Achilles’s great spear, which had aided the famed hero in defeating Agamemnon’s enemies. He bet Zander’d like to get his hand on this. He turned it in the light. Now it was nothing but cold tarnished metal.
From trunk to trunk he moved, taking note of the objects that might just come in handy. When he was done, he gathered what he needed for the night, replaced everything else, closed each trunk, and headed back toward the spiral stairs.
At the top he extinguished the torch, replaced it in its holster. As soon as he stepped through the arched doorway, the door slid closed with a deafening thwack.
Sweet. That was the best fucking security system he’d ever seen.
The ruins were silent as he made his way back to the main hall and the small room off the north side where he’d left Isadora. With any luck she was out like a light. He’d toss a blanket over her, then park himself across the hall where he’d spotted another small room with a view down the hillside, toward the ravine below.
He climbed the four short steps to the main hall. Rubbed a hand down his face. And was twenty yards away when she screamed.
Chapter 9
The castle was a flurry of activity by the time Orpheus made it back. He flashed to the fifth-floor hall outside Gryphon’s room and was greeted by a metallic crash from inside that set his nerves on high alert.
“We’re losing him!” Callia yelled.
Machines beeped and whirred. Something hard scraped the floor. Orpheus tried to muscle his way past the two guardians blocking the doorway but it was like swimming against an ocean of stone.
“No admittance,” someone said in his ear. A hand clamped over each of his arms.
“Shit, Orpheus,” Phineus mumbled on his left. “It’s not a good idea for you to be here right now.”
Screw that. Orpheus tried to wrench his arms free. The meaty hands tightened.
“Theron,” Callia said from inside the room, “hold him down. Zander, I need that syringe. Now.”
Panic and rage pushed in as Orpheus flashed free of Cerek’s hold and reappeared at Callia’s side. “What happened?”
Callia spared a quick glance his way before depressing the syringe of clear liquid into Gryphon’s IV line. The guardian’s eyes were closed but his face was scrunched in serious pain and his body thrashed against the bed and pillow. The only things that kept him from sailing off the bed were Theron’s massive hands pressing down on his shoulders, holding his upper body in place.
“Sonofabitch,” Zander said at Orpheus’s back.
“Not good.” Callia tossed the syringe on the table to her right, then pressed her fingers against Gryphon’s carotid artery to feel his pulse. Her eyes zeroed in on her watch. “Step back, Orpheus.”
“What happened? When I left—”
“Zander?” Callia asked without even looking up.
Another hand closed over Orpheus’s upper arm. “Come on, O, give her some space to work.”
Orpheus felt his eyes shift before he could control it. He wrenched free of Zander’s grasp with his surging strength. “Fuck that! Tell me what happened!”
Voices rose up in unison around him. Gryphon got off a good kick with his right leg and sent a cart full of medical supplies crashing to the ground. In the pandemonium, Orpheus was forgotten as Zander and Cerek moved in to pin Gryphon’s legs. The machine on the wall behind Gryphon’s head picked up its incessant beeping. Then Gryphon’s entire body seized and his back arched off the bed. Another machine off to the right set off a high-pitched alarm.
“He’s flatlining!” Callia shifted around and reached for something behind her. A loud hum echoed through the room. She moved back with two large white paddles in her hands, placed one paddle just beneath Gryphon’s collar bone and the other on his left side, down by his ribs. “Clear!”
Theron, Zander, and Cerek all let go of Gryphon. A zapping sound echoed. Gryphon’s body jerked.
Callia looked at the monitor. “Again. Clear.”
As Orpheus watched the seconds tick by with no change in his brother’s condition, and Callia started CPR, the tightness in his chest returned. Only this time it was razor thin and brittle. And he knew if he didn’t do something now it would fracture and shatter, splitting him forever in two.
He pulled the Orb from his jacket pocket. The disk was cool in the palm of his hand, the chain heavy between his fingers. The symbol of the Titans deeply embedded into the center stared up at him, as did the four empty chambers waiting to be filled. But the Orb didn’t need the classic elements to work. It carried a power like no other. And right now it was the only hope Gryphon had left.
Gently, Orpheus laid the Orb over Gryphon’s bare abdomen and let go. For a second, nothing happened. And then it began to glow. Pink at first, then brighter, until it was a blinding circle of red.
“Holy shit,” someone muttered.
Realizing something was happening, Callia paused and looked over. Her eyes went wide when she caught sight of the Orb. “What the hell are you doing?”
Before she could grasp it, Gryphon shot up like a bolt of lightning, the movement so strong it threw Theron back and down to the ground with a thud. Gryphon’s arm arced out to the right, knocking Callia off her feet. She screamed as she crashed into a medical cart behind her.
“Thea!” Zander yelled.
Theron pushed to his feet in a flash. The other guardians took a step in. The Orb slid down Gryphon’s stomach and dropped into his waiting hand. And then Gryphon opened his eyes.
Movement in the room came to a screeching halt as Gryphon looked from face to face. And as his head slowly swung Orpheus’s way, a collective gasp echoed through the room. When his brother was finally staring at him, Orpheus realized what was wrong.
The eyes that bore into his own were the same as they’d always been. Deep set, light blue, the same wide almond shape Orpheus always remembered. But this time they were empty. Vacant. As soulless as if…as if there was no one home.
A monstrous grin inched its way across Gryphon’s face and his hand tightened around the glowing Orb. “My master thanks you, adelfos.”
Brother.
In a poof of smoke, Gryphon disappeared. Leaving behind only rumpled bedding and swinging tubes and wires.
“Motherfucker,” Theron muttered on the far side of the bed. “Orpheus, what the bloody fuck did you just do?”
Voices kicked up again as questions swirled. Zander helped Callia to her feet at Orpheus’s side. The Argonauts argued around him about where the Orb had come from and what had just happened. But Orpheus barely cared. All he saw was the image of his brother disappearing into nothing.
“Dear gods,” he heard Callia whisper at his side. “Orpheus. Your arms.”
In a daze, he looked down. The ancient Greek text that marked all the guardians was slowly emerging on his skin. The writing was exactly the same as what had been on Gryphon’s arms, noting him as the guardian from Perseus’s line.
Voices trailed off. Someone swore. But the words didn’t register for Orpheus. The tightness in his chest cinched until he gasped in a breath and then it cracked and shattered, blinding him with pain. And then all of it trickled out. Until there was nothing left behind but a vast cavern of nothingness. Until the line that was his one connection back to humanity was finally severed.
“Oh, shit,” someone muttered.
“Um, guys?” Titus said from back near the door. “O’s the least of our worries right now.” Heads turned to look. But not Orpheus. He was still staring down at his forearms.