Slayde, Book 2 (Chaos Time Serial) (3 page)

But even as he gathered the tattered and confused remains of his pride around him, he couldn’t quite ignore the fact that the sparkle in her eyes dimmed, or that a frown had tugged at the corners of his full bottom lip.

With a growl, he turned his back to her and stared out at the city skyline.

“Fine,” he bit off. “He’s crazy. Got it.”

Hunter’s eyes closed for longer than a second before he took a deep breath and continued. “We’ll go in tonight, under the cover of darkness.”

“Where we going,
Haus
?”

“About six klicks back is a large stone structure.” Hunter gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Looks almost like a small pyramid, go in and two floors down is an antechamber housing the spring.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Sable whispered. “How do we destroy a spring though?” Her voice sounded soft, reed thin.

Slayde licked his front teeth, determined to ignore the scratchy quality of it.

“The spring is being fed by an underground source, only way to disable the source is to enter it and block it off. Kick a little dirt in it.” He eyed Slayde hard. “But the spring is volcanic; temps on that thing can reach into the hundreds of degrees, boiling us alive. I could swing it, but I don’t heal instantly. I’d be nothing but bone by the time I reached it.”

Her teeth clacked together as she jutted out her jaw. “Except for me. I’m a fire element.”

Hunter nodded. “Except for you.”

She tried to put on a brave face, and for all that Slayde hardly knew her, he felt her true emotion: fear. It festered under his skin like a living, breathing entity, making the blood in his veins hot and his skin itchy.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Hunter sighed loudly again. It was obvious the man was exhausted. Slayde would have liked to know what he’d really been doing though. Something told him Hunter hadn’t been out scouting for three days. This wasn’t a land where cities stretched on for miles. Everything was condensed, compacted into a couple hundred square feet. If the spring was inside the pyramid, then shouldn’t Hunter have looked there first, considering that was the largest structure within the city? The most obvious place to start?

It wasn’t like Slayde had any facts to back him up, but instinct was what kept him alive and his brain was screaming that something wasn’t right about any of this.

“All of you get whatever rest you can. We go in as soon as the sun sets.” Hunter glanced at Arianna’s hand, still holding tight to his. She nodded slowly, and then released him and walked back to the spot she’d been before.

With a ragged shake of his head, Hunter stood and shambled off to his own tree.

Sable hadn’t left yet. He turned to look at her.

She was staring at the ground with a vacant, cold look in her eyes. What was this chick’s story anyway? Everything about her screamed, young, naïve… but her action belied what his eyes saw. Because in that bar she hadn’t looked too young, she’d looked powerful, terrifying.

The girl was a strange mix of young and something otherworldly. It was more than just the fact that she could turn into a bird. So much more. He’d met a couple shifters in his time, she wasn’t like any of them.

He’d acted like an ass with her a second ago. The thought the he even cared about that irritated him. He didn’t care about people. Not usually. His policy was get what you need and keep going.

Steeling his resolve, he nodded to himself and turned to leave. But again his conscious screamed at him that he couldn’t leave her alone. Just like when she’d been forced to go to that tree to riffle through her memories for where they had to go next, he knew he couldn’t leave her alone.

“Damn me,” he muttered under his breath, and before he thought better of it or gave himself enough time to come up with another excuse he looked at her. “You okay?”

She gave a soft laugh, but it wasn’t pleasant. It was a barely held in check
I can’t believe this is really happening to me but I got to pretend like I’m all good
kind of a sound.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t fine and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Her skin was sallow, her eyes almost too large in her face. The pink bloom tucked behind her ear was even wilting. He almost laughed at the obvious metaphor implied there.

He wasn’t good at this kind of stuff. Comforting someone. Normally he was the one causing bedlam, but he didn’t want her dwelling on this shit either.

“You know what?” he forced himself to speak through clenched teeth.

Her brows gathered. “What?”

“You’re really white,” he said, lips twitching at the corners as forced himself to step outside of his comfort zone for her.

Sable huffed with an affronted gleam. “And you’re really stupid.”

