House of Slide Hybrid

by Juliann Whicker

  “It would hurt me far more to see you suffer when I can do something to help. You would feel the same way,” he whispered, brushing my cheek with his fingers before he pulled away.

  I stared at him, trying to see his eyes, his face, but I couldn’t make out his features even knowing what to look for.

  I shook my head. “Would you let me take your pain, make it mine? Would you allow me to die for you and leave you here with an unfinished bond?”

  He exhaled loudly. “No. I wouldn’t.”

  “I can’t do it again. I can’t allow you to suffer in my place. I can’t be that person no matter how hard tattoos are it’s worse knowing that I drained you, like Jason would have done.”

  “No,” he said, taking my hands in his with a firm grip I could not break. “You do not take. I give. It is my privilege to be your Intended, to see you through this difficult transition. If our positions were reversed, if I was weak and you were strong, you would use your strength for me. Why shouldn’t I do the same for you?”

  I bit my lip as I tried to stay upright. “Lewis, don’t. I can’t do that again. I just can’t,” I finished with a helpless shrug.

  The mists engulfed me again, swallowing my words, thoughts until all I knew was the caress of fingertips on my cheek, a touch that sank through my skin, easing an ache inside of my soul I hardly knew I carried.

  When I blinked the mists out of my eyes, I found myself at the edge of my mother’s yard, in the striped shade of bare branches. I turned, but the woods were empty, quiet, as bright as the sun could make them at the end of February. I stood there, bewildered but better as I walked across my mud and snow covered yard towards the glass doors. It nearly killed me to watch Lewis suffer. How could Devlin bear taking my soul, stealing my life away from me when I’d loved him so much unless he really was a monster, only worse than the Nether?

  No one was around when I entered the house. I stood in the silence with my beating heart until I ran up the stairs then past my room and up the other steps without hesitating once. The stones were where I’d left them on the floor of the attic, waiting for me.

  Without taking the time to think, I sat down in the middle of them and scooped as many as I could into my lap, gripping several stones at once.

  Stupid.

  Images flashed by me, Osmond, Snowy, me, Devlin, and then sometimes Lewis. Nothing was clear as the images piled on top of each other, like watching ten films on top of each other, nothing made sense, so much sound, emotion, drawing me down, in, my head pounding in time to the thumping of my heart that got louder and louder until…

  “Hey,” Snowy said, her voice jarring me along with her hands as she knocked the stones out of my fingers to the floor. “You really are trying to kill yourself,” she said, but didn’t sound like her heart was in it.

  I blinked, stunned at the light coming through the high window, faded like the sun was going down, but I’d expected time to stop, or the imprints to take no time, but time had definitely passed.

  “Ask me how the dance went,” she instructed me. I opened my mouth and shut it, unable to stop the racing of my heart. She rolled her eyes then handed me a bottle of water. “So, I am pretty close to hating your brother.”

  I blinked then croaked, “He’s dead.”

  She leaned back on her hands while she shook out her hair, staring up at the attic ceiling. “I’m breaking up with Smoke.”

  “What? You guys are really going out? You can’t break up with him before I know that you’re…”

  “I can’t date him. I thought I could because I’m the most amazing person in the world, right? I can do anything, of course I can, but the thing is,” she said with a slight sniff. “I like him too much and he likes me too much and I just want to forget about the stupid Code and live my own life already, but I can’t because I’m too responsible for that.”

  “The Code? Smoke’s breaking rules at school without me?”

  She glared at me, the kind of glare that made me wish I was still in the multiframe of Devlin’s foretelling. “Not the student handbook, the Code. The rules you have to follow in order to be safe from demon possession, you know, that Code. The rules Hotbloods follow so they don’t burn out, the Wilds follow so they don’t go insane, the rules that the rest of us follow because otherwise we’re open to demons, and you can’t fight something if you’re vulnerable like that. That’s why Osmond would be so good for me, why you’re so bad for him. You have to be with someone you like and respect but no more otherwise you break the Code, lose your edge and end up some psycho, demonic, twisted, badly dressed, wannabe. I hate him.”

