Hotblood (9 page)

Its burning red eyes rolled in its head while steam came from its nostrils. The open mouth showed me curved fangs as it screamed. The sound pierced me, cutting me through like my dad’s gaze as strands of hair whipped my face and I bent lower over the back. Shadows danced around me as we sped through the woods. I felt the heat of the creature beneath me, the muscles enclosed in black velvet against my skin, unseen, wrapped in shadows.

I felt a jerk and watched from a distance as they ran over the forest floor, racing against the moon. The speed, the wind, the smell of the creature all combined to fill me with a burning. I wanted to ride again. I wanted the wind, the power, the darkness to swallow me. I wanted it with a growing ache.

3 Genetics and Other Excuses for Killing Something

I looked around the room, blinking away the image, the hunger. I moved my arm and winced, feeling the tug of the needle. I glanced down, following the tube to a bag of blood that hung on a long pole. I was getting a blood transfusion? The room’s corners were shadowy, but I could see my dad in a comfortable looking chair with a lamp on the table beside him, illuminating the book in his hands. His glasses were perched on his nose and for a moment he looked at me over the lenses before he slowly lowered them with his long graceful fingers.

“
You’re awake. How do you feel?”

I took a deep breath trying to slow my racing heart, to replace the dark image with my father. “What happened?”

“
Don’t you remember? You went hunting.”

I blanched as the memory of the wholesale slaughter of an innocent creature came back to me. I swallowed and tried to breathe shallowly through my mouth, struggling against the sudden nausea. “I remember.” I also remembered his crumpled body and blood.

“
You have a very fastidious soul. You washed very well afterwards.”

“
Oh. That’s…good.” I swallowed again, the smell of the blood in the bag made me nauseous. “You’re okay? I thought I hurt you.” Maybe it was remembering the sound as his head had cracked against the tree that made me feel sick.

He tilted his head and I saw a line on his scalp that looked pink and tender but healing. “Grim did the honors.”

“
Oh. Good. I tried to find Grim but then… I’m sorry. Where am I?” I asked the question grasping at straws as I tried not to cry.

“
This is your room. If you don’t like it you can pick a different one. The house isn’t exactly bursting at the seams right now.”

I looked around at the mahogany molding on cream walls, golden landscape paintings next to heavy drapes in rich paisleys of blue and gold. “It’s nice.” I eyed the large four-poster and felt small beneath the heavy blanket. “Your head looks like it’s healing pretty fast.”

He gave me a half smile. “Well, after a week things tend to show improvement.”

“
A week?”

“
Yes. Your physical health has improved drastically as well.” This time when he smiled it lit up his eyes. I was stunned that I’d missed an entire week.

“
Did I have an accident? Was I in a coma or something?”

“
No. You were resting while your body gained strength.” His voice calmed me.

“
It doesn’t seem like I need any more strength after what I did to you.” I bit my lip and closed my eyes while I remembered. After I’d hurt him, I’d run so quickly. It didn’t seem like a person could run that fast. How fast could I run now if I’d been weak then? “I don’t remember anything after I killed the animal.”

“
I can’t tell you for certain since I wasn’t the one who found you. That was Satan. The brothers returned when they heard you yelling. While Grim stitched me up Satan took off after you. Satan caught up to you right before you jumped on the animal. He was impressed with your ability to take something like that out with your bare hands.” At my incredulous look he smiled briefly. “Satan enjoys hunting with the best of them.”

“
Wait.” I thought about what he said and was quite sure he’d spoken wrong. “If I was running fast enough to catch a coyote, how could Satan catch up to me after he found you?”

My dad looked at me with a frown. “Satan’s Wild like your mother,” he finally said.

“
What does that mean? Grim said something about that in the car, or maybe Satan was saying it, but then Satan fell asleep and so did I. Wilds are really fast? Faster even than Hotbloods? That’s what you called me, right?”

