As much as I want to be mad at them, they’re right. I can sense it. “OK, but no more surprises. I expect them from our enemies, I don’t want to worry about my friends too.”
“I can’t promise not to slap you,” Hannah says, “but if I do, it won’t be part of some secret plan.”
“No? Then what will it be for?”
She grins. “Because you deserve it.”
I feel myself blush and quickly look away, toward the Garden of Bone. “Um, so yeah… I’m gonna have to try and do this tunnel thing from here since we can’t get any closer without being spotted. Should you guys come with me or hang back here in case something goes wrong?”
“Cerberus knows us,” Hannah says.
“He knows us,” Ares agrees, “but he likes her. Hannah should go with you, Andrus. I will stay in reserve. Lend me your cloak, and I can fly into attack position when I’m needed.”
Hannah unfastens her purple cloak and reluctantly hands it to the God of War. “It’s a gift from my father,” she reminds him. “Take good care of it.”
“I will.” Ares fastens the cloak and adjusts the drape to keep his sword arm free. “If anything should happen, I will rain death from above.”
“Thanks,” I tell him. “I know I’ll feel better knowing you’ve got our back. Just be careful with Mark’s body, all right?”
Ares nods. “I am careful with all my vessels.”
“I’m sure you are, but can you be extra-careful with Mark? He’s not built for war like Mr. Cross.”
Ares fixes me with his cold steel gaze. “I understand.”
“So we’ve got the plan,” Hannah says, “now we just need to make it happen.”
I look down at the mossy cavern floor. “You mean I need to make it happen.”
From across the field comes a bloodcurdling scream. The monsters are eating Mr. Cross, dividing him into torn and bloody pieces like some picnic of the damned.
There’s no more time and nothing left to do. I sink to my knees and dig.
14
ANGER IS AN ENERGY
It’s not enough to dig. I have to feel the earth, bond with it. Becoming one, and that oneness is what drives me forward. Down, through the dirt. Pushing, parting, plowing. The earth is my sister, the rocks are my brothers. They embrace me, they know me, then step aside. I angle the tunnel, creating as gentle slope as I can. It’s working, and it’s happening because I believe.
It’s magic.
I’m magic.
The tunnel widens. It widens, and then we’re through. Under the field, then under the Garden of Bone. We’re almost there when I hit a wall of granite. A strange wall covered in mystic symbols. That stops me. I stare at the intricate glowing designs. Frustrated. Fascinated.
“This must be where they’re hiding Cerberus,” I say. “It’s not like the rest of the rock around here. I can’t seem to break through.”
Hannah shines her flashlight on the wall and grimaces. “Damn it! Nothing’s ever easy.”
“I’ve broken magic wards before,” I say. “The ones the priests left in Bronson Canyon.”
“Those were to keep ghosts and monsters in the cave.”
“So? Isn’t this supposed to keep Cerberus in?”
“No, it’s supposed to keep us out.” Hannah runs her hand over the wall and quickly pulls it back as if stung. “No doubt there are similar wards on the inside for keeping Cerberus caged.”
Above us, I hear the heavy taloned feet of Gyges stalking back and forth. The Lesser Titan shakes the tunnel with each step, driving home the danger we’re in.
I lower my voice, even though I’m sure he can’t hear us. “Can’t you just break through with your magic?”
Hannah sighs. “How much do you know about magic, Andrus?”
“Not much. Everything I learned, I learned in the past few days.”
“Then I’ll keep this brief and basic: All magic is either sympathetic or antipathetic; it attracts or repels. But the most powerful magic, it combines these qualities to become something truly potent.”
“You mean like this wall with one set of symbols on this side, and another set inside?”
“Exactly. These are symbols of antipathy, designed to keep us out. The other side will be covered in symbols of sympathy to keep Cerberus from wanting to leave. The best prison is one you don’t want to escape from.”
I think about that. I might think about it a lot more and a lot deeper, only this isn’t the place and there’s no time. “So what do we do? We can’t just quit!”
“How are you feeling?” Hannah asks. “Your magic, I mean? You tired?”
