Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (6 page)

My instinct was to turn and look, but I kept my head straight and continued moving. I wouldn’t be one of those stupid girls in the horror films who looks back to see her pursuer gaining on her, and then trips and falls. My breathing was loud, but even so I heard another one, following along to my right. They were pinning me in.
 

Then something tackled me, slamming into my right side. I tumbled to a stop with it on top of me, its small hand clamped over my mouth to prevent me from screaming. A voice hissed in my ear, “Be quiet! Do you want to lure more of them? We’ve only got a few seconds till it comes back. We’ve got to fight.”
 

I nodded, and the girl, by the sound of her voice, helped me to my feet.
 

“Do you have a weapon?”

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry, I don’t know what the hell is going on. What was that thing chasing me?”

“There’s no time for that.” There was a loud cracking sound, and then something hard pressed across my chest. “Here, take this.”

I closed my fingers around it, and realized she’d broken off an old branch to form a sort of staff.

“Is this your first Trial? Never mind. Of course it is. Damn,” she muttered. “It’s here!”

There was a shuffling sound. She stumbled against me, and grunted with effort. At the same time a meaty
thunk
came from in front of me. Something snarled, and then the shadows shifted again as the two struggled. Then a wet
snuk,
a low whine, and one of the shadows slunk off into the darkness, whimpering.
 

We waited a few moments in silence, and then she grabbed my hand. “Come on. We’ve got to get to the starting point. I’m Chanelle, by the way.”
 

“Eve,” I replied.
 

We moved quickly, but she pointed out things that might cause me to stumble, seemingly able to see in the darkness.

“I’m—what—” I stopped, gathered my thoughts. “What was that thing? Where are we?”

“That was a monster. They don’t have a name, or if they do, I don’t know it. And where we are is the big mystery. One of them, anyway.” She paused. “I think it’s not Earth. Or maybe it’s all in our heads. Super-vivid, shared hallucinations caused by whatever they put in us.”

“The Virtual Reality chips? So all this is just a game?” I felt air easing out of my lungs, along with tension.
 

“It’s not a game!” she snapped. “Believe me, this is as real as anything you’ll ever experience. You get hurt here, you’re hurt in real life. You die here…”

I didn’t ask her to complete her sentence. It was obvious. “What happens in the Trials?”

“The Trials are always different. They test different things, play to different strengths. Most of them have some physical aspect, though.” She paused to jump over the eight-foot-high trunk of a fallen tree. “If you’re breathing that heavy already, you’re in trouble.”
 

I felt a bit self-conscious, but there was nothing I could do to disguise my panting. “Exercise. Got it. How do you know what the Trial will be testing?”

“You know when you’re told how to get through it—what the objective is. Or if there’s no Examiner, then it’s usually a mental-type, and you have to work out how to survive all on your own.”

Another scream carried clearly through the strange-scented night air, changing from piercing and clear to gurgling, and then strangling out into silence.
 

“Monster?” I said.
 

“Yes. Let’s be quiet now. Sound draws them.”

A few minutes later, the gargantuan trees opened up to a small clearing, and the unobscured moonlight seemed bright enough to read by. Other people were standing about, obviously waiting.
 

“Other Players,” I murmured. There must have been fifteen of them. “So many!”

“This is only a few of us. There are other Trials going on simultaneously right now.”
 

I looked down and saw the source of my helper’s voice was a small blonde girl. She scanned the group of Players with a frown and bit her lip, hard.
 

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head. “My sister’s not here.”

Even as we entered the clearing, others came from the trees and joined together in the middle. I walked slowly forward, watching. “Maybe she just hasn’t arrived yet.”
 

“Maybe.” But she didn’t sound reassured.
 

Some of the Players seemed confused, disoriented, and frightened like me. Others’ moods seemed to vary from watchful preparation to absolute terror. I wondered what they knew that I didn’t. One extraordinarily gorgeous latte-colored girl seemed to be warming up. She must have spent a lot of Seeds on Beauty, because I’d never seen a more alluring face.
 

