House of Slide Hybrid

by Juliann Whicker

  I stopped suddenly, staring at the grape colored mustang parked on the side of the road, the only car parked along this street.

  I walked around the car, feeling a wave of emotion that had me gasping and clutching my racing heart until I opened the driver’s side door and slipped in. I leaned back and closed my eyes, smelling Lewis, the boy I’d fallen helplessly in love with before I found out that he didn’t exist. I shivered as I pulled up my knees, wrapping my arms around my scratchy skirt and cold tights. I was officially over the sparkly look. I needed jeans, sweaters and boots. And Lewis. I tried to draw a breath, but the ice in my chest that had formed when I’d seen him fall was melting, filling my throat until liquid trickled out of my eyes. They weren’t tears, I thought as I rubbed them away on my bandaged arm. They were only ice melt off my heart.

  The passenger door opened and a man slid in, a face made blurry from my tears. For a moment I thought he was my dad, or Grim, but then he spoke and I stiffened in terror.

  “Good afternoon. Are you prepared?”

  His voice, drawling, scornful, echoed in the close confines of the car. My Trainer had taken this awful moment to find me.

  “Prepared for what?” I whispered, trembling.

  “Pain,” he said as he handed me a white piece of fabric.

  I took it, turning the soft square over in my hands.

  “It’s called a handkerchief. Your face is a mess.”

  I sniffed, trying to glare at him, but instead I pulled down the rearview mirror and caught sight of my face, a rainbow of color running down my cheeks from my mother’s beautiful makeup. I mopped myself up with the handkerchief until the white had become streaked with color. When I looked in the mirror again, my eyes looked red-rimmed and my face was blotchy, but I looked more like myself.

  I handed him the handkerchief. “Thanks. Are you going to paralyze me again?” I got my first really good look of him, and couldn’t stop staring. He didn’t look like any of the Wilds I’d seen. He had a receding hairline, sagging cheeks with wrinkles around his mouth like he’d spent a lot of time frowning and a red mark imprinted on his cheek. He looked old, fifty at least.

  “Not today,” he said with a sneering smile that did little to comfort me. “Tell me about the PTSD.”

  I frowned at him trying to decipher his words.

  “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tell me what you’re thinking about when you lose control and exhibit your abilities.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Of course you don’t want to talk about it, but that’s today’s lesson in pain: talking about it.”

  “I’d rather be paralyzed.”

  His smile shifted, looking actually amused. “Then we’re on the right track.” He raised a slender dark eyebrow, waiting while he measured me thoroughly.

  I looked down at my hands, uncomfortable with his gaze. I wasn’t comfortable with any of this. Of course, I had to be trained or I would cause innocent people pain. Talking through my issues sounded productive if tortuous. I lifted my chin, meeting his gaze evenly.

  “Last fall, I went to an art gallery where my brother’s murderer tried to kill me.” I gripped my hands in my lap as I continued through a tight throat. “My friend was shot, one of my uncles died trying to protect me, and Lewis got captured by Jason.”

  “Stop,” he said, raising a slender hand with long fingers unmarred by time. “Go back to your brother. Tell me about him.”

  My throat tightened and I found it nearly impossible to swallow. “He died…”

  “No,” he interrupted with a slight sneer. “He took your soul, and then he died.”

  I winced, feeling a wave of helpless anger, at my brother and at this stranger who thought that he could drag whatever he wanted out of me. It was bad enough when my own father forced me to say what I felt, but this man had no right.

  I glared at him then blinked when the emotions disappeared as he watched me with disinterest. All my emotions were gone, the anger, the fear, the relief and hope, all of it, leaving me with nothing but rational thoughts.

  “You took away my emotions.”

  “Yes. It’s called ‘leaning’. Maybe you’ve heard of it,” he mocked. “This is your first line of defense. When an enemy strikes, instead of fighting back, you change his mind. That’s power. It doesn’t begin with your ability to lean, it starts with your knowledge of others, reading cues verbal and nonverbal, knowing what people want, what they’ll do to get it, what you need from them and how to get them to fight your battles for you. You have to stop focusing on yourself. It isn’t productive. Why are you Training? I see that you’ve accepted it, more or less. What is your motive?”

