The House of Hades(Heroes of Olympus, Book 4)

ANNABETH



GETTING KILLED BY TARTARUS didn’t seem like much of an honour.

As Annabeth stared up at his dark whirlpool face, she decided she’d rather die in some less memorable way – maybe falling down the stairs, or going peacefully in her sleep at age eighty, after a nice quiet life with Percy. Yes, that sounded good.

It wasn’t the first time Annabeth had faced an enemy she couldn’t defeat by force. Normally, this would’ve been her cue to stall for time with some clever Athena-like chitchat.

Except her voice wouldn’t work. She couldn’t even close her mouth. For all she knew, she was drooling as badly as Percy did when he slept.

She was dimly aware of the army of monsters swirling around her, but after their initial roar of triumph the horde had fallen silent. Annabeth and Percy should have been ripped to pieces by now. Instead, the monsters kept their distance, waiting for Tartarus to act.

The god of the pit flexed his fingers, examining his own polished black talons. He had no expression, but he straightened his shoulders as if he were pleased.

It is good to have form, he intoned. With these hands, I can eviscerate you.

His voice sounded like a backwards recording – as if the words were being sucked into the vortex of his face rather than projected. In fact, everything seemed to be drawn towards the face of this god – the dim light, the poisonous clouds, the essence of the monsters, even Annabeth’s own fragile life force. She looked around and realized that every object on this vast plain had grown a vaporous comet’s tail – all pointing towards Tartarus.

Annabeth knew she should say something, but her instincts told her to hide, to avoid doing anything that would draw the god’s attention.

Besides, what could she say? You won’t get away with this!

That wasn’t true. She and Percy had only survived this long because Tartarus was savouring his new form. He wanted the pleasure of physically ripping them to pieces. If Tartarus wished, Annabeth had no doubt he could devour her existence with a single thought, as easily as he’d vaporized Hyperion and Krios. Would there be any rebirth from that? Annabeth didn’t want to find out.

Next to her, Percy did something she’d never seen him do. He dropped his sword. It just fell out of his hand and hit the ground with a thud. Death Mist no longer shrouded his face, but he still had the complexion of a corpse.

Tartarus hissed again – possibly laughing.

Your fear smells wonderful, said the god. I see the appeal of having a physical body with so many senses. Perhaps my beloved Gaia is right, wishing to wake from her slumber.

He stretched out his massive purple hand and might have plucked up Percy like a weed, but Bob interrupted.

‘Begone!’ The Titan levelled his spear at the god. ‘You have no right to meddle!’

Meddle? Tartarus turned. I am the lord of all creatures of the darkness, puny Iapetus. I can do as I please.

His black cyclone face spun faster. The howling sound was so horrible that Annabeth fell to her knees and clutched her ears. Bob stumbled, the wispy comet tail of his life force growing longer as it was sucked towards the face of the god.

Bob roared in defiance. He charged and thrust his spear at Tartarus’s chest. Before it could connect, Tartarus swatted Bob aside like he was a pesky insect. The Titan went sprawling.

Why do you not disintegrate? Tartarus mused. You are nothing. You are even weaker than Krios and Hyperion.

‘I am Bob,’ said Bob.

Tartarus hissed. What is that? What is Bob?

‘I choose to be more than Iapetus,’ said the Titan. ‘You do not control me. I am not like my brothers.’

The collar of his coveralls bulged. Small Bob leaped out. The kitten landed on the ground in front of his master, then arched his back and hissed at the lord of the abyss.

As Annabeth watched, Small Bob began to grow, his form flickering until the little kitten had become a full-sized, translucent skeletal sabre-toothed tiger.

‘Also,’ Bob announced, ‘I have a good cat.’

No-Longer-Small Bob sprang at Tartarus, sinking his claws into Tartarus’s thigh. The tiger scrambled up his leg, straight under the god’s chain-link skirt. Tartarus stomped and howled, apparently no longer enamoured with having a physical form. Meanwhile, Bob thrust his spear into the god’s side, right below his breastplate.

