31 The Minotaur

31

The Minotaur

"Do we need to go over the plan again?"

I hang on to what's left of my patience with everything I have. "What plan, Hermes? All you've said is that I need to walk through the front door."

She beams at me. "Exactly. Now you're getting it."

I resign myself to not getting any further information and check my phone one last time. There's nothing from Ariadne, aside from letting me know that they got to the address Hermes provided safely. That should be enough to reassure me, but everything about this feels rushed and wrong.

I don't even know where the fuck we are. Hermes drives like an erratic old person on a Sunday outing, weaving and making wrong turns and circling back. I don't know how the fuck she has a license because she's an absolute terror. We're somewhere near the edge of Olympus, but I can't begin to guess where exactly. I keep having to tell myself that this isn't a trap. If she wanted to ambush me, she's had plenty of opportunity to do so.

The building we stand in front of looks abandoned. The glass on all the windows is foggy with dust and grime. The brick walls need a good power washing. I wouldn't look twice at it if I was walking past…unless I noticed that the door has a brand-new lock or that there's a camera tucked up in the eaves.

Someone really doesn't want anyone to notice this place.

Hermes fiddles with her phone. "Give me just a moment… Oh. There we go. You can walk in now. Remember, I need ten minutes."

"To do what?" I'm speaking to empty air. She's melted into the shadows behind us. I stare hard at them, trying to divine where she went, but there's no way to tell. I know she said it's pure athletics that allows her to do this, but I can't stop myself from shuddering. That shit is freaky as fuck.

I glance around, but the street is just as deserted as it was when we first arrived. It's not late, but this place has even less to offer than the warehouse district. There isn't a single soul around as I cross to the front door. It feels absolutely absurd to try the door, but it swings open soundlessly in response to my touch.

She really did hack it. It should be impossible with this tech, but when have the rules ever applied to Hermes?

I curse myself for getting into this mess and walk through the door. The outside of the building might lean more toward office, but inside is all military. There's a foyer with a booth on the other side. Two people stand inside it, their shocked faces showing through the glass.

Well, shit.

Hermes could've given me some warning. As the guards and I stare at each other, I notice that their black uniforms don't have an expected crest on the shoulders. It's not Athena or Ares or even Artemis. It's the gears and tools that denote Hephaestus.

She really was right. There's something important pertaining to the barrier here.

"Hey."

They stare at me. One is tall and nearly as broad as me, their skin the sickly kind of pale that comes when white people spend too much time away from the sun. The other one is nearly an identical build, but with warm medium-brown skin and a shaved head.

How long has it been? A minute? Two? I guess we could stare at each other for the next ten minutes while Hermes does whatever it is that she's doing. But surely there are more people here than just this pair. If they're going to such lengths to keep this place hidden, they would leave more than two people here to protect it.

I have the distant thought that Theseus had never mentioned this place, but he was a really shitty Hephaestus. His people hated him, and he hated the job. There's probably a lot of really important stuff that he just never noticed or knew to even ask about. The irony that he held the position that we needed to actually bring down the barrier is almost too much to bear. I can't even hold it against him, though, because neither one of us are cerebral. That's not the kind of weapons Minos trained us to be. If he wanted us to be brainiacs, he should've gone about shit a different way. That's on him.

All at once, the guards snap out of their shock. They draw their guns and start shouting. "What are you doing here? How did you get in? Who are you?"

The last one almost makes me laugh. For once, my reputation hasn't proceeded me. Typical that it's the one time it would've been useful. I hold my hands up slowly, skating my gaze around the room once more. There's not a lot to work with here, but I don't need much to make shit happen. "I'm just a tourist looking for a good time."

They exchange a look of disbelief. The white guy starts to lower his gun. "Dude, you're in the wrong place."

His friend narrows his eyes. "He's lying. There's no way he could've got through the door unless he was trying to." He points his gun right in my face. "Put your hands behind your head."

"Sure, sure." I do as he asks, but my shoulder screams in protest and the movement is jerky.

