Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (37 page)

Jacky scowled at him. "You shoulda taken that hit. You woulda healed from it just fine."

He opened his mouth, but was cut off by Adam. "Bullshit, you didn't do it on purpose. How
convenient.
"
 

What was going on here? "Adam. Stop it. All of you." It was news to me that the creature had been aiming for Sam, but it made no difference to the situation.
 

Adam turned to me and opened his mouth angrily once more, but I cut him off before he could continue. "Sam wasn't at fault. We may not always agree, but he’s never done anything to make you distrust him so. If he didn't want to be here, be part of this team, or wanted harm to come to me, it wouldn’t be too hard for him. Look at him. He looks like he got drowned. If he wanted to hurt me, he wouldn't have jumped off the side of the tree tower to save me, risking his own life in the process. He wouldn't be here right
now
, and I wouldn't be alive."
 

Adam knelt beside me, but didn't touch me. "If not for him, you wouldn't have
needed
saving, or be hurt this bad in the first place."
 

My breath hitched as I struggled for air, and Sam turned his attention back to my chest as I spoke. "What if he hadn't been there to dodge, and the monster had actually aimed for me in the first place? I just got the accidental swipe. And except for an apparent fall out of my own backyard tree, I'm barely hurt at all."
 

Adam sputtered, his eyebrows raised. "Barely hurt? Have you seen yourself? You look like a zombie!" He was shouting again.
 

I chuckled. "Well, thanks. Tell me I look like shit. What a great way to make me feel better."
 

He gaped at me as if I was crazy.
 

I actually felt fine, if a little weak. I moved to sit up and prove it, and screaming pain erupted from every inch of my body with the force of a sonic boom. I blacked out again.

Chapter 25

She’s mad but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.

— Charles Bukowski

I woke up in Blaine's house, on the little bed in the closet attached to his lab. An IV bag dripped into a tube attached to my arm.

China leaned forward and smiled at me brightly. "You're awake!"

I frowned. "Guess I passed out again."

"Yeah. Sam healed you up as best he could, then we brought you here. We sent your mom and brother a message from your sheath saying you were staying the night at a friend's house. Hope that was okay?"

I raised an eyebrow at my mother's no doubt pleased excitement that I actually had friends to spend the night with. "Yeah. They're already a bit freaked out at my suddenly booming social life, but it'll be fine. It's not like they'd ever suspect the truth."
 

She giggled, a surprisingly young sound, and I was reminded again of how difficult it was to live life like this. And how much it had to have aged her, that I only heard sounds like that from her on the rarest occasion.
 

"What time is it?"

"It's late afternoon, Sunday."
 

"Whoa. I slept over eighteen hours?" I lifted my arms to push the covers back, and winced as the movement woke the angry wounds covering my body, especially my back.
 

She shot over and pressed my forearms back down into the bed. "No moving! Blaine gave you something to let you sleep. You shouldn't even be awake right now, but your body keeps adjusting to the dose and metabolizing the sedative faster and faster. I'll go get him, and we'll up the dose again."

"No, no. I don't want to sleep any more. There's a lot to be done."
 

"You are not to move from this bed," she commanded imperiously, drawing her small frame upright and towering over me with her hands on her hips. "Is that clear?"

I stared at her for a moment, and then leaned my head back into the pillow. "Okay, but could you at least get me my pack? I won't move from the bed, but my mind can still work, even if my body doesn't, right? I have a puzzle I need to solve."
 

She hesitated, but when I gave her a puppy dog look that was as pitiful as possible, she relented, and brought my ripped and blood-soaked pack to me.
 

After checking to make sure the dark red-brown egg was okay, I dug out the silver chains I'd gotten from the Oracle, and started to fiddle with the smallest one, the one with the fewest rings, as I'd done every chance I got since she'd given them to me.
 

There were eleven bent links in the chain, and I had the idea they were a puzzle that would hold together if I could just figure out exactly how they fit. I knew they must be important, but the way to bring out whatever hidden potential they had was still a mystery to me. It was quite frustrating. But, since when had I let a little thing like that stop me?
 

