Alex left a wake taller than a titan as his ponies shot across the Mediterranean and followed Hermes. Ships flashed by on the horizon, and jets above couldn’t dream of keeping up with the speed he had. In less than fifteen minutes, Alex covered the distance between Termessos and Crete, and when he landed he saw his ponies pant for breath for the first time ever.
Alex jumped off his chariot and ran toward a stone archway that was flanked by a pair of lit torches and that appeared to lead into the depths of a mountain. Nearby stood Athena, who looked genuinely concerned for him, and Aphrodite, who twirled Hades’ scepter and sported a cruel grin.
“Where are they?” Alex asked, barely able to get the words out without choking on tears.
“Jessica is bound in one of the labyrinth’s alcoves,” Aphrodite said, motioning with her head to the tunnel entrance. “And Euryale is in a cage in the center that will open when the sun sets, which is in about a minute. So unless you want her to rip Jessica apart or turn her to stone, I’d get moving if I were you.”
“Let me guess, you’re still not going to help,” Alex said to Athena.
“No,” she replied. “But I am here to tell you that however this ends, that will be it.”
“You’re damn right it will be.”
Alex started for the dark tunnel, but stopped when Aphrodite called his name.
“You’ll need this,” Aphrodite said, tossing him Hades’ scepter.
“Why? Am I to raise an army to rescue her?”
Aphrodite shook her head. “No, silly. It’s to give you a choice. It’s the only thing that can turn your wife mortal and stop her from slaughtering your childhood sweetheart.”
Alex’s stomach churned. Thankfully, he managed to catch the bile rising in his throat before it turned into a projectile. “You’re sick,” he spat. “I’ll never make that choice.”
A mournful howl echoed from deep inside the labyrinth’s halls. Aphrodite smiled. “Then the choice will be made for you.”
Alex cursed them both under his breath and bolted through the stone archway, snagging one of the torches as he did. The halls he ran through were tight, and his feet pounded against the chipped, rocky floors. He didn’t know where to go, but at least the torch he held cast its light a good twenty yards in every direction, and he wondered if a god—Athena even—had blessed it in secret. Regardless, he was thankful for the extra light it provided.
“Euryale? Jessica?” he yelled, not sure who he ought to try and find first. Should he try and free Jessica and get her out of the maze before Euryale could catch her? Or should he try to find his wife and calm her down? He didn’t know if that was possible, let alone what Euryale had become, but if the brief preview he had seen of her monstrous form right after the wedding was any indication, both he and Jessica were in dire straits.
Alex rounded a corner and stumbled as the floor dropped an inch into shallow standing water. After catching himself on the wall, he continued until he reached a four-way intersection. Shadows danced on the walls, and nothing gave any indication which way to go.
“Someone. Anyone. Answer me!” he called.
A guttural cry echoed in the air. He thought it came from one of the tunnels on his right, but he wasn’t sure which. Feeling as if time was against him, he arbitrarily picked a tunnel and sprinted down it. The passage twisted constantly and branched time and again, sometimes leading up or down stairwells.
Alcoves and large rooms populated the labyrinth as well. Some were empty. Others had junk well past their prime, and a few had the remains of less fortunate souls. None, however, held Jessica nor his wife, and given how all the halls looked the same, Alex feared he’d go mad long before he found either of them.
He came to an abrupt halt when he entered an oblong cave that held four other exits spaced evenly about. A pit was in the center, one that was deep enough that the torchlight could not reach its bottom. Alex was about to kick a rock to test its depth when something entered the room from one of the other halls.
The monster that greeted him was covered in scales and had claws like daggers and fangs that could puncture dragon scale. It slithered farther into the torch light on a serpentine tale, and its head full of vipers hissed at him. When he spied the pair of red ones in the back, there was no question as to who this creature could be. All Alex could do was pray some shred of his wife was still inside the nightmare she’d become.
“Euryale,” Alex said, trying to stay strong for his sake as much as hers. “It’s me. We can go home now.”
“Liar!” she roared, driving toward him with claws outstretched.
Alex backpedaled, unsure what to do. He managed to bat her claws away, but Euryale rammed her shoulder into his chest, knocking the wind from his lungs and tossing him onto his back. His head struck the unyielding floor with a wet thump as both the torch and scepter flew from his grasp.
Euryale jumped on top of him. Her talons tore into his flesh with a ferocity that put Mister Lion to shame. “I gave you my heart and swore to the Fates you’d never leave me, and what do you do?” she screeched as the blows came down. “You leave me for a harlot the second you could!”
“I swear, I haven’t!” Alex said.
“Alex? Where are you?”
The cry was soft and distant, but it was enough to pause Euryale’s attack. The gorgon straightened and turned her head. When Alex’s name was called out a second time, she darted away.
“Euryale, stop!” Alex said, pushing past the pain in his arms so he could get to his feet. “Come back!”
The gorgon disappeared into the dark, and Alex raced after her, barely remembering to scoop up both the torch and the scepter as he went. He raced through the tunnels, using the sounds of Euryale’s own chase to guide him. The labyrinth was not kind to those using such methods of navigation. Sounds bounced from all over, and more than once Alex wondered if he was chasing the echoes of his own footsteps as much as he was chasing the noise of Euryale’s pursuit.
Alex rounded a corner and found himself back at the circular room with the pit where he had first run into his wife, only this time, he entered from a different passage. How he’d managed to return to this spot, he didn’t know, but apparently neither did Euryale, for she was a dozen yards away and switching her gaze between three separate exits.
“Euryale, please,” he said.
The gorgon turned and snarled at him, and then when Jessica’s soft cries drifted in to the room from one of the halls, she roared and charged.
Alex intercepted his wife an instant before she escaped down a passage. He had to drop both torch and scepter again to make the tackle, but he managed to wrap his arms and legs around her body and drag her to the ground. “I know you’re in there,” he said as they wrestled. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good because then you can witness every drop of her blood spill from her precious little body,” Euryale replied.
“I love you, but I’m not going to let you hurt her.”
“Save your hollow words for someone else,” she said before sinking her fangs deep into his arms. Her vipers followed suit, striking his face, neck and shoulders.
Alex screamed, and the pain that radiated from each new wound was tenfold stronger than what he’d suffered while on Hades’ wheel, but still he held onto his wife. He held on, that is, until his arms began to numb and his grip on Euryale began to falter.
“You’ll never stop me, dear,” she said with as much venom in her words as her vipers had in their mouths. “If anything, you should give your whore a quick, merciful death before I reach her.”
Water formed in Alex’s eyes. He knew she was right. He wouldn’t be able to stop her forever, but he might be able to delay her long enough to come up with a plan that was better than wrestling her for eternity. He tucked his knees beneath him and summoned what strength he had left in his hands to keep his arms locked around Euryale and dragged her back to the pit.
“Get off me!” Euryale screamed, striking at him with fang and claw yet again.
“Forgive me,” Alex said. He jerked back, spun, and let his wife go.
She fell into the pit and was swallowed by darkness, cursing his name the entire time.