In the center of the clearing, a black cube hung in mid-air. A message was written, the same on every side.
 

HERE YOU WILL BE TRIED, YOUR MEASURE TAKEN. THE WORTHY WILL BE GRANTED THE POWER OF THE GODS.

“What does it mean?” I asked Chanelle.
 

She shook her head, looking distracted. “I don’t know. It’s part of the Game. You get Seeds after the Trial’s over if you ‘perform’ well.”

“How—” I started to ask, but a screaming voice cut me off.
 

“People, it’s a trap! It’s a lie!” A boy stood at the edge of the forest, waving urgently at us. “If you stay there and enter the Trial, you’re all going to die. Please, believe me. I’ve done this before. It’s a death trap—” his voice cracked out, either from the stress of screaming, or the force of his memories.
 

People inside the clearing murmured to each other, some unsure, some shaking their heads at him.
 

Chanelle gripped my arm. “Don’t even think about it. Remember the penalty for not completing the quest? At least we have a chance of living if we can win the Trial. If we leave, we’re dead for sure.”

The beautiful girl heard her words and cracked her neck back and forth. “He’s obviously a newbie.” She had an accent. Spanish? “Watch what happens to him.”
 

“Please, believe me. At least out here we have chance. We can help each other survive,” he called.
 

Across the clearing, a girl let out a whimper and raced toward him.
 

He took her hand and squeezed it, then yelled to the rest of us again. “Run away before it’s too late. We can—”

His voice cut off again as the fifteen-minute timer reached zero and winked out of existence in front of all our eyes.
 

I drew a deep breath to calm myself. All this terror was really getting to me.
 

Clutching the girl’s hand, he took a step backward toward the blackness of the forest.
 

But then the tree above him moved, its whole form writhing. Something sprinkled down onto the two of them. At first I thought it was just fallen leaves, but the two started frantically brushing at their bare skin.
 

Their movements grew more and more frenzied, and then the girl started to scream, and ran back toward us. He followed, stumbling. “No, no, no, please, no,” the words scratched out of him.
 

As they got closer, I saw that whatever the tree had dropped onto them was sticking. I frowned and pushed forward through to the edge of the group of Players.
 

The boy stumbled first, and then the girl. “I take it back. I’ll do the Trial! Please,
forgive
me!” she wailed, clawing her way forward.
 

“Oh, damn,” I said aloud as I saw what was happening to them.
 

The things that had fallen onto exposed areas were burying themselves within the skin, growing, pulling at the flesh. As I watched, a tendril sprouted from the boy’s cheek, and a leaf grew from it, so rapidly it was like watching one of those time-lapse videos of the life of a plant over weeks. From seed to thriving adult, they only took a few minutes.
 

These were using the boy and girl as fuel. As the plants grew from them, unfolding beautifully, they sucked up the flesh beneath through their roots. The pair screamed, and kept screaming, wordless.
 

The girl looked like a corpse, skin thin enough that her bones were almost visible through it. Her voice trickled away into silence. An eyeball burst as a tendril forced its way outward, then shriveled as it was sucked up. But she didn’t move, and her expression of terror didn’t change, because she was dead.
 

I took an involuntary step backward, only able to watch as the two of them were consumed. The plants grew thicker and higher. The only sounds now were that of branches creaking and snapping, their leaves rustling as they reached for the sky, and the Players’ flesh and bones squelching and crumbling.
 

Finally, two trees stood in the place where the pair had fallen. The bases of the trunks were a vague memory of the shapes of their tortured bodies, like surrealist sculptures. The trees were miniature versions of all the others in the forest, and still growing upward.
 

I choked on nothing, my throat spasming involuntarily. I thought I might throw up. “They failed the quest,” I murmured under my breath, but the sound was loud enough to carry in the absolute silence of the clearing.
 

