8 Chapter 8

The wind hit Alex's chest like a loud boom, with his heart going crazy as he ran from the car. Normally, Brooklyn — as much as he preferred Queens — felt comforting and its cityscape familiar. But this wasn't a normal situation.

When he yelled at the top of his lungs to the lion, the beast began charging, so he ran through one of the backstreets, hoping it would follow him. The plan had worked a bit too well, because now that stupid lion was thrashing through the alleys, ripping everything in his way to get to Alex.

Those claws would definitely hurt more than the others.

With the sun beginning to set, Brooklyn began to feel like a labyrinth — a labyrinth of streets and darkness through which Alex was supposed to run across with the supposed-to-be unstoppable lion hot on his tail.

Yippie.

He made a sharp corner and dashed through an alley, breathing heavily enough to drown out the sounds of the city for a moment. He never figured that he'd miss the school projects on Greek monsters as much as this, nor the info dumps Grover had about his cards. At least then, it didn't involve him being on the menu.

The first turn he took was onto Fifth Avenue. Well, it would have been more pretty to look at under different circumstances. It normally was a busy street, filled with little shops, but now it was nearly empty, sole for the pattering of his frantic steps.

A smarter - okay, no, a much cleverer - thought struck him: Use the rooftops. God, why was he starting to think like those main characters in movies? Was he watching too many of them? Anxiously but willingly, he started off to the public library — a laugh he had to deny himself seemed wildly inappropriate with the Greek monsters' decoration on the inner ceilings now to laugh about.

Climbing itself wasn't really that hard; it was the issue of a crazy lion pouncing right before a leap that turned the moment into a more lethal version of 'The floor is lava' when they had been playing a game of cat and mouse for the last twenty minutes that Alex spent running. Funny, seeing as a lion was just a big cat, that is, if you took away the sharp claws, deadly teeth, and killer instinct.

What wasn't funny was when the monster got tired of swiping at him from below like a cat trying to get a bird in its cage, the lion decided to mimic Alex and began to climb the building like a ladder.

That wasn't good, was it?

Alex wished all of this was just a big hallucination, but the massive, muscle-ripped bundle of hatred and hunger skidding over the high-tiled barricades was a bit too realistic to be a product of his imagination.

He had to keep running.

From there, Alex flitted over fire escapes and air-con-encrusted passageways towards Prospect Park. He could try and lose his pursuer there. The shadows of the trees would give him some room to hide or trick the thing.

Not every child could say they'd avoided getting mauled this long by a highly undomesticated cat with a general meat-eating diet that consisted of people like him. Grover had said a lot of things in a span of a few seconds, and Alex could only make sense of two: Monsters liked his smell, and his mother was a goddess.

He would've probably spent hours upon hours just thinking of how that was possible if there wasn't a metallic lion after him.

When he finally reached the park, the sun had set. Alex ducked around an abandoned stall to catch a breath. He almost didn't notice the few owl-eyed strangers and insomniacs who shot bemused looks or simple glances his way. Then a thought came to his mind.

Couldn't they see the monster? He didn't get it. First, in the accident, the crowd thought the Nemean Lion was a pickup truck — a shiny one — but a vehicle nonetheless. When it had charged at him, they all ran away, shouting and yelling to be careful with the drunk driver.

That was what was bugging his mind. What driver? What the hell did everyone see when they looked at the monster? Were other monsters like this too? Or was it just this one?

Then when that thing was chasing him through the library's rooftop, what did they see? A crane, maybe?

"Hey, shouldn't you be at home?" Alex turned to find a portly woman with a hot dog cart rolling towards him, half in laughter, half sure that she should be amused at a kid playing make-believe.

"Y-yeah, I'm just-" Alex said, panting. "-catching my breath."

"Just be careful, you never know what kinds of people walk around at night." She said, making a hot dog faster than Alex could blink. "Here, kiddo, you seem hungry."

"Ah. Thanks." He was indeed hungry.

No other words broke from him. Not that he could spend the time for an explanation to the vendor that somehow, somewhere between those trees, a beast from Greek Mythology was trying to sniff him out. Or maybe, if he did, he'd get another free hot dog in pity. He was really hungry.

Somewhere behind, there was a roar, and Alex began to run again on instinct. He weaved through the trees, onto the dirt path, and back into the streets as he ran and ran.

It was weird. With the sun long lost behind the horizon, the streets were dark. Alex had been running for a few hours now, barely taking breaks to catch a breath. The lion would catch up if he spent more than 2 minutes in the same place. He was supposed to be tired by now, but he felt like he could run forever. He was supposed to start feeling sleepy by now, but again, he felt like he'd just woken up.

