Page 85 of Creatures of Chaos

“Sabine’s not here,” I hear a competitor say to another.

Sabine. The wolf shifter from another school. That’s who’s missing.

“I hope she’s okay,” the other says, a fae named Raven with two-inch gauges in her ears and a dark braid that reaches her waist.

The first competitor, Caden, a gorilla shifter with short black hair and muscles for days, shakes his head. “After what happened to that other guy who didn’t show to the last trial, it’s stupid to miss this one.”

“She probably didn’t do it on purpose,” Raven says. “It’s not like any of us were prepared to be woken in the middle of the night.”

“Like it matters whether or not it was intentional or not. She’s going to pay the price regardless.”

“Hey,” yells Kiaro, the snake shifter I fought in the cages, “shut up and help figure out which way to go. When we get out, you two can braid each other’s hair and gossip all you want.”

They grumble under their breaths but break apart and start to search for clues. Kiaro catches my eye and sticks his forked tongue out, wiggling it suggestively. I turn away and run into Titus, who’s inspecting one of the faelight sconces.

“Whoa,” he says when my hands land on his bare chest to steady myself.

Stepping back quickly, I mumble an apology and he waves me off.

“No problem. Just watch your step.”

My eyes catch on the parts of his tattoo curling over his shoulders. The swirls of veins and deliberately placed flowers are quite beautiful, delicate, yet somehow still masculine, and if it wasn’t completely weird I’d ask him to turn around so I can check out the rest of it. But instead I ask if the tattoo means anything, thinking of how Becks got his dragon tattoo after being named dragon heir.

Titus looks down at me, his mouth a hard line, “Yes,” he says, and then turns and walks away.

I suppose that was a rather personal question, so I don’t take the dismissal to heart as I head to the corner of the foyer to get out of the way of the other competitors. Standing with my arm’scrossed, I watch the other competitors scour the room for clues and come up empty.

“We’re wasting time,” Kiaro says from the middle of the foyer, drawing everyone’s attention. “We just need to split into groups and try the different rooms.”

“You want to leave this up to chance?” Raven scoffs, and Kiaro rounds on her.

“Do you want to waste an hour searching one room? If so, be my guest. That will be one less competitor I have to go up against in the final trial.”

The room dissolves quickly into an argument about picking doors at random and continuing to look for clues.

“The game master said there’s more than one path through the building,” Titus says, raising his voice above the arguments. “As much as I hate to agree with the snake shifter, we’ve already lost ten minutes here. We have to start moving.”

“Whatever,” Damon, a tall and lanky vampire says. “I don’t care what the game master said. I don’t trust any of you anyway. I’m going on my own.” Before anyone can stop him, he yanks open one of the doors on the ground floor and we all freeze.

I can’t see anything in the adjoining room. It’s pitch black. Damon pauses, but then gathers his courage and enters. He’s swallowed by unnatural darkness almost immediately, but after several moments when nothing happens, two more competitors take off after him.

I look for Talon, waiting to see what he’s going to do, and find him on the stairs, not even paying attention to what’s going on as he inspects the sconces. The ones running up the stairs are all a little crooked. Talon straightens one and then moves on to the next. I take a step toward him, curious about what he’s doing when someone shouts, “What is that?”

When I look over my shoulder, black mist is trickling out of the open doorway Damon and the other competitors wentthrough. It brushes up against the toe of Raven’s shoe and then latches on, clinging to her as it snakes its way up her body.

She yelps when she moves away but the mist doesn’t disengage from her. Everyone else quickly backs away from her and the growing mist as she frantically tries to shake or wipe it off her, but it keeps creeping up her body until tendrils of smoke wrap around her limbs, torso, and neck.

My heart leaps into my chest when the sinister black substance reaches her face, and she lets out a scream of agony and drops to her knees. She swipes furiously at her eyes, wailing that she can’t see. When she stops rubbing her face and looks up, her eyes are completely white, and I gasp. My heart speeds up and I’m torn between going to help her or backing away.

“Someone help,” she begs, but no one moves.

Suddenly, the blackness starts pouring out of the open doorway, heading straight for us. I’m frozen for a moment as the competitors split and bolt for the other doors, desperate to escape the blinding mist.

There’s no way I’m waiting out this trial in the foyer anymore. Forcing myself to move, I start toward the nearest door, the one on the other side of the foyer, when someone grabs my hand and jerks me in the other direction.

“Talon,” I yell, as he pulls me up the stairs behind him.

“You don’t want to go that way,” he warns.

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