Spartan Promise

by Jennifer Estep

I ignored Kylie, went down the line, and grabbed a ham-and-swiss panini, along with some strawberries and grapes and a helping of pasta salad. Finally, I reached the dessert table. Three kinds of cookies had been set out—chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, and cherry almond—and each one looked more delicious than the last. My stomach rumbled with anticipation.

  “Come to Mama,” I whispered.

  I grabbed the metal tongs to start loading the treats onto my plate. I had just taken hold of a chocolate chip cookie when a loud, popping noise rang out.

  What was that?

  I looked over at Ian, who was frowning, also wondering what the noise was.

  That popping noise sounded a second time, then a third. By this point, everyone was looking around the dining hall, wondering what was going on.

  And that was when the lights went out.

  Chapter Nine

  The lights abruptly cut off, plunging the room into total darkness.

  The dining hall was in the center of the mansion, which meant that it didn’t have any windows, and I couldn’t see anything, not even the trays of cookies on the table.

  “Hey! What’s going on?”

  “Why did the lights go out?”

  “Is this a Reaper attack?”

  The words Reaper attack seemed to ring throughout the entire room. In an instant, all of the kids started yelling and screaming, and I heard dishes breaking and chairs scraping across the floor, as though everyone were stampeding away from the buffet and dining tables and trying to find the nearest exit.

  “Keep calm! Everyone, keep calm!” Professor Dalaja’s voice sounded above the din, but the stampeding students quickly drowned her out.

  Someone ran into me and bounced off, and I felt my bag slide off my shoulder and hit my boot. Judging by the explosion of gold sparks, Kylie was the one who’d stumbled into me, although the sparks quickly winked out, and the darkness swallowed her up again. I pressed myself up against the dessert table, trying to stay out of the way of the panicked students.

  “Mateo!” I had to yell to hear myself over the chaos. “What’s going on? Did you kill the lights?”

  For a moment, I didn’t hear anything through my earbud, and I thought that maybe our comms had been knocked out along with the electricity. But then a faint crackle sounded in my ear.

  “I didn’t kill the lights!” Mateo yelled back at me. “I didn’t do anything! Someone else has hacked into the security system!”

  This had to be the work of Covington, Drake, and the other Reapers. They had waited until everyone was in the dining hall, and now they were putting their evil plan into action…whatever it was.

  My mind automatically went to the worst-case scenario. Covington was probably planning to steal as many artifacts as he could before ordering Drake and the Reapers to burn the mansion down to the ground with the Mythos students trapped inside—

  A hand touched my shoulder. I bit back a surprised shriek, even as my fingers tightened around the metal tongs still in my own hand, and I started thinking about the vulnerable spots I could attack. Eyes, nose, throat. I could hit one of those in the dark with the tongs—

  The light from a phone flared to life, driving back some of the blackness, and I realized that Ian was touching my shoulder. Ian was here, not the Reapers. I relaxed and set the tongs down on the table.

  Ian wasn’t carrying his duffel bag anymore, although his battle ax dangled from a slot on his belt. He must have grabbed the weapon out of his bag.

  Some of the other students followed his example, pulled out their phones, and used them as makeshift flashlights. The combined glow of the screens was bright enough for me to make out the panicked kids running around us, as well as some of the furniture.

  “The Reapers must have killed the power!” Ian yelled over the continued screams and shouts. “We have to get back to the library!”

  “I know!” I yelled. “Over there! Go toward the doors!”

  He nodded, and we hurried in that direction. Ian led the way, since he was still using his phone as a flashlight, with me following him. We were only about thirty feet from the doors, but the other students kept running and stumbling around, and we had to stop and start several times before we finally made it over to the exit.

  I grabbed one of the handles, but it didn’t budge. “Locked! The doors are locked!”

  “Not for long!” Ian shouted back.

  He stepped up, grabbed the handle, and wrenched it down, putting his Viking strength behind the motion.

