House of Slide: Hunter Page 3

  I sensed a darkly tainted soul behind me so I swung around with my staff in a solid stance probably from my uncle Stephen’s talents and knocked a brown-haired Wild to his knees. I pulled the life around him until vines shot out, wrapping the furious Wild, slender shoots embedding into flesh until taint oozed out while the Wild bucked and screamed, hatred bleeding out of its eyes.

  It hadn’t come close enough to touch me, not with my energy blur still around me. Somehow I’d managed to pass my staff through it without melting it. Maybe it didn’t work on trees. I had to learn to control it and the vines that kept swarming over the Wild while he filled the air with screams.

  Lewis fought soundlessly in comparison.

  An eagle shrieked but the sound was different, louder. It reminded me of Pisces’s scream.

  A shadow covered the sun before an enormous ball of feathers dropped down, grabbing a Wild that I hadn’t noticed in the shadows. The Wild screamed, kicking his legs as he rose in the air, then the body came down without the head, twitching and oozing black taint from the neck.

  More Wilds came from the woods behind us, their abilities too strong for ordinary Wilds. The ground bucked beneath my feet but I stayed upright with my staff firmly on the ground. Wilds glared at their fellow, more disoriented than I was by the suddenly unstable earth. Darts flew through the air towards me then melted when they reached my force field.

  I gripped my staff and raised it to meet the nearest Wild while the bird swooped down and raked through the Wilds with a scream that resonated through me, filling my veins with energy.

  I stepped forward, swinging the staff in a complicated pattern that I didn’t let myself think too much about. I knocked another Wild to the ground where the vines twined around him before he could regain his feet. The earth bucked again and I fell to my knees that time. The wind rose, a sudden gale that should have thrown off the bird’s attack, but she didn’t mind.

  The Wilds didn’t run away when they saw their friend’s fall, when they saw that this would be no easy victory. They feared someone else much more than they feared me. Even if I killed them, the demon mistress would do worse.

  I shivered as I stared into the eyes of a Wild who had fair skin and blue eyes where they didn’t blur red.

  “You’re tainted. You should be looking for a cure, not serving the one who tainted you,” I said, bringing up my staff to block his knife.

  He smiled, but the expression lacked anything pleasant. “The taint is not a disease. It is power,” he said lifting his arms then brought them down in a rush. The ground pulled me down, pulled everyone Wild or not, to the ground while the bird above rose, keeping her distance.

  I rested my palms on the ground, biting back a scream when I felt his knife in my back, the force of the thrust knocking my face against the earth.

  I rested against the ground, listening to the soil, the roots beneath. They’d lived in quiet respite for so long. They didn’t like being uprooted by those who carried taint. The trees themselves hated the taint and wanted it destroyed.

  I spoke to them, trying to get them to respond, but trees take too long to convince to do anything. Vines sprang to life, wrapping around the Wild over and over as he slashed at them until finally, one yanked him down and the rest rooted him into place. He died or lost consciousness and the gravity released its hold on us. I rose to my feet, pulling the knife out of my back. I hefted it, knowing that Stephen could have thrown it at someone, killing them without hesitation.

  I turned around and saw Lewis engaging with three Wilds at once, sweat and blood staining his shirt.

  “Lewis,” I said, and threw the knife.

  He glanced at me and caught the thing as easily as if we’d practiced for our circus routine before he cut the heart out of a Wild, kicking him away as he turned on another.

  I winced as my back healed, tissue rebuilding where the knife blade had been. I tried not to feel the horror of witnessing so much death, of seeing Lewis take so many lives and feel nothing besides a dull satisfaction from his emotions as he took out another threat.

  The enormous eagle swooped down again, and I heard a distant cawing, like a symphony of dissonant violins in the sky as more birds came, hundreds, maybe thousands of black birds, striking the demon tainted Wilds with small claws and sharp beaks that sought out eyes, while they brushed me with their soft feathers.

  Stephen always had liked birds. Blinded by the birds, I easily struck a Wild body with my staff, knocking it down while the birds did their damage.

