House of Slide: Hunter Page 19

  I swallowed hard. “Me?”

  She shook her head. “I just see a lot of darkness in you. Before, you had so much light. Now, not so much.”

  There was a puzzle here, and all the pieces if I only knew how to put them together. Maybe Devlin would give me the key.

  “You don’t know anything about imprints? You have Cool-Wild blood with ability to foretell. My brother was like that.”

  She laughed. “Your brother? Dari, you have more Nether blood than anyone I’ve ever met. What you did back there, dancing with your eyes closed, taking out demon men like it was easy, that’s your heritage and my flashes of foretelling aren’t worth imprinting on anything. You’re trying to read your brother’s imprints? Supposedly it’s impossible to read details of anyone else’s imprints, but maybe you have enough blood to do it.”

  “Blood?”

  She shrugged and edged away from me. “I just wanted to tell you about what’s going on now that you’re paying attention to things a little bit more. I’m not sure what you can do about it.”

  I nodded and tried to smile and communicate my gratitude instead of whatever intense emotion was repelling her away from me.

  “Thanks Chloe. Don’t worry so much.”

  She laughed again. “Right. None of the demon men looked like they minded being evil. I’m sure I wouldn’t either.”

  I watched her leave, looked down at the muddled yarn in my hands and leaned against a tree. I soaked in its energy until I felt the darkness it held and stood upright, trying to shake it off. We shouldn’t camp in dark woods, where taint had bled into the soil. Could I save the trees? Could I purify their taint? Could we do anything for the demon men that didn’t involve finding an old one to bind them with? Aiden was the only Old One I knew, and he couldn’t be trusted not to drain someone he was supposed to be fighting with.

  Half of me wanted to go into the darkness, find the demon mistress, and end her. The other half knew that would be tantamount to suicide, or worse, allowing her access to more of my blood. I was safe from taint, Lewis had seen to that, but I didn’t know what they could do with my blood, and honestly, I didn’t want to find out. What Chloe said made sense, that was what they were waiting for, the Hunters to kill enough that they’d be vulnerable to their enticements. Who wouldn’t be? Power enough to destroy the Hollow One, to stop all the darkness, all it took was drops of darkness on the inside that made you forget who the enemy was.

  We didn’t know enough about the demon mistresses, what they wanted, most importantly, how they did what they did to create so many demon men and whether we could reverse it. Maybe my blood could undo what was done, but what if it made things worse? I closed my eyes and searched through souls until I found the one, Sieve the Bloodworker who might know how to go about finding that kind of darkness, and who would know more about blood than anyone else in camp.

  I slipped inside his tent, standing in the near darkness while I waited for my eyes to adjust. It smelled like sweat, dirt, autumn, crumbling leaves and ashes.

  Sieve lay on his cot, stretched out with his eyes closed, his face surprisingly young as he dreamed. I moved cautiously across the tent floor then perched on a big wooden crate beside his bed, wrapping my arms around my knees while I waited for him to wake up. Sleep took effort and usually pills to accomplish. I couldn’t disturb someone who wasn’t having nightmares.

  Soon enough, his eyes began to twitch, his body jerked, and he sat up with horror in his eyes, searching the tent for the remnant of his dreams.

  “Do you know how to find them?” I asked, sending him a wave of calm.

  “Slide?” he asked, the word throwing me off.

  “I know where Slide is,” I answered.

  “Sorry, Sand,” he corrected, flashing me a blinding smile with enough charm to melt the socks off a dozen Hotbloods. “Know where to find who?”

  “The demon men,” I answered. “I think that we should catch one and see what makes it tick.”

  “Capture a demon man? Any specific ones in mind?”

  I frowned. “There were some Hybrids taken by the demon mistress, a different one, so now the count is up to three. Three demon mistresses and we have no idea how to stop the spread of taint, much less cure it. We need information. We need to know what we’re up against. We also need to move camp. This is her territory. We have to find a place without a shred of darkness that’s more defensible than this.”