The white guy jumps back a step and grabs his radio. "Intruder at the front! We need more people up here."

Well, fuck.

The other guy curses and hurries toward me, out of the relative safety of his little booth. Another mistake in a long line of them. People get guns in their hands and think they're invulnerable. If they were trained properly, they would know better. It's super fucking easy to take a gun from someone when you're in close proximity.

Which is exactly what I do the moment he reaches for my hands. I spin and deliver a sucker punch to bend him in half. From there, it's child's play to grab the pistol. I kick the back of his knees, sending him flailing to the floor, and aim the gun at his friend. "Drop your weapon."

I don't wait for him to decide what he's going to do before I move forward and slam my pistol butt into his temple. His eyes roll back in his head and he slips to the floor. I take the opportunity to grab his gun, eject the clip, and toss it across the room.

The first guard has a couple of zip ties, so I use those on both of them. He sputters threats that I ignore because the door deeper into the building opens and eight more people emerge. " Fuck ."

Ariadne would want me to not kill them, but I promised her I'd make it back to her safely. Their lives versus my promise? It's no contest. Even so, I shoot the first one in the kneecap instead of the head. They topple into the person next to them, making their shot go wide.

Two strides and I'm in the middle of them. Shittily trained or not, they hesitate to use their guns in such close proximity for fear of shooting each other. I use that to my benefit. I ignore my wound shrieking in pain and slam two of their heads together hard enough that I feel the sound the contact makes. They drop with twin groans. Three down.

The fourth tries to shoot me in the face, but I jerk their pistol up, peppering the ceiling with bullets as they pull the trigger wildly. I count the rounds in my head as we struggle. Eight, nine, ten. The gun clicks. I step back and punch him in the face hard enough to make him stagger back… Right into the bullet spray of the person behind him. Blood spatters me and the floor and he goes down.

The fifth one and I look at each other. Their eyes are wide, probably because they just murdered their companion. Not my problem. I shoot them in the shoulder, the impact spinning them away from me and sending their gun flying.

Three more.

My back is one fiery block of pain. I can't keep this up indefinitely. Ten people is several too many to fight with my current injury. Still, I can't help picturing Ariadne's disappointed face when she finds out I killed just under a dozen people. I'm a fool. A godsdamned bloody fool.

Take out both kneecaps of the sixth, punch the seventh in the throat, and kick the eighth in the balls, breaking their nose with my knee when they bend over in agony.

My breath saws in my lungs, and I spin around, fully expecting another attack. None comes. They're all groaning and moaning on the ground, except for the dead one. From there, it's quick work to find zip ties in the booth and secure them all. The seventh tries to give me trouble, but I punch them in the throat again, and then it's easy enough to get their hands tied together.

I straighten and stretch carefully. Fuck, I'm sore. "By my count, I only have a few minutes left, so sit there and don't make me kill you." They glare and curse, but they're mostly helpless.

I step into the booth and am pleased to note they have security cameras rolling. As I previously noted, the rest of the interior does little to match the abandoned vibes of the outside. It takes me several long seconds to realize what I'm looking at—a massive machine that seems to disappear into a tunnel heading toward the perimeter of the city.

Is this the barrier? Or at least part of it? When we came into the city, passing through the barrier almost felt like magic. It shimmered in the evening lights in a way that felt odd even to me. To see that reduced to gears moving in a seamless rhythm feels a little bit like peeking behind the curtain of a magician's trick. It was never magic. I knew that, but apparently part of me was still clinging to that awe. I should really know better by now.

Movement on one of the screens draws my attention. I watch in fascination as Hermes rushes through the space, light on her feet and moving at nearly a sprint. There are a few guards who maintained their position instead of coming to fight me, but they don't stand a chance against her. I don't see exactly what she does to them; the only thing I know for sure is that they fall to the floor as she passes them. It's seamless on a truly overwhelming scale. I knew she was a menace, but this display of competence puts her into an entirely new category in my brain.

Hermes is dangerous .

