Sable Book 1 of Chaos Time (Chaos Time Series) (5 page)

Maybe this time, she wouldn't come back.

Chapter 5: This way lies madness

Sable screamed, slapping at her body, at the flames eating her skin, the burnt smell of flesh fresh in her nostrils. Hands covered her mouth.

"I said it couldn't hurt me, but it can still make me want to suck my thumb and curl into the fetal position. Stop, Sable. Now."

He shook her and slowly, slowly the dream peeled away and she was back. In the present. In this moment. She looked around, trying to remember. She'd fought the nurse. He'd punched her. Strapped her down. A shadow. A voice. Hunter. Words that had made her laugh and then—

"You stabbed me!" She clawed at his hands. Shoving him off of her and throwing her full weight at him. It wasn't much, but it was enough to make him jump back.

"There's a good explanation." His hands were up in that placating fashion again and he was slowly backing away from her. Nothing made sense. Not his behavior, not her memories, nothing… nothing… Grabbing hold of her head, she tried to separate fact from fiction. Dreams from reality.

What was going on?

She vividly remembered the stabbing, but when she rubbed at her chest there was no pain. Frowning, she lifted her shirt, uncaring that he stood inches from her and could see her exposed body. Let him look. Covered in bruises, there wasn't a part of her that wasn't black, purple, or green.

There'd been so much pain. She'd felt it. "I died," she whispered, so low she thought he couldn’t hear.

He nodded. "Yes, you did."

It took a second for that to penetrate. She hadn’t imagined the raw, visceral pain. The darkness that’d crowded her mind and made her shut down. It hadn’t just been in her head. Anger exploded from that thought.

"You did it!" She jumped off the cold concrete slab she'd been laying on. She glanced around, saw a slivered shard of metal and picked it up. The rough edges bit into her skin, bleeding her instantly. But she barely felt it. Maybe a scream wouldn't incapacitate him, but he could feel what she had.

He shook his head. "I had to. You weren't ready yet." Steel blue eyes pierced through her. Body trembling with adrenaline and the need to regain her power, she hated that the first thought that popped into her head was how innocent his eyes looked.

She gripped her head, scraping the sliver of glass against her scalp. "You make no sense. Who are you really? What do you want from me?"

He only shook his head. “Can’t you feel it?”

His innocent question only brought more confusion. It was on the tip of her tongue to demand he tell her what that meant. Why all the riddles, the questions about raindrops and feeling it, feeling what? She wanted to scream it at him, but her vocal chords suddenly seized up as a type of pain she’d never felt in her life immediately gripped her.

One second she felt normal, the next her muscles were spasming and clenching. Heat spread from her insides, shoving down her legs, up her arms and made her feel like her blood was literally boiling over in her stretched veins. She was so hot. Sable wiped her wet brow.

"What's… happening to me?"

She shook. The metal fell from numb fingers, as the warmth was now a raging inferno. Grunting, she fell to her knees. Her bones shifted, they slid and rubbed against one another. The friction bowed her back. She watched the hand in front of her. Shock scrambled her brain. She couldn't understand what she was seeing.

Nail—hers—began to lengthen and thicken. Black crept from the nail bed, higher, spreading like cancer and overtaking the white. Then her bones were cracking, snapping and a scream tore out of her throat as she dropped like a stone to the floor.

A heat wave rose from her palm. She gnashed her teeth. "I'm dying," she wailed, her lower lip trembled as the pain took over her body.

Hunter ran up to her, held her tight against him. His hand soothing and cool on her temple. "Don't fight this, Sable. It has to be. Relax and accept who you are."

She heard him, but it was a distant sound. Faint and tiny. An echo she could barely discern. This time when she tried to scream, she couldn't. Like her vocal chords had been fused, wired differently. The grunts were guttural and dragged from the depths of her pain.

Red brilliance covered her, netting her in ember sparks. She sensed Hunter pull back from her, but she could no longer see him. Dying. Pain. So much pain.

Flesh sizzled. Hers? The smell. It was awful. Burnt hair, skin. Curling into herself. Arms thrown over her face.

Sounds. Calls she couldn't make out. A name. A voice.

