“Dariana Sanders, do you have a better way the young man can prove his capabilities?” he asked, sounding amused, like he was humoring me.
“How about all the uncles get in a suicidal fight trying to protect me from a bunch of Wilds and Hotbloods, and Lewis rescues us, sacrificing himself in the process.”
He raised his eyebrow, a slight movement that felt like a slap in the face, but I continued, undeterred.
“Or he could actually survive me taking his soul, kind of an impressive thing if you think about it.”
His eyes narrowed and I had a hard time breathing, but I shook off his disapproval and kept going.
“Personally, I think he should arm wrestle or play chess.”
My grandfather’s expression changed, like I’d said something brilliant or clever. I felt my heart race at his approval even as I struggled to fight the heady sensation. Dealing with a Head of House left me feeling like I was trying not to slide off a vertical precipice.
“I think you’re right; since the boy clearly can defend you physically the question is whether he’s able to play the game, and win.” He smiled then, the kind of smile that made my heart sink, realizing that arguing with him was probably not the best way to go since he, Head of the House of Slide, would always win.
I opened my mouth to backtrack, but Grim stopped me, the pressure on my arm making me flinch, forgetting for a second about my other arm, the one with the gash.
He whispered, “The more you talk, the deeper you dig. I highly recommend you coming with me into another room where your mother and I can sew up that cut and work on an exit strategy.”
“Grim,” my grandfather said, a world of disappointment in his voice. “Helen and her daughter are free to leave at any time, as you yourself are.”
Grim smiled slightly as he bowed to his father, “The Head of the House is eternally benevolent.”
My grandfather laughed then, a sound that welled up, filling my head and ears and heart until they were overfull, ringing with a sound that didn’t leave any space for my own thoughts. Grim physically led me out of the room, closing the door, and sealing the laughter behind us.
I took a deep breath, looking up at Grim as we walked down a hall, his face mournful and solemn while I staggered along, shock and blood loss hitting me hard without Lewis to distract me.
I could barely breathe. Lewis was at the mercy of that man, that man with too much power and self-importance to be trusted. Slide, my grandfather made everyone else I’d met look like a child playing marbles with their anger and violence. He was above that. There wasn’t a question of his dominance and authority.
I shook my head trying to clear it. One encounter and I could hardly think straight.
We walked, neither one of us interested in disrupting the silence until we got to the kitchen where my mother was moving around with a tightly coiled energy that made me nervous. She glanced up at us, her dark expression shifting to surprise when she saw who we were.
“Dariana needs a suture,” Grim said, guiding me towards the long dark table in the middle of the pale slate floor. I pulled out a chair, heavy, iron-wrought, and sat down on the surprisingly comfortable seat.
“Mother, your House is so fun,” I said with a wan smile.
“What happened to you?” She pounced on me, taking my arm in her hands, giving it a professional perusal. “Curved blade, very sharp, odd angle to stab someone…” She spotted the knife I clutched in my hand and lifted an eyebrow as she gave me a skeptical look. “Why did you cut yourself?”
I scowled at my arm then shrugged off the embarrassment. “Why not? Is there a reason you didn’t tell me that I would have to either stab Lewis or kiss him?”
I tried not to notice as Grim came back and began laying out supplies on the table—gauze, white tape, needles.
“It’s against the rules to tell someone. It might make you overthink what is supposed to be an emotional response, at least as emotional as Wilds can get,” Grim droned. “Personally, Wilds have an almost infinite ability to overthink, so it’s probably a good rule. In your case it might have been better done differently. Speaking of things being done differently,” he said threading a needle with hands that I realized were already covered in latex gloves. “I doubt that Lewis appreciates your interference, however good your intentions are.”
“What do you mean?” my mother asked, gripping the table, all intent focus and extreme paranoia.
“Slide instigated challenge duels. When Dariana interceded, he agreed to shift them to a more cerebral sphere.”
