Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (7 page)

Mr. Wolf threw back his head and laughed. His eyes shone wetly when he looked at us again. “Let the Trial begin.”

Chanelle gripped my hand and pulled me out of the circle.
 

I stumbled, my legs feeling weak. Outside of the light’s edge, I couldn’t help but look at the fresh twin trees.
 

She let out a sigh, gripped my face, and pulled, forcing me to bend over and look her straight in the eye. “Things are about to get dangerous, okay? You need to pull it together. Focus. From now on, concentrate on staying alive. Don’t think about what happened to those other people. There’s no room for that.”
 

I stared into her big blue eyes and tried to stop trembling.
 

She gripped my face tighter. “Do you want to live, newbie?”

I swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”

“Then stop thinking about those two. Forget them. The Trial and surviving it are the most important things in the world to you right now. Got it?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

She let go of my face and stepped back, turning to face the light. “Does there need to be a reason? That’s not important.”

Mr. Wolf placed himself in the center of the circle, his hands covering his eyes. “Let the Trial begin. Loudly, now, and all of you together.”
 

“What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?” we chorused.
 

“Twelve o’clock, little bunnies!”

We stepped forward twelve times, moving from the outside of the circle inward. This repeated with different “times,” until a few Players drew dangerously close to Mr. Wolf and his saber tooth dogs.
 

It would be the next round, I knew. And it was.
 

“Dinner Time!” he sang, uncovering his eyes as he turned around to look at the majority of us, who’d walked toward him from behind.

His stuffed animal head was no longer stuffed. It was a grotesque, huge wolf’s head, alive atop his human body. His too-large eyes moved, taking in our positions relative to him, and the dogs sprang forward. His nostrils flared, and saliva swung from his hanging tongue, falling toward the tip of his polished shoe.
 

Seeing it hit snapped me out of my trance, and I turned around to sprint back to the safe line. Someone screamed. I didn’t turn my head to look back, didn’t wonder about the safety of my fellow Players, and didn’t think about my own already aching legs. I just ran.
 

Ahead of me, a guy stuck out his foot to trip another, and the second guy went down hard. I jumped over him, and kept running.
 

I passed the line by quite a bit because of my momentum, and turned around to make sure I was safe. Others stampeded toward and past me, obscuring my view of Mr. Wolf for a moment. When the small field had cleared of terrified people, I saw him standing still in the middle of it.
 

Two of the dog-things had caught someone, and one was the boy who’d been tripped. The monster’s jaw was clenched around his upper arm, long curving teeth piercing into the flesh. Blood mixed with saliva ran down, soaking the boy’s blue T-shirt. His face was white and contorted with pain and fear.
 

Someone laughed beside me. It was the one who tripped him. Our eyes met, and he gave me a small shrug and a smile. “Less survivors mean more Seeds.”
 

The fallen boy reached out a pleading hand to all of us watching safely from behind the line, and then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he started to convulse. He looked like he was having a seizure, and foam dripped down his chin. The other downed Player started to flail, too. The dog-monsters retreated back to Mr. Wolf’s side, and soon the bodies lay still.
 

Not saber-tooth tiger teeth, then. More like cobra fangs. Poisonous.
 

People screamed and cried on the edge of the light.
 

But then the boy in the blue T-shirt twitched. Silence crashed down as we watched him.
 

He moved bit by bit, jerky, like a battery-powered doll running on the last bit of its juice. He stood up, but his stance was strange, alien. Limp arms hung down past slightly bent knees, and his head lolled to the side. His eyes were vacant, and he turned his back on us to join Mr. Wolf in the center of the light.
 

Mr. Wolf giggled. “Oh. Bitten Players become wolves. I may have forgotten to mention that.”

Chapter 6

What reinforcement we may gain from Hope. If not, what resolution from despair.
 

