House of Slide Hybrid (48 page)

“That’s not something I’d joke about if I were you.” I stepped towards him, glaring.

He shifted slightly as we faced off, grinning while his blue eyes burned brilliantly. “Who said I was joking?”

I tackled him. The second Aiden’s hand came around my throat, I felt myself pushed back, down, away from Lewis and back to myself.

***

I opened my eyes in the Hollow house at the top of the cliff, alone for the first time since the crash.

I waited, holding my breath for a moment until I was sure that the pain really was less than before. After another moment I flexed my toes, and the pain, while intense, was accompanied by relief almost headier than the pain. I could move my toes! Movement, while painful freed a fear that I hadn’t realized was clenched so tight around my heart. I wasn’t trapped here on this table, pathetic, helpless forever.

I rolled onto my side filled with so much pain that I thought I was going to black out but after a moment, it was manageable. I gripped the sheet wrapped around me, then slowly touched my shoulder. The skin had a thick scab over it, so I must be healing.

I touched my neck and felt a long gash up the side of it that was less healed than the shoulder. My face was a mess, swollen mouth, cheek, eyes it was astonishing I could see out of, while my hair was completely gone. Lewis must’ve shaved both of us at the same time because my head was as smooth as his face had been.

I felt the tears pool in the corners of my eyes, which was stupid. Of all the things to cry about, baldness was right up there with losing my cute party shoes. Well, I could cry about that too. The skin of my head was slick and soft where it wasn’t bumpy from scars that felt old. The metal was a shock that made my breath short. As I gasped, fighting nausea, I forced my fingers to explore the runes now embedded on my skull. Apparently, when Lewis made up his mind, he was very thorough. I followed the trail of cold whorls down my neck, surrounding my spine, elaborating my basic Life runes.

Lewis found me like that, clutching the back of my neck while I cried.

“Hey,” he whispered, pulling me into his arms, so gently that I couldn’t bear it. How could he be gentle now when he’d brought me back to life so thoroughly? “You shouldn’t move. If you fell off the bed…”

“I’ll move if I want to,” I snapped, pulling away from him, well, trying to pull away from him. “Don’t tell me what to do. I can cry about anything I want, so don’t tell me that I should save my tears because I’ll get dehydrated. Don’t tell me anything, because you know what? No. You don’t know what. You don’t know anything. People who drag people back to life when they should be dead should be shot, brought back to life, then shot again. In the foot the second time. Both feet. And I’m hungry. And bald. Do you know what it’s like to have runes on your bald head? Satan is the only person in the entire world who wouldn’t cry about that, and that’s because he’s too busy smoking cigars and blowing stuff up. I don’t care if I look like him, I’m not smoking. It’s disgusting, vile, and makes your blood taste like crap so when people bite you they instantly regret it. What would you taste like?” I blinked, shocked that I’d said that. “Never mind. Your blood probably tastes like anchovies.”

“Probably,” he said in a serious voice as he touched my face delicately with his fingertips. “You must be really hungry if you’re considering my blood. That would bind us together. Forever. Bonding for the Nether is like marriage, only more permanent. I think you’d prefer anchovies. Drink this.”

He held me against him while he tipped a bottle against my mouth. I drank because it was either drink or choke, then it was because it was cold and soothed my throat then spread a pleasant numbness through my limbs.

“What is that?” I asked when he finally took the bottle away. My tongue was numb, my words clumsy.

“Winter. I don’t think that you’re ready for solid food yet but I can bring you more death if you…”

“No, I’m falling asleep again. Ash was right, sleeping is my special skill.” When I said Ash, I felt a spike of something from Lewis, an emotion that was unexpected as it was weird. Jealousy? Lewis was going to let down his guard to let something like jealousy for Ash escape? Maybe he wasn’t doing so well. I focused my eyes on him then felt my jaw clench as I saw the already swollen skin around his eye. He’d fought Aiden, so it was lucky that he was still walking.