  I stared at him, coolly, unemotionally as I considered his words. “I thought you didn’t want me to focus on myself. I need Training because I have to learn to control myself. I killed people out of anger. That was my action because I had no control. I worry that I am that monster inside, that it wasn’t Lewis’s soul, a fury, but that Devlin took my soul because he knew that I would become evil, and no one would be able to stop me, except Lewis.”

  His thin eyebrows narrowed at me as he scratched his stubbly chin. “You have a strong guilt complex, although the propensity to see yourself as evil might be more destructive than helpful. People are what they do, not actually the term we use to define them. You are alive. You are female. You are capable of acting in ways others might consider violent, destructive, and even perhaps, evil. But marrying yourself to an identity makes it difficult to change. Innocent. That’s another term that will hold you back from your actual potential. Tell me about your mother.”

  “I don’t understand what my mother has to do with anything,” I said, frowning at him.

  He only waited, mouth pursed until I continued.

  “I don’t understand my mother. I know that she loves me, but I don’t think she knows how to show it. She trusted my brother. She supported him when he took my soul. I hate her for that.”

  “Hate?” he asked, and I felt the rising emotion slide away.

  I shook my head. “No, not hate. Betrayal, confusion and hurt. She’s so sad. I’m not dead and she sees my dead brother more than she sees me. She won’t fix her relationship with my dad so that she can be happy. She’d rather be right than happy. She’d rather miss my brother than see me, the child that isn’t dead yet. I don’t want to be her. I don’t want to be my father either. He left us when we needed him most. My mother is right that he betrayed her, us.” I frowned staring at his gaunt face. “She said that you betrayed her. How can I trust you if you already have a history of betrayal?”

  He shook his head slightly. “This isn’t about my history, it’s about yours.”

  “It’s about me having a Trainer that I can rely on. It would be irrational for me to continue if you were unable to prove her words false.”

  We stared at each other until he shrugged his wiry shoulders. “Your mother needed what she didn’t want. I gave her that.”

  “Clarify.”

  “What do you think love is?” he asked instead of answering.

  I frowned but said, “Love is a feeling.”

  “The greatest love is demonstrated through sacrifice. Love is pain. Love is what a mother feels when she dies in childbirth. Love is the emotions that allow actions that are for the sake of another in spite of our own well-being. Love is what keeps the world from breaking down into chaos. It is the ability to see beyond our own self-interest. I loved your mother and gave her what she needed instead of what she wanted.”

  “My mother’s love does not inspire me.”

  “She left her soulmate, her heart’s desire for the sake of your brother and you. She would not abandon her family for the sake of her happiness.”

  “She’s right. You are like my father. You both would call abandonment love.”

  He smiled, a full show of teeth that looked dull, stained. “You have an interesting mind. Do you love your brother?”

  I s
tared at him, flatly, aware of the building emotions, the anger and betrayal but overwhelming grief, that I would never see my brother again.

  “Yes.”

  “Would you sacrifice for him?”

  I frowned as I battled the emotions that threatened to overwhelm me. I waited, but he didn’t take them from me, didn’t lean me.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  I swallowed and shook my head. How could I trust someone who took my soul, leaving me alone in darkness, practically dead until Lewis… I felt something in my chest clear as something settled into place. He had taken my soul and given me Lewis, someone who I would have tried to kill, otherwise. Did I trust Devlin? He’d taken my soul, yes, but did I actually think that he’d done it out of spite? Of course not. He’d had a plan. That plan had involved Lewis. It must have. Whether it involved him dying, I wasn’t sure about.

  “Yes. I trust him.”

  He nodded and leaned back. “And so you should trust me. It was your brother who asked me to be your Trainer, not Slide.”

