House of Slide Hybrid (6 page)

I shook my head and forced myself to concentrate on the lines and stanzas of a poem, but instead I noticed my hand shaking as it tried to grasp the red pencil. It felt like I’d been there forever, but it had probably only been twenty minutes or so. Osmond had been right; all of this was too scary, too intense for someone who had the emotional maturity of a six-year-old. It was exasperating, but true.

I wrapped the end of my ponytail around my finger, tugging absently at my hair. My hair went with my soul, pretty, innocent, and more suited to blue ponies than dark winter woods.

“Satan said I would be safe,” I told myself, sounding loud in the empty car. “He might also be trying to scare me a little bit so that I am aware that this isn’t a fun and exciting thing to do. Which worked, actually,” I added in case he was listening.

The scraping came again, louder, and it seemed to come from the other side, past Snowy’s SUV instead of the closer woods.

“It’s nothing, or the wind, or something else dragging something metal around,” I said, thinking that wasn’t exactly likely.

I jumped and shrieked when something thumped above my head. A pinecone rolled off the roof and down to the icy mud. I exhaled and turned back to my writing assignment, almost glad that I had to concentrate to read the small letters of poetry in the dim light. I shouldn’t let my imagination get the better of me even if I apparently had a very active, creative mind. Maybe I would be an artist someday after all. I smiled slightly until I heard the sound.

The whine was mournful, a drawn out quivering sound that made my heart ache for whatever poor lost thing made the noise. I looked out the window along the line of trees and barely could make out a gray figure, dragging itself along the ground, its fur matted and patchy while it’s large black eyes gazed around pleadingly searching for aid of some kind—any kind. It was a dog. What else could it be? I watched it creep forward, favoring its hind leg. It stopped, curled up in the freezing mud and began to nuzzle the back leg, the one that was hurt.

I put a hand on the door handle, pulling slightly. It’s head snapped up as if he heard the sound, and its eyes met mine, enormous black eyes that seemed to plead with me. It seemed to ask if I had compassion, how I could sit in my warm, comfortable car and let an injured, innocent animal shiver in the cold. It was shivering, I could see it, and if it stretched out I would be able to see its ribs. It didn’t look away as I felt a wave of guilt and struggled to justify why I should stay where I was instead of running to this creature’s aid. I pulled the handle until with a loud click it unlatched.

The dog/thing launched itself at the car with powerful apparently unharmed back legs, showing a thick body and curved claws, as well as a tail that uncurled, lashing like a whip with a strange tuft at the end. It should have hit the door and knocked it closed, but it landed short then proceeded to grip the handle with its teeth to rip it open. I hadn’t realized how large it was; from across the clearing it had looked very small. It had only taken a moment for all of this to happen, and I would probably have ended up in the belly of the creature if the second its teeth touched the door handle green sparks hadn’t exploded in its mouth, making the creature yelp and retreat.

I jerked the handle closed, slamming down the locking mechanism while the creature retreated to the trees. I heard it lament, a long drawn out howl that made my stomach turn. What kind of creature could play a game like that—the kind of game that would play on my sympathy?

I stared at the trees, wondering if the creature would be back, when I heard a sound of metal on metal from the other side of the car, low, so low that I couldn’t see anything out the window. I held my breath as I waited, hearing nothing, wondering if I’d imagined the sound, when I heard a slight thump from right below where I was sitting—like something was under the car. I whimpered then closed my eyes while I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them, wishing that Satan would come back really fast and blow something up, even if there wasn’t anything actually out there, just to distract me from the sound. I looked the other way, out the window the dog/thing had been and screamed, and screamed, and screamed as the fangs, distended eyes and claws hovered centimeters from the glass, as though the creature knew to keep from actually touching the car and getting shocked by the green sparks.

“That’s really quite loud,” someone said in a low voice that I managed to hear in spite of the fact that my scream still hurtled through the night.

