Slayde, Book 2 (Chaos Time Serial) (7 page)

Knowing it was too damn late to turn back, he kept going, eyes scanning constantly from front to back.

Roughly five hundred yards later he spotted, what he assumed was the beginning of the heat spring bubbling up from the center of a man-made well. Blurry waves of heat shimmered off the top of the water. He shielded his eyes from the almost sun level glare shooting up from its nucleus.

“Fuck,” he growled. There was nobody here guarding the place. He stood in the doorway, staring into the empty chamber, at the obvious source of power, and knew he’d just walked into a trap.

Every fine hair on his body was now raised and he cursed himself every kind of asshole, because he wasn’t the kind of guy that did shit like this. Slayde had survived the Great Rift because he was smart. Though people took a look at him and assumed he was just an ignorant redneck, he thought things through and always,
always
knew when it was time to cut and run.

But he hadn’t done it this time, and he refused to analyze why. Heart beating a million miles per hour in his chest he knew he’d have to see this stupid ass idea out to the bitter end. Running to the well, he knelt and picked up handfuls of dirt, dumping it in over and over.

If the spring was the source of power, than blocking it should work. But he’d underestimated the severity of this situation. Clearly. Berating himself ten times a fool, he continued on with this useless exercise, knowing as he dumped in handful of dirt after dirt it wasn’t doing a damn bit of good.

“Shit,” he snarled, pissed as the dirt continued to swirl away. The dirt wasn’t doing it. But maybe a rock would. Something big he could dump down the hole to block the water.
Something
. There had to be a way.

Sweat dripped off him in muddy rivulets as he swiped it out of his eyes. Twirling on his heel, he ran to the rock face, running his hands along it, trying to find a chink or crack that he could grab a hold of to help him rip it out. But every time his fingers found a divot, all he could yank out was thin slivers of rock that weren’t even sharp enough to cut someone, let alone block the flow of water.

Manic in his quest to find something he didn’t stop until the shivery presence of “something” made him pause. Slayde whirled around in a defensive crouching position, but he was unprepared for what stood in front of him.

The man was stooped over and frail looking. Brown skin so papery thin each green vein stood out in bold relief. Age spots littered his withered frame. His face was long and hawkish, his jaw hairless and etched with long wrinkles and black swirled markings. His nose was pierced through with a long white bone and at either end appeared to be attached two small monkey skulls.

Slayde snorted, the adrenaline was spiking through his body like verve, and without consciously thinking about it, he relaxed his posture a little.

A stiff wind could knock the old man over.

The stranger walked purposefully toward Slayde, edging closer to the edge of the stream. Maybe if he shot out a bolt he could shove the man into the water. Let the fish have a light lunch.

His hand flexed and he waited, luring the bait closer by his lack of fear. “So you’re what’s got everyone’s panty in a wad, huh? You don’t look scary to me, old man.”

The Lord cocked his head and for the first time Slayde noticed the reptilian irises. A niggle of doubt wormed through his brain. The old man didn’t seem in the slightest bit scared of him. He should be. He should be pissing himself to get away, and come to think of it, he wasn’t really moving like an old man. Slow yeah, but his steps were strong and sure.

“Get back,” Slayde shouted, shoving his energy into his palms, turning them a bright red. His body hummed with energy.

The Lord was close enough, and frankly, Slayde didn’t feel like waiting another second. He shot out a blast of energy so powerful it would have killed ten men. It surrounded the old man like a web drawing closed. But instead of slamming him to his knees, his entire body swelled and what was once an old man, was now a middle aged one with flat black eyes.

Stunned, Slayde couldn’t compute what he was seeing.

The Lord gestured with his hand, in an obvious sign of “come and get me.”

Fury overrode Slayde’s shock, shutting down reason and common sense. If he’d thought things through he would never have done it again. He would have recognized what was going on. But he couldn’t stand to be mocked.

Ever.

He threw wave after wave of his power out. The red brilliance surrounded the Lord, obscured him. Slayde did not stop until his arm tired. After ten minutes he knew the Lord had to be dead. That level of power was akin to a nuclear time bomb, he’d seen it bring many men to their knees.

