Burned

but Stark’s a reader. Maybe he’ll have a clue what you’re talking about,” Aphrodite said.
    “Aphrodite, would you do me a favor?” Stark asked.
    “Maybe.”
    “Stop. Talking.” He looked up at Seoras. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll remember it.”
    Seoras met his gaze. “You must do this on yer own, laddie. I cannae even hold yie down. If you cannae bear it, you willnae make it through the gate anyway, and best to be puttin’ this tae an end now, before yie think tae begin.”
    “I’m not going to move,” Stark said.
    “The heartbeat of the Seol ne Gigh will lead you to the Otherworld. Getting back, ach, well, that’ll be a path yie must be findin’ fer yur-self.”
    Stark nodded and spread his hands against the surface of the marble, trying to absorb its heat into his suddenly chilled body.
    Seoras lifted the dagger and struck Stark so fast the movement of the Guardian’s hand was a blur. The initial pain of the wound thatslashed from his waist to the top of the right side of his rib cage was little more than a hot line in his skin.
    The second cut was almost identical to the first, only it made a weeping red line across his left ribs.
    And that was when the pain began. Its heat seared him. His blood felt like lava as it poured from his sides, pooling on the top of the stone. Seoras worked the razor-edged dirk methodically from one side of Stark’s body to the other, until Stark’s blood crested the edge of the rock as if at the corner of a giant’s eyes. It hesitated there and finally poured over and down, weeping scarlet tears in the intricate knot-work and then dripping to fill the horn-shaped trenches.
    Stark had never felt such pain.
    Not when he’d died.
    Not when he’d un-died and thought only of thirst and violence.
    Not when he’d almost died from his own arrow.
    The pain the Guardian made him feel was more than physical. It burned his body, but it also seared his soul. The agony was liquid and interminable. It was a wave he couldn’t escape, which battered him over and over. He was drowning in it.
    Stark automatically fought. He knew he couldn’t move, but still he struggled to retain hold on his consciousness.
If I let go I’m dead.
    “Trust me, laddie. Let go.”
    Seoras was standing above him, bending again and again over his body to slice his skin, but the Guardian’s voice was a distant anchor, hardly discernible.
    “Trust me . . .”
    Stark had already made the choice. All he had to do was to follow through with it.
    “I trust you,” he heard himself whisper. The world turned gray, then scarlet, then black. All Stark was aware of was the heat of the pain and the liquid of his blood. The two merged, and he was suddenly outside his body, sinking into the stone, dripping down the carved sides, and washing into the horns.
    Surrounded only by pain and darkness, Stark fought against panic, but strangely, after only a moment, the terror was replaced with anumb acceptance that was kinda comforting. On second thought, this darkness wasn’t so bad. At least the pain was going away. Actually, the pain seemed almost a memory . . .
    “Do not fucking give up, moron! Zoey needs you!”
    Aphrodite’s voice? Goddess, it was irritating that even detached from his body, she could still bother him.
    Detached from my body.
He’d done it! The exhilaration that came with the realization was quickly followed by confusion.
    He was out of his body.
    He could see nothing. Feel nothing. Hear nothing. The blackness was absolute.
    Stark had no idea where he was. His spirit fluttered and, like a trapped bird, it battered against nothingness.
    What is it Seoras had said to him? What had been his advice?
    . . . surrender is a powerful force.
    Stark quit fighting and quieted his spirit, and a small memory shone through the blackness, that of his soul, pouring with his blood into two troughs shaped like horns.
    Horns.
    Stark focused on the only tangible idea in his mind, and he imagined himself grabbing hold of those horns.
    The creature came out of the absolute darkness. He was a different kind of black than that which had engulfed Stark. He was the black of a new moon sky—deep, night-resting water—and half-forgotten midnight dreams.
    I accept your blood sacrifice, Warrior. Face me and move on, if you dare.
    I dare!
Stark shouted, accepting the challenge.
    The bull charged him. Acting purely on instinct, Stark didn’t run. He didn’t jump aside. Instead, he faced the bull, head-on.