House of Slide: Hunter

by Juliann Whicker

  I felt uncomfortable under her stare. “Yes. He did lots of things. Excuse me,” I said, pushing back my chair.

  I went to bed, exhausted in spite of doing nothing other than climbing up the stairs and trying to make plants grow slowly. I sank onto my cot, listening to the wind whistle around the building making the leaves rustle.

  I missed him so much. If I closed my eyes I could almost feel his warmth beside me. No. It was the muggy humidity. I had a flash of pain that made me sit up gasping. I rubbed my chest where the pain originated and tried breathing through my nose. The pain radiated out until my whole body burned and then it was over.

  I sat there breathing hard running my hands over my skin to see if I’d been left with any burn marks. I lay back down with my hands crossed over my chest, the thick scar pressed against my palm. I could barely feel the other line on my chest, the line from being bound together. Had I made the right choice? I really preferred not having the voices in my head. Should the demon taint have killed me, in spite of all that Lewis did to keep me alive?

  I closed my eyes, thinking happy thoughts, but only the power of Matthew’s House let me fall asleep.

  I dreamed of blood, of my Mother fighting the demon mistress, then dying, calling my name as I watched unable to move. I dreamed of Ash, laying on the floor of woods, staring sightlessly up as some monster crouched over him, draining him of life. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t speak, could only watch helplessly. It seemed I watched everyone I loved die that night, one after another, my father smelling of silver and rain, Snowy screaming as blood blossomed in her white hair, Smoke, even Devlin came back from the dead, only to die while I watched, dizzy from the scent of his blood. In the last dream, Lewis died as I struggled, trying to stop Jason from swinging the sword, tried to block him, lean him, anything and everything, only to watch Lewis fall…

  I sat up, breathing hard. The room around me was still, faint light spilling through the window, through the tangled greenery. I could feel Lewis below me, in the kitchen probably. I scrambled out of bed, needing to see him, touch him.

  When I pushed through the door, Matthew sat at the kitchen table with a mug in his hands, scowling down at its depths, deeply offended. He looked up at me, his scowl darkening.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  I froze, staring at him then searching around the rustic kitchen for Lewis. Where was he?

  “He’s not here. You burned him,” Matthew said, sounding tired.

  I shook my head and couldn’t stop from trembling. “I know he’s here. I can feel him.”

  “It’s not him,” Matthew said before he threw the rest of the contents of his mug down his throat. He slammed the mug back on the table, scowling at me. “It’s time for you to take control. Somehow you’ve slipped out of my protection. It’s your choice. Either you accept reality and master yourself, find your focus and your purpose, or I’ll have to take you back. As long as you’re unstable, you’ll have to stay here. So will your mother.”

  My mother. Somehow thoughts of her broke through the panic and the need. My mother who let a demon try to bond with her to make me kill it. My mother who had taint in her veins compatible with her Nether blood and couldn’t kill demons or risk becoming a demon mistress. My mother who had lost her mother, her life, and her love but learned how to live again on her own terms.

  I took a deep shaky breath and nodded. “What do I do?”

  “Tell me. Tell me he’s dead.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it, feeling a shriek rise up in my chest. I couldn’t do it. He couldn’t be dead. I couldn’t live without him. There wasn’t anything without him. Everything… No. I was not nothing. My family was not nothing. My friends were not nothing. Even Matthew with his lack of social skills cared about me, and my mother.

  I licked my lips. “You’d hate that, having my mother here for the rest of your life.”

  His eyes gleamed. “I’d learn to cope.”

  I shrugged. “Lewis is dead. I’m not. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  He cocked his head and threw an apple at me that I juggled before I caught it.

  “What’s your focus?”

  I swallowed before I took a bite, crunching it while he waited, patiently. Lewis was dead. I was going breathe however much it hurt. I could function on my own without Matthew taking away the madness. I saw faces. Snowy, Ash, Smoke, my mother, my uncles Satan and Grim as well as my dad and Aiden. I could do this. I could fight with them against the darkness. Maybe I would die. Some things were worse than death.

