Slayde, Book 2 (Chaos Time Serial) (6 page)

He glanced over his shoulder and studied Synn whose legs were ripping up the turf.

He wanted to help her. He wanted to hold her. To touch her. But he couldn’t. Not again. He clenched his jaw, reaching out his hand and scraping it down the rough edge of the pyramid, using the pain to ground him. He stopped running. They were here.

A snapped twig sounded off to his right. Sable walked into a circle of moonlight. Her eyes danced with threads of spun silver, angry breaths scissored through her lungs.

“Are you sure he’s here?” she asked forcefully, and he could still feel the sharp sting of her anger. “What if he got taken? Hunter,” his name ended on a wail.

She seemed desperate to believe he hadn’t done what was so obvious to him.

“He’s here,” he said slowly, his eyes intently focused on Synn’s curved high cheekbones when she stopped next to them. Her chest heaved and the whites of her eyes gleamed bright. Her honey skin was slick with sweat.

“Follow me, don’t touch anything, don’t say a word. This place is booby trapped.”

Sable wrapped her slim arms around herself, shivering for an instant. Synn stared at him; she nodded once, all of it mechanical. Automatic. She wasn’t hearing him. Not really.

He walked around to the entrance of the pyramid. It wasn’t protected or guarded, didn’t have to be. There was a Lord inside, the people’s shaman. A man of awesome, fearful power. A being able to call the gods to them and say who’d live and who’d die. None dared to trespass here.

None but them.

He stepped inside as the darkness curled around them. There was no light, not even a tiny source of glow. He’d learned the route by counting his breaths. For the last two days he’d traced and retraced his steps, knowing when they came back they couldn’t light a torch.

Two hundred and forty seven breaths forward and then turn left.

He licked his lips.

Ninety-three breaths and then right.

His ears started to ring.

Ten forward and stop to hug the wall as he walked forward for sixty-seven breaths to avoid the earthen hole full of writhing, hungry crocodiles.

A pebble skidded and fell into the hole. Thudding slaps of tails and the snap of jaws was punctuated by a sharp gasp. It was Synn. He stopped moving, his pulse pounded so hard it threatened to burst a vessel. Had she fallen in? Adrenaline was pumping hard. His muscles ached and filled with blood. For two seconds he forgot to breath. He almost pulled away, almost called her name. Then he heard a whisper.

“Grab my hand.” It was Sable who said it.

The thunder in his ears quieted, he didn’t move, but took five deep breaths and willed the choking panic back down. Slowly the fear leeched out and he could breathe again. Once he was sure they were ready to follow, he began walking again.

Down they went, deeper and deeper into the bowels of hell.

He’d never told them the full truth. He couldn’t fight. Actually he could, but he wouldn’t fight. Because when he fought and he let the anger take him, he became a monster. A monster with no heart, no words, no feelings.

A monster who’d kill them all.

***

Somewhere below he heard the ground tremble.

Chapter 4: The Lord Part 2 (Slayde)

Slayde sucked in a deep breath, heart hammering wildly in his ears. Damn that’d been close. He eyed the large hole that’d opened up immediate and instant when he’d stepped foot on the hairline crack in the packed red dirt floor. There were traps everywhere and this one had been the most dangerous. Liquid lava bubbled and hissed at him from below, spitting tiny red projectiles as it slithered like a weaving mass of gelatinous goo down the smooth dirt tunnels. He hugged the wall behind him. His toes barely staying put on the narrowest of ledges.

The heat was crazy intense and so dense he could practically make it out. A sheen of heated moisture dancing around his face, scalding the inside of his nose with each inhalation he was forced to make. It smelled like what he’d imagine hell might smell like. Metallic with a hint of rotten eggs. He forced himself not to gag and to take small shallow breaths and only when necessary. Because each time he did he had a violent sneezing fit that endangered his already precarious foothold on the ledge. His skin itched, and he clenched his fingers to keep from scratching.

Who the hell would live in a place like this? On purpose? Now he really wanted to kick the Lord’s ass for making him walk through this. He ignored the small voice telling him this was really his own stupid fault for trying to play the hero to save the only chick he’d ever met who could probably kick
his
ass.

