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Another party came, and sooner than I expected. They woke Mòr and made such a racket that I didn’t have a chance to fight them.
“We have to hide York. There are too many this time for you to fight alone,” she said.
“What, you mean like twenty? I can handle myself.”
“You can handle yourself? Is that what you call the killing spree you went on that led them right to my door? Why didn’t you wake me and let me cast a spell to throw the attention away from us?”
I hadn’t thought about that. “You can do a spell like that?”
Mòr flexed her fingers. “You would be shocked and amazed to see what I can do when I get going. I told you, my powers are returning. Do you listen to nothing I say?”
“Sometimes.”
I took York into my arms with little effort and let her usher me toward a trapdoor in the floor. The scent of dirt hit me like a slap in the face as I followed Mòr down into her hidden underground basement. She was a stronger woman than me, certainly, if she could stand being back underground after everything she’d been through.
We left Crius to whatever hiding place he’d found outside and the three of us closed the door behind us.
It proved surprisingly difficult to remain underground without freaking the hell out. I tried my best.
A quickly uttered word under her breath sealed us from detection, although I heard the commotion overhead.
An explosion, first, that sounded like the whole front of the house had been torn apart. We hadn’t left any bloody rags behind for them to find, had we? I hoped not. They’d use our own blood against us if they could. I didn’t put anything past those jerks.
Mòr held her fingers to her lips to keep me from making a sound. I shifted York into a more comfortable position in my arms. He would probably never forgive me for cradling him like a baby, but we’d cross that bridge when he regained consciousness.
Overhead, wood crashed. Furniture moved and the beat of many feet pounded across the floorboards. I heard voices. Low enough that I couldn’t detect the individual words but I could guess the meanings. They knew we were here. They knew who we were, and they knew what we’d done in breaking Mòr out.
It didn’t take long for the soldiers to decide that they weren’t going to find us above. And whatever Mòr had done to make sure they didn’t catch a whiff of the trapdoor, well, I had to tip my metaphorical hat to her.
“What do we do now?” I whispered.
“We wait.”
“For what? The gong to sound?”
“For them to get tired of wasting their time and leave,” she snapped.
We sat for a long while. I was still pretty out of it, back aching and exhaustion riding me hard to the point where I could barely see straight anymore.
We waited a long time until the sounds receded. Longer still before we deemed it safe to make our exit. I was glad to breathe the night air again instead of the dusty, claustrophobic basement air.
“That was close,” I said unnecessarily.
“We are going to have to leave this place,” Mòr said with equal lack of necessity.
“Is it safe to move York when he’s barely gotten the healing that he needs?”
“Absolutely not. But I fear we have no other option. The soldiers are going to keep coming until they find us, and of course this was the first place they would look. They won’t stop until they get what they want. We don’t have much of a choice.”
We stood in the ruined living room. There was nothing left of the place except the exterior walls and roof, and those looked like they were hanging on by twigs and hope at best.
So much for a safe place to stay.
I sighed, shifting York and running a hand through the lank strands of my hair. I added a shower to my mental list of things I desperately desired. Maybe then I’d feel almost normal again.
Crius popped his head inside. “What’s the plan?”
Some big help he’d turned out to be. I bit the inside of my lip to keep from pondering out loud why I’d broken him out of Tartarus in the first place.
Easy, V. That’s the hangry talking.
I knew the lack of power hurt my father almost as much as not being able to help me. And he’d made the choice to bring us here knowing what would happen.
Part of me wondered what had happened to him when he’d been here wooing my mother. Or had he been a different Titan back then, before the uprising of the Olympians?
“There’s nothing to pack. We carry nothing, we travel light, and maybe we will be able to outrun the detection of the soldiers before the King decides to send his hounds after us.”
I placed a hand over the rumbling in my stomach to see if the sounds ceased. They did not. “I can deal with dogs,” I replied.
Mòr whipped around and fixed me with a stern gaze I’d never seen from her before. “Not like these, you can’t.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t want to figure out what kind of hounds she spoke of, so I did what she asked. It included following her back down into the underground claustrophobia chamber and waiting while she uttered a spell to close us in yet again. The place was infinitely smaller this time around because my father took up more than half of it.