He frowned and hesitated like he was thinking about how he could explain something complicated. “Wilds are able to get tattoos that work like runes on their skin to increase their natural abilities. Satan is extra-large, strong, and fast because of his runes. The runes also enhance his natural abilities with fire.” He shook his head. “I’m probably not the one to tell you about Wilds.”

“
Then what am I doing here? Mother said that you were the one who was the best to explain everything no one else wants to tell me.”

“
Your mother told you that I was going to explain everything to you?” He smiled again, a slow smile that ended with him chuckling. “That does surprise me. Wilds are very particular when it comes to explanations. Cools are not typically on the best terms with Wilds and so any explanation that I gave would not be subtle enough for them. I can’t imagine Satan would have felt comfortable leaving you with my version of Wilds.”

I remembered the car ride and how Satan had been trying to press something on me. “He tried to say something but then he fell asleep.”

“
He fell asleep mid-sentence?” My dad asked then laughed again when I nodded. “That would be Grim’s doing. He’s one of the only people who can make Satan stop talking. Grim is an interesting Wild. He left the House before your mother met me. I was surprised to see him at the funeral and here with you.”

“
What House? Last night mother and Satan were talking about the House and the end of the world. Are all Wilds paranoid?”

My dad’s face shifted slightly. He looked uncomfortable as he stood and looked down at me. “I’m going to get you a tray and you can eat while I answer your questions. I’ll be right back.”

I sat in my bed in the empty room feeling like I’d missed something. It seemed like my questions had chased him away. Maybe he was paranoid too. He returned before I had the chance to worry about it with a tray full of food that I ate eagerly. I felt like I hadn’t eaten for a month.

He smiled slightly as he settled back in his chair, frowning when I reached too far across the tray and the needle pulled in my arm. “The Wilds are very worried about the end of the world. Some Wilds can foretell the future, or at least they think they can, and enough of them had visions of a world empty of all Wilds that they began to scheme and plan ways around it. They came to the conclusion that the only way to avoid utter destruction was to annihilate another breed, the Hollow bloods. Unfortunately, it turned out that only made destruction for the Wilds more likely, according to their foretellers.” The look on his face was so disgusted I stopped eating while I thought about what he’d said.

“
They killed an entire breed, like genocide, because they were paranoid that they would die, so that made them even more paranoid about dying? Okay. No wonder mother thinks Satan’s completely crazy.”

My dad was quiet for some time, then he spoke quietly, as if against his will. “I started it.”

I stared at him, at his face the way he looked blank, and not empty exactly, but like he was looking inward so closely he couldn’t see anything else.

He snapped out of it and gave me a smile that felt wrong after that moment. “If you’re done with the meal, I’ll take it down. You probably want to rest again.” He was on his feet with the tray and gone before I could blink. He was fast.

I sat in the empty room staring at the chair he’d left empty and tried to understand what he meant by “I started it”. Did that make him a foreteller? I’d never gotten around to asking about what he did as a Cool blood. The thing he’d done when I’d gotten here, looking through me like that and knowing right away that I was Hotblood, made me think his talents were mental. I had a moment’s unease as I wondered if he could read my mind, but then why would he have to ask me questions if he already knew what I thought?

My dad came back a few minutes later. He apologized for being so abrupt and proceeded to take the needle out of my arm. He put a bandage on me and pressed the cut for a moment. He was close to me, and I could smell his blood, different from Satan’s.

“
What is Cool and what is Nether?” I asked him keeping my voice low.

He finished fussing over my arm and stood back with his arms across his chest. He cocked his head to the side and then fished around in a drawer beside my bed.

“
This,” he said drawing a horizontal line across the page, “divides the body from the soul. This,” he said drawing a line vertically so there was a cross on the page, “divides the mental from the emotional. Top left we have the body and mind, those are the Wilds; top right is body and emotion, that’s Hotbloods; bottom right, soul and emotion, those are Cools; bottom left, soul and mind, the Hollows.”