  Lewis leapt past me, into the mess, a knife sticking out of his shoulder. He fought with renewed strength, as if the birds gave him hope. I swung around my staff knocking back a Wild. Vines caught ankles while the birds blinded, but even with their help, the Wild force couldn’t possibly be stopped.

  Could it? I saw a Wild bring up a long katana sword. I leaned him, bending his mind just enough to make him miss Lewis. Another Wild leapt at Lewis, flames flowing from his fingers. I screamed as a ball of fire wrapped around me, licking my runes until with a sudden flash of light, the fire died and Lewis screamed, the sound echoing when the bird descended, silver claws gripping my wrist, leaving me my staff to swing at the head of a Wild who fell back stunned while I rose in the air, dangling from the claws of the Nether bird.

  She carried me away from the fighting, leaving the Wilds and Lewis behind.

  “No!” I yelled, twisting my body and letting go of the staff to try and pry her claws from my arm, but the only way I was getting away from her was if I disconnected my arm from my body.

  “Lewis!” I shrieked as the bird carried me south high above the trees, the black birds surrounding me, clouding me from the Wilds who threw knives, flames and wind at me. They chased me on the ground. I could see their tainted souls flickering as they ran. Lewis. I saw his soul, so bright and brilliant that I could have seen him from the other side of the universe.

  With the Wilds split, half chasing me, half engaging Lewis, maybe he would be able to survive, to fight them off.

  The bird veered as an explosion rocked me, so close to me that my vision got spotty until I hit the top of a tree.

  The bird screamed what seemed like an apology before she straightened, lifting me above the tree line. The birds fluttered around me, a cloud of feathers that burst when a metal spear, like the one that took out Pisces, came at us.

  The bird spun, dodging the bar, but losing her grip on me. I pin-wheeled through the air until I hit the first branches. The descent was softened by the delicate avian bodies that loyally followed me.

  I hit the ground hard. I waited until I could breathe again, burnt skin healing as I lay there, heart pounding, surrounded by black feathers.

  I had to get to Lewis. I saw his soul flicker and felt something that had me scrambling to my feet, whether I could breathe or walk didn’t matter. I had to get to him before it was too late.

  His soul shone brighter than ever, sparkling with energy that I realized he shouldn’t be using, that he should be saving for himself. He wouldn’t last long at the rate he was using up his soul. How could he do that? He should have nothing left to give, but somehow he held on, fought for my life.

  I ran faster, healing as I vaulted over fallen logs, pounding over the earth, ignoring the screaming muscles that wanted to sleep, to rest and die. Now was not the time.

  As I ran, I leaned, turning the Wilds attention to something else, something farther away from me while I moved through them, towards Lewis where he engaged.

  I had to make it before it was too late. I made it to the clearing in time to see him fall to one knee, weapons protruding from his body like a porcupine.

  “Lewis?” I said, pushing my body to move faster, to catch him before he hit the ground. I barely got him, wrapping my arms under his shoulders before I lay him on his side, where there were fewer weapons.

  “You’re supposed to be safe,” he said, frowning at me. He lifted a hand halfway before it fell to the ground. I grabbed
his fingers, squeezing them.

  “I’m fine. We’re both fine.”

  “Dariana, you have to be careful. Stay away from the Hollow One.”

  He frowned at me, blinking rapidly like he had a hard time seeing me.

  “Sure. Whatever you say. Let me take out this knife. Will it bleed more? You’re bleeding so much. We have to get you out of here. Lewis?”

  His eyes fluttered open, but he didn’t see me. “Dariana. Have hope. You are my hope.”

  I kissed him, trying to hold onto him, but his soul spun out around me, a growing spiral of energy that flowed out of him, filling the world for one bright sparkling moment before it went out.

  “Lewis?” I wept as I pushed his hair back from his face, spreading my fingers over his skin, memorizing the texture of his jaw and neck. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be dead, except that I tore apart from the inside. Soul, body, ripped in two as he faded out like a final puff of smoke on a long dying ember.