  “I need to fight her, to push back the evil that wants to destroy everything I love. I’m going to protect Sanders and everyone in it.” My heart pounded, my head ached.

  “Tell me five things about your apple.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “It’s sweet.”

  “One.”

  “Crunchy.”

  “Two.”

  “It’s red, and hard, and reminds me of climbing trees when I was little.”

  “Name five things in this room.”

  I stared at him, but he stared right back until I sighed. “An apple, an obnoxious trainer who asks me to do pointless things, a table, a floor, and a big stove.”

  “Like this. Be in the moment. Don’t let your focus leave where you are. You have a purpose here. Find your purpose here and you won’t go chasing ghosts.”

  “I…”

  I nodded and sat down across from him then smoothed the table with my hands. Scars. I could count scars. I had so many. I could have a purpose for each scar.

  “The next few days you’re going to practice controlling the madness without leaning yourself. You’re going to work on new skills like runes, leaning, strategy, history, and other things that may prove of interest, but most importantly, how not to go insane.”

  That day’s lesson in the yard had more to do with sitting than training, feeling the energy, the souls of the bushes and trees in the garden. It was like Hybrid camp only more moments of insanity when Matthew would bring me back with some cruel words that I heard, willing myself to believe that Lewis was dead.

  The next day we were back in his office. I lingered at the door.

  “If you’d like to have your lesson standing, that’s fine, but I’m going to sit,” Matthew said, throwing himself into an old leather chair that creaked from his weight.

  The ‘lesson’ was a long lecture on the history of my mother’s House, Slide. Somehow he made all the fighting between Houses back when Slide had been one of the most vicious red Houses ever known into a boring story that made me yawn. It didn’t help that I wanted so badly to go outside and search for Lewis, dead or not.

  “Now, show me what you remember,” he said, pulling out a large sheet of paper from a drawer and putting it on the desk.

  I stared at it stupidly.

  “I want you to show the lineage of Slide, starting with yourself then back all the way to Heron, the Wild who founded Slide.”

  “You want me to draw a picture?” I’d never really seen Lewis draw. I’d wasted so much time.

  He shrugged as he stood up. “I smell something smoking. I’m going to see if your mother decided to burn down the house. Enjoy your homework. Try to take pride in it.”

  I blinked as he left me, moving with an odd grace somehow neither like my father or one of my uncle’s. I stared at the paper while the names he’d told me swam in my head. I started at the bottom and drew stick figures of me and my dead brother, then above them, two people for my parents. I wrote those names as neatly as I could, then beside my mother drew little guys with guns and hats for my uncles. Satan was particularly fun to draw. I gave him a fierce face with squiggles all over for tattoos on his bald head.

  I couldn’t remember half of what he’d told me, so I filled in the blanks with the characters I’d remembered, like Sharma, the chick who had blinded herself to improve her foretelling, Rasmus, a Head of House who turned Slide ov
er to his brother and joined a monastery, and of course, Heron, who created Slide by destroying six other houses with the band of men called, ‘The Sound’.

  When I pulled away from my very full sheet of paper, I couldn’t really see any patterns to it. As for whether I’d done it with pride, who wouldn’t be proud of such brilliant stick figures? I missed Lewis. He would point out where I’d made an intentional line and wrap his arms around my waist and who in the world would care whether I was the worst artist in the history of ever?

  I stood up, hearing a floor board creak under my weight. I read the titles of the books on the desk. ‘Demon Taint’, ‘Demon Spawn’, ‘Demons: Control Of’, and ‘The Great Controversy Regarding Reanimation’. I pulled the last book towards me and had barely read the title page when the door burst open and Matthew entered with a scowl on his face.

  “She burned my plants. Every single one of them in the kitchen. I told her to make dinner not a blowtorch.”

