House of Slide: Hunter

by Juliann Whicker

  “Lewis,” I whispered as I tightly closed my eyes and tried to breathe. At least this monster couldn’t touch him, couldn’t hurt him ever again.

  The demon man’s eyes burnt red. “There are forces in this world far greater than you and I, little bird. Come with me to meet the mistress. She will show you a new world.”

  I shook my head and pressed on, biting my bottom lip as I readied myself. When I spun around and hurled the green sparks at him, he flinched back, distracted for a moment as I pushed, forcing him to a standstill, fishing inside his brain for anything I could get about her as I tried to turn him. He laughed and shook his head, red eyes burning into me as he pushed back, sending me spinning into my own soul.

  “Pretty bird should not play with fire,” he said as his eyes narrowed on me, smiling cruelly.

  I turned and ran, hearing his steady footfalls behind me, narrowing the distance between us with every step.

  I tripped. Falling face-first, something caught me and strung me up by the ankles, swinging me wildly around.

  A tree. A tree had caught me for the Wild Demon-man who wanted to force-feed me to the demon mistress for dinner. I smiled as I closed my eyes and spread my arms, letting the world fade into sparks of color and light. I’d made it.

  I let the tree in, remembering the touch of my Trainer, the directions he’d given me to come, the safety he’d promised me. The vines hurled me through the air. I came down rolling across the moss and stones, feeling the bruises heal on impact. The Wild demon-man stopped smiling. He held back for a moment, long enough for the earth to open beneath his feet and swallow him.

  I stumbled on, knowing the direction, but not entirely certain how far I still had to go. The greenery came close and impassable. I concentrated on leaning in order to get through, but everything resisted, as stubborn as their master.

  I finally caught sight of a building through the screen of foliage, covered in tangled vines and shaded by enormous live oaks. I circled the tall building, covered in mossy bricks until I came to a door swollen closed.

  I slammed it open, using all the strength from my runed arms. An explosion of green sparks had me racing to defend with my own runes, circles and patterns that defused the defensive runes before they’d done more than burn a few centimeters of my skin away. I tried not to notice the skin grow back as I searched the dim interior.

  Beneath and behind stacks of moldy books lay draped furniture, covered in dust.

  “Carve?” I called, first soft then louder as I passed through room after room of books heaped and strewn across the floor. I opened a door only to have an avalanche of books knock me back.

  I stopped watching where I stepped, feeling guilt as I put pressure on an old and priceless tome, cracking the spine with my weight.

  When I climbed the stairs, I clung to the banister as I slid on the books, struggling up to wherever he was. The land would not protect us forever.

  I pushed open a door and found a floor, a desk, plants twining up the walls, and a man snoring face-down on the desk.

  “Carve!” I said, loudly, with no reaction. I reached out and shook his shoulder, feeling his loose bones beneath relaxed muscles flop around. I shook him, making his head strike the desk solidly, but still nothing.

  I closed my eyes and tried to focus on something other than the anger that rose like a glossy film over the ocean of anguish that waited to drown me.

  Matthew, I am here. Demons come. Protect your books.

  Maybe not the finest message, but it wasn’t suicidal which was about all I could hope for.

  He stirred, shaking his head slightly as a frown flickered over his face, bringing back the familiar wrinkles.

  He raised his head, waving it back and forth as he squinted at me.

  “Who asked you?” he snarled, leaning towards me in a sudden lurch that he didn’t expect. His eyes rolled as he struggled to stay upright.

  “You’re drunk.” I stood there, speechless with my arms over my chest. Everyone in the world wanted me dead or alive, and I got a self-indulgent lush. “Unbelievable. You’re supposed to be the trainer who teaches me to stay alive? What are you going to teach me? How to drool on my enemies?”

  He squinted at me. “Dariana? Helen’s daughter?”

  I sighed and slumped against the wall. I’d used up the fear the demon man’s voice had awoken. Maybe I should drink what he was drinking, because I wanted to be a passed out disgusting unconscious person. “Hey. There are demon men around your yard. Sorry for disturbing you, but I thought you should know.”

