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“Please, don’t k-kill me,” I cried. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
Raising her head, she locked on to something over mine. She raised her other hand, throwing up the sign for stop. I craned to see, and muffled a scream at the sword halted directly over my head.
Snarling, Ares dropped his sword and fell back, obeying the command of his legendary lover.
Disbelief rocked me to my core and shattered what was left of my belief in logic and reality. One after the other, the statues came to life, tore from their pedestals, and wielded what looked to be artistic additions, as weapons.
Zeus raised his lightning bolt. Hephaestus hefted his hammer. Hestia her pot. Ares cocked his sword. Apollo lifted his lyre. Hermes thrust forth his caduceus. Aphrodite presented her mirror. Artemis notched her bow and arrow. Athena raised her spear. Demeter her cornucopia, and finally Hera, queen of the heavens, raised her scepter, pointing it at the doors.
Ares turned, and slashed his sword through the wall, bringing it crumbling down.
“Aghh!”
The atrium collapsed in on itself, folding like a house of cards. Deadly debris rained from the sky, falling all around me. What saved me from being struck and killed?
Absolutely nothing. Luck itself spared my life as Ares tore apart the walls erected around them, letting in the bracing night air.
The Olympian gods bypassed the massive staircase with a simple step down, emerging into the night.
I trembled so hard, my teeth chattered. What had I done? What were they going to do? There was no coming back from this for me.
“Selene?” I shrieked. “What’s happening?”
No reply came.
I whipped my head this way and that, which was why I saw them the moment they appeared from the shadows.
A typhon emerged from the trees, stopping just short of the gate.
My mind retreated to a small, quiet place. A creature as tall as the eucalyptuses crushed the brush beneath its serpent’s body. Half a dozen tentacles sprouted from his torso, each tipped with three razor-sharp claws. Free of the trees, he spread his batlike wings—their span longer than ten of me lined head to feet.
I looked into his boarish face; yellow, slitted eyes; rows of brown fangs, and spider legs sprouting from his head like hair, then pitched forward and vomited. I couldn’t help it.
Everything from their hideous patchwork bodies to the raging storms that followed them like puppies nipping at their masters’ heels, was meant to instill fear in all who saw them.
Typhons were not merely monsters, they were gods. All of them sons of the first Typhon—offspring of the goddess Gaia and god Tartarus. From Typhon, all monsters were born, granting him the title: father of monsters. But only the sons grown from pieces of his own body became beings as fierce and terrifying as him. According to my textbook, of all the monsters of Olympia, typhons were the most dangerous.
I hoped with all that was in me that I would never meet one in this lifetime or the next. That hope mocked me as two—four—seven more burst through the trees, joining their brother.
“What’s this?” a clear, intelligent voice spoke from one of the typhon’s heads. “Something’s different, brothers, can you tell? I have an inkling that”—he rolled over the gate, crumpling the metal like tissue—“all their pesky protections have gone.”
Raucous laughter swept through the monsters as they one after the other, passed through the barriers that weren’t there.
“No,” I croaked. “No, no, no. What have I done?”
The corroding curse. It didn’t just destroy one barrier. It destroyed them all.
“Summon the others,” the typhon ordered. “Summon them all! Tonight, we feast on demigod flesh.”
“No!”
My shout was a twig before a hurricane. Not protection at all. One of the typhons put its tentacle to its snake head and blew, sounding a spine-chilling, eerie whistle. The forest surrounding the castle came alive.
Winged beasts took to the sky. Moonlight illuminated their tangled hair, feminine torsos, and talons where feet should be. Strangely moving black shadows skittered across the forest path, making for the ruined gate with impossible speed. I nearly threw up again to see they were half woman, half spider.
Arachnes.
Bounding up behind them were a pack of cerberi, and behind them were more echidnas than I wanted to exist in this world or any.