— John Milton

The next round, we all inched forward, moving our feet only enough to count as taking a step, and no more. When “Dinner Time” was called, the two bitten Players turned and chased after us, just like the monsters. The boy’s mouth was stretched in a wide grin, and slobber ran down his chin and neck.
 

I turned after reaching safety and watched a thin guy run desperately from the strangely loping former Player. He…
it
reached out a hand and grazed the back of the guy’s shirt. Terrified, the guy took a dangerous chance, trying to feint away. He stopped abruptly and turned to run at a different angle, but he wasn’t counting on a dog-monster being there. The creature vaulted at him, and his neck was caught between its massive, wide-open jaws, his head disappearing inside the mouth.
 

Blood gushed out between the teeth.
 

My knees were shaking. I took deep breaths and looked away from the gruesome scene. I wanted to deny that this was real, just pretend it was all a horrible dream that I would wake from soon. But I couldn’t do that, because I knew the fear was the only thing keeping me going. Without the slight edge that it gave me, boosting my slow, ungainly movements with adrenaline, I would die here tonight.
 

I knew that, and so I didn’t pretend that it wasn’t real. I looked away, swallowed, and tried to steady my shaking legs.
 

Chanelle caught my eye, and gave me a silent nod of approval.
 

We started forward again. The speed was glacial, each of us doing our best to move forward less than the others.
 

I panted for breath, my muscles burning and trembling, and I felt so grateful to Bunny for enticing me to exercise. He must have known I would need the strength I was using now. He knew, I realized. He knew about this.

Chanelle crept beside me on one side, the beautiful Spanish girl on the other.
 

I felt incrementally safer between them, and found myself watching Chanelle’s white runners dragging through a puddle of dark blood half-soaked into the ground where the last Player had fallen. Her pretty white shoes were ruined.
 

I realized my mind was trying to play tricks on me—to disconnect from the horror. I grabbed the pad of my left hand between my forefinger and thumb and pinched as hard as I could. Pain brought some clarity to my mind, and I focused on it, trying to get a grip.
 

When “Dinner Time” was called, we all turned to run. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Spanish girl slip in that same puddle of blood covering the ground. But I didn’t stop. How could I stop?

When I reached the safe line and looked back, she was pinned to the ground by the blue T-shirt “wolf.” He snarled down at her, drool dripping onto her cheek.
 

The fingers of her left hand were wrapped around his neck, holding him off. She formed the other into a fist and slammed it into his ear. Once, twice, three times.
 

He fell sideways off her, eyes unfocused for a second. He shook his head and rallied, but she’d already scrambled to her feet.
 

She pulled back her right fist and slammed it down into the back of his head, propelling it with the force of her entire body.

His face smashed flat into the ground. He twitched, and she pulled back and punched once more. He didn’t move that time, but she kicked him in the side before racing back to the safe line, weaving to avoid the remaining monsters and bitten Players.
 

I watched her in awe. What kind of strength was that?

By the start of the next round, we were down to almost half of our original numbers, while Mr. Wolf’s had grown again.
 

Everyone’s tension inched toward the breaking point as we got closer and closer to Mr. Wolf. A girl tried to bolt back to the safety line early, but vines burst from the earth, tripped her, and held her down. She screamed and struggled, but was trapped. When Mr. Wolf sang out “Dinner Time!” all the attackers ignored her, leaving the easy pickings for last.
 

Only a few seconds from the safety line, a turned Player lunged for a boy running close to Chanelle. The boy swerved and spun to avoid it, smashing his elbow hard into her temple.
 

She went down.
 

I stumbled the last few meters across the line and looked back, gasping.
 

She knelt on her hands and knees, blood dripping down the side of her head. Beside her, the boy who’d elbowed her was being bitten.
 

“Run!” I screamed at her.

She crept forward a few inches and tried to stand, but couldn’t get her feet solidly under her, and fell forward again.
 

The turned Player released its catch and turned to her.
 

I took a step into the light, but she snarled at me, “Get back!” Her voice was slurred, groggy.
 

