Percy Jackson The Complete Collection (93 page)
Read Percy Jackson The Complete Collection Online
Authors: Rick Riordan
‘Dad,’ I said. ‘When I was in the maze, I met Antaeus.
He said… well, he said he was your favourite son. He decorated his arena with skulls and –’
‘He dedicated them to me,’ Poseidon supplied. ‘And you are wondering how someone could do something so horrible in my name.’
I nodded uncomfortably.
Poseidon put his weathered hand on my shoulder. ‘Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names… well, it usually says more about
them
than it does about us.
And you,
Percy, are my favourite son.’
He smiled, and at that moment, just being in the kitchen with him was the best birthday present I ever got. Then my mom called from the living room, ‘Percy? The candles are melting!’
‘You’d better go,’ Poseidon said. ‘But, Percy, one last thing you should know. That incident at Mount St Helens…’
For a second I thought he was talking about Annabeth kissing me, and I blushed, but then I realized he was talking about something a lot bigger.
‘The eruptions are continuing,’ he said. ‘Typhon is stirring. It is very likely that soon, in a few months, perhaps a year at best, he will escape his bonds.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean –’
Poseidon raised his hand. ‘It is not your fault, Percy. It would’ve happened sooner or later, with Kronos awakening the ancient monsters. But be aware, if Typhon stirs… it will be unlike anything you have faced before. The first time he appeared, all the forces of Olympus were barely enough to battle him. And when he stirs again, he will
come here, to New York. He will make straight for Olympus.’
That was just the kind of wonderful news I wanted to get on my birthday, but Poseidon patted me on the back like everything was fine. ‘I should go. Enjoy your cake.’
And just like that he turned to mist and was swept out of the window on a warm ocean breeze.
It took a little work to convince Paul that Poseidon had left via the fire escape, but since people can’t vanish into thin air, he had no choice but to believe it.
We ate blue cake and
ice
cream until we couldn’t eat any more. Then we played a bunch of cheesy party games like charades and Monopoly. Tyson didn’t get charades. He kept shouting out the answer he was trying to mime, but it turned out he was really good at Monopoly. He knocked me out of the game in the first five rounds and started bankrupting my mom and Paul. I left them playing and went into my bedroom.
I set an uneaten slice of blue cake on my dresser. Then I took off my Camp Half-Blood necklace and laid it on the windowsill. There were three beads now, representing my three summers at camp – a trident, the Golden Fleece and the latest: an intricate maze, symbolizing the Battle of the Labyrinth, as the campers had started to call it. I wondered what next year’s bead would be, if I was still around to get it. If the camp survived until next summer.
I looked at the telephone by my bedside. I thought about calling Rachel Elizabeth Dare. My mom had asked me if there was anyone else I wanted to have over tonight, and I’d thought about Rachel. But I didn’t call. I don’t
know why. The idea made me almost as nervous as a door into the Labyrinth.
I patted my pockets and emptied out my stuff – Riptide, a Kleenex, my apartment key. Then I patted my shirt pocket and felt a small lump. I hadn’t even realized it, but I was wearing the white cotton shirt Calypso had given me on Ogygia. I brought out a little piece of cloth, unwrapped it, and found the clipping of moonlace. It was a tiny sprig, shrivelled up after two months, but I could still smell the faint scent of the enchanted garden. It made me sad.
I remembered Calypso’s last request of me:
Plant a garden in Manhattan for me, will you?
I opened the window and stepped onto the fire escape.
My mom kept a planter box out there. In the spring she usually filled it with flowers, but now it was all earth, waiting for something new. It was a clear night. The moon was full over Eighty-second Street. I planted the dried sprig of moonlace carefully in the dirt and sprinkled a little nectar on it from my camp canteen.
Nothing happened at first.
Then, as I watched, a tiny silver plant sprang out of the soil – a baby moonlace, glowing in the warm summer night.
‘Nice plant,’ a voice said.
I jumped. Nico di Angelo was standing on the fire escape right next to me. He’d just appeared there.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘That’s – that’s okay. I mean… what are you doing here?’
He’d grown about an inch taller over the last couple of months. His hair was a shaggy black mess. He wore a
black T-shirt, black jeans and a new silver ring shaped like a skull. His Stygian iron sword hung at his side.
‘I’ve done some exploring,’ he said. ‘Thought you’d like to know that Daedalus got his punishment.’
‘You saw him?’
Nico nodded. ‘Minos wanted to boil him in cheese fondue for eternity, but my father had other ideas. Daedalus will be building overpasses and exit ramps in Asphodel for all time. It’ll help ease the traffic congestion. Truthfully, I think the old guy is pretty happy with that. He’s still building. Still creating. And he gets to see his son and Perdix on the weekends.’
