The Titan's Curse (14 page)

“REEEEEEEEET!”
it squealed, and raked the three skeletons aside with its tusks. The force was so great, they went flying over the trees and into the side of the mountain, where they smashed to pieces, thigh bones and arm bones twirling everywhere.

Then the pig turned on us.

Thalia raised her spear, but Grover yelled, “Don't kill it!”

The boar grunted and pawed the ground, ready to charge.

“That's the Erymanthian Boar,” Zoë said, trying to stay calm. “I don't think we
can
kill it.”

“It's a gift,” Grover said. “A blessing from the Wild!”

The boar said
“REEEEEET!”
and swung its tusk. Zoë and Bianca dived out of the way. I had to push Grover so he wouldn't get launched into the mountain on the Boar Tusk Express.

“Yeah, I feel blessed!” I said. “Scatter!”

We ran in different directions, and for a moment the boar was confused.

“It wants to kill us!” Thalia said.

“Of course,” Grover said. “It's wild!”

“So how is that a blessing?” Bianca asked.

It seemed a fair question to me, but the pig was offended and charged her. She was faster than I'd realized. She rolled out of the way of its hooves and came up behind the beast. It lashed out with its tusks and pulverized the WELCOME TO CLOUDCROFT sign.

I racked my brain, trying to remember the myth of the boar. I was pretty sure Hercules had fought this thing once, but I couldn't remember how he'd beaten it. I had a vague memory of the boar plowing down several Greek cities before Hercules managed to subdue it. I hoped Cloudcroft was insured against giant wild boar attacks.

“Keep moving!” Zoë yelled. She and Bianca ran in opposite directions. Grover danced around the boar, playing his pipes while the boar snorted and tried to gouge him. But Thalia and I won the prize for bad luck. When the boar turned on us, Thalia made the mistake of raising Aegis in defense. The sight of the Medusa head made the boar squeal in outrage. Maybe it looked too much like one of his relatives. The boar charged us.

We only managed to keep ahead of it because we ran uphill, and we could dodge in and out of trees while the boar had to plow through them.

On the other side of the hill, I found an old stretch of train tracks, half buried in the snow.

“This way!” I grabbed Thalia's arm and we ran along the rails while the boar roared behind us, slipping and sliding as it tried to navigate the steep hillside. Its hooves just were not made for this, thank the gods.

Ahead of us, I saw a covered tunnel. Past that, an old trestle bridge spanning a gorge. I had a crazy idea.

“Follow me!”

Thalia slowed down—I didn't have time to ask why— but I pulled her along and she reluctantly followed. Behind us, a ten-ton pig tank was knocking down pine trees and crushing boulders under its hooves as it chased us.

Thalia and I ran into the tunnel and came out on the other side.

“No!” Thalia screamed.

She'd turned as white as ice. We were at the edge of the bridge. Below, the mountain dropped away into a snow-filled gorge about seventy feet below.

The boar was right behind us.

“Come on!” I said. “It'll hold our weight, probably.”

“I can't!” Thalia yelled. Her eyes were wild with fear.

The boar smashed into the covered tunnel, tearing through at full speed.

“Now!” I yelled at Thalia.

She looked down and swallowed. I swear she was turning green.

I didn't have time to process why. The boar was charging through the tunnel, straight toward us. Plan B. I tackled Thalia and sent us both sideways off the edge of the bridge, into the side of the mountain. We slid on Aegis like a snowboard, over rocks and mud and snow, racing downhill. The boar was less fortunate; it couldn't turn that fast, so all ten tons of the monster charged out onto the tiny trestle, which buckled under its weight. The boar free-fell into the gorge with a mighty squeal and landed in a snowdrift with a huge
POOOOOF!

Thalia and I skidded to a stop. We were both breathing hard. I was cut up and bleeding. Thalia had pine needles in her hair. Next to us, the wild boar was squealing and struggling. All I could see was the bristly tip of its back. It was wedged completely in the snow like Styrofoam packing. It didn't seem to be hurt, but it wasn't going anywhere, either.

I looked at Thalia. “You're afraid of heights.”

Now that we were safely down the mountain, her eyes had their usual angry look. “Don't be stupid.”

“That explains why you freaked out on Apollo's bus. Why you didn't want to talk about it.”

