Chapter 2 I Stab an Old Lady, but It’s Fine, Really #3
Apparently, Ares had decided to bind the weapon to me in the most annoying, Ares-like way possible. I suspected that now, anytime I thought about needing it, the blade would come flying to find me, cheerfully skewering anyone or anything that stood in its way. Thanks again, Dad.
Harper got to his feet. He gawked at me. “Well, that was the single coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I smirked. “You should have seen me throw it at the old lady.”
He and Benny gave me horrified looks.
“The child-eating monster!” I quickly amended. “She just looked like an old lady!”
“You killed an old lady?!” Zuri materialized next to us so suddenly I had to suppress a scream.
“How did you do that?” I demanded.
She shrugged. “Stealth?”
“Next time, could you use your Stealth Lite mode? With fifty percent less quiet?” I was annoyed, but not surprised, to see that she looked completely unscathed from her trek through the Woods of Infinite Death. No scratches. No bruises. No burns. No muddy pants.
“Glad you’re alive,” said Harper. “I mean…of course you are.” He nodded at her bow. “You have a magic golden weapon.”
“Celestial bronze,” Zuri corrected.
I flashed her a thumbs-up. “Fancy.”
“That’s me.” She flicked her wrist, and the bow shrank back into a pendant and chain, which she fastened around her neck. I thought I saw words engraved on the sides of the pendant—maybe names—but I couldn’t make them out in the dark.
I thought about my own pendant, which was very much not magic. It only had my name in Korean. And it wasn’t even a Korean name. I didn’t have one of those like Olivia did. I was just…Katie.
“You meet any monsters in the Zone?” Benny asked Zuri.
She shrugged. “Nothing worse than Clarisse and her cronies.” She scanned our little group. “Where’s the other guy, Grant?”
Benny and Harper turned toward me.
I swallowed the taste of demon-lady dust out of my mouth. “Yeah, so…he should be here soon….”
I told them how we’d gotten separated.
Benny regarded me with wide, incredulous eyes. “He was injured, and you just left him? You’re literally family!”
“I know that, Benny!” I wondered if I sounded as defensive as I felt. The adrenaline was leaving my system, quickly being replaced by crushing guilt. “I was going to double back, but then the old lady who eats kids came after me!”
Benny shook his head. “You never should have left Grant alone in the first place.”
“Okay, easy.” Harper rested a hand on my shoulder. He winced when he touched me, like I’d given him a static shock. “Katie already feels bad about this. Let’s not make it worse.”
Zuri peered back at the forest. “This thing in the treetops—did you get a look at it?”
“Not really.”
“Where was it?”
I rubbed my face. “Uh…around G20?” Seeing their mystified looks, I added, “On my mental grid.”
That didn’t seem to lessen their confusion.
“Could you find the area again?” Zuri pressed.
“Yeah, but…” I stopped myself. This wasn’t the time for me to complain about a few near-death experiences. I felt the others staring at me, trying to decide what kind of person I was to have left an injured friend in the Wild Zone. “You’re right. I should go back.”
I didn’t say we. It didn’t feel like there was a we.
Harper studied me with those unnerving blue eyes. Then he glanced at the eastern horizon, where the sky was just turning from black to charcoal gray. “So we barely made it out of the Wild Zone alive. It’s almost dawn. And you’re suggesting we go back in to find Grant.”
I squirmed. “I didn’t say you had to—”
“All in favor?” Harper asked, raising his hand.
I felt a brief flood of gratitude, but I never got to find out how Zuri and Benny would have voted. Our team-building session was cut short by three squawking human-chicken creatures that fluttered down from the sky and landed in a circle around us.
They were the most hideous things I’d seen all night, and that was saying a lot.
Each had a woman’s face, but with a beak for a nose and feathers for eyebrows.
Their wings were tipped with human hands.
Their three-toed feet looked big enough to snatch and carry off a small horse.
And the smell…oof. I nearly passed out from the reek of ammonia.
“Look here!” screeched one of them. “Naughty, very naughty!”
I hefted my dagger, but then decided against using it.
My first panicked thought had been of that shrieking thing in the trees above Grant and me, but we weren’t in the Wild Zone anymore.
These creatures gave off a very different vibe.
They sounded gloating, not angry. Also, they weren’t fast enough to dart from tree to tree.
They moved like tarred-and-feathered helium balloons.
I knew what they were, even if I hadn’t met them yet. Harpies. The camp’s security personnel—who we’d been warned might eat us if they caught us violating curfew.
“Rule-breakers!” the second one shrieked with delight. “Should harpies peck?”
“Peckish!” said the third, with a dangerous gleam in her eye. “Harpies feel peckish!”
All three cackled, licking their chicken lips.
Great. I’d made it safely back to camp, only to become bird food.