‘That’s good.’
Nico tapped at his silver ring. ‘But that’s not the real reason I’ve come. I’ve found out some things. I want to make you an offer.’
‘What?’
‘The way to beat Luke,’ he said. ‘If I’m right, it’s the
only
way you’ll stand a chance.’
I took a deep breath. ‘Okay. I’m listening.’
Nico glanced inside my room. His eyebrows furrowed. ‘Is that… is that blue birthday cake?’
He sounded hungry, maybe a little wistful. I wondered if the poor kid had ever had a birthday party, or if he’d ever even been invited to one.
‘Come inside for cake and
ice
cream,’ I said. ‘It sounds like we’ve got a lot to talk about.’
PUFFIN
To Mrs Pabst, my eighth-grade English teacher,
who started me on the road to Camp Half-Blood
The end of the world started when a pegasus landed on the hood of my car.
Up until then, I was having a great afternoon. Technically I wasn’t supposed to be driving because I wouldn’t turn sixteen for another week, but my mom and my stepdad, Paul, took my friend Rachel and me to this private stretch of beach on the South Shore and Paul let us borrow his Prius for a short spin.
Now I know you’re thinking, Wow, that was really irresponsible of him, blah, blah, blah, but Paul knows me pretty well. He’s seen me slice up demons and leap out of exploding school buildings, so he probably figured taking a car a few hundred metres wasn’t exactly the most dangerous thing I’d ever done.
Anyway, Rachel and I were driving along. It was a hot August day. Rachel’s red hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she wore a white blouse over her swimsuit. I’d never seen her in anything but ratty T-shirts and paint-splattered jeans before, and she looked like a million golden drachmas.
‘Oh, pull up right there!’ she told me.
We parked on a ridge overlooking the Atlantic. The sea is always one of my favourite places, but today it was especially nice – glittery green and smooth as glass, as though my dad was keeping it calm just for us.
My dad, by the way, is Poseidon. He can do stuff like that.
‘So.’ Rachel smiled at me. ‘About that invitation.’
‘Oh … right.’ I tried to sound excited. I mean, she’d asked me to her family’s vacation house on St Thomas for three days. I didn’t get a lot of offers like that. My family’s idea of a fancy vacation was a weekend in a rundown cabin on Long Island with some movie rentals and a couple of frozen pizzas, and here Rachel’s folks were willing to let me tag along to the Caribbean.
Besides, I seriously needed a vacation. This summer had been the hardest of my life. The idea of taking a break even for a few days was really tempting.
Still, something big was supposed to go down any day now. I was ‘on call’ for a mission. Even worse, next week was my birthday. There was this prophecy that said when I turned sixteen, bad things would happen.
‘Percy,’ Rachel said, ‘I know the timing is bad. But it’s
always
bad for you, right?’
She had a point.
‘I really want to go,’ I promised. ‘It’s just –’
‘The war.’
I nodded. I didn’t like talking about it, but Rachel knew. Unlike most mortals, she could see through the Mist – the magic veil that distorts human vision. She’d seen monsters. She’d met some of the other demigods who were fighting the Titans and their allies. She’d even been there last summer when the chopped-up Lord Kronos rose out of his coffin in a terrible new form, and she’d earned my permanent respect by nailing him in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.
She put her hand on my arm. ‘Just think about it, okay? We don’t leave for a couple of days. My dad …’ Her voice faltered.
‘Is he giving you a hard time?’ I asked.
Rachel shook her head in disgust. ‘He’s trying to be
nice
to me, which is almost worse. He wants me to go to Clarion Ladies’ Academy in the autumn.’
‘The school where your mom went?’
‘It’s a stupid finishing school for society girls, all the way in New Hampshire. Can you see me in finishing school?’
I admitted the idea sounded pretty dumb. Rachel was into urban art projects and feeding the homeless and going to protest rallies to ‘Save the Endangered Yellow-Bellied Sap Sucker’ and stuff like that. I’d never even seen her wear a dress. It was hard to imagine her learning to be a socialite.
She sighed. ‘He thinks if he does a bunch of nice stuff for me, I’ll feel guilty and give in.’
‘Which is why he agreed to let me come with you guys on vacation?’
‘Yes … but, Percy, you’d be doing me a huge favour. It would be
so
much better if you were with us. Besides, there’s something I want to talk –’ She stopped abruptly.
‘Something you want to talk about?’ I asked. ‘You mean … so serious we’d have to go to St Thomas to talk about it?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Look, just forget it for now. Let’s pretend we’re a couple of normal people. We’re out for a drive, and we’re watching the ocean, and it’s nice to be together.’
