Percy Jackson The Complete Collection (14 page)

The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!

The river raced towards me at the speed of a truck. Wind ripped the breath from my lungs. Steeples and skyscrapers and bridges tumbled in and out of my vision.

And then:
Flaaa-boooom!

A whiteout of bubbles. I sank through the murk, sure that I was about to end up embedded in fifty metres of mud and lost forever.

But my impact with the water hadn’t hurt. I was falling slowly now, bubbles trickling up through my fingers. I settled on the river bottom soundlessly. A catfish the size of my stepfather lurched away into the gloom. Clouds of silt and disgusting garbage – beer bottles, old shoes, plastic bags – swirled up all around me.

At that point, I realized a few things: first, I had not been flattened into a pancake. I had not been barbecued. I couldn’t even feel the Chimera poison boiling in my veins any more. I was alive, which was good.

Second realization: I wasn’t wet. I mean, I could feel the
coolness of the water. I could see where the fire on my clothes had been quenched. But when I touched my own shirt, it felt perfectly dry.

I looked at the garbage floating by and snatched an old cigarette lighter.

No way, I thought.

I flicked the lighter. It sparked. A tiny flame appeared, right there at the bottom of the Mississippi.

I grabbed a soggy hamburger wrapper out of the current and immediately the paper turned dry. I lit it with no problem. As soon as I let it go, the flames sputtered out. The wrapper turned back into a slimy rag. Weird.

But the strangest thought occurred to me only last: I was breathing. I was underwater, and I was breathing normally.

I stood up, thigh-deep in mud. My legs felt shaky. My hands trembled. I should’ve been dead. The fact that I wasn’t seemed like… well, a miracle. I imagined a woman’s voice, a voice that sounded a bit like my mother:
Percy, what do you say?

Um… thanks
. Underwater, I sounded like I did on recordings, like a much older kid.
Thank you… Father
.

No response. Just the dark drift of garbage downriver, the enormous catfish gliding by, the flash of sunset on the water’s surface far above, turning everything the colour of butterscotch.

Why had Poseidon saved me? The more I thought about it, the more ashamed I felt. So I’d got lucky a few times before. Against a thing like the Chimera, I had never
stood a chance. Those poor people in the Arch were probably toast. I couldn’t protect them. I was no hero. Maybe I should just stay down here with the catfish, join the bottom feeders.

Fump-fump-fump
. A riverboat’s paddlewheel churned above me, swirling the silt around.

There, not two metres in front of me, was my sword, its gleaming bronze hilt sticking up in the mud.

I heard that woman’s voice again:
Percy, take the sword. Your father believes in you
. This time, I knew the voice wasn’t in my head. I wasn’t imagining it. Her words seemed to come from everywhere, rippling through the water like dolphin sonar.

‘Where are you?’ I called aloud.

Then, through the gloom, I saw her – a woman the colour of the water, a ghost in the current, floating just above the sword. She had long billowing hair, and her eyes, barely visible, were green like mine.

A lump formed in my throat. I said, ‘Mom?’

‘But…’ I was sure this woman was my mother, or a vision of her, anyway. ‘Who – how did you –’

There was so much I wanted to ask, the words jammed up in my throat.

I cannot stay, brave one
, the woman said. She reached out,
and I felt the current brush my face like a caress.
You must go to Santa Monica! And, Percy, do not trust the gifts
…

Her voice faded.

‘Gifts?’ I asked. ‘What gifts? Wait!’

She made one more attempt to speak, but the sound was gone. Her image melted away. If it was my mother, I had lost her again.

I felt like drowning myself. The only problem: I was immune to drowning.

Your father believes in you
, she had said.

She’d also called me brave… unless she was talking to the catfish.

I waded towards Riptide and grabbed it by the hilt. The Chimera might still be up there with its snaky fat mother, waiting to finish me off. At the very least, the mortal police would be arriving, trying to figure out who had blown a hole in the Arch. If they found me, they’d have some questions.

I capped my sword, stuck the ballpoint pen in my pocket. ‘Thank you, Father,’ I said again to the dark water.

Then I kicked up through the muck and swam for the surface.

A block away, every emergency vehicle in St Louis was surrounding the Arch. Police helicopters circled overhead. The crowd of onlookers reminded me of Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

A little girl said, ‘Mama! That boy walked out of the river.’