So when he dropped his arm, he was unprepared for the body that came hurtling at him with the speed and power of a charging rhino. It threw him back so hard he crashed against the rough lava rock with an ear splitting boom.

There was no time to catch his breath or regain his bearings before the rush of fists pummeled his face, his cheeks, his nose.

Snap
.

Crack
.

He blinked through swollen eyes, throwing up his hands in a reflexive movement to try and ward off the worst of the blows, but there’d be no stopping this onslaught. His nose crunched and his head swam. Blood started to drip.

If he threw out energy it only made it worse. The more he threw, the more powerful the Lord became. He knew he had teeth missing, that his tongue was split in two from accidentally biting down on it, all he could do was laugh. A gurgling, pitiful, broken sound. Maybe Hunter was right, maybe he was a loser. Only a loser would knowingly walk into death’s arms.

The Lord sliced through his stomach and his body quivered with surprise. This was a beating unlike any he’d ever gotten in his life.

He’d really misjudged this one.

If he had to die, then he’d die fighting. With every last drop of will he possessed, he stood tall against the constant barrage of fists.

He would die like a man, or not at all.

Chapter 5: The Lord Part 3 (Sable)

They reached the entrance to the spring echoing with the grunts and groans of a battle. Sable blinked in horror, unable to process what she saw. The Lord drove a punishing fist into Slayde’s face. He blinked and then crumpled like a broken doll to the ground.

“Sable, come on,” Hunter said in an urgent stage whisper.

The stomping of lots of feet drew closer. The Lord glanced up, sniffing the air and she knew they were seconds away from being discovered.

“You’ve got to come. We’ll get him back, but you’ve got to come. Now!” Hunter snapped.

Time slowed, so that she became aware of every minute detail. The Lord—a frightening hulk of a man—began to turn.

Synnergy was clinging to Hunter’s arms, barely hanging onto her sanity. Her fear was a palpable stench to Sable’s sensitive nose. She didn’t want to leave Slayde.

A wave of men entered through a side opening, diverting the Lord’s attention for a moment.

She tried to jerk her arm out of Hunter’s vice grip, but it was impossible. Slayde’s thick hair splayed around his swollen face like a bloody halo. She gulped, this couldn’t have happened. How had this happened? Slayde was so strong, so powerful.

“Come, damn you!” Hunter snarled, and with a swipe of his hand opened a portal, nearly pulling her arm out of socket as he yanked her through.

She didn’t feel the jump, she was so pissed. The second they landed she shoved him. “How could you leave him! How could you?”

“Sable,” he started, but she didn’t hear him.

“I hate you. We could have saved him. I hate you, Hunter!”

“Shut up!” A hand flashed out and slapped her hard across the cheek. The burn instantly brought tears to her eyes. She grabbed her stinging flesh, gazing accusingly at Synnergy who was panting with barely suppressed rage. “Don’t you see he tried to save your sorry ass? You stupid b—”

“Stop,” Hunter barked, placing one hand against Sable’s chest and the other against Synnergy’s. He needn’t have bothered. The slap had taken all the steam out of her. She wasn’t angry so much as heart sick and desperate to get Slayde back.

“Hunter,” she moaned, tears spilled unchecked down her cheeks. “We can’t leave him.”

He grabbed her face, his gaze searching, conveying silently the depth of his sincerity. “We will, Sable. I swear to you we will. But not now. We can’t. There were too many guards, not to mention a Lord that had fed on Slayde’s energy. He was beyond any of us at that moment.”

Arianna frowned, stared at Hunter and her with hurt filled eyes. She turned and walked off to another part of their tree. He’d transported them back to where they’d started.

Sable grabbed his fingers and squeezed them hard. Her heart began to find a more normal rhythm as she asked, “when?”

“Tomorrow, during the harvest sacrifice.”

In her head popped an image of Slayde—face completely swollen and unrecognizable—lying broken and bloody with his stomach sliced open revealing the meat beneath. Hunter must have sensed her panic because he shook his head.

