  I screamed, twisting and hitting out in the emptiness any way that I could, sinking my nails into flesh where I could find it, forgetting about the dagger as I struggled for a way out of the blindness and the painful desire pushing at me. It was everywhere, everything, eating away the weight and force of me, leaving me nothing but a raging inferno needing to consume.

  I heard a distant crash then found myself on the floor in the room, black spots clearing from my vision until I could see Lewis, the overturned tea table and the small cut on my arm that welled blood and stung. I still felt the irresistible pull but not nearly as much as a moment before when I’d been swallowed in darkness. I stared at the floor, at the wood and wondered if my blood would leave any stain, or if that was why they had such dark floors in this house. I shuddered as another wave of desperate need swept through me.

  I looked up where Lewis stood frozen, staring back at me with eyes so dark and fathomless, empty of flame, terrifyingly empty of heat. I dropped my eyes, focusing on the lines of wood beneath my fingers, so smooth that someone must have spent hours sanding so the lines would be barely noticeable even to me where I sat beside the knocked over tea table with broken crockery and spilt tea around me.

  I had trouble swallowing. My throat felt raw like I’d been screaming, but there hadn’t been anything but ragged breathing in that upside down, inside out moment when I’d seen… whatever I’d seen. There were things out there, things that only some people could see, like the demons that I happily hadn’t seen for months, but this wasn’t like that, like nothing I’d imagined before. It was possible that I was losing my mind and that I’d just had an episode like the Hybrid had talked about, the agony of being ripped in two making me see things.

  “You leaned me,” Lewis said, the weight of his gaze like a hand on my bent head, pressing into me. I blinked as I stared down at my arm, still welling blood and realized, even as I covered my arm with my hand, that the feeling hadn’t been mine. I risked a glance up at Lewis where he stood like he was afraid to move or breathe, his unblinking gaze still beating at me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, in a shaky voice that scared me. I sounded like I’d been in a car wreck.

  His eyes narrowed as he dropped to his knees beside me. “You’re bleeding, yet you ask me if I’m all right? I cut you.” His voice was flat and dead.

  I looked down at my arm, at the blood that seeped through my fingers, dark rich blood that doubtless he could smell. I frowned, shaking my head, quite sure that he wasn’t to blame for the cut.

  “You wouldn’t have cut me. I must have when I felt your…” I opened my mouth but I couldn’t find words for what I’d felt, instead shifting to a safer, if still terrifying subject. “I saw your soul. I think.” I looked up at him, realized how close he was that he had come closer, was on one knee with a hand outstretched while glass glinted dimly on the floor around us.

  “And you dreamed me. You must have more Hollow blood than I’d thought,” he said, his eyebrows lifting while his eyes glowed brighter.

  I felt my breath catch as I stared into that golden gaze.

  “Hollows are extinct,” I whispered, but he only shook his head sadly as he reached forward, brushing my cheek with his fingers before he shook his head, glancing down at the chaos around us, overturned table, broken dishes with tea spilled across the floor.

  “This is probably the messiest Intending known to man. Of course, we aren’t very Wild, are we?” he asked with a wry smile.

  “What does an ordinary Intending look like?” I asked, shivering and pulling my knees closer to my chest.

  He sighed and sat down, crossing his feet and leaning back on his hands. “Well, everyone is dressed in black and white, or the girl will wear an accent color that sets off her coloring magnificently. I would bet that your mother wore red. The gentleman offers her the knife of his family, and she either stabs him or accepts it with a kiss. Everyone comes in to congratulate the happy couple, or to throw him out of the place, and then they have a big dinner with dancing and music. It’s unheard of the candidate to stab the girl. Really, I cannot believe I allowed this to happen.” He reached over and applied steady pressure to my arm. I gasped when his skin touched mine, feeling his heat more than the gash beneath his hand.

  “I don’t feel sick about the blood,” I said, frowning down at his hand over my arm. “I should be having flashbacks of all the people I killed, but instead I can’t get over how much you want me.”

  He sighed. “I don’t want your skin ripped open. I want my blood poured into you until… I don’t suppose talking about it is productive.”

  “We should finish the bond,” I said, feeling dizzy.

  “Right now, we should finish the Intending Ceremony. No one is going to come in with a bandage until you make your choice.”

  “I can’t stab you,” I said with a helpless shrug. “I wish Wilds weren’t so binary. Die or Train. Kiss or Stab. They should realize that there is an inf
initude of variation between black and white, with other colors like red and yellow to make things interesting.”

