The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4) (28 page)

A
KHLYS LUNGED AT
P
ERCY,
and for a split second he thought:
Well, hey, I’m just smoke. She can’t touch me, right?

He imagined the Fates up in Olympus, laughing at his wishful thinking:
LOL, NOOB!

The goddess’s claws raked across his chest and stung like boiling water.

Percy stumbled backwards, but he wasn’t used to being smoky. His legs moved too slowly. His arms felt like tissue paper. In desperation, he threw his backpack at her, thinking maybe it would turn solid when it left his hand, but no such luck. It fell with a soft thud.

Akhlys snarled, crouching to spring. She would have bitten Percy’s face off if Annabeth hadn’t charged and screamed
HEY!
right in the goddess’s ear.

Akhlys flinched, turning towards the sound.

She lashed out at Annabeth, but Annabeth was better at moving than Percy. Maybe she wasn’t feeling as smoky, or
maybe she’d just had more combat training. She’d been at Camp Half-Blood since she was seven. Probably she’d had classes Percy never got, like How to Fight While Partially Made of Smoke.

Annabeth dived straight between the goddess’s legs and somersaulted to her feet. Akhlys turned and attacked, but Annabeth dodged again, like a matador.

Percy was so stunned he lost a few precious seconds. He stared at corpse Annabeth, shrouded in mist but moving as fast and confidently as ever. Then it occurred to him why she was doing this: to buy them time. Which meant Percy needed to help.

He thought furiously, trying to come up with a way to defeat Misery. How could he fight when he couldn’t touch anything?

On Akhlys’s third attack, Annabeth wasn’t so lucky. She tried to veer aside, but the goddess grabbed Annabeth’s wrist and pulled her hard, sending her sprawling.

Before the goddess could pounce, Percy advanced, yelling and waving his sword. He still felt about as solid as a Kleenex, but his anger seemed to help him move faster.

‘Hey, Happy!’ he yelled.

Akhlys spun, dropping Annabeth’s arm. ‘Happy?’ she demanded.

‘Yeah!’ He ducked as she swiped at his head. ‘You’re downright cheerful!’

‘Arggh!’ She lunged again, but she was off-balance. Percy sidestepped and backed away, leading the goddess further from Annabeth.

‘Pleasant!’ he called. ‘Delightful!’

The goddess snarled and winced. She stumbled after Percy. Each compliment seemed to hit her like sand in the face.

‘I will kill you slowly!’ she growled, her eyes and nose watering, blood dripping from her cheeks. ‘I will cut you into pieces as a sacrifice to Night!’

Annabeth struggled to her feet. She started rifling through her pack, no doubt looking for something that might help.

Percy wanted to give her more time. She was the brains. Better for him to get attacked while she came up with a brilliant plan.

‘Cuddly!’ Percy yelled. ‘Fuzzy, warm and huggable!’

Akhlys made a growling, choking noise, like a cat having a seizure.

‘A slow death!’ she screamed. ‘A death from a thousand poisons!’

All around her, poisonous plants grew and burst like overfilled balloons. Green-and-white sap trickled out, collecting into pools, and began flowing across the ground towards Percy. The sweet-smelling fumes made his head feel wobbly.

‘Percy!’ Annabeth’s voice sounded far away. ‘Uh, hey, Miss Wonderful! Cheerful! Grins! Over here!’

But the goddess of misery was now fixated on Percy. He tried to retreat again. Unfortunately the poison
ichor
was flowing all around him now, making the ground steam and the air burn. Percy found himself stuck on an island of dust not much bigger than a shield. A few yards away, his backpack smoked and dissolved into a puddle of goo. Percy had nowhere to go.

He fell to one knee. He wanted to tell Annabeth to run, but he couldn’t speak. His throat was as dry as dead leaves.

He wished there were water in Tartarus – some nice pool he could jump into to heal himself, or maybe a river he could control. He’d settle for a bottle of Evian.

‘You will feed the eternal darkness,’ Akhlys said. ‘You will die in the arms of Night!’

He was dimly aware of Annabeth shouting, throwing random pieces of drakon jerky at the goddess. The white-green poison kept pooling, little streams trickling from the plants as the venomous lake around him got wider and wider.

Lake, he thought. Streams. Water.

Probably it was just his brain getting fried from poison fumes, but he croaked out a laugh. Poison was liquid. If it moved like water, it must be partially water.

He remembered some science lecture about the human body being mostly water. He remembered extracting water from Jason’s lungs back in Rome … If he could control
that
, then why not other liquids?

It was a crazy idea. Poseidon was the god of the sea, not of every liquid everywhere.