“We won’t let anything happen to him, I swear. But the Lord won’t be quite as powerful.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

She knew he was lying to her. There was a very real chance they wouldn’t get Slayde back alive. The violence of the Lord, the horror of seeing something that looked so weak, rip into Slayde as if he were nothing more than a piece of rotting meat. She shuddered. Hunter was trying to give her hope. But she knew. How would any of them stand a chance against something like that?

“Your voice,” he said softly as if reading her mind. “Use your voice. He absorbs power and throws it back, we’d all be useless against that, but your voice scrambles the brain waves nullifying his ability to absorb it and then you strike.”

Whether he lied or not, didn’t matter. There was nothing else. Either it would work or it wouldn’t. “It had to be me all along, didn’t it?”

He was quiet for a long moment, before finally nodding. “Eric was a fool to do what he did.”

She hissed, fingers curving like claws by her side.

Hunter held up his hand. “I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it, it’s the truth. No one else could have defeated that Lord but you. If he’d stayed with us, he would have known that.”

“Why did he go? Why?” she practically wailed, panic lay like bile on her tongue.

Muscle in his jaw clenching and unclenching, Hunter finally shook his head. “Slayde’s is a mind I’ve never been able to understand. But if I had to guess, I’d say he wanted to save you.”

“Save me?” she hiccupped, swiping angrily at the tears rolling out of her eyes.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. It’s done. Get some sleep, Sable. The Lord won’t look for us, he’ll know the only way Slayde got there was through a time jumper, he’ll believe I carted us off well beyond his reach.” He seemed about to say something else, but patted her head instead and walked off.

There would be no sleep for her. She had to get him back. She didn’t understand her desperate desire to do so, and honestly she didn’t care. Past, present, future... Slayde was all those things for her and she’d do anything to get him back. Period.

***

The next morning all three of them were awake, waiting on the very edge of the jungle, and watching the slow moving procession of bodies walking up the blood stained steps of the sacrificial pyramid.

Chanting, wailing, screaming, and moaning was a chaotic cacophony of noise Sable could barely process. Where the hell was Slayde? Her question beat in tandem to the frantic pounding of her heart. Her tongue felt swollen and void of moisture.

They couldn’t be spotted, not until they were ready to ride in and swoop him up. She hung like a monkey in a tree, with none of the grace. Her arms trembled as a strong gust of wind threatened to knock her from her precarious perch. But she wouldn’t move, because this was the only spot that gave her an unobstructed view of the Lord and his kills.

The people were gathered in a tight cluster, throwing their hands up with the hungry cries of blood lust each time the Lord—looking pitifully frail again—lifted his bloody blade and kicked yet another headless corpse down the long flight of stairs. It was macabre the way the limbs floated up through the air and then slapped against the rocks as it rolled steadily down the steps.

It seemed like the blood bath would never end. What was even more sick was the smile’s on the faces of the sacrificial lambs. They looked like they felt honored by this.

Her stomach soured, hating the idiotic cruelty of it. They were like cows led to slaughter, not even needing guards to lift them up onto the killing stone. They lay with arms bound in ropes upon their chests. Eyes staring at the burning sun as their priest lifted his knife and plunged it deep into their still beating hearts. Each death was the same.

Down they lay. Priest stabbing the heart. A jerk. A spasm. Bowels evacuating. Cutting out the heart and jerking it high above his head as blood ran between his slippery fingers. Then he’d throw the heart down to the waiting eager fingers of the masses. Behead them and kick them away, only to do it over again and again.

His eyes glowed.

She wondered if the people knew their high priest was more than human. But the way they were screaming and dancing and war whooping, she doubted they cared. Their freneticism and the sickly metallic scent of old and fresh blood whipped an already crazed crowd into an unstoppable force of fanaticism. All that mattered was appeasing the gods.

After the first ten victims, she started to think that maybe she was becoming immune to all the carnage, but then they laid a baby down. Her fire rushed to the surface so quick it caused the leaves above her to start smoking.

Hunter clamped down on her arms seconds before she changed. Her change was so close she sizzled.

“Sable, you must calm yourself.”

“How dare you!”

They were high enough up no one would hear, but at the moment she wouldn’t have cared if they had.