‘That’s nice, dear,’ her mother said, craning her neck to watch the ambulances.

‘But he’s dry!’

‘That’s nice, dear.’

A news lady was talking for the camera: ‘Probably not a terrorist attack, we’re told, but it’s still very early in the investigation. The damage, as you can see, is very serious. We’re trying to get to some of the survivors, to question them about eyewitness reports of someone falling from the Arch.’

Survivors
. I felt a surge of relief. Maybe the park ranger and that family made it out safely. I hoped Annabeth and Grover were okay.

I tried to push through the crowd to see what was going on inside the police line.

‘… an adolescent boy,’ another reporter was saying. ‘Channel Five has learned that surveillance cameras show an adolescent boy going wild on the observation deck, somehow setting off this freak explosion. Hard to believe, John, but that’s what we’re hearing. Again, no confirmed fatalities…’

I backed away, trying to keep my head down. I had to go a long way around the police perimeter. Uniformed officers and news reporters were everywhere.

I’d almost lost hope of ever finding Annabeth and Grover when a familiar voice bleated, ‘Perrr-cy!’

I turned and got tackled by Grover’s bear hug – or goat hug. He said, ‘We thought you’d gone to Hades the hard way!’

Annabeth stood behind him, trying to look angry, but even she seemed relieved to see me. ‘We can’t leave you alone for five minutes! What happened?’

‘I sort of fell.’

‘Percy! Two hundred metres?’

Behind us, a cop shouted, ‘Gangway!’ The crowd parted, and a couple of paramedics hustled out, rolling a woman on a stretcher. I recognized her immediately as the mother of the little boy who’d been on the observation deck. She was saying, ‘And then this huge dog, this huge fire-breathing Chihuahua –’

‘Okay, ma’am,’ the paramedic said. ‘Just calm down. Your family is fine. The medication is starting to kick in.’

‘I’m not crazy! This boy jumped out of the hole and the monster disappeared.’ Then she saw me. ‘There he is! That’s the boy!’

I turned quickly and pulled Annabeth and Grover after me. We disappeared into the crowd.

‘What’s going on?’ Annabeth demanded. ‘Was she talking about the Chihuahua on the elevator?’

I told them the whole story of the Chimera, Echidna, my high-dive act, the underwater lady’s message.

‘Whoa,’ said Grover. ‘We’ve got to get you to Santa Monica! You can’t ignore a summons from your dad.’

Before Annabeth could respond, we passed another reporter doing a news break, and I almost froze in my tracks when he said, ‘Percy Jackson. That’s right, Dan. Channel Twelve has learned that the boy who may have caused this explosion fits the description of a young man wanted by the
authorities for a serious New Jersey bus accident three days ago.
And
the boy is believed to be travelling west. For our viewers at home, here is a photo of Percy Jackson.’

We ducked around the news van and slipped into an alley.

‘First things first,’ I told Grover. ‘We’ve got to get out of town!’

Somehow, we made it back to the Amtrak station without getting spotted. We got on board the train just before it pulled out for Denver. The train trundled west as darkness fell, police lights still pulsing against the St Louis skyline behind us.

‘Let’s try to contact Chiron,’ Annabeth said. ‘I want to tell him about your talk with the river spirit.’

‘We cant use phones, right?’

‘I’m not talking about phones.’

We wandered through downtown for about half an hour, though I wasn’t sure what Annabeth was looking for. The air was dry and hot, which felt weird after the humidity of St Louis. Everywhere we turned, the Rocky Mountains seemed to be staring at me, like a tidal wave about to crash into the city.

Finally we found an empty do-it-yourself car wash. We veered towards the stall furthest from the street, keeping our eyes open for patrol cars. We were three adolescents hanging out at a car wash without a car; any cop worth his doughnuts would figure we were up to no good.

‘What exactly are we doing?’ I asked, as Grover took out the spray gun.

‘It’s seventy-five cents,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve only got two quarters left. Annabeth?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘The dining car wiped me out.’

I fished out my last bit of change and passed Grover a quarter, which left me two nickels and one drachma from Medusa’s place.

‘Excellent,’ Grover said. ‘We could do it with a spray bottle, of course, but the connection isn’t as good, and my arm gets tired of pumping.’

