The Watch (The Red Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

I was distracting the wardens from what I’d actually done. With even more
luck, I might manage to get some precious information out of them. I’d never
before had a chance to talk to wardens about the woods.
    “Don’t you know what lives out there?” the scarred warden
said. I couldn’t read his expression.
    “Wild animals,” I said. “Wolves and stuff.”
    “And stuff.” He smiled without humor. “You’re meant to know
the stories.”
    “I do,” I said. “But sometimes I wonder if that’s all they
are. You know—just stories.”
    The warden stared at me for a long moment, not blinking.
“And what would be the point of just
stories ?” he said, his voice hard.
    I chose my words carefully. “It’s hard to get everything
done,” I said. “We don’t have enough people who are strong and healthy. And if
the woods were safe, we might lose good workers. Some might leave the city.
They might even try to find a way off the island.”
    The warden crossed his arms over his chest, tipped his chair
back. “So you think the city commissioners lie to keep people in the city.
You’re calling the commissioners liars.”
      “No! Not
lies—just stories, for the kids, when we’re little. I only wonder
sometimes, because nobody I know has actually seen anyone out there. In the
woods, I mean. No one has seen anyone in the woods.” I was babbling. I should
never have broached the topic—but now that I had, I’d have to see it out.
“I’m not saying the Watchers are liars.”
    “ City commissioners ,”
the warden corrected. “It’s rude to call them Watchers.” Then he gave a
humorless snort that might have been laughter, and set his chair down with a
thud. “Sounds like you need a bit of review. Start with Wes. You remember what
happened to Wes?”
    “He gathered firewood too far north. Too near the wilderland .”
    “And?”
    Maybe it was only a story. Still, I didn’t like to say it
out loud. “They sent out a search party and found him dead,” I said, as evenly
as I could manage. “He’d been skinned like a rabbit.”
    Somewhere down the hall a door shut with a clang. From the
corner of my eye I saw the older warden turn toward the sound, but the scarred
warden kept his gaze on me. “Now do Rosella,” he said.
    Rosella wasn’t as hard to talk about. In fact, she was
something of an inspiration to me.
    “Rosella didn’t like the breeding partner she was assigned,”
I said. “She ran away to the woods in protest.”
    “And what became of her?”
      “She was gone
for a couple of months. When she came back, she said there were things in the
woods that were terrifying and beautiful, all light and shadow. Not entirely
human. She went around warning people to stay in the city, away from them.”
    The warden nodded. “Exactly.”
    He seemed calm enough, so I decided to push my point. “But
she came back crazy,” I said.
    “As a bedbug,” he agreed.
    “So she didn’t know what she was saying. She could have been
repeating childhood stories she’d been told. She might not have seen anything
at all out in the woods.”
    I desperately wanted to believe there wasn’t anything to fear
out there. Sure, I’d been terrified of the woods when I was younger. I’d
thought of the gaps in the walls as gaping mouths that would devour me if I
wandered too close.
    But now  . . . I wanted to believe there was
a place we could go, Meritt and I, to escape from the
eyes all around us. We’d never talked about it, but I wanted to hope that when
the time came for him to be assigned a breeding partner, we’d run away, go live
in the woods and become part of the legends, the victims in horror stories designed
to keep everyone under control, but really we’d be safe. We’d be free. We’d be
the ones who got away.
    “Poor lovely Rosella,” the balding warden said sadly. “She
was a friend of mine, once upon a time.”
    I turned to look at him, the metal chair creaking ominously
as I moved. “You