  “Devlin didn’t make the Code, did he?”

  She shook her head slightly, white blonde hair swishing around her face. “Smoke is foretold to be tainted by the demons if he doesn’t keep the Code. Devlin told me that if I lost it with Smoke I would be sentencing him to a life of soulless servitude. I want to kiss Smoke!”

  I stared while she shook her head angrily. “You can’t kiss Smoke? Devlin told you that you couldn’t kiss Smoke? Right. So, you believe him?” The room still reeled a little bit, but she didn’t look concerned only reached out to steady me with a hand.

  “Of course I believe him, that’s why I hate him so much. I kind of kissed Devlin, you know, mouth to mouth contact but not like with Smoke after the dancing, he’s so alive when he dances, and I kept wanting to touch him. I’m not like that, you know, one of those girls who thinks a guy’s so hot she can’t keep her hands off of him, but he’s so wrong for me that I can’t help myself. There is no logic. I could argue with logic and win, but what do you do when you want something that makes no sense in the first place?”

  She had a point. Snowy and Smoke fighting made sense, going out, not so much. “Why do you like him? Other than his great dancing, I mean.”

  She sighed and shifted uncomfortably. “So, I was in fourth grade when I met Devlin at a company picnic, you know, your mother’s pharmaceutical company that my dad works for, and of course, Smoke’s Mom. I think that was where Smoke met Ash, something about a tree he was fighting, pretending it was an ogre or something lame, you know, Smoke’s like that, and Devlin was like, ‘I’m going to organize some games so come on,’ and Smoke didn’t even hear him, and I felt ashamed that I was best friends with someone so completely oblivious, so I ditched him to follow…”

  “You were friends with Smoke in fourth grade?” I cut her off.

  She rolled her eyes but her shrug was uncomfortable, guilty even. “I was always friends with Smoke, his mom and my mom…anyway, the hours we spent in his basement playing video games or dungeon and dragons, I can’t begin to tell you. I liked organizing stuff, had a natural talent for it, so Devlin put me in charge and I liked it. People were always so easy to deal with when Devlin was around. He understood them. I know he could make people do stuff, but he didn’t, at least not usually, instead he gave them what they needed, said the right thing at the right time, put them in the place where they’d thrive, like Osmond.”

  “Not like me,” I put in, hating the way her voice had stopped being angry when she talked about my brother, dreamy and nostalgic instead. We were hating on Devlin and I really liked that.

  “Yeah.” Her words were quiet, her gaze fixed on the stones instead of at me.

  “So you’re dumping Smoke like you did in fourth grade? Poor Smoke.”

  She looked up, angry all over again, but I thought her eyes were teary. “Yeah. I am. I should go shopping for some super-villain boots to go with my new rep.” She shook her head as she got up, dragging me to my feet along with her. “So you’re going to finish your tattoos so you don’t die, right?”

  I looked at her, at the way she hated so much doing what she thought was the best thing and nodded my head slowly.

  Chapter 14

  The belly of Satan’s beast scraped the driveway as we entered the underground parking garage, the lurch snapping my jaws together before we spiraled down to the tattoo parlor.


  I’d made a deal: I’d do tattoos but it would be on my own. I wouldn’t do them if Lewis was there, and if I died then I died. My dad would be there, inside the building waiting for me. He’d offered and I hadn’t said no, but I made him promise that he would keep his blood in his own veins. My mother hadn’t liked it, called it pointless, reckless, but I wasn’t going to change my mind. Eventually my mother had agreed that there would be no Lewis, no Jackson, just my dad and Satan, but it had taken an incredible amount of energy to fight her.

  I didn’t tell her why, only that I didn’t want to see Lewis. If Snowy could avoid Smoke, dropping him for his own good even though I could feel how much it hurt her, then I could win an argument with my mother to protect Lewis, for once.

