59

59

Fear Is My Friend

The terror that wants to rip my guts out through my mouth on every scream is crippling, but I manage to take a breath. And then another.

“Did you lose a flag?” Diego asks.

It takes me at least two more breaths before I can force words through a jaw so stiff I could be a corpse. “Give me…a second.”

I focus on breathing. I can see the end of the tunnel, where there is a small light. We’re almost out. And my experiences—years in a place where I was forced to manage my fear or appear like the weakling all the other thieves thought I was—kick in harder with each breath. Thank the gods. Because fear isn’t debilitating. Not when you lean into it. Not when you listen to it for what it is. It’s a warning, your body’s way of telling you to live—to fight or flee or even sometimes freeze so that you survive.

Fear is a tool.

One I’ve been learning to use my entire life.

Granted, this fear is more than I’m used to, and it’s not coming from me, so I take the extra time to breathe through it. To let the adrenaline of it fill my muscles and instead of paralyzing me, galvanize me.

“Lyra?” Diego asks.

“I’m okay. I’m going to keep moving.”

“Okay.”

I position my body so that I can surge to my hands and knees and move fast. And when I do, that adrenaline is there, pumping through my veins, driving my muscles, and dulling the pain from all my bumps, bruises, and electric burns.

I keep crawling, and I don’t stop until I burst into the light. I still don’t stop, giving Diego enough room to get all the way out before I collapse to the ground, shuddering. I can see him as he drops next to me—he must have removed his ring.

The fear hasn’t stopped, even now that we’re safely out of the cave, resting in a small clearing. But I can contain it. I still have control. Sort of. I mean, my hands are in fists and my chest feels like there’s a boulder on it, but I’m not screaming or in a fetal position, so I consider that a win.

I guess if I had to lose a flag, that was the best one for me.

I roll my head in his direction. “You okay? Lose any flags?”

Diego shakes his head, then breaks out in a huge grin. “That’s two!” He holds up two fingers.

I laugh and groan at the same time, then roll to high-five him, only to grunt when he smacks one of my scorch marks.

He frowns. “I’m sorry.”

Come to think of it, every time that tunnel lit up, it was because I got zapped. “Did you get shocked at all?”

He gives a sheepish shake of his head.

We push to our feet and take one look at the next obstacle, and I have to pitch forward, hands on my knees, to contain the unnatural fear all over again.

The next obstacle appears to be a giant scrapyard with an obvious path right down the middle. Piles and piles of junk of all kinds. Metal scraps, crushed cars, tires. Mountains of them. There is a rusted metal arch indicating the entrance to this part of the challenge.

Something bad is going to happen the second we step inside. I just know it.

Honestly, if death wasn’t the result of not finishing this Labor, I’d cop a squat right here and wait until it’s all over. Tempting. Really tempting. But not today.

“Let’s keep going,” I say.

Diego nods.

I take a deep breath, readying for whatever horror is going to jump out at me from the billion hiding places in the junk mountain, and a swath of deep purple catches my eye from behind a rusted-out truck hull. Careful not to enter, I walk to the left leg of the arch to get a better view of Amir crouching behind the truck as he stuffs something in his mouth. Something white. He’s rocking as if he’s in horrible pain.

But before I can call to him, he jumps to his feet and sprints down the path. I guess I was wrong about the pain. He’s moving just fine, even with his boot on.

“Let’s go.” Diego tugs on me, and we enter the obstacle together.

I knew it. The second we pass through the arch, there’s a terrible screech like metal on metal. Not one screech…hundreds coming from all around.

Birds. They’re crawling out of the metal all over the junkyard, sort of the way my tattoos leave my arm, only they are peeling away from the scraps, leaving gaping holes. And not just any birds…

Stymphalian birds.

Not as big as recorded history says—maybe the size of crows. The metal of their snapping beaks catches the sun in a hundred flashes of light, as do their tails and longer wing feathers that they can turn into bronze at will.

As they break loose, they take to the air, then, in unison, dive straight for us.

An extra shot of adrenaline fires my blood. Thank fuck.

“Run,” I scream.

Heart pounding, I sprint down the path between the mountains of scrap until my legs burn and my lungs ache. I almost lose my footing as I look back over my shoulder to see how close the birds are, but I catch myself and come to a stop.

They’ve vanished.

“That was close,” I say to Diego between gasps. Not that I can see him, thanks to his ring. But I realize in the silence now that I can’t hear his footsteps or his breathing like I could before.

“Diego!” I call out softly, and then again when he doesn’t answer.

Maybe he passed me. “Great,” I mutter. I’m on my own now.

Wait a minute. When did I start to need other people to get through shit?

The metal around me screeches as more Stymphalian birds struggle to break away from the scrap.

Not my flags. Not today. Pumping my legs, I sprint between heaps. But a flash of a green uniform and red hair snags my attention as I dash past, and I double back, scanning for the birds, who haven’t caught up with me yet.

