“We have to hurry,” Aisling said.
I squeezed her hand before releasing it and sprinting down the road toward the pile with her. When the ground trembled again, I realized the minotaur was on the move once more. The distraction with the guns and the house was over, but more traps lay ahead of it.
We were halfway to the pile when another bang sounded and another cloud of dust billowed into the air. The minotaur had fallen into the first trench we dug across the road and carefully covered again to make it blend in. The ground quaked so violently that I imagined the minotaur slamming its hands onto the ground or driving its horns into the earth.
“Oh shit,” Aisling breathed.
“Just keep going,” I told her. “We’re going to get through this.”
We skidded to a halt in front of the pile as the minotaur’s claws emerged over the side of the trench. This thing could eviscerate us with one swipe of its hand, and blood still caked the wicked-looking talons. When its head emerged over the top of the trench and its yellow eyes met mine, I could tell that happy thoughts of wearing my intestines were dancing through its pea-sized brain.
Aisling’s breath came faster as the minotaur began to pull itself out of the fifteen-foot-deep trench. The ground gave way beneath its weight, and with an enraged roar, it vanished into the ditch. The following silence was more unnerving than any of its reverberating bellows. And then those claws appeared again, and those yellow eyes blazed with a fury that lit the night around it.
With methodical precision, it worked its way free, rose, and took one step forward. Dozens of knives and spears exploded from the spring-release trap we’d set next for it. The minotaur reared back as the weapons embedded themselves in its side and one stuck into its neck. Aisling’s hands shook as she knelt in front of the pile and held them over the wood.
I rested my hand on her shoulder. “Take your time.”
Flames burst out of her palms. The intensity of it was so astonishing that Aisling fell away from the fire, which followed her as she landed on her ass. She gazed at her hands in amazement while she turned them before her. The flames followed her movements as they danced up her wrists and circled her forearms. The sleeves of her shirt fell away, but the rest of it didn’t catch fire.
“What the…?” She marveled as she turned her hands before her. “It’s getting stronger.”
“It’s the Chosen bond. You can withstand my kiss, and your fire has grown.”
“It’s made me faster too,” she said as she held her hands over the wood. “I noticed the other day.”
I’d noticed that the other day too when she pulled herself on top of me so fast, I’d barely seen her move before she was straddling me. I squeezed her shoulder again. “My touch probably helps to fuel it.”
Her mouth formed an O before she replied, “Yes, it does.”
Leaning forward, she placed her hands against the pile. The flames blackened the wood as the minotaur succeeded in pulling the last of the knives free. I kept one eye on the monster and the other on the smoldering pile as the beast dropped to all fours.
Come on. Come on.
Aisling gazed between the beast and the pile as her flames licked across some drywall. When the minotaur took a step toward us, her fire grew until a wave of it was streaming across the pile. Smoke filled the air as the minotaur charged toward us.
I thought the ground shook before, but now it was a full-on earthquake tearing the earth apart. Glass broke and fell from the windows closest to the beast. The minotaur was fifty feet away from the pile when another trench gave way, and it plummeted into the hole.
Its infuriated roar echoed through the night as the pile caught and flames leapt into the sky. Sparks shot off and rained over us as the crackling pop of wood drowned out the noise of the minotaur.
The heat forced me away from the fire, but awe filled Aisling’s face and flames danced in her eyes as she sat before it. The fifteen-foot-high flames leaping into the air reflected off the windows closest to us and blocked my view of the minotaur. I didn’t feel any vibrations beneath my feet, which meant it was probably still trapped, but it wouldn’t stay that way.
“We have to go,” I said.
Aisling rose in one fluid motion. Turning away from the fire, I clasped her hand as we ran back to the others. Corson, Wren, Bale, and Lix stood with those who agreed to go with us. The remaining dozen or so humans and demons were huddled together near the library.
“Are you sure you won’t come with us?” Corson asked them.
Some of them exchanged looks while others backed further away. A few broke away from the crowd and joined us, but the rest remained where they were.
“Please,” Aisling pleaded as she stepped forward. “There’s no way of knowing what the fire will do if it spreads, or what will happen if the minotaur discovers us gone. Please come with us.”
“No,” one of the demons said.
“We’re not leaving,” a woman said.
“Let’s go,” Bale said.
She snatched the one bag of supplies we’d packed for the trip from the ground and put it on her back. Because we needed to move fast, there was only some water and a little bit of food in the bag. It wouldn’t last the humans with us more than two days, and that was if they were lucky.
“We can’t leave them here,” Aisling whispered.
“We have no choice,” I told her. “We have to go.”
She hesitated, but when I gave her hand a small tug, she fell into step beside me as we turned away from them. The flames leapt higher, and smoke billowed into the air as the fire spread to the building closest to the pile. It was only a matter of time before the fire consumed the town.
Like wraiths, we slipped into one of the alleys between the stores and onto a side street. We didn’t take that road but jogged across front yards and into the backyards of houses as we made our way over to the next street.
The faint vibrations beneath my feet alerted me the minotaur had worked its way out of the trench and was hunting once more. We didn’t have much time before it found its prey or realized we were gone and returned to its cave.
