The Titan's Curse (16 page)

Bianca and I ended up next to each other, hiding behind a broken chariot.

“You took something,” I said. “That bow.”

“No!” she said, but her voice was quivering.

“Give it back!” I said. “Throw it down!”

“I . . . I didn't take the bow! Besides, it's too late.”

“What did you take?”

Before she could answer, I heard a massive creaking noise, and a shadow blotted out the sky.

“Move!” I tore down the hill, Bianca right behind me, as the giant's foot smashed a crater in the ground where we'd been hiding.

“Hey, Talos!” Grover yelled, but the monster raised his sword, looking down at Bianca and me.

Grover played a quick melody on his pipes. Over at the highway, the downed power lines began to dance. I understood what Grover was going to do a split second before it happened. One of the poles with power lines still attached flew toward Talos's back leg and wrapped around his calf. The lines sparked and sent a jolt of electricity up the giant's backside.

Talos whirled around, creaking and sparking. Grover had bought us a few seconds.

“Come on!” I told Bianca. But she stayed frozen. From her pocket, she brought out a small metal figurine, a statue of a god. “It . . . it was for Nico. It was the only statue he didn't have.”

“How can you think of Mythomagic at a time like this?” I said.

There were tears in her eyes.

“Throw it down,” I said. “Maybe the giant will leave us alone.”

She dropped it reluctantly, but nothing happened.

The giant kept coming after Grover. It stabbed its sword into a junk hill, missing Grover by a few feet, but scrap metal made an avalanche over him, and then I couldn't see him anymore.

“No!” Thalia yelled. She pointed her spear, and a blue arc of lightning shot out, hitting the monster in his rusty knee, which buckled. The giant collapsed, but immediately started to rise again. It was hard to tell if it could feel anything. There weren't any emotions in its half-melted face, but I got the sense that it was about as ticked off as a twenty-story-tall metal warrior could be.

He raised his foot to stomp and I saw that his sole was treaded like the bottom of a sneaker. There was a hole in his heel, like a large manhole, and there were red words painted around it, which I deciphered only after the foot came down: FOR MAINTENANCE ONLY.

“Crazy-idea time,” I said.

Bianca looked at me nervously. “Anything.”

I told her about the maintenance hatch. “There may be a way to control the thing. Switches or something. I'm going to get inside.”

“How? You'll have to stand under its foot! You'll be crushed.”

“Distract it,” I said. “I'll just have to time it right.”

Bianca's jaw tightened. “No. I'll go.”

“You can't. You're new at this! You'll die.”

“It's my fault the monster came after us,” she said. “It's my responsibility. Here.” She picked up the little god statue and pressed it into my hand. “If anything happens, give that to Nico. Tell him . . . tell him I'm sorry.”

“Bianca, no!”

But she wasn't waiting for me. She charged at the monster's left foot.

Thalia had its attention for the moment. She'd learned that the giant was big but slow. If you could stay close to it and not get smashed, you could run around it and stay alive. At least, it was working so far.

Bianca got right next to the giant's foot, trying to balance herself on the metal scraps that swayed and shifted with his weight.

Zoë yelled, “What are you doing?”

“Get it to raise its foot!” she said.

Zoë shot an arrow toward the monster's face and it flew straight into one nostril. The giant straightened and shook its head.

“Hey, Junk Boy!” I yelled. “Down here.”

I ran up to its big toe and stabbed it with Riptide. The magic blade cut a gash in the bronze.

Unfortunately, my plan worked. Talos looked down at me and raised his foot to squash me like a bug. I didn't see what Bianca was doing. I had to turn and run. The foot came down about two inches behind me and I was knocked into the air. I hit something hard and sat up, dazed. I'd been thrown into an Olympus-Air refrigerator.

The monster was about to finish me off, but Grover somehow dug himself out of the junk pile. He played his pipes frantically, and his music sent another power line pole whacking against Talos's thigh. The monster turned. Grover should've run, but he must've been too exhausted from the effort of so much magic. He took two steps, fell, and didn't get back up.

“Grover!” Thalia and I both ran toward him, but I knew we'd be too late.

The monster raised his sword to smash Grover. Then he froze.