Then again, Tartarus had its own rules. Fire was drinkable. The ground was the body of a dark god. The air was acid, and demigods could be turned into smoky corpses.

So why not try? He had nothing left to lose.

He glared at the poison flood encroaching from all sides. He concentrated so hard that something inside him cracked – as if a crystal ball had shattered in his stomach.

Warmth flowed through him. The poison tide stopped.

The fumes blew away from him – back towards the goddess. The lake of poison rolled towards her in tiny waves and rivulets.

Akhlys shrieked. ‘What is this?’

‘Poison,’ Percy said. ‘That’s your speciality, right?’

He stood, his anger growing hotter in his gut. As the flood of venom rolled towards the goddess, the fumes began to make her cough. Her eyes watered even more.

Oh, good, Percy thought. More water.

Percy imagined her nose and throat filling with her own tears.

Akhlys gagged. ‘I –’ The tide of venom reached her feet, sizzling like droplets on a hot iron. She wailed and stumbled back.

‘Percy!’ Annabeth called.

She’d retreated to the edge of the cliff, even though the poison wasn’t after her. She sounded terrified. It took Percy a moment to realize she was terrified of
him
.

‘Stop …’ she pleaded, her voice hoarse.

He didn’t want to stop. He wanted to choke this goddess. He wanted to watch her drown in her own poison. He wanted to see just how much misery Misery could take.

‘Percy, please …’ Annabeth’s face was still pale and corpse-like, but her eyes were the same as always. The anguish in them made Percy’s anger fade.

He turned to the goddess. He willed the poison to recede, creating a small path of retreat along the edge of the cliff.

‘Leave!’ he bellowed.

For an emaciated ghoul, Akhlys could run pretty fast when
she wanted to. She scrambled along the path, fell on her face and got up again, wailing as she sped into the dark.

As soon as she was gone, the pools of poison evaporated. The plants withered to dust and blew away.

Annabeth stumbled towards him. She looked like a corpse wreathed in smoke, but she felt solid enough when she gripped his arms.

‘Percy, please don’t ever …’ Her voice broke in a sob. ‘Some things aren’t meant to be controlled. Please.’

His whole body tingled with power, but the anger was subsiding. The broken glass inside him was beginning to smooth at the edges.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, okay.’

‘We have to get away from this cliff,’ Annabeth said. ‘If Akhlys brought us here as some kind of sacrifice …’

Percy tried to think. He was getting used to moving with the Death Mist around him. He felt more solid, more like himself. But his mind still felt stuffed with cotton wool.

‘She said something about feeding us to the night,’ he remembered. ‘What was that about?’

The temperature dropped. The abyss before them seemed to exhale.

Percy grabbed Annabeth and backed away from the edge as a presence emerged from the void – a form so vast and shadowy he felt like he understood the concept of
dark
for the first time.

‘I imagine,’ said the darkness, in a feminine voice as soft as coffin lining, ‘that she meant Night, with a capital N. After all, I am the only one.’

T
HE WAY
L
EO FIGURED IT,
he spent more time crashing than he did flying.

If there were a rewards card for frequent crashers, he’d be, like, double platinum level.

He regained consciousness as he was free-falling through the clouds. He had a hazy memory of Khione taunting him right before he got shot into the sky. He hadn’t actually seen her, but he could never forget that snow witch’s voice. He had no idea how long he’d been gaining altitude, but at some point he must have passed out from the cold and the lack of oxygen. Now he was on his way down, heading for his biggest crash ever.

The clouds parted around him. He saw the glittering sea far,
far
below. No sign of the
Argo II
. No sign of any coastline, familiar or otherwise, except for one tiny island at the horizon.

Leo couldn’t fly. He had a couple of minutes at most before he’d hit the water and go
ker-splat
.

He decided he didn’t like that ending to the Epic Ballad of Leo.

He was still clutching the Archimedes sphere, which didn’t surprise him. Unconscious or not, he would never let go of his most valuable possession. With a little manoeuvring, he managed to pull some duct tape from his tool belt and strap the sphere to his chest. That made him look like a low-budget Iron Man, but at least he had both hands free. He started to work, furiously tinkering with the sphere, pulling out anything he thought would help from his magic tool belt: a drop cloth, metal extenders, some string and grommets.

Working while falling was almost impossible. The wind roared in his ears. It kept ripping tools, screws and canvas out of his hands, but finally he constructed a makeshift frame. He popped open a hatch on the sphere, teased out two wires and connected them to his crossbar.

How long until he hit the water? Maybe a minute?

