House of Slide Hybrid (22 page)

“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.”

“She says that he betrayed her.”

Lewis frowned as he focused on his driving, spinning the wheel in his hand as we took a corner. “Perhaps in a relationship of any duration there are times where betrayal becomes inevitable.”

“What does that mean? Do you intend to betray me?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps I felt betrayed when you left me and told me that you wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe you felt betrayed when you found out more about me than I wanted you to know.”

I looked out the window, feeling a mixture of emotions as he reminded me that however tightly he held me, I still didn’t know enough about him, and maybe never would.

“Makes love sound positively unappetizing.”

“I’m sorry,” he growled, reaching over and pulling me against him, spreading his warmth through me. “I’m supposed to inspire you to achieve greatness, to inspire trust and commitment, towards me and your House. How is your arm?” he asked, brushing my bandage with remarkable tenderness.

“It doesn’t hurt at all. I think the cold must have numbed it.”

“You can’t feel this?” he asked, stroking my arm carefully with his fingers.

Heat spread up my arm and goose bumps too as my veins sung, thrummed, tingled.

“I can feel that. A lot.”

He nodded slightly. “Your Trainer took away the pain for you.”

“Grim didn’t use analgesic to give me stitches, but my Trainer took away my pain? Shouldn’t there be some kind of consistency?”

He laughed. “Carve will do as he likes. I dislike that as a general rule, but maybe his Training hurt you enough in other ways.”

I sighed. “He made me talk about my feelings. Is there anything crueler? He took away my emotional distress and then gave it all back to me again. He told me that he’d helped my brother take my soul.” I shook my head. “I’m overwhelmed. It’s all too much too fast. And this outfit is horrible for winter weather. I think that I’m officially over sparkles.”

He laughed, the sound so warm and delicious I couldn’t look away from him. His eyes glowed and his teeth glistened like a monster in the woods.

I shifted under that gaze, unable to stay still, wanting to touch his skin, his teeth. “How is your collarbone? I saw it snap. How can you handle the pain? I would be crying all over the place.”

He raised my hand to his mouth and pressed a hot kiss on my skin. “I’m tough. I burn and it heals. If I feel particularly like crying, I take a walk in the woods. We should go hunting. I would
love
to take you hunting. I’m not very nice when I’m with Pisces, not very human, but I think you can handle it. You are gloriously enticing when you hunt.”

I felt my cheeks heat up as I looked up at him. “You’re not supposed to know about that.”

“And you’re not supposed to know about my pet.”

I shook my head. “No. I want to do something nice, something normal. That doesn’t involve other people and technology that I’d blow up. I want to see your world,” I said nodding my head firmly.

“I don’t have a world,” he said with a shrug. “I make it a point to not create attachments with people that threaten my autonomy.”

“Says someone who just became Intended to a House.”

He grinned at me. “Touche. Although, for the record, I’m Intended to you, not Slide. I know where to take you. Somewhere different. Somewhere violence is theoretical.”

“Such a place exists? I’m intrigued.”

I settled against the seat, feeling warmth from him fill the car until I didn’t resent the sparkly tights anymore.

I watched him drive, mesmerized with his movements until, before I knew it, he’d brought us to the edge of town by the river, not where the warehouses and docks were, but where the woods and surrounding countryside made the city seem far away, even in the barren, cold winter.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling into a parking lot with frozen mud instead of paving. He had stopped at a camp or something with tents, not tents but booths I realized as people wandered seemingly aimlessly from one place to another, trading, buying, or chatting in an idle way, like everyone had all the time in the world and no one really noticed the cold. Of course with the sweaters and gear they had, they were probably warm.

“Where is here?” I asked, wondering why everyone looked so familiar. I didn’t know anyone, at least I didn’t think that I did, but everyone moved, talked, gestured and smiled like someone I knew.

“Farmer’s market. It’s a Cool hang-out. You said you wanted to see how the other half lives,” he said, shooting a slight grin at me before he got out, looking more beautiful than humanly possible in his suit pants and white button up.

Cool. That explained why everyone seemed familiar, at least most of them had a bit of my dad in the way they moved. I shook my head and shoved open my door, unnerved when Lewis reached in to pull me out.

“Thanks,” I muttered feeling disoriented as he took his time letting go of my hand, like he didn’t really see anyone besides me, didn’t think anything of prolonged physical contact.

He leaned over inside the car while I looked around, trying not to feel cold without Lewis, then not feel self-conscious when he slung his suit coat around my shoulders, taking his time with buttons while I slid my arms in the still warm sleeves. It smelled like him. Like honey and grass, like leaves and sunshine.

“How do you smell like that?” I asked, flopping the sleeves up and down where they covered my hands.

He studied me carefully as he rolled the sleeves. “I took a shower this morning. Maybe I smell sweaty and…”

I laughed and grabbed his arm. “You smell like sunshine.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said, a half smile on his lips as I hung on him, trying to remember that we were adults and I should not want to hold his hand, much less swing on his arm.

“You’re welcome,” I said as I straightened, fiddling with the black buttons of the coat before I slid my hands into the welt pockets so I didn’t grab onto him again.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Fine! Thanks. I feel weird. I’m not sure what we’re doing. Are we hanging out, or getting in trouble with the House and my mother, are you escorting me, or are we on a date?” I ended with a shrug.

He reached into the pocket of his coat I wore and squeezed my fingers.

“Whatever makes you most comfortable, whatever you want it to be, that’s what it is.”

He pulled my hand out of his pocket, turned it over until he bent and brushed his lips over my knuckles.

“Okay,” I whispered.

We walked, hands entwined and I didn’t care who saw us, not that the Cools would report to Slide. Or would they? I looked up to ask Lewis, but then he was reaching into his pocket and handing money to an old lady over the booth for a steaming dough thing with veggies and nuts inside.

“No meat here,” he said as we turned away from the booth.

“Good. No meat, no blood. I didn’t know that Cools gathered,” I said, staring at a tall woman and man who were standing having some kind of transaction without using any words. The noise volume was very low, talking, light laughter, wind through the trees and chimes tinkling. The longer I walked beside Lewis, through the gatherings of Cools who acted so nice and calm, so steady and relaxed, the better I felt about everything. It seemed almost all right that Slide had crushed me after I’d leaned my uncle.