The Sea of Monsters (12 page)

"Nothing!" Grover said in his falsetto voice. "Just weav-ing my bridal train, as you can see."

The Cyclops stuck one hand into the room and groped around until he found the loom. He pawed at the cloth. "It hasn't gotten any longer!"

"Oh, um, yes it has, dearest. See? I've added at least an inch."

"Too many delays!" the monster bellowed. Then he sniffed the air. "You smell good! Like goats!"

"Oh." Grover forced a weak giggle. "Do you like it? It's Eau de Chevre. I wore it just for you."

"Mmmm!" The Cyclops bared his pointed teeth. "Good enough to eat!"

"Oh, you're such a flirt!"

"No more delays!"

"But dear, I'm not done!"

"Tomorrow!"

"No, no. Ten more days."

"Five!"

"Oh, well, seven then. If you insist."

"Seven! That is less than five, right?"

"Certainly. Oh yes."

The monster grumbled, still not happy with his deal, but he left Grover to his weaving and rolled the boulder back into place.

Grover closed his eyes and took a shaky breath, trying to calm his nerves.

"Hurry, Percy," he muttered. "Please, please, please!"

* * *

I woke to a ship's whistle and a voice on the intercom— some guy with an Australian accent who sounded way too happy.

"Good morning, passengers! We'll be at sea all day today. Excellent weather for the poolside mambo party! Don't forget million-dollar bingo in the Kraken Lounge at one o'clock, and for our special guests, disemboweling practice on the Promenade!"

I sat up in bed. "What did he say?"

Tyson groaned, still half asleep. He was lying facedown on the couch, his feet so far over the edge they were in the bathroom. "The happy man said ... bowling practice?"

I hoped he was right, but then there was an urgent knock on the suite's interior door. Annabeth stuck her head in—her blond hair in a rat's nest. "Disemboweling practice?"

Once we were all dressed, we ventured out into the ship and were surprised to see other people. A dozen senior citizens were heading to breakfast. A dad was taking his kids to the pool for a morning swim. Crew members in crisp white uniforms strolled the deck, tipping their hats to the passengers.

Nobody asked who we were. Nobody paid us much attention. But there was something wrong.

As the family of swimmers passed us, the dad told his kids: "We are on a cruise. We are having fun."

"Yes," his three kids said in unison, their expressions blank. "We are having a blast. We will swim in the pool."

They wandered off.

"Good morning," a crew member told us, his eyes glazed. "We are all enjoying ourselves aboard the Princess Andromeda. Have a nice day." He drifted away.

"Percy, this is weird," Annabeth whispered. "They're all in some kind of trance."

Then we passed a cafeteria and saw our first monster. It was a hellhound—a black mastiff with its front paws up on the buffet line and its muzzle buried in the scrambled eggs. It must've been young, because it was small compared to most—no bigger than a grizzly bear. Still, my blood turned cold. I'd almost gotten killed by one of those before.

The weird thing was: a middle-aged couple was stand-ing in the buffet line right behind the devil dog, patiently waiting their turn for the eggs. They didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.

"Not hungry anymore," Tyson murmured.

Before Annabeth or I could reply, a reptilian voice came from down the corridor, "Ssssix more joined yesssterday."

Annabeth gestured frantically toward the nearest hiding place—the women's room—and all three of us ducked inside. I was so freaked out it didn't even occur to me to be embarrassed.

Something—or more like two somethings—slithered past the bathroom door, making sounds like sandpaper against the carpet.

"Yesss," a second reptilian voice said. "He drawssss them. Ssssoon we will be sssstrong."

The things slithered into the cafeteria with a cold hiss-ing that might have been snake laughter.

Annabeth looked at me. "We have to get out of here."

"You think I want to be in the girls' restroom?"

"I mean the ship, Percy! We have to get off the ship."

"Smells bad," Tyson agreed. "And dogs eat all the eggs. Annabeth is right. We must leave the restroom and ship."

