Spartan Destiny

by Estep, Jennifer

  I lunged out of the way of his attack, then surged back up onto my feet and held my hands out in front of me. “Mateo! Stop! It’s me! Rory!”

  But he didn’t listen to me any more than Ian had on the library roof. Mateo let out a low growl and raised his tablet high overhead, intending to smash it down on top of my head. Once again, I sidestepped him and whirled around.

  Babs was still lying in the grass, yelling at me, but I didn’t lunge toward the sword. She couldn’t help me with this. Instead, I dug into my jeans pocket and yanked out the one thing that might.

  Aphrodite’s Cuff.

  The gold cuff gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, and I twirled it around in my hand, getting a feel for it the same way I would with any other weapon. Right now, it was a weapon, and the only thing that might save Mateo. Takeda’s healing magic hadn’t helped Ian, just like my magic hadn’t worked on Aunt Rachel. But the cuff was a powerful artifact, and I was hoping it would succeed where Takeda and I had both failed.

  Only one way to find out.

  Mateo growled and started circling me, so I let my Spartan instincts take over and started analyzing his every move. Mateo’s greatest advantage was his speed, but he only had his tablet instead of a sword or a dagger. Still, the hard plastic case slamming into my head had been painful enough, and I had no desire to let him hit me with it again.

  But that was what I was going to have to do in order to get the cuff on his wrist. I just couldn’t get close enough to him otherwise.

  I sighed. This was going to hurt.

  Mateo let out another growl, hefted his tablet, and charged forward. Instead of dodging his attack, I stepped up so that I was standing right in front of him. Mateo grinned and hefted his tablet even higher, while I reached up and grabbed his left arm.

  We struggled for a moment, with him trying to smash his tablet into my face and me trying to shove up his shirtsleeve so that I could put the cuff on his wrist. I didn’t think the artifact would work unless it was actually touching his skin and not just his clothes.

  We both succeeded at the same time.

  Mateo slammed his tablet into my forehead, while I slapped the cuff onto his wrist. But before I could move away, he used his speed to draw his arms back and hit me in the head with his tablet again, hard enough to make me see white stars. I stumbled back, tripped over the dead Reaper, and hit the ground.

  Mateo must have realized that he couldn’t kill me with his tablet, because he tossed it aside, reached down, and grabbed the sword off the dead Reaper’s belt. I was on my back on the ground, my head still spinning. I forced myself to blink away the white stars and look up at Mateo, but his eyes were as red as before.

  Why wasn’t the artifact working? I had hoped the cuff would immediately counteract the red narcissus venom, but it didn’t look like the artifact was having any effect. And now he had a sword and seemed even more determined to kill me than he was before.

  Mateo surged forward and lifted his sword high overhead, intending to bring it down right on top of me. I dug my feet and elbows into the grass, trying to scramble back and out of the way, even though I knew I wasn’t moving fast enough to avoid the deadly blow that was coming—

  Mateo lifted his sword even higher, then stopped.

  He just stopped.

  He stayed frozen like that for a few seconds, his sword high overhead, like he was a statue instead of a real, live person. Then he jerked forward, and the sword slipped from his fingers.

  Mateo let out a loud, strangled cry. His red eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he dropped to the ground.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mateo hit the ground face-first. He didn’t move after that.

  “Mateo?” I whispered. “Mateo!”

  He didn’t respond, so I crawled over to where he was sprawled across the grass. I took hold of his shoulder and gently rolled him onto his back, so that he wouldn’t be breathing in dirt, then leaned down and peered at his face.

  “Mateo?” I whispered again. “Are you okay?”

  His eyelids slowly fluttered open. I held my breath, expecting the worst, but Mateo looked up at me.

  His eyes were their normal dark brown.

  A moment later, the ugly red and black streaks faded from his face as well, and Mateo looked like his regular self again.

