I could run, but that would only provide them a little entertainment before their meal. They looked slow and hulking, but those wings weren’t for show. They’d take to the sky and surround me before I made it three feet.
Though none of that is what scared me. My grand plan was to shake the border watchers loose as they went after the greater threat—the typhons. If the best hunters and trackers in the land were following the massive, obvious paths their slithering bottom ends cut through the forest, they were heading right this way.
To me.
They can’t take me back. They can’t force me into the academy. They just can’t.I rose up on shaking knees, and ordered them to stop. This is my only choice. I would face it with my head high.
I walked up to the circling beasts—stomach churning at forms each more hideous than the last—and held my arms up in surrender.
Strange snickering hisses rose up around me.
“What’s this?” my new friend asked. “Begging for mercy? Praying that we’ll spare you if we see you’re unarmed?”
The clear intelligence in his voice surprised me, though there was no reason it should. Olympian monsters were hunting and killing us to near extinction. A feat that wouldn’t be so easy if demigods were top of the predator chain like we wanted to believe.
“No begging. No praying,” I said clearly. “Go ahead and kill me. Just do it quick.”
That strange, unsettling laugh spread through the gorge as the typhons traded looks.
“So young and lovely to be suicidal.” The one doing all the talking was clearly the one in charge. He moved in on me while the others hung back. “Your escape to the mundane world fails, so you offer yourself up as a lamb to the slaughter? You won’t even fight back, little demigod? Why is that?”
I coiled like a spring the closer he came. My pants picked up, eyeing the lethal claws tipping each one of those tentacles. I pushed against it, trying to fight it, but it wasn’t working. Fear leaked through my calm façade, and something else came with it.
No. Please no! If I must die, let me die as Aella.
My fingertips tingled in defiance, calling the same feeling in my lower legs.
“What? Now you don’t speak?” His claw tipped my chin, pinpricking the tiniest spot of blood. I bit my lips hard to stop them trembling.
Ever face your worst fear? A tarantula in your home? A snake that slithers in your path on the road? And you tell yourself not to be afraid because you’re bigger, faster, and smarter. Did that internal pep talk ever work?
Now imagine trying to force your fear away when you’re not bigger. You’re not faster. And you’re not smarter.
“P-please,” I hissed. “If you’re to kill me, just do it! Before— Before—”
“Before what, young one?” He cocked his horrifying head. “Before the border watchers come? Are you more afraid of them than you are of us? You wouldn’t happen to be the masked assassin that murdered the Apollo councilman and then fled the Imperial Palace while the guards were still fumbling for their spears?”
Surprise broke through my panic. Someone killed the Apollo councilman? I no longer knew Olympia as I once did. Circumstances saw to it that I lived a dark, ignorant life, but even in the deepest hole, everyone knew of the council.
Every demigod had power, but none matched the Twelve. The strongest of each child of Olympus was granted a seat on the council. That particular seat went to a son of Apollo who could shoot beams of light that burned hotter than the sun. Years ago, when he fought in battle, he reduced whole hordes of bronze bulls to scorched smears on the earth. Marcus Sideris was so powerful that he didn’t ride with guards or other soldiers. He just roamed the countryside solo, taking down monsters wherever they dared to raise their heads.
How could anyone kill a man like that?
Maybe they took my silence as an answer, because something that could only be described as a smile stretched each of their grotesque faces. A shudder rippled through me, and I looked down—whimpering at the black spreading down my fingers like a spilled inkwell. Pain followed as my fingernails elongated to claws that would be as deadly as theirs.
No! I will die as myself, not a monster!
“—impressive,” the typhon crooned. “Out of respect for killing that gods’ scum, I will grant your wish.” He raised his tentacles high, leaving his serpent’s end to wrap around my torso and lift me up. “A quick death.”
As I said, I didn’t fight, or plead, or pray. I closed my eyes as growing claws shredded my boots. My change would come too late. I would die on my own terms. The first choice I ever made in what turned out to be a short, miserable life.
Maybe it’ll be better in Hades. Sacrificing myself for a world that’s done me no favors has to get me into Elysium. An afterlife in paradise sounds pretty nice to—
“Arrrgggh!”
His body constricted, choking a gasp out of me. My eyes popped open and I beheld a sight worse than the deadliest monsters of legend.
“Aim for their eyes!”