Once she's dispatched all the guards, she ducks into the tunnel the machinery descends into. When she reappears a few moments later, the backpack she had been carrying is nowhere in evidence. She hurries through the corridors and walks through the door into the foyer. She's not even breathing hard.

"Ten. Well done. You were an excellent distraction." She raises her brows at me. "Why are they still alive?"

I raise my brows right back. "I did mention that your plan wasn't explicit. You didn't say you wanted them dead."

"You're the Minotaur. I thought it would've been readily apparent." She plucks a fallen gun from the ground and fires at each guard without looking. A perfect headshot each time. And she does it without a single bit of remorse on her pretty face. "No witnesses."

"Hermes."

"Hold, please." She turns back to the door and places a small charge on the frame at the top. "We need to get out of here. The building is coming down."

"And the barrier?"

"That will be a little later." She turns back to me. "It will take you some time to collect Ariadne and Icarus and get to the marina. I'm giving you that time." She flicks her fingers at the charge. "But no one will be able to get down to that room to stop the bomb from going off. Come on."

I don't ask her how she knows my plans. It doesn't matter. But I appreciate it all the same. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me. I take no joy in any of this." She casts a single look at the dead bodies and marches through the front door, leaving me to follow on her heels. "Olympus needs to be focused on the outside threat, not on worrying about what I'm doing."

It seems to me that the only thing Olympus should be worried about is what Hermes is doing. But her actions are serving my purpose, so I keep my mouth shut and follow her out the door.

We walk a block in silence before a roar sounds behind us and a cloud of dust kicks up as the building comes down. Just like she planned. She turns abruptly to me. "Pleasure doing business with you."

I stare at her outstretched hand. "You used me as bait."

"Only a little. I knew you could handle it and, look at that, you handled it. Now, you're wasting time." She rolls her eyes and wiggles her fingers until I take her hand and allow her to shake mine. "Good luck with the rest of your life."

"Just like that?"

She extracts her hand from mine and gives me a narrow look. "Literally nothing from the start of this situation has been ‘just like that.' I'm cleaning up a mess generations in the making. Now stop wasting time and get out of here."

I watch her walk away until she turns the corner and disappears. If I gave a shit about Circe or the Olympians, I would tell them all to watch out for Hermes. But I don't, so I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Ariadne.

"Hello?"

I frown. "What happened? Why do you sound like that?"

She laughs but not like anything is funny. "We had a close call with some Olympians. Athena's people. They know we came to this house. We managed to trick them into thinking that we left, but I don't know how long that will hold before they circle back. We're kind of trapped."

Alarm floods me. "I'm on my way."

"Okay." The relief in her voice only makes me worry more. "Did you do what you needed to with Hermes?"

I glance back at the remains of the unassuming building filled with dead guards and then turn the corner and head deeper into town. "We have maybe an hour or so before the barrier comes down. I'm going to come for you, and then we're going to the marina. Stay inside until I get there. I'll call you when it's safe to come out."

"What are you going to do?"

"The same thing they were going to do to you if they caught you." I take a deep breath and keep going before she has a chance to protest. "I'm going to clear a path. We don't have time for a messy confrontation, so it will be a quick getaway."

She takes a sharp breath like she's about to argue with me and then exhales shakily. "Okay. We'll keep our heads down until you get here. Please be safe."

"I haven't failed you yet, sweetheart." It feels like a lie. Safety is the one thing I can't guarantee. Actually, there's not shit I can guarantee right now. I'm going to do my damnedest to get her and her brother out of here, but with both Minos and the Olympians gunning for us, that's a tall order.

It's only as I'm hot-wiring a car to head toward the address I sent them to that I wonder if this was all part of Hermes's plan from the beginning. She doesn't want Olympus or Circe looking too closely at her, so she's offered us up as sacrificial lambs to keep their attention. It seems like something she would do.

Fuck that. I'm done sacrificing for other people, and I'm sure as shit done letting Ariadne do it. We're getting out of here, and the rest of them can murder each other and raze the city to the ground for all I care.