فصل چهل و هفتم

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The Bull’s Roar

Edie could breathe again. When the Minotaur hit her and scooped her off the pavement, the impact had knocked all the air out of her lungs, and she had gaped in shock for a breath that just wouldn’t come. Then things had gone swirly and black, and she’d lost consciousness.

The pounding impact of the Minotaur’s hooves must have jerked her awake, maybe even kick-started her lungs back into action.

She swallowed a mouthful of air that was half diesel fumes, and gagged again. Then she started to struggle. She was being crushed against a massive black chest, curved like the keel of a great boat, shaggy with rough hair that moved—despite being made of metal—like an animal pelt.

She could hear the thudding of a massive heart against her right ear. Her right eye was squashed into its chest.

The Bull’s Roar She could hear the deep grunt of an anima’s breathing.

She could see a fraction of London with her left eye. Enough to see that whatever was carrying her was running with the traffic, in pace with a red bus.

All these impressions whirled in and hit her at once, like a kaleidoscope.

She struggled.

She kicked.

The beast stopped dead, with a suddenness that winded her all over again. Then the hands gripped her and held her out in front of the beast’s face, and she saw what had grabbed her for the first time.

She saw the head of the Minotaur.

Forehead like an anvil.

Big sledgehammer snout.

Tiny angry eyes.

Sharp curved horns sweeping out and up in an evil, man-gutting curve.

And behind the horns, behind the flattened ears, a gargantuan hump of hunched, impossibly muscled back that loomed over her like a dark mountain.

She felt blackness seeping back in on her brain, and knew she had to fight its dark pull. She knew she had to fight.

She opened her mouth to shout, to yell, to scream, but before she could think which, the Minotaur beat her to it. The head reared, the mouth opened and revealed sharp predator’s teeth that were designed for anything but chewing grass, and then the Bull roared.

No words. Just a bull roar of pure fury and hunger and sound that hit her in a thunderous rolling broadside.

It contained bass notes so deep that her guts began to squirm and loosen in a fear so ancient and hardwired into her, as to be beyond explanation.

It contained notes so high that she thought her ears were going to burst with the keening pain they contained.

And as her eyes reflexively shut, her hair was blown back in a hot blast of breath that smelled of fresh meat and old charnel houses. And Edie did the only thing she could do to stop the blackness sweeping her under. She found what energy there was left in her, and screamed straight back, right into the dark wet cavern of the Bull’s mouth.

Trying to outshout the devil.