She took a deep breath. Then she brushed the pine needles out of her hair. “If you tell anyone, I swear—”

“No, no,” I said. “That's cool. It's just . . . the daughter of Zeus, the Lord of the Sky, afraid of heights?”

She was about to knock me into the snow when, above us, Grover's voice called, “Helloooooo?”

“Down here!” I shouted.

A few minutes later, Zoë, Bianca, and Grover joined us. We stood watching the wild boar struggle in the snow.

“A blessing of the Wild,” Grover said, though he now looked agitated.

“I agree,” Zoë said. “We must use it.”

“Hold up,” Thalia said irritably. She still looked like she'd just lost a fight with a Christmas tree. “Explain to me why you're so sure this pig is a blessing.”

Grover looked over, distracted. “It's our ride west. Do you have any idea how fast this boar can travel?”

“Fun,” I said. “Like . . . pig cowboys.”

Grover nodded. “We need to get aboard. I wish . . . I wish I had more time to look around. But it's gone now.”

“What's gone?”

Grover didn't seem to hear me. He walked over to the boar and jumped onto its back. Already the boar was starting to make some headway through the drift. Once it broke free, there'd be no stopping it. Grover took out his pipes. He started playing a snappy tune and tossed an apple in front of the boar. The apple floated and spun right above the boar's nose, and the boar went nuts, straining to get it.

“Automatic steering,” Thalia murmured. “Great.”

She trudged over and jumped on behind Grover, which still left plenty of room for the rest of us.

Zoë and Bianca walked toward the boar.

“Wait a second,” I said. “Do you two know what Grover is talking about—this wild blessing?”

“Of course,” Zoë said. “Did you not feel it in the wind? It was so strong . . . I never thought I would sense that presence again.”

“What presence?”

She stared at me like I was an idiot. “The Lord of the Wild, of course. Just for a moment, in the arrival of the boar, I felt the presence of Pan.”

THIRTEEN

We rode the boar until sunset, which was about as much as my back end could take. Imagine riding a giant steel brush over a bed of gravel all day. That's about how comfortable boar-riding was.

I have no idea how many miles we covered, but the mountains faded into the distance and were replaced by miles of flat, dry land. The grass and scrub brush got sparser until we were galloping (do boars gallop?) across the desert.

As night fell, the boar came to a stop at a creek bed and snorted. He started drinking the muddy water, then ripped a saguaro cactus out of the ground and chewed it, needles and all.

“This is as far as he'll go,” Grover said. “We need to get off while he's eating.”

Nobody needed convincing. We slipped off the boar's back while he was busy ripping up cacti. Then we waddled away as best we could with our saddle sores.

After its third saguaro and another drink of muddy water, the boar squealed and belched, then whirled around and galloped back toward the east.

“It likes the mountains better,” I guessed.

“I can't blame it,” Thalia said. “Look.”

Ahead of us was a two-lane road half covered with sand. On the other side of the road was a cluster of buildings too small to be a town: a boarded-up house, a taco shop that looked like it hadn't been open since before Zoë Nightshade was born, and a white stucco post office with a sign that said GILA CLAW , ARIZONA hanging crooked above the door. Beyond that was a range of hills . . . but then I noticed they weren't regular hills. The countryside was way too flat for that. The hills were enormous mounds of old cars, appliances, and other scrap metal. It was a junkyard that seemed to go on forever.

“Whoa,” I said.

“Something tells me we're not going to find a car rental here,” Thalia said. She looked at Grover. “I don't suppose you got another wild boar up your sleeve?”

Grover was sniffing the wind, looking nervous. He fished out his acorns and threw them into the sand, then played his pipes. They rearranged themselves in a pattern that made no sense to me, but Grover looked concerned.

“That's us,” he said. “Those five nuts right there.”

“Which one is me?” I asked.

“The little deformed one,” Zoë suggested.

“Oh, shut up.”

“That cluster right there,” Grover said, pointing to the left, “that's trouble.”

“A monster?” Thalia asked.

Grover looked uneasy. “I don't smell anything, which doesn't make sense. But the acorns don't lie. Our next challenge . . .”

He pointed straight toward the junkyard. With the sunlight almost gone now, the hills of metal looked like something on an alien planet.

We decided to camp for the night and try the junkyard in the morning. None of us wanted to go Dumpster-diving in the dark.

