House of Slide Hybrid (3 page)

I stared at myself in the mirror, the eyes that were somehow both my dad’s silvery pale blue, and my mother’s dark blue nearly black, the hair that still had highlights from the summer that made the brown look alive and healthy. I looked nice. When I smiled I didn’t look like I wanted to eat someone. I missed the scary Hotblood. I shook my hair back and left the knife where it was. I needed to forget about all the things I wasn’t and couldn’t be.

On the date, I stood beside Osmond in line for the popcorn and felt my stomach clench. I couldn’t remember ever being in a movie theater and there was something about the dim lights and the popcorn machine that made me nervous. Maybe it was Osmond who was wearing a nice button down shirt and a jacket, wearing cologne I could smell. I guess he matched me in my carefully selected dress but it made me wonder where the guy was who I’d known all my life.

“So… do you have the internship with the architect in the city lined up yet?” I asked as a younger couple with some rebellious piercings that would have looked mild anywhere other than Sanders bumped us.

“It’s been lined up for years. How are your art classes going?” He gave me a half smile that made a dimple in his cheek. The dimple made me smile back at him.

“Great! It’s amazing to see how much there is to learn.” My smile was weak and forced but I held onto it.

“Give it some time,” he said encouragingly. “Do you want popcorn?”

Before I knew it we were sitting close to the back of the movie theater with popcorn between us.

“That guy makes a lousy villain,” Osmond whispered.

“What is he wearing?” I asked, and he gave me a smile I could only see dimly in the reflected light.

I eventually relaxed back into my chair and let myself be amused by the story of a guy and girl who were chased around by some ridiculously badly acted villains until the point where the guy’s injured and the girl’s telling him she loves him. There’s so much blood, and the smell is overwhelming and intoxicating, and nothing else in the world is like it, and it’s everywhere, on her hands, smeared down her dress, and she’s kissing him, begging him to live, begging him to stay with her, telling him she loves him and can’t live without him until someone starts yelling, something about danger. The woman has to leave him, has to…

The screen went black right before Osmond pulled me to my feet and half carried half pushed me down the aisle towards the nearest exit. People shouted and pushed while the thick smoke came from everywhere. I coughed and stumbled but Osmond had his arm around my shoulder and he blocked everyone in our path, gently of course. I leaned against him and put my face in his shirt, glad for the smell of the cologne that blocked out the smoke, kept me from smelling the blood that was probably only in my head.

We burst through the side doors into the alley where groups of people were standing around talking excitedly, pointing at the movie theater. I looked down and studied the bricks beneath my feet as Osmond took me away quickly down the alley, holding me steady as we walked over ice so I didn’t fall on my face.

We made it to the curb where he’d left his truck parked letting the sound of people fade behind us, the cold air and brisk wind sweeping away any traces of smoke. Osmond buckled me in when my shaky hands wouldn’t do it then was soon in his seat turning on the truck with the heater on full blast. I hunched as small as I could get with my hands over the heater.

He drove around town aimlessly. I still felt shaky, like I’d been in an accident and barely walked away, leaving a wreck behind. Osmond reached over and took one of my hands in his. His hand was warm, comfortable, but I had to resist the urge to jerk away from him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Osmond asked after a long silence stretched out as dark and bleak as the night outside the window.

“About what?” I asked.

“Did you see Valerie in the alley?” he asked.

I shook my head and shivered.

“She looked at you like… I don’t know. She looked like you were responsible for it.”

My head snapped up and I stared at Osmond. He looked back at me with a slight frown on his warm face and I pulled my hand out of his grip.

“I haven’t talked to Valerie since school started after Christmas break.”

“I could feel the energy coming off you,” Osmond said quietly. “You were watching the movie but I watched you. Something happened in that theater that only you saw, and it upset you enough that…” he trailed off.

“You think I burned down the theater?”

He studied the road for a minute without saying anything. “I don’t know what happened; that’s why I’m asking you.”

“How should I know? I don’t know anything! I don’t know why I still haven’t figured anything out! I don’t know who I am, or what I want, or what’s going to happen, and I certainly don’t know why you wanted to take me on a date. I don’t know why I have to smell blood in a movie theater, or why I…” I faltered and didn’t ask why I hurt so much for someone I didn’t really know.

I shook my head and fought down the panic, the same close feeling I’d felt in the theater and on the sidewalk under the light.

