Chapter 24
Flesh, Bone, & Circuits
LYRA
One hand at a time, I take the reins, moving with the rhythm of the horses I’m driving. I’ve only ever seen clips of movies that tell me anything about how to do this. Jaw clenched against the wrenching violence of the motion, I snap the reins. “Go!”
As if they were only waiting for the signal that I was ready, my team of horses finds a new gear, gaining on Hades’ team just as they round the turn.
When I fly around the same turn, not only are Hades’ horses ahead of us, but I catch sight of another team. Glowing neon green.
That’s all I see before Boone’s around the far turn so fast that I wonder if I saw what I saw.
When we round the end this time, we’re close enough to Hades’ team that the smoke around us thickens and my lungs are burning as I cough and my eyes water. But I squint against the sting. The hell horses pull to the inside of the track. The shorter path.
Screw them. I go wide. We veer wildly for a second. That’s when I see Boone’s horses behind me.
“Holy shit!” The words burst from me.
Because they are…digital.
Neon green on a darker green or maybe black, their bodies are made of squares, like pixels. Electricity seems to travel the outlines of those pixels like it’s zapping across electric wires, sparking and glowing.
“Hermes!” I realize.
Boone picked the power of the messenger god known for speed. Boone may have taken Hermes’ status as the god of thieves, but Hermes kept all his other abilities, and now Boone is using one. Not just physical speed but, in this day and age, also the speed of digital communication.
Fucking brilliant.
And they are fast! Boone’s already closing the distance between him and us.
Grinning like a demon, I urge my horses faster and faster until we draw even with Hades’ team just as the second owl drops with another tremulous trill that fills the stadium.
As if that sound was a signal, the instant it stops, something shoots up out of the ground directly in front of me. I swear it’s a hand, but we flash by it before I can tell. Then another. And another. I jerk us to the left to avoid yet another.
One of the hands, or whatever those things are, rises up with a spear the size a giant would wield and stabs it through all four of my golden horses in one fell swoop. On a heart-wrenching scream of pain, my team disappears in a blink. Gone as fast as they came.
I’m flung into the air, arms and legs wheeling as I come down. Thank Olympus for the soft, thick dirt. I manage to curve like a banana when I strike, rolling and flipping before I land with a thump.
Get up, Lyra. Get new horses.
But before I can move, another hand bursts from the ground and clamps down over my neck, cutting off my air. Definitely a hand. I claw at it, kicking and grunting, and finally wrest it away from my neck with a sickening sound of a crack followed by sucking.
I throw it off me, jumping to my feet, which is when I see it fully.
Flesh turned a sickly green, rotting, and hanging off the bone I just snapped. I literally pulled an arm off a body that I assume is still buried.
Gross.
The hand jumps up, using its fingers like legs. Because Addams Family style totally makes sense in this moment. It skitters across the ground toward me, and I let out a squeal that a five-year-old would be proud of as I run away.
Yes. Like a coward.
I yell, “I need horses made of Nike’s power of victory.”
“They’re gone.” Hades’ voice booms out. “Pick another.”
“Gone? As in dead?” I ask, spinning around to face the columned structure where I think he sits. Because of me?
Another hand bursts from the ground, grabbing me by the ankle. With a yelp, I jump back. Just as the full body comes up out of the ground.
And a knife of fear slices through my veins.
Zombie. Definitely a zombie. Hades is the god of death, after all. It’s made of disgusting rotting skin all over, eyes gone milky white with death. The scent of rotting meat rises up around me.
Nightmare material. That’s what this is.
With a series of telltale thumps of rotting flesh bursting through the soft earth, more and more zombies rise.
I freeze for a moment, unable to decide if I should call for horses or run. The meat sack who just put his arm back on makes my mind up for me. His jaw hinging open on a terrible, gurgling scream, he comes at me.
Not slow. He sprints.
I take off running, dodging more who are still rising up out of the ground.
I’m just reaching for the curved knife strapped to my leg when a piercing whistle sounds from behind me—a signal I haven’t had directed at me in ages, and yet my body automatically does what I’ve been trained to do.
I flip around to see Boone’s horses bearing down on me, plowing through the zombies.
Which, even in the milliseconds I have, I register as disgusting.
Parts flying and ripping apart, then skittering.
Boone is leaning over the right side of the basket of his chariot, hand extended.
I’m pretty sure he’s slowed down for me, but damn those digital horses move fast. It doesn’t even occur to me not to trust that he’ll catch me at this speed.
So I run at him, reaching for him.
The second we grasp each other by the forearms, I’m yanked off my feet and swung violently around. But he doesn’t drop me, and I somehow end up in the chariot beside him.
“Gotcha,” he says and shoots me a cocky grin.
Hanging on to Boone’s waist by the leather straps, I look over my shoulder to yell at Hades. “You didn’t say anything about zombies, asshole!”
A dark chuckle rattles around the empty arena, louder than the terrible sounds of the flesh-eating monsters coming after us or the thunder of the horses’ hooves.
“Hold on,” Boone shouts.
I grip him tight and lean with him as his team takes us around the turn fast and hard. The second we straighten, I can see that there are no zombies on this side. Yet.
Boone whistles, and apparently these digital horses are AI, because they understand thieves’ signals. They kick their speed up to an impossible level. The obelisk and statues down the center divider blur as we whip past.
We’re just coming to the turn when the third screech owl sounds.
Three laps down. And we’re behind.
I’m racking my brain for any possible combination of power and horses that could be faster than the ones Boone has come up with. But I’ve got nothing.
“Lyra!” Boone nods down.
Trying not to get in his way, I lean over the edge of the basket to look down. Sure enough, half a zombie body is climbing up the side, trying to get at us. I grab at my knife.
“Hold on!” Boone yells as we whip around the turn.
As soon as we stabilize, I hack at the zombie. The crunch and suck of my blade in its flesh is a sound that might haunt me for the rest of my life.
But the thing drops off the chariot.
I check for more as much as I can from this angle and with smoke blowing into my face from the horses ahead of us.
Then I straighten as we hit the turn. We skid wide but manage not to tip over, and then we’re neck and neck.
The rapid thudding of hooves and the rhythmic snorting of the horses as they breathe with the effort is quickly drowned out under the sickening crack, splatter, and screams of the zombies.
Only our team is plowing through zombies again, while the things are leaping out of the way of Hades’ horses.
He’s such a cheater.
The fourth owl’s trill rings, and I assume the little statue drops forward, counting down. I’m too busy slashing at several more gruesome things trying to come at us from below.
A whip of smoke lashes across our team, striking our horses. But their pixels just shimmer and shift to fill in the wound.
“Remind me to kiss Hermes when we get out of Tartarus!” I yell.
“Ew,” Boone yells back.
Another whip of smoke catches him across the face. The strike is hard enough that he has to drop the reins to keep from being thrown. Which is when I realize that he’s tied to the reins that are wrapped around his body.
But I don’t have time to worry about that danger.
Another lash of the whip comes for us. This time, I manage to sever it with a slice of my knife. But they keep coming.
“Okay, new plan,” I yell, and Boone doesn’t stop me when I duck under his arm.
“I need horses of Poseidon,” I call out. “Made of ocean waves.”