My mother’s shocked face worried me, so I patted her hand comfortingly. “It’s fine, mother. I think they’re going to play chess.”
She didn’t look relieved as she turned back to the kitchen and the cleaning mixed with cooking that should have been chaotic, but she was almost painfully efficient and organized.
“This may hurt a bit,” Grim said, fingers hovering over my cut with a pungent smelling cloth in his fingers. I opened my mouth to say something, but all I did was gasp as the stinging stuff hit my cut arm.
“That hurts,” I managed during the next swipe. When he picked up the needle, I gritted my teeth, holding tightly to the table as he shoved the piece of metal through my skin.
I flinched, breathing through my nostrils as he pushed it through again. It hurt every time the needle went through. I wanted to kick something, but I managed to keep my arm still. It may have had something to do with the fact that Grim had all his weight on it.
It seemed to take forever, but finally he was finished, saying as he smoothed gauze over my arm, “Right as rain and twice as lovely.”
My mouth trembled. I’d come a long way since the girl who came back from the woods with a Hotblooded soul, but I wasn’t sure if I’d gone in the right direction.
It was quiet in the kitchen. Too quiet as I shifted on the chair, unable to keep my hands still. My fingers ran over the stones on the hilt over and over, turning the blade over in my hands as I waited for Lewis, for my arm to stop throbbing. The kitchen filled with smells of baking while the air steamed from boiling soup and rain dripped down the tall window.
My mother seemed at home in the room that was more industrial than domestic, filling up the space while she scrubbed, peeled, chopped, needing no help, actually looking like it relieved her stress.
The door opened, and we all looked up, me holding my breath while I waited to see who came in. Satan’s bald head was the first thing through the door. He grinned at me, and I smiled back, rising from the table to question him, but slowing down when I saw Lewis, two steps behind him, giving me a slight smile before he looked around the kitchen, as if he were searching for something. Seth or Stanley, the black haired, dark blue-eyed uncle who hadn’t been fighting Lewis followed them with an irritated look on his face.
“Ready?” Satan said, pulling out a large pocket-watch, nodding for a moment as if in time with the seconds before saying, “Go,” in a rapid fire way.
Lewis shed his jacket, draping it over the back of a chair before he rolled up his sleeves and went to the fridge. I watched Lewis move, as smooth and intense as if he were fighting my uncle while he fished vegetables and meat from the fridge.
“What are they doing?” I hissed to Satan as he stretched his enormous body into the chair beside me.
“Cooking is now a sport,” Lewis said, apparently having heard my low voice. He pulled his own knife out, a nondescript long knife that looked like the one he’d cut himself open with the other night. My stomach clenched at the memory, and I gripped the ornate dagger harder while he chopped vegetables with speed and precision, flipping them into a pot.
Satan snorted, “It’s baking you have to watch out for with Stan. He makes a mean tart…”
“Torte,” Stanley cut him off as he shook a sifter briskly, a cloud of flour floating slightly above his hands where they worked, unerringly. Lewis nodded while he continued with whatever he was doing, the muscles in his forearms standi
ng out while he gripped the handles of pans, arranging them on the stovetop.
“Slide’s displaying his sense of humor,” my mother commented drily where she sat at the other side of me. I hadn’t noticed her abandoning the cooking and cleaning areas, but apparently she had left it to Lewis and Stanley.
“It could be worse,” Satan growled, pulling a cigar out of the inside pocket of his suit, rolling it between his fingers for a moment before putting it back.
“What did he do with Stew?” Grim asked, like Lewis wasn’t cooking furiously right in front of us.
“Billiards,” Satan said, nodding like that made sense. “Quick game, the boy knows how to minimize extraneous movement.”
I looked up at Lewis in time to see his mouth twitch slightly.
“What will he do with you?” my mother asked, leaning her chin on her hand, looking at Satan with concerned dark eyes.