Tartarus roared. He swatted at Bob, but the Titan backed out of reach. Bob thrust out his fingers. His spear yanked itself free of the god’s flesh and flew back to Bob’s hand, which made Annabeth gulp in amazement. She’d never imagined a broom could have so many useful features. Small Bob dropped out of Tartarus’s skirt. He ran to his master’s side, his sabre-toothed fangs dripping with golden ichor.

You will die first, Iapetus, Tartarus decided. Afterwards, I will add your soul to my armour, where it will slowly dissolve, over and over, in eternal agony.

Tartarus pounded his fist against his breastplate. Milky faces swirled in the metal, silently screaming to get out.

Bob turned towards Percy and Annabeth. The Titan grinned, which probably would not have been Annabeth’s reaction to a threat of eternal agony.

‘Take the Doors,’ Bob said. ‘I will deal with Tartarus.’

Tartarus threw back his head and bellowed – creating a vacuum so strong that the nearest flying demons were pulled into his vortex face and shredded.

Deal with me? the god mocked. You are only a Titan, a lesser child of Gaia! I will make you suffer for your arrogance. And as for your tiny mortal friends …

Tartarus swept his hand towards the monster army, beckoning them forward. DESTROY THEM!
LXX





ANNABETH



DESTROY THEM

Annabeth had heard those words often enough that they shocked her out of her paralysis. She raised her sword and yelled, ‘Percy!’

He snatched up Riptide.

Annabeth dived for the chains holding the Doors of Death. Her drakon-bone blade cut through the left-side moorings in a single swipe. Meanwhile, Percy drove back the first wave of monsters. He stabbed an arai and yelped, ‘Gah! Stupid curses!’ Then he scythed down a half-dozen telkhines. Annabeth lunged behind him and sliced through the chains on the other side.

The Doors shuddered, then opened with a pleasant Ding!

Bob and his sabre-toothed sidekick continued to weave around Tartarus’s legs, attacking and dodging to stay out of his clutches. They didn’t seem to be doing much damage, but Tartarus lurched around, obviously not used to fighting in a humanoid body. He swiped and missed, swiped and missed.

More monsters surged towards the Doors. A spear flew past Annabeth’s head. She turned and stabbed an empousa through the gut, then dived for the Doors as they started to close.

She kept them open with her foot as she fought. At least with her back to the elevator car, she didn’t have to worry about attacks from behind.

‘Percy, get over here!’ she yelled.

He joined her in the doorway, his face dripping with sweat and blood from several cuts.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Got some kind of pain curse from that arai.’ He hacked a gryphon out of the air. ‘Hurts, but it won’t kill me. Get in the elevator. I’ll hold the button.’

‘Yeah, right!’ She smacked a carnivorous horse in the snout with the butt of her sword and sent the monster stampeding through the crowd. ‘You promised, Seaweed Brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!’

‘You’re impossible!’

‘Love you too!’

An entire phalanx of Cyclopes charged forward, knocking smaller monsters out of the way. Annabeth figured she was about to die. ‘It had to be Cyclopes,’ she grumbled.

Percy gave a battle cry. At the Cyclopes’ feet, a red vein in the ground burst open, spraying the monsters with liquid fire from the Phlegethon. The firewater might have healed mortals, but it didn’t do the Cyclopes any favours. They combusted in a tidal wave of heat. The burst vein sealed itself, but nothing remained of the monsters except a row of scorch marks.

‘Annabeth, you have to go!’ Percy said. ‘We can’t both stay!’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘Duck!’

He didn’t ask why. He crouched, and Annabeth vaulted over him, bringing her sword down on the head of a heavily tattooed ogre.

She and Percy stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, waiting for the next wave. The exploding vein had given the monsters pause, but it wouldn’t be long before they remembered: Hey, wait, there’s seventy-five gazillion of us, and only two of them.

‘Well, then,’ Percy said, ‘you have a better idea?’

