Spartan Heart

by Jennifer Estep

  “Now, this secret faction of Reapers does have a leader, someone who has been pulling everyone else’s strings and slowly taking control of all the remaining Reapers,” Linus said. “We haven’t been able to identify the leader yet, but we know that it’s a man and that he goes by the code name Sisyphus.”

  I frowned. Sisyphus was a name from my myth-history class, that of a mortal man doomed to keep pushing a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down, forcing him to start all over again. Strange name for the leader of the Reapers. Or perhaps Sisyphus had chosen that name because he knew what an enormous task it would be to resurrect the group after Gwen had decimated them.

  “So what does all this have to do with the warrior band here?” I sniped, gesturing at Ian and the other kids. “What were they doing on campus today? And what was that other girl, Amanda, doing in the library earlier?”

  “Over the last few months, Sisyphus has been building his group, mostly by recruiting Mythos students to join his new band of Reapers,” Linus said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Seriously? Who would be stupid enough to want to join the Reapers?”

  “Kids whose Reaper parents died during the battle at the North Carolina academy,” Linus said in a soft, serious voice.

  He fell silent, and everyone looked at me, the girl with the dead Reaper parents. That familiar mix of guilt, shame, and embarrassment churned in my stomach, and I dropped my hands to my lap so that no one would see them tighten into fists. Even here, in this strange place, I couldn’t escape what my parents had done.

  I would never escape it.

  Linus cleared his throat. “Many of these kids are mixed up and hurting. They want revenge for their parents’ deaths, and Sisyphus is taking advantage of them, using them to further his own ends. But other students, well, they were already Reapers, or at least on the path to becoming Reapers, thanks to their parents and their own anger and greed. Those kids are all too happy to do whatever Sisyphus asks, no matter who they have to hurt and betray.”

  “And?” Aunt Rachel asked.

  “And a couple of weeks ago, we got a tip that one of those Reaper students was going to try to steal an artifact from the Library of Antiquities when the Colorado academy opened for the new school year. We didn’t know which artifact the student was targeting, but we now realize that it was Typhon’s Scepter.”

  Linus hit another button, and new photos appeared on the screens, each showing a gold stick that was about as long as my forearm. Several figures were etched into the gold, and it took me a moment to realize that they were Nemean prowlers, rams, and scorpions, all curled together. A single figure, also made of gold, crouched on the top of the scepter. That figure was a combination of all the other creatures, with a prowler’s body, ram’s horns on its head, and a scorpion’s stinger on its tail. It was an ugly, monstrous thing, made even more so by the two glittering blood-red rubies that made up its eyes. I shivered. The creature was the same as the monsters I’d fought in the library earlier: a Typhon chimera.

  I stared at the photos of the scepter and thought back to that glimmer of gold that I’d seen in the display case. “So that’s what the Reaper stole from the library.”

  “Typhon was a Greek giant with several creatures sprouting out of his body—prowlers, rams, scorpions, and more. Typhon pulled bits and pieces of the creatures off his own body and fused them together to create one new being, the chimera.” Linus pointed at the images on the monitors. “The scepter is thought to be made of one of Typhon’s bones, which was encased in gold. All someone has to do is wave the scepter in a specific pattern, and chimeras spew forth from the end of it in clouds of dense black smoke. Chimeras cannot be reasoned with, and they are extremely dangerous. But they can be killed like any other creature, and a mortal wound makes them dissipate into a cloud of smoke.”

  “Amanda would know that better than anyone,” Ian muttered.

  Linus looked at the Viking, sympathy flashing in his eyes. “Yes, she would.”

  We all fell silent again, thinking about the poor girl who’d lost her life tonight. And for what? So a Reaper could steal an artifact? I shook my head. What a sad, tragic waste.

