Chapter 23
Run, Little Girl. Bang.
LYRA
There’s a distinct snap of fingers.
This time, I know to brace for the electric jolt that reverberates through me, strips me bare, and steals the strength from my limbs, the sight from my eyes, and the air in my lungs.
“Gods damn.” I hear Boone’s groan of pain off to my right. A sound that cuts off abruptly.
And I force my eyes open to find him doubled over, but the next jolt brings that light, obscuring my vision. My powers are getting sucked out of me, stolen away so that I can only face what happens next as a mortal.
By the time my vision clears once more, I’m on my knees and trying not to heave as a wave of freezing cold chills me to the marrow of my bones.
A team of four horses now stands before us, rearing in their traces.
Horses made of…smoke.
Jet-black and billowing, their manes and tails flow up and around them, streaming away and dissipating in the air.
Intricately etched black metal armor is layered into their smoky flesh like bony growths.
And through those plates, at their very centers, I can see through the smoke of their bodies to their hearts beating inside their chests.
Hearts that look like coal burning bright blue, pulsing in time to the glowing blue blood visible in their veins.
“You’ve got to be shitting me!” I jump back just as Boone grabs me and swings me around fast, putting his back to the team, his body between me and harm.
But nothing happens to either of us, and we both straighten to face them. The horses remain where they are, stomping and snorting, eyes of fire trained on us.
Hades’ lips draw up into a smile that is pure challenge. “My test is to survive the poison of evil that can affect all mortals.”
“Sounds ominous,” I mutter.
He lifts a single eyebrow. “All you have to do is beat my hell horses in a race. Seven laps.”
Gods, he’s so damned frustrating. Even down here. And what does a chariot race have to do with evil poison? “It can’t be that easy,” I say. “Unless you’re making me try to win the race on foot.”
Shut up, Lyra. Don’t give the recording ideas.
“You will drive a chariot. You may pick any of the teams that draw from any god’s or goddess’s powers that you can think of. All you have to do is call out their name and power, and horses will appear, drawing a chariot.”
Despite the fact that I’ve never driven a team of horses in my life, it’s still too easy.
I roll my eyes. “What’s the catch?”
Hades smiles. No dimples, though. “These creatures are what they are made of. For example, Hephaestus’ lava horses are all things passion, all things destruction, and they will decide who to bless and who to kill indiscriminately.”
Always a godsdamned catch. Never trust the gods. Even if I’m one of them now. “Do I have to use the same horses for the entire race?”
He tilts his head. “I swear, little previous mortal, you ask the right questions faster each time I see you. Perhaps you truly can remember those other visits and just don’t know it.”
“Answer her question.” Boone is back to growling.
The animated copy of my god of death gives a nonchalant shrug like none of this matters anyway. “You can change teams as many times as you wish.”
“And me?” Boone asks. “Do we both have to cross the finish line ahead of your team of horses or just one of us?”
Again Hades’ gaze slides to Boone, turning sharper like my friend is the whetstone to a dagger.
“My team only has to lose,” Hades says. “It doesn’t matter to whom.
Seven laps. The first horses to cross that finish line, no matter who is driving them, determines the winner.
Lyra wins, she opens the Lock. You win, you open the Lock. I win, you—”
I wave him off with an angry flap of a hand. “We die. We know.”
Another curious tilt of his head, slower this time, reminding me of a snake coiling to strike. “It is not wise to be rude to a god.”
I scoff. “I’m not being rude to a god. I’m being rude to the King of the Gods, who also happens to be my lover.”
“King?” Hades gives an annoyingly dark chuckle that snags at my already tattered nerves. “Your stories get more creative every time I see you. I look forward to our next encounter, Lyra Keres.”
And then he’s gone.
The smoky horses remain, stomping their hooves and neighing with impatience.
“What’s our plan?” Boone asks without even a beat of time to react to any of this. Straight into get-shit-done mode.
It helps settle me in an odd way. “Let’s each start with our own horses. We’ll figure it out from there.”
“Double the chance to win.” He gives a sharp nod. “Smart.”
I grab his wrist. “Just nothing that could kill a mortal. No lightning. No fire.”