I could tell something was bothering her, but she put on a brave smile. The sunlight made her hair look like fire.
We’d spent a lot of time together this summer. I hadn’t exactly planned it that way, but the more serious things got at camp, the more I found myself needing to call up Rachel and get away, just for some breathing room. I needed to remind myself the mortal world was still out here, away from all the monsters using me as their personal punching bag.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Just a normal afternoon and two normal people.’
She nodded. ‘And so … hypothetically, if these two people liked each other, what would it take to get the stupid guy to kiss the girl, huh?’
‘Oh …’ I felt like one of Apollo’s sacred cows – slow, dumb and bright red. ‘Um …’
I can’t pretend I hadn’t thought about Rachel. She was so much easier to be around than … well, than some other girls I knew. I didn’t have to work hard, or watch what I said, or wrack my brain trying to figure out what she was thinking. Rachel didn’t hide much. She let you know how she felt.
I’m not sure what I would’ve done next, but I was so distracted I didn’t notice the huge black form swooping down from the sky until four hooves landed on the hood of the Prius with a WUMP-WUMP-CRUNCH!
Hey, boss
, a voice said in my head.
Nice car!
Blackjack the pegasus was an old friend of mine, so I tried not to get too annoyed by the craters he’d just put in the hood, but I didn’t think Paul Blofis would be real stoked.
‘Blackjack,’ I sighed. ‘What are you –’
Then I saw who was riding on his back, and I knew my day was about to get a lot more complicated.
‘’Sup, Percy.’
Charles Beckendorf, senior counsellor for the Hephaestus cabin, would make most monsters cry for their mommies. He was huge, with ripped muscles from working in the forges every summer. He was two years older than me and one of the camp’s best armour-smiths. He made some seriously ingenious mechanical stuff. A month before, he’d rigged a Greek fire bomb in the bathroom of a tour bus that was carrying a bunch of monsters across country. The explosion took out a whole legion of Kronos’s evil meanies as soon as the first harpy went
flush.
Beckendorf was dressed for combat. He wore a bronze breastplate and war helm with black camo pants and a sword strapped to his side. His explosives bag was slung over his shoulder.
‘Time?’ I asked.
He nodded grimly.
A lump formed in my throat. I’d known this was coming. We’d been planning it for weeks, but I’d half hoped it would never happen.
Rachel looked up at Beckendorf. ‘Hi.’
‘Oh, hey. I’m Beckendorf. You must be Rachel. Percy’s told me … uh, I mean he mentioned you.’
Rachel raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? Good.’ She glanced at Blackjack, who was clopping his hooves against the hood of the Prius. ‘So I guess you guys have to go save the world now.’
‘Pretty much,’ Beckendorf agreed.
I looked at Rachel helplessly. ‘Would you tell my mom –’
‘I’ll tell her. I’m sure she’s used to it. And I’ll explain to Paul about the hood.’
I nodded my thanks. I figured this might be the last time Paul loaned me his car.
‘Good luck.’ Rachel kissed me before I could even react. ‘Now get going, half-blood. Go kill some monsters for me.’
My last view of her was sitting in the shotgun seat of the Prius, her arms crossed, watching as Blackjack circled higher and higher, carrying Beckendorf and me into the sky. I wondered what Rachel wanted to talk to me about, and whether I’d live long enough to find out.
‘So,’ Beckendorf said. ‘I’m guessing you don’t want me to mention that little scene to Annabeth.’
‘Oh, gods,’ I muttered. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
Beckendorf chuckled, and together we soared out over the Atlantic.
It was almost dark by the time we spotted our target. The
Princess Andromeda
glowed on the horizon – a huge cruise ship lit up yellow and white. From a distance, you’d think it was just a party ship, not the headquarters for the Titan lord. Then, as you got closer, you might notice the giant figurehead – a dark-haired maiden in a Greek chiton, wrapped in chains with a look of horror on her face, as if she could smell the stench of all the monsters she was being forced to carry.
Seeing the ship again twisted my gut into knots. I’d
almost died twice on the
Princess Andromeda
. Now it was heading straight for New York.
‘You know what to do?’ Beckendorf yelled over the wind.
I nodded. We’d done dry runs at the dockyards in New Jersey, using abandoned ships as our targets. I knew how little time we would have. But I also knew this was our best chance to end Kronos’s invasion before it ever started.
‘Blackjack,’ I said, ‘set us down on the lowest stern deck.’
Gotcha, boss
, he said.
Man, I hate seeing that boat.