  I let out a relieved sigh and slumped back on my heels. He was okay. Mateo was okay. Aphrodite’s Cuff had worked, and the artifact had reversed the venom’s effects.

  Mateo blinked several times, as if he was slowly waking up from an intense dream and wasn’t quite sure what was going on. After a few seconds, he focused on me. “Rory?” he asked in a raspy voice. “What happened? Why are we outside? Why am I lying on the grass?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  He started to shake his head, then his eyes widened. “Oh—oh, no!”

  Mateo tried to sit up, but he hissed with pain, fell back down to the ground, and grabbed his head, as though it was suddenly pounding. I put my hand under his shoulder and slowly helped him sit up, although he kept cradling his head in his hands.

  “So I take it you do remember?” I asked.

  Mateo dropped his hands to his lap, raised his head, and looked at me again. “Yeah, and I really wish I didn’t.” He winced. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you with my tablet.”

  I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just glad that you’re okay.”

  “Me too.” He glanced around. “Where are the others?”

  Apparently, he didn’t remember everything.

  “The Reapers still have them—”

  Voices sounded in the distance, cutting me off. My head snapped around, and I strained to listen. Yes, those were definitely voices, along with the heavy thud-thud-thud-thud of footsteps, all of them coming from the direction of the main gate. The Reapers stationed there must have heard the other man scream and were coming to investigate.

  I scrambled to my feet, then held out my hand to Mateo and pulled him up. “Come on. We need to get out of here before any more Reapers show up.”

  He pointed at the dead man on the ground. “And what about him? If the Reapers find his body, they’ll know you’re back on campus.”

  He was right. We had to do something with the Reaper’s body, or we would lose this small advantage. I glanced around. A thicket of bushes stood about twenty feet away. Not the best or most original hiding place, but it would have to do.

  I jerked my head at the bushes. “Let’s take him over there. Grab his shoulders, while I get his legs. Hurry!”

  Mateo and I didn’t have Ian’s strength magic, but together the two of us managed to carry the dead Reaper over to the bushes and set him down behind the dense screen of leaves.

  “Hey!” Babs called out from where she was still lying in the grass. “What about me?”

  I darted over and scooped her up, along with Mateo’s tablet and the Reaper’s sword and phone. I also grabbed my messenger bag from where I had left it. We couldn’t afford to leave anything behind for our enemies to find. I had just slid back behind the bushes next to Mateo when three Reapers appeared in the distance, running up the main path and heading in this direction.

  The Reapers stopped a few feet away and glanced around, their swords up.

  “Are you sure you heard something?” one of them asked.

  “I’m telling you that someone screamed. And there were other noises, like there was a fight going on,” a second one replied.

  Those two Reapers turned toward the third man, as if waiting for him to settle their argument and decide if they needed to investigate further.

  Mateo tapped me on the shoulder, then pointed to the spot where I had killed the Reaper. I looked over there and grimaced. We had hidden the Reaper’s body behind the bushes, but there was one thing we hadn’t been able to cover up: his blood.

  The Reaper’s black cloak had soaked up most of his blood, but I could still see spots of it on the ground. The other Reapers wou
ld too if they glanced in that direction.

  I handed the dead man’s sword to Mateo. He nodded, telling me that he was ready to fight, and then we looked at the Reapers again. We would have to take them down as quickly and quietly as possible and then hope we could escape from the area before more Reapers showed up and surrounded us—

  “Well, I don’t see anything,” the third Reaper said in a bored voice, not even bothering to look around. “We should get back to the gate. We’re not supposed to leave our posts. Besides, everyone on campus has been infected with the venom. There’s no one left to fight back.”

  The other two Reapers nodded, and the three of them headed down the path toward the main gate. Mateo and I stayed still and quiet behind the bushes until they had disappeared from sight.

  Mateo let out a soft sigh. “That was close.”

  “Too close,” I agreed.