“Oh, we’ve got a smart one here!” a mocking voice rang out from behind me. A man in a three-piece suit walked out of the trees. He was dressed immaculately, from his white, starched collar to his shiny black dress shoes. The only incongruous thing was the huge costume wolf head that he wore, which completely covered his own head.
 

The cube hanging in mid-air rose higher and grew bright, causing those standing next to it to jump. It lit up most of the clearing, a spotlight shining down and forming a distinct circle of brightness. The newly grown additions to the forest stood just outside the light.
 

He stopped and took out a gold pocket watch from his vest. “Seems like time’s up.” He looked us over. “And a few are missing?” He shook his huge wolf’s head back and forth. “Tch. Too bad. So sad.”

I moved back to Chanelle, who’d been my savior. She shook her head at me before I had a chance to open my mouth. “It’s over. The Trial’s started now. Focus on that,” she said.

I had a sudden realization. “Your sister…?” I murmured, clenching my trembling hands and trying hard not to think about what I’d just witnessed.
 

She shook her head. “China’s not here. Maybe she entered a different Trial,” she said, but looked grim.
 

I knew we were both thinking of those anonymous screams we’d heard from the forest. The image of a new tree growing in the darkness flashed in my mind, and I shuddered from deep in the pit of my stomach.
 

The suited man moved farther into the circle of light. He bounced on his toes, and I could swear the wolf’s head smiled just a bit, its felt tongue falling out of the side of its mouth. “There are consequences. You were all warned. This isn’t just some child’s game…” he trailed off with a giggle to himself. “Well, except it is, tonight.”
 

He clasped his hands formally behind his back, stood up even straighter, and announced, “This Trial will be a game of ‘What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?’ Has anyone played it before?” It seemed almost as if the costume head had moved a bit, the tongue adjusting itself to lie properly inside the mouth, instead of hanging lasciviously over the side.
 

No one said anything.

“Well, that’s fine. You’ll all get the hang of it quickly, I’m sure. I am Mr. Wolf, obviously.” He gestured to his head, and paused as if for laughter.
 

There was none.

He sighed, but continued. “I stand in the center of the playing field with my eyes closed. You all start around the edges, wherever you want. You will all ask me ‘What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?’ ” He called out the last part in a high-pitched, singsong voice. “And I will respond with, say…‘Three o’clock.’ You must all take three steps at that point, and then you ask me again. You may not take any more, or any less than the amount given. Repeat ad nauseam, until it’s ‘Dinner Time.’ ”

The lips of his wolf head stretched back from the teeth in a strange parody of a smile.

I swallowed. Rather than being ludicrous, it was terrifying. The teeth looked sharper and harder than stuffing-filled cloth possibly could, the eyes brighter, and the gums pinker. He snapped his fingers in the air.
 

From the forest, dark shadows moved forward, slinking up to Mr. Wolf’s heels. They looked a bit like feral dogs, except that their eyes and ears were bigger than any dog I’d ever seen, and they had teeth that curved out of their mouths like saber-tooth tigers.
 

“What the hell are those?” I whispered, afraid to draw attention to myself with noise.
 

“The same monsters that attacked us in the forest,” Chanelle whispered back.
 

“When ‘Dinner Time’ is called, my wolves will eat you,” he waved a pointed finger, encompassing our group, “who are dinner.
If
they can catch you before you get back past the safe line again, that is. If you can make it out of the light, you’ll be safe. So run fast, little bunnies.”
 

The gorgeous girl with the Spanish accent cracked her knuckles. “How do we win this game?”

He focused on her intently for a few, incredibly long seconds.
 

She didn’t seem fazed by the psychological pressure at all, as I knew I would have been. Instead, she took the time to crack her neck again and roll her shoulders backward in a circular motion.
 

“The game is won either by surviving for twenty rounds, or if one of the prey is able to touch me before I call ‘Dinner Time.’ Everyone who makes it to the end will be rewarded with Seeds, according to their performance, as always.”

“Got it.” She nodded. “But…I’m not the prey here. I’m the predator.” She licked her chops exaggeratedly and grinned.