Page 71 of Of Monsters and Mazes

That was odd. Though Theron was a master of both dreams and nightmares, he rarely dabbled in pleasant images. I didn’t know if he had any in that warped mind of his. I still resented him for the time he’d shown me the nightmare of my own conception during a squabble. His powers of heat were a gift few devils could master, but his control over mind space was a power that rivaled Master’s teleportation and time-space manipulation. I wasn’t envious, but it was a bother in a fight.

Without another word, he laid down beside her, and he held her hand. It was nothing but a warm, snuggly feeling of peace that hit me as she woke up again. After a few whispered sweet nothings, she kissed him, and he cocooned her in his arms. He closed his eyes, and I listened intently for the moment he slipped into his dream state.

I blinked in disbelief, trying to wrap my head around everything I’d just witnessed.

There were way too many warm fuzzy feelings being thrown around in this makeshift camp, and none of that belonged in my Labyrinth. Let alone the Orange Sector.

Still, I could work with this. Inconvenient as this cuddling was, having Theron asleep was much easier than dealing with him awake. No problem.

In the distance, Alessi was stoking the fire, and far too distracted by his melancholy to notice anything I might do to these two. They had set up a system that would protect them from the noisy and irritating Cronus, but they had no defenses against me.

I drew in a breath, then slowly willed vines to sprout around Theron’s sleeping body. I threaded the plants carefully between the two of them, assuring I didn’t make physical contact just yet. I needed to time this perfectly and quietly. Alessi was uncatchable, and the moment he noticed what was happening, I’d have a fight on my hands.

I closed my eyes and concentrated, until the vines started blossoming with a line of marigold tinted flowers. Each bud contained a powerful poison that could put its target to sleep much more deeply than was natural. It would be trickier to administer the poison to Alessi, but I had a plan.

I coiled the vines around Theron’s head, always staying just a few inches from contact, then I forced the flowers to expel their pollen. He breathed it in gently. The arm around the girl lost all of its tension, before it fell limply down to her side. She’d surely breathed in enough to deepen her sleep as well, so I was able to use the vines to lift his arm off of her and untangle their bodies from each other.

Next, staying on the far side of the fire ring, out of Alessi’s field of view, I fed flowers directly into the flames from below. The moist and lively plants started to burn slowly, creating more and more smoke than the otherwise dry wood would produce naturally. By the time Alessi noticed the increase, he was already too late. His body tensed the second before he slumped forward on the log, unconscious in sleep.

I used the vines to fully bind Theron, but I didn’t risk waking Alessi by doing the same. Any chance of catching him would be naturally thwarted by his instincts and innate magic, so it was safer to just keep feeding vines into the fire to keep him unconscious until the last ember burned out. With both men down for the count, I approached Sela, then unceremoniously crouched down, rolled her up in her blanket in a nice little secured package, and hoisted her over my shoulder.

With the added inhalation of the tranquilizer, she didn’t so much as stir as I hauled her into the woods. I got out of earshot of her companions before I took the time to carve the tracking marks out of her palms. The rest of Theron’s marks, I couldn’t dispel, but getting rid of her tracker would prevent Jericho from being able to watch her through his projection, allowing me to do what I needed to do in peace. It would only delay Theron for an extra second or two, since the portion of angel blood I’d fed her had allowed that bond to form, but that would have to do. It wasn’t much, but it was the best I could ask for.

Her palms healed near instantaneously between my magic walls, then I resumed my trek into the deepest woods. Once I found an adequate clearing, I set her down, and I took a seat on a nearby stone. Though I knew I needed to do this, there was a sense of wrongness in my chest that I couldn’t quite shake, and I determined that was just another side effect of the blood bond. Once I committed, I’d be glad I’d done it. But I still needed more than a ten count to get myself calm and ready.

This sector was my best bet to pull all of this off anyway. I could blame her death on the Cronus, and no one would be the wiser. I was doing what was best for the good of the realm.