It’d seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. When Hunter had mentioned that no one could handle the heat but Sable, Slayde had grinned privately. He could handle it. He wasn’t sure why, but from the moment he’d stepped within the circle of Sable’s flames, the fire had beckoned him.

But now... he stared at the lava pit, he was rethinking his decision. Unfortunately it was too late to back out.

“Such a damn masochist,” he growled while carefully sliding forward one maddening inch at a time. The red goo popped with a loud sizzle, blasting out an intense beam of heat.

He actually liked it, it felt like her. An inferno pitch of flames so hot, so searing that it felt like tongues licking at his flesh, breaking him out in a wash of sweat and making his body tremble with a need he couldn’t understand.

Finally he made it to more solid ground but before he felt safe enough to rest his full weight on it, he tested the dirt with the tip of his boot. A gentle tap here and there, but when it didn’t give, he felt confident enough to bear down and breathed a sigh of relief when no hole opened up beneath him. Glancing over his shoulder, Slayde was proud of himself for getting this far. Hopefully luck would continue to stay on his side.

But Murphy’s law was alive and well, because no sooner he thought it, then he was presented with a literal fork in the road. Two paths, one going left, the other right, neither giving any sort of indication to where he should go. There were no footprints, no light, nothing.

Rolling his eyes, he decided he had no choice but to pick. Taking a deep breath he made toward the left.

His heart beat a driving rhythm through his chest; it wasn’t fear but anticipation of the strike. The fight. The feeling of slamming his fist into something and seeing it break beneath him. Feeling the raw and powerful surge of energy that filled his body like molten fire and flew from his fingers like a million shards of glass. Ripping and tearing through flesh, muscle, sinew and bone.

He loved the fight. Always had. Ever since the night he’d come into his power, the night he’d fought back. The night he’d told his old man he’d never do that to them again.

The deeper and further he went, the smaller the tunnel became, until he was finally stooping to get through it. And though he’d never had problems seeing in the dark before, this darkness was a sucking void of nothing. If it weren’t for the fact that he was physically touching rock, he’d swear he’d fallen through a black hole. He stumbled over a bump, falling to one knee and hissing as a sharp bit of something sliced through his jeans and kneecap.

“Damn. Me.” He punched the rocky surface.

He ground his teeth, searching for another way. Hoping he hadn’t come all this way in vain. But after stumbling around blind for several minutes he knew there wasn’t another option. With a low growl, he headed back the way he’d come. Swearing the whole way until finally he was back to where he’d started. He entered the other tunnel and held on to slick, cold rock with one hand while he felt in front of him with the other. The darkness was unwavering and he worried he might have to fight in the blind.

He could do it if he had had, but he’d really rather not. His night vision wasn’t all that impressive.

Suddenly the interior of the cave flooded with a bright blue light. He snarled and jumped back, his eyes squinting from the painful light. Fungi had cut through rock face, the light was coming from the strange looking mushroom caps, but it wasn’t a gentle glow, each cap was like a small ball of sunlight, making him squint as his eyes spontaneously watered.

There was nothing behind him but rock and a few stalactites. He waited, listening so hard, he was sure his heart drove an echoing whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, through the cave.

Knowing he was totally exposed, Slayde decided it might be a good idea to pick up his pace, while trying to be silent. It was easy to be loud under the cover of darkness, but anyone could spot him now. He felt a lot like a wounded gazelle in a den of lions. Not a feeling he particularly enjoyed.

Up ahead a circular opening yawned and he ducked into it, this time praising the blessed darkness.

It took a moment for the sound to reach him. But when it did, it was unmistakable. The rushing tide of fast moving water. He licked his lips and couldn’t stop the grin as he mumbled, “just kick a little dirt in it.”

Making sure there was no one around ready to pounce at him the moment he stepped out of the shadow, he glanced both ways and waited a ten count. Satisfied that he was still alone, he followed the sound.

The small opening was growing larger and wider. Then he saw the water, it was nothing more than a small trickle, but the roar was definitely coming from upstream. Which meant just ahead was what he sought. And likely, the Lord was there and guarding it.

