Sable Book 1 of Chaos Time (Chaos Time Series) (6 page)

“You’re lying.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not.”

Her lips clamped shut and she wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Look at me, Sable.”

She refused and suddenly he knew the fight had left her.

Hunter gripped her shoulders and shook her hard. Her head whipped back and forth and all she could do was moan no over and over. It was exhaustion, he knew it. Her skin was sallow, eyes sunken. Brave words and nothing more. She needed sleep. Food too. She'd told him before how the shift would drain her energy the first few times so that it was like she was one of the walking dead. In firm control of his emotions once again, he drew her tight into his arms.

Her knees buckled, and right before she fell he hefted her up. This talk would have to wait, if he didn't find her shelter soon, Sable would die and without her, none of this mattered.

Chapter 6: The hole in the ground

She groaned as the dreams continued to bombard her into the waking. Sable rolled over onto her stomach, her bruised body cushioned on something soft. It smelled clean and when she inhaled she was surrounded in lavender. She grabbed her head that felt like it was trying to split in two, blinking open eyes swollen and full of grit.

She was in a small room. And it was warm. A thick blanket lay at her feet. The room wasn’t much to look at, but she didn't care. It felt like heaven to be on this bed. Gradually she became aware of other smells—buttery bread, tangy cheese and grilled meat.

A silver tray lay on the ground, she yanked the lid off and without taking the time to appreciate any of it or even sit up, began wolfing it down.

"There's some juice on the night stand."

She hadn't noticed Hunter sitting on the chair. He had one leg kicked out in front of him as he sat slouched with his chin on his fist, staring at her.

She narrowed her eyes, feeling a primal urge to hiss at him and protect her food. But instead she snatched up the plastic bottle of O.J. and gulped it down without taking a breath.

She couldn’t honestly say she’d tasted a thing, but it was a glorious feeling to be so full. Burping, she wiped the back of her mouth. "Still here I see? Was beginning to think I'd imagined you."

His brows lifted. "Nope, not your imagination."

"So you really busted me out of there then?"

"Yup."

"Take me back." Why was she asking him that? At this point she was pretty sure she had no intention of ever living there again. It started to dawn on her maybe she really was the pain in the ass people had accused her of being.

He shook his head. His hair was wet and slightly curled in the back. He wore a teal and orange tee and dark jeans with scuffed knees. Suddenly she felt dirty and ashamed that he was seeing her look and act like an animal.

“We’re not really back to this are we?” he asked, voice tired and she would
not
feel sympathy for someone she barely knew. Especially someone who’d freaking stabbed her through the heart.

Sable sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Take me back." She was a hundred percent certain she wasn’t going back to stay. She just wanted to get away from him, from the confusing things she felt around him.

"Not possible."

She shot to her feet, ignoring the many aches that assaulted her. "Now. You don't get a choice in the matter."

"Sable—"

"No. I'm powerful, I might not look it, but I have ways to make sure you never come back. So if you thought to hide me away and have your nasty way with me—"

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sat up. "Let's try this again. It's gone. Sank. Sunk. Poof."

She set her jaw. "What are you talking about? Take me back, now!"

"Fine. You want to go back. Come with me." He stood, tall form unfurling like a looping predator. Between one blink and the next he stood so close she felt his heat like second skin. He yanked her by the collar.

She gagged and punched him.

"Do you want to see it or not?" he snarled.

Sable shook his hand off and cleared her throat. "Don't you ever grab me like that."

Hunter's lips thinned. "Fine. I won't. Now come." He moved his hand in an arcing motion and a ripple of blue opened up—a swirling vortex of colors and shifting patterns of light. Dizzy, she stared at his face. He wore a satisfied grin.

"C'mon." He pulled her through.

She yelped, but didn't have a choice other than to follow. The only way to describe it was free falling while simultaneously feeling like every atom in your body was being ripped apart by the unbelievable pressure. One second she felt stretched to the size of a mile long noodle, the next like she’d been squashed into a golf ball. And just as she thought she could take no more, they were stepping through.