  Screech!

  The lock broke, and both glass doors popped open. Ian yanked the doors out of the way. Then, together, we darted out of the dining room.

  * * *

  Ian and I ran into the next room, but it was as dark as the dining hall had been, and he had to stop and shine the light from his phone around so we could see where we were going.

  “Hey! Over here!”

  “This way!”

  “These doors are open!”

  Behind us, yells and shouts sounded as the other kids found the open doors and streamed out of the dining hall.

  Ian and I ignored the commotion and started running again. He held his phone out in front of him, using it to light our way, but it was still slowgoing, since neither one of us wanted to slam into any of the furniture.

  Several seconds later, we reached another set of locked doors at the opposite end of the room. While Ian wrenched them open, I yanked Babs out of her scabbard, which was still attached to my belt, and held her up where I could see her face. The sword’s eye was closed, telling me she had been taking a nap during the tour, as was her custom whenever I had school stuff going on.

  “Babs? I hope you had a good nap, but it’s time to wake up.”

  Her eye immediately popped open. “Oh, I had an excellent nap. Professor Dalaja has such a soothing voice. But don’t worry, Rory. I’m wide awake now. I’m always awake whenever there are Reapers around. To battle! To glory! To victory!”

  She would have kept right on crowing, but I flipped the sword around so that I was holding her by her hilt. Even then, I could still feel her lips moving against my palm, although my hand muffled the sound of her voice.

  Ian finished opening the doors. Together, the two of us headed into the next room. And the one after that…and the one after that…

  We ran through the mansion as fast as we could. The farther we went, the easier it got, since windows started appearing in the walls, letting the noon sun stream inside. By the time we reached the solarium, there was more than enough light to see by, and Ian shoved his phone into his jeans pocket.

  We stopped running, snapped up our weapons, and crept through the solarium, looking all around the room, in case any Reapers were lurking behind the tables full of potted plants. But the area was empty, and we sidled up to the wall next to the doors that led into the library.

  I glanced up, but the lights hanging down from the solarium ceiling were dark, and the power was still off.

  “Mateo?” I whispered. “We’re at the library doors. What’s happening on your end?”

  The sound of rapid, staccato typing echoed through my earbud, as though Mateo had tiny daggers attached to his fingertips and was repeatedly stabbing them into his keyboard.

  “Nothing,” he snapped. “That is what is happening. Absolutely nothing. I’m locked out of the system. Even worse, no electricity means no security cameras. If the Reapers are here, I can’t see where they are.”

  “Rory, Ian.” This time, Takeda’s voice crackled in my ear. “I’ve alerted the Protectorate guards in the woods, and they are coming to the mansion to escort the students to safety. Zoe and I have left the security center, and we’re on our way to your position.”

  “Roger that,” I said. “Ian and I are going into the library. If the Reapers are in there, we’ll keep them busy until you guys can come help us.”

  “Be careful,” Takeda replied.

  “Yeah,” Zoe chimed in. “Try not to die before we get th
ere.”

  Even though she couldn’t see me, I still grinned. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Through my earbud, I could still hear Mateo typing and Takeda barking orders to the Protectorate guards, but I tuned them out and looked at Ian. He nodded, telling me that he was ready. I nodded back, then leaned forward and tried one of the doors.

  Unlike all the others we’d encountered, the handle slid down easily, and the door creaked open.

  The Reapers were definitely here.

  That was the only reason this door would be open when all the others had been locked. Covington must have realized that the Protectorate guards were watching the estate. He must have found some way to slip inside the mansion and hide in a spot close to the library. Then, when he was ready to strike, he had hacked into the security system so he could remotely lock all the other doors to slow down the guards while he stole Serket’s Pen.

  Did the evil librarian realize that I was here too? Probably, since he always seemed to be three steps ahead of us. Maybe he thought I would come to the library to check on the artifact. Maybe he wanted me here so he could try to whammy me again with an Apate jewel and turn me into a Reaper.

