I spotted the minotaur stalking down the first side street we entered after leaving the others behind. It must have taken the street to avoid the fire. Instead of slipping down the alleys, which it would never fit through, it went to the end of the road and turned right toward the library.
It was still on the hunt, which meant we should have at least fifteen minutes before it returned to the cave—hopefully longer if it decided to try to uncover Hawk and me first. I’d seen the way it looked at us, even if it didn’t intend to hunt us tonight, it was eager to kill us.
Would it realize we weren’t in town anymore or assume we were hiding and content itself with claiming its intended victim?
I suspected it might move on; it didn’t strike me as the smartest creature, and it would never consider someone would be ballsy or stupid enough to enter its domainwillingly. We also had to hope the others didn’t rat us out, but I doubted we’d get much loyalty from them.
Still, I believed we had fifteen minutes on the minotaur. Perhaps we could get through the labyrinth without it knowing we were here—if there was a labyrinth. So far, all I saw was rock.
Turning away from the spreading fire, I focused on the cave as the others shuffled forward. Though only a faint amount of the moon’s rays pierced the interior, I saw Oliver watching me over Nadine’s shoulder. I smiled at the boy, and he smiled shyly in return.
I really hoped this was the right choice for him; I couldn’t live with myself if this decision caused his death.
“Aisling,” Corson said, “we need your fire.”
Hawk and I made our way to the front of the group to discover Corson, Bale, Wren, and Lix gathered near a tunnel leading deeper into the cave. It was impossible to see more than two feet into the fifteen-foot-high tunnel leading into the bowels of the earth.
We couldn’t go back, but I wasn’t too thrilled about going forward either.
With no other choice, I lifted my hand and created a small ball of fire in my palm. The shadows slid back as the flames danced in the air flowing from the tunnel. The fire’s glow revealed the chipped stones in the ceiling that were gouged out by the minotaur’s horns as he carved his way through the rock. I frowned at the small pieces of metal and wood on the ground until I realized they were the remains of the tracks the carts once traversed.
“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” someone said from behind me.
“It’s too late to change our minds now,” Randy said.
Itwasfar too late to change our minds now. We only had two options: keep going or die.
And I was not going to come this far to die without a fight.
With my flame illuminating the tunnel, I led the way deeper into the earth. In the beginning, cobwebs brushed my face, and then we reached a depth that was too much for spiders. I still didn’t detect the potent reek of death I’d expected, but smelled the musky aroma of something feral mixed with the stench of wet dog hair; it was the scent of the minotaur.
We were a few hundred feet into the tunnel when it branched into two different directions.
“Shit,” someone whispered from behind me.
“Now what?” someone else asked.
I tried not to let my mounting panic show as my brain stuttered for an answer. This was supposed to be a maze, but I’d been expecting bushes or something like those old-fashioned English mazes I’d seen pictures of in school. I had not expected the minotaur to carve out a maze within the mountain.
I turned my flame in the direction of the tunnel to the right before swinging it to the left.Now what? Now what?
The question looped through my mind as I swung my flame back again. Left or right? Life or death?Thatwas the real question here because one of these tunnels would give us a chance while the other ended all hope.
When I swung my flame back again, I almost sobbed with relief. “Left,” I said.
“How do you know?” Wren asked.
I swung my flame back to the right and watched as it burned in my palm before turning it back to the left. Once it settled down from the motion, the flames flickered and danced far more than they did from the tunnel on the right.
“There’s airflow coming from this tunnel,” I said before swinging it right again. “But there isn’t from this one.”
“Left it is then,” Hawk said.
I was sure I was right, but a tendril of unease crept down my spine as we strode down the left-hand tunnel. Almost immediately, the broken pieces of track vanished, and the rocks became more jagged as we entered a section of the tunnel carved by the minotaur instead of miners. I didn’t know how long it took for the creature to cut its way through the rock, but I suspected it spent a good chunk of time creating its new labyrinth after leaving Hell.
Would we be aware of the minotaur’s return? I suspected we would know when it entered the cave again. The creature’s footsteps shook the town when it left the mountain; they would definitely rattle the walls of this cave.
Would it know we were here when it returned?