“You fall off a cliff or something?” I asked, fighting against the pull of sleep as I traced his face with my fingers. His skin was cool and soft. I poked a little harder, wanting to hurt him, mostly because anyone that stupid deserved to hurt, not that he didn’t hurt already, but still. He winced and I felt horrified and delighted at the same time. I had to get ahold of this Lewis hatred before I pushed him in front of a bus.

“I was fighting off a would-be suitor. I’m afraid I’m not quite as effective as I used to be.”

I knew it was Aiden, but the word suitor triggered a memory of Raoul. I pushed away from Lewis, trying to sit up, to scramble off of the stone bed, but Lewis wasn’t budging.

“Let me go,” I said as I shoved against his chest with the strength of a car sick kitten.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I was only joking. Aiden is not interested in becoming your suitor, at least, I don’t think he is.”

“Raoul. Raoul shot me, the dart. He brought my gifts to life right as he put me on the plane. The demon mistress. He, she, the giggling man and the, ugh!” I shuddered as I remembered, the feel of hands, of being unable to move, unable to reach any of my gifts, stuck, trapped while a mass of evil touched me, caressed me. I clung to Lewis, burying my face in his shirt, the smell of wood smoke and antibacterial strangely soothing, or maybe that was Lewis, stroking my ridiculous bald head.

“It’s fine.”

I hit him with my fists. “It’s not fine. Stop saying it’s fine, it’s all right. It’s not fine. There’s nothing fine about anything. How can you say that…” I struggled to breathe, to twist away from him, but he only held me tight against his chest, with my head tucked beneath his chin, listening to the sound of his heart beating. It didn’t beat steadily, but for some reason being there, so close to Lewis, even with the bond ache, I felt better. I was really angry about that, but I’d push him in front of a bus later. Right then, I listened to his heart beating.

Chapter 22

I recovered, well, some of me recovered in the days that followed, holed up in the strange Hollow cliff house with Lewis close beside while Aiden lurked in the background. The bond was worse than ever, and I wasn’t sure what I felt half the time from the demon taint. I didn’t want to think about it. I couldn’t acknowledge them without them screaming inside my head. Without his mists, without the Hotblood soul, I wasn’t sure what he was, only that my blood ached for his.

When Lewis offered to finish the bond my instant response was so gut wrenchingly angry that I could barely speak. Now he wanted to finish the bond? After I’d mostly died in a plane wreck he thought it was a good time? He interpreted my silence for a refusal and solemnly went about dabbing my injuries with a magic potion that smelled like stinky feet. The next time he brought it up, I was a little more eloquent.

He said, rubbing the stuff on my shoulder, “We could complete the bond, if you wish to.”

“If I wish to? Wow. As tempting as that is, I’m not going to throw myself at someone who’s not interested. I did that already. It didn’t really work out for me.” I winced as the words came out of my mouth. Angry and sarcastic wasn’t me.

“It’s not that I’m disinterested,” he breathed, so close to me while he worked on my shoulder that my breath caught for a moment. “You know what I want.”

He let down his guard then, so I got the wonderful sensation of my bond craving doubled by his, and his felt more massive and enormous than mine. I shoved my hands against his chest, not moving him even slightly, but he inhaled sharply at the physical contact while his eyes softened until I pulled back my hands.

“No, I don’t,” I whispered as I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the deep aching in my throat as I tried to hold myself together. “I don’t know why you didn’t want to finish the bond after I finished my life runes. Why, Lewis? Why didn’t you want me when I was cute? Why didn’t you want to marry me if you say you love me? Is it just another lie, another layer of who you would be if you weren’t something else? I’d rather die than be bound to you when you don’t really want me. I know the bond wants to be finished, but that’s not really you the same way I don’t really want to punch you in the face.”

He laughed, a surprise to both of us before he took my hands in his and leaned his head until our foreheads touched.

“You shouldn’t do that. I have a very hard face. It would hurt your fist. I’m sorry Dariana, for all of this. I should have trusted Aiden. I should have finished the bond as soon as it happened. I didn’t see clearly. I wanted so much to be good for you. It turns out that I didn’t know what you needed. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve wanted you from the first moment, but wanting someone and loving them isn’t the same thing. I want you to be happy. I don’t see a future for me. I’ve lived a long time for a Hotblood, even if I’m half Wild, fifty is a long time. I haven’t lived gently. I haven’t held back anything, except with you. I don’t want to mess you up.”