“Not really. If anything, I feel stronger than when I started the tunnel.”
“Interesting… Your power regenerates from contact with earth, and magic earth in particular. That’s good.”
“Because all the earth here is magic?”
“Not just that. This tunnel is made of magic earth, but it’s earth you’ve used your magic on.”
“So it’s double magic?”
“In a sense, yes.” She gives me an appraising look, then turns her attention back to the wall.
I get impatient watching her. I don’t want to just stand here, I want to do something. “Maybe there are no symbols on the bottom. Maybe we can get in that way.”
“No, Cronus will have thought of that. hang on, let me think.”
I can feel my anger grow. I pace as much as the tunnel will let me to try and burn some of it off. It doesn’t help. If anything, I seem to get more agitated. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. “Look, let’s just—”
“That’s it!” Hannah says.
I stop and stare at her in confusion. “What?”
“Remember how your anger connected you to Cronus? And that let you read his thoughts?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re angry now, right?”
“Sure, I’m angry! But I don’t see what that has to do—”
“Magic wards like this are coded to keep things out or in, but they aren’t coded to keep out whoever cast them.”
“So? I’m not Cronus.”
“No, you’re not, but you’re related to him, and if you knew anything about magic, you’d know that wards are weaker against those of the same bloodline as their caster.”
“They sure seem to be strong enough against me.”
Hannah smiles. ““Maybe you’re not angry enough. Sure you don’t want me to slap you? I don’t mind. You have a very slappable face.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I can get plenty pissed off on my own.”
Hannah bows and steps back, gesturing me to take her place at the wall. “Focus your anger, Andrus! Anger is an energy. Without focus, it’s as dangerous to the wielder as to everyone around him. But if you can control it, you can use it, instead of it using you…”
I concentrate, first on my feelings, then on the wall. It cracks, and I feel its magic power wane. I pour pure molten hate into it, the hate of my father, and my hatred of him. The glowing symbols falter, flicker, and fade.
“Great job!” Hannah says from somewhere behind me, but it might as well be on the moon.
I can’t stop the hate, can’t stop the scream. I’ve tapped into something inside me. I’ve tapped into something beyond me. The cage wall shatters. I stand there, breathing hard, as six glowing red eyes swim out of the dark.
15
SOME THINGS ARE FOREVER
Cerberus pads forward, eyes blazing, black fur bristling, but it’s the fangs that really get my attention. There are so many of them! Of course there are. The monster dog has three heads, each equipped with an identical set of massive, snapping jaws.
I back up slowly. “N-nice dog,” I stammer. “Good boy, Cerberus… Good boy!”
The hound of Hades barks and growls and snaps all at the same time.
“Hannah!” I half-shout, half-whisper. “I don’t think he likes me. Do something! Now!” The big dog is ready to lunge, to take me in those foam
-flecked teeth. On reflex, I unsheathe the crystal daggers from my knuckles.
Hannah steps forward, positioning herself between us. Cerberus lunges forward, bowling her over. She shrieks, and I raise my crystal spikes, but then I see the dog isn’t biting her. He’s licking her, slobbering with joy, and she’s laughing and stroking his fur. I back off.
“It’s OK!” Hannah says. “Cerberus is just happy to see me. Aren’t you, boy?”
“If that’s what he looks like when he’s happy, I’d hate to see him mad.”
Hannah gets up and takes a moment to scratch each of the black-furred heads behind the ears. “Who’s a good dog? You want to help find Daddy?”
Cerberus nods his three heads vigorously and lets out several enthusiastic barks. Dust filters down from the ceiling, the tunnel walls vibrate as Gyges treads the ground above. All three of us eye the ceiling with mutual apprehension.
“We should go,” Hannah says, hoisting herself up the monster dog’s body. When she’s seated behind the center head, she urges Cerberus forward. “Come on, boy!” Dog and rider leap forward, claws scrabbling against the tunnel floor.
