Lore

Lore looked back in time to see one hunter break through the lines of bodies falling to ash, jumping as he brought his sword down. The steel caught the strap of Castor’s vest, slicing through it into his shoulder.

Castor staggered back, his concentration momentarily shattered as he flipped his sword around and began his own attack.

More hunters spilled down into the station from the street above, swarming the platform behind her. Lore’s mind screamed for her to turn back, but she kept her gaze forward, fixed on the darkness ahead, running until Castor’s presence no longer burned at her back and the light of the flare disappeared like a dying star.

HER PHONE DIDN’T LINK back up with its cell service until she reached the knot of tunnels beneath Grand Central Station. Lore hadn’t considered how confusing it would be underground as three different subway lines intersected with the Metro-North rail.

“Shit.” Lore struggled with trembling hands to get her text messages open. The new one that loaded was from Miles, saying he was in position in the building above her. They had fifteen minutes until noon.

Cas in trouble, she typed on the thread with the others. 5th ave 7 Train. Going ahead now.

The GPS map wasn’t detailed enough to tell her which tunnels to take, just that she was moving in the correct direction.

By the time Lore found the last tunnel, her whole body was rigid with frustration. As she stood at the head of it, staring down its silky darkness, Lore hesitated, suddenly uncertain.

Lore had lost herself so many times before she didn’t completely understand how she’d found herself here. For a moment, she knew how Theseus must have felt in the Labyrinth, only she didn’t have Ariadne’s thread to guide her back out again.

She forced herself to take a breath. One hand choked the hilt of Mákhomai, while the other curled into a fist behind the aegis. The shield’s vibrations fed the roiling mass of dread in the pit of her stomach.

Her first step forward took as much effort as dragging herself through a dark tide. Lore didn’t know a prayer to help her now, or who might hear it. She felt the air stir around her, as if beings moved there, unseen, watching, waiting.

She pressed the curved edge of the aegis to her forehead, closing her eyes. She gripped the necklace, the feather charm, until the metal edges left an impression in her palm.

I can be free.

She was not Theseus in the Labyrinth, or Perseus in the gorgon’s lair. She was not Herakles, laboring in his tasks. She was not Bellerophon, who rode across the sky, Meleager on his hunt, or Kadmos fighting the serpent. She was not even Jason, triumphant at the edge of the world with the Golden Fleece in hand.

There was nothing fated. Lore had not been chosen for this; she had chosen to come here herself. Every step she’d made, every mistake, had led her here.

She was here because her father had taught her to hold a blade, because her mother had raised her strong and proud, because her sisters were forever unfinished people.

She was here for the city that had raised her, and she came with the pride of her ancestors and the strength of her heart, and neither would fail her.

Lore recognized them then—the shadows moving along the tunnel walls beside her.

“Stay with me,” she whispered, taking that next step. She repeated the words until they became the prayer she’d needed, and armor for her soul. “Please stay with me.”

Lore sprinted forward, shooting down the tunnel like an arrow released from the steadiest of hands. “Stay with me. . . .”

The air changed, and Lore knew she was close. An undercurrent of power licked at her senses, guiding her off that line and into a smaller tunnel.

Lore’s focus intensified as she ran along the tracks, water splashing up around her. Sooner than she’d expected, she reached a section of the subway divided off from the rest—the one that led beneath the Waldorf Astoria.

At the sound of voices, she slowed and switched off her flashlight.

“Listen to me, please!”

Belen, she thought. Lore reached up and removed one of the noise-canceling earbuds to better hear.

Indistinct shapes took form at the end of the line, in the cavernous space that was Track 61. Lanterns had been hung around, spotlighting sections of the otherwise pitch-black station.

It was nothing like the other subway stops she and Castor had walked through to get here. As Lore made her way forward, she struggled with her footing over two different sets of tracks hidden beneath the water. There were no raised platforms around them, leaving a generous amount of space to the right of the single flatbed subway car that waited ahead. A large silver tank, as big as the car itself, had been strapped atop it. If it was a bomb, it wasn’t like any she had seen.

“Do you doubt me?”

Wrath’s voice carried over to her, low and menacing. He moved around the flatbed and came into view. Nearby, a massive elevator loomed—one that no doubt led up into the hotel’s parking garage.

He was monstrous in his dark sublimity, his body rigid with muscle. He would have towered over even Castor, just as he towered over Belen now.

The young man backed away from him, holding his hands up. He was dressed in what looked to be a ceremonial robe, crimson embroidered with gold. Both of his hands were bandaged in a thick layer of white gauze.

The sheen on Wrath’s skin had to be some sort of gold paint. It covered his entire body beneath the ivory silk of his tunic. He wore polished bronze armor over his chest, as well as gauntlets and greaves. Worse, there was a familiar, spikey tan hide draped over him. Its head had been long ago cast in bronze to be worn like a helmet, as Wrath did now. It belonged to the Nemean lion, and it would make any skin it covered impervious to blades.

Panic gripped her. If he was dressed for battle, hours before sunset . . .

The information had been wrong again. Wrath’s plan was happening now.

Lore pulled out her phone, but there was still no service. She debated leaving, trying to get to higher ground to warn the others if they hadn’t already discovered it for themselves, but Belen spoke again, this time more desperate.

“You are the most powerful being in this world,” Belen said. “You have us, and we are devoted to you. All of us, my lord.”

“Is that so?” Wrath asked coldly. He circled his mortal son slowly, forcing Belen back toward the flatbed without ever needing to draw a blade.

“You don’t need her,” Belen continued, his voice pitching up.