House of Slide: Hunter

by Juliann Whicker

  I caught his sleeve feeling a wave of panic. “What if…”

  “You’ll be fine,” he assured me, squeezing my fingers before he dropped them, sounding assuring if slightly mocking. “You won’t go mad while I’m here. This is my House, after all.”

  “Right. So impressive,” I said, fingering the feathers around my shoulders. He slammed the door leaving me alone with my magnificently shabby and demented garb.

  I had to cut off most of the leather laces. I couldn’t undo the knots with my tired fingers. I slid into the water, gasping as the heat stung my scabs, hating to look at the wounds that had opened and looked infected, oozing yellowish fluid.

  After my bath with a citrusy smelling soap, I rubbed on the ointment that smelled like woods and wind then put on my umbrella pajamas.

  I felt odd as I shuffled into the main room in slippers that were too big for me.

  Matthew worked, sifting through the papers tirelessly as though he were searching for something.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked, feeling out of place in my normal clothes in this clearly abnormal world.

  “This book,” he said, holding the two pieces of ripped cover that Devlin had read. “Have you found your focus yet?”

  I frowned at him as I stepped on the shifting papers. I bent down, fishing in the papers until I felt Devlin’s imprint. I grabbed the paper, bent and found more, making a stack in my arm until I had a good pile of the parchment.

  “Here,” I said, handing it to him. “I’m sorry about the mess.”

  He curled his lip at me as he took the papers, stacking them between the two covers. “Banned books should probably always elicit such a reaction. Unfortunately, it usually does the opposite. Forbidden knowledge is always more beckoning than the ordinary kind.”

  “You collect forbidden books?”

  “I collect knowledge that comes from any source that I think may prove useful.”

  “Still collecting books, living in a filthy hovel, seducing young women who don’t know any better?” My mother’s voice filled the room crackling like lightning before she moved from the shadows into the light.

  “Helen,” Matthew whispered.

  I stared at her beautiful pale face, luminous dark blue eyes framed in waves of black hair that seemed to move in the wind that flowed around her from the open door.

  “You send me a letter with two words. I’m here. Explain what you meant before I get tired of intruding.”

  “You’re here sooner than I expected. We were just…”

  I saw my mother’s mouth tighten as Matthew gestured towards me, but she never looked at me. She kept her eyes on Matthew, as though if she shifted her gaze he’d transform into a wolf and gobble her up.

  “Translation, not excuses,” she said as she raised her hand.

  Matthew rose in the air a few feet before he stopped, held aloft by her hand.

  “Mother, how did you do that?” I asked, staring at the ceiling, searching for hidden strings.

  My mother gasped, Matthew fell, and then my mother’s arms were around me, holding me too tight, but at the same time, not nearly tight enough.

  I put my face against her shoulder and breathed in the scent of lightning and chalk dust along with a floral perfume that I didn’t recognize. She held me tight, tight enough that my unhealed scabs protested, but I only clung to my mother, glad that her love swept over me.

  “Darling, I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered against my ear, pressing her cheek against my bald, runed head. Her fingers smoothed over the runes delicately, her face concerned when she brushed my cheek with her fingers, the one that wasn’t split in half.

  “Lewis died,” I said simply.

  She held me again, feeling so much sadness mixed with empathy, for losing those we love will never be easy. It could be endured. I must find a focus, a purpose that could fill up the aching. Her emotions spilled out of her, too strong and overwhelming for her to control. She felt a wave of something towards Matthew that she tried hard to damp down. I felt it though. Gratitude mixed with a wave of melancholy. Did she still love him?

  I pulled away, too tired to deal with anything. My loss, hers—all of it was too much.

  “Dariana was going to rest,” Matthew said, fidgeting with the cuffs on his shirt before he forced his hands to still.

  It was the first time in years he’d been alone with my mother. Would they fight? Would she levitate him again? Would he sing her love songs? What about my dad? My parents weren’t divorced even if they’d been separated for over a decade. I looked from Matthew to my mother, but she still studied me, as if analyzing the swirls of my runes and the lines of my scars.