Zoë and Bianca produced five sleeping bags and foam mattresses out of their backpacks. I don't know how they did it, because the packs were tiny, but must've been enchanted to hold so much stuff. I'd noticed their bows and quivers were also magic. I never really thought about it, but when the Hunters needed them, they just appeared slung over their backs. And when they didn't, they were gone.

The night got chilly fast, so Grover and I collected old boards from the ruined house, and Thalia zapped them with an electric shock to start a campfire. Pretty soon we were about as comfy as you can get in a rundown ghost town in the middle of nowhere.

“The stars are out,” Zoë said.

She was right. There were millions of them, with no city lights to turn the sky orange.

“Amazing,” Bianca said. “I've never actually seen the Milky Way.”

“This is nothing,” Zoë said. “In the old days, there were more. Whole constellations have disappeared because of human light pollution.”

“You talk like you're not human,” I said.

Zoë raised an eyebrow. “I am a Hunter. I care what happens to the wild places of the world. Can the same be said for thee?”

“For
you
,” Thalia corrected. “Not
thee
.”

“But you use
you
for the beginning of a sentence.”

“And for the end,” Thalia said. “No
thou
. No
thee
. Just
you
.”

Zoë threw up her hands in exasperation. “I
hate
this language. It changes too often!”

Grover sighed. He was still looking up at the stars like he was thinking about the light pollution problem. “If only Pan were here, he would set things right.”

Zoë nodded sadly.

“Maybe it was the coffee,” Grover said. “I was drinking coffee, and the wind came. Maybe if I drank more coffee . . .”

I was pretty sure coffee had nothing to do with what had happened in Cloudcroft, but I didn't have the heart to tell Grover. I thought about the rubber rat and the tiny birds that had suddenly come alive when the wind blew. “Grover, do you really think that was Pan? I mean, I know you
want
it to be.”

“He sent us help,” Grover insisted. “I don't know how or why. But it was his presence. After this quest is done, I'm going back to New Mexico and drinking a lot of coffee. It's the best lead we've gotten in two thousand years. I was
so close
.”

I didn't answer. I didn't want to squash Grover's hopes.

“What I want to know,” Thalia said, looking at Bianca, “is how you destroyed one of the zombies. There are a lot more out there somewhere. We need to figure out how to fight them.”

Bianca shook her head. “I don't know. I just stabbed it and it went up in flames.”

“Maybe there's something special about your knife,” I said.

“It is the same as mine,” Zoë said. “Celestial bronze, yes. But mine did not affect the warriors that way.”

“Maybe you have to hit the skeleton in a certain spot,” I said.

Bianca looked uncomfortable with everybody paying attention to her.

“Never mind,” Zoë told her. “We will find the answer. In the meantime, we should plan our next move. When we get through this junkyard, we must continue west. If we can find a road, we can hitchhike to the nearest city. I think that would be Las Vegas.”

I was about to protest that Grover and I had had bad experiences in that town, but Bianca beat us to it.

“No!” she said. “Not there!”

She looked really freaked out, like she'd just been dropped off the steep end of a roller coaster.

Zoë frowned. “Why?”

Bianca took a shaky breath. “I . . . I think we stayed there for a while. Nico and I. When we were traveling. And then, I can't remember . . .”

Suddenly I had a really bad thought. I remembered what Bianca had told me about Nico and her staying in a hotel for a while. I met Grover's eyes, and I got the feeling he was thinking the same thing.

“Bianca,” I said. “That hotel you stayed at. Was it possibly called the Lotus Hotel and Casino?”

Her eyes widened. “How could you know that?”

“Oh, great,” I said.

“Wait,” Thalia said. “What is the Lotus Casino?”

“A couple of years ago,” I said, “Grover, Annabeth, and I got trapped there. It's designed so you never want to leave. We stayed for about an hour. When we came out, five days had passed. It makes time speed up.”

“No,” Bianca said. “No, that's not possible.”

“You said somebody came and got you out,” I remembered.

“Yes.”

“What did he look like? What did he say?”

“I . . . I don't remember. Please, I really don't want to talk about this.”

Zoë sat forward, her eyebrows knit with concern. “You said that Washington, D.C., had changed when you went back last summer. You didn't remember the subway being there.”

“Yes, but—”

“Bianca,” Zoë said, “can you tell me the name of the president of the United States right now?”

“Don't be silly,” Bianca said. She told us the correct name of the president.