  “My dad wrote this book too?” I asked, tracing the name below the title with my finger.

  He blinked at me then grabbed the book out of my hands, scowling at it before tossing it back on the desk. “I thought you’d agreed with your mother not to read banned books. Your father is the author of many such. I collect them. Most of them are absurd. This one for instance,” he said, picking up ‘Demons: Control Of’. “It has only a small paragraph at the beginning to warn the reader that controlling demons is impossible before he goes on to explain how to do it.” He shook his head. “You can read them, if you’d like, but you should know that most of them are banned because they propagate foolish ideas which get people killed. It’s widely agreed that Horace, the author of that and other books like it, was firmly under control of a demon mistress at the time he wrote it, at least those who admit the possibility of demon mistresses, though more and more people dispute it.” He gave me an irritated look. “Separating the nonsense from the might-be-possible is a hobby of mine. I hope your mother will manage to only burn the books of nonsense with that torch of hers. What’s this?” he asked, picking up the paper and turning it upside down for a moment before he leaned and studied the pictures closely, like there was something hidden and deep in the simple pictures.

  “Um, my lineage?”

  He smiled at me, a bright and unstable smile that made me nervous with how much power he held, power that seemed to swirl around him. “Brilliant.”

  “Yeah? My art teacher would not be very impressed.” Lewis wouldn’t have cared how horrible it was.

  He gave me a scowl before studying the paper again with an intense look on his face. He really seemed insane, and that was before he began mumbling under his breath. I couldn’t make out the words; it didn’t seem to be in English. He stood up, threw his hands wide, and the room filled with bright sparks that exploded then hung suspended above us.

  I stared at the green lines and shapes, some looking distinctly humanoid and realized that he’d brought my ridiculous picture to life in a way that was brilliantly green. I stared at the figures and couldn’t help but reach for one of them, a tiny figure of a woman who stood proudly, pointing into the distance. When I touched it, a shock, not quite electric, but something that resonated in my soul, passed through me, and the next time I blinked, green lines spread from her, through me and onto the walls of Matthew’s office.

  “You’ve managed to capture the imprint of your ancestor. Well done. If you follow the lines, you’ll find that they end in a tome or other resource carrying her imprint. It’s one way to research one’s family tree.”

  I stared at him. “The green lines lead to books that will be about her?”

  “Or that she read, wrote, or something else about her. You carry all of your ancestors with you, in your blood, your Nether. All of them, their histories, stories, experiences are somewhere inside of you.”

  “Creepy.”

  His smile showed his teeth. “Most Wilds aren’t sensitive to imprints. Training you will be more interesting than I anticipated. Now run along, help your mother with her cruel assassination while I work on some House business.”

  “House business?”

  “I am Head of a House. Two actually.”

  “You’re going to order more vines?”

  He opened a drawer and pulled out a creamy sheet of paper that smelled nothing like mold or dust. He eyed me when I lingered, watching him pull an old fashioned quill and a bottle of ink out of another drawer before I turned and left to not find Lewis however much I wanted to.

  Chapter 7

  Days passed, melting into weeks until I’d practiced leaning, practiced melting technology and other things until Matthew and my mother had a glorious argument about whether or not I was Trained. Matthew felt I could still learn, my mother insisted that I had far more practical experience than most who were considered Trained, after all the biggest purpose of training was to condition you to pain until madness had less appeal. I wasn’t ready, but I could keep from searching for Lewis without leaning myself and cut the heart out of a demon man.

  I stood at the top of the stairs in a dark teal dress with an underskirt of white creamy satin that you could see where it had been pulled up, fastened with a diamond encrusted pin. My hair had grown an inch and a half, enough to barely hold in the matching silver and diamond combs. When I moved, the dress slid around my body like a second skin.