  Even though the Reapers were gone, we remained hidden in case they doubled back. I wanted to give the Reapers plenty of time to return to the gate, as well as to let Mateo get his bearings and rest for a few minutes.

  “What do you remember?” I asked. “What happened after I escaped from campus?”

  He frowned, and I could tell that he was concentrating, trying to think back through the poison that had clouded his mind.

  “Covington came back down to the second floor of the library, yelling and screaming at Drake and Ian for letting you and the gryphons get away,” Mateo said. “That went on for quite a while.”

  Despite our dire situation, I still grinned. I would have liked to have seen Covington’s frustration. It would have made up for some of the many times he had gotten the better of me over the past few months.

  “After that, Covington ordered us to get into the elevator and ride back down to the Bunker. He stomped around down there for several minutes, tearing through the artifacts on the shelves. He thought that maybe you had hidden the Narcissus Heart in the Bunker,” Mateo said. “But he quickly realized that it would take him hours to look through everything, so he made us stand in a row again, and he went up and down the line of us, barking out questions and demanding to know where you had hidden the Narcissus Heart. He thought one of us knew where it was or had helped you hide it.”

  Mateo gave me a reproachful look. “But you didn’t tell anyone that you had taken the Heart. Not even Ian or your aunt Rachel. Covington was surprised by that. He kept asking us question after question, but nobody had any answers.”

  “Did he…hurt you guys?” My voice came out as a low, strained rasp. “When you couldn’t tell him where the Heart was?”

  Mateo shook his head. “No, he just yelled and screamed again.”

  I let out a quiet sigh of relief. At least he hadn’t hurt them any more than he already had by poisoning them.

  Mateo kept staring at me with that same reproachful look, clearly wanting an explanation. I definitely owed him one after everything he and the others had been through.

  “I did it. I opened the black Chloris box, stole the Narcissus Heart, and replaced it with those red crystals. And then I hid the real Heart. I was so afraid that Covington would break into the Bunker and steal it. I felt like I had to hide it, like I had to do whatever was necessary to protect the artifact, even if it meant lying to you guys.” I had to force out my next words. “Are you mad at me?”

  “Am I upset that you didn’t trust me and everyone else enough to tell us how worried you were?” Mateo shrugged. “Sure. But I also understand why you did it. And it turns out that you were right to do it. Because if you hadn’t hidden the Heart, then Covington would have control of everyone at the academy right now, including you.”

  Relief washed through me. I just hoped that the rest of my friends were as understanding and forgiving. I had shared my secret with Mateo, and I wanted to ask him something in return.

  “What was it like?”

  “The red narcissus venom?” he asked.

  “Yeah. That, and being under Covington’s control. Having to do whatever he said.”

  Mateo’s eyes darkened, and his mouth twisted with disgust. “It was horrible. The venom made it feel like my entire body was burning up from the inside out.”

  I nodded in sympathy. I had experienced the same thing when Covington had poisoned me with a red narcissus seed at the Idun Estate.

  “But after a while, the intense burning sensation died down a bit. You know how you feel hot and achy all over when you’re sick and have the flu? It was like that. It still hurt, but it was at least bearable.”

  Mateo fell silent for a moment, his mouth twisting again. “But the worst part was having to obey Covington. Every time he touched the Chloris Amulet and barked out a command, I could hear his voice booming like thunder in my head. And no matter how hard I tried to fight it, I had to do exactly what he said, even though I didn’t want to. And if I tried to resist, then the venom heated up in my body again, until it felt like my skin was going to melt off my bones. But as soon as I did what Covington said, then the heat and the pain would die back down. The more times he used the amulet, the more quickly the pain intensified, and the harder it was to fight him. Pretty soon, he didn’t have to use the amulet at all.”

  He paused. “And there’s something else you should know.”

  “What?”

  “After I gave in, after I quit fighting, things…changed. The pain went away, but something else took its place. It’s hard to describe, but I think I was feeling what Covington was feeling, including how much he wanted to hurt you, how happy it would make him to see you bleed.” Mateo paused again. “And the idea of hurting you started to make me happy too.” His last few words came out as a low whisper.