“Already done since Slide’s willing to count the other night, the one when he burned my face off.” He nodded easily settling back, one hand raised. “Shelley and iambic pentameter,” he said, ticking off one of his fingers. “Saul and running,” he said ticking off another finger, only two remaining. “Your dad has gone to get painting supplies, a paint-off between the immortal Axel and Alex of the Woods should be exciting,” he said with an exaggerated eye roll.
“Wait a minute,” I said, staring at Lewis’ back, really tense for someone who was mixing something in a bowl. “Why would the Head of the House agree to a poetry contest instead of a violent fight? Not that I’m complaining, but Slide seems kind of serious to have a cooking competition.”
“Slide’s sense of humor,” my mother said with a cool voice, disapproval coloring her words.
“Hey, I’ll take humor over violence any day, it’s just unexpected,” I said, watching my mother’s cold mask, wondering why she would rather they fight than do something productive. I loved it, it actually made me wonder what else my mother would find distasteful that made sense to me. Maybe it was my Cool blood that made chopping veggies way better than chopping each other.
I relaxed as I watched Lewis, noticing that he was as tense as my mother where she sat watching them. Maybe they didn’t know how to relax.
“This might get dull at some point,” Lewis said as he pulled out a rolling pin, offering me an apologetic smile.
“No kidding,” Satan said, but then Lewis looked at Satan, then glanced at me, then back at Satan. “Right,” Satan said standing up. “Dari, come help with the clean-up. There’s bound to be a mess somewhere that can use straightening.”
“The billiard room,” Stanley said, jaw clenched as he sliced peaches.
“Um, okay?” I said, slowly standing, looking at Lewis’ back. My arm hurt and I felt dizzy when I stood up, but I didn’t want them to be uncomfortable. Stanley clearly hated cooking against Lewis
“I’ll see you at lunch,” Lewis said, flashing a smile at me that made my knees wobble. He didn’t usually smile like that, warm instead of hot, with crinkled eyes where he’d have laugh lines if he ever aged. I found myself unable to move as I gazed at the most beautiful creature in the world.
“Come on,” Satan said, prodding me forward, gently for him.
“Yes. I’m coming,” I said, watching Lewis until the kitchen door swung closed behind me, leaving me in the wide hall with Satan who gave me a long stare before shaking his head.
“You’re not very subtle,” he growled.
I sighed as I followed him down the immaculate hall with pristine marble floors and dark coffered ceiling, feeling out of place in my pastel outfit, except for the dagger I still held in my hand.
“How long will you keep him here? Why didn’t Grim use some kind of anesthetic when he stitched up my arm? Is my dad really out getting painting supplies? I would like to watch that one. I’d like to watch them all, actually. He’s so…”
He growled a short laugh that made my spine tingle in an uncomfortable way. “That cut on your arm that Grim didn’t numb should not have happened. That cut makes Slide nervous. That cut shows that Lewis is not in control of this situation, of himself and therefore you. We should be eating dinner instead of cleaning up billiards. Grim didn’t use antiseptic because you’re in training. Trainees do not get coddled.”
“You mean the candidate doesn’t usually have to prove his abilities?”
He snorted. “The candidate does not get this far without already being tested by the House.”
“It wasn’t his fault. I had a flashback. I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. I didn’t mean to cut myself.”
“If he can’t protect you from yourself, who can he protect you from?” he growled as he pushed a door open with one large meaty paw before gesturing me through with a half bow.
I gasped as I stepped into the room that might have once been more than wreckage. Wood shards, dark green fabric, splintered wood, the smell of blood mixed with lemons that might have been wood polish. The table, what was left of it, was broken in the middle, balls rolling around on the floor when I accidentally kicked one with my foot.
I put a hand over my eyes, feeling dizzy, the smell, the meaningless violence carrying me back to the fury and carnage. I dropped my hand, forcing myself to stay there, in that room with my uncle and take in the wreckage, the blatant signs of a Hotblood in residence. I bent to pick up a broken pool cue, the sharp jagged edge lethal looking, standing in contrast to the rest of the polished wood, smooth in my hand like any well-used tool before I spun on my heel, passing Satan on my way out.
