Sable Book 1 of Chaos Time (Chaos Time Series) (14 page)

When he returned to
Egypt
Synn was back, she’d found a toga somewhere and had it wrapped around her. It looked like nothing more than a white linen bed sheet the way she had it tucked.

His gaze snapped to Slayde’s nearly drooling stare and he couldn’t help himself, he threw the heavy bag of gems at his head like a mini projectile.

Slayde grabbed the bag a second before it beaned him and gave Hunter a knowing smirk. He slipped the bag open and whistled appreciatively. Slayde reached in and pulled out a gem, holding it up to the poor lighting. “Where in the hell did you get this thing?”

Hunter smirked and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Does it matter?”

Slayde lifted a thick, dark brow and before Hunter had a chance to blink the diamond was gone, as was the bag. Slayde always did have fast hands. “Not a bit.”

Greedy bastard
. There was only one thing Slayde had loved more than the chicks, and that was the money. “You’ll get the other half after we’re done.”

“So,” the Hispanic accent laced with the trace of something else cut sharp through Hunter’s musings, “you’ve got us here, now what?”

His lashes fluttered, god he didn’t want to feel this—the almost painful euphoria of having what you wanted most in life so close, so alive and so touchable. But knowing at the same time it could not be. It was a double-edged sword that cut him to the quick and made him hot, aching, and angry all at once.

“We find the first source.” His voice gave no indication to his inner turmoil.

Slayde shrugged out of his book bag and trench coat, dumped both on the floor, and then sat on the mini version of the Sphinx. He was leaning against the back of a file cabinet with his booted feet crossed and kicked up on the head.

Synn leaned back, her barefoot braced against the wall, causing the sheet to slide open and reveal a large expanse of thigh. Hunter’s pulse pounded.

“Sable, we need you here now,” he said, words more gruff than he’d intended.

A couple of seconds later the rustling of her footsteps came through the doorway. She was biting her lip with a petulant gleam in her smoky gray eyes.

Call him stupid maybe, but he still held out hope that they could get this right, though it was looking less and less likely each minute that passed.

Just seeing Slayde again, regardless that this Slayde didn’t remember any of what happened before, had his blood frothing. And Synn...he’d thought he’d been ready. Sable was a mystery, one that intrigued him despite himself.

He pinched the bridge of his nose that bloomed with the start of a headache. They hadn’t even gone on their first mission.

“I’m here,” Sable said softly, looking at him hard. And this time it wasn’t the teenager staring at him with conflicted hormonal induced feelings, but the wise eyes of the phoenix that could strip away the meaningless to see the truth within.

Clearing his throat, Hunter wasted no time in getting them caught up. “Right before the Phoenix died, she told me of Dragden’s riddle. The puzzle of sources scattered through time that he drew his powers from. But she wasn’t able to give me the first location.”

Slayde snorted and crossed his arms. “Well that’s great, Tonto. That’s gonna take us places. You aren’t getting my diamonds back, that’s for damn sure.”

He tried to control himself. To count to ten. To remember that
he
was never allowed to get truly angry. That his rage wasn’t simply emotion, but something more. Something sinister and cold and demonic that would bear down with lethal consequences.

Trembling, skin itching, he knew he was starting to lose his fight.

Small hands curled around his clenched fists. He hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes, until he opened them and was snared by a mesmerizing swirl of dancing silver lines inside eyes turning an inky black.

“I’m here to help, Hunter,” Sable’s voice had dropped to a throaty whisper, melding her naturally upbeat sound with the smoky strain of the phoenix.

The touch grounded him and he could finally take a deep breath freed of the malevolent grip on his soul.

Sable’s mouth opened up into a tiny
o
as if on some level she sensed the monster. The poison that festered within him. She cocked her head, reminding him of her bird in that moment and then after a brief pause, patted his hand. She turned and pinned a still smirking Slayde with her hard gaze. “Say another word to him, Slayde, and I’ll cut that pretty little head off that pretty little neck.”

Her words were low and menacing and anyone else would have probably wet themselves to hear it, but not Slayde. His blue eyes twinkled with irreverence and something else Hunter couldn’t name. Slayde saluted her; mimed zipping his lips shut and gestured for Hunter to continue.

