“So what will we do?” I draw a hand to my chest and fist my jacket.
Another scream ricochets from within the depths of the darkness and inches my fraying nerves to the edge of some mental abyss.
“It’s not going to get any easier,” Harpoc says, extending an open palm toward that dark maw. “Let’s see what we’ve got on our hands before we decide anything.”
My legs freeze.
Harpoc catches the fear in my eyes when I still haven’t moved a minute later. “Do you trust me?”
I can only bob my head. He dealt with the sphinx. Had it not been for idiot archeologists, no one would have gotten hurt.
“Give me your hand. We’ll get through this… together.”
My arm trembles as I reached out and he takes it and gives it a squeeze.
“Ready?”
No. “Yes.”
Mrs. O’Grady dragging my nine-year-old ass to the dentist when I had an abscessed tooth, bolts to mind as we skirt the makeshift barricade. I still can’t stand the sound of the drill, tool of the devil, that’s what it is.
Zephyr’s next screech is no better. The hard rock amplifies it all the more as we navigate the illuminated concrete stairs that descend into the bowels of the earthen cavity.
I clutch the metal handrail with my left hand.
You can do it, Pell. You’re being responsible.
Getting myself killed more like.
Harpoc keeps squeezing my right hand as we make our way past a wall of stalactites and stalagmites that’s lit up with green and yellow lights, or perhaps that’s the natural color of the rocks, I can’t tell. I would stop and marvel at their beauty if I didn’t have a pressing prior engagement.
The concrete stairs get slick as we continue. It’s apparently the perfect invitation for my alter ego, Grace, to make another appearance because I feel the stair slip out from under me, and despite Harpoc’s reactions, my arms pinwheel, but I can’t stop my hip from meeting the edge of the stair.
I yip, grasping for the railing.
Of course I land just below where my coat stops—it can’t be higher. Nope. Just like mine, Grace’s mantra is “go big or go home,” and like always, she never fails.
My side starts throbbing. I’ll have a colorful bruise, maybe as colorful as the walls, one to match my other side where I crashed and burned playing mountain goat for the scrolls, but what else is new.
Harpoc leans over and extends a hand. “Are you okay?”
“Does it look like I’m okay?” I frown.
“Little Miss Graceful, I see.” He barely staunches a smirk now that he knows I’ll live. “I have to say, I’ve never seen anyone fall with quite that much flair.”
“Ha ha, glad I can be your comedic relief, now help me up.”
Another heart-rending screech echoes as I rise. No avoiding Zephyr any longer because with her shrill cry I also hear the sound of wings brushing rock, and it’s getting closer.
That sinking feeling of plunging over the first rise of that rollercoaster, again, overwhelms me as a shadow swoops across the wall from around the bend ahead.
I grab the lower rail of the handrail, crouching despite my hip smarting. Harpoc stands as still as a soldier beside me.
This is it, don’t chicken out now, Pell.
Gold eye, silver eye. Gold eye, silver eye.
Zephyr isn’t completely avian, I note in an instant as the lights illuminate her as she rounds the corner in the distance and screeches again.
I’m frozen from fright and can’t cover my ears as I squint through the rails. Her head and torso are that of a naked woman, with breasts that rise and fall with each flap of her enormous black, feathered wings; they may look like Harpoc’s wings, but I have zero desire to touch them.
As for her bosom, whew, her knockers are huge. They’d give me a backache for sure.
Long white hair flows behind her, and her shins are covered in what look like green scales at this distance. She turns sharp talons on us and flexes them as she soars closer, adding another ear-piercing screech as her gaze locks on us. Her breasts undulate wildly as she banks in the large cavity we stand at the edge of.
I feel my bowels loosen and squeeze my butt muscles.
She’s who I brought back? She fears Zeus? My whole body starts to shake.
She’s a wind spirit, a hound of Zeus, and she leaves no question as to why she and her kind have earned that reputation.
I clutch the rail, knuckles turning white, forgetting about my smarting leg. Harpoc hasn’t so much as flinched. He raises a hand, then bellows, “Zephyr, stop.” His words bounce around the hard walls.
I hold my breath as Zephyr keeps coming.
We don’t stand a chance. We’re Frick and Frack—I’ve seen the old reruns.
“You have a choice, Zephyr,” Harpoc booms in Greek, ignoring her squawks. “Go to Atrop on Sonmel Island and guard the gates to the Underworld with your sisters, or I’ll be forced to employ other measures to stop you.”
The thunder of his voice rams the fear of god into me, packs it down hard, and keeps filling me, to overflowing.
It takes a second for his words to register, but when they do my hands turned clammy. “Your sisters,” it’s what he says. There are more of these things in the world? She isn’t the only one? Wherever Sonmel Island is, it’s way too close.
I gulp down breaths to stay quiet.
Get up, Pell, face her, it’s the only way. He says so.
Are you crazy?
I chance a look at Harpoc beside me.
Shit!
His flaring nostrils, bared teeth, and cold, flinty eyes make him look like a completely different person, a brutal cutthroat. I’ve guessed he’s dangerous, but this… it’s a glimpse of who