Annabeth wished she did.

The Doors of Death stood right behind them – their exit from this nightmarish world. But they couldn’t use the Doors without someone manning the controls for twelve long minutes. If they stepped inside and let the Doors close without someone holding the button, Annabeth didn’t think the results would be healthy. And if they stepped away from the Doors for any reason she imagined the elevator would close and disappear without them.

The situation was so pathetically sad it was almost funny.

The crowd of monsters inched forward, snarling and gathering their courage.

Meanwhile, Bob’s attacks were getting slower. Tartarus was learning to control his new body. Sabre-toothed Small Bob lunged at the god, but Tartarus smacked the cat sideways. Bob charged, bellowing with rage, but Tartarus grabbed his spear and yanked it out of his hands. He kicked Bob downhill, knocking over a row of telkhines like sea-mammal bowling pins.

YIELD! Tartarus thundered.

‘I will not,’ Bob said. ‘You are not my master.’

Die in defiance, then, said the god of the pit. You Titans are nothing to me. My children the giants were always better, stronger and more vicious. They will make the upper world as dark as my realm!

Tartarus snapped the spear in half. Bob wailed in agony. Sabre-toothed Small Bob leaped to his aid, snarling at Tartarus and baring his fangs. The Titan struggled to rise, but Annabeth knew it was over. Even the monsters turned to watch, as if sensing that their master Tartarus was about to take the spotlight. The death of a Titan was worth seeing.

Percy gripped Annabeth’s hand. ‘Stay here. I’ve got to help him.’

‘Percy, you can’t,’ she croaked. ‘Tartarus can’t be fought. Not by us.’

She knew she was right. Tartarus was in a class by himself. He was more powerful than the gods or Titans. Demigods were nothing to him. If Percy charged to help Bob, he would get squashed like an ant.

But Annabeth also knew that Percy wouldn’t listen. He couldn’t leave Bob to die alone. That just wasn’t him – and that was one of the many reasons she loved him, even if he was an Olympian-sized pain in the podex.

‘We’ll go together,’ Annabeth decided, knowing this would be their final battle. If they stepped away from the Doors, they would never leave Tartarus. At least they would die fighting side by side.

She was about to say: Now.

A ripple of alarm passed through the army. In the distance, Annabeth heard shrieks, screams and a persistent boom, boom, boom that was too fast to be the heartbeat in the ground – more like something large and heavy, running at full speed. An Earthborn spun into the air as if he’d been tossed. A plume of bright-green gas billowed across the top of the monstrous horde like the spray from a poison riot hose. Everything in its path dissolved.

Across the swath of sizzling, newly empty ground, Annabeth saw the cause of the commotion. She started to grin.

The Maeonian drakon spread its frilled collar and hissed, its poison breath filling the battlefield with the smell of pine and ginger. It shifted its hundred-foot-long body, flicking its dappled green tail and wiping out a battalion of ogres.

Riding on its back was a red-skinned giant with flowers in his rust-coloured braids, a jerkin of green leather and a drakon-rib lance in his hand.

‘Damasen!’ Annabeth cried.

The giant inclined his head. ‘Annabeth Chase, I took your advice. I chose myself a new fate.’
LXXI





ANNABETH



W HAT IS THIS? THE GOD OF THE PIT HISSED. Why have you come, my disgraced son?

Damasen glanced at Annabeth, a clear message in his eyes: Go. Now.

He turned towards Tartarus. The Maeonian drakon stamped its feet and snarled.

‘Father, you wished for a more worthy opponent?’ Damasen asked calmly. ‘I am one of the giants you are so proud of. You wished me to be more war-like? Perhaps I will start by destroying you!’

Damasen levelled his lance and charged.

The monstrous army swarmed him, but the Maeonian drakon flattened everything in its path, sweeping its tail and spraying poison while Damasen jabbed at Tartarus, forcing the god to retreat like a cornered lion.

