Fiona lay in the darkness, half-crushed beneath Pierce’s weight, holding her breath. Pierce did not seem to be breathing either, and as much as she wanted to believe that he was just trying to remain quiet, she knew better.
How many shots had there been? Four? Five? More? It seemed impossible that the ugly gunman, Rohn, had missed that many times.
She struggled to recall exactly what had happened. The room had plunged into darkness, and she had felt someone—it could only have been Pierce—grab hold of her, almost lifting her off her feet. That was when the shooting had started.
All was quiet now. She lay motionless, pinned down and immobilized by Pierce’s—don’t say it, don’t even think it—dead weight.
Voices drifted toward her, Kenner and Rohn discussing what to do next, then silence again.
“Uncle George?” The question was barely a whisper. Despair had stolen her voice.
A low hissing sound issued from the darkness. “Shhh.”
Fiona’s heart leapt, but she stifled a squeal of joy. Pierce was still alive. Just as quickly her relief was dampened by other possibilities. What if Pierce was injured? What if the killer came after them? There was nothing she could do but hope and wait.
Finally, Pierce stirred and rolled off her. She took that as a cue to break the silence. “Are you okay?”
“I’m not hurt, if that’s what you mean,” he replied, with palpable anger. “But I’m not okay. Not by a long shot.”
A light flashed on, blindingly bright after such a long time in the dark. Fiona raised a hand to provide some shade and braved the stinging brilliance to get a look at him. For a moment, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. Then, despite everything they had just gone through and the crisis they were still facing, she burst out laughing.
Pierce glowered at her from beneath the regal mane of the Nemean Lion, which he wore as Hercules once had, if the legends were to be believed. After a few seconds, his expression softened. He turned, playfully showing off the long cloak of lion skin like a runway model, and he joined her in laughter.
Fiona understood now how they had survived the barrage of gunfire at almost point blank range. In the instant before Rohn had pulled the trigger, Pierce had flicked off his light and pulled the lion skin over him like a blanket. The legendary creature’s skin was evidently as impervious to bullets as it had been to swords and arrows in Hercules’s time. Pierce had then scooped Fiona up and headed into the nearest passage.
That, Fiona realized, had probably been the most dangerous part of his desperate plan. The odds were against it being the correct route out of the Herculean trophy room, which meant that they were no longer in the ‘safe’ part of the Labyrinth. Though they had gone less than a hundred yards, Fiona was not sure which direction to go now. And even if they managed that, she doubted that Kenner and Rohn would leave the door open.
But they were still alive, and that was better than nothing.
“A dead lion,” she murmured.
“What’s that?”
“Something I heard once. ‘Better to be a live dog, than a dead lion.’ It seemed appropriate given the circumstances.”
He nodded, approving. “It’s from the Bible. Ecclesiastes, chapter nine. ‘To him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.’ Loosely paraphrased: Where there’s life, there’s hope. We’re a couple of lucky dogs who are still alive because of a dead lion.” He turned around and pointed down a passageway. “I’m pretty certain that’s the way back to the center. From there, we can follow the Phaistos markings to the exit. If Kenner and his ugly friend are waiting for us… Well, we’ll figure something— Wait. The papyrus in the chest. The Heracleia. The Greeks didn’t develop their alphabet until the eighth century BC. So that document couldn’t have been written until about six hundred years after the Disc was buried in the ruins of Phaistos palace.” Pierce considered this for a moment. “Alexander might have had another way to open the door. A duplicate key.”
Fiona shook her head. “But no one knew about the door. It was covered up long before the Greeks started coming here. Alexander came here later, maybe hundreds of years later.”
Pierce rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “A back door, then. The Labyrinth wasn’t originally built to hide these treasures. That came later, after the main entrance was covered up.”
“If you’re right, we still have to find it.”
“Let’s get back to the trophy room,” Pierce said. “Maybe there’s a clue.”