“Vic? That old blowhard?” The sword scoffed. “He’s a braggart. Likes to make promises that his blade can’t keep. I can’t believe he’s still around. I would have thought someone would have cleaved him in two by now. Or melted him down for scrap metal. Or…”
Instead of quieting down like I had hoped, she revved right back up again, listing all the things she thought would have happened to Vic by now. As far as incessant talking went, I thought she could give the other sword a run for his money, but I kept that to myself.
As fascinating as the sword was, I really needed to get back to watching the Reapers, so I rapped my knuckles on the glass a third time, interrupting her rant. “Anyway, it was nice meeting you, um…”
“Babs,” the sword said. “You can call me Babs.”
“Okay, Babs. My name is Rory. I’ve gotta go now, but I’ll see you around—”
A scream tore through the air, cutting me off.
Before I had time to blink, another scream sounded, echoing through the library. I winced at the sharp, screeching howls, and my breath caught in my throat.
Those weren’t human screams.
The scream came a third time, and I rushed over to the balcony railing. Down below, Amanda was standing in the open space in front of the checkout counter, her staff up and at the ready. In front of her was a large…creature. I didn’t know what else to call it.
In many ways, the creature reminded me of a Nemean prowler—pantherlike body, burning red eyes, midnight-black fur shot through with crimson strands. But its paws were much bigger than a normal prowler’s, as if they belonged to some larger creature and had been glued onto this one by accident. Its razor-sharp claws were longer than my fingers and gleamed a glossy crimson, as though each claw had been dipped in blood. As the creature padded back and forth, it left smoking paw prints behind on the stone floor.
But the truly terrifying part was its head. Oh, the creature had the pantherlike head of a Nemean prowler, but its teeth were much longer and sharper than a regular prowler’s and gleamed like jagged rows of diamonds in its mouth. Enormous black ram’s horns sprouted up from the creature’s head, each curled into a tight, hard knot with a daggerlike point on the end, while a scorpion’s stinger tipped its long black tail.
The crimson claws, the jagged teeth, the horns, the stinger. It looked like someone had taken bits and pieces of various mythological creatures and mashed them all together to create this one truly terrifying being.
The creature hissed at Amanda, and noxious clouds of black smoke spewed out of its mouth. Of course it could breathe smoke. Because all those claws, teeth, and horns didn’t make it dangerous enough already.
Amanda scrambled around a study table, putting it between her and the creature, but the creature hissed at her again, and black smoke washed over the top of the table, charring the wood the same way the creature’s paws were scorching the floor. So not only did the smoke stink of sulfur, but it also had some sort of burning, caustic property.
I stood there, frozen in place, my mouth gaping in shock. I had seen a lot of bad things, especially during the final battle with Loki, but I had never encountered a creature like this before. No, not a creature, a monster, in every sense of the word, a twisted, evil thing right out of every warrior’s deepest, darkest nightmare.
“Chimera,” Babs whispered, still sitting in the glass case behind me. “That’s a Typhon chimera.”
I kept staring at the monster. Chimeras were the stuff of fairy tales, even to Spartans like me. I had thought they were just a legend, just, well, a myth. Some scary old story that warrior parents told their kids in order to get them to behave, the way regular mortals made up tales about spooky bogeymen for their own children.
But I had been wrong—very, very wrong.
The chimera hissed out another cloud of black smoke, further charring the table between it and Amanda. A grim look filled her face, and she gripped her staff tighter, shifting the weapon into an attack position. The chimera crouched down, and its tail lashed back and forth over its head, the stinger on the end pointed at Amanda, as it got ready to leap over the table and launch itself at her.
“I have to help her,” I muttered. “No way can she kill that thing on her own.”
I still didn’t know what Amanda was doing in the library, but she had been nice to me at lunch and had treated me like an actual person instead of a villain like all the other kids did. I wasn’t going to let her get clawed to death, even if she might be a Reaper.
“Are you crazy?” Babs hissed. “You need to get out of here. Run! Go! Now! While you still can!”
The sword babbled on and on about how I needed to leave and save myself, but I ignored her frantic words and scanned the rest of the library below. My gaze cut to the left, but the Reaper was gone, along with whatever artifact had been in that display case he’d broken into. So he hadn’t been working with Amanda after all. Otherwise, the two of them would have left the library together. So what was Amanda doing here? Had she been trying to stop him from stealing?
Frustration filled me. I should have gone downstairs and confronted the Reaper the moment I saw him, instead of waiting up here like Aunt Rachel had asked me to. Now Amanda was in danger. But I could fix that. I could save her from that chimera.
I looked at first one case, then another, searching for a ranged weapon to use against the chimera. A spear, maybe, or a bow and a quiver full of arrows. I had zero desire to get close enough to the creature to stab it with a sword—
Babs sucked in a startled breath. “Watch out!”
A shadow moved across the floor, springing toward me. That and Babs’s cry were all the warning I had, but my Spartan instincts kicked in, and I whirled around and threw myself forward, sliding across the slick stone floor. My left shoulder slammed into the bottom of Babs’s display case, rattling the entire thing and making the sword shriek in surprise. Pain jolted through my shoulder, and I grunted at the hard, bruising impact.
Behind me, I heard the scrape-scrape-scrape-scrape of claws against stone, and I knew what was coming next. I grabbed the top of the case and pulled myself up and onto my feet.
Babs’s green eye widened. “Look out!”
I pushed off the case, whirled around, and threw myself down and forward again, doing another slide across the floor and going back in the opposite direction. And not a moment too soon.
Crash!
Something slammed into the spot where I’d been standing, shattering the glass display case and sending Babs flying. Emerald-green sparks shot out from the sword’s blade and hilt as she tumbled end over end along the floor. I hit Sigyn’s statue with my left shoulder and bounced off. More pain radiated from my shoulder, but I ignored it, gritted my teeth, scrambled onto my feet, and whipped around to face this new danger.