Bob stumbled away from the battle, his sabre-toothed cat at his side. Percy gave them as much cover as he could – causing blood vessels in the ground to burst one after the other. Some monsters were vaporized in Styx water. Others got a Cocytus shower and collapsed, weeping hopelessly. Others were doused with liquid Lethe and stared blankly around them, no longer sure where they were or even who they were.

Bob limped to the Doors. Golden ichor flowed from the wounds on his arms and chest. His janitor’s outfit hung in tatters. His posture was twisted and hunched, as if Tartarus breaking the spear had broken something inside him. Despite all that, he was grinning, his silver eyes bright with satisfaction.

‘Go,’ he ordered. ‘I will hold the button.’

Percy gawked at him. ‘Bob, you’re in no condition –’

‘Percy.’ Annabeth’s voice threatened to break. She hated herself for letting Bob do this, but she knew it was the only way. ‘We have to.’

‘We can’t just leave them!’

‘You must, friend.’ Bob clapped Percy on the arm, nearly knocking him over. ‘I can still press a button. And I have a good cat to guard me.’

Small Bob the sabre-toothed growled in agreement.

‘Besides,’ Bob said, ‘it is your destiny to return to the world. Put an end to this madness of Gaia.’

A screaming Cyclops, sizzling from poison spray, sailed over their heads.

Fifty yards away, the Maeonian drakon trampled through monsters, its feet making sickening squish squish noises as if stomping grapes. On its back, Damasen yelled insults and jabbed at the god of the pit, taunting Tartarus further away from the Doors.

Tartarus lumbered after him, his iron boots making craters in the ground.

You cannot kill me! he bellowed. I am the pit itself. You might as well try to kill the earth. Gaia and I – we are eternal. We own you, flesh and spirit!

He brought down his massive fist, but Damasen sidestepped, impaling his javelin in the side of Tartarus’s neck.

Tartarus growled, apparently more annoyed than hurt. He turned his swirling vacuum face towards the giant, but Damasen got out of the way in time. A dozen monsters were sucked into the vortex and disintegrated.

‘Bob, don’t!’ Percy said, his eyes pleading. ‘He’ll destroy you permanently. No coming back. No regeneration.’

Bob shrugged. ‘Who knows what will be? You must go now. Tartarus is right about one thing. We cannot defeat him. We can only buy you time.’

The Doors tried to close on Annabeth’s foot.

‘Twelve minutes,’ said the Titan. ‘I can give you that.’

‘Percy … hold the Doors.’ Annabeth jumped and threw her arms around the Titan’s neck. She kissed his cheek, her eyes so full of tears she couldn’t see straight. Bob’s stubbly face smelled of cleaning supplies – fresh lemony furniture polish and Murphy Oil wood soap.

‘Monsters are eternal,’ she told him, trying to keep herself from sobbing. ‘We will remember you and Damasen as heroes, as the best Titan and the best giant. We’ll tell our children. We’ll keep the story alive. Some day, you will regenerate.’

Bob ruffled her hair. Smile lines crinkled around his eyes. ‘That is good. Until then, my friends, tell the sun and the stars hello for me. And be strong. This may not be the last sacrifice you must make to stop Gaia.’

He pushed her away gently. ‘No more time. Go.’

Annabeth grabbed Percy’s arm. She dragged him into the elevator car. She had one last glimpse of the Maeonian drakon shaking an ogre like a sock puppet, Damasen jabbing at Tartarus’s legs.

The god of the pit pointed at the Doors of Death and yelled: Monsters, stop them!

Small Bob the sabre-toothed crouched and snarled, ready for action.

Bob winked at Annabeth. ‘Hold the Doors closed on your side,’ he said. ‘They will resist your passage. Hold them –’

The panels slid shut.
LXXII





ANNABETH



‘PERCY, HELP ME!’ ANNABETH YELPED.

She shoved her entire body against the left door, pressing it towards the centre. Percy did the same on the right. There were no handles, or anything else to hold on to. As the elevator car ascended, the Doors shook and tried to open, threatening to spill them into whatever was between life and death.