I opened the door. Osmond slammed on the brakes and I managed to get my seatbelt off.

“I’m going to walk home. I need the exercise. I’ll see you tomorrow at school. Good night, Osmond.” Osmond opened his mouth to protest but something in my face must have stopped him, because he nodded and let me shut the door and turn away from the truck before the first tear trickled down my cheek.

I walked purposefully and tried not to slouch down like I wanted to collapse. That wasn’t brave and strong and Wild. I should be ripping up tile and reupholstering furniture, or saving the world with brilliant medical marvels. I should not be burning down movie theaters, if that had really been me. Was it possible? I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve wishing I had a tissue. In my screwed up world anything was possible. Everything bad was possible.

I walked down the sidewalk past the cheerfully lit houses feeling lost and trapped, desperate for something, anything to stop the panic. I turned a corner and headed down a street on the edges of town not so well lit, somewhere I wouldn’t accidentally blow up a streetlight, if that had been me. After I was halfway down the block I knew with a smack of awareness that someone was watching me.

“Good evening,” a voice said out of the darkness.

I froze as I searched the shadows, wishing I’d chosen a better lit street to wander down instead of avoiding the light.

“Evening,” I said politely to the general air and forced myself to continue walking. My heart pounded in my throat as I walked and heard the sound of ice cracking. I shivered in my coat and wished I had my knife on my leg. I hated feeling defenseless, being defenseless. Of course I could always bite him. The idea of someone’s blood in my mouth made my stomach roil. Maybe not. Maybe it would be better for me to be defenseless and die so that other people wouldn’t have to.

“Giving up without a fight? I didn’t think Helen’s daughter would be so pathetic.”

I spun around. “I’m sick of disembodied voices, and I’m sick of fighting! You don’t know me and you don’t know what’s inside of me. If you did you’d stay far away because people who get too close to me don’t end well. Friends as well as enemies, and disembodied voices have never gone over too great with me. So leave me alone!” This last was so loud it echoed strangely on the dark snow covered streets. I startled myself with my intensity, my rapid breathing and clenched fists reflecting the anger that burned inside of me. It didn’t burn like a fury, but more icy and cold, scary and dark.

“Disembodied voices in the darkness represent your inner demons. If I showed you a face, any face at all, you’d be unable to realize that what you see is only a reflection of who you are.”

“Is that supposed to be funny? Typical that the reflection of my inner turmoil would be a crackpot philosopher. At least I won’t have trouble falling asleep at night.” I kept walking towards the corner where a street light burned hoping that once I got there I’d find relative safety.

He grabbed me by the back of my coat. I spun around to knock his hands off me, but slipped on the ice and went down instead. I banged my knee but rolled to my feet as quickly as I could. Unfortunately I still couldn’t see him and the footing was very bad. I took a breath to scream, to yell something, and it was like all the air was sucked out of me. He gripped my face with icy fingers that dug into my skin until it felt like they sank into the bone, into my brain with pain that seared through everything I’d ever known until I forgot myself, forget everything besides one name I whispered before the explosion of agony collapsed into darkness.

“Lewis.”

The sound of voices faded in and out before I realized that I wasn’t unconscious but still couldn’t open my eyes. There was my mother’s voice, husky, murmuring to someone, Satan’s rough growl in response, Grim’s voice, smooth and elegant while my dad’s voice, soothing and at the same time icy cold, made all the other voices less noticeable in comparison.

I was safe.

I let myself fall back into the chaos of my mind—there were memories, the voice of the stranger in the darkness, the image of Snowy pulling out her gun, Devlin’s face, his dark blue eyes rimmed with shadows as he smiled at me after another sleepless night when I walked into his room to find him hunched over his desk, a rock from his seemingly endless collection being tucked into his pocket. I focused on those eyes, the apology that seemed to hover just past his lips, curved in a half smile. It was the same almost smile he’d given me for years and years—ever since he’d taken my soul.

I felt a wrench when I thought that, an internal tug that brought me to another memory, the same eyes, the same half smile, but the face was younger, untouched by age but somehow, even though my brother hadn’t been more than eight years old, there was ageless sorrow in those eyes, in that smile, even while he told me to hold still, bribed me with ice cream our mother never allowed us to have while he showed me the cool new thing he’d learned while he’d been gone.

I heard in my mind a voice, a child’s voice, a girl who however young she was, knew what she wanted. She—me—asked him where he’d been, why it was such a secret and how long this thing would take, because I wanted to build a castle for my blue pony before dinner.