I made my way back to the kitchen, unsurprised when I heard the clatter of pans and even less surprised when I threw open the door and saw Stanley and Lewis armed with iron pans and butcher knives, circling each other while the torte, or what had been the torte, was left a heap of ashes on one charred counter.
They both looked up at me when I entered before Stanley lunged for Lewis, managing to hit his shoulder with a cast iron pan. Lewis’ collarbone snapped with a crack that made my stomach roil. Lewis blinked, but kept most of his focus on me while he twisted, knocking the pan out of Stanley’s grip, stabbing his knife through Stanley’s forearm into the counter, even as he gave me that same nice smile, the nice boy smile.
My mother wasn’t there, or Grim, just Lewis and Stanley destroying a perfectly nice kitchen all because Slide had a sense of humor.
“Can we help you?” Lewis asked, politely—politely in spite of the fact that he’d just stabbed someone through the arm with his knife, someone who pulled a knife out of his coat and raised his arm to throw it into Lewis’s back.
“No!” I screamed as I took all the energy, all the force of will I had and bent it towards my uncle.
Stanley jerked, his knife slipping through his fingers to the floor while he convulsed, caught in the web of my inept leaning before Slide came down on me like a sledgehammer.
The pressure of the House filled my mind, my head, body and soul until I crumpled to the ground, unable to move, to think. I saw Lewis spin around, looking from Stanley to me.
“Release him, Dari,” he ordered, his voice full of heat, power, rationality. “He’s not going to hurt me,” he assured even as I saw his collarbone protruding from his chest. “This is the way we play the game. I should never have allowed you to get cut. The more you interfere, the worse it will be for me.”
His words hurt me more than seeing his broken bone. I closed my eyes and submitted, allowing the House to crush and shatter me into dust, relaxing my hold on my uncle and allowing him to do what damage he could.
The House lifted enough that I could breathe, filling my crushed lungs with sweet air as I held my eyes tightly closed until I could crawl to my knees. I looked up at Lewis, wincing when I saw his face, the anger, the heat, the fury before he spun roaring, knocking Stanley back a step.
I turned towards the door, trying not to hear the thud and hissing sound behind me. I couldn’t help him. I’d distracted him or Stanley wouldn’t have been a
ble to hurt him. I leaned against the wall, wrapping my arms around myself while I tried to get a grip on myself after being handled by the unseen power of Slide. I had to go back, to keep him safe. I shook my head and forced myself to run away. We were all just puppets compared to that power.
Before I knew it, the handle to the front door was in my hand, turning obligingly under my grasp, letting me escape the heavy oppression of the House of Slide.
Chapter 9
Cold air greeted me as I left the House, walking beneath the gray sky that for the moment had stopped sleeting. I shivered but couldn’t go back and find my coat, instead I walked faster, hating my impractical tulle skirt and sparkling tights.
I didn’t even know why I’d come. I’d wanted to do something to help Lewis, to get him away from Slide, but facing my grandfather had filled me with a perfect realization of how powerless I really was. What could I do?
I stumbled down the long driveway, ignoring the symmetrical shrubbery that lined the drive. I half expected someone to follow me, to keep me in the yard as I neared the gate, but instead the wrought iron opened as I neared it, allowing me to leave without having to so much as talk to the guard in the guardhouse.
I wrapped my arms around myself, the throbbing of my arm less terrible in the cold. I gritted my teeth as I remembered the snap of Lewis’s broken collarbone, how powerless we’d been in Slide’s domain.
I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t stop the violence that I was responsible for. I’d gone to his garage; I’d given him my blood and started this whole mess.
It took forever to walk the fence line along the edge of the House’s property until I finally reached a new design in the wrought iron from the next impressive estate whose roof I could see peeking above the bare limbs in the distance.
House of Slide Hybrid Page 17