Free Slayde, Book 2 (Chaos Time Serial) by Marie Hall Page A

God sleep couldn’t come soon enough. His immortality came with a price. The reaper always got his due.
    He sighed, the sound echoed distant and loud in his glass chamber. The barren landscape he’d claimed as his prize spread out as far as his eye could see. The sky was a sickly shade of pale taupe, the red sun a large circle, garish in color compared to the muted shades of death. The land was charred, trees barely more than skeletal structures pointed gnarled brittle fingers towards the heavens. A strong breeze would snap what few yellowed leaves remained. The only animals to survive the final nuclear holocaust of war were reptiles and cockroaches. And soon they’d eat each other and die out. There’d be nothing left.
    This was his prize. What he’d fought over two centuries for. They’d killed the land. The people. The animals. There was nothing of value left. The earth was angry, splitting open from fissures deep in the ground full of molten lava. He snorted, touching the thick pane of glass. It was a hollow victory.
    The prize didn’t live up to the dream. In retrospect it was accomplishing his goal, the middle of his journey, that he’d truly enjoyed most.
    Had he played God? She’d accused him of that right before he’d shoved the sword through her belly, spilling out her intestines. Her dove gray eyes liquid with pain as she’d found strength from deep within to whisper one last word of hate in his ear. He’d held her, cried over her. He’d loved her. All his life he’d been fascinated by the thought of creating a race of people both man and beast. He’d worked a serum that had almost accomplished it, but with a few imperfections.
    Sometimes a man who could only speak as a beast. Other times there was a beast, with the pitiful strength of a man. And for some, the man and beast could not co-exist at all, and all that remained was madness.
    When the magic had imbued the land and people there’d been a few ‘natural’ hybrids, but none as perfect as his little bird. His ideal of a perfect hybrid was one who could switch from human to animal, keeping the intellect and strength intact through each transition. If he’d been able to create such a one, she’d have been it.
    His vision. His greatest feat. But she wasn’t his creation, and he envied that. Loved it. Maybe even resented it a little. But he’d learned different ways to harness her powers to suit his needs. In the end, he’d made her his.
    He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the cool pane, remembering her touch. Her hands sliding up his thighs, down his back. Her chaos, her fierceness, her desperation to escape in the end—his pulse quickened—he thought, maybe... he missed it.
    Was it possible? There was an ache, an emptiness inside him. For so long he’d been so driven, with one purpose, one goal in mind, but now that he had it, he no longer knew what to do with it. There was no one to enjoy it with. His amry feared him, his monster had lost its mind, no longer recognizing its maker. He was alone, in a palace made of glass. Alone with his thoughts. His paranoia. His secret fear that maybe he’d been wrong.
    Maybe...
    Maybe...
    If he had to do it over again, would he? Would he kill her? Them? Was it possible that he was now realizing the error of his ways? Could a leopard change its spots?
    “Sir!” A deep-throated voice, rumbling with the heavy strains of human and beast, snapped him from his melancholy.
    Dragden turned on his heel.
    The sentry entered on soft leather shoes that strapped up the thick muscles of his calves. His short tunic was a chaotic hue of colors, deep purples and rusty reds, burnished gold and deepest azure. The land did not sing with life, so their clothes must. From the neck down he was a virile man of twenty some odd years. But the words did not fall from the lips of a man. They came from between the heavy folds of a shaggy bull’s mouth. Large rounded tusks pierced through the top of his head.