I jog after them, but before I can break into a run, the tunnel ceiling collapses. A huge bird claw slams into my path. It’s Gyges. I don’t know if he knew we were down here or whether his weight accidentally collapsed the weakened ground above my tunnel. All I know is I’m cut off from Hannah and Cerberus. So I do the one thing, the only thing I can think of…
I jump onto the foot and jam my spikes into one of the orange toes, just above the talon. I’m not doing it to cause damage so much as to hold on when Gyges pulls his foot out of the hole. Which is exactly what the giant does, as its surprised bellow blasts my eardrums.
I’m lifted out of the tunnel in a shower of dirt and rock. Gyges yanks his monstrous leg up high and fast, taking me along for the ride. The world becomes a blur: the dizzying gem-starred ceiling above—a false sky under which harpies fly—and the Garden of Bone and centaurs and cyclopes below. All I know is I don’t want to be on Gyges’ foot when it lands.
If I can time it just right…
I jump off the second before the foot hits the ground, ducking into a roll that deposits me in front of Captain Nessus and the dismembered—but grotesquely still living—body of Mr. Cross. The centaur officer goggles at me with his gray-furred ram’s face, not quite comprehending what he’s seeing. I come out of my roll and immediately launch myself at Nessus. There’s really no time to think of a better plan. And besides, I can see he has both of Ares’ magic swords sheathed on his back.
I grab the swords free with a mighty shing, but before I can draw them across the centaur’s throat, he bucks me off. I hit the ground hard, but not nearly as hard as I would have if I’d stayed glued to Gyges’ foot.
Nessus brays orders in his inhuman goat-voice, rallying his centaur brothers Democ and Ruvo to his side, but that’s not my only worry. The harpies circling above have caught on there’s fresh meat. They take up a shrill chorus of “Give us the eyes! The eyes!” as they begin to peel off from their formation and launch into a dive. Claws thrust forward, greedy to taste the “juicy jewels” in my skull. There are more centaurs closing in.
I move in a defensive circle, blades out, seeking targets. I wish I hadn’t lost my shield in my last battle with the Night Patrol, or I’d surely have it raised over my head to ward off the raking talons streaking down at me. But my blades and my reflexes are all I have, so I make use of them, slicing through a hideous harpy, sending the shrieking she-vulture away in a blast of blood and feathers. I’m almost immediately set on by another, but the centaurs are thrusting their hooked spears at me too, and it’s all I can do to dodge both.
“Andrus Eaves!” Captain Nessus gives a gloating shout. “I have you now!”
“Not likely, you brain-eating bastard!” I lash out with my twin swords but the cruel beast gallops just out of reach.
His brothers, Democ and Ruvo, charge in, their flesh-hooking spears raised, and again, I’m forced to dodge rather than counterattack. The move puts me closer to a different centaur, one I don’t know, and I waste no time chopping through his spear and into his hairy torso. Monster blood splashes my face: hot, black, and stinking. I wipe my forearm across my eyes to clear them, then I’m moving.
A cyclops lumbers toward me, swinging the jawbone of an animal like a club. The one-eyed giant is twenty feet tall, but I take him down by ducking under the clumsy swing and popping up inside his guard. The glowing blades sink into his groin, then slice through, pausing only briefly before severing the spine. The cyclops falls in two steaming pieces: guts spilling, gore gushing.
I’m breathing hard. I used up most of my magic busting Cerberus out of prison. I still have the three crystal daggers concealed in my right hand, but I’m saving those as a last resort.
I could really use Ares’ help right about now because there is no clear path to escape, only different sets of monsters, with more coming in from all sides. I have to keep moving… cutting… cleaving. Where is Ares? Where are Hannah and Cerberus? Have they abandoned me?
I race through the Garden, using its hulking shards of bone as cover, until I run out of ways to go. I’m surrounded in a tight circle with nowhere to run.
“We have you now,” Nessus gloats. “First, we eat the teacher, now the student!” His bold promise draws hungry howls and slobbering moans from the assembled creatures.
A cyclops smacks his club against his palm. “Smash him to paste!”
“No!” a harpy shrills. “Rip him to bits! To bits!”
There’s a pillar of bone against my back, so I only have to worry about attack from three sides—and above.