I shuddered. If Annabeth and Tyson were actually agree-ing about something, I figured I'd better listen.

Then I heard another voice outside—one that chilled me worse than any monster's.

"—only a matter of time. Don't push me, Agrius!"

It was Luke, beyond a doubt. I could never forget his voice.

"I'm not pushing you!" another guy growled. His voice was deeper and even angrier than Luke's. "I'm just saying, if this gamble doesn't pay off—"

"It'll pay off," Luke snapped. "They'll take the bait. Now, come, we've got to get to the admiralty suite and check on the casket."

Their voices receded down the corridor.

Tyson whimpered. "Leave now?"

Annabeth and I exchanged looks and came to a silent agreement.

"We can't," I told Tyson.

"We have to find out what Luke is up to," Annabeth agreed. "And if possible, we're going to beat him up, bind him in chains, and drag him to Mount Olympus."

Annabeth volunteered to go alone since she had the cap of invisibility, but I convinced her it was too dangerous. Either we all went together, or nobody went.

"Nobody!" Tyson voted. "Please?"

But in the end he came along, nervously chewing on his huge fingernails. We stopped at our cabin long enough to gather our stuff. We figured whatever happened, we would not be staying another night aboard the zombie cruise ship, even if they did have million-dollar bingo. I made sure Riptide was in my pocket and the vitamins and thermos from Hermes were at the top of my bag. I didn't want Tyson to carry everything, but he insisted, and Annabeth told me not to worry about it. Tyson could carry three full duffel bags over his shoulder as easily as I could carry a backpack.

We sneaked through the corridors, following the ship's YOU ARE HERE signs toward the admiralty suite. Annabeth scouted ahead invisibly. We hid whenever someone passed by, but most of the people we saw were just glassy-eyed zombie passengers.

As we came up the stairs to deck thirteen, where the admiralty suite was supposed to be, Annabeth hissed, "Hide!" and shoved us into a supply closet.

I heard a couple of guys coming down the hall.

"You see that Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?" one of them said.

The other laughed. "Yeah, it's awesome."

Annabeth was still invisible, but she squeezed my arm hard. I got a feeling I should know that second guy's voice.

"I hear they got two more coming," the familiar voice said. "They keep arriving at this rate, oh, man—no contest!"

The voices faded down the corridor.

"That was Chris Rodriguez!" Annabeth took off her cap and turned visible. "You remember—

from Cabin Eleven."

I sort of recalled Chris from the summer before. He was one of those undetermined campers who got stuck in the Hermes cabin because his Olympian dad or mom never claimed him. Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn't seen Chris at camp this summer. "What's another half-blood doing here?"

Annabeth shook her head, clearly troubled.

We kept going down the corridor. I didn't need maps anymore to know I was getting close to Luke. I sensed something cold and unpleasant—the presence of evil.

"Percy." Annabeth stopped suddenly. "Look."

She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistory canyon that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade—a mall full of shops— but that's not what had caught Annabeth's attention.

A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen Laistrygonian giants like the ones who'd attacked me with dodge balls, two hellhounds, and a few even stranger creatures—humanoid females with twin serpent tails instead of legs.

"Scythian Dracaenae," Annabeth whispered. "Dragon women."

The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armor who was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in my throat when I realized the dummy was wear-ing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As we watched, the guy in armor stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upward. Straw flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled.

Annabeth stepped away from the window. Her face was ashen.

"Come on," I told her, trying to sound braver than I felt. "The sooner we find Luke the better."

At the end of the hallway were double oak doors that looked like they must lead somewhere important. When we were thirty feet away, Tyson stopped. "Voices inside."

"You can hear that far?" I asked.

Tyson closed his eye like he was concentrating hard. Then his voice changed, becoming a husky approximation of Luke's. "—the prophecy ourselves. The fools won't know which way to turn."

Before I could react, Tyson's voice changed again, becoming deeper and gruffer, like the other guy we'd heard talking to Luke outside the cafeteria. "You really think the old horseman is gone for good?"