  I screamed as pain and anger crowded my chest, filling me with such aching rage that I couldn’t see, couldn’t think. The world around me reeled, trees cracking as they reacted to me, felt my call for vengeance. I searched the world for my enemies, for the Wilds who would die at my hand, but I found nothing but the small swirling souls of my birds.

  I ripped the weapons out of his body. Blood puffed in the air with every dagger, spear, sword that I pulled out of him. I smoothed his shirt down, stained with dirt, darkness and blood.

  “You can’t be dead,” I told him, straightening his collar.

  His eyes stayed closed, his chest refused to rise and fall while I felt it, the missing chunk where my heart had been.

  “Is this what you meant by having a weak heart?” I asked, grabbing a bloody hand that I saw was missing two fingers. I winced and closed my eyes, squeezing his hand tighter as I tried to breathe, tried to stop the sound coming out of my throat, a keening hideous sound that nothing on earth should make. Surviving the plane wreck had been a beautiful walk in the park compared to this. My body had healed from everything except the scabbed scar down the left side of my body, but my soul had been pulled apart, tangled and torn beyond repair. I couldn’t live like this. Life wasn’t life without him, not after we’d been bound together. We were supposed to die together. How dare he leave me alone?

  I felt another surge of rage that sent the birds spinning. I felt their pain, their confusion and needed the echo, the empathy. I slumped over Lewis, holding his hand, forehead resting against his strong jaw.

  I felt a presence more than I heard the rustling that had me sitting upright and bringing alive a force around the two of us of so much buzzing intensity that it singed my ears.

  I saw the demon Cool bending over a fallen Wild who had been devoured by my vines. As I watched, he cut the vines away from the Wild and sliced his neck open. He had some kind of container that seemed to attach to the wound while Theo worked the body, apparently gathering its blood.

  I felt a wave of revulsion that he seemed to notice, looking up at me with a wide smile.

  “I’m not here for your blood, little Daughter,” Theo, the demon Cool said in a crooning voice that made me shudder.

  I stared at him and the feeling, the horror faded as I felt the aching nothingness in my chest. I looked down at Lewis. He looked paler, waxy as though his skin would melt in the next sunrise.

  “Why not? Come on. See if you can kill me.”

  He laughed, a low mesmerizing sound so full of darkness I wanted to bury myself beneath Lewis and never hear again.

  “Axel wouldn’t like that, would he?”

  “Now you care what he wants? Are you his friend or are you her tool?”

  “You think that the mistress has no friends?” He shook his head and looked suddenly serious. “Axel was a friend to me. I am not always the best friend a soul could have. It’s the demon in me. Axel saw past that.” He shrugged. “Not certain if there really is much past that, but he had hope. He had ways of seeing things that others couldn’t see. Like you, without a soul. Who can love someone without a soul?” He frowned at me. “What are you going to do with the body?”

  I bared my teeth at him. “Don’t even think that you’re going to drain him of his blood, you filthy…” I sputtered.

  He raised a hand. “I am not as filthy as you, little Daughter, covered in blood, dirt, demon taint. There is a place, a lake.”

  “A good place to bathe? For some reason, I’m not interested in leaving Lewis even for something so hygienic. Thanks.”

  He shook his head, eyes never leaving my face. He knew my grief, knew my pain and anger, and wouldn’t come near it with a ten foot pole. I hated that, that he wouldn’t even try to kill me, to put me out of my misery as he’d so blithely offered to do for Lewis.

  “We could make a good pyre,” he said, accent lilting as he said the words.

  “A pyre,” I repeated mind scrambling. Vikings were sent into the afterlife in a flame of glory.

  “Eventually, left here, some creature would consume his flesh. Some prefer flames to end it all. Cleaner. A fresh beginning.”

  I inhaled sharply. “Do you think he’ll come back to life, like a phoenix? He has Nether blood. He could come back. Couldn’t he?”

  He cocked his head to the side as he let the silence fall around us while I waited with baited breath for his answer.

  “He could be brought back as an animated corpse, as a scavenger, as a ghoul or a ghost, maybe. But the bond you feel, the brokenness of that bond,” he said, rubbing his hand over the scar on his wrist. “Unless he’s the Hollow One himself, he’s not coming back.”

