Chapter Twenty-Three
The first thing Theo saw was light. At least eight or ten torches were set in iron rings around the perimeter of the circular chamber she stumbled into, making her blink at the unexpected brightness and dancing shadows. The musky animal smell was almost overpowering to her divinely sensitive nose; she opened her mouth and breathed through it instead, but the smell still filled her, making her swallow hard to keep down her churning stomach.
Next to her at the chamber’s entrance was a large pile of sour-smelling hay and a battered tin bucket. The old hay stirred memories of her horse-crazy days at age eleven and made her indignant; livestock needed fresh clean hay daily, not this moldy mess. No wonder the whatever-it-was (she avoided thinking about large bovine creatures) sounded so unhappy. You’re fixating, Fairchild. I don’t think you should be worrying much about cruelty to animals just now—
Sudden movement scattered these irrelevant thoughts. She turned to her left, and tried to shriek. But the only sound that emerged from her dry, constricted throat was a tiny bleat. She registered its silliness even as she started to back away from the hulking figure that shambled around the edge of the room. It caught sight of her and stopped.
Theo knew what a Minotaur was. She had seen artists’ interpretations of them in her beloved books of mythology growing up: the sepia-toned snoring bull-headed figure lying amid a pile of human bones in her D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths had haunted her dreams for weeks after she first saw it at age nine. But no illustration, no matter how terrifying, could have prepared her for this.
It was tall—taller than a man by several inches and correspondingly broad. She stared into the glittering black eyes that were widening in surprise, the bloodshot whites visible around the dark irises. They were shockingly bright in the black-furred head on its thick muscular neck. It was not just a human with a bull’s head on its shoulders but an eerie amalgam of man and animal: the snout shorter and the eyes placed farther forward than was usual with a bull, the body thicker and squarer and more heavily furred than a man’s. And its hands—she glanced at the useless, bifurcated stubs and looked away again.
“I—I’ve come to get Grant Proctor,” she managed to say in a hoarse whisper. The Minotaur gawked at her, and she saw the short fur on its neck and shoulders bristle like a dog’s, saw the ears flatten and the long yellow horns point directly at her as it lowered its head and lumbered toward her.
She thought about what those wickedly pointed horns could do to an unprotected body, thought about ripping flesh and gouging, goring, tearing spikes driven by that powerful neck. She gasped, and suddenly found herself on the opposite side of the chamber. She had involuntarily transported herself.
Necessity is the mother of invention, even in magic, she thought incoherently as she watched the Minotaur stagger to a halt in mid-charge, looking for her. She saw that its tail was sticking out stiff and straight behind it, and a hysterical giggle caught in her throat. I didn’t think it would have a tail—how cute. But then it turned and spotted her again, and all irrelevant thoughts fled as it snorted angrily and charged at her again, moving awkwardly on its human feet, as if it were not quite sure how to use them.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” she just had time to cry out before she blinked and magically dodged once more to the other side of the room. The Minotaur paused again and bellowed in fury as it looked for her.
She tried to keep an eye on it while she looked around for some sign of Grant. She managed a kick at the hay pile before teleporting again, wondering if he were buried inside it for warmth, but her foot swished through it without touching anything solid. Then where could Grant be? There hadn’t been any sign of him in the passages of the labyrinth. Had June maliciously tricked her? Could this whole labyrinth just have been a red herring of Julian’s to keep her occupied until time ran out? She put that thought to one side, but her hope flickered like a dying candle.
“I need your help. I’m trying to find someone. His name is Grant Proctor. Please. Do you know where he is?” she gasped out. The creature snorted angrily and ran at her once more. She vanished again, the Minotaur’s horns a mere foot from her throat. Think! If Grant wasn’t here, then where was he?
“Tell me!” she panted, shouting across the chamber at the enraged half-beast. “Where is Grant? Isn’t he here? What did you do with him? Give him back to me!”
The Minotaur roared back at her, a furious, inarticulate cry of rage. The sound of her speech seemed to antagonize it: again it stumbled clumsily toward her, broad feet slapping on the stone floor, and she noticed something just before she whisked away from its savage horns.
