Page 105 of The Games Gods Play
Samuel could carry her, but we need to move fast, and he can haul the most vodka. Which we all need now. Not to win—to survive. Jackie’s already flown away, or I’d enlist her help. But even if Zai flew Meike out of here, it wouldn’t fix her condition. Not until the rest of us cross the finish line and end the Labor.
I squeeze my eyes closed. I can’t let her die here.
Fuck me.
I think I’m the only one who can help her. If I use a pearl.
“Damn,” I whisper.
I’m predicting another round with Hades when I return to Olympus. Charon warned me not to do this, but I don’t hesitate. “I can get Meike out of here.”
Sorry, Hades.
“How?” Trinica asks.
“You’ll see. But…” I pause. “I’m not sure I can take even one with me. I don’t—”
Amir taps me on the shoulder. “Take Meike. We’ll get through.”
I look directly at Dex. “They’ll need to use your vodka if—”
“Go,” he snaps. He’s clearly not happy about it, but it means I can leave them with him.
I look back to find Zai staring at me, earnest and urgent.
“Zai—”
“Go,” he says. “I have extras in the top drawer in my room.”
EpiPens, he means. I nod and slip a pearl out of the zippered pocket in my vest.
The Daemones’ roars blast through the cavern, and I swear the sound alone shakes the ground. They’re coming for me. I know they are.
I shove the pearl in my mouth and grab Meike. The last thing I see as I swallow the pearl is the enraged faces of the Daemones flying at me out of the darkness.
Immediately, it’s like someone throws a lasso around my waist and drags me through time and space in a wind tunnel that blows so hard I can’t open my eyes to see and so loud I can’t hear. I hold on to Meike with a bruising grip, terrified the wind is going to claw her out of my hands.
Meike has almost slipped from my hold when the wind abruptly stops whipping around us. I open my eyes to find I’m kneeling in the middle of Zai’s room in Hades’ Olympus house.
Meike’s head lolls to the side, her breath rasping in and out, lips turning blue.
“Shit.”
I run to the drawer and find the medicine right on top. Having watched Zai do it to me, I’m back to Meike and plunging the end against her leg, then holding…and waiting.
I watch her chest, her face, for any sign that it’s working. Finally, when my panic is at a fever pitch, she takes a long breath.
And so do I.
“Lyra,” a voice snarls above me.
I jerk my gaze up to find Hades towering overhead, his face a storm of rage.
“I—”
Shock ricochets through me a second time when he drops to one knee by my side. “We don’t have time. They’re coming for you.”
He yanks me up against his chest, both arms wrapped around me, and we disappear.