I find Neve huddled by a heap of crushed cars.

She’s on the ground, knees drawn up to her chest and rocking, whimpering in pain and babbling the same thing over and over. “Nora dies if I don’t win. She dies. She dies.”

I probably only have a few seconds before the birds track me down. I try to take her by the shoulders, but Neve screams and jerks away. Her Strength flag is gone, which means she’s drowning in pain the way I am in fear. Only she’s not controlling hers. Maybe because she’s also missing her Mind flag…confusion and pain.

At the sound of a bird rending itself from the metal right by us, she screams. “The birds. The birds.” Then she starts to crawl away through a tunnel in the junk. “Have to hide,” she mutters.

I frown as she crawls out of sight. Do I stay? Or abandon her and run, already having lost time?

“Fuck.” I drop to my knees to follow her.

And that’s when one of the birds rips my Strength flag off my arm.

Pain—like someone took a blowtorch to every nerve in my body—scorches through me, and I cry out. But I still have my wits, and, with every move an excruciating torture, I force myself to crawl after Neve.

Fear is telling me to give up. To just lie here and die from the agony ripping me apart.

Drawing deep, I force my hands and legs to move, and I don’t stop until I find her. She’s huddled inside a metal dumpster turned on its side, back to rocking and babbling about whoever Nora is, tears trailing down her face.

I crawl inside and hold very, very still. If I don’t move, the pain isn’t quite as bad. But as the birds continue to shriek outside, the fear builds, swelling within me as questions start to swarm. What if we’re both stuck here in pain and fear and confusion? What if the birds never let us leave? What if I can’t get myself out, let alone both of us?

I might start rocking and muttering myself in a second. I close my eyes and hum, focusing on a single image.

Hades.

As suddenly as it started, the metallic screeching outside stops, and I crack an eye. Are the apocalypse nightmare birds gone?

Every nerve screaming at me to stop, I manage to flip over and start crawling, grunting with every move, but Neve grabs my ankle. I immediately cry out, and it takes all I have not to vomit. She jerks back with a hiss, shaking her hand. Yup. Touching hurts like a son of a bitch for both of us.

“Not yet,” she whispers.

Is she working her way through that confusion?

I wait. But she stays quiet.

“Ready?” I whisper.

She blinks at me like she forgot I was here and has no idea what I’m talking about.

“Can you follow me?” I ask.

Another blink, and maybe that competitive thing Ares gave her kicks in, because her blue eyes clear just for a second and she nods.

And we crawl.

Once we’re back on the path, I force myself to stand, though my entire body shakes with the effort. “Don’t be seen,” she says in jerking words.

With a deep breath, she shoots her fisted hands out from her sides, and armor—bright bronze, speckled with stars—covers her chest and shoulders down to her hips, along with reinforced silver ankle and forearm protection. She cries out, probably at the touch of it against her skin, but starts moving regardless.

I follow.

Instead of running, which I’m not sure I could do anyway, we walk carefully, staying close to the heaps and piles, using the shadows and crevices as cover. I clamp a hand over my mouth both to stop myself from humming and to keep quiet, because after the second time a whimper of pain escaped me, Neve turned to glare at me. She is one of the Strength champions for a reason, that’s for sure.

Eventually, I can see it.

The end of the path.

It opens into a field with tall, brown grasses that will stand well above my head.

What next?

That terrible metal caw-caw screech of the birds comes from behind us, and my heart tries to explode. No choice now. “Run!”

With a yell that comes from the pit of her, pure determination, Neve propels herself forward. Damn, that woman is fast with her long legs, even in agony. I can’t keep up with her. She bursts into the grasses and disappears.

She left me.

She left me here to die. Like everyone does. Everyone leaves me.

Fear tries to grab at my feet and slow me down, stop me. But the metallic racket from behind me is enough to force that same fear to drive me forward, and I run into the grasses. They hurt. They brush against my skin, and it feels like I’m being scraped with razors over and over.

I have to stop and breathe through the pain, only to watch in what feels like slow-motion horror as a hand reaches out from the field and, before I can even think to get to my axe to defend myself, plucks the Mind flag right off my head.

Immediately, confusion joins the fear and pain—a heavy fog of it.

For a second, I’m lost. Like something dropped me in the middle of a nightmare and I have no idea why, and everything combines to an overwhelming pitch.

I slam my hands over my ears, which only makes the pain worse as I drop into a crouch, and I let out a scream to wake the dead. An immediate answering roar goes up not far away, and I cover my mouth. A second roar makes the grasses bend under the force of a smoky wind.

And panic pummels at me.

The grasses are so high, they should block my view, but I still see the purplish-black wings that rise and fall not far from me. Fear, believe it or not, blasts a hole in my confusion, clearing it like sun burns away fog.

A dragon.

I have to run from a dragon.