It was limping.
What should she remember about limping? She watched the Minotaur as it stormed at her once more, looked into the dark angry eyes, and saw something else there—a pleading, entreating spark of consciousness, all but buried beneath the bestial wildness and frenzy.
“You’ve hurt yourself,” she said, dodging sideways this time so she could still see its eyes. “Your foot—”
It slowed, its rough panting making its sides suck in over pitifully prominent ribs with each breath, and stared at her in confusion. She felt lightheaded as she looked at it. A livid scar twisted just below its ribs, barely visible under the black hair, and then she knew. Shock twisted through her gut.
“Grant,” she whispered, and took one cautious step forward. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
The Minotaur moaned uncertainly, head lowered as it looked at her. She saw the stiff tail slowly relax and hang still. Was it true? Had Julian made Grant take a Minotaur’s form? What was it that he had said? “I can’t imagine you wanting to embrace the physical Grant just now.”
“Oh yes I would. I’d embrace you in whatever form you were in,” she said aloud, taking another step toward it. “I know it’s you, Grant. Your scar is there. And you’re limping. I could feel that you’d hurt your foot somehow, when I came to you in your dreams.”
A shiver passed through its frame as she reached out a hand to close the last distance between them. “Grant,” she whispered. “It’s me, Theo. I know you’re in there.” She touched the hairy shoulder, and it quivered but didn’t move. She reached out with the other hand, and slipped her arms around it, drawing it to her. “Grant,” she murmured once more, resting her cheek against the furred shoulder.
The Minotaur stiffened and threw its head back. Theo gasped and nearly jumped back as the body in her arms began to shake, then to change, to flow. “Grant!” she cried once more.
But the figure in her arms was not Grant. Instead, she was shocked to find a large dirty-brown lizard clasped in her arms. Clawed forefeet clutched at her shoulders, and a long forked tongue slipped out a slash of a mouth with a sibilant hiss. Flat yellow eyes with vertical pupils stared into hers.
“Awrch!” she cried in disgust. But, like lightning, an image flashed across her mind’s eye: a man on a beach gripping a strange figure, part lion, part tree trunk, and she knew. She swallowed her horror and gripped the dry scaly skin of the enormous lizard, and would not let go as it squirmed and thrashed its powerful tail. She’d had Theseus and the Minotaur. Now it was Proteus’s turn.
“No—way—” she panted, trying to avoid the creature’s fetid breath and sharp claws tearing at her shirt. “You’re not—going—to make me—let go!”
The lizard hissed loudly, and changed again. The scales under her hands softened and shredded into thick fur. Theo shut her eyes and dug her hands into a dense, musky-smelling pelt, gripped it for dear life, and felt long clawed paws embrace her back, squeezing harder and harder—
“Go on!” she gasped at the bear. “Squeeze the breath out of me! I won’t let go.”
Instead it let go of her, and she screamed in pain. The fur she had clutched so tightly had turned into countless burning needles, driving into her hands, her bare arms, her torso and legs. Her eyes flew open, and she saw that she was hugging an enormous gray-green cactus. She could al
most have laughed at the absurd change, if it hadn’t hurt so much.
“That the best you can do?” she said between gritted teeth as hundreds of two inch spikes seemed to burrow into her flesh like tiny skewers. “A few pinpricks?”
The needles vanished. She exhaled in relief as something smooth filled her arms, something smooth but horribly foul-smelling that squirmed and nearly jerked her arms apart. She turned her face aside, screwing her eyes tightly shut to avoid the vicious beak of the great vulture that was trying to break her grip with its powerful wings.
“Go ahead, fly if you can. I’ll still hold on,” she grunted as she fought to keep her arms around the slippery-feathered figure. It shrieked, sending a wave of carrion-tainted breath over her, and then the straining wings ceased pulling at her arms.
A thick streamlined column of muscle took its place, a column with strange rough skin and a thrashing tail and wide fins digging into her arms, a column with a pointed head and a cold merciless eye glaring at her as its jaws seemed to leap out of its mouth toward her face.
