Sable Book 1 of Chaos Time (Chaos Time Series) (11 page)

A guerilla grabbed Arianna by the scruff of her nightgown and threw her into her father’s kneeling body.

Breath left her on impact. She scrabbled to her knees and clutched at her mother’s arms. “Mama. Mama.”

The room filled with the metallic waft of gasoline. She choked on it. Dizzy and disoriented.

“Kill them. Then burn it down.” The leader’s voice was guttural, ruthless. He turned, walked out and never looked back.

A guerilla walked up to her mother. A hungry grin on his lecherous face. He took his machete and skewered her through the gut.

Her mother went stiff in her arms.

“I’ll kill you,” she said it so quietly that it was almost a whisper. She clenched her fist, shaking violently.

The last soldier pointed a rifle to her head. She saw his hand on the trigger. Saw his finger pull back and something inside her snapped.

She shot to her feet and lifted her arms. A consuming heat shot through her head and filtered through her body.

A scarlet shower exploded from her fingertips. The dagger shaped projections entered the soldier’s like cut glass. The sparks of her power ignited the gasoline.

Arianna’s body shook as the magic flowed through her. Then darkness invaded her mind and she knew nothing.

***

Heat, awful and thick crowded her. Arianna tried to take in a breath. It seared her lungs. The cloying smoke had her choking on her own saliva.

She turned her head and opened her eyes. The world was in chaos. Fire licked at the furniture, at the sprawled bodies of guerillas. Their slashed throats a gruesome testament to her...what? She’d never manifested power like that before. She’d been a healer. Not a...a killer.

Her stomach churned at the sight of their festering flesh.

“Ari...” a weak groan pulled her gaze from the horror of the bodies to her mother.

“Mama. You’re alive. How? I...”

Her mother coughed. She lay in a bright pool of scarlet. “Run, Ari. The house will collapse soon.”

She scrabbled toward her mother. The roof of the house began to groan. “No. Let me heal you. We’ll leave together.”

“No. There is no time. Ari, you must go now. Don’t let our deaths be in vain.”

Hot tears slid down the corners of her eyes. She shook her head. “Mama, no. Do not ask me to do this.” She hacked on the choking black smog.

Her mother reached over, pried a machete from one of the dead man’s hands and pulled it to her own neck. “Go!”

Arianna’s hands shook. “Mama,” she croaked.

“I love you,” she said, then sliced the machete from ear to ear.

The left side of the roof collapsed. Sparks of burning wood shot through the air like a missile, puncturing Arianna’s arm. With a strangled cry she shot to her feet and ran out.

Her feet touched wet grass and a loud groan exploded behind her. She stopped and turned, transfixed by the site of the raging inferno. Numbness spread through her limbs.

Everything she’d ever loved was in that house. The heat singed the hairs from off her arms. With one last lingering look she turned and fled.

Branches slapped her face, but the pain was nothing compared to the ache in her heart. She ran heedless of the night’s dangers, heedless of where she was going. Only knowing that she needed to get as far away as possible.

An hour later, finally spent of both mind and body she dropped to the ground. She lay in a heap, still unable to understand, unwilling to remember.

“Arianna,” a soothing, gentle voice whispered in her ear.

Startled, she woke up and stared into the face of a stranger with kind blue eyes. She hissed and quickly sat up, her hands outreached and ready to claw the man’s face off. Curious, but she didn’t feel the killing power flowing through her anymore. “Stay back, diablo.”

He clenched his jaw. Half in silhouette he was an alluring figure. Tall and dark, and while she could barely make out his face there was an innate power to him that entranced her.

He held out his hand. “Soy un amigo. You can trust me...Synnergy.”

She sucked in a breathe. Her arms trembled with fatigue. She eyed him, waiting for the thrum of power to flow through her veins, but nothing came. She was still inside; the tempest that often flowed through her was as calm as a placid sea.

“How do you know my tribal name?” she whispered, waiting for the intuition that had saved her life in the past to speak to her.

“Right now a mob is forming. The men you killed have been discovered and in moments you will be too. I don’t think I need to tell you what they’re planning to do with you. If you want to live, I can protect you.”

