House of Slide Hybrid (47 page)

“I’m fine. That’s not the problem. I tried, but I couldn’t let you go.” His voice cracked on the last word. “I should have ended your life quickly, painlessly, but instead, I kept you here. The Life runes kept you alive until I found you, my mists were enough to keep you alive, to finish the runes, to make you suffer as I never wanted to…I’m sorry.”

He sounded sorry, but I only shook my head. “I didn’t ask you to trade your life for mine.”

He stared at me, unmoving. “The mists will return. One doesn’t stop being half Nether simply by using one’s mists. Don’t let my ‘sacrifice’,” he said with a twist of his lips, “Bother you. It didn’t kill me, simply left me drained.”

“Half Nether?” I asked, but I was too weak to continue. My head pounded and my vision was more and more blurred. His face was the last thing I saw.

The next time I woke up, I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see Lewis, to realize that we were both at the end of our strength, that only one of us would survive, and that he’d make sure it was me. The bond ache threatened to eat me from the inside while the rest of me thrummed with waking nerves that felt too much. I had healing runes now, thanks to Lewis, but I was healing so much slower than the uncles would have.

How would he be able to survive without his mists? So many people wanted to kill him; I’d seen it at the Hybrid camp. How could I protect him when I couldn’t even move? I gasped a sob and opened my eyes.

He didn’t look like the Nether where he sat cross-legged on the floor, staring into the fire as though he didn’t know I woke up. Maybe he didn’t. He gazed unblinking into the flames, the flickering light dancing over his skin, making him look alive, beautiful. My heart ached for a moment worse than the bond craving, more than my slowly healing body.

He’d brought me back to life—the thought hurt, but at the same time, he looked like I felt, wrung out, broken, lost. I’d brought Grim back to life, begged Lewis to drag him back, Grim who never wanted to live. The thought made me cold, the realization that I’d done something like that to someone so carelessly. I hadn’t known what it would be like for Grim, but Lewis had warned me.

He’d done it because I needed him to, for a kiss that he’d never collected, a kiss that I wasn’t sure he really wanted. He shouldn’t have brought me back, not when he knew what it would do to me, how I would feel, how un-me it would make me.

He looked up with no surprise on his features. He’d known I was awake. Of course he knew I was awake. Was there a chance that he’d ever been surprised by anything I’d done? He’d never expected the blue hair. I remembered his smile when he saw my hair, so different from the pain he now had in his eyes.

“Aiden is here, if you’d rather he took care of you…” he began.

Aiden, no, Old Peter was there. Lewis or the Nether would feel how I felt since I hadn’t tried blocking anything, no doubt the whole world knew how I felt, barren, broken, and hateful. Did he think he could leave me with Aiden so he wouldn’t have to watch me, feel me? He must hate me, bringing me back when I should have been dead. Why did he keep looking at me, like there was something to see? His eyes were duller, but still, the firelight caught the gold in them. Even a fraction of what he’d been, he was the most beautiful creature in the world.

The anger was breathtaking, leaving me dizzy and hungry for death. Not his death, no, that would have been too simple. I wanted him alive, mine to hurt the way he’d hurt me. He’d traded Grim’s life for a kiss, a kiss I’d never given. I wanted that kiss, to sever any ties between us while I paid that debt, then he could leave me here, forever.

“What about the kiss?” My voice was louder this time.

I felt a twinge of delight at his confusion. “I don’t know…”

“I owe you a kiss for bringing back Grim, the way you brought me back. I’d like to pay my debts so I don’t owe you anything.” My words were ice.

“You want to kiss me, now?” His voice had life for the first time since the crash, life and bewilderment.

“Now.” My voice trembled on that one word, a betrayal.

He stared at me for a moment. Would he refuse? He got to his feet, slowly, then moved, not like an old man, but like a tired one. He knelt beside the stone bed, close enough that I could smell his shaving cream. When had he shaved? The idea of Lewis shaving confused me, made me remember his gentleness when washing my hair.

“I’ll kiss you,” he said, leaning over, barely touching my face with his fingers, “when it doesn’t hurt you.”