Talos cocked his head to one side, like he was hearing strange new music. He started moving his arms and legs in weird ways, doing the Funky Chicken. Then he made a fist and punched himself in the face.

“Go, Bianca!” I yelled.

Zoë looked horrified. “She is
inside
?”

The monster staggered around, and I realized we were still in danger. Thalia and I grabbed Grover and ran with him toward the highway. Zoë was already ahead of us. She yelled, “How will Bianca get out?”

The giant hit itself in the head again and dropped his sword. A shudder ran through his whole body and he staggered toward the power lines.

“Look out!” I yelled, but it was too late.

The giant's ankle snared the lines, and blue flickers of electricity shot up his body. I hoped the inside was insulated. I had no idea what was going on in there. The giant careened back into the junkyard, and his right hand fell off, landing in the scrap metal with a horrible
CLANG!

His left arm came loose, too. He was falling apart at the joints.

Talos began to run.

“Wait!” Zoë yelled. We ran after him, but there was no way we could keep up. Pieces of the robot kept falling off, getting in our way.

The giant crumbled from the top down: his head, his chest, and finally, his legs collapsed. When we reached the wreckage we searched frantically, yelling Bianca's name. We crawled around in the vast hollow pieces and the legs and the head. We searched until the sun started to rise, but no luck.

Zoë sat down and wept. I was stunned to see her cry.

Thalia yelled in rage and impaled her sword in the giant's smashed face.

“We can keep searching,” I said. “It's light now. We'll find her.”

“No we won't,” Grover said miserably. “It happened just as it was supposed to.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

He looked up at me with big watery eyes. “The prophecy.
One shall be lost in the land without rain
.”

Why hadn't I seen it? Why had I let her go instead of me?

Here we were in the desert. And Bianca di Angelo was gone.

FOURTEEN

At the edge of the dump, we found a tow truck so old it might've been thrown away itself. But the engine started, and it had a full tank of gas, so we decided to borrow it.

Thalia drove. She didn't seem as stunned as Zoë or Grover or me.

“The skeletons are still out there,” she reminded us. “We need to keep moving.”

She navigated us through the desert, under clear blue skies, the sand so bright it hurt to look at. Zoë sat up front with Thalia. Grover and I sat in the pickup bed, leaning against the tow wench. The air was cool and dry, but the nice weather just seemed like an insult after losing Bianca.

My hand closed around the little figurine that had cost her life. I still couldn't even tell what god it was supposed to be. Nico would know.

Oh, gods . . . what was I going to tell Nico?

I wanted to believe that Bianca was still alive somewhere. But I had a bad feeling that she was gone for good.

“It should've been me,” I said. “I should've gone into the giant.”

“Don't say that!” Grover panicked. “It's bad enough Annabeth is gone, and now Bianca. Do you think I could stand it if . . .” He sniffled. “Do you think anybody
else
would be my best friend?”

“Ah, Grover . . .”

He wiped under his eyes with an oily cloth that left his face grimy, like he had on war paint. “I'm . . . I'm okay.”

But he wasn't okay. Ever since the encounter in New Mexico—whatever had happened when that wild wind blew through—he seemed really fragile, even more emotional than usual. I was afraid to talk to him about it, because he might start bawling.

At least there's one good thing about having a friend who gets freaked out more than you do. I realized I couldn't stay depressed. I had to set aside thinking about Bianca and keep us going forward, the way Thalia was doing. I wondered what she and Zoë were talking about in the front of the truck.

The tow truck ran out of gas at the edge of a river canyon. That was just as well, because the road dead-ended.

Thalia got out and slammed the door. Immediately, one of the tires blew. “Great. What now?”

I scanned the horizon. There wasn't much to see. Desert in all directions, occasional clumps of barren mountains plopped here and there. The canyon was the only thing interesting. The river itself wasn't very big, maybe fifty yards across, green water with a few rapids, but it carved a huge scar out of the desert. The rock cliffs dropped away below us.

“There's a path,” Grover said. “We could get to the river.”

I tried to see what he was talking about, and finally noticed a tiny ledge winding down the cliff face. “That's a goat path,” I said.

“So?” he asked.

“The rest of us aren't goats.”

“We can make it,” Grover said. “I think.”

