Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) by Azalea Ellis Page 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