I gasped, ready to scream again as I turned to find a figure wrapped in darkness beside me on the seat. I sat with my mouth hanging open as I stared at the shadow that had materialized out of thin air, the shadow that smelled rich, dark and deep, like autumn, like death, like everything I’d craved when I had Lewis’ Hotblood soul. I wasn’t sure if I should keep screaming, or give up since the creature had apparently found a way past Satan’s runes and there was nothing I could do to stop it from whatever the Nether thing was going to do.

“Don’t stop on my account, by all means. You’re certainly not safer with me in this car.”

I scowled at him, disliking his tone, the way his words were condescending. “I know that being with you is not safer. What are you doing here?” I demanded, glad I’d gone from hysterical screaming to speaking almost rationally. My heart still pounded in my chest but hopefully he didn’t notice. “And what is that?” I asked, pointing out at the creature where it sat, jaws extended hovering just above the glass.

He said a word that I didn’t understand, something full of hisses and rumbles that were familiar to me, taking me back to the woods when I’d first seen the creature and it had spoken in that language with my father.

“Oh, that’s helpful,” I muttered.

“I don’t know why you’d leap to the assumption that I’m here to be helpful. You just said that you know I am not safe.”

I sighed, finding it impossible to be too freaked out by the monster outside my window when the Nether was so irritating. “I did, didn’t I? What are you doing here, O Creature of the Night? Don’t you have some children to frighten somewhere else?”

“Oh, I think you’re fright is as interesting as any other innocent child’s would be. Speaking of innocence, your soul looks healthy. Good.”

“Why good? What are you doing here? Checking out my soul?” I wasn’t sure if I should be creeped out by that or what.

“Your fright feeds it,” he said, waving a dark hand towards the window where I knew the fangs hung. “If you can calm down, you won’t attract so many interesting creatures. Of course, what would be the fun of that?”

“Isn’t it fun though,” I said through clenched teeth. “Wouldn’t a monster like that be worried that you’d attack it, or is it more powerful than you?”

He was quiet for some time, seeming to study me. I shifted nervously as I tried not to look over my shoulder at the monster. “It considers you to be my prey, and it feeds on your fear if it cannot get your flesh. No doubt it would be glad to have whatever bits of you were left over after I was finished.”

I cringed and closed my eyes, clenching my fists as I tried to ignore the smell of him and the smell that was slowly seeping through the window on the other side of me, the smell of rotting meat and sulfur mixing with the smell of leather and cigars. A thump came from the roof again, but this time I didn’t open my eyes to see if it was a pinecone or something else. I tried to visualize something, a field with a happy pony chasing butterflies, but as it was prancing a monster lunged out of the tall grass and… I opened my eyes and turned to the darkness cloaked creature.

“How can I stop being afraid? Do you have any ideas?”

“I could do something to distract you, but I doubt you’d like it.” His voice was amused, dark. I felt tired suddenly and ridiculously close to tears.

I swallowed hard, trying to keep a grip on my emotions. I was tough, strong, powerful, at least alternative reality me was. I should be using this opportunity to find out something, to dig up clues in my quest to find out why Devlin took my soul.

“Did you know my brother?” It was a good enough place to start, and thinking about my brother should make me angry.

“Your brother, the famous foreteller and compeller who stole innocent girl’s souls? I can’t say I had the pleasure. A pity really considering how much we have in common.” His voice dripped sarcasm as thick as the slime on the jaws of the creature by my window. “Did you meet my friend, Pisces, the silver demon hunter? You should sometime. He’s very friendly, besides the death lust and the annoying habit he has of randomly sharpening his teeth on people. Perhaps that’s how he expresses his friendliness.”

I stared at the shadows that wrapped him, unable to see features, the mouth that was probably curved in a derisive sneer and remembered the scent, how it felt to be swallowed in the Nether mists. If I had to bear the scent of the monster out of my window much longer I thought I would throw up, or cry, or both.