Unfortunately, while he could keep the lion at a distance, a simple mistake was bound to happen. And eventually, he took a wrong turn.

Alex's sneakers slapped the pavement of the dirty alleyway. The smell of the trashcans was nauseating, and it almost made the hot dogs he had before come back up. Surely he had lost the lion now. And maybe the smell would hide him.

However, when he turned around the corner, thinking it'd lead him to the main street again, he found a grim brick wall, with graffiti plastered all over it. His heart dropped. He tried to turn around, but the low guttural growl made him freeze.

The lion was only a few feet before him. The disgusting smell hadn't done a thing to stop the monster's incessant chase. Alex took a step back. What would he do now? He looked around for an exit — maybe he could use the fire escapes like before. But there weren't any. He was trapped, stuck with a murderous beast that chased him around Brooklyn for hours. Did he smell that good?

The lion moved closer, and Alex took another step back. The tight space barely allowed any room for manoeuvre. When the lion swung its massive paw, Alex wasn't fast enough, being thrown backwards, hitting the brick wall and grunting in pain.

He tried to think of anything he could do. The lion swung again, this time with its claws, and Alex knew he couldn't let that hit him. He threw himself under the beast, putting it in an awkward position to use its limbs. This time it was Alex who swung, fist closed into what he wanted to be a powerful punch.

There was a crack, and the lion stumbled backwards. Alex celebrated internally, thinking he had finally caused it some damage. But then, he looked at his right hand and saw his bent fingers.

With all the adrenaline, he barely felt the pain, but the discomfort was there. But the fact was, his punch had enough strength to push him back, invulnerable skin or not. That should've been impossible though.

He was athletic, he knew that. Even if he had no knack for sports except baseball, he still could do things most people his age and even adults couldn't. But punching a lion? He couldn't even beat his dad in arm wrestling.

Alex kept fighting for his life. It was a one-sided fight where the lion kept trying to kill him while he just dodged, rolled away, or threw himself out of danger.

There just was no way of defeating this thing. What had Hercules done when he fought it? What did Grover say? He should've been paying more attention dammit!

Rolling away from a bite, Alex kept thinking. Hercules was really famous for his strength, his feats, and his weapons. What were the weapons… A bow, a sword, and a cub, right? Think, Alex, think!

The bow surely hadn't worked. No arrow could pierce that skin. Hedge's cub had broken when he swung it at the beast. So that was a no-go as well. What about his sword? Didn't it shatter or something?

Alex dodged another swipe. Okay, if no weapon had worked, then what Hercules had to have used was his strength. But the lion's skin was still invulnerable. Then, had he starved the thing to death? Maybe he had locked him in place and waited until it stopped moving.

But that would take forever, and Alex couldn't hold on much longer. He kept thinking. What was the one thing the lion had in common with every single creature? The one thing it couldn't live without? Then something clicked.

Air. The lion had to breathe, just like any other creature. Alex remembered now. Hercules choked it to death. But could Alex do it as well?

He didn't have godlike strength… but he had something Hercules didn't — his size.

Alex was probably much smaller than the hero of legend. And that gave him an advantage over the lion. He was harder to hit. If he was harder to hit, he could go closer to the monster with much ease, and then… latch onto its neck and strangle the thing….

Yeah, that last part wouldn't be as easy. But he had to try it anyway. It was his only chance and way out. He had to wrestle with the Nemean Lion.

Facing its eminent attacks, Alex evaded the lion's next strike with a last-minute roll and got close to the beast like he did when he punched it. The lion's frustrated roars only fueled Alex's determination.

He leapt forward all of a sudden, surprising the lion and giving it no time to react. He managed to wrap his arms around the lion's underside neck, holding on with all his might. The mane felt like a thousand little knives slicing him away, but he refused to let go. The lion struggled, trying to get him off. It charged against walls and dropped to the ground, but nothing it did made Alex release his hold.

At one point, the lion tried using his claws to pierce him, but while it ripped some of his clothes, leaving bloody scratches all over his back, Alex kept tensing his arms. He was already in pain from the metallic mane. A few more gashes wouldn't faze him.

"Come on, you big asshole," Alex shouted. "die already!"

He had closed his eyes, trying to ignore the fact his arms were starting to give up when a loud bursting sound echoed in the alley, and he felt like a wave of sand crashed against his face and his back against the ground.

Alex struggled to lift his head when he fell, but when he did, a victorious grin crept up his face. He'd done it. He defeated the Nemean Lion, just like Hercules had. The of-so-mighty monster that was supposed to be invulnerable, was killed by an eleven-year-old.

"Undefeatable, my ass." Alex laughed, blood leaking all over his body. With a content smile, he closed his eyes in that dirty and dark alleyway. The sweet embrace of the night felt familiar.