Annabeth’s shoulders ached. The elevator’s easy-listening music didn’t help. If all monsters had to hear that song about liking pi?a coladas and getting caught in the rain, no wonder they were in the mood for carnage when they reached the mortal world.

‘We left Bob and Damasen,’ Percy croaked. ‘They’ll die for us, and we just –’

‘I know,’ she murmured. ‘Gods of Olympus, Percy, I know.’

Annabeth was almost glad of the job of keeping the Doors closed. The terror racing through her heart at least kept her from dissolving into misery. Abandoning Damasen and Bob had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

For years at Camp Half-Blood, she had chafed as other campers went on quests while she stayed behind. She’d watched as others gained glory … or failed and didn’t come back. Since she was seven years old, she had thought: Why don’t I get to prove my skills? Why can’t I lead a quest?

Now, she realized that the hardest test for a child of Athena wasn’t leading a quest or facing death in combat. It was making the strategic decision to step back, to let someone else take the brunt of the danger – especially when that person was your friend. She had to face the fact that she couldn’t protect everyone she loved. She couldn’t solve every problem.

She hated it, but she didn’t have time for self-pity. She blinked away her tears.

‘Percy, the Doors,’ she warned.

The panels had started to slide apart, letting in a whiff of … ozone? Sulphur?

Percy pushed on his side furiously and the crack closed. His eyes blazed with anger. She hoped he wasn’t mad at her, but if he was she couldn’t blame him.

If it keeps him going, she thought, then let him be angry.

‘I will kill Gaia,’ he muttered. ‘I will tear her apart with my bare hands.’

Annabeth nodded, but she was thinking about Tartarus’s boast. He could not be killed. Neither could Gaia. Against such power, even Titans and giants were hopelessly outmatched. Demigods stood no chance.

She also remembered Bob’s warning: This may not be the last sacrifice you must make to stop Gaia.

She felt that truth deep in her bones.

‘Twelve minutes,’ she murmured. ‘Just twelve minutes.’

She prayed to Athena that Bob could hold the UP button that long. She prayed for strength and wisdom. She wondered what they would find once they reached the top of this elevator ride.

If their friends weren’t there, controlling the other side …

‘We can do this,’ Percy said. ‘We have to.’

‘Yeah,’ Annabeth said. ‘Yeah, we do.’

They held the Doors shut as the elevator shuddered and the music played, while somewhere below them a Titan and a giant sacrificed their lives for their escape.
LXXIII





HAZEL



HAZEL WASN’T PROUD OF CRYING.

After the tunnel collapsed, she wept and screamed like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. She couldn’t move the debris that separated her and Leo from the others. If the earth shifted any more, the entire complex might collapse on their heads. Still, she pounded her fists against the stones and yelled curses that would’ve earned her a mouth-washing with lye soap back at St Agnes Academy.

Leo stared at her, wide-eyed and speechless.

She wasn’t being fair to him.

The last time the two of them had been together, she’d zapped him into her past and shown him Sammy, his great-grandfather – Hazel’s first boyfriend. She’d burdened him with emotional baggage he didn’t need and left him so dazed they had almost been killed by a giant shrimp monster.

Now here they were, alone again, while their friends might be dying at the hands of a monster army, and she was throwing a fit.

‘Sorry.’ She wiped her face.

‘Hey, you know …’ Leo shrugged. ‘I’ve attacked a few rocks in my day.’

She swallowed with difficulty. ‘Frank is … he’s –’

‘Listen,’ Leo said. ‘Frank Zhang has moves. He’s probably gonna turn into a kangaroo and do some marsupial jujitsu on their ugly faces.’

He helped her to her feet. Despite the panic simmering inside her, she knew Leo was right. Frank and the others weren’t helpless. They would find a way to survive. The best thing she and Leo could do was carry on.