He grins back at me, challenge sparking in his eyes. “Damn. I was planning on picking a tornado and just laying waste to the entire place.”
“You have ten seconds to choose your horses.” Hades’ disembodied voice rings through the stadium. “Ten. Nine. Eight—”
“Shit,” Boone mutters. “Go!”
We take off toward the arched gates to the right of Hades’ horses, and my mind is tumbling through gods and goddesses and powers and elements.
Sun, lightning, tempest—all are too dangerous as a mortal.
And what good are wine, harvest, childbirth, or even Persephone’s vines in a race against smoke-and-fire hell horses?
Boone beats me to the lineup as Hades counts down. “Five. Four.”
A whip of smoke lashes out from the demon horses to grab Boone around the waist and hurl him through the arched gateways. Because of the wooden gates blocking my view, I don’t see how he lands.
I’m also not going to make it to my gate in time. Desperation is a terrible place to start from. “I need horses made of Nike’s power of victory,” I yell as I run.
“Two.”
A team of four gold, winged horses appears instantly, already standing proudly in their traces. Not just golden haired. I mean solid gold, as if a master craftsman molded them from the metal and shined them to gleaming.
No idea what I expected when I picked that power, but it wasn’t this.
“One,” Hades says.
Then a series of pullies yanks the gates up, and Hades’ driverless horses spring forward on a sound that could be either a scream or a growl.
I leap into my golden chariot, grabbing the reins, not that I know how to use them. “Go!” I cry out.
Thank the ever-living daylight out of the gods, because the magical horses listen.
They bolt so hard and fast, I have to drop the reins to keep from being flung backward and out of the open back end of the cart. I’m still trying to just stay in the carriage as we fly past Boone, who is lying on the ground, unmoving.
I whip around to check that Boone’s okay. His prone form gets smaller and smaller as we race down the long length of the course.
“Get up. Get up. Get up,” I whisper, willing him to move.
My cart lists wildly to the right, and I am forced to face the front, throwing my weight to the left as I realize we’ve already reached the sharp hundred-and-eighty-degree turn around the center divider. We straighten out just as abruptly, hauling ass down the other side after Hades’ horses.
“Oh, gods. Oh, fuck.” If Boone doesn’t move out of the way, they’re going to trample him.
The smoke rising off those damned hell horses is filling the air and obscuring my sight.
The jet-black team moves in close to the center divider and whips around the bottom turn, where the carved feet of a towering statue of some hooded figure draped in wicked-looking chains jut out into the track.
Their chariot goes up on one precarious wheel behind them.
As soon as they are out of sight, I can see that Boone isn’t in view.
“Please don’t have been dragged under their wheels,” I mutter to myself even as I grit my teeth and lean again while we also round the aggressive turn.
I don’t see him anywhere.
“Where is he—”
There’s an odd trill of sound, high-pitched and so loud that for a second, I take my hands off the bar in front of me to clap them over my ears, only to unbalance and have to grab for it again.
As I do, I see one of seven carved onyx owl statues perched on a metal bar in the center divider drop forward.
Some small corner of my brain catalogs the fact that the sound they made is one screech owls use. Hades’ sacred animal.
Those owl statues must be counting off laps each time the team in the lead passes the dead center of this side of the track. One lap down. Six to go.
Across the track from the owls, situated in the main stands, there’s a covered hall decorated by fluted columns.
I narrow my eyes, searching inside the covered pavilion as we whip by.
I think maybe Hades’ copy sits upon a dark throne inside.
Watching. Is he using that sound—a trill used by mating pairs of screech owls—to taunt me with what I said about me being his queen?
Damn, he can be so cruel.
I love him, but damn.
My hands curl around the bar I’m holding on to as realization sinks in deep, even in the middle of all this chaos. I can’t die in here. If the real Hades ever found out, he’d blame himself.
As if survival wasn’t enough—mine and Boone’s—or, for that matter, the possibility of getting out of Tartarus—which has been implied, but I still don’t understand how—a new purpose strums through my blood in licks of fire.
The sun glints off the pure gold of my horses, which are already running so hard for victory. We have to win.
I have to win.
To try to escape.
To keep us from dying.
And to save Hades from guilt and heartbreak.