Or maybe I was doing this purely and only for myself.

I could do that sometimes, couldn’t I?

Chapter 38

“Wake up.” A harsh command ripped me from my sleep, and my eyes shot open in alarm. My vision was immediately filled with apricot colored foliage sprouting out from trees at every angle, accompanied by the vague sound of a rattle in the distance. Startled, I thrashed my way out of the too-well-woven blanket, trying to gain use of my limbs to fight off whatever had dragged me into the forest.

Theron and his soothing scent of chocolate cinnamon was conspicuously absent. So was Alessi’s once relaxing air of lilac. Instead, my nose was filled with the sharp aroma of walnut and pine, while in a tropical forest characterized by neither plant.

“I hope you got enough sleep.” The voice sounded from behind me, and I whipped around to meet a pair of crimson slitted eyes, framed by jet black hair, and massive, dangerous horns shooting straight up in a killing point. His voice was deeper than I’d expected. I’d only heard it briefly in the Blue Sector, and I’d been too overwhelmed to really notice it. Now it was the only thing I had to focus on. That, and the glints of piercings on his tongue, beneath his lip, through his nose and septum, above his eyebrows—how many piercings did this guy have? I counted something like twelve on his face alone. Twenty on his ears. Who knew how many in places I couldn’t see.

“I’m sorry, did I startle you?” Rai spoke casually, with a calmness unbefitting a monster. The talk of sleep automatically had me glancing up in search of the clock, hoping I hadn’t been out too long. I couldn’t see anything through the dense palms. “You still have thirty six hours, technically.” He confirmed for me, my thoughts obvious through my panic. “But you won’t need them anymore from here.”

“What do you mean?” I tried not to appear rattled by that cryptic statement. I glanced down at the marks on my arms wondering if I could call Theron to my location by pressing on them. The dots that once adorned my palm had disappeared somehow, but the rest were all there. I had no idea what to make of that. “Where are Theron and Alessi? What’s going on? Why did you kidnap me?” I asked next. Honestly, if didn’t matter where they were at this point, so long as they weren’t here, and I was on my own. But this kind of idle chatter was more about buying time to figure out what my potential escape options might be than it was real conversation.

“I wouldn’t worry so much about your companions. They’re not the ones in danger.” Rai continued to be matter-of-fact on the situation. His words were harsh, but his tone was eerily calm. “I’ve cut out your tracking marks, so you don’t have to worry about the king interfering either. This little interaction is completely off the record. No one else will have to watch you die.”

A lump stuck in my throat, and it took everything to swallow it down. “Isn’t that going against the King’s wishes?” I’d thought the Minotaur was supposed to be loyal to Jericho, but then again, who knew what loyalty looked like to a devil.

“It is. But sometimes the only person who will advocate for you is yourself, and this is one of those times. We’re at the point that I can’t ignore the trouble you’re causing anymore.” His toneless neutrality continued to be oddly alarming. “You’ve done well to stay alive this long, but then, you’ve had a lot of help.”

Rai grabbed a large stone from the ground. He examined it, like he was testing its size, weight, and grip-ability in his hand.

“I promise I don’t want to be here. I’ll gladly leave right now, and you’ll never have to see me again.”

“We both know that’s not possible without the King’s portals.” He tossed and caught the rock idly, maintaining relentless eye contact that was making me increasingly tense and self-conscious. “Which means either you make it through the Labyrinth, or I stop your quest right here, and we can be done with this whole debacle.”

“Why would you go against Jericho’s wishes to end the game early? We’re almost done. I’m following the rules. I’m not doing anything to hurt you.” I was practically pleading, but what else was I supposed to do in the face of someone I stood no chance against in any capacity. The only weapons I had were my words and whatever barely there charisma was left in me.

“Is that what you think?” He never so much as blinked as he reach across his body and smashed his left knuckles in five strong, savage, bloody hits.