We had to beat it there.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Aisling
We were probably crazy for doing this, but there weren’t any other options. Fighting the minotaur had proven useless, and we couldn’t sit around and wait for it to come for us. We couldn’t get out of the town, we couldn’t hide, and we couldn’t lay down and die like those we left behind.
Instead, we were going to try and escape by going straight into the monster’s lair. The insanity of the idea wasn’t lost on me. I’d been the one to suggest it, and when I looked at all of those who decided to join us, the weight of their lives rested heavily on my shoulders. They’d chosen to join us, but I’d offered a carrot they couldn’t resist.
What if it all backfired?
I couldn’t think about that now. It was already too late; there was no turning back. I’d seen the look in the minotaur’s eyes; it would tear us apart if we went back.
Stepping into the shadowed interior of the minotaur’s cave, I realized this might be the last bad idea I had. I didn’t know why I’d suggested this, or why the others listened to me, but instead of keeping my stupid ideas to myself, or being told I was an idiot, I said them out loud, and after some consideration, they agreed with me.
I wasn’t sure who that made dumber, them or me, but it made us all equally nuts.
A trickle of amazement ran down my spine as I stared into the shadowy interior of the minotaur’s lair. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find here, but it certainly wasn’t this clean space. There should be bones or broken rocks from the creature’s horns, or maybe victims chained to the wall. Instead, there was nothing.
For some reason, the nothing unnerved me more than if bones and bodies were strewn everywhere. Did that monster eat its victims whole?
Bile rose in my throat as I pictured that thing swallowing its victims in one
gulp. It could probably unhinge its jaw like a snake too. Shuddering, I rubbed at my arms as I tried to get rid of the image of the man-bull holding a screaming, flopping person over its mouth and lowering them down its gullet. But once the image was there, it was impossible to erase it.
“Come on,” Hawk said as he cupped my elbow. “We have to get as much distance between us and that thing before it returns.”
Twisting my head, I stared down the mountain at the town nestled in the valley below. If it weren’t for the toppled buildings and raging inferno, it would have been a peaceful place, and I imagine that, before the war, it was a tranquil place to live.
Now, I wasn’t surprised to discover the flames had spread to consume more of the buildings. With nothing to put the fire out, it would soon encompass the library and town. A stab of guilt twisted in my gut, but there was nothing I could do for those we left behind. They’d made their choice, and we’d made ours.
I spotted the minotaur stalking down the first side street we entered after leaving the others behind. It must have taken the street to avoid the fire. Instead of slipping down the alleys, which it would never fit through, it went to the end of the road and turned right toward the library.
It was still on the hunt, which meant we should have at least fifteen minutes before it returned to the cave—hopefully longer if it decided to try to uncover Hawk and me first. I’d seen the way it looked at us, even if it didn’t intend to hunt us tonight, it was eager to kill us.
Would it realize we weren’t in town anymore or assume we were hiding and content itself with claiming its intended victim?
I suspected it might move on; it didn’t strike me as the smartest creature, and it would never consider someone would be ballsy or stupid enough to enter its domain willingly. We also had to hope the others didn’t rat us out, but I doubted we’d get much loyalty from them.
Still, I believed we had fifteen minutes on the minotaur. Perhaps we could get through the labyrinth without it knowing we were here—if there was a labyrinth. So far, all I saw was rock.
Turning away from the spreading fire, I focused on the cave as the others shuffled forward. Though only a faint amount of the moon’s rays pierced the interior, I saw Oliver watching me over Nadine’s shoulder. I smiled at the boy, and he smiled shyly in return.
I really hoped this was the right choice for him; I couldn’t live with myself if this decision caused his death.
“Aisling,” Corson said, “we need your fire.”
Hawk and I made our way to the front of the group to discover Corson, Bale, Wren, and Lix gathered near a tunnel leading deeper into the cave. It was impossible to see more than two feet into the fifteen-foot-high tunnel leading into the bowels of the earth.
We couldn’t go back, but I wasn’t too thrilled about going forward either.
With no other choice, I lifted my hand and created a small ball of fire in my palm. The shadows slid back as the flames danced in the air flowing from the tunnel. The fire’s glow revealed the chipped stones in the ceiling that were gouged out by the minotaur’s horns as he carved his way through the rock. I frowned at the small pieces of metal and wood on the ground until I realized they were the remains of the tracks the carts once traversed.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” someone said from behind me.
“It’s too late to change our minds now,” Randy said.
It was far too late to change our minds now. We only had two options: keep going or die.
And I was not going to come this far to die without a fight.
With my flame illuminating the tunnel, I led the way deeper into the earth. In the beginning, cobwebs brushed my face, and then we reached a depth that was too much for spiders. I still didn’t detect the potent reek of death I’d expected, but smelled the musky aroma of something feral mixed with the stench of wet dog hair; it was the scent of the minotaur.
We were a few hundred feet into the tunnel when it branched into two different directions.
“Shit,” someone whispered from behind me.
“Now what?” someone else asked.