  I gasped, staring at the strange Wild who looked nothing like a Wild. “You knew my brother?”

  “I showed him the way down the path he took. Not that I intended him to take your soul for such a very long time, but I showed him the possibility.”

  He looked troubled, his brow furrowing over his strange, muddy gray eyes.

  “Lewis said that you might know how someone could fracture a soul, leaving a fragment so that the person didn’t die. How did he do it?”

  Matthew shook his head and I felt a rush of emotions tangling with one another so fast and sudden that I could barely breathe.

  “Next topic, soul flight. I understand you’ve been dreaming this Lewis. That’s an interesting skill that’s supposed to be extinct along with the race of Hollows. I’m sure you understand the importance of keeping your origins unknown to the general populace. I want you to do it now, while you’re awake.”

  I frowned as I struggled to breathe around the gripping sorrow in my chest from my brother’s death and betrayal along with how I felt about my parents and Lewis.

  “You have to tell me how he did it.”

  “No such thing. I wouldn’t admit the possibility except that you experienced it so there isn’t much point in denial. What would you do with such knowledge? Whose soul would you take? What would you do with it? Your brother paid for that knowledge with his life. I do not know how. I’m here to train you for something better. Now, about soul flight,” he said, narrowing his gaze at me until the streaks of silver emerged, giving his eyes a luminescence that reminded me of being paralyzed.

  I gritted my teeth as I struggled to breathe through the frustration. I should be grateful for the little bit he gave me, never mind what he held back. “How do I soul fly?”

  “Think of your beloved.”

  I frowned. “I think of Lewis all the time.”

  “No, you don’t,” he corrected. “You try not to think of him all the time. You’re part Cool. Your methods are avoidance and minimizing contact. Think of him. Everything about him. Embrace your emotions. Allow his aura to fill your mind until the knowledge of him overwhelms your self-awareness. Become him. Lose Dariana.”

  His voice became background noise as I closed my eyes, seeing Lewis’s face, his smile, feeling his arms wrapped around me, his blood streaming down his skin, the darkness of the Nether in the woods whispering to me, words that sounded scary but calmed me, centered me.

  “Forget you,” Matthew snarled, bumping me out of my own awareness.

  How had I felt when I’d dreamed him? I felt tall. Big. Strong. Capable of anything. I’d been action, motion, intention and fury. I’d just leaned him. I let the desire, the need that spread through my veins grow until I’d become a humming nucleus of agony. I saw his soul, fierce flame surrounded by velvet darkness, the fury and the Nether calling me to him.

  I slid through a world of sparks and lines of light until I’d found him.

  “Good,” Matthew’s voice snapped me back, blinking inside my own body, inside Lewis’s car.

  I shivered as I stared at him, feeling sick and nauseous like I’d gone on a roller coaster ride. I’d seen his soul. I’d gone to him in some way, hadn’t I?

  “Intention is important. Now, Dariana,” he sneered, leaning close to me, fixing his eyes on me until he knew he had my attention. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “You just taught me something so that I wouldn’t do it?”

  He smiled as he swung open the door. “You now know how to do it. Practice not doing it. Otherwise, there are those who can see souls and will know to come for you.”

  I swallowed at his words, the heaviness and seriousness pressing down on me.

  “Good evening,” he said, making me look up and see Lewis where he strode towards us, emanating threat and danger.

  “Carve,” Lewis responded in an almost civilized growl before he yanked off his suit coat and threw it in the backseat behind me. “Are you driving?” he asked me.

  “I can’t drive,” I responded feeling numb as he walked around the car to the driver’s side, opened the door and climbed on top of me.

  Heat roared through me from his hands where they gripped my arms, wrapping around my body. I couldn’t breathe from the weight of him, didn’t care when he kissed me, pulling me over so that I lay on the length of him, somehow both of us crammed in beneath the steering wheel. The kiss, fiery and fierce startled me. I pulled away, gasping as I stared into his eyes and he gazed back with a darkness in him that covered the gold. The Nether in his blood wanted to consume me, to steal me away from this world as much as Lewis’s veins craved the completed blood bond.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered, touching his cheek with my fingertips and coming away burned.