I thought about that. I'd done cliffs before, but I didn't like them. Then I looked over at Thalia and saw how pale she'd gotten. Her problem with heights . . . she'd never be able to do it.

“No,” I said. “I, uh, think we should go farther upstream.”

Grover said, “But—”

“Come on,” I said. “A walk won't hurt us.”

I glanced at Thalia. Her eyes said a quick
Thank you
.

We followed the river about half a mile before coming to an easier slope that led down to the water. On the shore was a canoe rental operation that was closed for the season, but I left a stack of golden drachmas on the counter and a note saying
IOU two canoes
.

“We need to go upstream,” Zoë said. It was the first time I'd heard her speak since the junkyard, and I was worried about how bad she sounded, like somebody with the flu. “The rapids are too swift.”

“Leave that to me,” I said. We put the canoes in the water.

Thalia pulled me aside as we were getting the oars. “Thanks for back there.”

“Don't mention it.”

“Can you really . . .” She nodded to the rapids. “You know.”

“I think so. Usually I'm good with water.”

“Would you take Zoë?” she asked. “I think, ah, maybe you can talk to her.”

“She's not going to like that.”

“Please? I don't know if I can stand being in the same boat with her. She's . . . she's starting to worry me.”

It was about the last thing I wanted to do, but I nodded.

Thalia's shoulders relaxed. “I owe you one.”

“Two.”

“One and a half,” Thalia said.

She smiled, and for a second, I remembered that I actually liked her when she wasn't yelling at me. She turned and helped Grover get their canoe into the water.

As it turned out, I didn't even need to control the currents. As soon as we got in the river, I looked over the edge of the boat and found a couple of naiads staring at me.

They looked like regular teenage girls, the kind you'd see in any mall, except for the fact that they were underwater.

Hey
, I said.

They made a bubbling sound that may have been giggling. I wasn't sure. I had a hard time understanding naiads.

We're heading upstream,
I told them.
Do you think you could—

Before I could even finish, the naiads each chose a canoe and began pushing us up the river. We started so fast Grover fell into his canoe with his hooves sticking up in the air.

“I hate naiads,” Zoë grumbled.

A stream of water squirted up from the back of the boat and hit Zoë in the face.

“She-devils!” Zoë went for her bow.

“Whoa,” I said. “They're just playing.”

“Cursed water spirits. They've never forgiven me.”

“Forgiven you for what?”

She slung her bow back over her shoulder. “It was a long time ago. Never mind.”

We sped up the river, the cliffs looming up on either side of us.

“What happened to Bianca wasn't your fault,” I told her. “It was my fault. I let her go.”

I figured this would give Zoë an excuse to start yelling at me. At least that might shake her out of feeling depressed.

Instead, her shoulders slumped. “No, Percy. I pushed her into going on the quest. I was too anxious. She was a powerful half-blood. She had a kind heart, as well. I . . . I thought she would be the next lieutenant.”

“But you're the lieutenant.”

She gripped the strap of her quiver. She looked more tired than I'd ever seen her. “Nothing can last forever, Percy. Over two thousand years I have led the Hunt, and my wisdom has not improved. Now Artemis herself is in danger.”

“Look, you can't blame yourself for that.”

“If I had insisted on going with her—”

“You think you could've fought something powerful enough to kidnap Artemis? There's nothing you could have done.”

Zoë didn't answer.

The cliffs along the river were getting taller. Long shadows fell across the water, making it a lot colder, even though the day was bright.

Without thinking about it, I took Riptide out of my pocket. Zoë looked at the pen, and her expression was pained.

“You made this,” I said.

“Who told thee?”

“I had a dream about it.”

She studied me. I was sure she was going to call me crazy, but she just sighed. “It was a gift. And a mistake.”

“Who was the hero?” I asked.

Zoë shook her head. “Do not make me say his name. I swore never to speak it again.”

“You act like I should know him.”

“I am sure you do, hero. Don't all you boys want to be just like him?”

Her voice was so bitter, I decided not to ask what she meant. I looked down at Riptide, and for the first time, I wondered if it was cursed.

“Your mother was a water goddess?” I asked.

“Yes, Pleione. She had five daughters. My sisters and I. The Hesperides.”