Hunter kept his eyes on her face, refusing to look at Synn, to look at Slayde; knowing the only way he’d get through this was to pretend neither of them existed.

“You need to return to your tree. Go into your phoenix sleep and will your memory to remember where the location of a source is at.”

She swallowed, worry scrawled tiny lines around the corners of her hypnotic eyes. “But what if I can’t?”

“You can, Sable. Your phoenix wants this fight. She’ll help you. Will it. Make it so. You’re strong.”

“I’m scared to remember. Those dreams haunt me,” she sounded like a small child, voice reed thin and trembling.

From the corner of his eye he saw Slayde sit up and felt his look like a hard weight pressed against his back. If Hunter didn’t know better, he’d almost think the man...anxious.

For her?

Hunter ignored him.

“Without those memories, we have nothing.”

After a brief pause, she nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay.” He gave her one last gentle squeeze and then released her. “Follow the ley lines. You’ll do fine.”

Hunter heard Synn gasp when Sable became engulfed by her sparking crimson-golden flames.

“Wait,” Slayde jumped to his feet, pointing to the large feral bird. “You’re sending the kid off by herself to discover this source?” he finger quoted.

Hunter lifted a brow, not sure where he was headed.

The phoenix squawked and Synnergy shoved her hands over her ears, running toward the bathroom. Hunter waited until his ears stopped ringing and glared at the bird, then back at Slayde.

“I’m going with her.” Slayde walked up to Sable and held his hand out.

Her head was cocked, her beady eyes trained on him. “I’m going with you,” Slayde said it softly to her, gentle even.

She shook her head, shrugging off the hand he’d placed at the base of her thick neck.

“I don’t think—” Hunter started.

Slayde shook his head and continued, talking over Hunter’s caution that her flames would kill him. “I like your fire, kid. Feels good. Now you’re taking me with you.”

A deep rumbling growl vibrated through her large chest. She turned her head and screamed again, shattering several large windows. Synnergy’s moans played duet. Hunter winced, but recognized she was getting better at controlling her aim. Though painful to hear, it wouldn’t maim.

Sable extended now flaming wings and wrapped them around Slayde’s body. He disappeared within the fire, and she shot off through the large hole in the wall like a bat out of hell.

***

Sable dived into the volcanic heat of her tree, the braches reached out to wrap around her like a warm hug. It pulled her into the heart, the center of the tree itself.

Without being told, without knowing how she knew this, she projected a one word command to it:
Change
. The flaming pit she slept in and called home immediately reformed into a chamber created of gleaming wood. The floor was a rich deep brown, and the walls glowed from mushroom spores. Light poured in from everywhere, as if the heat of the fire had been contained, but not the light the tree was made of. Everything shone a beautiful, dripping, buttery yellow.

She landed gracefully and unfurled her wings, releasing Slayde from the protective netting. He brushed his fingers through his hair.

“So change, kid.”

She wasn’t a kid and hated hearing him calling her that, she especially hated the way he’d stared at the healer. She’d wanted to gouge his eyes out for that; yeah totally lame that she’d gotten so jealous. But a part of her felt weirdly bonded to him too.

He’d forced her to bring him here and she was really confused and couldn’t freaking understand him or his motives.

Angry, she called the shift to her and stepped in closer to him. The flames reached out to lick at his skin, a grin split his face as the flames danced around his body. Even Hunter had burned being too close to her, but not Slayde.

No, he didn’t burn. He glowed. Like he drew her fire into himself, his eyes snapped the deep blue of her hottest heat. The red in his hair gleamed like poured metal and his skin took on a faint luminescence.

Finally human again, she eyed him crossly. “What are you doing, Slayde? What game are you playing?”

The glow faded slowly from his skin. She had the oddest desire to trace her hand down his cheek to see if it would rub off under her touch. She crossed her arms.

“Maybe I wanted to get under Hunter’s skin again. Did you see his eyes bug when I forced you to bring me?”