He told me that it wouldn’t take long even as he placed a rock, dark red, the color of half dried blood on the floor between us. He never lied, not even when it got him in trouble. I stared at him while his eyes, so big in his pale face, bore into me until I nodded, settling down on the blue carpet of his room.

I listened, entranced as he chanted, waving his hands until green sparks lit his fingertips, trailing down to the floor, searing into the carpet while the smell of burnt wool and something else, something a little bit like fireworks but more like power, if power had a scent, filled the room.

I didn’t move even when the smell made me wrinkle my nose and I wanted to open the window, to clear the room and let in the sun and wind. I wanted ice cream, but more, I wanted to know what else there was to see, what other tricks Devlin had.

The room filled with bristling power as Devlin continued waving his hands in elaborate patterns, filling the design around me with sparks that burned deeper and deeper into the rug. There was a pause, a lull as Devlin took a deep breath and I heard thumping footsteps in the hall before the door swung open right as Devlin said the final word.

The blue of the door faded even as it opened, leaving it gray, gray that matched my mother’s suit, a suit that had been red. I didn’t have time to be confused, I didn’t have time to ask my mother why she was screaming, or to tell Devlin that we would never get ice cream now, not when we’d obviously done something our mother would kill us for. My mother’s screams came from far away, farther and farther as I stared at Devlin, the last thing in the world with color until even the blue of his eyes faded to black.

I woke up with sunshine streaming through my window over the coverlet on my bed, intricate swirls of maroon, gold, and blue that reminded me of my father, that reminded me that I no longer had a Hotblood soul. I looked up at the painting, my Axel and stared at the swirling colors that reminded me of Lewis, of how it had been to have a soul that burned through life, that lived with more intensity than most people knew existed.

I stared at the painting, at the colors that seemed to shift under my gaze. Where was he? What had he thought when I’d told him that I didn’t want to see him again? He wouldn’t have stayed anyway, not someone like him, immortal practically, at least by the standard of Hotbloods who lived fast, died young, unless they were lucky or unlucky enough to be a bloodworker who could drain life from someone else, stealing their gifts.

I touched my mouth absently, the ghost of the last kiss heavy on my lips. Devlin had taken my soul with runework I’d never seen before, but I’d gotten it back again with the simple magic of true love’s kiss. Maybe I’d ended up with a half bound soul, tied to a rebel Hybrid, like me, but it beat the years of lifelessness, the abyss of emptiness where I’d died without dying.

I’d stolen his soul when I’d been little more than a walking corpse, lifeless, aimless, craving nothing besides oblivion. What could someone who painted something like my Axel painting, so alive, see in someone like me, the way I was then? I didn’t know, but…I couldn’t help the smile as I remembered the heat of him—he’d seen something.

I sat up, suddenly awake and ready to face the day, to enjoy the sun as long as it lasted. I hummed a nameless tune as I picked through my drawers, looking for something light and happy to wear, something that matched the girl with the blue pony. I was that girl, I was alive, and whether I blew up movie theaters, or was attacked by weird strangers, I would be as much myself as I could.

I paused in the middle of my dressing, still in pajamas that my mother must have dressed me in as I remembered the runes my brother had burnt into his floor. I left my room, racing down the hall to the familiar door, no longer blue but a cold stark white that matched the carpet, the walls of the empty room, the barren stretch of black duvet over a nondescript bed the only punctuation in the otherwise blank canvas. There were no traces of him, not his desk where he’d done homework, not the huge glass jar on the floor with his collection of rocks, not the dressers with trophies and photos on top, nothing to remind me of my brother, except when I stepped into the room, I thought I could still feel the runes, burned deeply into the floor, through the carpet and into the wood beneath, the bones of the house still carrying the scar of my brother’s betrayal.

I backed out of the room slowly, frowning as I tried to fit the pieces together, of the brother I’d known taking my soul when he’d never done anything else to hurt me or anyone else I knew. It didn’t fit any more than Lewis, the boy who was so alive, kissing the zombie.

I stood in the hall, staring at the white blankness then moved instinctively towards the door at the end of the hall, the door that led up to the attic. The stairs didn’t creak and there were no cobwebs—this was my mother’s house after all, but there was something empty about the room in spite of the piles of things, a bright red chair I remembered being in the living room at some point in my youth, a hodgepodge of books and pictures piled in stacks that looked dusted, but deserted. My mother hadn’t taken the time to box and label her memories, she’d taken them and shoved them out of sight, leaving her in the mausoleum of her pristine house as the rest of her world died.