His lips brushed my forehead, the touch so delicate and gentle, but it triggered a fresh wave of pain.

“It’s a little late to worry about hurting me, don’t you think?”

He looked at me, didn’t flinch from my words as I hurled them at him, took it like he expected it, deserved it. I closed my eyes tight, unable to see him like that, like he hated himself more than I could. It was my job to hurt him, to make him suffer the way I suffered, only, there was something wrong. I opened my eyes, searching his face for the answer to why I felt so wrong.

I was angry, and that part was fine, I had a right to be angry, but the other part, the darkness that wanted him to suffer, that wanted to hurt him, that part was new, and I didn’t like it.

“What’s wrong with me?”

He took a deep breath, his face half in shadow from the fire’s dim light, but I could see his hair, longer than before, a dark, burning auburn color. He was so much like autumn, like death.

“Physically you’re healing, but it’s slower than it should be. You’re Hybrid, not a Wild who can… anyway. Your internal organs are all functioning, your heart is beating almost steadily. You have a few broken bones, more than a few, actually, and they’re healing nicely, but not as fast as…”

“I mean,” I said, gripping him with my hand, the only one I could move. “Why do I want to hurt you?” The words were hard to say, because I still felt that roaring anger, the one that wanted to strike everything within reach, but particularly him, because he had no right to be so beautiful.

“Do you? You’re not referring to the Nether bloodlust, or the bond ache?”

I glared at him, furious that I’d had to say as much as I had, that he would pretend not to understand. “It’s not bloodlust.”

“I gave you a lot of my Nether mists. Most of them. I’m afraid they carry my remarkable self-hatred.”

“Incredibly annoying when he whines and whines about all the people he’s killed, how he’s destined to bring misery to every life he touches, seriously, makes me want to stick a dagger through my eye, just to change the conversation.” Aiden’s voice came from the darkness beyond the ring of light from the flickering fire.

“Aiden? No, Old Peter,” I corrected myself clumsily.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Lewis said, not glancing away from me.

He shouldn’t look at me like that, like there was something inside of him that burned after all he’d been through. I felt so torn, sick, angry, and pathetic with an underlying current of need. The anger was losing to the need.

“She could use some death, so here it is.” Aiden said then there was a thud and a scurrying sound from the other side of the room.

“Are you ready?” Lewis asked me, never faltering as he stared at me.

I shook my head. “No. I’m not killing anything, not when I feel like this. It’s not you. It’s different. It’s bad. I feel wrong. I don’t believe your mists have anything to do with that kind of emotion.”

His face crumpled for a moment before he took a shaky breath and nodded, not meeting my eyes. “It’s demon taint,” he whispered, finally meeting my gaze.

My heart thudded so hard in my chest that I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him correctly.

He shook his head. “I can’t get rid of it. Nothing I do makes a difference. It weakens you, slows your healing, it feeds on your light, on your beautiful soul, and I can’t do anything except slow it down.”

I gasped as the world exploded inside my head. The demons screamed, sinking claws inside of my brain, as though I hadn’t felt enough pain. I nodded woozily struggling to stay conscious.

“Please,” I whispered, begging the shrieking remnants of the demon mistress to have mercy on me. I blinked as I felt Lewis’s hand over my hand, holding the hilt of a knife before he drew it through the throat of a pale pink, hairy snouted pig. Pigs died every day so that people could eat their flesh, but maybe they wouldn’t if they had to hear the whine, watch the thing twitch while the blood squirted and sprayed, then see the eyes grow bleary and unfocused.

I shuddered as the death fed my Nether mists, Lewis’s and mine, muting the strength of the demons, the taint as it struggled inside of my veins. I felt a heady rush that almost distracted me from the bond, from the pain in my limbs.

“If you’re done,” Aiden said, tugging the swine from my grip, “I’ll do something amazing for dinner.”

“Bacon and pork sausage?” Lewis asked, sounding exhausted and disgusted.

The thought of eating what I had already consumed made me feel sick, or maybe it was the way the death seemed to trigger an aching in my bones as they knit together.

“With pork chops and baby back ribs.”

