Midnight Frost (Mythos Academy #5)(38)
Author: Jennifer Estep

She looked at the librarian like the answer should have been obvious. "Because there are going to be Reapers there – Reapers that I can kill."

Eyes wide, Covington glanced at Rachel, who sighed.

"Rory, you don’t know that Reapers are going to be there," Rachel said.

"Of course they’ll be there," I said. "We all know this is some sort of Reaper trap. That’s why they used the poison in the first place – so we’d have to come here to get the ambrosia flowers to make the antidote. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Vivian and Agrona were already at the ruins, waiting for us to show up so they can try to kill us."

The three adults exchanged glances, but they didn’t contradict me. We all knew they couldn’t. The Reapers had lured us here. Now, all we could do was see what sort of trap they had set – and hope we could somehow survive it.

Chapter 20

The others started talking about the things we needed to do, what we should pack, and the route we would take up the mountain to get to the ruins. Rachel and Rory did most of the talking, with Ajax and Covington chiming in. Alexei also offered some opinions. Apparently, he’d done a lot of hiking growing up in Russia. Daphne and Carson put their heads together and started whispering, while Oliver once again pulled out his phone and started texting on it.

Restless, I got to my feet and started pacing around the conference room. Eventually, I found myself peering up at the large gryphon carving on the wall. I didn’t get the same familiar, comforting vibe from it as I did the ones outside the Library of Antiquities back home, but gryphons were protectors. For some reason, staring at the carving made me feel a little better about our chances of finding the ambrosia flowers.

After a few minutes, Covington drifted over to me. "You seem very interested in that carving."

"I guess you could say that. What’s with all the gryphons?"

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

I gestured at the carving and all the others in the room. "I mean, it seems like there are statues and carvings of gryphons everywhere on campus. On the walls in here, beside the library steps, on top of the rock waterfall in the middle of the dining hall, on either side of the main gate. We don’t have nearly this many images of them back home."

"Oh," he said. "That’s because there are actually nests of gryphons here in the mountains. Legend has it that when this academy was being constructed, the builders were quite inspired by the creatures. Even to this day, you can see them flying over the academy, although no one knows exactly where they make their homes. Maybe higher up on this mountain or on some of the neighboring peaks."

"Do you have any contact with them?"

He shook his head. "No. For the most part, they avoid us, and we do the same, although every once in a while, a student or professor out hiking will be attacked by one. Rachel should have mentioned them when she was talking about things to look out for on the mountain. Gryphons are wild animals, dangerous, vicious, and completely unpredictable."

I thought of Nyx. I wondered if Covington would think the same of her – that she was a wild, dangerous, vicious creature. Maybe she was, but she was my friend too, my family, and I loved her just as much as I did Grandma Frost and the rest of my friends. I felt the same way about Nyx’s mom, Nott, even though she was dead, murdered by Vivian, just like my mom had been.

"Of course, the Reapers don’t care how dangerous the gryphons are," Covington added. "Rumor has it, Reapers come to the area several times a year to trap wild gryphons to add to the ones already in their service, although I don’t see how the Reapers manage to control them."

I knew how. Nike had told me the Reapers fed creatures like gryphons, Fenrir wolves, and Nemean prowlers a special poison to keep them under control. Without the daily dose of the poison, the creatures would die, horribly and painfully, so they were forced to serve the Reapers, even if they might not want to. I wondered if the Reapers used some version of Serket sap for that too.

"But Reapers or not, everyone knows that gryphons would just as soon bite your head off as look at you," Covington finished.

He made it sound like the gryphons were the monsters, instead of the Reapers. I didn’t think that was true, but I didn’t say anything else. It wasn’t like I’d had a lot of experience with gryphons. Maybe they were as dangerous as Covington had said. Or maybe they were simply misunderstood, like so many other mythological creatures. Either way, I doubted that I’d run into any gryphons at the ruins. If they were as smart as I thought they were, they’d take one look at us and the Reapers who were probably going to ambush us and fly the other way as fast as they could.

"All right," Ajax said, waving his hand to get everyone’s attention. "I think we’ve got all the details sorted out. Let’s go. We’ve still got a lot to do."

We grabbed our things and left the conference room. Still, just before I stepped through the door, I glanced over my shoulder a final time at the gryphon carving. For a moment, the gryphon’s head seemed to slowly swivel through the stone, until the creature was staring straight at me. Its eyes narrowed, and its claws seemed to grow longer and sharper the more I looked at it, as if it wanted nothing more than to break free from the wall, launch itself across the conference table, and tear into me –

"Come on, Gwen!" Daphne called out.

I blinked, and the carving was just stone once more. I shivered and hurried out of the room, not daring to look at it again.

We spent the rest of the day getting ready for our trip. Rachel went back to the dining hall, and she made Rory promise to actually go to her afternoon classes. Covington took the rest of us shopping over in Snowline Ridge, and we geared up with snowsuits, hiking boots, toboggans, gloves, scarfs, backpacks, sleeping bags, climbing rope, and more. We all had our own weapons, but everyone except me bought an extra sword or a few daggers. Everyone wanted to be as ready as we could for whatever might wait for us up on the mountain.

By the time we finished shopping, it was time for dinner, and we trooped back over to the dining hall. Ajax went with us, so we didn’t have any problems with the other kids. In fact, everyone seemed to go out of their way to give us as wide a berth as possible. Nobody wanted to mess with an adult who was as strong and as skilled a fighter as the Spartan coach.

After that, we grabbed our luggage from the library and headed down the hill to the dorms. I’d thought that the Powers That Were would have arranged for us to stay in some empty rooms, but Ajax kept right on walking past the buildings and veered onto a path that wound over to the far side of campus. The buildings grew fewer and farther between, although the rows of pines became thicker. Eventually, we reached a small stone cottage nestled in the middle of the trees. It was fronted by a white, wooden wraparound porch. The shutters and gingerbread trim were painted a pale green, although the roof was made out of black slate. Gray smoke puffed up out of the chimney and drifted into the winter sky, mixing with the dark clouds already gathered there.