I frowned again. Antibacterial window cleaner? Was that even a real thing?
“And I even have a balcony view. It’s terrific being able to look out and see so much of the library,” the voice continued. “Aye! This is so much better than being stuck in that moldy storage room for another decade. This will do quite nicely…”
The longer I listened to the voice, the more I realized that it belonged to a woman, one with a lovely Irish accent.
That uneasiness welled up in me again, along with an eerie sense of déjà vu. This sounded almost exactly like a story Gwen had once told me. So much so that I glanced over my shoulder at Sigyn’s statue, but the goddess was as still and stone-faced as before, and so were all the other statues around her.
That feminine voice kept chattering away in that lilting Irish accent, talking about the view, the balcony, and more. My curiosity propelled me forward, and I crept closer to the display case. And closer still…and closer still…
I looked down at the case and the same sword I had seen before, the one with the woman’s face inlaid in the hilt. Eyebrow, cheekbone, nose, lips, chin. The sword’s features were the same as before, with one notable difference.
Her eye was now wide open.
It was a beautiful color, a deep, dark green that gleamed under the lights, as though a polished emerald had been set into the sword’s hilt, instead of an actual eye. But it was an eye, and it swiveled left and right, admiring the so-called balcony view, and the sword’s lips twitched as it—she—started happily humming and talking to herself again.
“Aye! This is so much better than being stuck on the shelf next to that grumpy battle ax. All he ever did was reminisce about chopping off people’s heads. Why, he about talked my bloody ear off, he did, and I only have one of them to start with. What a crotchety old blade he was…”
The sword kept babbling to herself, completely unaware that I was standing right next to her. So I did what anyone would do in this situation. I rapped my knuckles on the glass like I was knocking on a fishbowl.
The voice immediately cut off, and the eye swiveled around to me. The sword looked at me, and I stared right back at her. I knew that I should go back over to the balcony and see what the Reapers were doing, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the sword. Her strong features, her intense green eye, her sharp silver blade. She was one of the most beautiful swords I had ever seen, a metallic work of art, and I itched to open the case and pick her up. The urge was so strong that I had to curl my hands into fists to keep from reaching for the case.
I shouldn’t have been so mesmerized. It wasn’t like I’d never seen a talking sword before. I’d had plenty of conversations with Vic, Gwen’s weapon. Vic loved crowing about how awesome he was and how many Reapers he’d helped cut down over the years. He was so proud of his battle prowess that I sometimes thought he should have been a Spartan’s weapon instead of Gwen’s. Not that I was jealous of her or anything. Okay, okay, so maybe I was a teeny, tiny bit jealous. I mean, c’mon. Gwen had a talking sword. How freaking cool was that?
But now that I was face to face with another talking sword, I couldn’t even form a coherent sentence.
“You—you—you—” I sputtered, but I couldn’t get out the words that were stuck in my throat.
The sword’s eye widened. “What are you doing here? The library is supposed to be closed for the night.”
Her incredulous tone finally snapped me out of my fangirl stupor. “Of course the library is closed for the night. I fell asleep studying and just woke up a few minutes ago.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but her eye widened even more. If it grew any bigger, it was liable to pop right off her face.
“Oh, no,” the sword whispered. “No, no, no. This can’t be happening. I just got taken out of storage by that nice old lady this morning! And put in this shiny new case! No. Oh, no, no, no…”
She repeated those same words over and over again, as if my looking at her was the worst thing that could have possibly happened. This was not going the way I’d expected. Not at all. Vic might be bloodthirsty, but this sword seemed downright paranoid.
I softly rapped my knuckles on the glass again, trying to interrupt her chatter and get her to quiet down. I didn’t need the Reapers on the first floor to hear her and realize that someone else was in the library and spying on them. “It’s no big deal. You’re not the first talking sword I’ve seen, and you probably won’t be the last. Everything’s cool.”
Her green eye narrowed. “Wait a second. What other talking swords have you seen? Where? Are they here in the library?”