  I thought of how Ian had grinned at me while we’d been fighting. Now I knew why he had been so eager to attack me—he’d been acting out Covington’s deepest, darkest desires.

  Mateo scrubbed his hand over his face, as if he was trying to wipe the memories out of his mind. “It was…it was awful.”

  A shudder rippled through his body, but he dropped his hand from his face. He stared at the gold cuff on his wrist as if he wanted to focus on something else, anything else, besides what Covington had done to him.

  Mateo tapped his finger on the cuff. “So I’m guessing that the Narcissus Heart isn’t the only artifact you’ve borrowed from the Bunker.”

  “Nope. I made fakes of every single artifact I could, then swapped them out for the real ones, just in case Covington ever did attack and get control of the Bunker.”

  Mateo nodded and turned the cuff back and forth on his wrist, making the diamond heart shimmer in the sunlight.

  “Did it…hurt?” I asked. “When I put the cuff on you?”

  “Yes. For as hot as the red narcissus venom was, the cuff was just as cold. I could feel that cold sweeping through me the second you slapped it onto my wrist. It felt like you had just dunked my entire body in a tub full of ice water.” He shuddered again. “But the cold killed the poison, so I’m glad you did it, no matter how much it hurt.”

  “Do you think the venom is gone for good?” I asked. “Or do you think it could come back if you removed the cuff?”

  Mateo chewed on his lower lip, thinking. “I feel like the poison is gone for good, but I don’t want to take a chance that I’m wrong. Besides, we could always run into more Reapers with smoke bombs, so I’ll keep wearing it for now. Okay?”

  I nodded. That was probably the safest thing to do.

  He smiled, lifted his arm, and struck a pose with the cuff. “Besides, I think this look is totally me.”

  I laughed. He was joking now, which meant he was really okay.

  The smile slipped from Mateo’s face, and he lowered his arm to his side. “But what do we do now? Covington still has control of everyone else, along with the academy.”

  I picked up his tablet from the ground and handed it to him. “That’s where you come in. I want you to check and make sure that no Reapers are between us and my cottage.”<
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  This was why I had decided to rescue Mateo first, instead of Ian or Zoe. If Mateo had finished reprogramming the security cameras, then the Reapers would have found me in a matter of minutes. But now that I had saved Mateo, he could use his computer skills to help us avoid and track the Reapers through the cameras. That was the only way we were going to stay free long enough to rescue the others.

  Mateo grinned and took his tablet from me. He cracked his knuckles and stretched out his arms, like I had seen him do dozens of times before, then bent over his tablet and started typing. Without the venom slowing him down, his fingers danced over the screen at their usual impressive speed.

  Several different boxes popped up on Mateo’s tablet, each one showing a different part of the academy. He swiped through them, staring at the live feeds.

  “Looks like the Reapers are split into three main groups. One group is in the dining hall guarding the students, while the second is watching the main gate. The third group is patrolling campus,” Mateo said.

  “That last group of Reapers must be looking for me. Covington must think I’m going to climb over the wall to get back on campus.”

  He eyed me. “How did you get back on campus? Covington had me monitoring the security cameras, but I didn’t see you sneak onto the grounds.”

  “Remember that tunnel under Club Dionysus? Well, a branch of it feeds into the academy tunnels under the main quad.”

  Mateo nodded and stared down at his screen again. “The way to the cottage is clear. At least, until the Reapers sweep through the area again, but given their current pace, that shouldn’t happen for at least another thirty minutes.”

  “Good. Then let’s go.”

  “What’s at the cottage that’s so important?” he asked.

  I smiled. “You’ll see.”

  * * *

  Mateo was right. No Reapers were patrolling this area, and we made it to the cottage without any problems. We ducked into a thicket of pine trees and studied the house.