‘What are you talking about?’

He fed in the quarters and set the knob to
fine mist
‘I-M’ing.’

‘Instant messaging?’

‘
Iris
-messaging,’ Annabeth corrected. ‘The rainbow goddess Iris carries messages for the gods. If you know how to ask, and she’s not too busy, she’ll do the same for half-bloods.’

‘You summon the goddess with a spray gun?’

Grover pointed the nozzle in the air and water hissed out in a thick white mist. ‘Unless you know an easier way to make a rainbow.’

Sure enough, late afternoon light filtered through the vapour and broke into colours.

Annabeth held her palm out to me. ‘Drachma, please.’

I handed it over.

She raised the coin over her head. ‘O goddess, accept our offering.’

She threw the drachma into the rainbow. It disappeared in a golden shimmer.

‘Half-Blood Hill,’ Annabeth requested.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then I was looking through the mist at strawberry fields, and the Long Island Sound in the distance. We seemed to be on the porch of the Big House. Standing with his back to us at the railing was a sandy-haired guy in shorts and an orange tank top. He was holding a bronze sword and seemed to be staring intently at something down in the meadow.

‘Luke!’ I called.

He turned, eyes wide. I could swear he was standing a metre in front of me through a screen of mist, except I could only see the part of him that appeared in the rainbow.

‘Percy!’ His scarred face broke into a grin. ‘Is that Annabeth, too? Thank the gods! Are you guys okay?’

‘We’re… uh… fine,’ Annabeth stammered. She was madly straightening her dirty T-shirt, trying to comb the loose hair out of her face. ‘We thought – Chiron – I mean –’

‘He’s down at the cabins.’ Luke’s smile faded. ‘We’re having some issues with the campers. Listen, is everything cool with you? Is Grover all right?’

‘I’m right here,’ Grover called. He held the nozzle out to one side and stepped into Luke’s line of vision. ‘What kind of issues?’

Just then a big Lincoln Continental pulled into the car wash with its stereo turned to maximum hip-hop. As the car slid into the next stall, the bass from the subwoofers vibrated so much, it shook the pavement.

‘Chiron had to – what’s that noise?’ Luke yelled.

‘I’ll take care of it!’ Annabeth yelled back, looking very relieved to have an excuse to get out of sight. ‘Grover, come on!’

‘What?’ Grover said. ‘But –’

‘Give Percy the nozzle and come on!’ she ordered.

Grover muttered something about girls being harder to understand than the Oracle at Delphi, then he handed me the spray gun and followed Annabeth.

I readjusted the hose so I could keep the rainbow going and still see Luke.

‘Chiron had to break up a fight,’ Luke shouted to me over the music. ‘Things are pretty tense here, Percy. Word leaked out about the Zeus–Poseidon stand-off. We’re still not sure how – probably the same scumbag who summoned the hellhound. Now the campers are starting to take sides. It’s shaping up like the Trojan War all over again. Aphrodite, Ares and Apollo are backing Poseidon, more or less. Athena is backing Zeus.’

I shuddered to think that Clarisse’s cabin would ever be on my dad’s side for anything. In the next stall, I heard Annabeth and some guy arguing with each other, then the music’s volume decreased drastically.

‘So what’s your status?’ Luke asked me. ‘Chiron will be sorry he missed you.’

I told him pretty much everything, including my dreams. It felt so good to see him, to feel like I was back at camp even for a few minutes, that I didn’t realize how long I had talked until the beeper went off on the spray machine,
and I realized I only had one more minute before the water shut off.

‘I wish I could be there,’ Luke told me. ‘We can’t help from here, I’m afraid, but listen… it had to be Hades who took the master bolt. He was there at Olympus at the winter solstice. I was chaperoning a field trip and we saw him.’

‘But Chiron said the gods can’t take each other’s magic items directly.’

‘That’s true,’ Luke said, looking troubled. ‘Still… Hades has the helmet of darkness. How could anybody else sneak into the throne room and steal the master bolt? You’d have to be invisible.’

We were both silent, until Luke seemed to realize what he’d said.

‘Oh, hey,’ he protested. ‘I didn’t mean Annabeth. She and I have known each other forever. She would never… I mean, she’s like a little sister to me.’