The amber flames turned to blue shot through with veins of purple. The metal she'd gripped earlier was now a silver puddle at her feet. Then a shower of crimson feathers dipped in gold exploded from her body. She shook like a dog, ruffling her feathers and emerged from the fires a beast.

***

Hunter watched the magnificence of Sable's first turning. He wasn't sure how she would handle this. She'd known nothing of her true self. That much had been obvious when he'd seen her strapped to the gurney. She’d looked like nothing he’d remembered. The fire in her eyes was gone. Now they were large in a face so pale she looked more like a ghost than a living, breathing person. Ratty, stringy reddish brown hair had covered bruises on her cheeks and chin.

She’d looked like a person broken, but if she’d known who she really was, she'd have killed them all.

It wasn't just her voice that made her deadly; it was the power of the phoenix within her. Predatory and lethal, a true throw back to the dawn of the dinosaurs.

She stood before him now, tall and towering with a twelve-foot wingspan. Her beak was curved and long, its ebony thickness able to inflict killing damage within seconds. Her tiny black eyes were glazed; she was obviously still dazed from the turn.

He approached her cautiously. The angular head turned an eerie one hundred and eighty degree rotation before squawking loudly. Calm, he held out a steady hand. She shifted on taloned feet, taking wobbly, uncertain steps toward him.

His palms sweat and he swallowed hard, but showed no outward evidence of his fear. The bird was a natural killer and any appearance of weakness would trigger its instinctual need to attack. He'd once seen her take down a wolf. It hadn't been a fair fight. Her claws had gripped its shoulders and her beak had cut through his skull like a warm knife through butter.

He wouldn’t die, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like a mother and make him wish he had.

She hopped around awkwardly a couple times, before—with a loud woof—falling. Her ribcage expanded with her labored breathing. Gray wispy curls of smoke rose from her body. Hunter rushed in, held onto her head and let himself become engulfed in the burning flames that peeled away the subcutaneous layers of his flesh as she once again returned to her alter form. The sting of burnt skin lasted only a minute.

This time he was determined to show her she wasn’t alone, he’d care for her. He’d show her, he’d make things work. She wouldn’t feel temptation, she wouldn’t feel alone… this time if he did it right, they’d win. They’d all win.

After only a minute, that'd felt more like an hour, she blinked her strange colored eyes back at him. Familiar eyes. So striking to the one’s he’d known, that he had to close his own and remember it wasn’t really her.

He swept her lanky amber hair—matted and twisted with blood and dirt—out of her face. She was panting, gripping tight to his hands. Her legs wouldn't stop moving as subconsciously she seemed to be trying to run away from what had just happened.

"Shh." He continued to stroke her slight form, trying to ground her back to reality. "It's over now. It's done. It will never be like that again."

Her bottom lip quivered as she started to shiver. Her muscles trembled violently.

"What did you do to me?" The accusation hit him like a sharp arrow.

"What needed to be done," he admitted reluctantly, "you told me how to force the change, I'm sorry, you never warned me it would be so bad."

She coughed, a little blood landed on her lips. "I've never met you before. You're crazy."

Hunter glanced around the sparse warehouse, looking for a blanket, or even some discarded newspapers. But there was nothing other than dank puddles of water and litter. The cold concrete they sat on wasn't helping. He lifted her onto his lap. Sable didn't fight him, weak from the shift. Her small hands curled into his sweater and she tucked her face against his chest. She was so small, fragile. It angered him to see her this way.

He hugged her to him, hanging on tightly until the worst of her trembles had passed. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a squished energy bar and handed it to her.

"It looks like crap, but I bought it this morning. Should taste fine."

She didn't seem to care. She tore open the wrapper and took three huge bites, groaning as if in bliss, like she hadn't eaten anything in a while. Looking at her, he could believe it.

Sable licked the chocolate off her fingers. "You got anymore?"

“Sorry.”

Already the color was returning to her pale cheeks. She scooted off his lap. He bit his lip, fighting the urge to help her stand. She looked like a newborn colt the way she gingerly made her way to her feet.

The sun had set hours ago, not that anyone would have noticed with the storm. But the rain had stopped and that was a minor blessing.