  “As I said before, we got a tip that a Reaper was going to try to steal an artifact,” Linus continued. “So Takeda and the others came to the academy a few days ago when the students starting moving into the dorms to see if they could figure out who the Reaper was. Our plan was to identify the student, let him steal the artifact, follow him back to his friends, and arrest all the Reapers at the same time, including Sisyphus. But, regrettably, that didn’t happen.”

  “We were watching the library, and we saw the student approaching, but we lost track of him. So Amanda decided to go into the library ahead of everyone else,” Mateo said in a soft, sad voice. “I was on comms with her the whole time. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen to me. Then, when she got into the library, she couldn’t find the Reaper.”

  “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Ian glared at me, and I realized what he was really saying.

  I glared right back at him. “You think that I’m somehow working with the Reapers? Viking, you are seriously off your rocker. I would never, ever work for the Reapers.”

  “Really? Just like your parents couldn’t have possibly been Reaper assassins?” he shot right back at me.

  This time, my hands curled into fists on top of the table where everyone could see them. “You should shut your mouth—unless you want me to shut it for you.”

  Ian’s eyes narrowed. “Bring it on, cupcake. Bring it on.”

  I shoved my chair back so I could get up and lunge across the table at him, but Linus stepped forward and laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “Enough,” he said. “That’s enough. From both of you. We need to work together, not fight among ourselves.”

  I glared at him too, but Linus raised his eyebrows, and I shrugged his hand away and sat back down in my seat.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “The Viking can keep his teeth. For now.”

  “Wow. Thanks.” Ian’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Linus might have said that I was a hero, but it was obvious that Ian didn’t believe him. Either that, or Ian hated me for some other reason. Whatever it was, I was tired of the Viking’s attitude problem.

  Linus cleared his throat, wanting us to get back on track, so I looked at the monitors again, staring at the chimera scepter until I got my anger under control.

  “So Sisyphus and his Reapers are stealing artifacts,” Aunt Rachel said. “But you still haven’t explained what all of this is.”

  She waved her hand around at the room, with all of its high-tech monitors, tools, weapons, and shelves full of artifacts.

  “Not many people know this, but every single Library of Antiquities has a basement level deep underground,” Linus said. “Most of them are used to store artifacts, books, and the like from the library’s collection. The Colorado library is unique in that it has two basement levels, the second of which is not listed on any of the library schematics. Several months ago, after Loki was freed, I had this second, secret level converted into a fallback headquarters and stocked it with the Protectorate’s most powerful artifacts in case things didn’t go our way. It was going to be our last resort, our last base of resistance and operations, if we weren’t able to defeat the god.”

  Now that he mentioned it, I realized that the shape and size of this room was an exact match for the main space around the checkout counter and the fireplace on the first floor. I had thought I knew every single inch of the library, but apparently not.

  “And them?” Aunt Rachel asked, waving her hand at Takeda and the others.

  “Sisyphus is recruiting kids and turning them into Reapers,” Linus said. “Kids who won’t talk to adults wandering around campus in Protectorate robes, much less gossip around them or share any sort of information. So I put together a group of people those kids will talk to—other students. This is
Team Midgard.”

  Midgard was another name I recognized from myth-history class. The term often referred to the mortal realm, but it was also the name of an enormous wall that the gods had once built to protect people from monsters and other threats.

  I eyed the other kids sitting at the table. “Doesn’t look like much of a team to me. Or a guard.”

  This time, Ian, Zoe, and Mateo all glared at me.

  Linus ignored my snide remark and gestured at Takeda. “Hiro Takeda is the team leader. A Samurai with impressive fighting and tactical skills, as well as healing magic. Takeda has been a member of the Protectorate for more than ten years, joining as soon as he graduated from the Tokyo branch of Mythos Academy.”

  Takeda was already sitting perfectly straight, but he seemed to grow even straighter at his boss’s praise. Ten years out of the academy would put him in his early thirties, a few years older than Aunt Rachel. Takeda’s dark brown gaze dropped to my arm. He must have been the one who had healed me. I tipped my head, silently thanking him. He nodded back at me.