“I had this tunnel carved out by dwarves,” Mòr told us almost conversationally. “It’s my backdoor escape hatch, if you will. This will take us away from the detection of the soldiers and buy us a little time.”
“Where does it lead?” I wanted to know.
“Somewhere safe.”
“Well, excuse me if I’m a little reticent to head into the dark unknown. Especially when it’s risky to move York. He’s barely gotten the healing that he needs.”
“Here, allow me.” Crius reached out to take York from me. “He’ll rest easier in my arms. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
Did I have a choice? No. Not in the least. I couldn’t waste my energy fighting grunts when the real action lay ahead of me.
Maybe the distraction of carrying York would help Crius forget his fear of enclosed spaces. From the way his breath quickened and his pulse practically jackrabbited out of his sternum, I’d guess not.
Mòr led the way down the winding passageway. We passed along in silence, with Crius and York in the middle and me bringing up the rear in a defensive position. The dirt walls felt like they were about to close in on me. The stench of the earth might have been comforting at one point, but since being to literal hell and back I took great offense with the smell.
My muscles ached. I’d never had that kind of experience before. The kind where I wanted to curl into a ball and give up. Where I felt the end of the rope I held, where I felt the last toehold of the cliff.
Those thoughts did me no good and still they came without end. Nothing could be as vicious as my own internal monologue, I found out.
“How much longer?” I asked, my voice echoing in the darkness.
“Longer,” Mòr answered unhelpfully. “This tunnel leads to a small section of forest that is mostly uninhabited. There are tales about the forest, how it swallows travelers and they are never seen again.”
“Tales that were originally set in place by you?” I quipped, only half joking.
She tossed a look over her shoulder so potent that I could make out the expression in the dark. “Potentially.” Yup, she sounded pleased. “The legends were already circulating. I helped them along for as long as I could before, well, you know.”
I knew, for sure. Although I wondered what she might have said to make people listen to the tales. Then decided that I didn’t want to know. There were other issues to focus on besides spooky stories.
We didn’t stop and we didn’t slow. Soon the only sound I heard was the echo of our footsteps and the distant drip of water from a source I couldn’t find.
Time had no meaning down there in the tunnel. In my head, I remembered the trek through the Underworld, like an alien planet unto itself. York and I had found our way in through a backdoor located in a set of caves off the coast of Greece. The map we’d used to get there had proved useless in actually gaining entrance. But we’d had help.
Much as we had help here...
I shook my head. Maybe it was the universe throwing us a much-needed bone to get this job done.
We needed to rest soon. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to keep going. Ahead I heard my father’s footsteps stumble and a scuffle of skin on rock. Too much go, go, go and not enough time.
“Careful,” Mòr warned.
Finally, I wasn’t sure how long, we made it to the end of the tunnel. Two great boulders blocked the way outside and Mòr waved a hand in front of them. Her magic flared to life with a flash of blue and the smell of spring. The rock on the left shifted to the side to reveal a large circular room carved from limestone.
“There’s a short tunnel leading up to the forest floor just ahead. We’ll be able to bed down here for the night and continue into the woods in the morning,” Mòr said. Her voice echoed back to us and I wondered how large the room actually was.
“Personally, I would rather sleep under the stars. I can’t stand to be in confined spaces.” Crius strode forward, his shoulders brushing the stones on his way. So the room was not large enough to hold the four of us, obviously. He shifted to slip through sideways and I nearly cried out for him to watch York’s head.
Mother hen, that was me.
“I’ll come up with you,” I agreed. I was tense and alert with a feeling of frustration I couldn’t seem to shake.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that we should have stayed below. Should have prepared ourselves a little better. I followed Crius up the small dirt-lined tunnel toward the night sky, visible with the glow of a few dozen stars in the heavens overhead. A breeze blew sweet scents toward me. Deceptively peaceful.
We weren’t alone.
There were soldiers waiting for us.