I stared at the paper seeing Satan’s face on the top left, mine on the top right, my dad’s on the bottom right, and the bottom left empty. “So, Wilds are mental and physical…”

“
They are obsessive planners and have power over the physical world,” my dad interrupted nodding.

“
All right, so they’re super paranoid and can control blood and fire. Hotbloods like me are more physical and emotional. When I get really angry I’m physically strong and fast, but instead of planning it, it all comes out in kind of mindless emotion.” He nodded and didn’t add anything. “Cools are emotional and soul? I don’t know what that means.”

“
Cools can manipulate the emotions and desires of those around them if they are centered enough. That is how I encouraged you to be as calm as you were yesterday. It’s unique that in the grip of your fury I had no power to lean you.” He frowned then shrugged. “It could be I’m out of practice.”

“
Oh.” I stared at him. “You can make me feel things I don’t really feel?” He nodded. “Great.”

He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t do that. Cools don’t as a rule, use their gifts for selfish gain. Cools have soul. They are about peace, tranquility, and respect for all living things.”

I stared at him and bit my lip wishing we weren’t having this conversation. I didn’t want to talk about souls. I didn’t want to think about Devlin, about my dad, about the things he’d told me that had made me so angry. “Hollows are mental and soul which means that…” I trailed off all out of ideas.

“
Hollows can manipulate souls, take a soul and absorb its energy. Of course a Hollow would never do such a thing unless he was insane.” My dad got quiet again. “Not every Hollow goes mad, really, not one in a million, but when they do, it’s very bad. Wilds would have you think that the danger is far greater. After all, they blame the Hollows for wiping out Wilds, and any breed that could do that must be destroyed.”

“
But the Wilds aren’t gone; the Hollows are. What happens when a Wild goes crazy?”

My dad looked at me and shrugged. “The same thing that happens to the rest of them. They can only have a certain amount of power. Satan is as dangerous as any Wild will ever be. That’s quite dangerous enough, but Hollows, while they aren’t aggressive and brutal the way Wilds are, can cause more damage than a thousand Wilds if they’ve…” He trailed off and looked at me like he’d forgotten who he was talking to. “Never mind. The only reason to tell you about the Hollows and their extinction is to show you how necessary caution is when dealing with Wilds. Some of them have decided that hybrids are the next great threat. That would be you, Dari. You, with a Wild mother and a Cool father, are what we call a hybrid. Under the treaties and laws that were created after the Hollow wars, hybrids became illegal. Marriage between the different breeds was something you could be killed over. Your mother’s House is a merciful House compared to most of the others. They only disowned her. Of course,” he said with a slight smile, “that might have been because fighting us would have cost them heavily. Wilds always look at the bottom line.” He got up and stretched and I realized light was coming in the window.

“
There’s a bathroom in the hall on the way to the kitchen. You have time to take a bath before breakfast.”

“
I just ate,” I said but didn’t stop him from helping me put a robe on over my nightgown.

“
Hotbloods rarely stop eating. They need a lot of fuel to burn.”

As he helped me up I fought the dizziness by closing my eyes tightly until it passed. I blinked and felt good, stronger than I had for a very long time. I could smell something cooking and had to agree that more food sounded really good.

As I walked slowly down the hall, I shook my head. I’d lost a whole week. Had I been asleep the whole time or was I missing more things like last time? Everything after I’d ripped out the coyote’s jugular was blank. At least I’d held on up to that point. I flinched at the memory of my dad lifeless on the ground. He’d used the word “gifts” for what people could do, but destruction seemed more of a curse than a gift. In the bathroom, I sat on the edge of the tub watching the water rise. How could I hurt my own father? I’d lifted him up and thrown him. I looked down at my hands and saw lines that were starting to heal even though I didn’t remember scratching them. They reminded me of the hands of the boy, the one I’d dreamed, the one who’d made me smile right before I broke my dad’s head. I shook my head and jerked off the robe and old-fashioned nightgown before stepping into the tub.