I screamed as a sudden jolt of pain shot down my leg, pain that felt alive as it pulsed through muscles, bone, tissue, pain that only ended when I lost consciousness.

***

I opened my eyes to see a bright blue sky that gazed back at me unblinking, surrounded by trees as gray as if winter still had them in her grip, but the air was warm, warmer than early spring should be as it ruffled the golden hair on my arms, Lewis’s arms. The weather was abnormal, wrong for how barren and desolate the trees were.

“Is this her?” I asked in Lewis’s low, piercing voice then I turned around to see Aiden behind me, looking nothing like Old Peter as he shrugged his narrow shoulders in an old red t-shirt like he didn’t care.

He shoved his stringy brown hair out of his eyes, rubbing his cheek over a patch of bumpy red acne. “What did you expect when you brought her back to life, gave her your mists, and enhancement runes? It wasn’t enough to save her life, you’ve got to finish her runes for her. You’ve done some stupid things, but this has got to be the single most impressively idiotical…”

“That’s not a word,” I said turning around, trying to ignore him.

“There ain’t a word for how stupid you are,” Aiden said then laughed, a sound brightly tinny, full of life, but also unstable.

“You’re probably right. I figured that if I was pouring metal into her flesh, I might as well do it right. Can you fix it?” I asked, gesturing around at the still woods where they held onto the sleep of winter.

“Can’t. You gave her more Nether than I’ve got, and with the Runes and the taint, well, if she was trying she could do some real, good damage. How long’ll it take your mists to grow back? Do you think you’ll need them to clear the taint? Or maybe we don’t care ‘cause we haven’t got time for anything before the end of the world?”

“I should ask you. You’re the one who was so close to the foreteller. You knew that if I didn’t bond with her she would be hurt, killed maybe.” The trees around were so serene, dead. My voice had an undercurrent of dead, at least deadly.

“I think that the bond is the answer to the taint, but she’s not going to like it, not now.”

“I don’t want to talk about the bond.”

“And here I thought you just asked me what I knew.”

I felt his hand on my shoulder, the warmth static, cold, hot, a heavy, huge hand that I didn’t need. I stopped walking until the hand fell.

“I’m listening.”

“You’re not the only one,” Aiden said slowly.

I turned and saw Aiden look at me with a cocked head and a strange expression on his lean face.

“Maybe you should seduce her.”

I laughed but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “That wouldn’t exactly be up to Code, would it? You heard her. I thought that maybe we’d be lucky, that maybe she wouldn’t be infected. What do the demons want with her? I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have. She doesn’t need more trauma, more confusion, more anything right now.”

“She needs you.” Aiden sounded regretful. His eyes burned a sudden bright blue, as he stared at me.

I shook my head as I crossed my arms over my chest. “She needs anyone but me. I couldn’t let her die. Why couldn’t I let her die?”

The light was still there even as Aiden shrugged. “It’s in the blood. You were both brought to life by their design.”

“You blame this on the Nether? What plan could they have for us that we would possibly want to be part of?”

He grinned at me, a large disarming smile showing off very nice white teeth. “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? What they want is never what you want, but when do they ask us? Maybe if you follow through, they’ll finally let you die once and for all. Maybe they’ll let you take her with you.”

I swallowed hard. “There is no happy ending for me.”

Aiden stuck his hands in his pockets and tilted back to look up, into the sky. I followed his gaze with my own, and made out a bird high above us perched on a white branch, a very large, dark bird before it spread its wings screaming as it flew away, disappearing from sight.

“That’s not demon,” I said sounding tired.

“You almost wish it was, don’t you? Are you suicidal now? You don’t have a fury anymore, or do you think I’m going to waste my fury saving you? Maybe with the Nether, what they leave behind is only enough humanity to feel the pain, but at least you’re alive, feeling the pain, and so is that girl. So, are you going to finish the bond, diminish the pain? Or are you going to draw it out longer, give her more reasons to hate you?” Aiden had a strange glint in his eyes as he smiled. “If you’re not going to do the bond, maybe I’ll take up with her. I’ve thought for a while now that bald and tattoos make a girl distinctive.”