She gagged, huffing and panting. Bent over and dry heaving, desperate to shake off the sensation of being whipped through space and time at dizzying speeds; slowly she felt her reality and sanity return. She cracked open an eye, shocked to discover she was still in one piece. She patted herself.

“You’re all there. No worries.” There was humor in his voice and she had to fight the overwhelming urge to punch him.

“I do not
ever
want to do that again.” She spit, her stomach still queasy.

“It gets easier. You’ll get used to it.”

“Ugh, yeah. Don’t think so.”

He grinned, the type of smile that said clearly:
you just wait and see.

She huffed and turned her back to him, walking away. But each step made her more and more confused because everything was familiar and yet nothing was the same. She stopped, turning in circles. The land, the flat grass she’d seen it all before. But there wasn’t a building. No chaos of bodies and charred remains from a supposedly large tremor.

There weren’t even any exposed beams or siding. A large, deep crevice where Fairfield should have been was the only thing that lent any sort of credibility to his story.

In fact, strange to say, but the place was oddly peaceful. A brook—gurgling and chirping with life—trickled merrily by a few yards off from where she stood. Jays and robins glided gracefully past.

It looked like someone had made anything man made...vanish.

“So do you believe now?” he asked from right behind her.

She turned on him. “What is this? Where have you brought me?”

He circled around her back, standing next to her and spread his arm. “This is Fairfield, about a week from when I took you.”

“Wait.” She held up her hand. That was impossible. Right? Right. Impossible But her mind was too messed up to really comprehend what she was seeing. Because, while it looked real, she’d cracked before. “Oh my god,” she breathed. “They gave me too much. I’m still strapped to that gurney. None of this is real.”

Her hands shook as primal liquid fear flooded her insides, made her knees weak. Disassociation, that’s what her doctor had called it. Squeezing her eyes shut she willed her mind to wake up, to stop this now.

“Sable,” Hunter growled, “you weren’t this obstinate before.”

“No!” She took two steps back. “You shut up. This isn’t real. And neither are you. I will not lose it.” She clenched her fists. She’d always feared this day would come. The day her mind would completely breakaway from reality. The day she really did go crazy. “Wake up, Sable. Wake up.”

“What do I have to do to convince you that I am who I say I am and this is really real?” And just as he finished saying it, she saw something in his eyes click into place. He bit his lip and she knew that whatever he’d just thought of, she wasn’t going to like it.

She squeezed her fists over her ears, drowning him out with her repetitious chant, “
wakeupwakeupwakeup
!”

Strong hands grabbed her, forcing her to look into a calm glacial stare. He wrapped her up and she was once again hurtling through time at a dizzying speed. The lights. The movement. It confused her mind. Scrambled her wiring and made her body forget to do its most basic thing. Breathe. Then they were out and she was hunched over and gagging, sucking in air like a woman starved.

It took two seconds to realize where they were at. The view from this side was strange and she couldn’t speak. For years all she’d ever dreamed about was this. It didn’t matter that rain pelted her face, that lightning struck dangerously close to where they stood, or that she could smell the sulfur reek of it in the air.

She was outside staring in.

Fairfield was a gray and morose structure standing boxy and imposing on the top of the hill before them. He stepped to the side of her. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

“What is this, Hunter?”

“If words fail to convince, then maybe seeing really is believing.”

She would have asked him to explain but then the ground rumbled. Her eyes grew and she jumped back. It was like someone had breathed life into the Earth. Deep fissures started to skate across dirt as the land separated from itself. Glass shattered and then the screaming started.

Hunter grabbed her, and she didn’t fight him. They were back in his tunnel, her hands clamped tight to his skull, desperate that he not let her go. When next she blinked they were back where they’d started, but things were completely different this time.

The rain hadn’t stopped, and Fairfield was a ruined heap. There were electrical sparks shooting up into the darkened sky. Exposed beams stuck out of the rubble like cracked ribs. There was not a moan, or a breath of sound.

He grabbed her hand, heading up the hill.