I slept again for a few hours that afternoon, and woke again at night.
 

Sam sat beside me this time, looking thoroughly exhausted. "Hey, how are you doing?" he said, smiling weakly.
 

"Peachy keen," I responded along with a sarcastic smile.
 

"Well, that's a lie," he chuckled. "But you're going to be okay. In fact, you got quite a few extra Seeds, so once you're mended and the ones you lost along with all that blood have replenished themselves, you'll be better than ever."

"Thanks."

He leaned forward as if he wanted to grab my hand, but settled for smoothing down the edge of my blanket, instead. "I hope you know, I didn't—I didn't let this happen to you on purpose. I would never do that. I mean, I was angry at you, and to be honest I still am. But it's really just anger at myself, because I let you convince me to kill that guy so I could save myself. I wouldn't ever try to take revenge, or anything—anything like that." By the end, he was whispering.
 

I slipped my hand out from beneath the cover and patted his own lightly. "I know, Sam. I didn't think you would. I know you better than you think, you know. We're not so different, in some ways."
 

He raised his eyebrows at that, but didn't respond, and after a few more awkward moments, left me for some work in the lab with Blaine. Apparently everyone was busy preparing to carry out my plan for NIX. At the door, he stopped. “I’m not brave, Eve. I told you before, I’m not the person you want at your back in a fight.” He left.
 

With no one there to stop me, I made my way out of bed by increments, and moved to a seat at one of the chemist tables. I'd been fiddling with the Oracle's puzzle for a few minutes before Blaine, Sam, and Adam, all working in intense silence, noticed my presence.
 

Adam tried to tell me to lie down again, but I waved him off. "I'm fine. I'm sitting down, and I'm not straining myself. There's no need to coddle me."
 

"You said something similar the last time we spoke, if I remember correctly. And then you tried to move and passed out," he said, deadpan.
 

I raised a challenging eyebrow at him. "Yes. That happened. But I'm staying right here, in this seat, and you're not going to stop me."

He returned my challenge with a glower, but bit back the words he obviously wanted to say, and returned to typing away furiously.
 

I took a measured breath so as not to stretch my back with the movement, and returned to messing with the puzzle chain.
 

Blaine noticed, and moved over to peer at it. "What is that?"

"I don't know. I got it in the Intelligence Trial. The Oracle said it would guide my path, and I think it's a puzzle, but I've got no freakin’ idea how to make it work. I need to figure it out, because all this not knowing is dangerous. I hate it."
 

He held out a hand. "May I?"

"Sure." I dropped it into his palm, and he took it to a microscope.
 

After a few minutes of silent inspection, during which he turned the links around and examined them from every angle, he sat back and returned the chain to me. "It's a puzzle ring. The bands join together around your finger, designed to come apart when you take it off. This one has minuscule grooves and protrusions, so unless you match all the bands to each other exactly, they won't join. It's quite complicated. Impressively so. You said you got that in the Trial?"

I nodded, speechless at his quick understanding of something I'd spent many futile hours on already. I bent my head to study the bands, trying to see the imperfections he’d spoken of in their surface.
 

"Interesting. I have some ideas about the place you go to when you're transported away..."

I jerked my head up as I remembered, and interrupted him. "I've got something else you might want to take a look at. It's in my pack. Will you get it from the closet?"
 

He brought the pack to me, laid it gently on the table, and opened it.
 

The egg lay inside, clearly visible, and as big as a cantaloupe.
 

“Good thing it didn’t break in the fall.” I almost shuddered at the thought.
 

Blaine removed it reverently, holding it cupped between both hands. “What is it?”

“It’s a tailos egg. The tailos are…big cats with wings. And I think they’re telepathic. Its mother gave me the egg to protect. It’s probably the last of its kind.”

He blinked, staring through thick glasses at the heavy, porous, blood-crusted orb. “You brought back an unhatched…Trial monster?”

“Umm, yeah?” Suddenly the idea seemed questionably dangerous.
 