“Those were the girls who lived in a garden at the edge of the West. With the golden apple tree and a dragon guarding it.”

“Yes,” Zoë said wistfully. “Ladon.”

“But weren't there only four sisters?”

“There are now. I was exiled. Forgotten. Blotted out as if I never existed.”

“Why?”

Zoë pointed to my pen. “Because I betrayed my family and helped a hero. You won't find that in the legend either. He never spoke of me. After his direct assault on Ladon failed, I gave him the idea of how to steal the apples, how to trick my father, but
he
took all the credit.”

“But—”

Gurgle, gurgle,
the naiad spoke in my mind. The canoe was slowing down.

I looked ahead, and I saw why.

This was as far as they could take us. The river was blocked. A dam the size of a football stadium stood in our path.

“Hoover Dam,” Thalia said. “It's huge.”

We stood at the river's edge, looking up at a curve of concrete that loomed between the cliffs. People were walking along the top of the dam. They were so tiny they looked like fleas.

The naiads had left with a lot of grumbling—not in words I could understand, but it was obvious they hated this dam blocking up their nice river. Our canoes floated back downstream, swirling in the wake from the dam's discharge vents.

“Seven hundred feet tall,” I said. “Built in the 1930s.”

“Five million cubic acres of water,” Thalia said.

Grover sighed. “Largest construction project in the United States.”

Zoë stared at us. “How do you know all that?”

“Annabeth,” I said. “She liked architecture.”

“She was nuts about monuments,” Thalia said.

“Spouted facts all the time.” Grover sniffled. “So annoying.”

“I wish she were here,” I said.

The others nodded. Zoë was still looking at us strangely, but I didn't care. It seemed like cruel fate that we'd come to Hoover Dam, one of Annabeth's personal favorites, and she wasn't here to see it.

“We should go up there,” I said. “For her sake. Just to say we've been.”

“You are mad,” Zoë decided. “But that's where the road is.” She pointed to a huge parking garage next to the top of the dam. “And so, sightseeing it is.”

We had to walk for almost an hour before we found a path that led up to the road. It came up on the east side of the river. Then we straggled back toward the dam. It was cold and windy on top. On one side, a big lake spread out, ringed by barren desert mountains. On the other side, the dam dropped away like the world's most dangerous skateboard ramp, down to the river seven hundred feet below, and water that churned from the dam's vents.

Thalia walked in the middle of the road, far away from the edges. Grover kept sniffing the wind and looking nervous. He didn't say anything, but I knew he smelled monsters.

“How close are they?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Maybe not close. The wind on the dam, the desert all around us . . . the scent can probably carry for miles. But it's coming from several directions. I don't like that.”

I didn't either. It was already Wednesday, only two days until winter solstice, and we still had a long way to go. We didn't need any more monsters.

“There's a snack bar in the visitor center,” Thalia said.

“You've been here before?” I asked.

“Once. To see the guardians.” She pointed to the far end of the dam. Carved into the side of the cliff was a little plaza with two big bronze statues. They looked kind of like Oscar statues with wings.

“They were dedicated to Zeus when the dam was built,” Thalia said. “A gift from Athena.”

Tourists were clustered all around them. They seemed to be looking at the statues' feet.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“Rubbing the toes,” Thalia said. “They think it's good luck.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. “Mortals get crazy ideas. They don't know the statues are sacred to Zeus, but they know there's something special about them.”

“When you were here last, did they talk to you or anything?”

Thalia's expression darkened. I could tell that she'd come here before hoping for exactly that—some kind of sign from her dad. Some connection. “No. They don't do anything. They're just big metal statues.”

I thought about the last big metal statue we'd run into. That hadn't gone so well. But I decided not to bring it up.

“Let us find the dam snack bar,” Zoë said. “We should eat while we can.”

Grover cracked a smile. “The dam snack bar?”

Zoë blinked. “Yes. What is funny?”

“Nothing,” Grover said, trying to keep a straight face. “I could use some dam french fries.”

Even Thalia smiled at that. “And I need to use the dam restroom.”

Maybe it was the fact that we were so tired and strung out emotionally, but I started cracking up, and Thalia and Grover joined in, while Zoë just looked at us. “I do not understand.”