I didn’t know—but I was going to find out.
* * *
I finally dug my phone out of my bag. To my surprise, I had missed a call from Gwen, but when I played the voice mail she had left, it was all loud and garbled, like she was standing beside a roaring engine that was drowning out her words. I listened to it a couple of times, but I just couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me.
I called Gwen back, but her phone rang and rang before going to voice mail. I tried a second time, and then a third, with the same result. I also called Logan, but he didn’t answer me either. Neither did Linus Quinn.
Worry shot through me. Had Covington sent Reapers to poison people at the North Carolina and New York academies too? Were Gwen, Logan, and Linus already infected with red narcissus venom? Maybe Gwen had been calling to warn me that the other academies were under attack. I didn’t know, and I had no way to find out. Whether they had been attacked or not, they were far, far away, and there was nothing I could do to help them right now.
So I texted Gwen, Logan, and Linus, telling them what was going on. I also asked whoever got the message first to have Protectorate guards surround the Colorado academy but not to come inside the walls, for fear that Covington would poison them too. I waited several minutes for one of them to reply, but no one did.
It was up to me, then.
I had just put my phone in my pocket when the gryphons returned to the cavern. Several chunks of bronze fur and feathers were missing from Balder’s and Brono’s bodies, and the third gryphon was limping, but they were all okay, and it looked like they had gotten the better of the basilisks.
My heart eased, and I ran over and hugged each one of them. I had been so afraid that the basilisks would hurt them—or worse. The gryphons were my friends too, and I didn’t want to put them in any more danger, but I needed their help to save Ian, Aunt Rachel, and everyone else.
I looked at the creatures. “I need you guys to fly me back down the mountain and then stay nearby until I use the whistle to call for you again. Can you do that for me? Please?”
All three gryphons nodded. They had seen the Reapers and the Fafnir dragon on the library roof, so they knew what was at stake.
I picked up Babs and slid her into her scabbard, which was hooked to my belt, then grabbed my messenger bag and slung the strap across my chest. I also tucked Aphrodite’s Cuff into the front pocket of my jeans.
When I was ready, I looked at the gryphons again. “Let’s go.”
* * *
We went outside to the clearing, and I climbed up onto Balder’s back. A moment later, we were airborne and flying back down the mountain toward the academy. It was after four o’clock now, a little more than an hour since I had first flown away from the academy, and here I was heading right back into the danger zone.
I checked the air around us, thinking that Covington might summon some more basilisks or even send a couple of dragons to look for me, but the sky remained clear. Well, that was one fewer thing to worry about, although I still had plenty more.
Balder started to veer toward the academy, but I leaned down.
“No! Take me over there!” I pointed out the location I wanted, and Balder screeched and headed in that direction.
A few minutes later, he landed on a patch of grass, and Brono and the third gryphon touched down beside him.
“What are we doing here?” Babs muttered from her spot on my belt. “I thought you never wanted to see this place again after what happened the last time we were here.”
Her dire words didn’t match our pretty surroundings. Cobblestone paths lined with iron streetlamps curled through the lush, landscaped grass that spread out in all directions. In the distance, a tall black wrought-iron fence cordoned off this area from the large parking lot next door. Given the picturesque scene, I would have almost thought I was in a park—except for the tombstones. They and other grave markers dotted the grass, clearly denoting this as a cemetery.
The Midgard had come here a few weeks ago when we had been trying to recover Serket’s Pen from Gretchen Gondul, the Valkyrie who had stolen it from the Idun Estate and had foolishly tried to sell it to Covington and Drake. The Reapers had killed Gretchen and taken the artifact that night, and they had summoned a basilisk that had almost killed me too.
My gaze darted over to a grave marker with a stone basilisk perched on top of it. Even though it was just a statue, the basilisk still looked like it was about to take flight, zoom through the air, and stab me with its sharp, pointed beak. I shuddered and looked away from it.
“What are we doing here?” Babs asked again. “We’re nowhere close to the academy.”
“I know, but we can’t just walk up to the front gate and go inside. Covington is sure to have posted guards along the perimeter. So we’re going to have to take the long way around to sneak back inside the academy.”
I turned to the gryphons. I went down the line, hugging and petting each one of them. “Thank you so much for your help. I would probably be dead right now if it wasn’t for you guys.”
The gryphons all straightened up and flexed their wings, accepting my praise.
“I’m going to the academy to fight the Reapers. I need you guys to stay here, out of sight, until I use Pan’s Whistle to call for you again. I’m probably going to need your help again later on to save everyone. Okay?”
The gryphons nodded. I didn’t want to say this next part, but I forced out the words anyway.
“But if I don’t call for you and I don’t come back here, don’t go inside the academy searching for me. Gwen should be here in a few hours, along with some Protectorate guards. She’ll take care of you guys. Okay?”
Balder, Brono, and the third gryphon all bowed their heads in understanding. I petted them a final time, and then they wandered away, using their beaks to snatch wildflowers, clover, and more out of the grass for their dinner.