  “And blue,” he said brushing my hair away from my face before he shook his head. “My knife is somewhere under the table. We’ll have to find it before you can kiss me. Do you think you can stand?”

  I blushed. “I admit that kissing you is fine incentive to stand up. I’m not sure about not falling over after I get to that point. I’m still overwhelmed with how you feel, how agonizing it is for you to not finish the bond. Didn’t I agree to do it? Are you masochistic, enjoying the torture of our blood partially combined?”

  He smiled as he stood, helping me to my feet as I swayed against him. “You smell incredible,” he whispered against my hair. “Like blood and electricity with a hint of vanilla. I’m not masochistic at all,” he said, straightening up although he still held me, his large hand covering over the gash in my arm. “Torture is only torture if there is no purpose behind the pain.”

  “Is that something you learned from Glissade?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “It’s something that I learned from you.”

  My heart thudded in my chest as his arms tightened around me and his head lowered, closer and closer to my lips before he jerked upright, blinking.

  “You intoxicate me,” he said with a grin before he dropped down, searching as he lifted the white tablecloth sending shards of crockery across the floor. He came up holding the knife triumphantly.

  “Excellent,” I said, feeling woozy. I still reverberated with the intensity of his desire that had ripped through me body and soul. “Give me the well-balanced knife that can cut through a rhino and then you can catch me while I faint.”

  He smiled and leaned forward, extending the hilt of the gem studded knife. “Hunting rhinos sounds like a lot of fun.”

  “Fun. I think that I need some fun. It can’t all be nightmares and homework.”

  “And kissing,” he said grinning at me with a suggestive raise of his eyebrows.

  “And kissing. It’s nice to know that Wilds did get something right. How do we proceed?”

  “An Intending is sealed with a ceremonial kiss. First, you need to take the knife, unless that’s too unpleasant for you, then you return the blade, preferably somewhere fleshy. Maybe a shoulder?”

  “Unpleasant for me? You’re the one who lost their soul the first time I kissed you.”

  “You have a soul. There isn’t a void any more.”

  “So, why did you kiss someone who was a void?”

  He blinked. “Void is the wrong word. You had a fragment…”

  I cut him off. “I was not myself, but still able to suck the life out of you. Kissing me should definitely make you nervous.”

  “You think I’m not nervous?” He took a step closer to me. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”

  “You didn’t act like it the other night,” I muttered.

  He grinned wickedly. “You give purpose to my pain.”

  I shook my head, fighting off dizziness from blood loss or from how ridiculously good he looked.

  I swallowed as I reached for the knife, taking it with my cut arm so I didn’t have to take my hand off my cut. The hilt felt strange in my hand, the gold and gems warming to my fingers, feeling at home in my palm. I slashed the air unconsciously, liking the sound it made as it cut through the air.

  I spun on Lewis, grabbed his tie and pulled him against me, forgetting about my arm, about the House, about anything other than my soul mate finally where he belonged—in my arms.

  He let me pull him down, sighing as I pressed my mouth to his. At first it was only soft and sweet, a brush of pressure that barely registered the heat but then roaring filled my ears as he filled my senses, taking away everything, wrapping me in heat while my eyes closed, revealing a glimmer of crimson as his mouth pressed harder against mine. His heat and strength erased the rest of the world as he wrapped his arms around me, matching my insistence, pulling me against him, his heat that I could feel even though the only thing I could see was the swirling vortex of crimson over the palpable darkness that was his soul. I tumbled, lost in heat that erased my fear, erased everything. I pulled him closer to me, stretching against him instinctively, feeling the muscles of his chest constrict even as the monster, the only thing I could see, erupted in my arms.

  I tightened my grip on him, reveling in the heat as it cut through the fear, the loneliness. His soul, flaming crimson on the outside, black velvet burning on the inside, was as glorious as he was. I took it all in, the arm around me, the feel of his body even as his soul spun before me and my new sight. My soul was somewhere inside of me, thrilling at his touch, wanting more, to be united with this other soul, to finish the bond. I couldn’t see myself. Why was that? It didn’t really matter as I strained closer to Lewis, pressing against him, craving the heat of him and his soul.

  He stiffened suddenly, his lips stilling beneath mine as if he was made of something cold and constant instead of this whirling miasma of heat that called to me even as he pulled away. The sudden desperation in me, the need to keep his heat, energy, life, made me reach out in a way I’d never experienced, like my own soul was trying to catch his.

  I saw white blue sparks that looked like laughter and waterfalls for what must have been less than a moment, reaching to catch the crimson, then Lewis shuddered, his whole body from his head to his toes before shaking me off of him, stepping back while I stumbled, disoriented and unseeing for a moment before the dim second tea parlor came back into focus.