She shuddered and dropped her arms to her sides. Nothing within her screamed that this man was anything other than a Good Samaritan. She narrowed her eyes, thinking of her mother and father. They would think her a coward if she gave up now.

As much as her heart ached, she knew it was too dangerous to remain in the jungle alone and unprotected. The militia knew the jungle as well, or better than her. She didn’t stand a chance against them.

She looked at the stranger. Moonlight sliced a thin vein through the tight canopy of night. Who was this man that he confidently offered her protection?

“Aya! She went that way!”

The man looked behind his shoulder.

Her heart lurched into her knees and she gasped. They were close.

“Come now!” He shoved his hand toward her.

Did she really have a choice?

Arianna took his hand as the first gleam of a flashlight illuminated the area. “Oh my gosh, it’s too late.”

“Hold on,” he pressed her face into his chest and then a brilliant blue light exploded around them. Her mind sank into the peace oblivion of nothingness.

Chapter 11: That’s a funny joke…oh wait, you’re not kidding

Sable gripped the base of the large tree, watching the night around her like one would a horror movie, expecting at any moment that Jason or Freddy would jump out and cleave her in half. The rattling of a tree limb several stories high made her feel like she was ready to puke from the nerves. She didn’t even want to think about what was up there. A sleek, black panther—it’s green eyes locked on her neck—stalking forward on silent pads, seconds from jumping her.

She shivered, her forearms broke out in goose flesh, and she couldn’t help but glance up. “Stop it,” she reprimanded herself impatiently and for the like the thousandth time. When the hell was Hunter gonna come back?

The sky was black, dipped in diamonds and shrouded with a smoky veil of shimmering indigo. It still amazed her how well she could see. She was a predator now too. She needed to remember that. The next alarming quiver of leaves made her forget just as quickly though.

The air in front of her shivered with a pulsing blue and Hunter stepped out with a frail looking china doll of a woman gripped tight in his arms. She was passed out; actually she looked dead and cold. Her skin, which had probably been a warm shade of buttery brown, was at the present ashen with a pale gray ring around her mouth. Black hair trailed on the grass, picking up bits of bramble and pebbles.

“Lift her head,” she ordered, “trust me, she won’t appreciate all the snarls later. And what did you do to her anyway? Is that our healer?”

He shook his head, but did as she’d said. He cradled the cargo like she weighed no more than a feather. Her clothes, if you could even call it that—nothing more than a couple of well-placed strings of hide and long grass—were scorched and tattered. She was pretty much naked—a fact that obviously wasn’t escaping Hunter as he kept glancing down at her every two point five seconds with a look in his eyes that made Sable tingle. No man had ever looked at her like that before. Like he didn’t want to just touch her, but consume her.

“I didn’t do this. It’s the guerrillas after her. They’re coming here now,” there was an urgency to his words she’d never heard before. “I’ve got to get her to safety. She’s too valuable to us to let anything happen to her.”

“Okay.” She nodded, spooked by the thought of machete toting lunatics hard on their heels. “Let’s go then.”

The tip of his tongue stuck out the right side of his mouth and moving back and forth.

“What?” she asked, overcome by déjà vu. She knew that look, had seen it many times before—though it made her feel totally crazy—but she had seen it. And it had never preceded anything good.

“I have to take Arianna back.”

“
Ookay
,” she said very slowly, knowing somehow there was a
but
in there. He wasn’t acting like himself. “Spit it out, Hunter,” she said a moment later when he still hadn’t said anything.

He cleared his throat. “You will have to find our last piece of the puzzle.”

“What! Without you?”

He closed his eyes, his arms wrapped around Arianna’s now shivering shoulders. “Arianna needs time to heal. I cannot trek her around. Besides, Slayde is a hot head.”

“So what makes you think—”

“Because you have a bond.”

She snorted, a mix between fear and sheer incredulousness. “You are kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding, Hunter. That bond would have been with Errol anyway, not me.”

He hefted the healer higher, who by now was starting to wake and moan loudly. His eyes were large. “We’ve got to go now, Sable.” He did his hand wiggle thing and this time opened up two portals of time. “Tell him he will be paid enough to set him up forever; he’ll never need to work again.”

“What is that supposed to mean? And don’t ignore me! He knew Errol, not me,” she huffed, planting a small fist on her hip.