She studied Leo. His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. The biggest difference was his eyes. They constantly drifted, as if Leo was trying to spot something over the horizon.

‘Leo, I’m sorry,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay. For what?’

‘For …’ She gestured around her helplessly. ‘Everything. For thinking you were Sammy, for leading you on. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but if I did –’

‘Hey.’ He squeezed her hand, though Hazel sensed nothing romantic in the gesture. ‘Machines are designed to work.’

‘Uh, what?’

‘I figure the universe is basically like a machine. I don’t know who made it, if it was the Fates or the gods or capital-G God or whatever. But it chugs along the way it’s supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly … things happen for a reason. Like you and me meeting.’

‘Leo Valdez,’ Hazel marvelled, ‘you’re a philosopher.’

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m just a mechanic. But I figure my bisabuelo Sammy knew what was what. He let you go, Hazel. My job is to tell you that it’s okay. You and Frank – you’re good together. We’re all going to get through this. I hope you guys get a chance to be happy. Besides, Zhang couldn’t tie his shoes without your help.’

‘That’s mean,’ Hazel chided, but she felt like something was untangling inside her – a knot of tension she’d been carrying for weeks.

Leo really had changed. Hazel was starting to think she’d found a good friend.

‘What happened to you when you were on your own?’ she asked. ‘Who did you meet?’

Leo’s eye twitched. ‘Long story. I’ll tell you sometime, but I’m still waiting to see how it shakes out.’

‘The universe is a machine,’ Hazel said, ‘so it’ll be fine.’

‘Hopefully.’

‘As long as it’s not one of your machines,’ Hazel added. ‘Because your machines never do what they’re supposed to.’

‘Yeah, ha-ha.’ Leo summoned fire into his hand. ‘Now, which way, Miss Underground?’

Hazel scanned the path in front of them. About thirty feet down, the tunnel split into four smaller arteries, each one identical, but the one on the left radiated cold.

‘That way,’ she decided. ‘It feels the most dangerous.’

‘I’m sold,’ said Leo.

They began their descent.

As soon as they reached the first archway, the polecat Gale found them.

She scurried up Hazel’s side and curled around her neck, chittering crossly as if to say: Where have you been? You’re late.

‘Not the farting weasel again,’ Leo complained. ‘If that thing lets loose in close quarters like this, with my fire and all, we’re gonna explode.’

Gale barked a polecat insult at Leo.

Hazel hushed them both. She could sense the tunnel ahead, sloping gently down for about three hundred feet, then opening into a large chamber. In that chamber was a presence … cold, heavy and powerful. Hazel hadn’t felt anything like it since the cave in Alaska where Gaia had forced her to resurrect Porphyrion the giant king. Hazel had thwarted Gaia’s plans that time, but she’d had to pull down the cavern, sacrificing her life and her mother’s. She wasn’t anxious to have a similar experience.

‘Leo, be ready,’ she whispered. ‘We’re getting close.’

‘Close to what?’

A woman’s voice echoed down the corridor: ‘Close to me.’

A wave of nausea hit Hazel so hard her knees buckled. The whole world shifted. Her sense of direction, usually flawless underground, became completely unmoored.

She and Leo didn’t seem to move, but suddenly they were three hundred feet down the corridor, at the entrance of the chamber.

‘Welcome,’ said the woman’s voice. ‘I’ve looked forward to this.’

Hazel’s eyes swept the cavern. She couldn’t see the speaker.

The room reminded her of the Pantheon in Rome, except this place had been decorated in Hades Modern.

The obsidian walls were carved with scenes of death: plague victims, corpses on the battlefield, torture chambers with skeletons hanging in iron cages – all of it embellished with precious gems that somehow made the scenes even more ghastly.

As in the Pantheon, the domed roof was a waffle pattern of recessed square panels, but here each panel was a stela – a grave marker with Ancient Greek inscriptions. Hazel wondered if actual bodies were buried behind them. With her underground senses out of whack, she couldn’t be sure.

