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

by Azalea Ellis

  Behind me, the wall slid shut and a three-minute timer popped up. The seconds ticked away at a seemingly impossible speed, pushing a sense of urgency on me.

  I looked at the city map again, trying to figure out the smartest move. My brain spun, but could only come up with best guesses, because I didn’t have enough to go on. The seconds flashed away. I took a deep breath and ignored the timer. If I didn’t have enough information, that meant I needed to gather more.

  Instead of running away, I went to a nearby building with windows overlooking the starting point. It didn’t have any doors, and I supposed whatever pieces of the wall would have slid open for me were powered off. But it did have a broken window.

  I leaned my back against the wall and jabbed my elbow at the remaining chunks of glass, then crawled through the cleared opening.

  My eyes adjusted to the lack of moonlight quickly, and I saw something had caused part of the ceiling, otherwise known as the second floor, to collapse. I peeked up under the hole all the way through to the roof, and into the night sky. A huge chain with links I could fit my arm through hung down from somewhere above. I had the urge to tug on it, but resisted. The ground below the opening was cracked and crushed in a circular crater. Whatever caused that, I wanted to stay far away from.

  I climbed up the staircase and crouched in front of an intact window. The remaining Players below ran off as the last few seconds ticked away, and the doors of the starting building slid up, spilling out light and rat-men soldiers.

  Their silhouettes moved into the darkness silently, and stood with their heads tilted, noses twitching as they scented the air. A few bent to the ground and sniffed, then pointed in the same direction many of the Players had run. With a few whistling sounds among themselves, they scattered, following scent trails.

  I kept my eyes on the streets below and pulled up my map again, mentally marking the directions the rat-men had taken. “Hope they don’t smell me in here,” I breathed into the dark.

  A different silhouette against one of the silver moons drew my attention. Someone stood atop the building adjacent to mine. I squinted and focused, able to distinguish the features of the Spanish girl. I didn’t know her name yet, but I wanted her for my team.

  She crouched and sprang off the edge of the roof, toward my building. As she moved through the air, a sick feeling built in my chest. I pushed, much too slowly, away from the wall, toward the hole piercing the building.

  Sure enough, a muffled shout of surprise came through the hole, and then a few frantic scrabbles, like she had tried to grab onto something. She was falling, and I couldn’t move fast enough to catch her.

  My hand was outstretched, too far away from the tunnel of air piercing the building. As if I’d have been strong enough to catch her anyway. She plummeted through the air in front of me, her hand outstretched as well, as if reaching for me.

  Our eyes met for a second, the image of her splattered on the broken stone of the ground floor already in my head. It would happen because I was too weak to save her.

  Then she grabbed the huge metal chain with her outstretched hand.

  I reached the edge of the hole just in time to see her body slam hard into the crater below. But not hard enough to kill her, as she’d slowed her descent with the chain.

  Above, I heard a cracking sound, and a few pebbles fell past my head. I looked upward just in time to see the huge ball at the end of that chain roll through the hole in the roof, a perfect fit. It started to hurtle down through the opening that it had obviously created in the first place, blocking out the light from the sky. As it fell, the chain below piled up on top of itself like a messy soft-serve ice cream cone.

  “Move!” I screamed.

  She was just starting to look up at her impending doom, too late to save herself, when something smashed into her from the side like a kamikaze fighter jet.

  I jerked my head out of the tunnel, less than a second before the huge ball smashed down, loud and hard enough I felt it vibrate through the building. “Crap. Someone definitely heard that,” I said.

  I listened for movement below, wondering whether I should go down or not. Whatever had knocked the girl out of the way might be dangerous. And the rat-men would be coming back soon, too. Then I realized what I was doing and clenched my fists. Not again.

  I rushed back down the stairs, and saw that she and someone else were lying in a tangle of limbs a few feet away from the metal ball. I dropped hard to my knees on the dusty stone beside them. “Are you okay?”

  The other one, a boy, was panting hard.

  She was still, and I smelled blood.

