Who was arming Minotaurs?
It lunged forward, swinging wildly at the gunmen on its left. Someone cried out and a hail of bullets rained down on the charging creature. The minotaur paused, raising gargantuan paws to shield itself, and then roared again, foaming saliva spattering the line of soldiers lined against the mountainside.
It charged, they ran. The minotaur scooped one of the soldiers up out of the snowdrift where he had fallen. I averted my eyes just in time to hear the clear crack of bone echo along the ridge.
“You have to get out of here Professor,” Wyn gasped, grabbing my elbow and leading me backwards, away from the camp and toward the helicopter already preparing for flight, its blades rotating, creating a haze of dusty snow all around it. I squinted to see my things already being loaded on, soldiers shouting orders at one another to retrieve me. I yanked myself out of Wyn’s grasp.
“I held my own in Belgium. Give me a gun.”
Wyn stared at me for a moment, blinking incredulously through those frozen spectacles. Then he merely shook his head and headed for the helicopter with the rest of the fleeing scientists. I growled, turning and prowling through the camp until I found what I was looking for.
Muttering under my breath that this was what happened when you put the army in charge of astrophysics and natural phenomena, I jammed a magazine into the handgun I’d found, slung an ammunition belt over my shoulder, and strapped a pack of C4 to my thigh. Then I exited the abandoned tent to join the fray beyond.
The minotaur was lashing out blindly now. It was bleeding deeply from a cut in its left side, a long bloody gash that ran from its abdomen around its back. It reached out with its enormous hands and crushed anyone and anything it found beneath them. It roared, again and again, in agony, in pain, in brutal intimidation.
It was an animal, I reminded myself, just an animal. Like a boar or a bear. A carnivorous, ferocious beast that wants nothing more than to kill you.
But the truth was, I’d never had the stomach for killing. Not even when it saved my own life. Not even when it saved my uncle’s. But I would do it, if I had to, and then I would turn my anger towards whoever had created the situation in which I had to. There were several to blame for this one. I’d get to them.
I took my chance when the beast was distracted by another line of gunmen shooting at him under precise directives. I rolled my eyes and darted quickly across the snow, staying low so as not to draw the creature’s attention too soon.
I loaded the forgotten machine gun with the ammunition belt I’d brought along and then took aim.
The first round of my bullets struck home. The beast bellowed and reared back, dropping the man he had been holding fifteen feet in the air. The soldier screamed as his leg cracked against the cold, gray stone. I kept my focus and loosed another round.
The minotaur whirled around, predatory eyes narrowed as it sought me out, making me its new prime target. It saw me a moment later and, as it charged, I shouted for the men to get down and then let the machine gun do its thing. Bullets sprayed wildly without direction as I stepped away from the gun. The minotaur ducked and hurtled, snorting viciously as it lowered to all fours and rushed toward me. I waited patiently, fingers twitching over the handgun and the bomb.
When the creature was close enough, I ran for it myself, tucking and rolling at the last second so that I slid deftly between its legs. It growled in anger; the rumble causing the surrounding snow to shake loose, to slide down, down. It pivoted again to face me, prowling forward. I waited as it came closer.
Men were screaming again, surrounding us, but I didn’t dare to look away from the beast as it reached me, sniffing once, twice.
It stilled.
The minotaur blinked at me, that enraged panic giving way to a strange calm. I could feel its uncertainty. It looked at me almost as if confused. My heart beat faster than it even had during the attack, faster than it had in a very long time. Because the way it was looking at me was something I recognized. Reverence. It had stopped attacking me because it thought it might serve me.
My hands were shaking. How had it known?
But then it became aware of something else as well. Cocking its head to the side, it glanced down to where I had attached the block of C4 on the underside of its upper thigh. It snarled and lunged.
I felt the heat on my face first, singing my skin just moments before the blast threw me off of my feet. I went careening into one of the nearby tents, arms splayed out in an effort to cushion my fall, reaching for nothing, for everything. My back hit something hard and a sharp pain shot up my spine. I winced as my legs twitched beneath me.
Blood rained down on the camp, on the soldiers, on the equipment, on me. My furry white coat turned red with it. The minotaur’s guts landed on the wooden box beside me, the one labeled property of Hadley University. More screams and the distinct sound of vomiting emanated from the camp but I hardly heard them. My eyes were already closing. As soot and ash filled the sky around us and the mountain below began to rumble, I fought to remain alert, conscious.
But it was a losing battle. And the last thing I heard, as I drifted into the world of dreams, was a lone, terrified voice, screaming one word.
“Avalanche!”
Chapter two
A Mortal Reminder
Ihadbeenwrongbefore. There was no truer nuisance than an avalanche.
Soldiers lifted me, one and then two, the second of which was already limping himself. I was fading in and out of consciousness but I felt their hands holding me aloft, felt the sharp and frigid air beating against the cool skin of my face as we reached the helicopter, heard the tremendous roar of natural fury as a wave of white tumbled toward us.
“Just hang on!” one of them was screaming, inches from my face, over the whirring of the helicopter blades and the rumbling of the mountain.
“Hadley,” I croaked, gripping him around the collar, my eyelids already fluttering closed again. “I need… to get back…”