Tyson laughed Luke's laugh. "They can't trust him. Not with the skeletons in his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw."

Annabeth shivered. "Stop that, Tyson! How do you do that? It's creepy."

Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. "Just listening."

"Keep going," I said. "What else are they saying?"

Tyson closed his eye again.

He hissed in the gruff man's voice: "Quiet!" Then Luke's voice, whispering: "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Tyson said in the gruff voice. "Right outside."

Too late, I realized what was happening.

I just had time to say, "Run!" when the doors of the stateroom burst open and there was Luke, flanked by two hairy giants armed with javelins, their bronze tips aimed right at our chests.

"Well," Luke said with a crooked smile. "If it isn't my two favorite cousins. Come right in."

The stateroom was beautiful, and it was horrible.

The beautiful part: Huge windows curved along the back wall, looking out over the stern of the ship. Green sea and blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon. A Persian rug covered the floor. Two plush sofas occupied the middle of the room, with a canopied bed in one corner and a mahogany dining table in the other. The table was loaded with food—pizza boxes, bottles of soda, and a stack of roast beef sandwiches on a silver platter.

The horrible part: On a velvet dais at the back of the room lay a ten-foot-long golden casket. A sarcophagus, engraved with Ancient Greek scenes of cities in flames and heroes dying grisly deaths. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, the casket made the whole room feel cold.

"Well," Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. "A little nicer than Cabin Eleven, huh?"

He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.

He still had the scar under his eye—a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting strangely with its halfsteel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.

"Sit," he told us. He waved his hand and three dining chairs scooted themselves into the center of the room.

None of us sat.

Luke's large friends were still pointing their javelins at us. They looked like twins, but they weren't human. They stood about eight feet tall, for one thing, and wore only blue jeans, probably because their enormous chests were already shag-carpeted with thick brown fur. They had claws for fin-gernails, feet like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed canines.

"Where are my manners?" Luke said smoothly. "These are my assistants, Agrius and Oreius. Perhaps you've heard of them."

I said nothing. Despite the javelins pointed at me, it wasn't the bear twins who scared me.

I'd imagined meeting Luke again many times since he'd tried to kill me last summer. I'd pictured myself boldly standing up to him, challenging him to a duel. But now that we were face-to-face, I could barely stop my hands from shaking.

"You don't know Agrius and Oreius's story?" Luke asked. "Their mother ... well, it's sad, really. Aphrodite ordered the young woman to fall in love. She refused and ran to Artemis for help. Artemis let her become one of her maiden huntresses, but Aphrodite got her revenge. She bewitched the young woman into falling in love with a bear. When Artemis found out, she abandoned the girl in dis-gust. Typical of the gods, wouldn't you say? They fight with one another and the poor humans get caught in the middle. The girl's twin sons here, Agrius and Oreius, have no love for Olympus. They like half-bloods well enough, though ..."

"For lunch," Agrius growled. His gruff voice was the one I'd heard talking with Luke earlier.

"Hehe! Hehe!" His brother Oreius laughed, licking his fur-lined lips. He kept laughing like he was having an asthmatic fit until Luke and Agrius both stared at him.

"Shut up, you idiot!" Agrius growled. "Go punish yourself!"

Oreius whimpered. He trudged over to the corner of the room, slumped onto a stool, and banged his forehead against the dining table, making the silver plates rattle.

Luke acted like this was perfectly normal behavior. He made himself comfortable on the sofa and propped his feet up on the coffee table. "Well, Percy, we let you survive another year. I hope you appreciated it. How's your mom? How's school?"

"You poisoned Thalia's tree."

Luke sighed. "Right to the point, eh? Okay, sure I poi-soned the tree. So what?"

"How could you?" Annabeth sounded so angry I thought she'd explode. "Thalia saved your life! Our lives! How could you dishonor her—"

"I didn't dishonor her!" Luke snapped. "The gods dis-honored her, Annabeth! If Thalia were alive, she'd be on my side."