“one shall perish by a parent’s hand. Yeah.”
I didn’t need to ask. I knew Chiron’s dad was Kronos, the evil Titan Lord himself. The line would make perfect sense if Chiron went on the quest. Kronos didn’t care for anyone, including his own children.
“Chiron,” I said. “You know what this Titan’s curse is, don’t you?”
His face darkened. He made a claw over his heart and pushed outward—an ancient gesture for warding off evil. “Let us hope the prophecy does not mean what I think. Now, good night, Percy. And your time will come. I’m convinced of that. There’s no need to rush.”
He said your time the way people did when they meant your death. I didn’t know if Chiron meant it that way, but the look in his eyes made me scared to ask.
* * *
I stood at the saltwater spring, rubbing Chiron’s coin in my hand and trying to figure out what to say to my mom. I really wasn’t in the mood to have one more adult tell me that doing nothing was the greatest thing I could do, but I figured my mom deserved an update.
Finally, I took a deep breath and threw in the coin. “O goddess, accept my offering.”
The mist shimmered. The light from the bathroom was just enough to make a faint rainbow.
“Show me Sally Jackson,” I said. “Upper East Side, Manhattan.”
And there in the mist was a scene I did not expect. My mom was sitting at our kitchen table with some..guy. They were laughing hysterically. There was a big stack of textbooks between them. The man was, I don’t know, thirty-something, with longish salt-and-pepper hair and a brown jacket over a black T-shirt. He looked like an actor—like a guy who might play an undercover cop on television.
I was too stunned to say anything, and fortunately, my mom and the guy were too busy laughing to notice my Iris-message.
The guy said, “Sally, you’re a riot. You want some more wine?”
“Ah, I shouldn’t. You go ahead if you want.”
“Actually, I’d better use your bathroom. May I?”
“Down the hall,” she said, trying not to laugh.
The actor dude smiled and got up and left.
“Mom!” I said.
She jumped so hard she almost knocked her textbooks off the table. Finally she focused on me. “Percy! Oh, honey! Is everything okay?”
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
She blinked. “Homework.” Then she seemed to understand the look on my face. “Oh, honey, that’s just Paul—um, Mr. Blofis. He’s in my writing seminar.”
“Mr. Blowfish?”
“Blofis. He’ll be back in a minute, Percy. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She always knew when something was wrong. I told her about Annabeth. The other stuff too, but mostly it boiled down to Annabeth.
My mother’s eyes teared up. I could tell she was trying hard to keep it together for my sake. “Oh, Percy…”
“Yeah. So they tell me there’s nothing I can do. I guess I’ll be coming home.”
She turned her pencil around in her fingers. “Percy, as much as I want you to come home”—she sighed like she was mad at herself—“as much as I want you to be safe, I want you to understand something. You need to do whatever you think you have to.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you really, deep down, believe that you have to help save her? Do you think it’s the right thing to do? Because I know one thing about you, Percy. Your heart is always in the right place. Listen to it.”
“You’re…you’re telling me to go?”
My mother pursed her lips. “I’m telling you that…you’re getting too old for me to tell you what to do. I’m telling you that I’ll support you, even if what you decide to do is dangerous. I can’t believe I’m saying this.”
“Mom—”
The toilet flushed down the hall in our apartment.
“I don’t have much time,” my mom said. “Percy, whatever you decide, I love you. And I know you’ll do what’s best for Annabeth.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because she’d do the same for you.”
And with that, my mother waved her hand over the mist, and the connection dissolved, leaving me with one final image of her new friend, Mr. Blowfish, smiling down at her.
* * *
I don’t remember falling asleep, but I remember the dream.
I was back in that barren cave, the ceiling heavy and low above me. Annabeth was kneeling under the weight of a dark mass othat looked like a pile of boulders. She was too tired even to cry out. Her legs trembled. Any second, I knew she would run out of strength and the cavern ceiling would collapse on top of her.
“How is our mortal guest?” a male voice boomed.
It wasn’t Kronos. Kronos’s voice was raspy and metallic, like a kniefe scraped across stone. I’d heard it taunting me many times before in my dreams. But this voice was deeper and lower, like a bass guitar. Its force made the ground vibrate.
Luke emerged from the shadows. He ran to Annabeth, knelt beside her, then looked back at the unseen man. “She’s fading. We must hurry.”
The hypocrite. Like he really cared what happened to her.
The deep voice chuckled. It belonged to someone in the shadows, at the edge of my dream. Then a meaty hand thrust someone forward into the light—Artemis—her hands and feet bound in celestial bronze chains.
I gasped. Her silvery dress was torn and tattered. Her face and arms were cut in several places, and she was bleeding ichor, the golden blood of the gods.
