The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4) (40 page)

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.

‘P
ERCY, HELP ME!’
A
NNABETH 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 piña 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.

H
AZEL 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.

‘
Pasiphaë
,’ Hazel said.

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

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

‘Silence, fool.’ Pasiphaë’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 Pasiphaë. ‘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,’ Pasiphaë said. ‘Be a good boy and let the women talk.’

Pasiphaë 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.

Pasiphaë 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 Pasiphaë 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 Pasiphaë 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.
’

Pasiphaë’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. Pasiphaë 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 Pasiphaë 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 Pasiphaë 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,’ Pasiphaë 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.’

Pasiphaë 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?’ Pasiphaë 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.’ Pasiphaë 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.’ Pasiphaë 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.’