“If I’d known you could bring them back, I’d have had you bring me more. I could be dissecting them right now!” He flicked it with a finger, leaning close to listen.

“Well, usually the monsters are quite…large. We can only bring back small things, things we can kind of wrap ourselves around. And besides, I don’t even know if they could survive in this world.”

He sat the egg down on the table and scurried away, then came back with a tube of gel, a stethoscope like device, and a series of small metal hammers.
 

“Whoa, you’re not going to try and crack it open. I promised the mother I’d protect it. If it’s still alive, being born prematurely could kill it.”
 

“Relax, I’m only going to do a sonogram.”

 
He spread the gel over a patch, and then placed the pad at the end of the stethoscope into the gel.
 

Some gel ran down into one of the pores, and a tiny but forceful puff of air from inside sprayed it away and onto the table.
 

My eyes met Blaine’s, and Sam and Adam joined us at the table as the air filled with a charge of excitement.
 

Blaine chose the smallest mallet, and tapped gently on the shell. His eyes widened, and I had to resist the urge to rip the stethoscope-thing’s tips from his ears when he said, “It moved. Something’s alive in there.”
 

“Let me,” I said. I put the tips in my own ears, and tapped gently on the shell. A sloshing wriggle came from inside, along with what might have been an irritated squeak.
 

My face stretched in a huge grin, and I reluctantly gave up the stethoscope to Adam and Sam.
 

Blaine was frowning into the pores, and scratching at the dried blood on the surface. “I wonder if it’s cold. Should we incubate it? What temperature, though, and for how long?”

I thought back to the tailos hatchery, and slid off my chair, making my way to Blaine’s supply closet while they were too focused to notice me. I grabbed a handful of scalpels, and made my way back. Then I took the stethoscope back from Blaine, put the tips in my ears, and ripped open the packaging of one of the stethoscopes.
 

“Whoa. Be careful there. I thought you didn’t want to hurt it,” he said. “Cutting it open isn’t any better than cracking it. And either way, a scalpel isn’t the tool for the job.”
 

I ignored him, lifted my left wrist above the egg, and cut a slice into the side, away from my veins, but deep enough so the blood flowed well.
 

Adam gasped, and then slapped the scalpel out of my hand while the others were still gaping at me.
 

He clamped a large hand around my bleeding wrist, and pulled it up to elevate the cut. “Get some blood-clotter and some bandages. Wait. Sam, just heal her.”

Sam moved to obey, but I pulled weakly at Adam’s restraints, and scowled. “Stop it, you two. The tailos eggs drink blood. I was just giving it some. Look.”

The blood that had made it down into the pores was being sucked up, and when it was gone, I heard more wriggling from inside, and a definite squeaky sound.
 

I pulled my arm away from Adam, and let more blood drip onto the egg.
 

It continued to suck up the liquid until Sam put his hand on my wrist and stopped the bleeding.
 

“You just lost a crazy amount of blood. Now is not the time to be slicing open a vein to feed some cat egg,” Adam said.

I laughed, and then realized that I did feel a little lightheaded. “Yeah. You’re right.” I nodded to Sam. “Thanks.”
 

Sam nodded, and the slice healed to a raw pink patch of skin before my eyes.
 

Blaine had watched the whole exchange in avid silence. “It drinks blood. And you said the adults are telepathic?”

“Yeah,” Sam responded. “They don’t use words, but it’s like they push sensory input and feeling right into your brain.”
 

“And they’re good. I mean, they’re pretty vicious, but they don’t attack any and all humans indiscriminately, and they have families and…a culture,” I added.

Blaine blinked owlishly. “You guys realize what this means, right? There’s a sentient, communicating race in these Trials. One that’s never been seen on Earth.”
 

“Well, at least not for a long time, right? What if…have you guys ever heard of a gryphon?” I said. “They’re not the same, but…what if there’s some sort of connection? And some of the places we’ve gone, it’s like an ancient city of ruins. I mean, what about that energy cartridge, Adam? There’s something…more, going on here. There’s something missing, something we don’t understand.”