  A cold, tight fist of fear wrapped around my heart. Covington had almost taken control of me at the Cormac Museum a few weeks ago. He would have taken control of me, if not for Babs’s babbling and my wearing Freya’s Bracelet with its protective power.

  Ever since then, part of me had dreaded the day when I would face the Reaper again. I had no idea what other artifacts Covington might have. Maybe he had something even stronger than Apate jewels. Something that would completely take away my free will. Something that would turn me into a Reaper no matter how hard I tried to fight it.

  Panic rose in my chest, mixing with my fear, but I tightened my grip on Babs and forced myself to focus on the other emotion I was feeling right now: rage.

  Rage that Covington had murdered my parents. That he had blamed them for his crimes. And that he wanted to use me to do his dirty work the same way he had used them.

  I grabbed hold of that white-hot rage and let it burn in my heart, until it had charred all of my fear, dread, and panic to ashes. I was never going to become a Reaper, and I was never going to work for Covington. I had Babs, Freya’s Bracelet, and my own Spartan skills. That was more than enough to handle anything Covington threw at me.

  That was what I kept telling myself, anyway. Maybe if I thought it long and hard enough, it would actually be true.

  Either way, I had a job to do and an artifact to protect. So I drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out, steadying myself. Then I slipped through the open doors and stepped into the library.

  I darted over to my right and crouched down behind the first artifact case I came to. Ian went left and did the same thing on the other side. We both waited, but I didn’t hear anything but the rapid thump-thump-thump of my heart pounding in my chest. I glanced at Ian, and he nodded back at me. Then we both crept up and peered around the sides of our respective cases.

  The library was empty—completely, utterly empty.

  My head snapped left and right, and I blinked and blinked, but nothing changed. No one else was in the library.

  “Rory, Ian, what’s your status?” Takeda’s voice sounded in my ear.

  I got to my feet and stepped out from behind my case. So did Ian, who hurried over to the far corner to check on the artifact.

  I looked around again, but the library was as empty as before. “No one’s here. No Covington, no Drake, no Reapers. The library is empty. I repeat. The library is empty.”

  “Stay there,” Takeda said. “We’re on our way.”

  “Roger that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Ian growled. “The Reapers have already been here.”

  My heart sank, and I went over to him, although I could already guess what I would find. Sure enough, broken pieces of glass littered the floor from where the top of the display case had been smashed to bits. The wires inside had also been ripped away, along with the artifact.

  Serket’s Pen was gone.

  The Reapers had stolen the artifact right out from under our noses. Despite Ian and me being in the library, despite the security system and the Protectorate guards waiting in the woods, the Reapers had still managed to get their hands on the pen—

  Creak.

  Ian and I both whirled around at the soft sound. My gaze darted around, wondering what had made the noise. The sound came again, and I realized that one of the windows was slightly open.

  “The window,” Ian muttered. “That must have been how the Reapers got out of the library.”

  He rushed over to the window, opened it the rest of the way, and looked outside, probably hoping to catch a glimpse of the Reapers running away across the lawn, but I stayed where I was by the artifact case. As much as I hated to admit it, Covington and Drake were smart, in addition to being sneaky. They had planned this perfectly and were probably already long gone.

  More rage surged through me, and I lashed out with my boot, slamming it into the side of the wooden case—

  Caw! Caw-caw! Caw!

  I froze at the loud, piercing cries. They reminded me of the horrible, inhuman screams that Typhon chimeras made, although these sounds were much higher and sharper, like the call that a Black roc might make—or something that was part roc.

  I tightened my grip on Babs and slowly turned around. I didn’t see anything, so I glanced over at Ian. His jaw was clenched, and his knuckles were white around his ax handle. He looked at me, then deliberately flicked his eyes up.

  “On the chandelier,” he whispered, barely moving his lips.