I didn’t want to leave them, but they couldn’t follow where I was going. I watched the gryphons a moment longer, making sure they were okay, then headed deeper into the cemetery.
I drew Babs out of her scabbard and hurried along the path, keeping an eye on everything around me. I thought I was being smart, coming here instead of going directly to the academy, but Covington was smart too, and he might guess what I was planning.
But I was the only person moving through the cemetery, and I quickly made it to my destination, a stone building with a door that was standing wide open.
“Oh, no,” Babs whispered. “Please don’t tell me we’re going into those creepy tunnels again.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
I drew in a breath, raised Babs into an attack position, and stepped through the open door.
Chapter Seventeen
I moved into the building, walked down a set of stairs, and glanced around.
The walls were bare, except for a couple of plastic lanterns hanging on an iron spike. I didn’t know who had left the lanterns behind, but I grabbed one of them and hit the button on the side. The lantern flared to life, its light burning bright and steady. Finally, a bit of good luck.
Clutching the lantern in one hand and Babs in the other, I headed toward the dark tunnel carved into the back wall. I had chased Gretchen Gondul and the Reapers through this same tunnel a few weeks ago, and now I was going back through it in the opposite direction.
“Here goes nothing,” I whispered to Babs.
“Good luck,” she whispered back.
I stepped into the tunnel and started walking.
The tunnel was the same as I remembered it, a stone passageway with a low ceiling and thick cobwebs covering the walls like sticky ghosts. My boots crunched on the loose stones on the floor—at least, I hoped they were loose stones and not bones—but I kept going. The tunnel twisted and turned before finally opening up into a much larger room.
A crypt.
The round room was also made of stone and covered with cobwebs, just like the t
unnel. Spaces had been hollowed out of the walls, starting right above the floor and climbing all the way up to the ceiling. Thanks to my lantern, I could see the white bones gleaming in each and every one of the spaces. I shivered, and not because of the cool air.
Gretchen Gondul had brought me to this crypt the night she tried to sell me to Covington, along with Serket’s Pen. A few black feathers still littered the floor, along with tufts of black fur, from where the basilisk and the chimera that Gretchen and Covington had summoned had battled each other.
I shivered again, crossed the open space, and hurried into the tunnel on the far side. This passageway was the same as the first, except for one important difference: it split into two separate tunnels.
I stood at the junction and shone my lantern into both of the tunnels. Not too far ahead, in the right passageway, I could make out the solid slab of a wall that seemed like a dead end. In the left one, all I could see was darkness.
“All right,” I whispered to Babs, even though no one else was around to hear me. “The right tunnel must be the one that opens up into the basement of Club Dionysus. That must be the way Gretchen brought me the night she kidnapped me from the club. The left tunnel must be the one that leads back to the academy. There was one tunnel that Zoe and I didn’t map from the other side, but it seemed like it went on past the academy and over here into town.”
“Are you sure?” Babs whispered back.
“No, but this is our best shot to sneak back onto campus. We have to check it out.”
Babs’s hilt quivered in my hand, as if she was nodding her agreement. I raised her and the lantern again and set off down the left tunnel.
This tunnel was the same as the others, a passageway strung with cobwebs and littered with loose bits of stone. I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary, although every faint scuff of my boots on the ground made me wince. Still, I kept going, peering into the shadows the whole time and expecting the Reapers to appear at any second, along with a basilisk or a dragon. But nothing happened, and I walked on…and on…and on…
A light clicked on.
I bit back a shriek and lurched to one side of the tunnel, thinking that someone else was in here and about to attack me. It took me a moment to realize that a light had clicked on in the ceiling. I studied the light, which was a simple round circle, like all the other ones in the tunnels that ran underneath Mythos Academy. I let out a breath. My guess had been right. We had made it. We were back in the academy tunnels.
Which meant that the most dangerous part of my mission was just beginning.
I switched off the lantern to save the battery and set it down beside the wall. I decided to leave it here, just in case I had to beat a hasty retreat and head back down the tunnel toward Club Dionysus and the crypt. Then I lifted Babs again, made sure my messenger bag was still secure across my chest, and tiptoed forward. I quickly reached the end of this tunnel and peered into the one beyond.
Even though I couldn’t see the door to the Bunker at the far end, I knew this was the tunnel that led to the Library of Antiquities. I looked and listened, but I still didn’t see or hear anything. No boots thumping on the floor, no voices echoing off the walls, no claws scraping against the stone. Nothing to indicate that Covington, Drake, or anyone else was nearby. Good.
I stepped into the library tunnel, but I didn’t move toward the Bunker. Instead, I headed toward the junction where the five main tunnels met. I stopped in front of the light switch and glanced down at the spot near the bottom of the wall where I had hidden the Narcissus Heart.
The stones were still whole and intact. Covington hadn’t found the artifact yet. I let out a quiet sigh of relief.
I debated whether I should pull the stones out of the wall, grab the Heart, and take it with me, but I decided not to. Right now, this was the safest place for the artifact, and I didn’t want to risk losing it while I was trying to save my friends. I glanced at the spot in the wall again, then moved on.