  “Mateo Solis,” Linus continued. “A Roman with remarkable quickness and even more remarkable computer skills. If it’s electronic, Mateo can hack it.”

  A blush stained Mateo’s cheeks, but he too sat up a little straighter.

  “Zoe Wayland,” Linus said. “A Valkyrie with an affinity for creating all sorts of interesting gadgets and weapons.”

  Zoe lifted her chin and waved her hand toward her desk covered with tools. “In other words, I make all the awesome stuff around here.”

  “And Ian Hunter,” Linus finished. “A Viking warrior whose family has a long history of Protectorate service.”

  I expected Ian to sit up straighter too, just like Takeda and Mateo had, but he grimaced instead, as though Linus’s praise bothered him. Weird. I would think he would be chomping at the bit for Linus to tell everyone how awesome he was.

  “So you guys are basically the mythological equivalent of supersecret, black-ops spies,” I said.

  Linus nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Well, superspies, do you know who the Reaper was in the library? The one who stole the scepter and unleashed those chimeras? Because all I could see was his black cloak.”

  Linus hit another button on his remote. “We believe it was this student.”

  A familiar face popped up onto the screen. Black hair, blue eyes, tan skin, great smile, perfect dimples.

  Surprise shot through my body. “But…that’s Lance Fuller.”

  “The guy you were getting cozy with earlier today,” Ian sniped. “I saw your little meet-cute in the dining hall.”

  I wanted to point out that Ian and I’d had the same sort of meet-cute on the quad earlier today, but I bit back my snarky words. I didn’t want Ian to realize how gorgeous I had thought he was—at least until he’d opened his mouth and started insulting me.

  “Lance and I weren’t getting cozy,” I muttered. “We just bumped into each other. That’s all. He was actually nice enough to apologize for running into me. But that’s not surprising, since he’s practically the only person at this stupid school who will even talk to me now.”

  Aunt Rachel glanced at me. She knew all about my crush on Lance, since I had pretty much gushed to her every single time he’d smiled at me or laughed at one of my stupid jokes last year.

  “According to our intel, Lance is one of Sisyphus’s new recruits,” Linus said. “He joined the Reapers over the summer.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve got the wrong guy. Lance’s family is totally rich and connected. His dad works for the Protectorate.”

  “His father used to work for the Protectorate,” Linus said in a cold voice. “James Fuller was caught stealing weapons and armor from the Protectorate warehouse where he worked in New York. In addition to stealing the weapons, he sold many of them on the black market to Reapers. Mr. Fuller and several Reapers were killed during a Protectorate raid on that warehouse a few months ago.”

  I hadn’t heard a whisper about Lance’s dad dying, much less that he’d been selling weapons to Reapers. Then again, the Protectorate would have wanted to keep it quiet that one of their own had betrayed them. Lance would have wanted to keep it quiet too. He had seen what happened to me at school last year, and he wouldn’t have wanted the same thing to happen to him. He wouldn’t have wanted to lose his golden-boy status, especially since he was so much more popular than I had ever been and had so much farther to fall.

  “So you think that Lance joined up with the Reapers so he can get revenge on the Protectorate for his dad’s death,” I said.

  Linus and Takeda both nodded.

  “Just because Lance’s dad was a Reaper doesn’t mean that he’s one too!” I snapped.

  My voice boomed out far louder and angrier than I had intended. A tense, awkward silence fell over the room, and everyone looked at me again. This time, I glared right back at all of them, including Ian. After a moment, he dropped his gaze from mine and shifted in his seat, as though he were suddenly uncomfortable.

  “We understand what you’re saying, Miss Forseti,” Linus said. “But the Midgard has been tracking Lance for several days now.”

  “So you actually saw him put on a Reaper cloak and break into the library.”

  “No.” This time, Takeda answered me. “We spotted Lance approaching the library, but he wasn’t wearing a Reaper cloak. We tried to follow him, but he vanished.”

