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Boom! Boom! Boom!
An avalanche of knowledge and fantasies headed straight for the door.
“Talibah rips—”
“Agh!” I slashed her with the dagger, opening a weeping gash on her cheek.
She didn’t flinch or react, but I did when her tail whipped me off my feet—tossing me in the air and dropping me hard on the unforgiving floor.
Tears sprang to my eyes. I was knocked and battered all over. Wetness ran down my forehead. Vicious pain ran up and down my legs everywhere her claws pierced me, but the one thing going through my head, was Alex.
“Knowledge is a sphinx’s weakness. She will kill herself if you answer all of her riddles correctly.”
“I understand, baby,” I whispered. “Time to stop running, and start fighting.”
I pushed up on shaking arms, forced my feet under me, and stood. Talibah and I faced eye-to-eye—so close, our noses brushed.
“Forgive me,” I said evenly. “It was rude of me to run off in the middle of our game.” I glanced over her haunches to the door, waiting for me to leave through it the minute Talibah conveniently killed herself. “Go ahead and ask me anything.” I smirked to match hers. “I’m ready.”
She laughed a strange grunting laugh. “They all enter the library—weak and ignorant. Talibah rips them apart,” she whispers, circling me. “She breaks their spine, extracts their secrets beneath these claws confine. They cry with no voice and flee with no legs.”
My hairs stood on end. My smirk was entirely a bluff. Talibah scared me. She scared me as much as the echidna and cerberus.As much as every monster that crashed into my life since Olympia decided there was nowhere I could go to be free of a demigod’s burden.
“They cannot leave this place, no matter how they beg,” Talibah said, laughing that laugh. “Who are they?”
I opened my mouth, then stopped. She would kill herself if I kept answering right, but would attack me if I got it wrong, ran, or fought back. I couldn’t take another hit from her, or another slash from those claws. I had to get this right, so I closed my mouth, pushed aside my fear, and thought.
Weak and ignorant. Ripped apart.
“Silly girl. Stupid girl.” She laughed. “She can’t answer my riddle, and her bones will keep Talibah company till the end of all.”
My shaking grip tightened on the dagger. Talibah may get her wish, but this won’t be like the night I let them take my mother. This time... I go down swinging.
She breaks their spine and extracts their secrets with her claws— Wait! They have no voice and no legs, but they have a spine?
“Books,” I burst out. “They’re books. They enter this place and never leave. That’s the answer, isn’t it?” I taunted her frozen face. “I got it right. Wow, that wasn’t hard at all. Your riddles are so easy, Talibah. Maybe you’re the stupid, silly girl if you actually think those were hard. How about a little riddle for you?
“The weaver, the deceiver, and the believer stand guard. Within the eyes holds the gods’ lies. The son of Zeus will break the chains. A wolf will cross domains. On she fights as her mother’s love sustains. But don’t be fooled, the danger still remains. For within the dark she sleeps, within the dark she hates, within the dark she waits... for the child of the Fates.”
My eyes narrowed, chest tightening. “Who is she, Talibah? Who is waiting in the dark?”
She glared at me, eyes wild and huge. “Talibah... Talibah...”
“Talibah what! Who has my mother? Who is she!”
“Talibah doesn’t know!”
Her screams pierced the air. I didn’t know what kind of pocket dimension I was thrown in, and I still knew her roars echoed through Olympia and all five dominions.
“I don’t know,” she wailed. “Talibah has failed. Talibah is stupid. Worthless. Failure!”
She threw herself against the stacks—banging her head against the wood, shredding her wings, tipping the shelves still standing.
The door was already partially blocked. If she brought those down too, I was never getting out of here.
I didn’t think, I ran.
Ducking Talibah’s whipping tail, I shot around her and dashed for the door—hoping against hope the key would appear now that Talibah was defeated, because if I had to search for it among this endless maze of destruction, my bones would remain with her until the end of everything.