  I lifted my gaze to the crystal chandelier in the center of the ceiling. When we had first entered the library, I was so focused on what was in front of me that I hadn’t bothered to look up at what was above me. Now that I did see it, I wished I hadn’t, since it was even more horrible than I’d thought possible.

  The monster was perched on one arm of the chandelier like it was a tree branch, and its black feathers and big, strong body made it look like a blob of ink that was oozing all over the clear crystals. Its eyes burned a bright, eerie crimson, and the same color ribboned through its glossy feathers. The monster’s beak and talons were a shiny black, as were the sharp spikes that jutted up from the rooster’s comb on top of its head. The monster leaned forward, peering at me, and I realized that each black spike was tipped with red, as was the spike on the end of its long rattlesnake tail.

  The Reapers might have stolen Serket’s Pen, but they had left something behind in the library.

  A basilisk.

  Chapter Ten

  I slowly raised Babs up into an attack position. Over at the windows, Ian did the same thing with his ax. The basilisk’s eyes narrowed, and it cocked its head from side to side, as if it were debating which one of us to attack first.

  “Guys,” I said in a low, urgent voice. “The artifact is gone, but there’s a basilisk in the library. I repeat. There is a basilisk in the library.”

  “Hold on! We’re almost there!” Takeda’s voice echoed through my earbud, and I could hear him shouting orders to the Protectorate guards to converge on the library.

  The basilisk leaned forward a little more, making the chandelier rock from side to side and all the crystals tinkle-tinkle-tinkle together. Normally, I would have found the light, pealing sounds to be quite pleasant, almost like music ringing out, but right now, the noises reminded me of a bird pecking on a window. Or maybe that was because the basilisk kept opening and closing its massive black beak, as if it wanted to drive the point into my heart.

  “I read about basilisks last night in one of my myth-history books,” Ian murmured. “They’re attracted to loud noises, sudden movements, and shiny things.”

  I winced. “You mean, like the weapons we’re both holding?”

  “Exactly like that,” he murmured.

  Babs let out an indignant sniff. “Well, I am shiny and pro
ud of it!”

  Her muffled voice wasn’t all that loud, but it attracted the basilisk’s attention, like Ian said it would, and the monster leaned forward even more, its crimson eyes focused on the sword. The basilisk had made up its mind and was going to attack Babs and me first. Lucky us.

  “Now is not the time to talk about how awesome you are, Babs!” I hissed.

  The sword heeded my warning and fell silent, but the damage had already been done. The basilisk’s long black tail started lashing from side to side, causing the red rattles on the end to vibrate together in a clear warning.

  The monster was seconds away from attacking me, but I stared right back at it, studying every single thing about it. You had to know your enemy before you could kill it.

  The basilisk was so heavy that it had loosened the chandelier’s metal chain from the ceiling, making clouds of plaster dust drift through the air. Its sharp talons had scratched and dented the metal arm it was perched on, and its powerful wings continuously flexed, as if it were going to take flight at any moment.

  So how I could kill the monster before it killed me? I definitely had to avoid the sharp spike on the end of its tail, as well as the ones on top of its head. Not only could the basilisk skewer me with those spikes, but according to Takeda, they were also extremely poisonous. I might have healing magic, but I didn’t know if I had enough to counteract the basilisk’s poison. I didn’t want to take that risk, so I couldn’t let the monster so much as scratch me with one of its spikes.

  Even if I dodged the spikes, the basilisk could still kill me with its sharp, pointed beak. One stab from it would be like having a sword shoved through my chest. The creature could also rip me to pieces with its talons or use its wings to slam me into a wall.

  Spikes, beak, talons, wings. I had to avoid all of those things, which only left one spot for me to attack: the basilisk’s soft, feathery stomach.

  Of course. The stomach was almost always a weak spot for monsters and mortals alike. I had killed chimeras by stabbing them in the stomach, and I was betting the basilisk wouldn’t be any different.