He turned the sphere’s control dial, and it whirred into action. More bronze wires shot from the orb, intuitively sensing what Leo needed. Cords laced up the canvas drop cloth. The frame began to expand on its own. Leo pulled out a can of kerosene and a rubber tube and lashed them to the thirsty new engine that the orb was helping him assemble.

Finally he made himself a rope halter and shifted so that the X-frame was attached to his back. The sea got closer and closer – a glittering expanse of slap-you-in-the-face death.

He yelled in defiance and punched the sphere’s override switch.

The engine coughed to life. The makeshift rotor turned.
The canvas blades spun, but much too slowly. Leo’s head was pointed straight down at the sea – maybe thirty seconds to impact.

At least nobody’s around, he thought bitterly, or I’d be a demigod joke forever.
What was the last thing to go through Leo’s mind? The Mediterranean.

Suddenly the orb got warm against his chest. The blades turned faster. The engine coughed, and Leo tilted sideways, slicing through the air.

‘YES!’ he yelled.

He had successfully created the world’s most dangerous personal helicopter.

He shot towards the island in the distance, but he was still falling much too fast. The blades shuddered. The canvas screamed.

The beach was only a few hundred yards away when the sphere turned lava-hot and the helicopter exploded, shooting flames in every direction. If he hadn’t been immune to fire, Leo would have been charcoal. As it was, the midair explosion probably saved his life. The blast flung Leo sideways while the bulk of his flaming contraption smashed into the shore at full speed with a massive
KA-BOOM!

Leo opened his eyes, amazed to be alive. He was sitting in a bathtub-sized crater in the sand. A few yards away, a column of thick black smoke roiled into the sky from a much larger crater. The surrounding beach was peppered with smaller pieces of burning wreckage.

‘My sphere.’ Leo patted his chest. The sphere wasn’t there. His duct tape and rope halter had disintegrated.

He struggled to his feet. None of his bones seemed broken, which was good, but mostly he was worried about his Archimedes sphere. If he’d destroyed his priceless artefact to make a flaming thirty-second helicopter, he was going to track down that stupid snow goddess Khione and smack her with a monkey wrench.

He staggered across the beach, wondering why there weren’t any tourists or hotels or boats in sight. The island seemed perfect for a resort, with blue water and soft white sand. Maybe it was uncharted. Did they still
have
uncharted islands in the world? Maybe Khione had blasted him out of the Mediterranean altogether. For all he knew, he was in Bora Bora.

The larger crater was about eight feet deep. At the bottom, the helicopter blades were still trying to turn. The engine belched smoke. The rotor croaked like a stepped-on frog, but
dang
– pretty impressive for a rush job.

The helicopter had apparently crashed
onto
something. The crater was littered with broken wooden furniture, shattered china plates, some half-melted pewter goblets and burning linen napkins. Leo wasn’t sure why all that fancy stuff had been on the beach, but at least it meant that this place was inhabited, after all.

Finally he spotted the Archimedes sphere – steaming and charred but still intact, making unhappy clicking noises in the centre of the wreckage.

‘Sphere!’ he yelled. ‘Come to Papa!’

He skidded to the bottom of the crater and snatched up the sphere. He collapsed, sat cross-legged and cradled the
device in his hands. The bronze surface was searing hot, but Leo didn’t care. It was still in one piece, which meant he could use it.

Now, if he could just figure out where he was and how to get back to his friends …

He was making a mental list of tools he might need when a girl’s voice interrupted him: ‘What are you
doing
? You blew up my dining table!’

Immediately Leo thought:
Uh-oh.

He’d met a lot of goddesses, but the girl glaring down at him from the edge of the crater actually
looked
like a goddess.

She wore a sleeveless white Greek-style dress with a gold braided belt. Her hair was long, straight and golden brown – almost the same cinnamon-toast colour as Hazel’s, but the similarity to Hazel ended there. The girl’s face was milky pale, with dark almond-shaped eyes and pouty lips. She looked maybe fifteen, about Leo’s age, and sure she was pretty, but with that angry expression on her face she reminded Leo of every popular girl in every school he’d ever attended – the ones who made fun of him, gossiped a lot, thought they were
so
superior and basically did everything they could to make his life miserable.

Leo disliked her instantly.

‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ he said. ‘I just fell out of the sky. I constructed a helicopter in midair, burst into flames halfway down, crash-landed and barely survived. But by all means – let’s talk about your dining table!’

He snatched up a half-melted goblet. ‘Who puts a dining
table on the beach where innocent demigods can crash into it? Who
does
that?’

The girl clenched her fists. Leo was pretty sure she was going to march down the crater and punch him in the face. Instead she looked up at the sky.

‘REALLY?’ she screamed at the empty blue. ‘You want to make my curse even
worse
? Zeus! Hephaestus! Hermes! Have you no shame?’