“Um, no. His name is Vic, and he’s with my cousin, Gwen, in North Carolina. He’s her sword. Or she’s his Champion. Or however that really works.”
“Vic? That old blowhard?” The sword scoffed. “He’s a braggart. Likes to make promises that his blade can’t keep. I can’t believe he’s still around. I would have thought someone would have cleaved him in two by now. Or melted him down for scrap metal. Or…”
Instead of quieting down like I had hoped, she revved right back up again, listing all the things she thought would have happened to Vic by now. As far as incessant talking went, I thought she could give the other sword a run for his money, but I kept that to myself.
As fascinating as the sword was, I really needed to get back to watching the Reapers, so I rapped my knuckles on the glass a third time, interrupting her rant. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you, um…”
“Babs,” the sword said. “You can call me Babs.”
“Okay, Babs. My name is Rory. I’ve gotta go now, but I’ll see you around—”
A scream tore through the air, cutting me off.
Before I had time to blink, another scream sounded, echoing through the library. I winced at the sharp, screeching howls, and my breath caught in my throat.
Those weren’t human screams.
The scream came a third time, and I rushed over to the balcony railing. Down below, Amanda was standing in the open space in front of the checkout counter, her staff up and at the ready. In front of her was a large…creature. I didn’t know what else to call it.
In many ways, the creature reminded me of a Nemean prowler—pantherlike body, burning red eyes, midnight-black fur shot through with crimson strands. But its paws were much bigger than a normal prowler’s, as if they belonged to some larger creature and had been glued onto this one by accident. Its razor-sharp claws were longer than my fingers and gleamed a glossy crimson, as though each claw had been dipped in blood. As the creature padded back and forth, it left smoking paw prints behind on the stone floor.
But the truly terrifying part was its head. Oh, the creature had the pantherlike head of a Nemean prowler, but its teeth were much longer and sharper than a regular prowler’s and gleamed like jagged rows of diamonds in its mouth. Enormous black ram’s horns sprouted up from the creature’s head, each curled into a tight, hard knot with a daggerlike point on the end, while a scorpion’s stinger tipped its long black tail.
The crimson claws, the jagged teeth, the horns, the stinger. It looked like someone had taken bits and pieces of various mythological creatures and mashed them all together to create this one truly terrifying being.
The creature hissed at Amanda, and noxious clouds of black smoke spewed out of its mouth. Of course it could breathe smoke. Because all those claws, teeth, and horns didn’t make it dangerous enough already.
Amanda scrambled around a study table, putting it between her and the creature, but the creature hissed at her again, and black smoke washed over the top of the table, charring the wood the same way the creature’s paws were scorching the floor. So not only did the smoke stink of sulfur, but it also had some sort of burning, caustic property.
I stood there, frozen in place, my mouth gaping in shock. I had seen a lot of bad things, especially during the final battle with Loki, but I had never encountered a creature like this before. No, not a creature, a monster, in every sense of the
word, a twisted, evil thing right out of every warrior’s deepest, darkest nightmare.
“Chimera,” Babs whispered, still sitting in the glass case behind me. “That’s a Typhon chimera.”
I kept staring at the monster. Chimeras were the stuff of fairy tales, even to Spartans like me. I had thought they were just a legend, just, well, a myth. Some scary old story that warrior parents told their kids in order to get them to behave, the way regular mortals made up tales about spooky bogeymen for their own children.
But I had been wrong—very, very wrong.
The chimera hissed out another cloud of black smoke, further charring the table between it and Amanda. A grim look filled her face, and she gripped her staff tighter, shifting the weapon into an attack position. The chimera crouched down, and its tail lashed back and forth over its head, the stinger on the end pointed at Amanda, as it got ready to leap over the table and launch itself at her.
“I have to help her,” I muttered. “No way can she kill that thing on her own.”