“That’s what I’ve been told, but that’s not what I was getting at.” He smirked, feeling himself slip into a character he’d thought he’d never play again. And it shouldn’t be, but it was easy with her. Too easy. He hated that he wanted to see her laugh. Hated that he even freaking cared.

But he did.

She cocked her hip out. “Then what is your point exactly?”

“Even if it’s night, you and me, we’re gonna stick out like sore thumbs. Might as well paint our bodies neon and march through this town with a black light strapped to our assess.”

She covered her mouth with the back of her hand and giggled. She didn’t say anything for a second, and not sure what exactly he was doing, he was ready to turn back around feeling like he’d accomplished the mission of at least making her perk up, when she whispered, “We are kind of pale.”

He nodded.

“Well,” she said after another lengthy pause, “what should we do about it? Not like we’ve got body paint to spray on ourselves.”

He held up his finger, this was where having three days to study the lands around them came in handy. “No,” he pointed in the direction of the marshy swamp he’d spotted earlier, “but we’ve got mud.”

She wrinkled her nose.

He grabbed her hand and said gruffly, “stop being such a girl. Let’s go.”

Sable glanced to where Hunter was laying with his head on his folded hands.

He glowered and yanked her to him. “C’mon. You don’t need daddy’s permission, do you?”

“Ugh, you’re so aggravating, Slayde,” she hissed and then called her flames to her. She shifted smooth and immediately into her bird, his heart banged hard against his rib cage. She was awe inspiring, terrifying in this form. A side of him, the adrenaline junkie, loved knowing that if she wanted to she could rip her talon down his middle and slice him in two. She was a killer, a lethal but lovely killer, wrapped up in a contradictory bundle of youth and primeval.

Then shoving her taloned foot into his chest so hard he stumbled back and fell off the branch he’d stood on, he grinned. He felt no fear as wind rushed through his hair and pushed against him, confident she’d grab him.

She did.

***

Sable couldn’t believe she was actually doing this. Doing this and having fun doing it. She and Slayde were covered in the thick black mud, until they barely resembled themselves.

They looked more like the swamp thing crawling out of the primordial ooze. Alligators were staring at them from the bank of the mud hole with flat reptilian gazes. But she didn’t fear them, the second they’d arrived at the hole, any and all manner of creepy crawlies had immediately moved out; as if sensing in them a threat far greater than themselves. A large fat snake had ventured closest, but Slayde had slammed a red bolt into its hind and it’d seemed to think better, turning and slithering off.

Slayde took a running leap and then did an impressive twist in the air so that his back landed with a wet plop into the slick mud. She laughed.

“That it, kid?” he taunted, seeing her backing out.

“I’m done,” she panted for breath, feeling as if she could barely talk around the ache in her middle. It felt like she’d been laughing for the past hour straight. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined Slayde acting so ridiculous. Coating himself in mud and slime and looking like a big kid. Gone was the brooding guy who’d held the gun to her the first time she’d met him, or the smart aleck who constantly felt a childish need to one up Hunter.

She didn’t know him, didn’t know which version of him was actually real. Or if either of them were, but this Slayde, this one she liked. This one made her think of her dreams. This one made her heart skip and stutter and recall things they’d done in past lives. Things she was curious to try now.

Then there was the matter of the doll. Oh yeah, she’d seen the dirty purple monkey, but didn’t have a clue what to ask him about that. It was his business and she didn’t want to pry, but Slayde so did not seem like a doll kind of guy. She wondered the story behind it. Especially because when she’d noticed it, his claws—figuratively speaking—had snapped out, and she knew whatever that doll meant to him, the topic was off limits. Big time. Which made the curiosity all the worse.

“Oh, c’mon,” he wheedled, whipping his shirt off and slapping mud on one of the few remaining patches of pale skin left on him. “You know you want to.”

Even covered in mud, his beauty was beautiful. Lean and ripped and her breathing was definitely getting heavier. Partly due to the wet heat she kept sucking up into her lungs, but also because they were alone. Together. And every time she’d look at him she’d remember a past she knew he couldn’t.

What would he think if he knew the thoughts flipping through her head? Would he be weirded out like she sometimes was? Curious? Turned on?