  “Of course,” she answered, her husky voice like honey over coals. “You’ll rest and I’ll be here when you wake up. Everything will be better.”

  “That’s good,” I said with what I thought was a smile. “I don’t suppose it could be much worse.”

  “Things could always get worse,” Matthew said with a curl of his lips as he turned away, leaving me with my mother.

  We walked up the stairs, her arm around my waist while I leaned heavily on her, so tired, so very, very tired.

  “I’m sorry that you thought I’d died,” I said.

  She squeezed my waist. “It’s nothing. It’s over. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

  “And I’m not tainted,” I added, noticing her slight inhalation. “Lewis bound me to him after the demon mistress tainted me, so he saved me from one miserable fate and then left me to another. After I wake up, you’ll have to explain to me how I have demon in me. Matthew won’t tell me your story. He loves you,” I added as I slumped down on my cot, letting my mother slide my legs on to the bed and wrap me in warm, lovely blankets.

  “There are parts of the story that I don’t know. He’ll have to tell that to me as well.”

  I smiled at her and we shared something, I wasn’t sure what, but it made something inside my chest flicker in a pleasant way.

  Chapter 5

  I woke up to the sound of my mother singing softly. I smelled something burning that reminded me of Lewis, watching him float into the middle of the pond while flames licked him.

  I sat up with a lurch, needing to see my mother, to not feel the panic of being without Lewis.

  “Dariana,” she said with a tired smile where she sat on a rickety chair, leather and feathers draped over her lap with a needle poised over her work.

  “What time is it?” I asked, unable to tell with the muted light that came in through the vine-covered windows.

  “Day. You slept three nights and two days. I hope you don’t mind, I’ve been remodeling your clothing.”

  I sighed and ran my hands over my head, the stubble longer, less prickly than it had been. “I really thought I did a good job. Being crazy is so frustrating.”

  She laughed, her voice filling the room with energy and life. “I’ve had more than my share of insanity. You asked about the demons. I broke the Code when I was seventeen.”

  I felt uncomfortable as I asked, “With Matthew?”

  She looked genuinely surprised and then laughed again. “Oh, no. I didn’t meet Matthew until later. I tried to kill myself.”

  I gasped and stared at her, the way she studied the leather in her hands, frowning down at her work with her head cocked.

  “I should say,” she corrected with a line between her eyebrows. “I killed myself. Grim brought me back to life. Self-destruction is not good for souls.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  She sighed and looked up at me, her eyes full of grief. “My mother died. I had a session of runes. My true love broke my heart. It was a bad week. That’s not an excuse, of course, but being a quarter Hollow, I’m less stable than I need to be to cope with harsh realities.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, leaning forward to touch her hand. “Those are all horrible. You’re a quarter Hollow? Your mother was half Hollow or does Slide have Hollow blood?
”

  She smiled slightly as she squeezed my fingers. “My mother was half Hollow, half Wild. My father married her when he took her for training. My grandmother foretold her, the woman who would have his eight children, who would see the Slide line through the Hollow’s return. Slide kept her away from all the others who would have seen her Hollow blood. He kept his treasure secure until she died. She couldn’t be runed as a Hybrid with so much Hollow. There were excuses, of course. Runing changes people, makes us harder, tougher, less likely to conceive. He took her as the mother to his dynasty instead of as an asset on her own.”

  She shook her head, hair brushing her shoulders. “He loved her. We all loved her. She cared for us so much, all of us. You remind me of her,” she said, brushing my unscarred cheek with her fingers.

  “So, you killed yourself and then you became tainted?”

  “Not quite. It took years of hiding from the truth before I became host to taint. Matthew had a half-brother, a pure Wild who was Son of Carve. I thought I was in love with him, but he turned out to be quite different than I thought. Carve, their father always wanted Matthew to be Son instead of Jarvais.”

