Logan opened his mouth, but his dad cut him off. “She’s right,” Linus said. “The Reapers know they
have us trapped and outnumbered. They’ll want to savor their victory. I know Agrona. She’ll agree to it.”
“And Vivian will be practically salivating at the thought of killing me,” I added before Logan could protest any more. “And while the two of us are fighting, it will give the Protectorate more time to evacuate the folks in the back of the library. Trust me. It will work. Besides, this is what you’ve been training me for all these months, right? Surely I didn’t get up early all those mornings for nothing.”
I gave him a wobbly grin. Logan tried to return the expression, but he couldn’t. Yeah. I knew the feeling.
Logan didn’t like it, but he realized it was our only option, and he reluctantly agreed. We worked out a few more of the details. When everyone knew what their part was, I hit the button to dial Vivian’s number. Of course, it wouldn’t matter how clever my plan was if the Reaper girl hadn’t bothered to bring her phone with her—
“What on earth could you possibly want?” Vivian’s voice filled my ear.
“Hey, Viv. I’ve decided to make this your lucky day. I’m offering you a trade.”
She laughed. “Trade? What sort of trade? You don’t have anything we want, Gwen. Especially not when we’re going to come in and take it from you anyway.”
“Sure I do,” I replied. “Because you still want my head on a platter, and you still want to be the one to give it to Loki. Besides, isn’t it your duty as his mighty
Champion to finally kill me?”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” she said in a smug voice. “I’ll be doing that as soon as we get into the library. It shouldn’t be too much longer now. I noticed all those shiny new weapons your friends had out on the quad. Well, you weren’t the only one who thought to bring some artifacts with you.”
In the background, I heard a kind of loud whining sound, almost like a power saw. I wondered what sort of artifact could cut through the library doors and the bars that held them shut, but it didn’t really matter. Part of me didn’t want to know anyway.
“Sure, you can get into the library eventually,” I said. “But who knows how long that will take? And yeah, you’ll probably end up killing us all, but who knows what Reaper might get to me before you do? I wouldn’t want to rob you of your chance to finally prove that you’re worthy to be Loki’s Champion.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and I knew I
had her. “And what do you want in return?”
“You and me fight in the middle of the library, nobody else, and with just Vic and Lucretia,” I said. “No other weapons or artifacts.”
“And when I finally kill you?” she asked. “What do you want in return for the promise of your own death?” “You let everyone else live,” I said. “That’s the deal.”
Silence.
“Let me ask Agrona,” Vivian said.
More silence. In the background, I could still hear that saw buzzing, which effectively drowned out any chance I had of overhearing Vivian and Agrona. No matter what they said, I wouldn’t believe them. They would never let anyone live, especially not Linus, Sergei, and Inari. Vivian and Agrona knew that they were too important to the Protectorate. Without them, the Pantheon resistance would quickly crumble, and there would be nothing to stop Loki from enslaving the entire world, just as he’d tried to do all those centuries ago.
Still, every second I kept Vivian talking and distracted was another one that the gryphons had to evacuate everyone who was injured. Finally, after about two minutes, just when I was starting to get a headache from the saw’s whine, Vivian came back onto the line.
“We accept your deal,” she said. “Get ready to die, Gwen.”
“You do the same.”
“Oh, and don’t bother opening the doors for us,” Vivian said. “We’re almost through them anyway. See you in a few.”
She hung up on me. I let out a breath and slid the phone into my pocket. I looked at the others.
“They’re going for it,” I said. “Let’s get into position.”
Chapter 28
I stood in the middle of the library and waited for Vivian to come and kill me.
That noise from the saw, or whatever it was, grew louder and louder, until it reverberated through my head like a drill. I grimaced.
I glanced around, searching for my friends. Oliver and Alexei were crouched behind Raven’s coffee cart, with Rory peeking out at me from the other side, a dagger clutched in her hand. Sergei, Inari, Coach Ajax, and the other Protectorate guards were hidden in the stacks and behind the marble statues of the gods and goddesses that ringed the second-floor balcony. Daphne was up there too, crouching next to Sigyn’s statue, holding the bow that had supposedly once belonged to the goddess. Carson was with her, still clutching the Horn of Roland, although I didn’t know what else he might be able to do with the artifact, if anything.
Linus stood beside me, as the head of the Protectorate, with Logan on my other side. Metis was still in the back, healing as many of the wounded as she could while Rachel, Nickamedes, Raven, and Grandma Frost helped them climb to the upper floors so that the gryphons could fly them away to safety.
“Are you sure you can do this, Miss Frost?” Linus
asked in the kindest voice he’d ever used with me. “You need to draw the fight out as long as possible. It won’t be easy, given what a skilled warrior Vivian is.”
I shrugged. “I don’t really have a choice, now, do I?” “No, I suppose not,” he murmured.
The whining of the saw grew even louder, making me wince again. But as quickly as the noise had started, it faded away altogether. Silence. Then—
Bang.
Bang. Bang. BANG!
A great crash sounded, and I knew the Reapers had breached the outer library doors. I drew in a breath and held up Vic.
“Are you ready for this?”
The sword fixed his purplish eye on me. “I’m ready, and you are too, Gwen. Trust me. Nike believes in you, and so do I.”
My gaze drifted up to the goddess’s statue on the second floor. Her face was as neutral as before, although her eyes seemed to be fixed on mine. I wondered what she thought of the battle so far, the choices I’d made, and the fact that it was all going to end here in the library. Although I supposed that was rather fitting, since this was the place where it had all started, the night I’d grabbed Vic out of his artifact case.