  He stood suddenly then collapsed over the desk. He stayed there for a moment while the sickly scent grew until I had to take a step away from him, gagging.

  He sat up and I saw sweat on his face tinged a luminous yellow. “I understood that you were dead,” he said as he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, frowning at the residue.

  “Unfortunately, no.” I clenched my teeth as I fought back the sudden ache in my chest. I couldn’t breathe around the pain. That was okay. I didn’t need to breathe. “But they’re coming.”

  “Yes.” He nodded, frowning thoughtfully. “Let’s go welcome them.”

  He left the room, walking as if unaware of the books beneath his feet. He rode the books down the steps, uncaring about the pages left swirling in his wake.

  “Great. I’ll go pour the drinks and put on some music.”

  “Music?” he asked, glancing back at me with interest in his beady eyes. He ran a hand through his stringy hair then nodded. “I will play the music.”

  “Yeah. The demon men who work for the Demon Mistress can frolic around while we wait for her to show up and kill everybody. Awesome.”

  “You met her?” he asked, walking through the front hall around stacks of books like pillars.

  I flinched as the memory of her face and her touch flooded me with panic before I nodded, following after him. Somehow I’d expected this to go differently. Seeing my Trainer, how normal he acted, like getting roused out of a drunken stupor in time to fight demon men happened every day, made me want to curl up and cry, or die, or something that would make this thing in my chest move over somewhere so that I could breathe.

  “Now then,” he said once he’d moved out into the yard. He leaned to the side, and the bushes parted for him revealing a hidden spring. After a splash, he came up with a wet head and a chipped mug of water. After he rinsed his mouth, got another drink, offered me one which I refused, he started tapping his fingers on his pants, nodding his head as he stood there in his incredibly overgrown yard beside an overgrown fountain, like an insane man.

  “More drums,” he said jerking his chin towards the forest I’d come from. An explosion of soil followed by a scream made me flinch, but he stepped forward, spun to the right, pointed above me then below, while the wind rustled around me, and the vines, snapped, cracking above my head. The way he moved, another explosion of earth, the branches and vines all moved according to an elaborate choreography, no, not a dance, a symphony, orchestrated and directed by this insane Hybrid.

  Scream. Thump. Explosion. Crack. Water splashed up then slapped the earth while leaves rustled and hummed. Rhythm. Time. The insane Hybrid began to sing like nothing I’d ever heard before. Words, music, something that tore my heart in two and sewed it back up-side-down came out of my Trainer in a chaotic rush that tangled my thoughts and emotions. His voice. I’d never heard anything like it. For that time, while he sang the world into violence, I felt nothing of pain, knew nothing but the echoing beat in my own veins.

  I danced to the music, following Matthew through the pulsing limbs and waving fronds to the edge of the woods where the trees kept back the darkness. The groans of cracking wood and whistling wind through leaves sounded like voices raised in song; Matthew’s backup singers.

  The darkness paused as Matthew stood on a tall jagged stump, hands raised, wrinkled face turned to the sky while he sang a song of so much life that I ran past him, throwing showers
of green runes in the face of a monster before I leapt up, swinging up onto a branch like an acrobat.

  I took energy from around me and built up a force until with a rush in time with the ground exploding into the air, I shoved a bolt of my buzzing energy at three demonkind who didn’t seem human at all if they’d ever started out that way.

  Birds fluttered around me, caught in Matthew’s song, drawn by my own call. We leapt down, twirling and spinning through the darkness with nothing but my hands and gifts to fight with. Matthew’s song continued, gathering strength in a brilliant finale as the tree roots shot out of the earth like darts, pinning down the darkness while I danced among the limbs, caught in Matthew’s song and my own music. My heart sang a song that matched Matthew’s. His heart spoke of darkness, of love, of protection and betrayal. Mine spoke of death and life and vengeance.

  As I spun, my energy severed the arm off a demon man I’d barely noticed, someone whose intelligence, whose humanity still showed in his red-tinted eyes.