I poked around the piles of things until with a cry I opened a box labeled, ‘Dariana’. I sat on the floor before I pulled back the tape, ripping the cardboard until I opened the box and saw the pink, purple, and light blue of my childhood. There was a stack of clothes, my favorite dress, two shirts with pink characters on them, and a collection of toys, my favorite toys separated from the anonymous mass of my childhood. I picked out the blue pony, clutching it in my fingers as I remembered the corral I was going to build for it, of the world I’d wanted to create.

I would do it, in spite of the lost years and my age. I returned the pony to the box, picking it all up to take to my room. I spun around to take it to the stairs, but in my rush I knocked over a box that fell to the floor with an ominous crash as whatever glass thing inside it shattered.

I sighed as I lowered my box and carefully pulled the fallen box back into an upright position. It wasn’t labeled, but it had been heavy. I could have left it, tempted to not tell my mother about whatever breakable thing I’d ruined, but after a long hesitation I opened the box. I stared at the pictures, My brother with Snowy ready for prom, me standing in the background in a black nondescript dress, Osmond by my side but somehow more in the picture than I was. I gasped as I cut my finger as I’d run it over the now with cracked glass, pushing the picture to the side to see chunks of sparkling shards spread through piles of rocks. I saw more rocks than I’d remembered him having.

I stared at the strange collection for someone like Devlin to have, someone who could control anyone he met. Maybe he liked hanging out with things he couldn’t control and manipulate. I frowned as I reached out to touch a particularly pretty one, pink with sparkles.

The world in the attic fell away and I was swept to another time, another place as soon as my fingers wrapped around the stone.

I breathed heavily in the darkness, trying to smother a choking cough. My whole body ached, but the top of my leg throbbed in agony. A torch flared up above me, stinging my eyes. I pushed back my wild hair and messy braids streaked with silver, staring blindly at the torchbearer until with a gasp I said, “Osmond.”

I watched as Osmond, only not the Osmond I knew with his hair spiked up and his missing shirt, drove the handle of the torch into the ground before he knelt in front of me, me all in black leather while blood oozed from a nasty gash across my thigh.

“Dariana, drink this,” he said, uncapping a bottle before he pressed it to my mouth, forcing whatever nasty concoction it was down my throat. He stared at me with so much intensity. I wondered where the nice, decent guy I’d known all my life had gone. Of course, I wondered who I was and what I was doing wearing all that leather.

“I’m fine,” I gasped, pushing him away. That was when I saw the silver tattoos circling my wrists, sparkling in the firelight the same way Satan’s and my mother’s did.

“Come on,” Osmond said, casting a quick glance around the dark woods before scooping the alternate reality me up in his arms. He took the time to brush a strand of hair out of my eyes then proceeded to kiss me, pulling me close to that very naked chest in a way that made me forget to breathe. I wrapped my arms around him like I already knew him and kissed him until everything went black.

I blinked as the room around me came back into focus, the attic as it had been the last time I’d seen it, still in my pajamas, barefoot on the hardwood floor. I took a deep breath as I looked around, noticing that the pink stone had fallen onto the floor during my episode. It occurred to me that I should probably alert someone to my strange delusion, but that would require telling people that I’d seen myself make out with Osmond. I couldn’t imagine anyone I wanted to tell that to, not even Snowy.

I bent slowly to retrieve the stone, almost nervous, as though a rock could transport me to another existence. I held it lightly as I straightened, relaxing when nothing happened until I shifted my hold to get it more solidly in my grasp.

The attic disappeared again, but it wasn’t dark wherever I was, instead the air was hazy with smoke.

I ran up a hill, leaping over boulders as I raced agilely towards the top. I wasn’t alone; I ran among people who fought, some of them not entirely human. I forced myself on in spite of exhaustion. I couldn’t have kept running, but I did, step after step, dodging a fireball as easily and with as much alarm as if it were a slaughter ball. I ignored the blast of flame and heat although I could smell the charred grass and burnt stones.