It grabbed her head between two hands and bit into the curve where her neck met her shoulder. It ripped its head back viciously, and a bite-sized chunk of flesh went with it.
 

She flopped awkwardly in its grip, like a fish stranded on the shore, and let out a choked scream.
 

“No!” I shouted.
 

“My sister…China. Find her. Thirteen hundred Brine Street. Tell her…to live!” She squeezed the words out, rapid-fire.
 

It bit into her neck again, this time digging its teeth in and shaking its head like a dog with a toy.
 

She ignored it, keeping her eyes locked on mine.
 

I nodded, and her eyes rolled back into her head, and she started to thrash around.
 

I pinched the inside of my thumb pad, hard. Once again, the pain allowed me to focus. But not enough, so I bit my bottom lip, until the iron taste of blood blossomed on the tip of my tongue and spread throughout my mouth.
 

* * *

Mr. Wolf, drool running down the collar of his once immaculate suit, looked at the number of new “wolves,” and laughed.
 

Our numbers were severely depleted, and the danger of each round grew exponentially greater.
 

I looked at his grotesque, laughing head, and I hated him. I hated him, and I was absolutely terrified. I shuffled forward as the next round started and thought of the Seeds I’d wasted. What good was Beauty to me now, when my life was on the line?

Each round seemed to be taking longer and longer, as if Mr. Wolf was trying to get us as close to him as possible before calling Dinner Time, and because we were moving so slowly, it was a tedious affair of constant, mind-eroding tension. But Mr. Wolf never called for any time greater than ten o’clock.
 

When he finally turned and called “Dinner Time!” I pivoted toward the starting line as quickly as I could. As my head swung around, I met Chanelle’s eyes for a second, as if in slow motion. Then I broke the connection, running away.
 

Behind me, I heard light footsteps and bubbling gasps, as if someone were breathing through a layer of water.
 

My heart beat so fast it felt like it might literally burst out of my chest. I’d never understood those words before, but now I could feel it, expanding large and squeezing hard with each hummingbird-fast pump. My legs felt like fat, heavy logs, and wouldn’t move as I wanted. They were slow, too slow, much too slow compared to the light footsteps behind me, gaining on me.
 

As I approached the safe line, I started to let out great, gasping sobs. I was almost there when something grabbed the back of my knees. I went down hard, smashing into the ground and sliding just a bit.
 

I flipped over onto my back, scrambling to see who’d tackled me.
 

The-thing-that-had-once-been-Chanelle was on its knees, grabbing desperately onto my legs. Her jaw hung open halfway, and so much saliva bubbled up in her mouth that her breathing rattled with the fluid she’d inhaled. Her eyes locked on mine. There was no compassion, no recognition, only hunger.
 

I pulled back a knee without even thinking and slammed my foot into her face, hard enough that her small hands lost their grip on my legs. I scrambled backward like a crab, clumsily, as my arms slipped and collapsed.
 

She came for me, and I kicked her again and again, keeping her off until I somehow made it over the safe line.
 

We sat on either side of that division between light and darkness, and her eyes met mine again.
 

She seemed to strain forward, but was held back by some invisible force. Those blue eyes held nothing but hunger. No anger, no humanity.
 

Then they lost even the hunger and her interest in her escaped prey seemed to slip away. She limply rose to her feet and turned to walk back toward Mr. Wolf.
 

On the field, two other people were convulsing in their own blood.
 

My arms collapsed from the weight of my upper body, and I rolled into a ball with my eyes facing the ground and my torso bent over my knees.
 

It was too much. I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t do this again. That’s what I thought, but somehow I was on my feet again when the next round started.
 

Mr. Wolf called out “twelve o’clock” for the first time since the beginning of his sick game. I took my twelve shuffling steps forward. How many rounds had it been? Not close enough to twenty. I didn’t think I could make it till the end. But I would keep trying until I could move no more, or I got turned into a “wolf.”