“And who was the president before that?” Zoë asked.

Bianca thought for a while. “Roosevelt.”

Zoë swallowed. “Theodore or Franklin?”

“Franklin,” Bianca said. “F.D.R.”

“Like FDR Drive?” I asked. Because seriously, that's about all I knew about F.D.R.

“Bianca,” Zoë said. “F.D.R. was not the last president. That was about seventy years ago.”

“That's impossible,” Bianca said. “I . . . I'm not that old.”

She stared at her hands as if to make sure they weren't wrinkled.

Thalia's eyes turned sad. I guess she knew what it was like to get pulled out of time for a while. “It's okay, Bianca. The important thing is you and Nico are safe. You made it out.”

“But how?” I said. “We were only in there for an hour and we barely escaped. How could you have escaped after being there for so long?”

“I told you.” Bianca looked about ready to cry. “A man came and said it was time to leave. And—”

“But who? Why did he do it?”

Before she could answer, we were hit with a blazing light from down the road. The headlights of a car appeared out of nowhere. I was half hoping it was Apollo, come to give us a ride again, but the engine was way too silent for the sun chariot, and besides, it was nighttime. We grabbed our sleeping bags and got out of the way as a deathly white limousine slid to a stop in front of us.

* * *

The back door of the limo opened right next to me. Before I could step away, the point of a sword touched my throat.

I heard the sound of Zoë and Bianca drawing their bows. As the owner of the sword got out of the car, I moved back very slowly. I had to, because he was pushing the point under my chin.

He smiled cruelly. “Not so fast now, are you, punk?”

He was a big man with a crew cut, a black leather biker's jacket, black jeans, a white muscle shirt, and combat boots. Wraparound shades hid his eyes, but I knew what was behind those glasses—hollow sockets filled with flames.

“Ares,” I growled.

The war god glanced at my friends. “At ease, people.”

He snapped his fingers, and their weapons fell to the ground.

“This is a friendly meeting.” He dug the point of his blade a little farther under my chin. “Of course I'd
like
to take your head for a trophy, but someone wants to see you. And I never behead my enemies in front of a lady.”

“What lady?” Thalia asked.

Ares looked over at her. “Well, well. I heard you were back.”

He lowered his sword and pushed me away.

“Thalia, daughter of Zeus,” Ares mused. “You're not hanging out with very good company.”

“What's your business, Ares?” she said. “Who's in the car?”

Ares smiled, enjoying the attention. “Oh, I doubt she wants to meet the rest of you. Particularly not
them
.” He jutted his chin toward Zoë and Bianca. “Why don't you all go get some tacos while you wait? Only take Percy a few minutes.”

“We will not leave him alone with thee, Lord Ares,” Zoë said.

“Besides,” Grover managed, “the taco place is closed.”

Ares snapped his fingers again. The lights inside the taqueria suddenly blazed to life. The boards flew off the door and the CLOSED sign flipped to OPEN. “You were saying, goat boy?”

“Go on,” I told my friends. “I'll handle this.”

I tried to sound more confident than I felt. I don't think Ares was fooled.

“You heard the boy,” Ares said. “He's big and strong. He's got things under control.”

My friends reluctantly headed over to the taco restaurant. Ares regarded me with loathing then opened the limousine door like a chauffeur.

“Get inside, punk,” he said. “And mind your manners. She's not as forgiving of rudeness as I am.”

When I saw her, my jaw dropped.

I forgot my name. I forgot where I was. I forgot how to speak in complete sentences.

She was wearing a red satin dress and her hair was curled in a cascade of ringlets. Her face was the most beautiful I'd ever seen: perfect makeup, dazzling eyes, a smile that would've lit up the dark side of the moon.

Thinking back on it, I can't tell you who she looked like.

Or even what color her hair or her eyes were. Pick the most beautiful actress you can think of. The goddess was ten times more beautiful than that. Pick your favorite hair color, eye color, whatever. The goddess had that.

When she smiled at me, just for a moment she looked a little like Annabeth. Then like this television actress I used to have a crush on in fifth grade. Then . . . well, you get the idea.

“Ah, there you are, Percy,” the goddess said. “I am Aphrodite.”

I slipped into the seat across from her and said something like, “Um uh gah.”

She smiled. “Aren't you sweet. Hold this, please.”