As I ran, climbing higher and higher, the people around grew sparser until there was no one between me and a figure perched on the summit, still as he watched me get closer and closer. At first the features were blurry, but then he flicked his lighter open, then shut and I knew who it was before another fireball went arcing through the air towards me. I rolled to the side and lost my forward momentum. Pain streaked through me but I continued, limping for a moment before I regained my stride, racing towards Lewis with a fierce intensity.

I got out my knife, gesturing with my hands until blue sparks flickered around me before I launched myself at him. I moved so gracefully, strong, powerful as I wrapped my legs around him, grabbed a handful of hair and pulled his head back, revealing his long white throat for my knife.

I moved to draw the blade across his throat but something hit the knife and me away before it did more than nick him. I hung on to him even as another fireball exploded against my back. This time the fire wrapped around my leather jacket, burning me as I screamed, half in pain, half in fury.

I never loosened my grip on him. I gazed deeply into his eyes with my teeth gritted as I struggled to kill him. I leaned him even as the air crackled around me and I poured destructive energy, the kind that could melt movie theaters, into Lewis’ body. I could feel the force as I pushed inside of his skull, my will demanding that he release everything he was, pushing to erase his mind so that he would cease existing in every way. The further I pushed, the less there was to push against until with a cry that was as furious as it was desperate, I crumpled, lost in the abyss of him, unable to find myself.

I opened my eyes again and found myself once more in the attic, this time staring at the ceiling from my back on the floor. I closed my eyes tightly before I opened them again and found myself still in the attic, still lying on my back, hanging onto the stone for dear life. I dropped the stone, with effort before rolling to my feet, dizzy and slightly nauseous for a moment while I regained my balance.

I kicked the rock over to the box while I rubbed the back of my head where it must have hit the floor. My hair felt soft under my fingers, not all weird and hardcore. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen, but one thing was sure—I now knew why Devlin collected rocks, and it wasn’t because Geology was so fascinating, although Geology was rather fascinating. I shook my head as I shut Devlin’s box and grabbed my much lighter, and much less dangerous package then headed down the stairs.

I dropped the box in my bedroom before I went down to the kitchen. The sun seemed to be in the same position as it had been before I’d gone up to the attic, like I’d spent no time at all having delusions.

In the vision I’d been tough, strong and seductive, all things which I clearly wasn’t, and while I might tell him that I never wanted to see him again, I wouldn’t ever try and kill Lewis not to mention almost succeed. I shuddered before I entered the kitchen, giving Grim a slight smile where he sat at the counter, stonily buttering an English muffin.

“What’s for breakfast?” I asked, opening the fridge.

“What would you like? I’m your assigned chef, although you should know that Slide insists that all its members are adept at things like cooking.”

I shrugged, peering into a plastic container that looked like tofu. My dad really was here somewhere. “Another reason to stay away from Slide.” I shut the fridge and turned to Grim with a smile that he returned slowly.

“You’re up early. No one expected you to wake up until tomorrow.”

I stared at him while I let that fact sink in. “So you drugged me?”

He shook his head. “Apparently, Slide has seen fit to invest in a trainer for you. Congratulations. You met him the other night.”

I froze, the details of the night: the smoke, the screams, me leaving Osmond and the creepy voice with a touch that had seared me to my brain, came back full force.

“How many,” I demanded, trying to stay calm in spite of the panic I felt.

He raised an eyebrow.

“How many people did I kill? Was that really me? Did I really melt the movie theater? How?”

The lights flickered in our kitchen.

Grim put his hand over mine, calming my pulse with his abilities to manipulate blood.

“You’ve always been sensitive to technology and electricity. Years ago your mother had multiple circuits put into this house to keep the power up and running.”

“You knew that I had the power to do that? Why didn’t you tell me? How many people…”

“No fatalities,” he said crisply. “Four people went to the hospital with various injuries, nothing life-threatening.”

“So, the trainer came after I melted the movie theater to keep me from hurting anyone else? But, my father took all those lives to keep me away from the House. Why would he do that if you all knew that I’d end up hurting people with my Wild gifts?”

He sighed.

“We hoped that things wouldn’t get out of control. You still have options. You can train or choose to be hunted down and killed by the House, or Satan. We have to make sure that we don’t have a repeat of the other night. Unfortunately, your abilities are only going to get stronger as time goes on.”

I stared at him, taking in the long face, sunken eyes and the extremely doleful expression, like someone had just run over his favorite cat. Had I really melted the movie theater? I had to see it. What kind of damage could I cause, and if this was only the beginning…