But just as the monsters press forward, they fall back. The thunderous stomp of taloned feet tells me why: Gyges wants a piece of me. The fifty-headed giant looms like a nightmare, a thing that should not be, yet is. It forces the centaurs to widen their circle and scatters the flock of harpies, who resume their incessant circling—but far out of his reach.
Gyges doesn’t attack. Instead, he seems to be laughing, though he has so many heads, it’s hard to tell what some of them are doing. Can beasts laugh? They can certainly make noise. Some of the hundred arms rest at his sides, some clutch boulders or whale bones, while crab claws click and tentacles slither. But it is the central “face” in his torso that speaks, the one with the fanged and suckered mouth of a leech or lamprey, the one surrounded by the eight spider-like eyes.
“Little brother!” Gyges booms. “I am Gyges! Gyges the Reaver, Gyges the Invincible! The Destroyer! He of the Hundred Hands Who Guards the Gate!” His voice is a storm, his words a horror. “You should not have come, not to me, nor to Tartarus. You must be very brave… or very foolish.”
“Can’t I be both?”
“You can,” the giant agrees. “You can be many things all at once, like Gyges!” His other forty-nine heads growl, caw, bark, and hiss. “But you are something else, little brother! Something Gyges cannot be.”
“What’s that?”
“Desperate!” This gets a gruesome cheer from the monsters on his side. “Desperate, and alone!”
He’s right about that, but instead I tell him, “We don’t have to fight.”
“No?” Gyges sneers scornfully. “What else is there but battle? Surrender, perhaps… Is that what you want, little brother? To surrender to Gyges? Because as much as I want to eat you, Cronus wants to eat you more, and Cronus is king.”
“For now,” I say. “Cronus is king for now, but not for always.”
The many faces of Gyges take on a shrewd, appraising look—or whatever passes for it in their species. “Some things are forever,” he says. “Some things are not. Who are you to say which is which?”
It’s a fair question, and after a moment’s hesitation, I answer. “I am Andrus Eaves, son of Cronus, son of Gaia, and I am a Titan!”
“You are,” Gyges says, “but are you the Titan who will tear the crown from Cronu
s’ head?”
“I am!”
“So!” Gyges says, his fifty faces erupting into toothy grins. “This you must prove! And you must do it without your friends, the Gods!” Some of his heads spit, others drool or drip venom. “You must do it by fighting me. There is no future without a fight!” The Lesser Titan thunders forward, monstrous mouths gaping, arms and weapons raised to crush, to rend, to destroy.
So much for diplomacy.
Panic grips me. I’ve never fought anything like Gyges before. The power, the sheer size of the thing overwhelms me. And knowing I’m related to it makes it worse.
I bring my swords up in what feels like a futile gesture, ready for the end. The inevitable. If I can’t hope to defeat Gyges, how can I hope to defeat Cronus?
As I stare up in horror, I see a familiar fog billow from the ceiling. A fog that takes on the form of Ares, God of War. He materializes in front of the onrushing giant, sword out. Gyges runs right into it, but of course, it’s just a pin prick to a creature that size. No, it’s what Ares does that gets Gyges to notice.
He tugs the blade down, peeling through the giant’s flesh like a blood-red zipper, cutting the chest open from the breast bone to the ribs. When he gets to the central face in the torso where the thing’s stomach should be, he kicks in one of the spider eyes to add insult to injury. Gyges screams, fifty screams from fifty throats in one fearsome sound. Yellow fluid slimes thickly from the cratered eye.
Ares uses his feet to push off from the injured giant, executing a perfect gymnastics move. The God of War lands on the moss-green cavern floor next to me. “My swords!” he says. It’s not a question, it’s a command. I hand the blades to him, and he hands me his.
“You should clean that,” he says.
“What?” That’s when I notice the yellow slime clinging to the blade is eating through the metal. Before I can think how to wipe it off, the blade doesn’t just sizzle, it melts.
“Scratch that,” Ares says. “You’ll need a new sword.” He hands me one of his. “Here, this one won’t melt.”
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