103 Don’t Look Back Zeus has unleashed a damned minotaur on us.
“It’s not an enchantment, like the dragon or the frog!” Jackie hisses. “It’s real.”
The dragon’s fire was real enough if you ask my arm, so I’m not sure if I care about the difference. And what we should be doing right now is not standing here staring.
With a bellow, the minotaur disappears, and a cloud of dust and debris bursts out of the crevice into the sky. It’s having trouble climbing out.
“My compass indicates there’s no one path,” Samuel says. He’s already tucking the copper instrument away. “But go through the gates. You can’t go around them.” Then he shoves something in my hands. “Here. This showed up in my room, but I know it’s yours.”
I look down to find the handle of my axe in my hands.
What the— I reach into the vest pocket where I keep my relic, but it’s still there. This isn’t mine. This is…Hades’. The twin that completes the set Odin gave him.
Zeus stole it and gave it to Samuel.
It’s not a relic or tool Samuel already owned, like I did with my axe and
the dragon teeth.
That godsdamned cheater.
Another bellow. The minotaur is pissed. Great. Why are we standing
here?
“Run.” Diego beats me to it.
His glow is immediately doused as he disappears from sight. Like horses out of the starting gates, the rest all take off. Not together. Not a single one
of us is sticking together. Because we can all win now.
Me too. I should be running. Instead, I drop to one knee, reaching a hand into one of my zippered pockets.
I have a few dragon teeth left. About four of them. I start digging a hole in dirt that is packed so hard it doesn’t want to budge and my scratching’s barely making a dent, so instead I shove the white shards of bone into one of the cracks and hope that’s enough. If last time was any indication, it’ll take a few minutes.
The horns are back. Fuck me, I should have just run. Two massive hands appear at the top of the crevice again. I pull out both my axes, holding them up. Not that they can do much against a thing that size, but they’re better than nothing. It’s coming out with its back to me. That will buy me a little more time.
I take off after the others, who are far enough ahead that they’re small in the distance. Trinica is closest to me. And Samuel, maybe still weakened from his wound, isn’t much farther ahead. Jackie and Zai are still on the ground, having not used their gifts of flight yet. The others are all too far away to tell.
The minotaur is halfway out, now off to my right, covered in brown-and- white mottled fur. Its bull head sits atop a human-ish body—huge shoulders, bare cowhide-covered torso. The human shape of him is rippling
with muscles on muscles.
Run faster, Lyra.
The minotaur swings a leg up to the ground. The thing is wearing breeches of some sort that only come to its calves, revealing that, like satyrs, its lower half is the same animal as its head—also bull, with the same brown-and-white coat. Both hooves finally on firm ground and chest heaving with anger and effort, the minotaur rises to its full height, towering into the skies, back to me still.
But movement must catch the minotaur’s eye, because it whips around to face us.
Its fur-covered face is grotesque, with a brass ring through its wrinkled, glistening nose. But of all the parts of the minotaur, including its size, the scariest are its eyes.
Cold, glassy, black eyes with no whites, as if the soul was sucked out of the beast a long time ago.
My stomach twists even as I pump my arms and legs.
I’m at the back of the herd. The obvious weak one. I am fucked.
Its head comes down, and it paws the water-starved dirt with a hooved foot, kicking up dust. Its body vibrates with rage built up from its frustrating climb, and I’m the easiest target available to take it out on.
This time, its bellow shakes the very earth.
The minotaur charges, coming straight at me. Out in the open. Alone.
Adrenaline hits my blood hard, and my heart pumps fast as I force my body across the long, flat distance between me and the gate. The ground shudders with every pound of its hooves as it closes in on me.
I know I’m not going to make it when a puff of humid, rank breath hits me in the side of the face.
With a yell, I stop and face it, but not with any real plan. But before I can make one, some invisible, magical force draws my axes up as if they are magnetized. They cross at the hilts, and the second they do, a force strikes them so hard I’m thrown to the ground, but so is the minotaur.
I don’t wait around to figure out what just happened. I’m back on my feet and moving.
But it doesn’t take the bull long to get up and chase me again. I got lucky last time. This time, I have no choice. I’m reaching for a pearl in my vest, thinking I’ll only use it to escape him, when a streak of turquoise zooms by me and rushes the minotaur’s head. The monster pulls up mid-charge.
Another wine streak with white wings is right behind that, and the minotaur
bats at the air with its beefy hands.
Jackie and Zai.
Zai manages to get in a stab with the Harpe of Perseus, hitting the minotaur’s forehead. On another ground-shaking bawl of rage, the bull swings its head, and Zai catches one of its massive horns in the stomach— thank the Fates, not with the tip—but it catapults him through the air, the wings on his sandaled feet beating ineffectually against the momentum.