Gradually he became aware of golden dew drops of phosphorescence dancing beneath the surface of the water. The light came from pinky length see through fish. Constantly checking out his surroundings to make sure he wasn’t being followed, he couldn’t help but dart a glance at the stream, studying the fish. Something about them was very odd.

Heart thundering through his veins, senses hyperaware, he bent over. A school of fish scattered at his approach, but not before he realized why they’d looked funny.

None of the fish had eyes.

At all.

In fact, so far as he could tell, it didn’t appear as if the eyes had been plucked out either. The skin on the head was without blemish. These fish were born blind.

That in and of itself wasn’t all that strange, he’d heard of cave fish that were blind, but an overwhelming sense of “wrong” made the back of his neck and skull prickle.

Licking his front teeth, he shrugged off the weirdness. It would only make sense that things seem odd, if what Hunter kept telling them was true, that there was some egomaniacal warlord hell bent on enslaving the world, then yeah… he’d likely surround himself with some strange ass shit.

Slayde lived in a world where strange wasn’t so strange anymore. Where the bizarre was as commonplace as the poor. But it was that strangeness that kept him more focused and alert. He’d just have to keep his guard up.

Humility had never been Slayde’s strong suit. He was mentally clapping himself on the back as he followed the flow, knowing eventually he’d hit pay dirt and find the source. He wasn’t sure what to make of this story that a great evil was tapping into sources of power to basically engineer himself into a godlike immortal. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to do the job so he’d get paid. The rest was just semantics.

The further he walked, the more his guard slipped. It wasn’t that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, but there was a stream and there was red rock and, apart from the fish, there were no creatures. Nothing to let on that this was being guarded by some big bad Lord. Maybe he’d taken a wrong turn again. Or this stream didn’t lead to the spring… hell, maybe the Lord wasn’t as badass as Hunter had led them to believe. Because the fact was, while he’d tried to be as silent as possible, he’d made noise. Lots of it. So why wasn’t he being attacked, or followed, or something?

The further upstream he got the stronger the surge of water became and the fish, he frowned, looked like they were pumped full of steroids. They were three times the size they’d been downstream and damn, was that fangs he’d just spotted on one?

Not just small pointed things either, but gnarled, vampire looking things pointing like a jagged chainsaw from its slitted mouth.

One fish, ribs in clear relief through its see through body, sank its fangs into a tail that had gotten too close to it. It shook its head like a salty crocodile, in a sort of grinding, ripping back and forth. The fish being attacked, jumped out of the water, twisting in on itself to possibly try and get away, but a final slash of the other fish’s head and the fish that’d jumped out was now missing it’s entire back half.

What the hell was in this water? And how could fish survive it? The water was frothing, churning at the surface and the heat was obvious even from five feet away. Steam rolled around him, breaking him out in a sheen of sweat.

This should be nothing but fish soup, but they were very much alive and swimming freely. The fish that’d been attacked just seconds ago was bobbing along the surface like a cork. Kneeling, Slayde clenched his jaw as he hurriedly swiped it out of the water. Having to release a blast of his red plasma at another fish that’d been making mincemeat of the one in his hand to keep it from savaging his own fingers.

Flipping the fish over and over, he frowned, because what’d appeared like a smooth, glass like surface of scales, was actually heavily armored. More like alligator plating, than fish scales. Which might account for how they survived the heat of the water, but he suspected not.

Turning the fish to the front, his nose curled as he came face to face with the teeth that were definitely much more than just teeth. They were hooked and barbed at the tips, so that when the fish sank into its prey, there was no unhooking it.

“Damn,” he muttered, and with a curl of his nose tossed the fish back into the steaming cesspit. It was set upon immediately, disappearing beneath the water in seconds.

“What the hell is down here?” he asked again, realizing he’d been wrong to let up his guard. That shit wasn’t normal.

His fingers flexed. There was something very off about this place. A nasty feeling sank into the pit of his stomach, but he pushed it aside. It was too late for second thoughts, he was here and they weren’t. The thought that maybe he might not come out of this alive began to impress itself upon him though.