  The gargantuan chandelier above me, the white on white of molding and meticulously polished marble made the men in black suits stand out like cut-outs, paper dolls that all looked the same. The house was Matthew’s House, the real one, the one where Carve business went on, the one where when he exited his black car, men in dark suits rushed down the gray marble stairs to assist me out of the back, like I couldn’t climb out on my own. Admittedly, my body would never be the same after the crash, not when my bones twinged at coming storms and not when my skin still ached around the scars that still hadn’t quite healed, but I could certainly get out of a car on my own.

  The ball wasn’t my idea. I didn’t feel trained. I felt like an idiot, brainwashed into giving time and energy to something that meant nothing to me. What did I care what the Sons from the various Houses thought of me where they stood in orderly rows, watching my entrance while the women, Daughters lined the surrounding ballroom, dresses splashes of color that flattered their various beauty?

  The Daughters fascinated me. They looked dyed. Their coloring was too exact with no mottling, no varying shades, too perfect. The men were the same, but I’d already seen enough Wild men to last me a lifetime. I quickly scanned the room, large, white marble floors and pillars while a dazzling chandelier filled up the space beneath the arcing dome, but Lewis was not there.

  I curled my hands and focused on the feel of silk around my legs, the way the crystal shattered the light into rainbows across the marble floor. Matthew coughed behind me, the sound enough of a nudge that he didn’t have to lean me into action. I went down the stairs with him two steps behind me, my grandfather, Slide two steps behind that, and then the brothers, by order of rank, Satan, my father, the rest of the uncles except Grim. He came in after Jackson, then last of all, my mother. She made enough of an entrance on her own that instead feeling like the end of a drizzle, she was the most important, saved for last in her crimson gown.

  I had to force my shoulders down instead of rising up to my ears as I felt the waves of power behind me, Carve and Slide not doing anything to lessen the intensity of their awesomeness. Matthew, or Carve as he was now that we’d come to his House house, hadn’t let his overwhelming presence swamp me as we’d lived in the overrun shack in the backyard of the real House, backyard if you call five thousand acres of woods and swamp a backyard.

  We’d gone to a scrubby motel to get fixed up that morning, my mother helping me before slipping into her glamorous red gown. I wished we could have stayed there, but we left our beige room. Matthew stood waiting on the cracked sidewalk outside of our door in his immaculate tux loo
king like a Wild, Head of two Houses that no one in their right mind would mess with.

  “Matthew, you look beautiful,” my mother said with a dangerous curve on her red mouth.

  His mouth tightened, his wrinkles and receding hairline somehow enhancing his appearance. “Let’s get this spectacle over,” he said, giving me his arm and putting my hand on it when I hesitated, looking at my mother for direction.

  “Why are we doing this, again?” I asked as we walked towards the long black car with a nervous looking Wild standing at the open door.

  “We want to pretend that everything’s normal,” Matthew said, cocking his head to give the man holding the door a piercing glance. “The fewer Wilds that flock to the demon mistress out of panic, the fewer we have to deal with when other problems arise.”

  “Also, it’s giving Wilds a chance to see how beautifully you’ve turned out,” my mother said, smiling slightly as she brushed my cheek with her perfectly manicured hand.

  The drive to Matthew’s House was as uneventful as it was agonizing. I missed Lewis. He should be there beside me, telling me not to worry and offering to steal me away, somewhere I’d never have to face another Wild again, like the Wilds who had hunted us down.

  The music played as I descended until I reached the marble floor, my soft leather slippers sliding over the marble. Carve stepped forward as he’d told me he would, circling the room with me as everyone watched, silent and still as statues.

  Lewis wasn’t there. I could feel him, anxious in the background, somewhere outside, probably on the enormous terrace with its fountains and steps leading down into the gardens, the forty acres of domesticated verdure.

  I glanced up at Matthew, looking handsome in spite of himself in his perfectly tailored pitch-black suit.

  “You should stand up straight,” I said, trying to focus on him, his scent which was too subtle and green to be very interesting, to distract me from the Lewis that wasn’t there.

  “Proportionally I’m taller than most Wilds. I’m trying to blend in.”