Page 3 of The Tree of Spirits (Paragons #2)
BEYOND THIS POINT LIES MONSTERS
I kept picturing Marlow in the Black Market garage, laughing and joking with the happy kids who’d formed a ring around him. He tossed them the toys he’d brought back from the Wilderness. He was like a really young Santa Claus decked out in post-apocalyptic camouflage wear.
I pictured him bartering with Kylie…and flirting shamelessly with my mom.
Marlow was a good man. A decent man. And judging from the total freak-out his dog was having, he was in very big trouble.
Wolf led me to the edge of the Emporium. There, at the west end, a tall and intimidating fence separated us from the fallen Park district.
Beyond this point lies monsters , a helpful sign warned me.
“Those are cursed lands. Are you sure Marlow is out there?” I asked Wolf.
She barked. That sounded very much like a yes.
Great.
“That’s far enough!”
I smiled at the two guards who’d converged on my location to block access to the gate. They didn’t return the gesture.
“State your business here!” one of them demanded.
“Hello, there. I’m an Apprentice Knight.”
Their gazes dipped to the official Castle symbol printed on my black Apprentice t-shirt.
“My name’s Savannah Winters.”
No hint of recognition touched their eyes. So they hadn’t heard of me. Good. That meant the General hadn’t yet gotten around to warning every single soldier, guard, and Watcher in the Fortress about me.
“I’m here on an urgent Quest.”
“Access to the Park is restricted,” the guard growled. “This is a Cursed zone.”
“I know. But like I said, I’m on an urgent Quest.” I kept the confident smile planted on my face, like I had every right to be here. Like the General totally wouldn’t order them to arrest me if he knew what I was trying to do.
My act seemed to work. One of the guards made a hand signal to the other, then they both ducked back into the guardhouse.
A few moments later, the gates parted just wide enough for me and Wolf to squeeze through.
I yelped when they slammed shut again like a pair of metal shutters, moving so fast that I nearly became a Savannah sandwich.
The guards didn’t even pop their heads out of their house to check if I was still breathing.
Nice.
“Where to now?” I asked Wolf.
She barked.
Ran forward a few steps.
Turned around to make sure I was following.
Then took off running again.
I could barely keep up with her.
She led me over the river and through the woods. The Park was very different from the other districts I’d seen in the Fortress. It was wilder. More feral. A ceiling of impending doom hung over the area, pressing lower the deeper into the district we ventured.
It was quiet. So very quiet.
The path was dirty and uneven. What must have once—very recently—been a sea of gurgling mud, had since dried and hardened, settling into a rigid but brittle crust. As I ran, the ground crunched and cracked under my shoes.
A low, eerie moan cut through the silent day—and through my thoughts. The Cursed Ones. They were so very close. I could hear their heavy footsteps, snapping and slurping, like a meat hammer hitting a wet piece of flesh.
And then I saw them. The tattered clothes and shredded shoes.
The pale, ghostly skin, tattooed with black veins.
The behemoth bodies, staggering down the trail, every movement choppy and ungraceful.
They might have been really strong, but they were also really clumsy, like teenagers who’d suddenly grown too fast and didn’t know the boundaries of their own bodies anymore.
Then they just stopped, all at once. Their cold red eyes locked on to me. One of them snarled.
“You’re afraid of me, remember?” I said quietly.
One of them lifted its nose in the air and took a few short sniffs.
“I swear, I’m not tasty at all,” I said in a calm, level voice.
My heart, on the other hand, was thundering like a racehorse in my chest. I hoped they couldn’t hear it.
The other six Cursed Ones lifted their noses in the air and started to sniff too.
Beside me, Wolf whimpered.
“I’m totally not worth biting,” I told the Cursed Ones, not at all expecting my argument to persuade them.
But, somehow, it did. Or at least it seemed to. Because the next moment, all seven of them turned away from me and disappeared into the woods.
“Thank goodness,” I said with a sigh, sliding to a stop at the edge of the woods.
The wind let out a mighty howl.
I turned my gaze up to the sky. It was growing darker by the second.
“Let’s hurry,” I said to Wolf. “The storm is almost here.”
The wind howled again, louder, deeper. The forest started shaking. Something whistled in my ears, then a branch split off from its trunk. It whipped through the air like a javelin, just barely missing me.
The sky quaked.
The earth howled.
The wind sliced.
Another broken branch shot toward me.
And this one didn’t miss.
It whacked me hard in the stomach, like a baseball bat, throwing me off my feet. I smashed into a large tree, and the world went dark.
Sometime later, I woke up on the hard ground, my ears humming, my head throbbing. I must not have been out for long because everything was in the exact same place as before, right down to the gnarled branch that had whacked me like I was a pinata at a children’s birthday party.
I struggled to my feet, swaying to the side when a wave of dizziness smothered me. My hands slammed against the trunk of a nearby tree, but at least I remained standing.
The humming in my ears was replaced by something far more sinister. A beastly growl.
I scanned the surroundings for any signs of the Cursed Ones, but they were long gone. The source of the growling wasn’t a monster; it was a dog.
“Wolf!” I exclaimed as the husky bounded toward me.
She barked.
“Don’t worry. We’ll save Marlow.” I massaged my pulsing, pounding temples. “Lead the way.”
She brought me deeper into the forest, down a trail overgrown with branches and weeds and far, far too many spiderwebs.
And then I saw the blood. So much blood. Crimson drops dripped from the leaves. Bloody footprints stained the cracked ground.
There was so much of it that I didn’t even need Wolf’s guidance anymore. All I had to do was follow the trail of blood.