Three years ago, Blackjack had been enslaved on the
Princess Andromeda
until he’d escaped with a little help from my friends and me. I figured he’d rather have his mane braided like My Little Pony than be back here again.
‘Don’t wait for us,’ I told him.
But, boss –
‘Trust me,’ I said. ‘We’ll get out by ourselves.’
Blackjack folded his wings and plummeted towards the boat like a black comet. The wind whistled in my ears. I saw monsters patrolling the upper decks of the ship –
dracaenae
snake-women, hellhounds, giants, and the humanoid sea-lion demons known as telkhines – but we zipped by so fast none of them raised the alarm. We shot down the stern of the boat and Blackjack spread his wings, lightly coming to a landing on the lowest deck. I climbed off, feeling queasy.
Good luck, boss
, Blackjack said.
Don’t let ’em turn you into horsemeat!
With that, my old friend flew off into the night. I took my pen out of my pocket, uncapped it, and Riptide sprang
to full size – one metre of deadly celestial bronze glowing in the dusk.
Beckendorf pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. I thought it was a map or something. Then I realized it was a photograph. He stared at it in the dim light – the smiling face of Silena Beauregard, daughter of Aphrodite. They’d started going out last summer, after years of the rest of us saying, ‘Duh, you guys like each other!’ Even with all the dangerous missions, Beckendorf had been happier this summer than I’d ever seen him.
‘We’ll make it back to camp,’ I promised.
For a second I saw worry in his eyes. Then he put on his old confident smile.
‘You bet,’ he said. ‘Let’s go blow Kronos back into a million pieces.’
Beckendorf led the way. We followed a narrow corridor to the service stairwell, just like we’d practised, but we froze when we heard noises above us.
‘I don’t care what your nose says!’ snarled a half-human, half-dog voice – a telkhine. ‘The last time you smelled half-blood, it turned out to be a meatloaf sandwich!’
‘Meatloaf sandwiches are good!’ a second voice snarled. ‘But this is half-blood scent, I swear. They are on board!’
‘Bah, your
brain
isn’t on board!’
They continued to argue, and Beckendorf pointed downstairs. We descended as quietly as we could. Two floors down, the voices of the telkhines started to fade.
Finally we came to a metal hatch. Beckendorf mouthed the words,
Engine room.
It was locked, but Beckendorf pulled some chain cutters
out of his bag and split the bolt like it was made of butter.
Inside, a row of yellow turbines the size of grain silos churned and hummed. Pressure gauges and computer terminals lined the opposite wall. A telkhine was hunched over a console, but he was so involved with his work he didn’t notice us. He was about a metre and a half tall, with slick black sea-lion fur and stubby little feet. He had the head of a Dobermann, but his clawed hands were almost human. He growled and muttered as he tapped on his keyboard. Maybe he was messaging his friends on
uglyface.com
.
I stepped forward and he tensed, probably smelling something was wrong. He leaped sideways towards a big red alarm button, but I blocked his path. He hissed and lunged at me, but one slice of Riptide and he exploded into dust.
‘One down,’ Beckendorf said. ‘About five thousand to go.’ He tossed me a jar of thick green liquid – Greek fire, one of the most dangerous magical substances in the world. Then he threw me another essential tool of demigod heroes – duct tape.
‘Slap that one on the console,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the turbines.’
We went to work. The room was hot and humid, and in no time we were drenched in sweat.
The boat kept chugging along. Being the son of Poseidon and all, I have perfect bearings at sea. Don’t ask me how, but I could tell we were at 40.19˚ north, 71.90˚ west, making eighteen knots an hour, which meant the ship would arrive in New York Harbor by dawn. This would be our only chance to stop it.
I had just attached a second jar of Greek fire to the control panels when I heard the pounding of feet on metal steps – so many creatures coming down the stairwell I could hear them over the engines. Not a good sign.
I locked eyes with Beckendorf. ‘How much longer?’
‘Too long.’ He tapped his watch, which was our remote control detonator. ‘I still have to wire the receiver and prime the charges. Ten more minutes at least.’
Judging from the sound of the footsteps, we had about ten seconds.
‘I’ll distract them,’ I said. ‘Meet you at the rendezvous point.’
‘Percy –’
‘Wish me luck.’
He looked like he wanted to argue. The whole idea had been to get in and out without being spotted. But we were going to have to improvise.
‘Good luck,’ he said.
I charged out of the door.
Half a dozen telkhines were tromping down the stairs. I cut through them with Riptide faster than they could yelp. I kept climbing – past another telkhine who was so startled he dropped his Li’l Demons lunchbox. I left him alive – partly because his lunchbox was cool, partly so he could raise the alarm and hopefully get his friends to follow me rather than head towards the engine room.