I reached a hand towards the shadows, tentatively pushing through the warm dampness that swallowed my hand in shadows. I felt nothing as I moved my hand down, although there should have been a car seat somewhere halfway up my wrist. It was as though shadows and other stuff didn’t really take up the same space, somehow they switched places. I scooted closer towards him, until with a start he wrapped his hand around my wrist and gave me a sharp tug.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a voice that sounded almost amused, still firmly holding my wrist. He wasn’t made out of mists anyway.

“I thought if I had more mists, closer, then I wouldn’t be able to smell the monster and throw up. Your mists are really potent. I don’t see how you can smell or sense anything else with so much wrapped around you.”

“You get used to it,” he said shortly, then after a moment’s pause. “You actually want to get closer to me? I don’t recommend it, but it wouldn’t bother me.”

I found myself pulled into the darkness, falling forward as gravity ceased having any kind of meaning, swallowed up in the warm, damp world until I found myself touching a shoulder with the hand that wasn’t still held by his. The smell of the mists was so encompassing, so rich, dark, and sweet, that I forgot about the other scent, the other world that had so recently occupied so much of my mind. I felt my heart slow as I relaxed, lost for a long moment in a relief so heavy I felt buoyed by it.

There was nothing to see, so I let my eyes close, not trying to see or make sense of a world inside of my world where there was the Nether, dark and dangerous inside the steaming mist that soothed every ache I had. There was a distinct lack of pain before something shifted inside of my mind or intention, and I realized then that the skin under my hand was bare, wet and slick. My hand slid over the shoulder, down a chest, a stomach with rippling muscles until his other hand came firmly over mine, stopping my progression any lower.

I opened my eyes, startled, but there was nothing to see, although the darkness seemed to caress my eyes, soothing the strain I’d had trying to see in the dim light. I pulled back, suddenly.

He didn’t resist, letting me slip out of his grasp like a fish in a stream until with a choked cry and a disoriented lurch, where I ended half off the seat, I was back in Satan’s car, staring horrified at the shadow across from me while a monster breathed through the glass behind my head with an awful smell that was almost comforting.

“Are you naked?” I shrieked. I’d never asked a boy that before, and the Nether might be a monster, but he was still a boy monster.

He laughed, and that sound flooded my head, sending all my rational thoughts skittering away like leaves in the wind. He shouldn’t have a voice that could do that, not when he was naked under all those mists, not when he smelled like that and could appear like magic in Satan’s car. I glared at the shadows, desperately trying to think of something that would shut him up, the laugh that mocked my innocence, that mocked my helplessness, that mocked my fear.

The sound of metal against metal, so close to my head just made me mad instead of scared. I whipped my head around and glared at the stupid monster, somehow pushing it away from me, shoving it with all of my energy. It jerked before slowly dropping to the ground then backed away, shaking its distended maw as it went, one slow reluctant step at a time until it disappeared into the underbrush. As I stared at the creature, willing it to leave, the laughter stopped. When I turned around to throw the Nether out of the car I found myself alone, looking at Satan’s shadowy backseat.

I felt a wave of humiliation, that he would find me so afraid then leave, like he’d seen as much stupid as he could handle in one night and was off to find something more interesting to do. I sniffed, but even when I put my nose down on the leather, all I smelled was oil and leather with a touch of gunpowder and cigars—no Nether.

It was soon after that, I heard Satan’s rough mumble and Snowy’s irritated response as they came back to the car, Osmond holding a flare above his head that gave Snowy a greenish glow that managed to make her look otherworldly instead of sick. She looked at me and nodded while I waved, not quite ready to open the door and face her penetrating glance. She said something to Osmond where he stood holding the flare before she stomped over to her SUV, like her feet were very cold, got in, and proceeded to drive away. Osmond took a little longer, helping Satan in the trunk where I couldn’t see them and could only hear the sound of thumps and low voices before Osmond got in his truck then with headlights bouncing, left me in the dark with Satan.