The air was dank and stale, smelling of piss and scat. Glass windows had been shattered, letting in a constant breeze that kept the warehouse just this side of freezing. It'd been the perfect spot to hide her while she she'd shifted, but it had outgrown its usefulness. They needed to find better shelter. She looked dead on her feet and was probably still hungry.

"Where'd you bring me?"

He got up and dusted off his jeans. "Meat packing district. Abandoned warehouse."

"You a pervert, killer, or both?"

"Neither." He grinned, relieved to note that though she'd gone through a trying ordeal, she seemed marginally stronger already.

Sable hugged her arms to her chest. "Who are you? What do you want with me?"

He didn't hear fear, not even curiosity, not really. More an acceptance that her life sucked and this was nothing new.

There was an obvious pink elephant in the room, the fact that she’d turned into a bird. The fact that that more than anything was incontrovertible proof that the life she thought she’d known she hadn’t really known at all. But she didn’t seem to want to talk about it. They would have to eventually, but he wouldn’t push it.

For now.

"I already told you. I didn't lie."

She shook her head and toyed with a ratty braid he hadn't noticed earlier. "So you're from the future. Okay, whatever. Just take me back."

"You can't tell me you miss that place? I saw what they did to you. Why would you want to go back there?"

She rolled her eyes. "Of course I don't like that place, I hate it. But it's a lot warmer than here and at least there I can maybe get food, crappy as it tastes, into my belly. You're some sick freak who wants me to what...trust you?" She finger quoted. "That you're some alien with god like powers. Oh and let’s not forget, you didn’t just try to kill me. You did. You really want me to believe you’re better than—"

"I'm not an alien and you didn’t die, not really. You told me before that’s the only way to unlock your powers.”

She grabbed her head. “You keep saying that. That I know you. I don’t effing know you, dude!”

Again she was skating the bigger issue. Why wasn’t she asking about what’d happened to her? It was as if she didn’t care. She had to care. Who could turn into a bird and not demand to know what’d just happened to them?

He’d expected her to rail and piss and moan about it, instead she was asking all the wrong questions and wanting to go back to the very place that’d beaten and tortured her for who knew how long?

Had they broken her? Was her life that meaningless that nothing mattered? It made a slithering, unsettling feeling creep down his spine, and settle in his gut like rancid grease. Breathing through the powerful emotion, he fought to shove the anger aside. It would do no good, not here, not now…

“And," he continued once he’d gotten control of himself, deciding he was done ignoring the obvious, "doesn't it bother you even a little that you shifted into a bird? Aren't you the least bit curious about that? That maybe, just maybe I'm telling the truth and we have a history we need to sort through?"

Her look was blank. "I'm sorry that you think I should care. I'm pretty used to weird shit happening to me. What's one more? Maybe it's the pills making me hallucinate that anyway." She shrugged her scrawny shoulders. "Don't care."

He shook his head, dumbfounded. This was not the phoenix he’d known. If he hadn’t seen her change, he’d think he had the wrong woman. But it was her. The hope of a world rested on this girl’s shoulders, he tried to quell his desperate desire for her to suddenly remember. "Denial isn't healthy, Sable," he growled, having a tough time repressing the anger that nothing was going as it should.

She laughed, the sound slightly shrill. "Oh that's funny. Seriously."

“Give me one good reason why I should take you back,” he snapped, breathing heavy with each second that ticked by.

His skin tightened, itched. Biting onto his lip, he breathed in and out through his nose. He wouldn’t lose it, not now. Pushing
it
down, he ignored the desperation and the need for everything to be what it was. He knew coming here they’d be starting over.

She wasn’t the same woman. He had to remember that.

Her eyes narrowed and for a split second of time he could almost swear he saw the ghostly image of the phoenix staring back at him. “Not like I haven’t already given you a million, but how ‘bout one more,” sarcasm dripped like dark molasses from her tongue, “because I swore to kill fat bastard before I left and I aim to do it. That’s why.”

“He’s gone, Sable,” he said slowly, his heart twisting with the pain she tried so hard to conceal from him. What had those people done to her?