Page 4 of The Tree of Spirits (Paragons #2)

IT'S WHAT HEROES DO

W olf trotted along beside me. Her dark ears drooped with melancholy. Her sharp eyes shone with determination.

“We’re going to find Marlow,” I told the dog. “We’re going to save him.”

She let out a gruff bark in response.

Caution compelled me to pause at the edge of the woods, and it was a good thing that I did. Something sinister lay past the hidden safety of the trees. It looked like a military base.

A sturdy fence formed a tight circle around the compound.

Another fence, larger and further out, surrounded the field just beyond the compound.

The grassy area in between the two fences was large enough for a few cows, but there weren’t any animals that I could see. It was empty, a kind of no man’s land.

What I did see were seven—no, make that eight—armed men inside the compound, all dressed entirely in black, their faces masked.

“They’re not Watchers,” I whispered to Wolf.

She gave her head an inquisitive tilt to the side.

“The uniforms are all wrong,” I explained. “They look cheaper, less bulletproof than the Watchers’ uniforms. And they’re missing the finer details.”

Wolf barked.

“Shhh,” I hissed at her. “We need to be stealthy.”

Her next bark was quieter, almost a whisper, so I guess she’d understood.

“Is Marlow in there?”

Wolf whispered another bark.

“And those people, those men in black, they took him?”

She whimpered.

“They hurt him?”

She growled.

“We’re going to get him out of there,” I promised her.

Wolf’s ears perked up. She took a step forward.

“Wait.” I cut her off before she left the cover of the woods. “Not like that. It’s not safe. Those men aren’t the only ones guarding the gate.”

My eyes had just caught a flicker of movement. Large, lumbering bodies were bumbling around, trapped inside the no man’s land between the two fences. The first two had just come into view. My gaze traced the black, tattoo-like veins on their pale skin. Their beast-like bodies. Their blood-red eyes.

“Cursed Ones.” I released the breath I’d been holding. “But what are they doing?”

“Guarding the compound.”

I pivoted around at the sound of Conner’s voice. He was wearing the same dragon scale invisibility suit as yesterday, when he’d visited me in my cottage in the Apprentice Village. But he wasn’t invisible right now.

He looked me right in the eye and, smirking, declared, “I should have known you couldn’t bear to stay away from me.”

I rolled my eyes at him.

“Ok, Red,” he said, using his favorite nickname for me. “How did you find me?”

“I didn’t. Wolf led me here.” I petted the top of her head.

“Wolf?” Conner’s sapphire eyes met the dog’s light blue ones. “What an original name for a husky.”

“I didn’t name her. She’s not my dog. She’s Marlow’s.”

“Marlow?”

“He’s trapped in there.” I pointed at the guarded compound. “We’re here to rescue him.”

“Of course you are.” Conner shook his head slowly, smiling to himself. “You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?”

I bristled. “Hey, it’s not like I go looking for trouble!”

I didn’t tell him that I’d seen the Rebels in the city—and that I would have gone after them too if they hadn’t spontaneously disappeared.

“Of course you go looking for trouble. That’s what heroes do.” He sighed like it hurt. “So what’s the plan? Let me guess. You want to singlehandedly break this Marlow fellow out of that heavily-guarded fortress?”

“Well, when you put it like that, it does sound reckless.”

“Because it is reckless. You certainly like to play with fire.” Conner’s gaze dipped to Wolf. “And with wolves.” He snapped his attention back to me, eyes twinkling. “Very well, Red. I will help you.”

I arched my brows at him. “Or perhaps I can help you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re obviously here for a reason,” I said. “My guess is you’ve been watching these men, looking for a way to infiltrate their stronghold.”

His mouth twitched. “Clever.”

I shrugged. “I have been called worse things.”

He cracked a smile. “So have I, Red. So have I.”

“You’ve been watching these people. So who are they anyway? And what are they doing with those Cursed Ones?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.”

“And?”

His smile faded. “And it’s an ongoing investigation.” He pushed his hair behind his ears. It was such an absentminded, human gesture, especially for a Knight.

“Wait, you think this has something to do with the Cursed Ones we stopped in Bayshore, don’t you? And the Cursed Ones who attacked the Garden?” I frowned at the big, ugly compound. “But who are those people? And what do they want?”

“Well…”

“Come on, Conner. You promised you’d tell me, remember?”