  I felt a pang in my chest as he bled, as I kicked him back and my birds dove for his eyes.

  “No,” I whispered, taken out of the dance. Something hit me from the side and I blacked out as earth exploded around me.

  When I woke up, I felt nothing. Emotions, sensations, everything seemed dim and distant.

  “Lewis?” I said as I tried to sit up but only flopped sideways in a way that made me sick. Which direction was up, again?

  “He’s not here,” my trainer said, his voice rough, like he’d performed at a heavy metal concert until his voice was gone.

  I closed my eyes so tight, hoping to go back to sleep so that I wouldn’t feel this aching gnawing hurt inside my chest. The pain spread out to my limbs until I could breathe again.

  “I know,” I whispered blinking rapidly to keep the tears back.

  My trainer leaned against a warped doorframe that seemed to be missing the door, looking me up and down, like he was counting my new scars. I still wore the demon Wild’s long leather coat over my shirt, so he couldn’t have really seen much of my scars other than my face and leg. Feathers floated around me when I struggled to sit up.

  “This will be an unconventional training experience,” he announced, his forehead wrinkling as he peered into my eyes.

  I thought he would slice through my thoughts the way my dad could do, but instead he only blinked and I noticed the bags and circles beneath his eyes above his scruffy, unshaven face.

  “When was the last time you ate?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t remember. At my party? Had I ever been able to hold down real food? Who needs food when they have death and love?

  I stared at him, feeling the strain from walking too far in the humidity with my unhealed wounds.

  “I am hungry,” I said, surprised that I could feel anything other than the misery.

  “I am not any kind of cook. I mostly eat things raw. Plants. I believe I have a can of soup I can heat up for you,” he drawled with a slight snarl at the end.

  I stared at his surly face. “Soup would be fine. Thank you.”

  He grunted and turned leaving me alone on the low cot he’d apparently dumped me on.

  I leaned forward slowly, blinking to adjust my eyes. The room felt more like a cave, smelling musty, like books and mold. The books piled high around the room, like precarious pillars threatening to fall on the unwary while vines grew around, up and over them, covering the walls and floors in deep, glossy green.

  “So, this is your House,” I said when he returned, carrying a big blue mug with a bent spoon in it.

  “Reeks of sophistication and power, doesn’t it?” he mocked as he bent down to help me sit upright, his hands cool even after handling the warm mug.

  “Knowledge is power,” I said bending my face to inhale the steam, smelling carrots and celery, something pungent and delicious. I took a bite with my trembling fingers, feeling like an idiot for spilling soup down my shirt.

  It tasted like home; warm hugs and soft pillows. While I ate I almost felt like Lewis sat beside me, sharing his warmth. I ate one bite at a time until my spoon scraped the bottom. It didn’t lessen the heartache but it made it more bittersweet. I lost Lewis, but I’d had him to lose.

  “You should be dead,” Matthew said in a gruff voice when I finally finished my soup.

  “Which time?” I asked, feeling energy spread through my body until I could swing my legs off the cot and stand on my own, if a bit woozily.

  “You were to listen to the music, not dance,” he said as he turned and started walking, but slowly so that I could keep pace with him. “How am I supposed to teach you anything if you die the first day?”

  For a second I couldn’t find words as I followed him to the book covered stairs.

  “I guess I missed the part where you told me to sit and watch,” I said, grabbing the banister for balance, but finding only vines. At least they seemed secure.

  He paused in his ascent, glancing over his shoulder at me curiously.

  “You would embrace death, and yet you fight to live. I suppose we can work with that.”

  I stared at him, almost tripped, and felt his hand around my arm, holding me in place. In that flash of physical contact I picked up his concern as well as carefully guarded anticipation, like things he’d been waiting for would happen soon, my coming ushering in a storm he’d been preparing for.

  “What do you know about my mother, about demons, about my blood?” I demanded after he pulled away.

  He looked steadily ahead as we climbed the stairs, frowning like he always did.