I wondered if Annabeth would like that description. In the stall next to us, the music stopped completely. A man screamed in terror, car doors slammed and the Lincoln peeled out of the car wash.

‘You’d better go see what that was,’ Luke said. ‘Listen, are you wearing the flying shoes? I’ll feel better if I know they’ve done you some good.’

‘Oh… uh, yeah!’ I tried not to sound like a guilty liar. ‘Yeah, they’ve come in handy.’

‘Really?’ He grinned. ‘They fit and everything?’

The water shut off. The mist started to evaporate.

‘Well, take care of yourself out there in Denver,’ Luke
called, his voice getting fainter. ‘And tell Grover it’ll be better this time! Nobody will get turned into a pine tree if he just –’

But the mist was gone, and Luke’s image faded to nothing. I was alone in a wet, empty car-wash stall.

Annabeth and Grover came around the corner, laughing, but stopped when they saw my face. Annabeth’s smile faded. ‘What happened, Percy? What did Luke say?’

‘Not much,’ I lied, my stomach feeling as empty as a Big Three cabin. ‘Come on, let’s find some dinner.’

Finally the waitress came over. She raised her eyebrow sceptically. ‘Well?’

I said, ‘We, um, want to order dinner.’

‘You kids have money to pay for it?’

Grover’s lower lip quivered. I was afraid he would start bleating, or worse, start eating the linoleum. Annabeth looked ready to pass out from hunger.

I was trying to think up a sob story for the waitress when a rumble shook the whole building; a motorcycle the size of a baby elephant had pulled up to the kerb.

All conversation in the diner stopped. The motorcycle’s headlight glared red. Its gas tank had flames painted on it, and a shotgun holster riveted to either side, complete with shotguns. The seat was leather – but leather that looked like… well, Caucasian human skin.

The guy on the bike would’ve made pro wrestlers run for Mama. He was dressed in a red muscle shirt and black jeans and a black leather duster, with a hunting knife strapped to his thigh. He wore red wraparound shades, and he had the cruellest, most brutal face I’d ever seen – handsome, I guess, but wicked – with an oily black crew cut and cheeks that were scarred from many, many fights. The weird thing was, I felt like I’d seen his face somewhere before.

As he walked into the diner, a hot, dry wind blew through the place. All the people rose, as if they were hypnotized, but the biker waved his hand dismissively and they all sat down again. Everybody went back to their conversations. The waitress blinked, as if somebody had just pressed the rewind button on her brain. She asked us again, ‘You kids have money to pay for it?’

The biker said, ‘It’s on me.’ He slid into our booth, which was way too small for him, and crowded Annabeth against the window.

He looked up at the waitress, who was gaping at him, and said, ‘Are you still here?’

He pointed at her, and she stiffened. She turned as if she’d been spun around, then marched back towards the kitchen.

The biker looked at me. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the red shades, but bad feelings started boiling in my stomach. Anger, resentment, bitterness. I wanted to hit a wall. I wanted to pick a fight with somebody. Who did this guy think he was?

He gave me a wicked grin. ‘So you’re old Seaweed’s kid, huh?’

I should’ve been surprised, or scared, but instead I felt like I was looking at my stepdad, Gabe. I wanted to rip this guy’s head off. ‘What’s it to you?’

Annabeth’s eyes flashed me a warning. ‘Percy, this is –’

The biker raised his hand.

‘S’okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind a little attitude. Long as you remember who’s the boss. You know who I am, little cousin?’

Then it struck me why this guy looked familiar. He had the same vicious sneer as some of the kids at Camp Half-Blood, the ones from cabin five.

‘You’re Clarisse’s dad,’ I said. ‘Ares, god of war.’

Ares grinned and took off his shades. Where his eyes should’ve been, there was only fire, empty sockets glowing with miniature nuclear explosions. ‘That’s right, punk. I heard you broke Clarisse’s spear.’

‘She was asking for it.’

‘Probably. That’s cool. I don’t fight my kids’ fights, you know? What I’m here for – I heard you were in town. I got a little proposition for you.’

The waitress came back with heaping trays of food – cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings and chocolate shakes.

Ares handed her a few gold drachmas.