  I patted her cheek. “Are you okay?”

  She groaned and her long, thick eyelashes fluttered open. Dark eyes stared at me blankly, and then she stiffened. She looked at the boy next to her and jerked back, flailing frantically in the effort to disentangle their limbs and get away.

  He groaned in pain as she pushed at his body, and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and dragged her away to protect him from her panicked blows.

  She clung to me in a vice-like grip, burying her face in my stomach.

  I hesitated for a moment, and then patted her head. “It’s okay. You’re fine.”

  She started to shake and let out strange noises, and I realized with discomfort that she might be crying. She’d seemed a much stronger type than that. Then she drew her head back, and I realized she was laughing. It wasn’t a beautiful laugh to match her looks, but it made me smile and want to laugh with her.

  “Nucking futts, I thought I was gonna die,” she said.

  “But you didn’t.” I looked to the boy lying on the ground and clutching his arm, dark curly hair that was slightly too long hanging into his face. “But we need to move. The rat-men are already on their way back. Both of you, come on.”

  She grew serious and stood up, but weaved dizzily on her feet, and I had to grab her arm to keep her from falling. She pursed her lips apologetically. “Hit my head. Ground keeps tilting under me.”

  The guy ground out between clenched teeth, “My arm’s broken, and my leg’s not feeling great, either. I’m bleeding pretty bad. You guys better move soon, cause they’re going to smell the blood.”

  The scent was everywhere, and I knew if I smelled it, the rat-men would too. “Crap. Okay, we can’t travel, but at the least we need to move a bit. Somewhere less visible.” I scanned the room and pointed to a corner blocked off by a half-wall only a few feet high. “There.”

  I threw the girl’s arm over my shoulder and walked her to the corner.

  As soon as she sat down, she struggled to rise again. “I don’t hide. I’ll fight ‘em if they come.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t want to waste time arguing. Plus, even with a possible concussion, she would likely prove herself more useful than me in a fight. “For now, just wait. They’re not here yet.”

  I went back for the boy, and knelt beside him. “Can you move? I’ll help. If we can just get you to the corner…” I trailed off, because I didn’t know if assurances that “things would be fine” might turn out empty.

  His left arm was badly broken. The bone punctured jaggedly through the skin of his forearm, and the wound had already pumped a puddle of blood onto the floor. He was squeezing just below the elbow with his other hand to strangle off the blood flow, but not doing a great job.

  “Shit.” The breath left my lungs in a whoosh.

  He was gritting his teeth and panting in pain, but still found the will to roll his eyes at me, as if to say, “No shit, Sherlock. I’m screwed.” What he said aloud was, “Just leave.”

  “No thanks, I’d rather stay.” I reached into one of the pockets of my pants, and pulled out a roll of medical gauze and unwound a long strip. I looped it around his bicep as tight as I could and rolled it into a tube that clung even tighter, helping to cut off the blood flow. Then I leaned over him and wrapped my arms around his torso. Being careful to avoid his arm, I helped him to his feet, and we hobbled to
the corner with the girl.

  I went to the nearest window and peeked out. Two rat-men were already slinking up to the building, their noses twitching as they whistled softly at each other.

  I felt warmth at my back, and then the girl whispered in my ear. “They coming?”

  I nodded. “If they come in, I’ll take the first, and you get the partner before it can call for help.” My whisper sounded barely louder than the rush of blood in my veins, but I knew she heard me.

  A rat-man’s ears twitched, and I prayed that it hadn’t heard me, too. But perhaps it hadn’t, because the two moved to the window I’d crawled through, their noses twitching furiously, and then one crawled through, headfirst and weasel-like.

  Or maybe they were just confident in their ability to take us in a fight.

  My claws slid out and my vision sharpened even more, and I held in a sigh of relief that my Skill hadn’t failed me.

  The girl’s eyes met mine for a moment as the rat-man stood up and its partner moved to follow it. We attacked at the same moment.