“I did,” he sighed. “Ok, here it is. After the incident at the Garden, I knew something was really off. The Watchers collected evidence from the scene of the crime. I needed to see it. So I broke into the Black Obelisk?—”

“Wait, that’s what you were doing there the other day when you saved me from the Watcher stampede?” I interrupted.

“Sure. What else?”

“Well, I thought Kato sent you into the Black Obelisk to interrogate the guy who attacked the Knights at the Tournament.”

“Na, finding that traitor in the Watchers’ prison was just an added bonus,” Conner said. “Maybe I should sneak into the Black Obelisk more often. The General probably has many more secrets hidden there, just waiting to be unearthed.”

“Why did you have to sneak in there anyway?” I asked him. “You’re a Knight. Couldn’t you just demand that the Watchers open the gate for you?”

“Uh, no. The Watchers only take orders from the General. And, well, technically, I’m not supposed to be investigating anything.” He shot me a look that was a little sheepish—and a lot wicked.

“Oh, right, I guess Knights can’t just do whatever they want, whenever they want, can they?”

“Unfortunately not.” Conner’s expression was almost wistful. “But I wasn’t going to let that stop me.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

His smile returned, bigger and brighter. “I guess we both have trouble following the rules.” He gave my back a hearty slap. “Though, just for the record, you’re way better at that than I am.”

“But you’re a Knight. You have protocols and procedures. And a whole Code of Conduct!”

“The Code of Conduct is seriously overrated.” He shrugged, totally unconcerned.

“Kato seems to like it,” I commented.

Conner let out a choked laugh. “Kato doesn’t just like the Code of Conduct. He loves it. In fact, I’m pretty sure he helped write larger parts of it.”

“Knights wear helmets,” I quoted absently.

“Yeah, that’s one of his favorites. Personally, I’m not a big fan of helmets. They mess up my hair in all the wrong ways.”

He ran his hands through his already-messy hair, which somehow made it look even better.

“Red?”

I blinked. “Sorry. I was just thinking.”

“Oh, it’s no problem at all.” Conner’s smile spread. “Think about me all you want.”

I crossed my arms. “I wasn’t thinking about you .”

Conner nodded, still smiling. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“Sometimes you’re really ridiculous, you know.”

His eyes twinkled. “Yes, it’s one of my more endearing qualities, don’t you think?”

“Annnyway.” I shook my head. “What did you find at the Black Obelisk?”

Conner’s face grew serious—or at least serious for him.

“I looked through the Watchers’ security videos of the Garden attack.

I figured my best bet was checking out the vehicle that brought the Cursed Ones there.

It was one of the Watchers’ own cars, and thanks to that serious case of OCD they all have going on, they record absolutely everything.

And yet somehow their records of that particular car were wiped clean.

Location data. Camera feeds. Everything. ”

“That sounds suspicious,” I said.

“Definitely,” he agreed. “That’s why I had to track down the vehicle itself, in case our mysterious culprit left any evidence in there.”

“The vehicle the Cursed Ones were in…but Kato sent it to Shadow Fall!” The memory of that creepy place sent a shiver down my spine.

Conner didn’t seem too happy about Shadow Fall either. “Yeah, I’ll have to remember to send Kato a thank-you present for that.”

“But you did find the SUV?” I asked.

“Eventually, though, I had to chase off a lot of monsters before I could get a look inside the vehicle. A bunch of fire tigers had turned it into a cozy monster den. Luckily, the SUV was still in one piece. Mostly.”

“And did you find any evidence in the SUV?”

“Yeah. It drove to the Garden on auto pilot. Someone pre-programmed the course and sent it there. The seatbelt release was part of that program too. The belts were heavily reinforced. They were strong enough to restrain a raging zombie.”

“So someone tied up the Cursed Ones in the SUV and sent it to the Garden. Then they remotely opened the restraints to release the Cursed Ones.” My throat clenched up.

“They unleashed the Cursed Ones into a closed area full of people, knowing those people had no way to escape.” Fear and anger twisted up into a tight ball inside of me, and I suddenly felt both very cold and very hot at the same time.

“What kind of monster would do something like that?”

“The human kind.” Conner’s eyes were as hard as diamonds. “Their signature is all over this. I found their name buried inside the auto-pilot program that drove that SUV into the Garden.”

“And?” I said eagerly. “Who is it?”

“The Brotherhood of Earth.”