She saw no other exits. At the apex of the ceiling, where the Pantheon’s skylight would’ve been, a circle of pure black stone gleamed, as if to reinforce the sense that there was no way out of this place – no sky above, only darkness.

Hazel’s eyes drifted to the centre of the room.

‘Yep,’ Leo muttered. ‘Those are doors, all right.’

Fifty feet away was a set of freestanding elevator doors, their panels etched in silver and iron. Rows of chains ran down either side, bolting the frame to large hooks in the floor.

The area around the doors was littered with black rubble. With a tightening sense of anger, Hazel realized that an ancient altar to Hades had once stood there. It had been destroyed to make room for the Doors of Death.

‘Where are you?’ she shouted.

‘Don’t you see us?’ taunted the woman’s voice. ‘I thought Hecate chose you for your skill.’

Another bout of queasiness churned through Hazel’s gut. On her shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which didn’t help.

Dark spots floated in Hazel’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors.

The giant Clytius was shrouded in the black smoke, just as she’d seen in her vision at the crossroads, but now Hazel could dimly make out his form – dragon-like legs with ash-coloured scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armour; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death’s (Hazel should know, since she had met Death personally). His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying.

Leo whistled. ‘You know, Clytius … for such a big dude, you’ve got a beautiful voice.’

‘Idiot,’ hissed the woman.

Halfway between Hazel and the giant, the air shimmered. The sorceress appeared.

She wore an elegant sleeveless dress of woven gold, her dark hair piled into a cone, encircled with diamonds and emeralds. Around her neck hung a pendant like a miniature maze, on a cord set with rubies that made Hazel think of crystallized blood drops.

The woman was beautiful in a timeless, regal way – like a statue you might admire but could never love. Her eyes sparkled with malice.

‘Pasipha?,’ Hazel said.

The woman inclined her head. ‘My dear Hazel Levesque.’

Leo coughed. ‘You two know each other? Like Underworld chums, or –’

‘Silence, fool.’ Pasipha?’s voice was soft, but full of venom. ‘I have no use for demigod boys – always so full of themselves, so brash and destructive.’

‘Hey, lady,’ Leo protested. ‘I don’t destroy things much. I’m a son of Hephaestus.’

‘A tinkerer,’ snapped Pasipha?. ‘Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.’

Leo blinked. ‘Daedalus … like, the Daedalus? Well, then, you should know all about us tinkerers. We’re more into fixing, building, occasionally sticking wads of oilcloth in the mouths of rude ladies –’

‘Leo.’ Hazel put her arm across his chest. She had a feeling the sorceress was about to turn him into something unpleasant if he didn’t shut up. ‘Let me take this, okay?’

‘Listen to your friend,’ Pasipha? said. ‘Be a good boy and let the women talk.’

Pasipha? paced in front of them, examining Hazel, her eyes so full of hate it made Hazel’s skin tingle. The sorceress’s power radiated from her like heat from a furnace. Her expression was unsettling and vaguely familiar …

Somehow, though, the giant Clytius unnerved Hazel more.

He stood in the background, silent and motionless except for the dark smoke pouring from his body, pooling around his feet. He was the cold presence Hazel had felt earlier – like a vast deposit of obsidian, so heavy that Hazel couldn’t possibly move it, powerful and indestructible and completely devoid of emotion.

‘Your – your friend doesn’t say much,’ Hazel noted.

Pasipha? looked back at the giant and sniffed with disdain. ‘Pray he stays silent, my dear. Gaia has given me the pleasure of dealing with you, but Clytius is my, ah, insurance. Just between you and me, as sister sorceresses, I think he’s also here to keep my powers in check, in case I forget my new mistress’s orders. Gaia is careful that way.’

Hazel was tempted to protest that she wasn’t a sorceress. She didn’t want to know how Pasipha? planned to ‘deal’ with them, or how the giant kept her magic in check. But she straightened her back and tried to look confident.