Theo very nearly let go that time. One of her older brothers had made her sit and watch all the Jaws movies with him just before their family vacation on Nantucket the summer she was ten. She had refused to put so much as a toe in the water for the entire two weeks of their visit. There was something so inherently abhorrent about sharks, so viciously inhuman—
You guessed that one pretty well, didn’t you? But it’s not going to work. I won’t let you get to me, she thought at it. Speech was impossible just then.
The shark’s skin grated her already lacerated arms but she held on grimly, unable to shout her defiance but equally determined to overcome the fear and repulsion that nearly choked her. She jerked away from the snapping jaws and managed to get one hand over its dorsal fin and yank it back, grunting triumphantly.
All at once the savagely thrashing fish melted in her arms. Again she felt her body sag in anxious relief. She had survived that metamorphosis, had survived all of them. What could possibly be worse than embracing a giant man-eating shark?
“My dear Theodora,” said a voice in her ear. Strong arms encircled her, and a gentle mouth softly kissed her. “My poor dear girl, you’re exhausted.”
…
Theo cried out and again nearly leapt away in shock and horror. Julian stood in her arms, magnificently naked, his turquoise eyes gazing ardently into hers.
“You amaze me, beloved. I underestimated your abilities of resistance. Forgive me for scaring you like that. The shark was dreadful, wasn’t it?” he said, smoothing back her hair.
“No!” Theo moaned, shrinking away from his hand. No, it couldn’t be Julian down here. How could he have—?
“My beautiful Theodora.” He slid her shirt up, stroked her back, dropped a trail of kisses down her jaw and onto the spot on her throat that always made her sigh and writhe when it was kissed. “You cling to me. Is this the end at last? Have you chosen me?” he murmured in her ear, nibbling delicately at her lobe. “Do you long for my arms around you once again, my body in yours making you delirious with pleasure?”
She shuddered. Was this really Julian? Could she let go of him and refute his hateful words? Or was this yet another trick, like the lizard and the shark, but a hundred times worse?
“You look away from me, my dear. Do I disgust you so? Is my love so unwelcome that you would flee me?” He turned her face and covered her mouth with his. “Sweet,” he murmured into her lips. “We belong together, my darling. You know that as well as I do.”
She felt his hand skim over one of her breasts, pausing to cup its weight, then continue down to unbutton her jeans, and she moaned. She was beginning to feel almost physically ill with the struggle. What if he tried to make love to her? She could not—could not—let him touch her again. But what if she pushed him away now, let go of him, and found that it wasn’t really Julian? That she had failed the Proteus challenge? Then she would lose Grant altogether.
The scar. She’d seen his scar. It had to be Grant, chained under a terrible enchantment. But what if it weren’t? She slid one hand up his side to feel if it were there.
Julian chuckled. “Ah, are you so eager for me after all?”
No scar. She hastily withdrew her hand and stood statue-like, eyes shut tight, feeling only the trembling deep inside her and Julian’s warm flesh under her hands. Just because there wasn’t a scar didn’t mean that it wasn’t Grant. Would the cactus have had his scar, or the vulture?
“You have to decide, Theodora,” he murmured as his hand slipped into the warm space between her legs. “Mmm, so deliciously wet. Should I continue? I do enjoy hearing you call my name in that breathy moan you use when you’re about to—”
Theo jerked her hips away from his questing fingers but still kept her arms around him.
“Which will it be, darling?” he said, laughing now. “Yield to me, or let me go?”
“Neither!” she snapped. Without pausing to think, she slid first one hand, then the other, to encircle his wrists. “I won’t let you make love to me but I won’t let go. It’s stalemate.”
Julian’s face darkened and he tried to yank his hands from her grasp. Theo set her jaw and held on, remembering how strong he was, how he could pick her up and carry her around like a doll. She’d never be able to keep hanging on.
