Henriksen and Drake stood staring at the altar for a few seconds. On the ground, Sully began to groan and then move as he slowly came around. Drake had no idea which Sully would be waking up, the one he knew or the one the white hellebore poison had made.
He glanced at Jada. Regardless of her intentions toward the flower that had caused so many so much grief and suffering, he could see that she needed to know just as much as he did what they would find in the chamber below.
“Push!” Drake said, glancing at Henriksen.
In the short tunnel behind them, they could hear the footfalls and voices of Olivia and her trio of mercenary survivors. On the floor, Sully groaned louder, and in the most pissed-off, most graveled voice Drake had ever heard, he started muttering colorful curses about the Protectors of the Hidden Word and payback.
Henriksen threw himself against the octagonal altar, and Drake did the same thing; the whole thing slid back with a rumble of stone on stone.
The first thing Drake noticed about the darkness yawning below was the nauseating stink that wafted up at them. Then he saw two yellow eyes gleaming against the black and heard the bestial snarl that grew into a roar as the Minotaur thundered up the steps, slavering and reaching for Henriksen’s throat.
Drake had no gun. He threw the hardest punch he had in him, aiming for the vulnerable muscle cluster under the Minotaur’s arm. He felt his knuckles crunch on impact, and pain shot up his arm as he swore and reeled back. As the Minotaur closed one hand around Henriksen’s throat, it twisted and snarled at Drake. Jada shone her flashlight into its eyes, and it flinched, startled.
Henriksen shot it twice in the chest, and the human monstrosity rocked with the bullets, relaxing its grip enough for Henriksen to shake free. The Minotaur looked down at the holes in its chest, blood weeping and then spilling from the wounds, and Drake had a better look at its face and head. There could be no doubt that this was a man, deformed and hideous to behold but no less human for it. A light coat of hair covered even his cheeks, and ridges of what looked like bone were visible through the hair, but the horns on top of his head were those of an animal, clamped inside a frame of tarnished gold and held there with leather straps. The beast had no clothes, and the matted hair that covered its body had begun to thin in places. It looked almost sickly.
But the bullets had not stopped it.
A clatter of footsteps came from behind Drake, and he heard Garza swearing.
“Son of a bitch!” Suarez yelled.
Massarsky grabbed Olivia and shoved her behind him even as Garza lifted her weapon, taking aim.
“Get clear of that thing!” Garza shouted.
Drake didn’t have to be told twice. The single glance the Minotaur had given him had chilled his bones, so now he grabbed Jada and backpedaled with her into the wall. Henriksen backed up as well, and Drake wondered why he hadn’t kept shooting. He had his weapon leveled at the Minotaur, but it was almost as if now that its attention was elsewhere, he had no interest in destroying it.
Sully had risen unsteadily, and now he wavered on his feet, half blocking Garza’s aim.
“Get down!” Garza shouted.
“Just shoot!” Olivia screamed at her. “Kill him, too! You’re going to kill them all anyway; just shoot through the bastard!”
The Minotaur roared, batting at the flashlight beams that blinded it for a moment, but the way it twisted, gaze narrowing, Drake thought it had zeroed in on Olivia’s shrill voice, as if it recognized that she was giving the orders. And why not? Once upon a time, it had been just a man.
It barreled toward Olivia despite the others in the way. Sully dived from its path, dropping wearily to his knees as the Minotaur continued past. Garza pulled the trigger, bullets chipping the walls, the echo of the semiautomatic fire assaulting their ears. Three bullets stitched the Minotaur’s hip and arm and shoulder, and it screamed in pain, but it was inhumanly fast and changed direction in an instant.
Garza’s weapon clicked on empty, dry-firing, the clip out of bullets. She might have had another, but her time had run out. Her eyes went wide as the Minotaur reached for her, grabbing her head and giving it a savage twist. The dry snap of breaking bone was like a whip crack in the worship chamber.
“Come on, kid,” Sully said, grabbing Drake’s shoulder, half for support and half to get him moving.
Drake turned and saw that Henriksen already had started down through the secret passage beneath the altar. He slapped Sully’s back and pointed, then called to Jada, and the three of them were following fast. Gunfire ripped the air behind them, and Drake heard the sound of bullets punching through flesh. This time when the Minotaur roared, it came out as a scream, but then they left the sounds of violence behind, descending into the heart of the fourth labyrinth at long last.
In the shadows, with only Henriksen and Jada’s flashlights to guide them, they found the corridor leading from the bottom of the steps. The heavy, musky stink of the Minotaur seemed to coat the walls and floor, so strong that Drake scowled in disgust.
Sully stumbled a bit, and Drake looked at him, still wary of the way the protectors had toyed with his mind and still feeling the bruising on his neck from Sully trying to strangle him. He was alive, and the relief of that still felt like victory, but Drake didn’t want to celebrate just yet.
Then Sully tripped and would have fallen if Drake hadn’t caught him. He ducked under Sully’s arm, helping him stay balanced as they moved down the corridor. Under his breath, Sully grunted something that might have been words.
“What was that?” Drake asked.
“You deaf?” Sully rasped. “I said it smells like your laundry down here.”
Drake blinked in surprise, and then a smile spread across his face. “Glad to have you back, old man.”
Jada caught up to them, then, and they had to stop in the corridor as she threw her arms around Sully. Drake backed away to give them a moment, and for several long seconds they just held each other, Jada’s shoulders trembling with emotion as she buried her face in the crook of Sully’s neck.
“I’m so glad you’re not dead,” she murmured into the collar of his shirt.
“You and me both, darlin’,” Sully replied.
“Look at this,” Henriksen said.
Drake glanced up and saw Henriksen shining his flashlight through an open side passage. When Drake looked inside, he saw a warren of tunnels as well as an opening that seemed to lead into a kind of living space decorated with crude wall paintings that looked as if they’d been made in blood. The stink of filth and death was powerful, and Drake knew it must be where the Minotaur slept.
“Let’s go,” Sully said. “Let’s finish this.”
In moments they had reached the end of the corridor. It couldn’t have been more than sixty feet in length, so short that the beams of the surviving mercenaries’ flashlights still provided some illumination back on the stairs. At the end of the corridor was a heavy wooden door with iron bands holding the thick planks together. They had encountered nothing like this in the other labyrinths, but Drake noticed the age of the wood and realized the door had been added within the past century or so, as if in this one place the hooded men had acknowledged the passage of time. It didn’t jibe with the Minotaur’s savagery, this tiny concession to civilization.
And there was light under the door.
“What the hell-?” Drake began.
Henriksen handed Sully his flashlight and tried the latch. The door opened, swinging inward, and Henriksen gave it a shove with his gun. Empty-handed, Drake felt more vulnerable than ever, but as the door swung wide, he forgot about protecting himself-forgot almost everything.
Consistent with Daedalus’s design, there were three steps down, but this room dwarfed any of the other worship chambers they had seen. Fires burned in braziers set at intervals that went deep into the cave. A pair of iron chandeliers hung from chains hooked to the ceiling, fat white candles burning brightly. But even all that light could illuminate only a portion of the shadowed cave, which seemed to be some bizarre combination of vault and sepulcher.