“No I don’t.” She turned her head as heat of a different kind slithered between her legs. Mortified and embarrassed, she knew it was time to go. “I feel gross and sticky and I’m done.”

She hadn’t even realized he’d stood up, much less had gotten to within yards of her, when suddenly his strong arms banded around her middle and he was flopping them both back into it. The thick ooze squished between her bare toes and under her nail beds. She gasped and slapped his bare shoulder.

“Let me up!” She banged her fist against him. He stared at her with penetrating eyes.

She swallowed, unable to tear her gaze away from the sharp lines of his jaw and the full pink lips. She licked her own and could swear she’d seen his pupils dilate.

The world, that until a second ago, had been loud with the sounds of the jungle were now muted. There was a weird rushing sensation in her ears. A bump, bump, bumping sound that had to be her raging heartbeat.

Suddenly she was hyperaware of the way her body fitted to his. How her stomach filled the hollow of his own, how their thighs touched and filled her limbs with unbearable heat. Holding herself absolutely still wasn’t helping either, no, it was doing just the opposite. The lack of movement, of being able to do more than take shallow breaths, only made the ache deeper, the craving more violent.

Sable swallowed hard, at a total loss what to do. He was older than her, twenty she thought. Maybe twenty-one. She was seventeen. The age difference wasn’t all that great, but in another time, a different world, it would have been enough to cry rape.

Wetting her lips, heart beating in her throat, she knew she should jump off him, but it was like what she should do and what she wanted to do were at complete odds with each other, increasing her indecision.

Her lashes fluttered against her cheeks when his large palm traced slowly up the length of her spine. Stomach dipping, gathering with a swirl of Kamakazi butterflies she started to lean in, slowly, so slowly...

“You missed a spot,” he said, and grabbing a large fistful of mud, plopped it on her head.

Shocked, all she could do was blink as the spell shattered into a million pieces. And when it did she could breathe again, think again. His blue eyes were twinkling, but she noticed a twitch in the muscle beneath his left one and sensed that maybe he’d been as confused as her.

Mortified, embarrassment, and relief crowded her thoughts.

“Gross, Slayde,” she hissed and swatted at his hand as he tried to massage it into her scalp. But with reality, came the knowledge that Slayde made her feel things, weird, powerful things. Things she wasn’t ready to feel. Maybe would never be ready to fill. She didn’t want to be with a guy because destiny demanded it. And right now, this was all too weird. Because each time she was with him, images would blur on top of her reality.

He was holding her, and in her head she saw him holding her in strange and wonderous lands. Lands were dinosaurs still roamed. Where pirates claimed the seas.

Fate, destiny… she didn’t want to believe in that crap. She wasn’t sure how to change it, or if she even could. But she was going to try, and that meant not falling back in love with Eric Slayde.

“Hey, all over, remember,” he drawled in that thick honeyed accent of his, and determined to make this lifetime different, Sable pretended like everything that’d just happened hadn’t. She pretended that for a split second she’d wanted to die of humiliation. Or that she thought she would die if she didn’t get to taste his lips. Didn’t get to feel his warm breath whisper along the column of her throat. Didn’t feel his hands squeeze her breasts, or rain kisses along her navel.

Because this life, she’d own herself. That’s how it would be. Period. And with an act worthy of any thespian, she squelched a glop of mud between her fingers and smeared it on his face.

He snorted with laughter and swatted her hand away. Taking that opportunity to sit up, she tried to put some distance between them, but he tugged on the end of her hair and played idly with it.

“You’re a bastard, Slayde,” she laughed. “But my hair is brown. Not like it’s that different than theirs and besides, do you have any idea how long it’s gonna take me to wash this crap out later?” Her tone was high pitched with exasperation and that shivery secret thrill that even though she shouldn’t enjoy his touch, she did.

Maybe if they were friends, if she could see him as something other than her destiny, she might be able to let this madness go.

Reclaiming her hair from his sticky fingers, she asked, “What’s your deal, Slayde? Why are you sometimes nice to me, but always such a douche to Hunter?”