She looked nervously at the coins. ‘But, these aren’t…’

Ares pulled out his huge knife and started cleaning his fingernails. ‘Problem, sweetheart?’

The waitress swallowed, then left with the gold.

‘You can’t do that,’ I told Ares. ‘You can’t just threaten people with a knife.’

Ares laughed. Are you kidding? I love this country. Best place since Sparta. Don’t you carry a weapon, punk? You should. Dangerous world out there. Which brings me to my proposition. I need you to do me a favour.’

‘What favour could I do for a god?’

‘Something a god doesn’t have time to do himself. It’s nothing much. I left my shield at an abandoned water park here in town. I was going on a little… date with my girlfriend. We were interrupted. I left my shield behind. I want you to fetch it for me.’

‘Why don’t you go back and get it yourself?’

The fire in his eye sockets glowed a little hotter.

‘Why don’t I turn you into prairie dog and run you over with my Harley? Because I don’t feel like it. A god is giving you an opportunity to prove yourself, Percy Jackson. Will you prove yourself a coward?’ He leaned forward. ‘Or maybe you only fight when there’s a river to dive into, so your daddy can protect you.’

I wanted to punch this guy, but somehow, I knew he was waiting for that. Ares’s power was causing my anger. He’d love it if I attacked. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.

‘We’re not interested,’ I said. ‘We’ve already got a quest.’

Ares’s fiery eyes made me see things I didn’t want to see – blood and smoke and corpses on the battlefield. ‘I know all about your quest, punk. When that
item
was
first stolen, Zeus sent his best out looking for it: Apollo, Athena, Artemis and me, naturally. If I couldn’t sniff out a weapon that powerful…’ He licked his lips, as if the very thought of the master bolt made him hungry. ‘Well… if I couldn’t find it, you got no hope. Nevertheless, I’m trying to give you the benefit of a doubt. Your dad and I go way back. After all, I’m the one who told him my suspicions about old Corpse Breath.’

‘You told him Hades stole the bolt?’

‘Sure. Framing somebody to start a war. Oldest trick in the book. I recognized it immediately. In a way, you got me to thank for your little quest.’

‘Thanks,’ I grumbled.

‘Hey, I’m a generous guy. Just do my little job, and I’ll help you on your way. I’ll arrange a ride west for you and your friends.’

‘We’re doing fine on our own.’

‘Yeah, right. No money. No wheels. No clue what you’re up against. Help me out, and maybe I’ll tell you something you need to know. Something about your mom.’

‘My mom?’

He grinned. ‘That got your attention. The water park is a mile west on Delancy. You can’t miss it. Look for the Tunnel of Love ride.’

‘What interrupted your date?’ I asked. ‘Something scare you off?’

Ares bared his teeth, but I’d seen his threatening look before on Clarisse. There was something false about it, almost like he was nervous.

‘You’re lucky you met me, punk, and not one of the other Olympians. They’re not as forgiving of rudeness as I am. I’ll meet you back here when you’re done. Don’t disappoint me.’

After that I must have fainted, or fallen into a trance, because when I opened my eyes again Ares was gone. I might’ve thought the conversation had been a dream, but Annabeth and Grover’s expressions told me otherwise.

‘Not good,’ Grover said. ‘Ares sought you out, Percy. This is not good.’

I stared out the window. The motorcycle had disappeared.

Did Ares really know something about my mom, or was he just playing with me? Now that he was gone, all the anger had drained out of me. I realized Ares must love to mess with people’s emotions. That was his power – cranking up the passions so badly, they clouded your ability to think.

‘It’s probably some kind of trick,’ I said. ‘Forget Ares. Let’s just go.’

‘We can’t,’ Annabeth said. ‘Look, I hate Ares as much as anybody, but you don’t ignore the gods unless you want serious bad fortune. He wasn’t kidding about turning you into a rodent.’

I looked down at my cheeseburger, which suddenly didn’t seem so appetizing. ‘Why does he need us?’

‘Maybe it’s a problem that requires brains,’ Annabeth said. ‘Ares has strength. That’s all he has. Even strength has to bow to wisdom sometimes.’

‘But this water park… he acted almost scared. What would make a war god run away like that?’

Annabeth and Grover glanced nervously at each other.

Annabeth said, ‘I’m afraid well have to find out.’