“Zai!” I yell, my stomach twisting as I watch him flip midair.
He recovers before hitting the ground, and I almost stumble in relief.
“Go!” Zai shouts at me, then flies back at the minotaur.
And I do.
Heart now in my throat for them, making it hard to breathe, I run as fast as I can for the gate. Any second, I expect to hear a crunch of bones as it hits one of them, but I don’t stop. It would only keep them in danger longer.
The ground under my feet quivers. I think.
I keep running.
Up ahead, I see Samuel pass through the gate, where Dae is already waiting for him.
Another quiver, harder this time, shakes clumps of dry dirt loose. Then another shudder, even bigger, and I have to slow down because it’s moving the ground under my feet.
That’s when four bone soldiers the size of the minotaur erupt from the ground in a blast of dirt and sand.
My bone soldiers are formed as men, rather than merfolk like last time.
They wield bone spears and shields, bone helms covering their heads.
The minotaur stops swatting at Jackie and swings around to face down this new threat.
I point and yell my orders. “Protect us from all the monsters.”
Immediately, the bone soldiers crouch, shields up, spears at the ready. In a single line, they take a step toward the minotaur. Then another.
Their bones clatter when they do, the sound ominous. The sound I imagine death makes when a reaper visits.
The threat to the minotaur is clear, and the bull focuses solely on the soldiers, no longer paying any attention to Zai or Jackie. The beast paws the earth again. It also crouches, fist to the ground like a defensive lineman, and lowers its head to peer at the soldiers from eyes narrowed with fury. Its breath blows dust up off the ground as it snorts and paws. Then it does a full-body shiver, its muscles bunching before it springs into a sprint.
I skid through the open iron doors tall enough to let King Kong through, then whip around. “Run!” I yell. Trinica made it through ahead of me. She is with Dae and Samuel, none of them moving on to the next gate yet, transfixed on the stragglers trying to make it through the gate, each shouting and screaming to urge someone on.
I scour the area for any of the other champions and catch sight of Rima
close by, Amir right behind her.
“Come on!” I wave at them.
Zai and Jackie dive to whip through the gate overhead, but then the minotaur clocks Rima and Amir and runs at them with a bellow.
The two bone soldiers closer to us beat him to the champions, each
scooping one up.
“Close the gates!” Jackie yells.
“What? Why?” The gate stands solitary in the wide, flat valley,
disconnected from the mountains far to either side. It’s just symbolic, isn’t it? It’s not going to stop anything.
“Walls! I can see walls.” She’s already pushing at one door to swing it closed, but it’s not moving more than an inch or two.
The rest of us start pushing with her. Even with Samuel’s strength, the gates resist us. Do all of us have to get through to close them? Or die. I can see Zeus thinking that’s a fun little twist.
The soldiers are almost to us, but the minotaur is faster, bearing down on
them like death incarnate.
It’s right behind them.
“Here! Samuel!” Diego’s voice comes from nowhere, and a telescoping spear made of brass appears and tumbles through the air.
Samuel catches it and hurls it at the minotaur, his enhanced strength shooting it like a rocket. It hits the creature in the cheek, and the minotaur roars but doesn’t slow. Samuel goes back to pushing the doors.
The bull lunges for the skeleton holding Amir, and it stumbles but keeps its feet. One after the other, the soldiers take diving leaps for the gate, sliding through on their bellies.
But the minotaur is right there, and the gates aren’t shut.
“Please let this work,” I mutter, then jump into the open space between the doors.
“What in the name of Hades are you doing, Lyra?” Trinica yells after me.
Both axes in my hands, I cross them in front of me, then try not to flinch or move as the minotaur bears down. The thunder of its hooves competes with the pounding of my heart as the other champions yell at me to get out of the way.
“Close the gates!” I yell back. It’s still taking all of them pushing to do it.
Then I brace.
This time, when the minotaur hits, I see it. My axes form an invisible shield in front of me—a lot like the walls to either side of the gates, I’m guessing. The minotaur bounces off it like it rammed into a mountain. I get thrown backward. Samuel catches me, and my momentum sends us both tumbling, my axes flinging out to the sides.
“Ouch,” I groan.
“Watch it!” Amir yells.
I jerk my head off the ground in time to see one of the skeletons still on the minotaur’s side of the gate slam into it as it’s lumbering to its feet. The
minotaur throws it off with ease, but that gave the second soldier enough time to get to us. It squeezes through to our side. I guess I was right about getting us all through to close the gates, because suddenly, they slam closed in a rush.
The doors lock a heartbeat before the bull rams the entire gate with a resounding clang.
