Page 11 of Bonds of Hercules
“LEAVE HIM!” I shouted.
Alexis tightened her grip around the injured boy as she dragged him through the woods.
A muzzle flashed.
Pop.
Alexis’s body rocked. She grunted and stumbled.
She wiped at her leg—her gloves were coated in crimson.
Copper stained the air.
She grabbed Drex’s wounded arm, he cried out in pain, and she resumed pulling him through the remaining trees.
A bullet was lodged in Alexis’s right calf.
They.
Shot.
My.
Wife.
Augustus bellowed.
Patro shouted.
A strange pain burned my leg.
I looked back—Hermos, the vile Gorgon, had a gun in his outstretched hand, the barrel smoking with fresh gunpowder.
He’d shot my wife using one of the Spartan gunsI’ddesigned.
I knew all about his kind.
The trainers at the House of Aphrodite were all Gorgons—they’d tortured Patro as a child, for fun. He was fucked up because of their sadistic culture.
“Get to her first!” Patro shouted, and Achilles sped up, his muzzle coated with ice.
Augustus matched him stride for stride.
The two behemoths of the House of Ares moved in a blur, faster than the rest of the Chthonics. They were built for power.
“Handle Hermos—or I’ll destroy him … permanently,” Augustus ordered, blood dripping profusely from his eyes as he weaved through the branches.
Spinning around, I came to a stop—raising both weapons—and fired at point-blank range.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Hermos didn’t have time to blink.
Bullets ripped through his skull—eyes, mouth, and forehead—his brain exploded. Momentum threw him onto the ice as he bounced off a tree.
I stomped over to Hermos’s fallen body, kicking off his Spartan helmet.
“What the fuck was that for?” Agatha screeched as she stumbled to a stop and kneeled beside her downed partner.