I still didn’t know what Amanda was doing in the library, but she had been nice to me at lunch and had treated me like an actual person instead of a villain like all the other kids did. I wasn’t going to let her get clawed to death, even if she might be a Reaper.
“Are you crazy?” Babs hissed. “You need to get out of here. Run! Go! Now! While you still can!”
The sword babbled on and on about how I needed to leave and save myself, but I ignored her frantic words and scanned the rest of the library below. My gaze cut to the left, but the Reaper was gone, along with whatever artifact had been in that display case he’d broken into. So he hadn’t been working with Amanda after all. Otherwise, the two of them would have left the library together. So what was Amanda doing here? Had she been trying to stop him from stealing?
Frustration filled me. I should have gone downstairs and confronted the Reaper the moment I saw him, instead of waiting up here like Aunt Rachel had asked me to. Now Amanda was in danger. But I could fix that. I could save her from that chimera.
I looked at first one case, then another, searching for a ranged weapon to use against the chimera. A spear, maybe, or a bow and a quiver full of arrows. I had zero desire to get close enough to the creature to stab it with a sword—
Babs sucked in a startled breath. “Watch out!”
A shadow moved across the floor, springing toward me. That and Babs’s cry were all the warning I had, but my Spartan instincts kicked in, and I whirled around and threw myself forward, sliding across the slick stone floor. My left shoulder slammed into the bottom of Babs’s display case, rattling the entire thing and making the sword shriek in surprise. Pain jolted through my shoulder, and I grunted at the hard, bruising impact.
Behind me, I heard the scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape of claws against stone, and I knew what was coming next. I grabbed the top of the case and pulled myself up and onto my feet.
Babs’s green eye widened. “Look out!”
I pushed off the case, whirled around, and threw myself down and forward again, doing another slide across the floor and going back in the opposite direction. And not a moment too soon.
Crash!
Something slammed into the spot where I’d been standing, shattering the glass display case and sending Babs flying. Emerald-green sparks shot out from the sword’s blade and hilt as she tumbled end over end along the floor. I hit Sigyn’s statue with my left shoulder and bounced off. More pain radiated from my shoulder, but I ignored it, gritted my teeth, scrambled onto my feet, and whipped around to face this new danger.
A Typhon chimera stood in front of me, its teeth bared, black smoke dripping from the corners of its mouth. The monster’s eyes burned a bright crimson, and its black tail snaked back and forth in the air above its head, the scorpion’s stinger on the end pointed at me like an arrow seeking a target.
I stared at the creature, studying every single thing about it, from the way its crimson claws dug into the floor to the ripple of the muscles in its broad, powerful back to its long, sinuous strides as it paced back and forth in front of me. My Spartan instincts took over, and that movie started unspooling in my head as I thought about and discarded various plans of attack.
I had to stay away from the chimera’s teeth and claws, or the fight would be over in seconds. The same thing went for that stinger attached to its tail, and forget about bashing it in the head. Those ram’s horns were much too hard for that.
I had to go for one of the chimera’s weak spots, like its stomach. If I could get underneath the creature, then I could cut open its belly. I didn’t know if that would be enough to kill it, but it would be a good start.
Another inhuman scream ripped through the air, and I glanced over the balcony railing. Down below, Amanda was running around, putting more and more study tables between herself and the first chimera, which was yelling out its frustration at not having killed her yet. The Amazon would have to take care of herself right now.
I couldn’t help her if I was dead.
I looked at the creature again, which was still stalking back and forth in front of me. My gaze moved past the chimera, and I scanned the balcony for something I could use as a weapon. I could try to topple one of the statues on top of it, but I doubted I had the necessary strength to move the heavy stone, and the chimera could easily claw me to death while I tried. The flimsy ink pens in my messenger bag wouldn’t even scratch through the creature’s thick fur and skin. Even the heavy reference book I’d been reading earlier wouldn’t so much as stun the monster if I threw it at the chimera’s face.
That left me with only one option: Babs.