  “What if he is the Hollow One?” I demanded, my heart racing as I hoped so hard I thought my teeth would break.

  Theo laughed, an unhappy sound that hurt. “The Hollow One? You hope for the Hollow One? The Hollow One is a body possessed by a million Lost Souls, mad Lost Souls who will smell your Wild blood and need your death. Alive he may be but not yours, not anything that you would recognize and love. That’s gone. That’s over. That’s why it hurts so much.”

  He squeezed his eyes closed and I saw something strange, sensed it. He leaned, not reaching out around him, but deep inside himself, showing himself a world that wasn’t there, blocking the pain of the broken bond and changing his perception.

  “Little daughter,” he said when he opened his eyes, madness lurking closer to the surface as he cocked his head to the side. “The night comes and with it darkness that will lick the blood from Lewis’s veins. You may fight them until you collapse from exhaustion, then they will take you as well. How long will you suffer before you destroy them or die? What will you become, I wonder?”

  He shrugged and turned away from me, leaving me with Lewis, with my weak body and shattered soul. I could bury him with the vines, but there was already so much evil here, taint, violence. How could Lewis rest here? I would not let him become something evil, something dark. I had to let him go. Because I loved him beyond the pain in the bonding and I owed him something more than life. My soul.

  “Help me make a pyre for him,” I said through a voice that sounded mostly dead.

  He nodded as he continued walking away from me, Southeast.

  Chapter 3

  I walked south, through the dark woods, punctuated by curling asphalt ribbons and towns with flashing neon signs that seemed alien, garish, unreal after the darkness of the woods. When I closed my eyes I saw Lewis’s face, eyes closed, flames licking around him as he drifted across the water, ripples spreading to me where I stood waist deep, trying to breathe around the pain.

  I kept my eyes open, walking like one already dead, towards my Trainer although I didn’t remember why.

  As I’d gone, I’d collected feathers. So many feathers covered the ground. Theo collected blood, I collected feathers, the friends who had died for me, someone who could barely feel the debt I owed them. I carried them in the pockets of a coat I took off a dead Wild. He’d died without a st
ruggle seemingly spontaneously. Just died. No marks, no blood, no taint, just dead. I shrugged as I draped the long leather jacket over my shoulders and stuffed my feathers in a pocket. Not much was left of my clothes, Lewis’s shirt. One side was charred, and it had several holes in it from being stabbed.

  I fingered the fabric as I walked, feeling the charred bits crumble away. Ashes, dust, like Lewis. I’d watched him burn until with a sudden roar, the conflagration imploded, a searing heat knocked me back, down, submerging me in the murky water while the air above burnt.

  Theo must have put something extra in the kindling. I came up sputtering, but when I looked around, nothing was left of the bier except for a thick layer of ashes on the water. Theo had already vanished.

  I shook my head, bending to retrieve more feathers. Too many died for me.

  Lewis.

  Gone.

  I closed my eyes, opened them. Saw the beautiful light of day reaching towards me. I felt the shattered bits of my soul clink against each other, shards of emotional pain I could barely see through. I couldn’t move, not through this pain. I walked lifelessly as I stepped forward, towards my Trainer. I’d almost made it but it didn’t seem to matter. What were miles walked on bare feet that healed when my soul was in pieces?

  I walked through the hanging moss, ignoring the weight on my face, too tired to duck away from it.

  “Pretty bird,” a demon man cooed, his oily voice coming before I could see him in the shadows of the dark woods.

  I froze for a moment as apathy struggled with panic. Remembering the demon mistress, her hands on my face, suffocating the soul out of me had me scrambling backwards, running as fast as I could, bending the trees around me to help me to run, fast as a fleeing deer, faster than a blood hound.

  “Where are you flying, pretty bird?” he taunted, his voice echoing in my ears with the shrieks of demons I told myself were not in my head. He ran, haunting my footsteps effortlessly. My burst of energy broke down quickly until gasping for breath I struggled, still weak, in shock, in need of a lifetime of naps and sunsets with the sweet boy I loved.