  “I asked you a question,” I said, my voice powerful enough to stop him.

  He turned and stared at me with a heavy weight in his eyes. I didn’t like that look, the empathy as though he knew what I felt, like he could read my heart and see how broken it had become.

  “Being bound to someone takes commitment that you were not prepared for,” he said, ignoring my words. “The two of you could not have been more different. You have this sphere of hope and optimism wrapped around you in spite of being touched by a mistress, while he was shrouded in darkness with you as his one spark. You judged him based on who you are, not on who he was.”

  “You have no right to speak like that about him. You didn’t know him. I didn’t ask you about Lewis.”

  He smiled curling half of his mouth. “You asked about demons, about your blood and your mother. Why don’t you ask her about her past? You are bound to a corpse. That shows him in a rather dim light, doesn’t it? Forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, but I know his darkness.”

  I clenched my jaw. “My mother isn’t here to ask. If Lewis hadn’t bound me to him, he’d be dead and I’d still be tainted. If he’d bound me sooner, the Demon Mistress would never have kidnapped me, and I wouldn’t have survived a plane wreck. Being bound to someone I love and would gladly give a thousand lives for is not the problem. Being alive after he’s dead…” I took a deep shuddering breath as my legs collapsed.

  Matthew caught me, kept me from falling all the way down the stairs, lifting me up as though I weighed nothing.

  “At least you’re proclaiming love for someone else,” he said with a sudden smile that looked unnatural on him. “After people see me sing, they usually never recover.”

  At the top of the stairs, he turned to the right, throwing open a wooden door that crashed against the wall, bringing down a shower of plaster.

  “You can stay in here,” he said, setting me down carefully enough that I didn’t immediately fall over.

  I leaned forward and saw a square room with a small area beside the door clear of books and vines with a white cot and a pile of bedding.

  “How nice. I’ll just ring for the maid to fetch me my bags,” I said, dropping down onto the cot. “Aren’t Heads of Houses supposed to be all powerful with servants and things like actual beds?”

  He turned his head and smiled at me slightly. “I’m not very good at being what I’m ‘supp
osed’ to be. As a Hybrid, that would be dead, wouldn’t it? I’ll be in my office down the hall if you have a sudden, urgent need to discuss metaphysiology or arcane plant lore before morning.”

  He slammed the door shut behind me, well, he tried but the warped door bounced off the frame. He didn’t do anything else to shut the door, only left me alone with the cot and the bedding. I collapsed on the pillow, grateful that it didn’t smell moldy. I closed my eyes and felt my heart twist in the absence of Lewis.

  He was gone and I was not. I had to find a way to survive without him. I had to find a way to bear the ache without breaking down in tears like the tears that dripped over my nose and onto the pillow. The tears burned when they crossed my badly healing scar. I let them burn, curling my fingers around the Nether metal band, trying to feel a small fragment of his heat, his warmth, his burning.

  Chapter 4

  I sat up too quickly and felt a rush of nausea while my aching body screamed at me. I hadn’t slept or rested enough since the plane wreck. It didn’t matter. I had to find him.

  The stairs were lit from a lantern hanging in the middle of the large book and vine filled room. In other words, the stairs were not really lit at all. There was enough light to keep me from plunging down, but the shadows from the vines made going slow. Finally, weaving my way around the pillars of books, I made my way to a door that I knew hid Lewis. I could feel him, waiting for me inside.

  I threw open the door, searching the shadowy room for Lewis. I inhaled deeply, needing to smell him, to touch him. Mostly empty shelves with vines growing over it lined the wall while a wood-burning stove looked rusted and beyond repair. Lewis wasn’t there.

  I stumbled back out of the kitchen and into a pillar of books that hit another pillar of books as I fell down, heavy tomes beating me as they fell until I lay with my cheek on the stone floor, nearly covered in books.

  Lewis wasn’t coming back. I could smell the smoke now, the smell of the pyre as he burned, taste the ashes in my mouth as they mixed with swamp water.