  I didn’t die. I wished I had afterwards when I was so sick that I couldn’t tell which direction to throw up, but no, My dad carried me out to Satan’s car, pouring his good energy into me while I lay limp, sweaty, in another one of those hideous gray gowns with my wrists tied together, so I didn’t try to rip out the runes before they’d set, the tattoo artist had told me without explaining what that meant. My eyes were swollen the next day from crying, my face bruised from when I’d hit it against the table before she’d strapped my face down. It was amazing how many straps they had, how they could immobilize your entire body so you didn’t hurt yourself while they tortured you. Thoughtful.

  I didn’t hide in my bed for a week, no, I stumbled down the stairs to go to school the next day after my mother put makeup on me so I looked practically okay in my black turtleneck and black hoodie. The phone rang. I stared at the black old fashioned device where it hung on the white wall. I checked the clock. Eight a.m. Lewis wanted to know how my runes had gone. I took a deep breath before I picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Dari,” he said through what sounded like gritted teeth. “Hold on a moment.” I heard muted sounds like a scream and a thump before he spoke. “How are you doing today?”

  “What was that? Are you all right?”

  He paused, letting the emptiness swell between us before he spoke. “I’m just staying occupied, hunting down those who attacked Sanders, nothing very interesting. I almost didn’t expect you to answer. Thank you.”

  I felt a wave of guilt and frustration. He was supposed to be staying safe, not fighting off a demon horde on his own.

  “Of course I answered. I miss you.”

  He cleared his throat then I heard a gasp and the line went dead in my hand. I stared at the black receiver, waiting for something to happen when Satan came in.

  “You have to hang it up if you want him to call you back.”

  I replaced the receiver on the cradle with trembling hands before I sank into a chair at the kitchen table and put my head down. I jerked my head back up from the pain of my bruise.

  “He’ll be fine,” Satan said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “He’s getting in contact with old Hunters who thought he was dead, bringing them into the area. It’s alarming how much demonic activity is around you.”

  I swallowed and nodded. “You think that he has help, that he’s not alone?”

  Satan sighed as he sank into a chair that creaked ominously. “Oh, he’s got as much help as he wants, but thing is, you distancing yourself from him while I suppose a bit altruistic on your part, isn’t something that he appreciates.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not going to sit somewhere safe while you try and finish your runes. He’s going to go out and look for trouble. Frankly, the safest thing for him is to be where you can keep your eye on him. He’s never had a reputation for being very concerned about his own well-being.”

  I swallowed down the panic that had the lights flickering before I stood up. “I’ve got to get to school. Will you take me?”

  On the drive, I stared out the window seeing Lewis everywhere with his face covered in blood, sweet blood that I wanted with a sudden burning in my veins that made me want to throw up.

  At school, Osmond gave me a smile that made my stomach twist with more guilt than usual, but that was mostly because it took all my will to put one foot in front of the other as I crossed the stone floor of the high school, beneath the stained glass window that glowed so brilliantly in the sun that still shone, true to my mother’s word. Snowy gave me a tight smile as she fell in beside me.

  “The weather’s been nice. Pretty soon it’ll be too warm for your turtleneck. You know what you need?”

  I sighed. If she started talking about Osmond I would scratch out my own ears.

  “Ice cream. After school we need to go to the ice cream place and drown ourselves in empty calories.”

  Well, that was better than talking about Osmond. Smoke didn’t show up until Sewing class, and he gave me a cool nod but didn’t perch on the edge of my table like he usually did. I was too wrung out to do anything about it, but I wished there was something to say to make Snowy’s cruelty more tolerable. What could I say, though? I drifted through the rest of that class then at home that night, sat by the phone all afternoon doing my homework, then just sat and stared at it until eight o’clock, it rang.

  “Hello?” I said as I ripped the phone off the hook, fumbling in my haste. “Lewis? Are you all right? What happened? I’ve been going crazy all day wondering if you were okay.”

  He laughed a low resonant sound that sent shivers through me. “Sorry about that. I didn’t think you’d be out of bed or I wouldn’t have gotten distracted. You sound amazing for just finishing your runes.”

