108

108

The Final Blow

Every part of me gets hit so hard with another burst of adrenaline, fear, and shock, my skin feels electrified.

It can’t be.

I very slowly turn and find Cerberus is there before me, bigger than ever, as if he’s grown to the same proportions as the other two monsters.

“Kill the mortal,” Cer snaps inside my mind. He lifts all three heads and sniffs the air. “Kill her,” Rus snarls. Ber just growls, showing me teeth designed to rend the flesh from my bones.

Sour bile rushes up my throat, and I swallow the burn back down.

This isn’t him. This can’t be him. The rage pouring through his voices is…feral. Rabid. Which is when I catch sight of Ber’s eyes. Black, soulless eyes. Like the minotaur. Zeus has to have them spelled. All of them.

But…the Labor is over.

We crossed the last finish line. Do all of us have to cross, like the other two gates? Except the gate is already gone. Thoughts fly through my head in a thousand directions.

Run. Hide. Help Cerberus.

Where the hells is Hades? Forget interfering. Zeus took Hades’ godsdamned pet and is loosing him on me after the Labor is already over. That fucker is cheating. If the hound is killed, Hades will never forgive himself. We can’t kill him. I won’t let the others. But I can’t let him hurt them, either.

Holding my axes up before me—a barrier between him and them—I face him. “Don’t—”

A black paw slams into me from the side. I hear Cerberus growl as, on a cry, my arms flailing, I sail up into the air and back down. When I hit, my axes go sliding away in opposite directions and the wind knocks out of me so forcefully, my next breath sounds like I’m dying.

That horrible noise of trying to make my lungs work again is immediately drowned out by Cerberus’ howls as he leaves the other champions behind and runs straight at me.

I see my friends scatter as soon as his back is turned, helping one another try to get to safety somewhere. Anywhere. My lungs are still struggling, and I’m swinging wildly between needing air and needing to run. The axes are too far away to get to both of them. I have my last pearl in my hand before I even think. It’s my only way out. There’s nowhere to hide here.

“Cerberus,” I yell. He’s so close. Right on top of me. “Don’t do this. It’s me. It’s Lyra.”

Cer…smiles. “I know.”

What happens next comes so fast, I don’t realize what I’m seeing until it’s over. Cerberus lunges for me, and a massive spear made of bone lifts into the sky over his head, startling white with my changed sight.

“No!” I scream.

Too late.

The skeleton soldier plunges it into Cerberus’ back. With a pathetic, horrible, heartbreaking yelp from all three heads, the hellhound twists around on the soldier, even as he falls to the ground.

And I have to scramble back to not get crushed when he does.

“No.” The word tears from my throat. Then I’m stumbling to get around Cerberus’ body to stop the bone soldier from finishing the job. “Don’t hurt him,” I order.

I don’t care if Cerberus eats me. I can’t let him die.

My protector immediately stands at attention, waiting for my next order.

“Lyra?” Cer’s voice is shaky in my head now. No more fury. No more mindless rage.

“Oh gods,” I whisper.

I reach out, only to jerk away at the sticky feel of blood, and Cer flinches from my touch, whimpering. His rapid pants are shallow and raspy. Ber and Rus are limp on the ground, eyes closed, unconscious and unmoving.

“I did not hurt you.”

I pat his head. “You didn’t hurt me.”

“I could see what I was doing, but I could not stop myself.” His voice is growing fainter.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” I’m shaking so hard, my hands keep clenching in jerking spasms, nausea rolling through me. “Can you get us to Hades?”

Where is Hades, anyway?

“Too…weak…”

“What will…fix you?”

“Only…the…” He stops, giving a pathetic little mewl. “Styx.”

Then Cer growls, the sound broken but fierce as he looks at something behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up, like I’ve touched a light socket. I don’t have to look to know, but I do anyway.

Zeus.

Oh fuck. I really should have grabbed my axes before coming over to Cerberus.

The god’s expression twitches with a sort of thwarted fury, but that’s not what makes me backpedal. It’s that, with my eyes still filled with Eos’ tears, I’m seeing things now. And what I see is a shimmering veil of mesh over Zeus’ face. In the odd rendering of the tears, it’s all sorts of colors, like looking through a prism, and fitted to his features like it’s been painted on.

What the hells is that?

Cold, heavy dread takes over my limbs, and I can’t move, can’t speak. I really wish freeze wasn’t one of my trauma responses.

Incredulity ripples over Zeus’ features. “I’ll be damned,” he mutters, then points an accusing finger at me. “You are the baby I cursed in my temple? The unlovable one?”

Shit. Now he remembers?

I lift my hands in the air in surrender, turning to face the god more fully.

He laughs, the sound a little out of control. Then he starts muttering and pacing. Something about, “If he knew all along, then he planned to become king.”

While he’s distracted, I roll my last pearl between my fingers, inching closer to Cerberus. I’ll take him with me. To Styx, obviously. Maybe Charon can help him.

I slowly stretch my fingers toward Cer’s head.

“No—” Zeus rounds on me, and his brows snap down in a scowl so dark, so wrathful, it transforms a face that is almost boyish in its handsomeness to twisted and terrifying. “I can’t let him win.”

So fast I barely register the movement, Zeus throws out his arms, and he is covered in head-to-toe armor. My mortal mind and body are too slow to react as lightning flashes from his hands and hits me right in the belly.

When the colossal boom and scorching flash of light recede, I’m not dead.

Not yet.

I’m on the ground, coughing up blood. The metallic taste of it in my mouth is the only thing that seems real. I don’t even feel the pain yet.

Vaguely, I’m aware that the blast knocked me into Cerberus. My constricting throat makes every tortured breath an agony. I don’t have to look at my stomach to know it’s bad. Hands over my belly, I can feel the wide gash, the blood surging out of me with every pump of my heart—too fast. I’m losing too much blood. Weakness and heaviness invade my limbs and slow my mind.

Hades. Where are you?

“Lyra…”

Cerberus.

“I’m…still…here,” I manage to whisper. I think I do. I’m not sure if my voice is working.

I’m still clutching the pearl. I close my eyes, scrunching them hard. I’m dead. I already know it, but maybe I can help him before I go. Even the Styx can’t heal me from this one. Not fast enough. Not without more of Hades’ blood first, and we don’t have time for that.

Cer noses at me weakly, then falls back. And that’s when I shove the pearl in his mouth, my hand coming away covered in thick, sticky drool. “Think of the Styx.”

“No—”

But he’s already gone.

I go limp on the ground. That took everything I had left. Now…I’m just going to lie here and die. At least I did something good with my last precious seconds of time. I stare up into the brightening sky and picture the Underworld. I’ll be there soon enough.

Hades.

He’s going to blame himself for this when he finds out. A tear squeezes from the corner of my eye.

Then Zeus’ feet come into view directly in front of me. Probably to finish the job.

Honestly, I’d rather go fast than sit here and bleed anyway.

I smile. “Bring it, asshole.”