  I punched at the first soldier’s neck, hoping to stop him from calling out. My fist caught, but not firmly enough to cause real damage, and he jerked back and automatically swung a fist at me. He smiled, and I realized that perhaps they had known where we were.

  I moved back, but not fast enough, and he struck me on the shoulder. The pain made anger flow through me, instead of the fear I’d been expecting, and I moved back in to teach him a lesson. I jumped and kicked at his knees, and we went down.

  He was definitely a better fighter, and stronger than me, too.

  But I was big for a girl, and he didn’t have a Skill that gave him claws and made him want to rip me open for daring to oppose him. I did. I clawed and hit at his face and throat, and when he moved to protect his head, I went for the belly and groin.

  He let down his guard at the wrong moment, and I grabbed the front of his throat. The claws let my fingers get a better grip, and I sank them into the flesh, braced my other hand on his face for leverage, and ripped away. His throat opened up, and blood guzzled out onto the stone below as he jerked spasmodically.

  When the last bit of life was gone from his body, I stood up and looked for the girl.

  She was leaning against the wall, grinning at me. Her opponent laid motionless with his hind end hanging out the window and blood dripping from his forehead where she’d smashed his face into the windowsill. “Took you long enough.”

  I was panting, and the rush of triumph making my head tingle made it hard to concentrate. My claws slipped away with a tingle, and I looked back down to the body in front of me, and stumbled back. “Oh, god.” Unlike the monsters before, it was distinctly humanoid, long arms and legs splayed awkwardly in the puddle of dark, metallic-smelling blood.

  She shook her head and pushed off the wall. “So you’re one of the crazies, yeah? Pretty gruesome.”

  I shook my head, but what could I say to negate the thing I’d just done? The evidence was the mutilated carcass at my feet. “Not crazy. I just need practice controlling myself,” I muttered.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and cut her off with a sharp hand motion.

  Down the street, another rat-man stood still, looking suspiciously in our direction. The girl’s opponent still lay with his hind end hanging out the window. If it noticed… It was much too far away for us to keep it from sounding an alarm and calling more of them down on us.

  Then someone far away screamed. It turned its body toward the sound, and with one last backward glance toward us, it slunk off, long limbs sliding around the darkness of the street corner.

  We both let out silent sighs of relief, I jerked my head toward the boy, and we went back to him.

  She held out a fingerless-gloved hand to me over his body. “I’m Jacqueline Santiago. Call me Jacky.”

  I gripped it firmly. “Eve Redding.” The blood still on my hand clung to her as I pulled away. I looked down at the guy. “And you?”

  “Me what?”

  “Your name,” I urged.

  He scowled at me. “Adam.”

  I stared back at him, undeterred. “What were you doing? Why were you here, I mean?”

  “I was watching them. NIX. Gathering information.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Any information,” he said, and stared at me mulishly, obviously unwilling to continue talking.

  I understood his lack of trust. I also understood the import of his information gathering. “Knowledge is power,” I agreed. And I was in the process of accumulating power. Plus, I’d seen him tackle Jacky out of the way. Humans couldn’t move that fast, not without what I calculated must be a large number of Seeds. Meaning he had experience surviving the Game.

  I dug around in my pack and pulled out the makeshift emergency kit I’d brought. I ripped the top off a foil kit and sprinkled the blood-clotting powder within over the guy’s wound. Then I took my can of numbing spray and applied it generously over his entire forearm. “I’m not sure how well this will work on your arm, but any relief is probably good in your situation.”

  He relaxed by a few degrees, so I knew it must have been helping.

  I took an old skirt from the pack and ripped a strip from it. My claws came out with a second of concentration, and I used them to slice holes in the larger piece of fabric to wind the strip through. I held up the product of my efforts. “A sling. Hope it works okay.” I’d packed the skirt for just such a need, along with many other things I wished I’d had in my last Trial.