‘Uh …’ Leo noticed that she’d just picked three gods to blame, and one of them was his dad. He figured that wasn’t a good sign. ‘I doubt they’re listening. You know, the whole split-personality thing –’

‘Show yourself!’ the girl yelled at the sky, completely ignoring Leo. ‘It’s not bad enough I am exiled? It’s not bad enough you take away the few
good
heroes I’m allowed to meet? You think it’s funny to send me this – this charbroiled runt of a boy to ruin my tranquillity? This is NOT FUNNY! Take him back!’

‘Hey, Sunshine,’ Leo said. ‘I’m right here, you know.’

She growled like a cornered animal. ‘Do
not
call me Sunshine! Get out of that hole and come with me
now
so I can get you off my island!’

‘Well, since you asked so nicely …’

Leo didn’t know what the crazy girl was so worked up about, but he didn’t really care. If she could help him leave this island, that was totally fine by him. He clutched his charred sphere and climbed out of the crater. When he reached the top, the girl was already marching down the shoreline. He jogged to catch up.

She gestured in disgust at the burning wreckage. ‘This was a pristine beach! Look at it now.’

‘Yeah, my bad,’ Leo muttered. ‘I should’ve crashed on one of the other islands. Oh, wait – there aren’t any!’

She snarled and kept walking along the edge of the water. Leo caught a whiff of cinnamon – maybe her perfume? Not that he cared. Her hair swayed down her back in a mesmerizing kind of way, which of course he didn’t care about either.

He scanned the sea. Just like he’d seen during his fall, there were no landmasses or ships all the way to the horizon. Looking inland, he saw grassy hills dotted with trees. A footpath wound through a grove of cedars. Leo wondered where it led: probably to the girl’s secret lair, where she roasted her enemies so she could eat them at her dining table on the beach.

He was so busy thinking about that he didn’t notice when the girl stopped. He ran into her.

‘Gah!’ She turned and grabbed his arms to keep from falling in the surf. Her hands were strong, as though she worked with them for a living. Back at camp, the girls in the Hephaestus cabin had had strong hands like that, but she didn’t look like a Hephaestus kid.

She glared at him, her dark almond eyes only a few inches from his. Her cinnamon smell reminded him of his
abuela
’s apartment. Man, he hadn’t thought about that place in years.

The girl pushed him away. ‘All right. This spot is good. Now tell me you want to leave.’

‘What?’ Leo’s brain was still kind of muddled from the crash-landing. He wasn’t sure he had heard her right.

‘Do you want to
leave
?’ she demanded. ‘Surely you’ve got somewhere to go!’

‘Uh … yeah. My friends are in trouble. I need to get back to my ship and –’

‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘Just say,
I want to leave Ogygia.
’

‘Uh, okay.’ Leo wasn’t sure why, but her tone kind of hurt … which was stupid, since he didn’t care what this girl thought. ‘I want to leave – whatever you said.’

‘Oh-gee-gee-ah.’ The girl pronounced it slowly, as if Leo were five years old.

‘I want to leave Oh-gee-gee-ah,’ he said.

She exhaled, clearly relieved. ‘Good. In a moment, a magical raft will appear. It will take you wherever you want to go.’

‘Who
are
you?’

She looked like she was about to answer but stopped herself. ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll be gone soon. You’re obviously a mistake.’

That was harsh, Leo thought.

He’d spent enough time thinking he was a mistake – as a demigod, on this quest, in life in general. He didn’t need a random crazy goddess reinforcing the idea.

He remembered a Greek legend about a girl on an island … Maybe one of his friends had mentioned it? It didn’t matter. As long as she let him leave.

‘Any moment now …’ The girl stared out at the water.

No magical raft appeared.

‘Maybe it got stuck in traffic,’ Leo said.

‘This is wrong.’ She glared at the sky. ‘This is completely wrong!’

‘So … plan B?’ Leo asked. ‘You got a phone, or –’

‘Agh!’ The girl turned and stormed inland. When she got to the footpath, she sprinted into the grove of trees and disappeared.

‘Okay,’ Leo said. ‘Or you could just run away.’

From his tool-belt pouches he pulled some rope and a snap hook, then fastened the Archimedes sphere to his belt.

He looked out to sea. Still no magic raft.

He could stand here and wait, but he was hungry, thirsty and tired. He was banged up pretty bad from his fall.

He didn’t want to follow that crazy girl, no matter how good she smelled.

On the other hand, he had no place else to go. The girl had a dining table, so she probably had food. And she seemed to find Leo’s presence annoying.

‘Annoying her is a plus,’ he decided.

He followed her into the hills.