Balking and stuttering, she shook her head. “I… I… What did you do? I don’t want to go up there.”

Hunter yanked her hand harder. “You have to. Unless you look there will always be doubt.”

In the distance and very faint, she heard the first peal of a police siren. Help was on its way.

Walking in a daze, she watched as Hunter stepped over stones, his brows were set and he seemed focused on showing her something. This wasn’t real.

The stench in the air of metallic blood and the wafting odor of ozone had to be hallucinations. The moans and cries couldn’t be real. It just couldn’t.

She stared, disbelieving her surroundings. This had been her home, her prison for years. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Dust floated like volcanic ash, covering everything. She hacked as some of it flew up her nose, settled into her lungs.

Numbness spread through her limbs, her feet were moving, but it was almost like she couldn’t feel herself walking. She was floating, like a soul that’d just been tossed from its body. A ghost who didn’t yet know they were no longer alive.

But every time she coughed or sneezed, she knew she hadn’t died. Her senses were too sharp, too crisp for this to be imagined. She’d never be able to conjure up this type of carnage on her own.

To envision broken and mangled bodies strewn throughout the floors and lying like broken dolls atop heaps of rubble. It helped to think of them as the dolls they resembled because she recognized too many faces.

There was the black girl who’d shoved her from behind. Her body ripped in half, her face crushed beneath the weight of several cinder blocks.

An ache spread from her lungs, and up her throat. Because anywhere she looked she knew them.

The Latin nurse was behind beneath a table, a small body crushed in his arms.

She swallowed hard, damning the heat gathering at the corners of her eyes. None of them had been her friends, and yet… it still hurt.

“Look.” He stopped and pointed.

She squeezed her eyes shut, wanting to tune it all out. Sable had seen enough to last ten lifetimes, she didn’t need to see more. “No.”

“You wanted proof that I wasn’t lying,” he growled, “then look!”

He grabbed her chin and forced her face down. Her eyes fluttered open instinctively and she went still.

It was her nemesis, the fat bastard. His massive face was contorted, frozen permanently in death. The skin around his mouth was gray white, but the rest of him was a sick purplish red. It seemed like all the blood had pooled up to his chest and face from his lower half. It probably had. An entire section of wall had crushed him from the waist down. But the thing she noticed was that he hadn’t changed his shirt, the crimson bloom was still on his collar.

Why hadn’t he changed his shirt? She frowned, realizing that maybe this was what shock felt like, because who cared that he hadn’t changed his shirt. She scratched her jaw.

The sirens were growing louder; she knew they were coming up the hill now. Tires squealed as the cars parked. Chaos moved below. People were yelling, feet were running.

They were seconds from being caught. But she couldn’t move.

Hunter’s hand was gentle when he grasped hers and yanked her away as the first fireman turned the corner. She was spiraling through the tunnel again, but this time it was a much shorter trip. It made her sick, but there were no words left in her, when they stepped out they were on the sidewalk in town.

He led her into an electronics store. She didn’t fight him.

“This is the news report from the next day,” he leaned in and whispered as he led her to a small T.V. in the corner of the store.

“
Many lives were lost
,” the man’s voice was professional, cool, “
one of those being the daughter of the Senator, Marsha Ray
.”

A large picture of Sable flashed on the screen. She flinched. She had no idea when the picture had been taken, but she remembered the day like it had been yesterday. It was one of the few days in Fairfield she could think of fondly. There’d been an ice cream social. Her hair was shorter than it was now, and gathered in two pigtails at her side. She’d turned 12 and had pretended the party had been hers. She’d eaten three bowls of mint chocolate chip and gotten totally sick from it that night.

“
Sable Ray was 17 years old
,” the man with the Ken Barbie doll haircut said. The scene cut away to a picture of her mother standing on the state capital looking calm and composed as always. She held a white Kleenex to her nose.

There were more wrinkles around her eyes and mouth than Sable remembered, but she was as flawless and beautiful as ever. Her brown hair was swept back in a chignon and the startling gray of her eyes—so similar to her own—were wide and clear.