by Marie Hall
He grabbed the finger she was pointing into his chest and grinned. “Hungry? Why yes, yes I am.” He couldn’t help but smile when her lips twisted and he knew she was trying with all her might not to laugh.
“I was gonna say irreverent.”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “Hungry. Definitely hungry. And if Hunter doesn’t come back soon I’m going to stroll down in there, flash some red lightning out of my palms, make them worship me as their sun god, and demand some damn food!”
And speaking of the devil, a blue glow shimmered like a tear in time on the branch next to them. Out stepped their vaunted leader less than a minute later.
“’Bout damn time,” Slayde rumbled, standing up and shaking his tense thigh muscles loose.
“Slayde, shut up,” Sable snapped at him and then turned to Hunter and he really didn’t like that.
It was kind of cute how she stood up to him. Since he’d come into his power no one dared to, and he’d die before admitting that he actually kind of liked it, but he didn’t like her constantly running to Hunter’s defense. He glowered at the pretty boy, making no effort to hide his disgust.
“What’d you find out?” she asked.
Hunter glanced quickly to where Arianna was crouched, she had her back to them. Though it didn’t seem it, Slayde knew she was listening. Her rigid posture spoke volumes.
Hunter scrubbed a hand down his face, a light dusting of stubble shaded his jaw and the skin under his eyes was a deep purple. The man looked like death warmed over, which gave him a cheap thrill.
“I found the source…”
There was definitely a but in there. Sable must have sensed that too, because she only cocked her head and waited.
Rubbing the back of his neck, an exhausted look on his face, Slayde wondered just what Hunter had been doing in the three days he’d disappeared. “But there’s a catch.”
“There always is,” Slayde rumbled, rolling his eyes.
Hunter pinned him with a sharp glare, before returning back to Sable.
“There’s a Lord.”
Slayde narrowed his eyes because something was definitely not making sense. “What Lord? You never mentioned anything about that. I thought we were looking for the source?”
From the corner of his eye he saw Arianna turn, no longer trying to feign indifference.
Hunter shook his head. “Let’s eat first. Then talk.”
If he wasn’t so damn hungry, he might have argued the point. But his stomach was making the decisions for him right now.
Three large, roasted legs of some sort of red meat materialized an instant later in Hunter’s hands.
Still pissed, Slayde snatched the meaty something from. After the rift he’d developed a phobia of touching or eating anything he hadn’t seen handled himself, but after three days starvation, it wasn’t nearly as important. He sank his teeth into the animal haunch, ripping and sawing at it like a pack animal. Fatty juices coated his tongue and he groaned, thinking to himself that nothing had ever tasted quite as good. He was done in two point two seconds and belched; finally noticing the disgusted looks being thrown at him by all three.
Picking his teeth, he just shrugged. Let them stare, at least his food had been warm, theirs was growing colder by the second. Well the girls food anyway. Hunter wasn’t eating.
The girls picked at the meat like girls tend to do. But then with an audible sigh, Sable looked at him, picked up her meat, and ripped into it. He couldn’t help but grin. She may not want to admit it, but he was definitely rubbing off on that girl.
Good thing too, it’d worried him how little she’d eaten the past three days. She was too skinny. Slayde knew very little about her story. Well, any of them really, but none of the others made him nearly as curious as the bird. If he was honest, he liked her fire. Liked what he felt when he was around her, words he really had no name for. They didn’t know each other from Adam, but something about Sable drew him in.
It should bother him more than it did, he was a loner by nature. Always had been. He didn’t like people. Didn’t like pretending to even like them. It was just easier to be on his own and only deal with humans when he had to. People were stupid, and all of them had hidden agendas. Mean, nice, cruel, kind… everyone had an agenda. It didn’t matter, and at the end of the day he was tired of playing games. Slayde was who he was and often times it pissed everyone off, but he saw no sense in pretending. What was the point?
If a shrink could have analyzed him, she’d probably have said he was a product of the rift. Living in a world where to trust anyone would likely get you shanked for whatever meager positions you still owned, it was stupid to let others get too close.
But then again, she reminded him of a ghost from his past, and maybe that’s all this was. Why he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her, why he gave her the first fruits he’d pick, pretending he was full just so that she could take in some much needed calories.
Then again, maybe it was just a case of bad indigestion and he’d be over it by tomorrow. He snorted, shaking loose thoughts of birds, and too skinny girls who made him think of things he shouldn’t, and eyed Hunter because if he had to listen to his thoughts any longer he’d be tempted to slit his own wrists just to get it over with.
After what felt like an eternity, Hunter finally sat back against the tree and picked up where he’d left off. “The Lords are Dragden’s guardian for his sources.”
Sable peeked up from beneath her lashes, as if to make sure no one was looking before slowly licking each and every finger. Slayde pretended like he didn’t see. But he saw.
“In order to destroy the source, we’ll have to destroy the Lord first. They’ll guard it to the death.”
“So, what is it?” Slayde asked with a turn of his lips, he didn’t know why... but there was something about Hunter that pushed every one of his this-guys-a-douche-bag-button. It was hard to focus on what he was saying, because all he kept picturing was his fist connecting with Hunter’s nose.
“A volcanic hot spring.”
Slayde laughed. Loudly. Uncaring if anyone heard. “So kick a little dirt in it. This is what the great evil is after? What an idiot.”
Hunter’s hand shot out and grabbed Slayde’s collar. That anyone would dare to grab him that way, let alone the smarmy looking prepster engulfed Slayde in a rage of nuclear proportions. He let it fill him, mold him, and turn him into a weapon of mass destruction.
“Let go,” he said, all traces of humor gone. He gripped Hunter’s wrist, his fingers glowing a crimson red. The smell of burning flesh wafted under his nose. Hunter didn’t even bat a lash as his flesh sizzled like grease on a hot skillet.
“This isn’t a joke!” Hunter snarled, his face seeming to shift in and out of focus, like a haze had descended over him and was stretching and pulling his skin.
“Stop,” Arianna’s voice was a sharp reprimand as she laid her hand against the both of theirs. Something foreign and warm flooded Slayde’s senses like a rush of endorphins, easing his rage and ripping the hate from Hunter’s gaze.
“It isn’t a joke,” Hunter repeated again, but without the heat this time. “If there’s anything in this world you care about.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say no, but sharing that felt too personal. Especially with this dysfunctional group he was surrounded by. Arianna he noticed hadn’t removed her hand from Hunter’s, as if she was still giving him that nudge of whatever it was she’d laid on them.
“Even if all you care about is yourself and your stock pile of money, then you’ll fight with your last breath to end Dragden’s madness,” Hunter’s words took on a cajoling tone, not pleading, not exactly. It seemed the level of disdain he felt for their “great leader” was definitely reciprocated, but what he said made sense.
All Slayde had in this world, was his ability to work and make enough money to get out of the damn slums he now called home. Much as he didn’t fear the freaks, he also didn’t like being around them. He had
a plan, and he was going to stick to it, come hell or high water. He was getting out of there someday, because he knew when this was all over (when they were done playing hero) he’d have to go back, but he wasn’t doing it without a fail safe in place. And that was money. Lots of it.
A small hand gripped his shoulder and he glanced up to see a worried pair of smoky gray eyes staring up at him. He took a deep breath. And things inside, the angry frightened things he fought so hard to keep hidden wanted to surge to the front. Wanted to make themselves manifest… nostrils flaring, he shrugged out of Sable’s grip. All his life he’d only needed himself, he didn’t need her trying to calm him down, didn’t need Arianna pushing whatever the hell through his body… he didn’t need any of them.
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.
&
nbsp; 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.