The sword was lying off to my right, closer to the chimera than to me. Her eye frantically swiveled around as she looked from me to the creature and back again.
“Hey, Babs!” I called out. “I hope whoever put you in that case remembered to sharpen your blade.”
“Oh, no!” she called out. “Don’t you even think about using me!”
“Sorry. Not a lot of other weapons lying around here.”
“Why?” she wailed. “Why does this always happen to me? All I want is a nice, quiet life in a museum somewhere. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”
The chimera grew tired of waiting for me to run, and it hissed and sprang through the air, its claws outstretched, ready to pin me to the ground and rip me to pieces. I darted forward, running straight at it.
At the last possible moment, I threw myself headfirst, diving across the floor for the third time. The slick stone helped me slide right on past the creature, which hit Sigyn’s statue and bounced off, much the same way I had done earlier.
As I slid, I stretched my hand out toward Babs’s gleaming silver hilt. The sword’s eye widened.
“No!” she yelled. “You don’t know what you’re doing! Don’t pick me up! Don’t pick me up! Don’t pick me up!”
I frowned. What kind of talking sword didn’t want you to use her in battle? But I didn’t have time to puzzle it out. My hand closed over the sword’s hilt, right over her mouth, muffling her frantic cries.
The chimera bellowed out a loud scream that made the hair stand up on my arms. I knew what was coming next. I flipped over so that I was lying on my back on the floor and snapped up the point of the sword. A shadow fell over me, blotting out the overhead lights, and all I could see were the chimera’s crimson claws, zooming toward my throat—
Crunch.
The chimera landed beside me just as I shoved the sword upward—straight into the creature’s stomach.
The chimera threw back its head, snarling and screaming with pain, and it stretched a giant paw up, as though it were going to swipe it down and lay my throat open with its claws. I gritted my teeth, locked both hands around the sword’s hilt, and shoved the weapon even deeper into the creature’s belly. The chimera might kill me with its claws, but I was taking it with me the way a true Spartan would—
Poof!
Just before the chimera’s claws
would have cut into me, the creature dissolved into a cloud of smoke. I coughed and coughed, trying to get the sulfur stench out of my lungs, and waved my hand in front of my face, trying to clear away the smoke, which stung my skin with its intense heat.
Babs slipped from my hand and clattered to the floor. The second the sword stopped rattling around, her eye snapped open, as though she had it shut tight during the fight with the chimera.
“Okay, that wasn’t so bad.” Her high, nervous tone made her Irish accent far more pronounced. “At least there was no blood to dirty up my blade. Now, if you’ll just do me a favor and find me a new display case, we can forget that this whole thing ever happened…”
Babs babbled on and on about how all she’d ever wanted was to live in a case with a nice view, but I tuned her out, got to my feet, and lurched over to the balcony.
Down on the first floor, Amanda was still running circles around the other chimera, which was taking great pleasure in leaping from table to table and swatting at her like a cat playing with a mouse. It wouldn’t be long before the creature moved in for the kill. Amanda knew it too, and she was trying to get to the exit doors. But every time she moved toward the main aisle, the chimera would leap onto the table in front of her, cut her off, and force her back to the center of the library. Amanda swung her staff at the chimera over and over again, landing several solid hits, but she couldn’t do enough damage to slip past the monster.
She was dead—if I didn’t save her.
I had already killed one chimera. I could kill another one. Even more than that, I wanted to do it. My Spartan instincts screamed at me to wade back into the fight, to hack and slash until all my enemies were dead, dead, dead.
The chimera leaped closer and closer to Amanda. In seconds, it would launch itself at her one final time, knock her to the ground, and tear her throat open with its teeth. I didn’t have time to run over to the door and rush down the stairs, and there was only one other way to get down to the first floor. I looked over the balcony railing, judging where I was in the library and the distance down to the ground. This was going to hurt, but there was no other way. But first, I still needed a weapon, so I whipped around and sprinted over to where I’d dropped Babs.