‘Whatever you’re planning,’ Hazel said, ‘it won’t work. We’ve cut through every monster Gaia’s put in our path. If you’re smart, you’ll get out of our way.’

Gale the polecat gnashed her teeth in approval, but Pasipha? didn’t seem impressed.

‘You don’t look like much,’ the sorceress mused. ‘But then you demigods never do. My husband, Minos, king of Crete? He was a son of Zeus. You would never have known it by looking at him. He was almost as scrawny as that one.’ She flicked a hand towards Leo.

‘Wow,’ muttered Leo. ‘Minos must’ve done something really horrible to deserve you.’

Pasipha?’s nostrils flared. ‘Oh … you have no idea. He was too proud to make the proper sacrifices to Poseidon, so the gods punished me for his arrogance.’

‘The Minotaur,’ Hazel suddenly remembered.

The story was so revolting and grotesque Hazel had always shut her ears when they told it at Camp Jupiter. Pasipha? had been cursed to fall in love with her husband’s prize bull. She’d given birth to the Minotaur – half man, half bull.

Now, as Pasipha? glared daggers at her, Hazel realized why her expression was so familiar.

The sorceress had the same bitterness and hatred in her eyes that Hazel’s mother sometimes had. In her worst moments, Marie Levesque would look at Hazel as if Hazel were a monstrous child, a curse from the gods, the source of all Marie’s problems. That’s why the Minotaur story bothered Hazel – not just the repellent idea of Pasipha? and the bull but the idea that a child, any child, could be considered a monster, a punishment to its parents, to be locked away and hated. To Hazel, the Minotaur had always seemed like a victim in the story.

‘Yes,’ Pasipha? said at last. ‘My disgrace was unbearable. After my son was born and locked in the Labyrinth, Minos refused to have anything to do with me. He said I had ruined his reputation! And do you know what happened to Minos, Hazel Levesque? For his crimes and his pride? He was rewarded. He was made a judge of the dead in the Underworld, as if he had any right to judge others! Hades gave him that position. Your father.’

‘Pluto, actually.’

Pasipha? sneered. ‘Irrelevant. So you see, I hate demigods as much as I hate the gods. Any of your brethren who survive the war, Gaia has promised to me, so that I may watch them die slowly in my new domain. I only wish I had more time to torture you two properly. Alas –’

In the centre of the room, the Doors of Death made a pleasant chiming sound. The green UP button on the right side of the frame began to glow. The chains shook.

‘There, you see?’ Pasipha? shrugged apologetically. ‘The Doors are in use. Twelve minutes, and they will open.’

Hazel’s gut trembled almost as much as the chains. ‘More giants?’

‘Thankfully, no,’ said the sorceress. ‘They are all accounted for – back in the mortal world and in place for the final assault.’ Pasipha? gave her a cold smile. ‘No, I would imagine the Doors are being used by someone else … someone unauthorized.’

Leo inched forward. Smoke rose from his fists. ‘Percy and Annabeth.’

Hazel couldn’t speak. She wasn’t sure whether the lump in her throat was from joy or frustration. If their friends had made it to the Doors, if they were really going to show up here in twelve minutes …

‘Oh, not to worry.’ Pasipha? waved her hand dismissively. ‘Clytius will handle them. You see, when the chime sounds again, someone on our side needs to push the UP button or the Doors will fail to open and whoever is inside – poof. Gone. Or perhaps Clytius will let them out and deal with them in person. That depends on you two.’

Hazel’s mouth tasted like tin. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. ‘How exactly does it depend on us?’

‘Well, obviously, we need only one set of demigods alive,’ Pasipha? said. ‘The lucky two will be taken to Athens and sacrificed to Gaia at the Feast of Hope.’

‘Obviously,’ Leo muttered.

‘So will it be you two or your friends in the elevator?’ The sorceress spread her hands. ‘Let’s see who is still alive in twelve … actually, eleven minutes, now.’

The cavern dissolved into darkness.
LXXIV