  “Sounds like you should be talking to Oz, not me,” he said, crossing his arms behind his head, flexing his impressive biceps far more than he needed to. At least he had a shirt on, even if it was a short sleeve t-shirt that showed off his scars.

  “I don’t want to involve him.”

  He grinned at me. “You sound a little bit soft towards the boy.”

  I sighed and ran a hand through my hair and over my runes, sending a shiver down to my bones. “I think they’re trying to corrupt us so that they can use us, make us join them. I have a lot of defense against that, but Osmond doesn’t.”

  “Osmond’s virtue is the strongest defense there is,” Sieve said, sitting up, his smile fading. “Truth to tell, my soul’s too cracked to stand against demon taint. The idea of tracking them, entering their hold, taking one of them as a pet…” he shook his head. “There’s a reason no one’s done it. It’s too dangerous.”

  I lifted my chin. “I’ll go alone. I just need you to tell me how to track them, find them, and hold one of them without killing it.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “I’m a Bloodworker, not the Hunter you want.”

  I gritted my teeth. “What Hunter do I want?”

  “Axel,” he answered with a smile. “But if he’s dead, he won’t be much use to us, will he?”

  I grabbed him by the throat, jerking his glowing eyes close enough that I could feel his heat against my face. His blue-green eyes burned into me, his smile as ferocious as a demon man’s.

  “If you want to breathe again, you’ll keep that name off your lips.” I let him go and turned, arms crossed over my heaving chest, wanting to hurt him as much as I hurt inside.

  After I could speak in a level voice I said, “If we can’t track them, we’ll have to bring them to us.” I left his tent, blinking in the brightness of day.

  I looked up and saw Osmond frowning at me. He raised his eyebrows, and I only shrugged, turning to go to my own small tent, then stopping. I had to talk to him. We had to move camp, and if we were making a trap, he’d know about it soon enough if I didn’t do it on my own. I couldn’t. I could not be a lure and a trap at the same time. I gritted my teeth at the idea of sitting as bait for the demon mistress.

  I couldn’t do it. I could feel her touch against my cheek, brushing my scar with her fingers. Fear swamped me only trumped by the pain that Lewis wouldn’t be there to bail me out. Sieve was right. I needed Lewis, Axel, the boy who rode darkness, a boy who’d sewn me up and put me back together, made me whole before he’d died, ripping me apart, this time on the inside. How could I face anything, anyone when my soul had been shattered?

  I leaned myself just enough that I could breathe a few shaky breaths before I opened my eyes and took one step after another towards Osmond’s tent. My soul didn’t matter. What I had would have to be enough, because it was all I had.

  Osmond didn’t like it. He liked it even less when I informed him that I would do it on my own if I didn’t have his help.

  “We can’t just wait for her to slowly nibble on our souls until we’re susceptible. We have to change something.”

  He stared at me from behind his desk, his gaze narrowing. “We’ll do it, but not with the Bloodworker.”

  I shrugged. “Just as well. I have a hard time keeping my hands off of him.”

  He frowned down at his desk and the papers strewn across it. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”

  I snorted. “My type? What would that look like? Someone covered in penguin guano or something equally attractive,” I said, raising my
arm to fluff the feathers on my arm. I felt their deaths, their beating hearts before they stilled and their souls floated free, each black feather a life that I’d taken.

  “Jones has some ideas of where we can move camp,” Osmond said. “We liked being in the middle of the battle, but if we’re going to ruffle some feathers,” he said, flicking a smile at me, “We can establish something a little more permanent, a little less filled with taint.”

  I nodded and felt a little of the stress ease. “So first we’ll move camp, then we’ll attack.”

  “I think we should do something a little more complicated than that,” he said, pushing a stack of papers towards me.

  I sifted through them, names, numbers, detailed instructions, miles, degrees, positions and purpose. The computer printouts seemed completely random and singular, but after I’d leafed through a dozen of them, the bigger picture started to come into focus.

  “Who did this?”