  He grimaced and pulled me against his chest, breathing in my hair while my ribs creaked ominously.

  “I can’t do this,” he said against my hair. “I’ve never tried to destroy a House before, but if Slide does that again, I don’t think I’ll be able to help myself.”

  “You can’t destroy Slide. That’s crazy.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, nodding so that his chin bumped my forehead. “Madness to try, but sometimes I forget myself.”

  I pulled away and glared at him, capturing his face in my hands. “No. You told me what to do. You were in complete control.”

  He laughed, throwing his head back and filling the car with a sound as otherworldly as Pisces’s screams. He stopped laughing, staring at me as he shook his head, sliding his hand behind my neck and cradling my head in his hand.

  “Slide knows my limitations. That’s why I’m here instead of still in the House. He’s giving allowances to the Hybrids.”

  “You don’t have to fight anyone while quoting poetry?”

  He shook his head, frowning down at me. “It’s just as well. I’ve never been any good at iambic pentameter. I blame it on my childhood. I had no idea we’d both fit in the driver’s seat.”

  I laughed breathlessly. “Maybe it has to do with your Nether mists, moving space and time or something like that.”

  He sighed as he pulled away, twisting until we were untangled and I slid into the passenger’s seat tingling to my toes.

  “You’re freezing,” he informed me once we were situated.

  “I didn’t notice,” I said, rubbing my arms. I frowned down at my bandage. I’d forgotten all about my injury.

  “Where shall we go?” he asked, twisting the wheel in his hands. The car leapt at his command with a grumble of its engine until we faced away from the House.

  “I want you to take me somewhere there aren’t any Wilds,” I said, looking back at the gates of Slide.

  “For the afternoon or forever?”

  I froze, remembering the brightness of his soul and the force of Slide crushing me, stealing away my will. We could go. Run away. Melt a movie theater in every state.

  I sighed as I turned
to look at him, his silhouette outlined against the gray day outside his window. I captured his hand, weaving my fingers through his until I was sure my voice would come out steady.

  “I wish you wouldn’t tempt me. One of these days I might tell you to keep driving.”

  He grinned, his eyes flickering gold as he gripped my hand, spreading heat through me. He revved the engine, the acceleration pushing me back against my seat. His previously smoothed back locks were disheveled and falling into his eyes. I brushed his hair back, savoring the texture in my fingers. I loved it. I loved the color and the way it felt brushing my cheek. I loved his hands, scarred, rough and calloused, capable hands that could do anything. I loved his smile, the mysterious one and the crinkly one when he forgot to be dangerous. Love. I shook my head slightly as I remembered my Trainer’s words.

  “What do you think that love is?”

  He gave me a quick glance with one eyebrow quirked. “’Love is not love if it changes when it alteration finds or bends from the remover to remove, it is an ever fixed marked that looks on tempests unshaken’… I’ve completely mangled that. I told you, poetry is not my forte.”

  “Was that supposed to be poetry?” I asked, innocently. We’d recently read Shakespeare in my English class.

  “Forget it,” he said with a grin as he reached over and ruffled my hair. “You don’t want to hear the poetry that resonates with me, anyway.”

  “Dream of a woman and dream of death?” I asked.

  He frowned as he stared out the windshield. “Or, ‘Nothing lasts in unending time, the moon wanes which just now was full, so too the savagery of love’s passions often ends up as a gentle breeze.’”

  I shook my head. “Carve said that it’s parenthood.”

  He made a hissing sound through his teeth. “I cannot argue with that. He was speaking about your mother. He is her Intended.”

  “He was before my mother married my dad.”

  “He never retracted his blade.” He said with a glimmering smile as he squeezed my hand. “Either she lost his knife and was unable to return it, or didn’t wish to inflict pain on him.”