  He stared at me, his face pale and sickly looking before he swallowed, inhaled deeply, then stooped to begin piling crockery, organizing the mess in the tablecloth so he could right the table, smoothing the surface with his shaky hands, like he was making sure it would stay where he put it.

  I tightened my hand on the knife as I took one breath at a time, watching him move, unable to speak as he worked rapidly organizing the broken crockery and glass. I looked up and saw the jagged remnants of the bulbs in the chandelier. When had I lost control and blown that up?

  “Lewis? Are you all right? Did I cut you? I must have accidentally shattered the light. I guess I shouldn’t kiss you like that.”

  “You tried to lean me,” he murmured, a low undercurrent to his voice that chilled me.

  I shook my head. “Is that what that was? It felt different.”

  He looked up and his gaze lacked the gold. Instead a dark flat green gazed at me, sharp and hard, like green glass. “You can’t lean me. If you can’t control that…”

  His words were cut off when Satan opened the door wearing a crisp suit that looked strange on his enormous body and bald head with black curlicues in sharp contrast to the white skin.

  Grim came after him giving me a slight nod as he walked around the curve of the room following Satan. The other uncles entered; Shelley, Stanley, and the other two, Saul and Stewart, but I couldn’t remember which was which. My dad came in at the end, his silver eyes flashing when he glanced at me where I stood above Lewis with a knife in my hand and blood streaming down my arm.

  After my dad, a different man, tall, but not as tall as any of my uncles, entered the room. He smiled at me. He was young and old, and when his eyes met mine I wanted to flinch away from the terrifying power of him.

  “Lewis, Axel, Nialls, of the House of Carlisle, we welcome you to Slide. Sylvester, attend to the girl,” he said in a melodic voice that was much gentler than I expected considering how much power roiled around him.

  I disliked him immediately, and probably not just because he’d called me, ‘the girl’. I mean, who does that? Lewis gets a title and a House and I get a common noun?

  I lifted my chin, getting a good grip on my arm. “The girl is fine. Thanks. If this is all over, I’ll take my Intended and leave.”

  I turned and glared at Lewis, willing him to look at me until finally, reluctantly, he lifted his eyes to mine. What I saw there was a spark of gold, but more important,
a flash of amusement.

  “There is the matter of the Intended’s proof of capability,” my grandfather, Slide or whatever said in the same gentle voice, like he hadn’t even noticed my disrespect. So irritating. “Begin,” he said as he stood with arms over his chest, waiting.

  Saul or Stewart, not sure which, walked towards Lewis where he stood beside the broken crockery. My uncle ignored me, didn’t even glance at me while he focused on Lewis with a cold clear gaze that made me shiver.

  “Dari,” Grim said, close beside me when I hadn’t even noticed him coming. I turned to look up at his pale face, sunken eyes and drooping mouth. “Let’s get your cut taken care of. No sense distracting the boy while he’s fighting.”

  “Fighting?” I asked, even as I turned to see Lewis and my uncle circling each other, like the two predators they were. I looked around for something to throw at them, but Grim’s hand on my arm made breathing hard, made everything slow down and get a little bit dark around the edges while he did whatever blood thing he did, stopping the flow, then he squeezed my shoulder.

  “It’s only a ceremony,” he assured me, but somehow I wasn’t feeling it, not when the ceremonial kiss had been so soul wrenching, not when I saw and heard as my uncle’s fist connected with Lewis’ jaw, snapping his head back.

  “Stop.” I said, but no one seemed to hear me, to pay any attention to ‘the girl’. “Stop,” I repeated, louder as I pulled away from Grim, glaring at my grandfather, willing him to acknowledge me, to stop this insanity. The sound of another punch made me flinch, even if it was my uncle this time who’d been hit. I reached out my hand to my grandfather, so sick of Wild Houses and this whole experience that had been completely lame, feeling betrayed that they would make me go through the whole Intending thing only to end with all my uncles beating him up. It was stupid, pointless, and infuriating. I hadn’t gotten seriously angry since I’d lost Lewis’ soul, but I was starting to feel the pressure of my rising frustration behind my eyes where the fury had always been.

  My grandfather looked at me, a startled look that was satisfying, as if he’d finally seen me. He lifted a hand and the two men fell back, instantly. I felt the silence hanging over the room, seeping through my skin like a live thing as he stared, the impossible weight of his gaze feeling as heavy as the stone and mortar the House was made of.