Fall of Hades (23 page)

“We'll just grab a sweet roll or something,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“There will be food on the plane too,” Gervaso said.

“Great,” I said. “Has Ostin come up yet?”

“He's back in the corner with McKenna,” Jack said, pointing.

“Thanks. Come on, Taylor.”

We walked over and grabbed plates.

“Didn't I tell you she liked you?” Taylor said.

“She's just being friendly,” I said.

“Very.” She turned and walked away.

I grabbed a cherry Danish, a hard-boiled egg, some toast, and a glass of orange juice, and carried it over to where Taylor had gone, next to Ostin and McKenna. Taylor looked embarrassed.

“Ostin said he found you guys sleeping in the hall,” McKenna said.

“It was quieter than sleeping next to Ostin,” I replied.

“I talk in my sleep?” Ostin said.

“No, you snore. Like a chain saw.”

He turned to McKenna. “I don't snore.”

“Uh, yeah, you do,” I said.

“Why are you making these cruel accusations?”

“Because I had to sleep in the hall,” I said. “And I got run over by some Chinese dude in a psychedelic green jacket. You definitely snore. If you don't believe me, we can prove it scientifically.”

“How would you do that?”

“Easy. We could record you.”

“What, with a phone recorder?”

“No, I was thinking more of a Richter scale.”

McKenna and Taylor both laughed.

“It's okay,” McKenna said. “Real men snore.”

Ostin smiled. Then he said to me, “Hey, you should try your Danish baked with butter. The way your mother used to make them.”

“I would if I had an oven.”

McKenna's eyebrows rose. “Excuse me, but what am I?”

“Sorry, but I don't usually think of you as an oven.”

“Give it to me.”

I put a pat of butter on top of my pastry and then pushed the plate to McKenna. She put her hand on it. Within seconds the butter was bubbling and the Danish was slightly toasted. She stopped and pushed the plate back to me. “There you go. Be careful, it's hot.”

“Thank you.”

I had only taken a few bites of my Danish when Jack walked up to our table. “Gervaso says it's time to head down.”

I downed my orange juice in one gulp, then grabbed a napkin and my sweet roll, and we all walked out to the elevator. Taylor and I stopped on our floor and grabbed our bags, then went down to the lobby. Ian and Gervaso were standing near the hotel's front doors.

“That's everyone but Welch,” Gervaso said.

“He's waiting for us outside,” Ian said. “He's reading a newspaper.”

“All right, let's go.”

After we were in our vans, Welch casually put down his newspaper and walked over to our vehicle and got in. I didn't think that he was being overly cautious. If I had Hatch and his whole army after me, I'd be careful too.

The drive from the hotel to the airport took about a half hour. We set what little luggage we had near the back of the plane, then boarded.

Scott closed the cockpit door, and within fifteen minutes we were in the air. I think that's the best part of a private jet. There's not a lot of sitting around. And you don't have to bring your seat up for takeoff.

Once the plane had settled on a cruising altitude, Gervaso stood up in the aisle at the front of the plane. He steadied himself by holding on to the seats on each side.

“Listen up, all. The flight to Sydney is almost nine hours, so you've got some time to relax. You all look pretty tired, so I suggest that you rest now and we'll talk a few hours before we land. There are some important things we need to go over.”

“Sounds good to me,” Taylor said softly. “At least the resting part.”

We reclined our seats, and she laid her head against me to sleep. We were headed to the monster's lair.

W
e ended up taking the long way to Sydney, Australia. Usually pilots look for the shortest route between two dots, but in this case that would have basically taken us through a hurricane.

An hour into the flight our pilots informed us that there was a category-five tropical cyclone (which Ostin explained meant there were winds of above one hundred thirty miles per hour) in the area of the Marshall Islands, which were about a thousand miles from Tuvalu and close enough to Sydney that all air traffic had been delayed or rerouted.

We ended up flying from Taipei to Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste—a country I'd never even heard of. Ostin, of course, had not only heard of the country but knew more about it than any normal non-Timorese wanted to know.

He informed us that Timor had been a Portuguese colony since 1520 except when, during World War II, the nation was invaded and conquered by the Japanese, but Timor was returned to Portugal after the war. Thirty years later it declared its independence from Portugal. Nine days after that it was attacked and conquered by Indonesia, which made it part of their country. Kind of like Tuvalu, which was open to attack from the Elgen after they declared their independence from England. Maybe sometimes it's better to just live with the devil you know.

We didn't do anything in Dili. We didn't even get off the plane. It was raining hard, and we waited on the runway while the ground crews refueled our jet, and then we took off again.

From Dili we flew south over Darwin, Australia, then overland to the Australian east coast and Sydney. Once we were over Australia, Ostin began vomiting facts about the country.

“Did you know that Australia was England's penal colony? It's basically where they dumped all the people they didn't want. That's why modern Australians call people from England ‘POME.'”

“What's a ‘POME'?” Jack asked.

“It's something that rhymes,” Tessa said.

“Not ‘po-
em
,'” Ostin said. “
POME.
It stands for ‘Prisoner of Mother England.'” Ostin continued without taking a breath. “There are more than one million wild camels in the Australian outback. And even Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.”

“That's not true,” Tanner said.

“Completely true,” Ostin replied. “Before humans arrived, there were nine-foot-tall kangaroos.”

“Now he's just making things up,” Tessa said.

“Australians have three times more sheep than people. And wombat poop is the shape of a cube.”

“What's a wombat?” Abigail asked.

“Something that poops cubes,” Jack said.

“A wombat is a plant-eating marsupial that looks like a badger with shorter legs.”