But she did. Maybe it was her new powers that helped her, for no matter how he tugged and writhed, she was able to hold his wrists. New hope surged in her breast. If she could still hold him like this—if he hadn’t been able to break away from her with Julian’s godly strength—then maybe he wasn’t a god. Maybe he was….
After a few minutes she caught a glimpse of his face. Though he scowled angrily, there was something different about his eyes. The intense turquoise was fading. Though her heart pounded with excitement, she squashed the emotion. You haven’t won yet. Don’t lose your focus now. A trickle of sweat ran down her forehead into her eyes.
Now she saw the bright silver of his hair darken, lengthen from Julian’s preppy stockbroker cut to something longer and shaggier, just touching the shoulders. At the same time she could feel something else change, too. She closed her eyes to concentrate; it was the structure of magic that surrounded the figure in her arms. She hadn’t even noticed it was there until it started to fall apart, gossamer threads dissolving into nothingness.
Still she held on, eyes closed, fearful of yet another horrible change, fearful of hoping too much. Julian’s struggles intensified, but so did her resolve. It’s coming—you’re almost there…
With a loud cry, the figure in her arms slumped against her, panting. Theo stood still too, winded as much by the mental strain as the physical, her hands tight on—well, it felt like wrists. With a deep shuddering breath, she held the figure away from her and opened her eyes.
Grant stood before her.
His eyes were closed, and his breathing was ragged. She saw his pulse beat frantically in his throat as he swayed slightly, deprived of her support. She pulled him back against her and let go of his wrists to wrap her arms around his naked shivering body. He sagged against her so limply that she wondered if he hadn’t lost consciousness.
“Grant?” she whispered, gently stroking his back and willing herself to stay on the ground. “It’s all right, my love. You’re you again.” A tremor of relief ran through her. They’d won. Everything would be all right. She and Grant could leave this cursed labyrinth and go back up into the sunlight together—
Then Grant’s body stiffened. Slowly, painfully, he stood upright. Theo opened her eyes and looked up into his gray ones, and was chilled by what she saw there. Without a word, he pushed her from him and stumbled away.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Theo stared after him, stunned. “Grant!” she cried, following him. “Please, Grant!”
He did not look round.
She went back and snatched up the cape she had summoned and lost during her struggle with the bear. Or was it the liza
rd? It was starting to become hazy in her mind as the shock of Grant’s rejection crept over her. She ran after him and managed to slip it over his broad naked shoulders. “You’ll freeze. Here,” she said tentatively.
He stood still, his back to her. She waited for him to shrug it off but he didn’t. “Thank you,” he said in a harsh monotone and pulled it around him.
She sidled past him, trying to face him. “Grant, what is it? What’s wrong?”
He did an about-face and walked back toward the central chamber, keeping his face averted from her. “What do you think is wrong?” he growled.
Theo tried to run ahead, to look into his face, feeling almost dizzy. “I don’t know! All I know is that you’re yourself again, and it’s time for us to get going back up to the real world before Julian wins.”
“Hasn’t he already won?”
She looked at her watch. It still read three. “I don’t know. I have no idea how long I’ve been down here. But if we don’t hurry—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He swayed again and caught at the wall. She tried to slip a supporting arm around him but he wrenched away from her.
“What is it?” she beseeched him, her throat hot and tight with unshed tears. “Don’t you want—”
“What do you want? When I was Julian just then, I already knew exactly what your mouth would feel like under mine. I knew where to kiss you to make you shiver and squirm. I knew the softness of your—” He swallowed. “He showed me his making love with you, made me feel you, hear you, taste you—”
“And did he show you how he had tricked me into it?” she replied angrily. But a sick feeling had risen inside her.
“I could feel your pleasure in him, how much you enjoyed every kiss, every touch,” he countered, his mouth twisting bitterly. “How do I know you care a drop for me? For all I know you and he have concocted this rescue as a charade for your own amusement and as soon as I touch you and say I love you he’ll appear from the woodwork and carry you away and leave me here to rot. Can you imagine what it’s been like to live as a beast? Or what it was like to take those shapes?”
By Jove Page 25