  “Smoke,” Osmond said, gathering up the papers, pulling out one with a row of numbers across the top. “This is your ID. Memorize it. Memorize your instructions, play your part, and everyone will have a tent to come back to.”

  I read my instructions feeling my heart pound as I read my role. I looked up at him.

  “You’re sure?”

  He gave me a slight nod that somehow took me back to that other Osmond, that other Dariana, breaking through the barriers I tried to keep up, this reality versus that one.

  My heart pounded so loudly that I thought he’d be able to hear it before I’d gotten away from him. I stumbled to the tent door while I folded the paper and tucked it into my leather top.

  “Good luck,” he said as I emerged into the evening light. I’d spent all day trying to convince him and all along he’d been planning with Smoke, checking how plausible it would be before he gave it the green. Good. That’s what leaders did. They didn’t go rushing into something because they couldn’t stand wasting any more time.

  I headed for my tent. I needed to get whatever rest I could.

  In my tent I changed into the green shorts and tank before I picked up the keys and the dangling rock. I closed my eyes and skipped through the imprint, searching for Devlin, trying to call him closer to me, but all I had when I dropped the rock was the sensation of Osmond’s mouth on mine, hearing the last rasping breath before he died, his head falling back leaving the bare curve of his throat, metal jaw piece glinting in the darkness.

  I shook off the false memory and dropped onto my cot. I closed my eyes and almost drifted, but the smell of smoke and ashes, the sound of birds screaming, Matthew singing, brought me upright. Had I slept? I couldn’t tell, but darkness had fallen, and it was time to hunt.

  I carefully rubbed balm on my body over my scars, feeling the tingle down my spine when I brushed my silver metal runes. I pulled the black leather and silk on before wrapping my feathers around my shoulders, the feel of their soft tips like wrapping myself in a blanket.

  I took a deep breath as I secured my dagger to my thigh and secured the pack to my back. We were really going hunting tonight. I smiled as I left my tent.

  When the fighting started and Hunters streamed through the camp towards the East, I stayed in the shadows of the tents, waiting for the right time before I headed North-west.

  I ran through the darkness, slipping through the woods like smoke and shadows. I spread my senses wide, mixing soul sight with my eyes. I could see the fighting, see the sparks of souls in the distance with the others, souls covered in flickers of red and darkness, through the lines of life that were blocked by flickering darkness. I ran towards the life I saw running strong and clear in the distance. I almost ran up a slanted tree trunk leaping from branch to branch as effortlessly as a squirrel, my runed body strong but still light enough I didn’t crack the branches when I landed on them.

  I emerged from the branches, above me the moon gleaming like a luminescent pearl, beaming benevolently down on all of us. With the wind rushing around me, swirling across my skin and runes, the moonlight parting the darkness like a saber, I felt my heart beating in my chest without pain. I held my breath in that moment when the world filled me with so much beauty and peace that it overflowed the pain, the agony of my shattered bond.

  I felt Lewis close by, loving me even if he’d never know me again. I soaked in the moonlight on my upturned face, the cool light seeming to soothe my scar, my soul before I took a deep breath and focused on the task at hand.

  I spread my arms and let the wind fill my sails as I leapt into the sky, soaring through the night with the moon as my guide. I aimed towards a bowing branch, touching down so the branch bowed beneath me before I pushed back into the sky, gliding along, holding my body rigid. I felt the brush of feathers on my fingertips. I aimed for another branch, another smooth lift-off into the cool sky with the birds around me, the moon above and darkness like water that I could swim through.

  The clearing came up sooner than I expected, the sound of water on the North where I’d put the first stake. I perched in a tree, pulled out the metal rod that expanded in my hand with a few twists then jumped. I came down, the force of my fall taking the six foot pole far into the ground. I spun, dodging beneath branches, leaping lightly over the water that gushed from the ground.

