My hand, as though of its own accord, kept on digging the heel into the monster’s neck, as my vision grew dim and dark.
Pol muttered obscenities, whimpered. I heard him move. His harsh, panting breath rasped from behind me.
My hand on the broad shoulders of the beast, I turned my head to yell at him to go back. Nats couldn’t survive what we artifacts could. And, gigolo though he might be, he’d shown courage enough to be an artifact himself. He shouldn’t just be killed now.
But I couldn’t find the strength to talk and warn him off. My mouth was too dry.
Pol, his left arm hanging like a limp rag at his side, lurched up behind me and, evading the creature’s teeth with speed and reflexes worthy of the best artifacts, stuck the shoe heel into the human chest beneath the bull’s head.
The beast bellowed and shuddered. Its great head snapped up and back.
My thigh ripped. I flew up and then down again, landing against the wall. Darkness closed in.
“Wake up, please. Wake up.” Pol’s raspy voice sounded like he’d cried himself to exhaustion.
I tried to open my eyes and saw his eyes—sea green and full of tears—floating as if in a sea of darkness.
The Minotaur…. A dream?
Sudden stabbing pain from my thigh brought me to full consciousness.
The pain came from a tourniquet which Pol was tying on my leg. He held an end of the cloth in his good hand and the other between his teeth.
He tied the frayed, bloodstained piece of cloth into a tight, tight noose around my mangled limb, and looked apologetically up at me. “I know it hurts, but the blood.”
I nodded. “Your arm?” My voice was a bare growl, but my vision improved slowly. I blinked drops of sweat away from my eyes.
Pol had tied a tourniquet on himself, clumsily but effectively enough.
He glanced at it, shrugged as if the ruin of the pretty body that was his fortune meant nothing. “Repairable,” he said. “If we get out of here in time.” He gave me a mirthless teeth-only grin and sniffled back tears. “Only I don’t think rescuers are coming. I think someone sabotaged the whole site. Unless you believe that was vegetarian.” He gestured towards the corpse of the Minotaur.
“No,” I said. Faint and nauseated, I felt bile burn my throat. No one else moved, nothing else made a sound. Pol and I were the only living beings. Smells of spilt blood and torn flesh stung my nostrils. “No.”
Pol’s companion hadn’t wanted to enter the labyrinth. “I’m sorry about your friend,” I said, as I dragged myself up on my elbows.
He flashed me another of his quick, joyless smiles. “Nary? Yes, I’ll miss her.” He glanced at her corpse. Tears shone in his eyes. “I don’t even know…” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We’re going to die anyway. I have no idea how to get out of here. We can’t rely on rescuers finding us. Not after this. So we’re going to die here. Lost.”
I almost laughed. For the first time since my freedom, my carrier-pigeon sense of direction would come in handy.
Of course, I’d have to tell Pol about it. I sighed. Weak and tired, I needed sympathy and human comfort, both things he wasn’t likely to expend on a bio-engineered creature like me. Of course, I hadn’t made a secret of my identity. My ring was there, for all to see. However, judging from the way he’d played up to me, his accomplice looks, his smiles, I couldn’t believe he’d seen it.
Once he saw it, he was likely to demand I guide him and never mind if I died in the process, dragging myself down the dark, smelly hallways. Freed artifacts were protected from murder by law. But causing their death from neglect probably would bring no penalty. Judges were natural-born.
No matter. We had to get out. We had to. And I had no time for pride, no patience to wheedle sympathy form this pretty, spoiled nat. Even if I had to crawl out of here, I refused to die. I’d survive. I always survived.
Sunken dark rings surrounded Pol’s aqua-marine eyes and he had gone so pale that his lips looked grey. Nats were fragile. He needed a doctor.
I would have to tell him of my nature and of my talent. “We can get out,” I said. “I was created with a sense of direction. For my work.”
He nodded. His eyes widened slightly. His generous lips tightened into a line. “All right, then,” he said. “I help you out and you guide us, right?” He bent and offered me his good hand, to help me stand.
Either he hadn’t heard what I’d said, or he was unusual indeed. He would help me out? He was still willing to touch me after knowing I’d been created?
I gave him a sidelong glance and sighed. Maybe he was just a practical man. He knew I’d take much too long to crawl out of here.
I sighed. Think of mythology enough, and you might find yourself living it. Just like my mythical namesake, I’d get to guide handsome Theseus out. And at the islet of Zeus, or some other convenient purlieu, he could leave me asleep and go on to his glorious destiny.
His companion had looked rich. He’d inherit. She would have made provisions. And, if not, there would be some other natural human hungry for beauty and company who would take him in a heartbeat, and provide him with all his heart’s desire.
Something I could never do, on my professor’s salary.
He helped me up.
“We turn left here,” I told him. “And the next one is right, but I’ll have to get there before I sense exactly which doorway it is.”
My leg hurt like the blazes. I had to lean against him and put my arms around his neck. My face pressed against his broad, golden chest. His heart thumped rhythmically. He smelled of sweat with faint traces of sun lotion.
He put his arm underneath mine, supporting me.
It was the only way I was likely to be embraced by a natural male, much less one this beautiful.
We progressed slowly. I held onto the walls. He held me up.
“What is your name?” His voice echoed distorted, through his chest.
“Ariadne. Ariadne Knossos.” If he didn’t know what I was before he would know now. Artifacts were always given mythological or pseudo-classical names. It was another way to make us different.
“Ariadne? Really? How appropriate.”
Ah. Two minds that thought like one. My throat closed.
I didn’t want him to despise me. Not him. Even though I was in pain, I could feel his attraction. He was beautiful and brave and even if he’d allowed himself to be bought, he’d had the decency of crying for the woman who’d paid him—annoying though she’d seemed.
I wanted his attention, his admiration. Long denied hormones surged to the surface or my being.
I’d been taken out of the crèche just at the onset of puberty and my work hadn’t required me to come in contact with men. For the company who’d created and employed me, I had been little more than an animated message system. The body and the gender had come as part of a package they didn’t find it worth to break up. From the moment of my official activation, on leaving the crèche, constant traveling had kept me from relationships with my kind. As for male nats, I shied away from them. Too many female artifacts were created as pleasure toys and anyone I approached would only think of me like that.
I’d rather be celibate and keep my dignity.
But now, free and almost thirty, here I was with my face pressed up against the most handsome nat I’d ever met and my libido—or something—surged. In my present state I couldn’t seduce him. But oh, I wished I could. Even if he thought of me as a toy. Even if it were for only one night.
“What was your… job?” He gasped for breath and his chest muscles moved, beneath my face.