  I sank down on the floor beneath the phone feeling the stress leach out of me. “It’s better this time. Much easier. I didn’t die or anything. Can I see you some time?”

  Silence stretched out on the line while my heart pounded in my chest.

  “I thought that you didn’t want to see me,” he said quietly.

  “I do. I just don’t want to hurt you.”

  He sighed. “I’ve been busy with some old friends. We’re in the middle of a small war, actually,” he said sounding embarrassed.

  “You’re in the middle of a war? Oh. In that case, never mind.” I wanted to scream at him, to lock him up and keep him safe. What was wrong with him? Why would he go fight a war in the middle of my runes? I needed him with me, safe, not fighting and putting his life on the line, like he wanted to die before we finished the bond.

  “I’m your Intended. This is part of the job description. When they attacked Sanders it became essential that I track them all down and destroy them, personally.”

  I swallowed unable to find words. I’d been runed too recent to be able to process very well.

  “Lewis, please come home. Don’t risk…”

  “It’s my duty and pleasure,” he responded.

  I wanted to smack him, to kiss him until he realized that he needed to be careful. Of course he wouldn’t do what I wanted him to do, not when he saw it as hypocritical of me to want to protect him instead of letting him protect me.

  “I can’t do this,” I whispered, rubbing my temples.

  “You’ve proven that you can,” he responded easily. “Don’t worry. Hunting is one of the things I do very well.”

  “You do everything well, that doesn’t mean that you should go out and fight a war in the middle of my runes! I’m trying so hard to be strong so that you’ll be safe, and you throw it away?”

  “You’re upset. Why don’t you have your mother make you some tea and go to bed?”

  I took a deep trembling breath. “Lewis, if you’re fighting in a war, maybe you shouldn’t take a break and call me twice a day. Maybe you should focus on what you’re doing so that you don’t get yourself or someone else killed.”

  “If that’s what you’d like.”

  “It is,” I said although after the words came out too quickly for me to have thought about them.

  The line went dead.

  “Hello? Lewis?” Nothing. I sat there with the dial tone and stupid tears staining my cheeks unt
il the computer voice came on. ‘If you would like to place a call, please hang up and try again.’

  I stood up feeling a hundred years old as I put the phone away whispering, “I love you,” before I went to bed.

  The rest of the week passed in a miserable blur and then it was time for another trip to the spa. I thought it would be better, after all, the second time wasn’t as bad as the first, I didn’t die or anything. My body seemed to accept the tattoos, letting them sink into my flesh while I lay there like a slab of meat on the metal table, limp, passive, without energy or desire to struggle anymore. Unfortunately, it was harder for me to function afterwards, to shake off the lethargy that left me limp with uncaring. I didn’t leave my body, didn’t get lost in the soul, but I wanted to.

  Lewis didn’t call.

  One day Satan caught me staring at the phone like a sick puppy.

  “I liked how punctual he was,” Satan growled, rustling in the fridge for something. “It really shows he cares.”

  “He said that he’s in the middle of a war. It doesn’t make sense for him to interrupt his hunting for a stupid phone call.”

  Satan snorted. “That’s what Stanley said.”

  “Stanley? What does he know about it?”

  “You don’t think Slide’s Intended would go out on his own, do you? I’m stuck here with you, no offense, but your Trainer and half the Sons of Slide are off watching your boyfriend kill stuff. I get to watch you mope.”

  “I’m sorry I’m so boring. I’ll try to liven things up a little bit, maybe melt another movie theater.”

  He snorted as he chewed on a turkey leg. “What you need to do is go hunting, taste some death. You could use it.”

  I shook my head in automatic disgust then paused. I knew what Lewis was, who he was, but I had such a hard time accepting that he had been made to go out and fight things that might hurt him. He hadn’t called me. He must hate me by now, weak, stupid, incapable of smelling blood or hurting anyone.

  “Yes. I’ll go get my knife,” I said as I walked up to my room.

  “You don’t want to rip it open with your teeth?” he called to me as I left.