  I moved fast, dodging through bushes, counting steps until I came to the next point, beneath a beautiful oak. I closed my eyes as I nudged the next pole into the earth, easing it between the deep roots. I felt the energy of the tree soak into me even without touching it. The tree held so much life, so much energy, beneath the filtered moonlight in the shadows of the oak. I hesitated before I left the oak, sprinting to the next point where I brought down the steel rod. Three more, and then one in the center, a place I had to go with by feel from the slight flickers of energy I could sense from the spikes.

  When I thrust the final one into the earth, a cloud of blue electricity crackled around me, pulling at me. I leaned myself as the shock left me breathless, trying to stay calm so that I didn’t destroy the wards. I knelt down as electricity played over my skin, the metal of my runes aching down to my bones until with a surge that made me feel like my skull was crushing down, the energy flared to the other bars, the energy flowing beneath the earth and arcing above me.

  I began weaving the runes, sparks of green flowing out of my fingers as I waved them around in the precise movements Matthew had taught me, rune wards that I embedded into the metal rods, tech married to magic. I wove the runes over and over, deeper and deeper, an intricate knot that would take even a demon Wild hours to unravel.

  When a Hunter sank beside me and began weaving the runes, the green sparked brighter, her energy feeding the wards. Another came, weaving the strands thicker and deeper, a net surrounding the space that nothing dark could pass through. When the third came, I tied off the energy I was feeding into it with a flash of green sparks and took off at a run, feeling the pressure on my skin when I passed through the exterior ward.

  I ran, passing another Hunter who went in the opposite direction. The Hunter stopped, catching my eyes with his glowing blue-green ones. He grabbed my arm until he found my skin and fed me images, showing Cool skills he shouldn’t have had, a trail through the woods into a dark, deep place with an entrance to deep underground.

  I blinked in the images while Sieve turned back to the camp I’d runed, leaving me to breathe hard around the images until I took to the sky. I scrambled up a beautiful tree with a shadow of darkness in it that fed the exhaustion from weaving runes. I ignored the drain until I got to the top of the waving tree, a wild wind whipping the branches while the shadowed moon gave me very little light. I didn’t need light. I closed my eyes and saw the flickers of souls beneath me, running through the woods while the darkness, the red shadows pursued. I closed my eyes and tried to call her, them, the birds and the Nether creature who seemed to only come when demons were involved.

  I felt a rush of wind before I jumped, spreading my wings to soar high a
bove the trees when the enormous bird swept under me, gliding just beneath me until I touched her feathers. We flew, gliding silently through the night with the birds around us until we reached the old camp, the tents nearly invisible in the darkness. We flew beyond. Every time I started losing altitude, the bird would nudge me back aloft, keeping me in the sky right above the trees.

  She could sense the demons. She knew what I wanted and I could feel her eagerness to join me. The idea that we were going to capture instead of destroy took a minute to get through, but finally she sent me a surge of agreement, with the promise that she’d take off the head of someone as soon as we’d gotten our prisoner out of the demon camp.

  Arguing with a Nether through leaning took too much concentration. I almost missed the demon camp, if you could call a door in the ground a camp.

  Guarded by three demon-men, that’s the image Sieve had showed me, but there were no guards, only a closed doorway.

  This part wasn’t exactly in the plan. We’d hoped that someone could locate the demon camp, take out guards. My job was the exit strategy. I had to wait, there in the trees with a pounding heart, branches whipping around me while she circled in the sky above me, high enough that hopefully no one could sense her. A bright explosion rocked the earth and I turned to the golden red flames that quickly died down into darkness. I didn’t know what part that played in the plan, if it did at all. I couldn’t see anything under the earth with my soul sight.

  I had to go down there and save them, but I’d promised Osmond. I had to wait. I had to wait and then it would be my turn. I leaned myself just a little bit to keep my mind from racing, my hand gripping the branch instead of spreading wide to catch the wind as I flew down. I counted heartbeats and feathers, but soon I heard Lewis whispering to me. He was in the next tree over, whispering along with the wind. The cicadas hummed around me, but they were really Lewis, calling me.

  I leaned myself to keep from turning my head, from searching the trees instead of keeping my gaze focused on the ground beneath me where I knew something would emerge.