  “So you don’t know for sure that he’s the Reaper,” I said. “He could have been sneaking around campus for some other reason.”

  “It was him,” Ian muttered. “It had to be. No one else was around.”

  Takeda tipped his head, agreeing with the Viking, then looked at me again. “We were expecting Lance to steal a sword or a piece of armor, since that’s what the Reapers have been targeting so far. Something far less dangerous than the scepter. That’s why we were going to let him leave the library with the artifact and then follow him back to the other Reapers. But Lance slipped away in the confusion of the battle with the chimeras.” Takeda’s voice remained calm, but anger sparked in his dark eyes. He wanted to catch Lance and make him pay for Amanda’s death. Couldn’t blame him for that.

  “So you’re going to track down Lance and arrest him, right?” Aunt Rachel asked. “Before he can hurt anyone else with the scepter.”

  “We don’t have to track down Lance,” Linus said. “He’s in his dorm room right now.”

  Understanding filled Aunt Rachel’s face. “You’re not going to arrest him. Not yet, anyway. You’re going to let him keep the scepter and see if he’ll lead you back to the other Reapers like you originally planned.”

  Linus nodded. “We think that Lance stole the scepter, but he was wearing a cloak, so we have no real proof that it was him. No security footage or anything like that, which means that we have no grounds to arrest him. But don’t worry. We have Protectorate guards discreetly watching his dorm right now to keep all the other students safe. If Lance does try to use the artifact, the Protectorate will move in and arrest him immediately.”

  “And if he doesn’t use it?” I asked. “What then?”

  “Letting him keep the scepter is a calculated risk, but our intel suggests that Lance will meet up with Sisyphus—or one of his trusted lieutenants—sometime in the next few days to hand over the scepter,” Linus said. “We need to find out when and where the handoff will take place, recover the scepter, and capture and arrest all the Reapers.”

  He paused and looked at Takeda, who nodded. Linus turned back to me, and I knew what he was going to say next.

  “And we want you to help us do it, Miss Forseti.”

  Chapter Eight

  Linus’s words echoed from one side of the briefing room to the other and back again.

  For a moment, I sat there, wondering if I’d heard him right. But Linus’s and Takeda’s steady stares told me that they were very, very serious.

  “You want me to join your team a
nd spy on Lance,” I said.

  The two men both nodded again.

  “You’re a student here, so you know the campus and all the other kids much better than we do,” Takeda said. “You would be on the team in a temporary capacity, until we figure out what Lance and the other Reapers are planning.”

  “And now that Lance has the scepter, we need another fighter on our side,” Linus added. “Chimeras are extremely dangerous. Just one is an enormous challenge for even the most skilled warrior. You killed two of them tonight with relative ease.”

  I thought of the chimera’s burning red eyes and jagged teeth and the deep, bloody gashes it had clawed into my arm. Please. Nothing about that fight had been easy.

  “I’ve seen you in action, Miss Forseti. You’re one of the best fighters I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching.” Linus paused. “Except for Logan, of course.”

  So much warm pride filled his face that I merely nodded, instead of saying that I was a better warrior than Logan Quinn. Or at least admitting that we were equal when it came to our fighting skills.

  “So you want me to watch everyone’s backs while they try to stop Lance, Sisyphus, and this new army of Reapers,” I said. “Is that about right?”

  “It is,” Linus said.

  Aunt Rachel shook her head. “Absolutely not. Rory did her part at the Eir Ruins when Agrona and all those Reapers attacked us trying to get the Chloris ambrosia flowers. Not to mention how hard she fought during the final battle against Loki. She doesn’t have to do anything else. You can’t make her do anything else.”

  “No,” Linus said. “I can’t make Rory do anything. And you’re absolutely right, Ms. Maddox. The two of you have done more than your fair share of fighting against the Reapers.”

  Aunt Rachel sighed. “But?”

  “But if Lance, Sisyphus, and the Reapers aren’t stopped now, then more people will die. People at this academy and beyond. The situation is critical.”