He took a step toward her and she smelled him and jeez did he smell a whole lot of awesome. His eyes peered into hers and she was sure if he tried a little harder he’d see into her soul and oh man, this was so weird.

She took a step back and held up her hand, pushing it firm against his shoulder to prevent him from getting any closer to her.

“You’re such a jerk. All he wants to do is save everyone. Including your stupid self and all you do is antagonize him. I hate you.”

He was quiet for a moment and then he did what she should have expected him to do. He threw his head back and laughed. “I don’t know what you expect from, kid. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. This is me. Take me or leave me. Hate me or not.” He shrugged. “I don’t really care.”

“Then why did you make me bring you?” she asked so quietly she didn’t expect him to hear, much less answer. Why it mattered to her, she didn’t even want to begin to analyze. He was right. She didn’t know him. Not really. There were dreams. But dreams of what? Of the past? The future? Of a time so distant it felt like little more than a story concocted by a mind addled from years of anti-psychotic drugs.

Not to mention the fact that the woman Slayde had loved had not been Sable at all. The thought made her clench her teeth.

“I don’t know,” he growled, the humor completely gone from him now. He grabbed her hand and with a grip that would have made a lesser person whimper, said, “stop trying to understand me and just do your stuff so we can go.”

She tried to shake his hand off, but he wouldn’t let her. Oh she could force it, if she really wanted to. They both knew she was stronger, but maybe she was masochistic enough not to want to. She was not gonna dwell on that thought.

Closing her eyes, and with the practiced ease of someone who’d done this year’s rather than only once before, slid into the dreaming. Sable, the shell for the Phoenix, slipped off like a robe dropping to the ground. Eternity wrapped up in fog banks of time bombarded her consciousness.

The Phoenix sifted through the strands of time like a woman sifting strings on a loom until she felt the warm rightness of the vision she searched for.

It was hot. Delicious, delicious heat wrapping her up in velvet folds of lust and desire.

She laughed, the sound throaty and full-bodied. Her lover’s legs wrapped around hers, the coarseness of his hairs a wonderful friction against the smoothness of her own.

“I told you,” that deep voice, full of whiskey heat shivered across her flesh and she purred, meeting his questing fingers as his hand brushed against her belly.

He planted a wet kiss against the hollow of her neck.

“Told me what?” she sighed on a pant.

“That you’d come begging and willing,” he laughed, and the sound of it chilled her blood. But the heat of his body called to her and she clamped down on the sick anxiety that always flooded her the moment he left her bed. She knew it was wrong, what they did, but she couldn’t seem to remember any of that when he came to her. Touched her.

Sable’s conscious mind returned in a flash. That was enough. She didn’t want to hear anymore, or see that freak touching Errol’s skin another second. Why was she seeing this? This vision made her sick. Is this what Hunter was hiding from her? That she’d obviously betrayed them all by sleeping with Dragden? She wanted to puke watching this. It felt like porn and she hated that debauched look on her face. The look between obsession and animalistic lust.

Sable forced the Phoenix to shove this memory aside, this wasn’t what she was looking for and didn’t know why the Phoenix kept forcing her to relive this crap. All she knew was watching it made her so angry and terrified, that she wanted to jump inside the vision and rip Errol apart for letting that disgusting bastard touch her that way.

She vowed to herself that no matter what, she’d never walk the road Errol had. Dragden would never claim her.

Like a movie in fast forward she blurred through what felt like a hundred more memories of laying with the sick evil that was Dragden, and slowed it only when she caught sight of Errol bent over a desk, studying a crumpled and ancient looking sheaf of paper that was brown and blackened at the edges. She looked different. Not quite so young anymore. Time had passed since the last vision, but how much she wasn’t sure. All she knew was Errol wore a look of grim determination with eyes that glittered cold and bright with pain.

The faint flicker of a tallow wax candle sitting on the corner of the pitted desk illuminated one word. This was it. Finally, she knew. Her heart kicked into hyper drive. It was the only way. She closed her eyes and gripped the sheet to her chest. The bastard would pay for everything he’d done. Everything. She’d discovered his secret. After all these years. She’d done it.