“Is it dangerous?” Tessa asked.

“Does it sound dangerous?” Zeus said.

“No.”

Ostin nodded. “They have been known to charge humans and bowl them over.”

“Oh, that sounds scary,” Tessa said, rolling her eyes. “Getting run over by a short-legged, cube-pooping badger.”

“Yeah? Well, there are plenty of things in Australia to be really scared of,” Ostin said defensively. “Australia is famous for having a lot of things that can kill you. It has more species of venomous snakes than any other country, including one of the most venomous of all land snakes, the inland taipan. One bite has enough venom to kill a hundred people.”

“How do they know it can kill one hundred people?” Tessa asked.

Tanner joined in. “Is that, like, exactly one hundred? Because maybe it's really like ninety-seven people. Or what if it's a hundred huge people versus one hundred little people? The whole ‘exactly one hundred people' thing sounds suspicious.”

“Didn't we already have a snake conversation in Peru?” Taylor asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “But this is a new country.”

“Is the taipan as dangerous as the black mamba?” Nichelle asked.

“Yes.”

“But it's not as cool.”

Ostin's brow furrowed. “Why do you say that?”

“Who doesn't like to say ‘black . . . mammmmbaaaa'?”

Everyone laughed except for Ostin, who was trying to analyze her point. He eventually gave up and continued. “Just so you know, the black mamba isn't necessarily black. The inside of its mouth is.”

“Good, that way I'll know it's dangerous after it bites me,” Tanner said.

“What is the most poisonous snake in the world?” Tessa asked.

“Snakes aren't poisonous; they're venomous. Poison is something you eat.”

“I wouldn't eat it,” Tessa said.

“If you eat poison, you die,” Jack said.

“I know,” Ostin said.

Jack pressed his point. “But you just said poison is something you eat.”

“It is.”

“But no one
would
eat it,” Tessa said. “That's the point.”

“Poison is something you eat,” Ostin said. “Venom is something you inject.”

“Again,” Tessa said. “I wouldn't inject it.”

“You're talking in circles,” Zeus said.

“What is the most
venomous
snake in the world?” Jack asked.

“The Belcher's sea snake is number one. But it's not the most dangerous snake in the world.”

“What does that mean?”

“Only about twenty-five percent of Belchers carry venom, and those that do don't really like to bite. But if it does, and it's venomous, you're toast. One bite can kill a thousand people.”

“That doesn't make it more dangerous,” Zeus said. “What does it matter if it can kill a thousand people or one? Either way you're dead.”

“He's got a point,” Nichelle said.

“I never said it was more dangerous. You asked which snake was most venomous.”

“He's got a point too,” Nichelle said.

“The
point
is,” Zeus continued, “it doesn't matter if the entire universe implodes on itself or you swallow a grenade, either way you're dead.”

“Who would swallow a grenade?” Tessa asked.

“A grenade would never fit down your throat,” Nichelle said.

Tessa nodded. “It wouldn't even fit into your mouth.”

“That's not the point,” Zeus said.

“You just said it was your point,” Nichelle said.

Zeus groaned. “I'm leaving this conversation.”

“It might fit into Ostin's mouth,” Tessa said. “It's pretty big.”

“Thank you,” Ostin said, though I'm not sure why. “Back to the snakes.”

“Oh, thank you,” Taylor said. “I was afraid you'd forgotten.”

“There's the brown snake, which is known for its bad temper and aggressive nature, which makes it very dangerous. The mulga snake, which puts out ten times the amount of venom in one bite as the tiger snake, the red-bellied black snake . . .”

“Which isn't really black, only its toes are,” Tanner mocked.

“Snakes don't have toes,” Ostin said. “That would make it a lizard.”

“He's so literal,” Tessa said.

“It's one of his more endearing qualities,” McKenna said.

“. . . There's the southern death adder, which is dangerous because it likes to camouflage itself, so it gets stepped on a lot and the venom acts so fast that half the victims die before they can get antivenin. . . .”

“And it has ‘death' in its name, which makes it super-scary,” Tessa added.

“And then there are spiders.”

“Of course there are,” Taylor said.

“Can we please stop now?” Abigail said. “I have arachnophobia. I'm not kidding.”

“I love that word,” Ostin said, ignoring Abigail's request. “My favorite is the Sydney funnel-web spider, which is one of the world's most dangerous spiders. Humans are especially susceptible to its venom.”

Tanner asked Taylor, “Why would anyone have a favorite spider?”

“I'll just stick to the ocean,” Tessa said.

“You're not safe in the ocean,” Ostin said. “Especially not in
this
ocean. It's filled with all kinds of killers.”

“Like the great white shark,” Jack said.

“Yes, but there's worse,” Ostin said. “Much worse.”

“What's worse than a great white?”

“There's the blue-ringed octopus, with one of the most toxic venoms on the planet. If it bites you, it causes paralysis within minutes, stopping your heart and lungs.”

“I can do that in seconds,” Cassy said.

“You bite people and cause paralysis?” Zeus asked.

Cassy laughed. “Sometimes.”

Ostin continued. “There's the cone snail. One sting can kill fifteen healthy adults within hours.”

“But one sting doesn't kill fifteen anything, because one sting is for one person and you only die once,” Zeus protested.

“Don't start that again,” Taylor said. “It's a slippery slope.”

“There's a fish called the stonefish. Its sting is so excruciating that people die just from the pain. When it comes to killers, most people think of the great white shark as the deadliest creature of the sea, but the box jellyfish has killed more people than all sharks, stonefish, and crocodiles combined. And it's almost invisible.”