  “Hybrids can’t be Heads of Houses,” I said. “Wilds hate Hybrids.”

  My mother sighed. “They can be as Matthew has proven, but it’s certainly the exception rather than the rule. Matthew never cared for the title, truly, I don’t think he cares much about anything, but Jarvais always felt threatened by his brother. Jarvais couldn’t use the knife, you see. He didn’t have enough Nether blood to make it work for him. Matthew, even without runes had more Nether than Jarvais.”

  “The knife? For someone who doesn’t care about titles, he has a lot of them.”

  She laughed, throwing her head back and letting the sound swell around me. Something about her laugh in this strange chaotic house seemed different, wild and untamed, like her hair around her shoulders in messy waves.

  “The knife,” she said, reaching down and taking my knife out of a sheath she’d had in a black bag.

  “You brought my knife?” I asked curling my fingers in my lap. The demon mistress had wanted it. “Lewis said it was a good blade.”

  She smiled at me. “Oh, yes. It is a very good blade. This is the knife Matthew presented to me at our Intending ceremony.”

  “If this was the knife he gave you, why did dad give it to me?” I felt a wave of unhappiness from her before she shook it off.

  “I assume that Matthew gave it to your father in trade.”

  “Trade for what?”

  She shook her head before she frowned at her work. “He’ll come with something inedible and explain to us both.”

  “You really don’t know?”

  She frowned slightly. “I can only imagine. I have a hard time understanding Carve’s motives. He doesn’t behave like a Wild or a Cool.”

  “I don’t understand. What does Carve have to do with you becoming tainted?”

  She sighed. “Carve’s first wife, Matthew’s mother died from demon taint. Carve became obsessed with finding a cure for the taint. With his son, Jarvais he had some success in creating blood that was immune to taint, but Jarvais took it further as he experimented with Nether blood, trying to become strong enough to use the knife. The knife gives its owner their first death’s gifts. I mean that the first person I killed with that knife could levitate. I have those skills because I have enough Nether blood to use the knife, or I did at that time. You took Stephen’s abilities because you took his death with the knife. Matthew took the abilities of someone who could control nerves and paralyze. The demons are working with Wilds, clearly, or you wouldn’t have this,” she said, raising the leather I’d taken from a demon Wild. “I can practically taste the taint.” She went back to methodically sewing up the leather while I stared at her. She hadn’t sounded repulsed by the idea of tasting taint.

  “You became addicted to Nether?”

  “Oh, let’s not talk about that,” Matthew said, sauntering into the room with a tray made out of vines with leaves still on them. “Welcome to DelaCroix,” Matthew drawled as he set the tray on the ground with a flourish.

  “Yes, I became a Nether addict,” my mother said, placidly, smiling slightly at Matthew. “I also became a demon death addict. I loved to kill most things. I wasn’t very good company, was I, DelaCroix?”

  He frowned at her, his wrinkled face enhancing his scowl. “Never a dull moment. I caught fish and picked some berries that aren’t very sweet, but won’t kill you. Not that you’d die from something as commonplace as poison,” he said to my mother as though that were a compliment.

  “We were wondering how the knife you gave me ended up with Alex,” my mother said, leaning forward to scoop up a handful of berries.

  Matthew shifted in his black leather boots which shone as though he’d freshly polished them. He looked clean, too, like he’d taken a bath and shaved recently.

  “That’s a very long, dull story.”

  “Oh, good,” my mother said, wincing a little bit as she tasted a berry. “I love long, dull stories. Why don’t I guess, or we could do charades? I know. Interpretive dance.”

  Matthew sighed. “I don’t know how much truth is good for the girl.”

  “Dariana, would you like to know all of the truth, or only the pleasant parts?”

  I stared at her. Watching the two of them frustrated me. I felt like they were having a conversation beneath the one I was hearing. It was better than being stuck in my own head searching for Lewis. The ache in my chest still throbbed, but at least I knew he was dead, that I’d never have him again, and I didn’t need to excuse myself to go and find him.