“Tell him,” he said with a sharp note of impatience.

She bristled, feeling like she’d suddenly been pushed to the side for that doll he now carried. She didn’t like this feeling, but there it was. Maybe she was only human after all.

“Oh great and powerful Oz, how am I supposed to get back to my time when, or if, I should actually say, I do find him? Hmm?” She pointed to her chest. “Not a Jedi warrior here.”

Suddenly the sound of a very quiet, sneaky something disturbed the brush about a hundred yards back. The machete goon squad was obviously here.

“They’re here,” he snarled, coming to the same conclusion she had. “Say my name when you’re ready to go. I’ll hear you.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he was serious, but his face was a tight mask of anger and impatience. Obviously he wasn’t joking.

“Go, now!” he commanded and without a backwards look at her, stepped through his spiraling vortex of doom.

It was then that it dawned on her she’d never even asked for a description of the mysterious Slayde. Oh man, this sucked the big one.

She took a deep breath, the first bullet zinged past her head, brushing its hot little body across her forehead. She stepped through.

He’d better be right, because so help her if she got stuck in a strange place she would make it her personal mission to come back and haunt him forever.

Chapter 12: Meet Eric Slayde

Eric kept his head low and his eyes open. He studied the heavily crowded bar, looking for a table far enough back that he wouldn’t be bothered. He was only twenty, but a reliable source had told him this place never carded and didn’t care, so long as the money was good.

And his money was very good.

Finally he spotted a two top all the way to the back, between the black doors of the employee’s lounge and bathrooms. He moved with no hurry toward it and when he got there, sat.

The nasty tacky tabletop threatened to stick to his skin. Slayde pulled off the book bag he always wore and opened it. He pushed aside a soft plush toy he should have thrown away years ago but could never seem to bring himself to, and several nines that before might have landed him an easy deuce in jail. Cops no longer had time to deal with minor infractions like illegal weapons possession. They were busy rounding up super freaks sprouting scales and bony horns from every part of their body. Those down and out losers who’d sat on Skid Row, high on dope and beggin’ or theiven’ so they could get that next bump of whatever.

Skid Row had never been the safest place to begin with. When it fell off the grid ten years ago taking thousands of users, pushers, prostitutes, and runaways with it and turning them into literal freaks of nature, it was even less so. Way he figured it; it was his civil duty to carry something.

His weapon of choice was a nine mil—compact and accurate, if it had bullets. His wasn’t loaded. But it didn’t have to be to have deadly consequences.

He finally found what he’d been seeking. He pulled out a pack of sanitizing wipes—a habit he’d developed recently—and cleaned the crap off the table until it gleamed. Resting his arms on the tabletop, he jerked his chin toward the petite, red headed waitress.

She popped a large wad of gum. “What?” she asked, staring at him with glazed blue eyes.

He sniffed. She smelled sweet, like she’d dipped her head in powdered sugar. Her soiled long sleeved shirt was rolled up, exposing forearms that looked like she’d been infected with scabies.

He curled his nose in disgust and leaned away from her. It wasn’t contagious, it was one of the symptoms of the new street drug—Verve—whipped up overnight by some entrepreneurial dealer knowing super freaks would need super drugs.

“Get me a bottled beer.” He didn’t want anything that came out of the tap poured into any glass he hadn’t washed first.

She didn’t move, but kept eyeing him. “What kind?” she finally said after a ten second stare down.

“Do I look like I care?”

Her lip pulled back and he could see the gums at the top starting to turn black. Teeth would fall out next. He curled his lip. “Just get me what I asked for!”

The drug was notorious for dulling the senses, she didn’t even jump. Just kept popping that damn gum until he felt he was gonna do something stupid, like grab her mouth and force her to swallow it.

Right before he acted on instinct, she turned back to the bar. He shrugged back into his seat and studied the crowd. No one looked up; everyone was lost in their drink and huffing drugs.

Even the bartender didn’t look around and he was a big dude. Easily six foot four with muscles that looked stacked one on top of the other and veins that popped. Bald, with one gold hoop in his right ear, yet as dominant as his presence was, even he knew to keep his head down and his mouth shut. The real monsters were everywhere, and sometimes where you least expected them.