I stared at him. “You shaved me. You really think that I could get any worse?”

He flinched. “If we finish the bond, you’ll be miserable when I die. It will be like your soul being ripped in half and unable to ever heal.”

“You’re not going to die. I saw you. I couldn’t kill you no matter how much I tried. The only thing that hurts you is you trying to keep me alive. That’s just an excuse because you don’t really want me. If you didn’t want me before, there’s no way you’d want me after the plane wreck.” I sniffed after that. I hadn’t meant to sound vulnerable, more matter-of-fact, but the scars I tried not to see, my head with its fine stubble that itched, me ripped to shreds was all too much. Why had I mentioned the crash? I tried not to think, to see myself and the Frankenstein’s monster that I was now, patched together with jagged scars that didn’t fade, but every time I thought of the plane spiraling down, of the scream of the demon mistress… It was a good thing I spent most of my time unconscious.

“No? Well, that explains everything,” he said. “Really, now I get why I haven’t been able to leave you alone when being with you, with anyone makes no sense in my life. I have no future. If I’d thought that being bound to you would protect you, I would have done it. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the demons coming. No one ever sees the demons coming.”

I took a deep breath, trying to hear Lewis, to focus on how infuriatingly perfect he was instead of the helpless horror. He looked at me, a long look that pushed the fear back or at least shifted it to him while a roaring grew in my ears. He was so close, the bond ache so unbearable, why not finish what I’d started in that small warehouse office what seemed years before. Maybe I’d be so full of him I wouldn’t have room for fear.

“What were you going to tell me in the woods?” I whispered.

He shook his head. “More secrets, more layers of who I would be if I weren’t something else.” He dropped his head on my hands, pressing kisses to my knuckles his eyes against my fingers. “If you don’t want me to finish the bond, if you’d rather keep the taint, I understand.”

“Why aren’t I dying from the taint?” I whispered closing my eyes and leaning against his shoulder. “It took Grim fifteen minutes. Is it the mists or the other thing, where I already had some demons in my heritage?”

He raised his head, frowning at me intently. “What demons were in your heritage?”

I shrugged half-heartedly. “Ash said that my skills were a mix of Hollow and demonic. Maybe that’s why you don’t want me.”

He groaned before he leaned forward and gripped my shoulder with his teeth, one of the few places on me that wasn’t bruised.

I froze in shock as he held me so gently, pressing against the skin of my shoulder in a way that made absolutely nothing else exist.

“Lewis,” I whispered as I melted in his arms, forgetting about pain, demons, and everything else besides his teeth, his hands, his warmth and soul.

He pulled away, looking bewildered and vulnerable.

“I need you,” he said clenching and unclenching his jaw. He brushed my cheek with feather light fingers. “If I don’t hold back, I might consume you.”

“So, consume me,” I said without thinking as I pulled him close.

I kissed him, his lips, ignoring the pain, the way that my cheek pulled from unhealed skin. I ran my hands over his skin beneath his shirt, needing him closer, closer, sudden overwhelming desire leaving me weak and dizzy.

He pulled away.

“You wish to complete the bond?”

I fought off the wave of anger, struggling to distinguish between what I wanted and needed and what the demon taint inside of me craved. The Code. A broken Code left one vulnerable to demon possession. I hadn’t broken the Code, had I? I wanted to. I wanted Lewis in an extraordinarily physical way which would break the Code before we’d been married, or at least bound.

I had to be smart, had to think. I couldn’t when my body ached for him with every throb in my veins, his silky skin tempting me, his warmth and strength made for me.

I turned away from him, startled that I could feel so much. It reminded me of Raoul when he put his hands on my neck, his fingers against my runes. He’d filled me with sensation that didn’t come from me but from the metal. The demons were feeding my already overwhelming desire, trying to corrupt it into something more destructive than it already was.