I tried not to let my mounting panic show as my brain stuttered for an answer. This was supposed to be a maze, but I’d been expecting bushes or something like those old-fashioned English mazes I’d seen pictures of in school. I had not expected the minotaur to carve out a maze within the mountain.
I turned my flame in the direction of the tunnel to the right before swinging it to the left. Now what? Now what?
The question looped through my mind as I swung my flame back again. Left or right? Life or death? That was the real question here because one of these tunnels would give us a chance while the other ended all hope.
When I swung my flame back again, I almost sobbed with relief. “Left,” I said.
“How do you know?” Wren asked.
I swung my flame back to the right and watched as it burned in my palm before turning it back to the left. Once it settled down from the motion, the flames flickered and danced far more than they did from the tunnel on the right.
“There’s airflow coming from this tunnel,” I said before swinging it right again. “But there isn’t from this one.”
“Left it is then,” Hawk said.
I was sure I was right, but a tendril of unease crept down my spine as we strode down the left-hand tunnel. Almost immediately, the broken pieces of track vanished, and the rocks became more jagged as we entered a section of the tunnel carved by the minotaur instead of miners. I didn’t know how long it took for the creature to cut its way through the rock, but I suspected it spent a good chunk of time creating its new labyrinth after leaving Hell.
Would we be aware of the minotaur’s return? I suspected we would know when it entered the cave again. The creature’s footsteps shook the town when it left the mountain; they would definitely rattle the walls of this cave.
Would it know we were here when it returned?
I didn’t know how intelligent the creature was, but I hoped it had the brain capacity of a mouse and wouldn’t be able to scent us out over the stench of this place. Maybe we’d get lucky and it wouldn’t know we were here at all; I didn’t think that was likely as our luck had led us into this town.
We’d traveled at least five hundred feet into the tunnel when I detected a glow ahead of us. I squinted as I lifted the flame to see what lay ahead, but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. The light grew brighter as we approached, and the tunnel came to an end with a circular opening.
I stepped through the entrance, and my breath sucked in at the same time gasps filled the air. My flame sputtered out as I gaped at what lay beneath us.
I’d expected twists and turns through the tunnel along with offshoots that would go nowhere or circle around or maybe lead to freedom. We’d encountered only one branch, but that was because the tunnel was nothing more than the entrance to the labyrinth.
Here was where the real fun began.
There were so many winding pathways I couldn’t focus on just one of them. They intersected each other in a crisscrossing pattern that confused me, and I hadn’t even stepped foot in the thing. I tried to follow one of the pathways, but it was impossible to stay with it for more than twenty feet.
I couldn’t begin to decide which of those pathways might lead out of here before the rows of convoluted routes disappeared over a hill that blocked out anything on the other side of it. I bit my lip as I tried not to think about the possibility there was no way out of here.
There had to be an exit, or I’d led all these people to their deaths.
Despite the convoluted pathways, the labyrinth was amazingly beautiful. Like the old English maze I’d expected to find, rows of hedges created the hundreds of corridors beneath the earth. Overhead, a dome of hewn rock arched over the labyrinth. That dome stretched at least two hundred yards and arced over the section of the maze I couldn’t see.
The sun couldn’t shine down here, but golden light illuminated the l
abyrinth and chased away the shadows of the cave. Before me, a rocky, winding pathway led down to the entrance of the maze. Once we walked down it, we’d have no idea which way to go or where we were in the maze.
We’d be as lost as a bird in a tornado the second we stepped foot in those hedges.
For a moment, I feared I might throw up as bile rose in my throat and my head spun. Part of the plan was to get enough of a head start that maybe we could find our way out of the labyrinth before the minotaur realized we were here. That was probably impossible.
When Hawk rested his hand on my shoulder, I glanced at him. I saw apprehension in his eyes, but there was also a steely resolve that straightened my spine.
“Now what?” the blue-haired demon asked.
“Now we keep going,” Hawk said.
“Into that?” a human asked.
“Do you want to turn back?” Corson inquired. “Because there is nowhere for us to go back there.”
“Except into the mouth of the minotaur,” Bale said.
I glanced into the shadows of the cave. I wasn’t sure which was worse, wandering into the maze or returning to fight the monster who so easily defeated us the other day.
Turning back is worse.
There was no way to know how much time we’d spend trapped in the labyrinth, but we wouldn’t have much time left in the town before it came for us. And now that the town was burning, we’d have less time there.
“We have to go,” I said.
Before anyone could stop me, I started down the side of the mountain. Here the rock walkway was at least ten feet wide and open all around me.
“How is this place possible?” I asked as I led the way down the winding path. “How did that beast create this world? How are there bushes growing under the earth and in this rocky ground?”
“The same magic the minotaur used to trap us in the town was also used to create this,” Bale said. “The labyrinth is the minotaur’s home and its creation.”
“If this is its creation,” Randy said, “then can it change it around us?”
I shuddered at the possibility and realized it might happen. If that creature had built this world, then it might be able to do anything with it, which meant we had no chance of escaping this maze.
Kiss of Death: Hell on Earth Series, Book 3 Page 21