He stared up at the seething seven-foot monster in front of him. Blood and sweat and other disgusting things he didn’t want to think about dripped down its ugly face. The shiver that ran through Max was a mixture of the near-zero temperatures this far north in mid-October, and the fear that lanced through every cell in his small body.
“You. Will. Pay!” The daemon lunged, his sword slicing through air, coming dangerously close, but one thing Mr. Ugly didn’t count on was how quick someone only four and a half feet tall could be.
As if fueled by some outside source, Max darted between the daemon’s legs, whipped back and sliced out with his own blade, cutting deep into the daemon’s thigh. The monster howled, dropped his sword and went down to one knee. Blood spurted from what could only be his femoral artery, spraying over Max and the ground. Bile welled in Max’s throat, but he lifted his sword again, ready to strike. To finish this. The need to annihilate stronger than anything he’d felt before.
“Good. Good, Maximus.” Atalanta’s voice echoed in his ear. “Let your hatred guide you. Finish him. Plunge your blade deep into his chest. Then send his soul to Hades for all eternity by decapitating the beast.”
He wanted to. His muscles ached to kill. But the pride he heard in Atalanta’s voice stopped his forward momentum.
The monster lifted its face, his glowing green eyes now level with Max. There was fear there, true fear at what would happen to him. And in that instant Max saw himself reflected back in those eyes. He saw the weeks of training, the years of hopelessness and his own fight just to stay alive. And he saw that Atalanta was winning.
He dropped his blade, stumbled backward. Couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from the daemon in front of him. A kind of respect passed between them. And on the daemon’s part, a thanks, if you could call it that. But it was probably more relief. Tomorrow he’d be healed of this wound and be ready to take Max on again. This time to the death.
“Spineless.” Atalanta swept by Max, picked up his blade and thrust it into the daemon’s chest. The monster’s eyes went wide. He reached for the blade, but she yanked it from his body, swung out and decapitated the beast without so much as a grunt. His grotesque head hit the ground just before his body fell.
Max’s eyes grew wide, but he didn’t run or even gasp. He’d seen her kill before. Knew he would see it again.
She rounded on him, leaned down and narrowed her black-as-night eyes. “I grow tired of your humanity, Maxi-mus. Kill or be killed. That is the world in which we live. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you will take your place at my side.”
She was tall, close to six and a half feet, he guessed, and with her jet-black hair, which fell straight to her waist, her snow-white skin, her coal eyes and those high, sharp cheekbones, probably pretty to some, but not to him. This close she smelled sweet, of honey and spun sugar. But he knew how deadly she was. The beauty was a mask. Inside she was as sick and twisted as the daemons who served in her army. And when she struck, her sting was worse than any scorpion’s.
“Yes, Maximus,” she whispered, a wry smile sliding across her perfect face as she leaned in closer. “I feel your hatred for me right now. You want to lash out. To hurt me. But you can’t. Because I am your matéras. Feed the feeling, yios. Channel it. Direct it back to the ones who created me. To those who are responsible for your misery now. You know the root of all evil lies with the Argonauts.”
She let the last word linger near his ear, her hot breath running down his neck, under the collar of his thin shirt. The sickness he’d been fighting condensed in his stomach and rose to his throat, and it was all he could do to swallow it back.
Her eyes were filled with victory as she eased away, but there was also something else there. Disgust at how he had failed her yet again.
He stared at her. Didn’t break the eye contact. Knew she’d see it as another sign of weakness if he did. But she was right. He did hate her, and he did want to hurt her. Though what stopped him wasn’t the fact she claimed she was his matéras. No, he stopped because the humanity left in him that she hated so much wouldn’t break. Not while he breathed air in his lungs.
She rose to her full height, her red robes pooling around her feet, and glared down at him. One perfect hand lifted and pointed back toward the fortress across the barren field. “Leave me now before I change my mind and let Thanatos have a crack at you.”
Though he wanted to run, Max turned and walked across the frozen ground, head held high, shoulders back. When he reached the massive log structure, he darted around the side to the servants’ entrance at the back. He knew his place. Though the bulk of Atalanta’s army was housed in the barracks nestled in the woods and steep-rising mountains behind the property, a few of her “chosen” resided with her in the big house. Thanatos, her archdaemon. A couple of servants. And him.
He went in through the kitchen and silently climbed the rickety back stairs to the fourth floor. This huge house, more like a wilderness lodge than anything else, was still an improvement over the Underworld. There he hadn’t had his own space. Here, even though it was freakin’ cold 24-7 and his toes were in a constant state of numbness, at least he had more than a corner to call his own.
After being banished from Hades for reasons he still didn’t understand, Atalanta had moved her army to this barren wasteland deep in the forests of northern British Columbia. He knew why she’d brought them here. Because it was isolated. Just as he knew this house and all the land around it had once belonged to some old oil tycoon who’d struck it rich somewhere in Alaska. That man was now dead, the gruesome details of his mutilation alive in Max’s mind thanks to Thanatos, but no one in the nearby community of Fort Nelson had any idea a demigod from the Underworld was living among them. None realized they would soon die. Or that the woman who now resided here plotted revenge and was formulating a way to take over the world.
His thighs ached by the time he reached the fourth level. He was so tired from the day’s fighting he could barely see straight. At the end of the long hall that split the floor in half, he eased open the three-foot-high door and crawled through the small space. Inside, he grasped the rungs of the dusty, wooden ladder and climbed until he reached the attic. Then finally sighed in relief.
Across the dirty floorboards, his pallet beckoned. The filthy porthole-shaped window high on the wall looked out at the frozen gold-brown training field, but he didn’t spare it a glance. He never did. Its only use was to let light into the dingy room, as it did now.
He was grubby, covered in blood and sweat, and he needed a shower in the worst possible way, but it could wait. Right now he wanted comfort. The kind he could only get from one thing.
He crossed the room. The blanket had already been removed from his pallet—by one of her minions in the house who’d watched the scene outside, no doubt. Punishment, he was sure, for not killing that daemon when he’d had the chance. If there was one life lesson he learned every day it was that in this world, everything had consequences. But today he barely cared.
Next to his pallet, a fresh bowl of water and a plate of bread had been left for him. Though his stomach growled at the sight, he ignored the pathetic food and instead continued on. To the fifth floorboard from the wall. To the one only he knew was loose.
He pried the board up with fingers still so cold he could barely move them. After lifting the corner, he reached underneath to draw out the glass.
It wasn’t a mirror, but it wasn’t clear either. The oval piece was frosted on both sides, rippled as if from the inside out even though it was smooth to the touch. Around the outside it was rimmed in what looked to be gold, though Max couldn’t be sure, as he’d never seen real gold before. All he knew was that it was heavy, a solid weight in his palms, no bigger than a saucer, and it held a magic like nothing he’d ever known.