  He reached for it, and I brushed his hand out of the way. “I’ve got two hands free. I’ll do it.” As I leaned over and carefully slid the cloth around his broken arm, I noticed a stylistic, Celtic knot-like design snaking up and down his arms. I sat back on my heels and studied it. It was intricate and beautiful, delicate even. It ran from above his wrist to his bicep, the knot losing intricacy and finally disappearing as it rose. The inked skin was torn and scraped off around his wound.

  “Your tattoo. Is that going to be alright?”

  “I’ll just redo it when everything’s healed. It’ll be good as new.”

  I stopped studying it and looked up at him. “You do that yourself?”

  He was frowning at me. “Yes,” snapped. “Why are you doing this?”

  I didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “Because I want to. You saved Jacky. Thank you for that.”

  “You know her?” He winced as he used his good arm to adjust the sling and stood up on one leg.

  I shook my head. “No, not really. But I will. And I’ll know you, too.”

  He raised a derisive eyebrow.

  “I will. Don’t think I’m doing this just to be nice. You’ll owe me.” I stared hard at his eyes, refusing to be the first to look away. He needed to know I was serious in that.

  He looked down at his body. “Why did I do something so stupid? Basically guaranteed I’d lose the Trial.” He grumbled, and then looked back to me. “I’ll accept my debt to you, only after you get me out alive. If you can.”

  “I will.” I held out my hand.

  After a pause, he shook it with his uninjured one.

  “Do you have a weapon? Something to defend yourself with?”

  He pulled something small from his pocket, and a familiar butterfly knife glinted in the darkness, bright to my sensitive eyes. “I’ve got a few skills besides fighting, too. If the situation demands, I’ll show you something impressive.”

  I couldn’t help a wolf-like grin stretching across my face.

  Chapter 13

  I am your worst nightmare. And your wildest dream.

  — Sonya Chloe

  "Share Map Display," I said. The three-dimensional model of our Trial arena popped up in front of me, and Adam and Jacky’s eyes focused on it as well. Sharing my displays was a little trick China had taught me.

  "Okay, this is us." I pointed to the blue arrow in the center, in the cen
ter of a rectangular building. "We'll be going here." I pointed to a blinking yellow dot on the top of a building only a few streets removed from our location.

  "Why?" Adam frowned. "That's not the closest one, and it's all the way on the roof."

  "We need to stay down-wind of the rat-men as much as possible. Most of them went this way." I pointed in the direction I thought was east. "We want to keep them between us and the wind. As for the ones that went the other way, we'll just have to deal with them."

  Jacky licked her finger and raised it to the air to catch the direction of the breeze that filtered through the broken windows of the building. "Why don't we just roof-jump? It'll be faster than goin’ through the streets."

  I mentally mapped the route we'd take for both options, and nodded slowly. "Yes. That's a good idea. We'd leave no scent trail on the ground, so finding us might be a bit more difficult. And the faster we can get out of here, the better our chance of survival." I looked to Adam. "Could you make a jump like that with your arm?"

  He took a beanie from his pocket and shoved it onto his head with his good hand, flattening his hair in the process. "I'll have to, won't I?"

  I hoped he could keep to that statement when the time to act came. "Okay. Let's go."

  We moved up the stairs, Jacky taking the lead, seemingly to avoid Adam, and me staying beside him to make sure he could keep up despite his injuries. Halfway up the third floor staircase, she raised her hand and we froze. I snuck up to her and saw what had caused her to stop us.

  A small plant-like creature with slowly wriggling limbs spread out across the steps above our head. One long stalk rose from its base, on top of which sat an eyeball like a snail's. "Concerned citizen?" I whispered.

  She stepped forward like flowing water in the darkness. Her feet made no sound on the ground, and her movement seemed to stir no air. I thought it was a Skill.

  The creature didn't have time to let out more than a gasping squeak once it noticed her presence.

  Her hands shot out and wrapped around its neck, squeezing and twisting, while she ground her boot into its body. The eyestalk snapped off, and the stump squirted some sort of fluid that smelled sweetly of antifreeze. The limbs at the base stopped wriggling, and the whole body seemed to deflate onto the ground like a popped balloon.