I strode forward and stopped, staring down each one of the four other tunnels. Each passageway led to one of the main buildings on the quad aboveground, but where did I want to go? I had no idea where my friends were right now, much less the Reapers.
Think, Rory, think.
I pulled out my phone and checked the time. After four thirty. Classes were long over with for the day, and Covington had probably poisoned everyone on campus by now. But what would he do with that many people?
He would want them close by, someplace where he could easily keep an eye on all the kids at once, someplace where he could hold them as hostages, in case any Protectorate guards showed up and either surrounded the campus or stormed onto the grounds to try to free everyone.
That eliminated the English-history and math-science buildings. Neither one of them was big enough to hold all the students, professors, and staff members. So that left the Library of Antiquities, the gym, and the dining hall.
The only way I could get into the library without being seen was through the tunnel that opened up into the Bunker, but I couldn’t risk using it and running into my friends or the Reapers. They would either capture or kill me, and my rescue mission would be over with before it really got started. Besides, I didn’t think that Covington would hold everyone in the library. Not given all the artifacts stored inside. He would want to keep those for himself and away from everyone else.
I didn’t think that Covington would hold everyone in the gym either. There were too many doors there, and it would be hard to keep the Protectorate guards from breaching the building, if it came to that.
The dining hall—that was where I would keep my hostages. Besides, zombified kids still had to eat and drink and use the restroom, and holding them in the dining hall would be far easier than hauling food and water across the quad to the library or the gym.
So I stepped into the tunnel that led to the dining hall. I moved quickly and quietly through the passageway, which ended at a locked door.
I stared at the silver button embedded in the wall. No doubt Covington already had Mateo manning the campus security system, using the cameras and his facial-recognition app to alert the Reapers the second I returned to campus. There were no cameras in the tunnels, but I had no idea if the tunnel doors were hooked into the security system. But I couldn’t get through this door any other way, so I jabbed my thumb onto the button and let it scan my print. A green light flashed, and the door popped open a second later.
Before I could change my mind or think about how much danger I was putting myself in, I slipped through to the other side.
* * *
The tunnel door opened up into an old walk-in freezer at the very back of the dining-hall kitchen. The freezer’s cooling system was broken, but the chefs still stored nonperishable food in here, everything from sacks of potatoes to cans of corn to bags of chocolate chips.
Even though it was a risk, cutting off my exit, I shut the tunnel door behind me, then hurried forward and ducked behind a shelf full of canned tomatoes and other vegetables. Staying behind the shelf, I followed it up to the front of the freezer. The chefs must have been moving in and out of here earlier, before the Reapers had invaded campus, because the freezer door was cracked open.
I sidled up to it and glanced through the crack into the area beyond. Normally, at this time of day, the kitchen would have been filled with chefs cooking dinner, but the area was empty, and no food was sizzling on the stoves.
But perhaps the worst part was the complete, utter silence. I didn’t hear a whisper of sound in the kitchen or in the dining hall beyond. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Covington hadn’t brought everyone here. Either way, I had to make sure, so I opened the freezer door and stepped into the kitchen.
“What’s the plan?” Babs whispered, her lips moving underneath my palm.
“Recon,” I whispered back. “Let’s see what we can find out, and then we can plan our next move.”
The sword fell silent, and I kept going.
; Two swinging double doors at the front of the kitchen led into the dining hall. Someone had wedged a doorstop under one of them so that it was cracked open, just like the freezer door had been. I crept forward, crouched down, and peered through the crack and into the dining hall.
It was full of Reapers.
More than a dozen Reapers sporting black cloaks stood along the dining-hall walls, all wearing swords and daggers on their black belts. To my surprise, none of the Reapers was sporting the usual black harlequin masks, but then again, they didn’t have to, since no one was going to fight back.
I had been right. Covington had rounded up the kids, professors, and staff members and had brought them here. They were sitting at the tables, staring straight ahead at nothing, and all of their eyes were that sickening red, with those ugly red and black streaks fanning out across their faces.
My gaze moved from one person to the next. I recognized most of the students, including Kylie Midas and her Valkyrie friends, as well as my professors. Every seat in the dining hall was taken, which meant that everyone at the academy was here. I was hoping that at least a few people had escaped, but it didn’t look like anyone had. My heart sank, but I kept scanning the faces, searching for my friends—
The doors at the front of the dining hall banged open, making me flinch. Covington strolled inside, along with Drake. But the Reapers weren’t alone. Ian followed them, along with Zoe and Mateo.
I looked at the doors, but Aunt Rachel, Takeda, and Professor Dalaja didn’t appear. Worry surged through me, but I hunkered down and scooted back a bit. I couldn’t afford to let them see me.
Covington looked out over the dining hall and nodded in satisfaction. He turned to one of the Reapers standing along the wall. “Is this everyone?”
The Reaper nodded back. “Yes, sir. We’ve checked all the campus buildings. The classrooms, the dorms, the gym, the library, and everywhere else where someone might be hiding. We’ve gotten everyone.”
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