House of Slide Hybrid (31 page)

I should be fine by now, over a week after tattoos, a week of hiding in my bed while my body recovered. I hated being so weak, so slow, such a mess. I had a flash of memory, Lewis pale and weak, brought to the edge by me, again. Why did it bother me so much to see Lewis hurt when I knew that he was practically indestructible and that he liked danger and violence? I should have felt much worse about Jackson, but I didn’t. Jackson wasn’t at the Hollow house because I’d bound him to me; that had been Slide’s doing, not mine. That must be why I hated remembering his sunken eyes and cheeks, but couldn’t bear to think of Lewis’s.

I inhaled and tried to suck as much cold into my lungs as possible. I didn’t like that name swirling around in my brain, burning my conscience when I should have been past feeling. We were all puppets jerked by Devlin the dead puppeteer, even Lewis, especially Lewis. I couldn’t stop though. That was the worst thing, knowing that if I didn’t go back, didn’t finish the tattoos, all of the pain Lewis felt would be wasted, thrown away like a gift I didn’t want. I’d been so thoughtless, so certain that it would be easy. It was bad enough to nearly die, to have that pain, but for Lewis to suffer for me was what kept me paralyzed, unable to move because I might hurt him again.

A wisp of smoke curled around my hand, the only warning I had before I was immersed in shadows, lost to sight, feeling, anything while the scent of Nether filled me with a dark longing. I didn’t struggle, only waited for the mists to diminish so I could see the dark figure where he sat beside me, cloaked in shadows in spite of the bright sun falling all around him.

“Are you going to jump?” he asked.

I held very still while I fought the need to put my head on his shoulder, to wrap my arms around him the way his mists curled around me.

“What are you doing here?”

“I thought I could help you. Mists are good for Hybrids who really aren’t meant to be runed.”

I closed my eyes, clenching my hands into fists to keep from relaxing against him. “What about you? Don’t you think you should spend some time away from me to make up for the last encounter?”

“Seeing you well is much better for me than wondering whether or not you died in the night.”

I shook my head. “No one will let me die.”

“I don’t think you’d find death very interesting. Being a Hybrid with the beginnings of runes is certainly interesting.”

I laughed before I shook my head and stared down at the ice, at the current I could almost see beneath the thin layer. It was bright with the snow melting in the sun sparkling on the ice. “Is that what this is about for you? How interesting and painful life could be? Is that what you want?”

“The question is; what do you want?”

“I don’t want anything. I just don’t want to hurt anyone.”

He slid his hand over mine, persuading my palm to open. “You never hurt me.”

I half laughed. “Of course I didn’t. I only took your soul and left you for dead. That’s fun and interesting, right?” I shook my head again and pulled my hand away from his.

He sighed. “So you are depressed,” he murmured.

I shoved a hand through my hair, feeling frustrated when I found myself blinking back tears.

“I’m fine. I need to go back. I know that. I need to go and finish the tattoos. I’ll do it. But I don’t want you there. I don’t want you to suffer, for my choices to hurt you.”

“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?”