  “What’s the pleasant story?” I asked.

  “Once upon a time, a girl met a boy, they fell in love, had two wonderful children, the end.”

  “That’s hardly a story,” Matthew objected, frowning hard at my mother.

  “You missed the part where the son took the soul of the daughter,” I said, agreeing with Matthew. Matthew must have been leaning me or something. I sounded practically normal. When I thought of Devlin, my brother taking my soul, it hurt almost as badly as missing Lewis. If Lewis were here, he would have his arms around me. He’d say something ironic and funny, and he’d look at me with his glowing eyes… well, as long as I was considering impossibilities, may as well have glowing eyes.

  “Fine,” Matthew said, sighing as he sank down cross-legged on the floor, black pants getting smeared from dirt. His voice swelled with the grace of a master orator. “Helen sought Nether and demon day and night. After she raised a demon horde a hero came to stop her. I met with him and he agreed to try and save Helen instead of killing her. I didn’t think that he’d marry her, and he didn’t think they’d have children. He’s actually a distant relation of my mother’s.”

  I waited for him to continue, to fill in some of the glaring blanks, like about my mother raising a demon horde and my dad trying to kill her. The silence continued until I realized that he’d finished. “You said that was a long, dull story. You lied on both counts. Doesn’t lying bother you, you know, breaking the Code and all that.”

  My mother said, “Matthew is trying to protect you from the story of your parents trying to kill each other. Alex and I fought many times before he captured me, bound us together and cured me of the taint. It was rather romantic.”

  “I remember what you found romantic,” Matthew said flatly.

  My mother blushed. I couldn’t remember seeing her blush before. I didn’t know this woman, not really. She reminded me of the mother of my childhood, warmer, clearly displaying affection and love instead of her usual reserve, but I couldn’t trust it.

  “I killed so many,” she said quietly, as though that was what she’d found romantic. “You shouldn’t have stayed as long as you did.”

  Matthew blinked and frowned down at the berries, taking a handful and then wincing at the bitterness. “I’m responsible for your fall.”

  She shrugged as tho
ugh she could argue the point, but she wasn’t in the mood to.

  I cleared my throat. “So, you raised a demon horde? What is that, exactly? Does that mean that you are a demon mistress? How did you become addicted to demons? Wouldn’t they kill you? They should kill you the way they were killing Grim.”

  Matthew said, “My father experimented on Jarvais while I was here in the states apprenticing to DelaCroix. When I saw him next, he had a much larger affinity for darkness and demons. My father was obsessed with creating children immune to the taint that killed my mother.”

  “That’s why you have the books, from your father?”

  Matthew frowned. “I did collect books for him, but this is my own personal library. At any rate, my father succeeded in creating someone who wouldn’t die from the taint, not immediately. My brother shared his skills with Helen, and the rest is history.”

  “Can my blood be used to create more people who wouldn’t die from the taint, but instead become… What would they become?”

  “Demon Wilds,” Matthew answered, reaching over to brush the leather skin that draped my mother’s knees. “The Nether blood and the demon taint should not be able to coexist. They are poison to each other. Your mother’s blood, your blood…”

  “My brother’s blood,” I interrupted. “She wants to make more demon Wilds. How much blood would she need to use to change one person, how long would it last, and how do we keep her from getting any more of mine?”

  “You’re safe,” my mother said, soothingly.

  “More or less,” Matthew quantified.

  My mother frowned at him but he only smiled back blandly.

  “If you raised a demon horde, couldn’t you stop the demon mistress?” I asked, feeling a wave of hope rise in my chest.

  “No,” Matthew said firmly, handing me a charred fish on a leaf. “Your mother cannot face the demon mistress. At best, she’ll die. At worst, she’ll take her place. If there’s one thing worse than having a demon mistress in the world, it’s having her be your mother.”