Slayde, Book 2 (Chaos Time Serial) by Marie Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

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