“You heard the boy,” said the man in the shadows. “Decide!”
Artemis’s eyes flashed with anger. I didn’t know why she just didn’t will the chains to burst, or make herself disappear, but she didn’t seem able to. Maybe the chains prevented her, or some magic about this dark, horrible place.
The goddess looked at Annabeth and her expression changed to concern and outrage. “How dare you torture a maiden like this!”
“She will die soon,” Luke said. “You can save her.”
Annabeth made a weak sound of protest. My heart felt like it was being twisted into a knot. I wanted to run to her, but I couldn’t move.
“Free my hands,” Artemis said.
Luke brought out his sword, Backbiter. With one expert strike, he broke the goddess’s handcuffs.
Artemis ran to Annabeth and took the burden from her shoulders. Annabeth collapsed on the ground and lay there shivering. Artemis staggered, trying to support the weight of the black rocks.
The man in the shadows chuckled. “You are as predictable as you were easy to beat, Artemis.”
“You surprised me,” the goddess said, straining under her burden. “It will not happen again.”
“Indeed it will not,” the man said. “Now you are out of the way to good! I knew you could not resist helping a young maiden. That is, after all, your specialty, my dear.”
Artemis groaned. “You know nothing of mercy, you swine.”
“On that,” the man said, “we can agree. Luke, you may kill the girl now.”
“No!” Artemis shouted.
Luke hesitated. “She—she may yet be useful, sir. Further bait.”
“Bah! You truly believe that?”
“Yes, General. They will come for her. I’m sure.”
The man considered. “Then the dracaenae can guard her here. Assuming she does not die from her injuries, you may keep her alive until winter solstice. After that, if our sacrifice goes as planned, her life will be meaningless. The lives of all mortals will be meaningless.”
Luke gathered up Annabeth’s listless body and carried her away from the goddess.
“You will never find the monster you seek,” Artemis said. “Your plan will fail.”
“How little you know, my young goddess,” the man in the shadows said. “Even now, your darling attendants begin their quest to find you. They shall play directly into my hands. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a long journey to make. We must greet your Hunters and make sure their quest is…challenging.”
The man’s laughter echoed in the darkness, shaking the ground until it seemed the whole cavern ceiling would collapse.
* * *
I woke with a start. I was sure I’d heard a loud banging.
I looked around the cabin. It was dark outside. The salt spring still gurgled. No other sounds but the hoot of an owl in the woods and the distant surf on the beach. In the moonlight, on my nightstand, was Annabeth’s New York Yankees cap. I stared at it for a second, and then: BANG. BANG.
Someone, or something, was pounding on my door.
I grabbed Riptide and got out of bed.
“Hello?” I called.
THUMP. THUMP.
I crept to the door.
I uncapped the blade, flung open the door, and found myself face-to-face with a black Pegasus.
Whoa, boss! Its voice spoke in my mind as it clopped away from the sword blade. I don’t wanna be a horse-ke-bob!
Its black wings spread in alarm, and the wind buffeted me back a step.
“Blackjack,” I said, relieved but a little irritated. “It’s the middle of the night!”
Blackjack huffed. Ain’t either, boss. It’s five in the morning. What you still sleeping for?
“How many times have I told you? Don’t call me boss.”
Whatever you say, boss. You’re the man. You’re my number one.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and tried not to let the Pegasus read my thoughts. That’s the problem with being Poseidon’s son: since he created horses out of sea foam, I can understand most equestrian animals, but they can understand me, too. Sometimes, like in Blackjack’s case, they kind of adopt me.
See, Blackjack had been a captive on board Luke’s ship last summer, until we’d caused a little distraction that allowed him to escape. I’d really had very little to do with it, seriously, but Blackjack credited me with saving him.
“Blackjack,” I said, “you’re supposed to stay in the stables.”
Meh, the stables. You see Chiron staying in the stables?
“Well…no.”
Exactly. Listen, we got another little sea friend needs your help.
“Again?”
Yeah. I told the hippocampi I’d come get you.
I groaned. Anytime I was anywhere near the beach, the hippocampi would ask me to help them with their problems. And they had a lot of problems. Beached whales, porpoises caught in fishing nets, mermaids with hangnails—they’d call me to come underwater and help.
“All right,” I said. “I’m coming.”
You’re the best, boss.
“And don’t call me boss!”
Blackjack whinnied softly. It might’ve been a laugh.
I looked back at my comfortable bed. My bronze shield still hung on the wall, dented and unusable. And on my nightstand was Annabeth’s magic Yankees cap. On an impulse, I stuck the cap in my pocket. I guess I had a feeling, even then, that I wasn’t coming back to my cabin for a long, long time.
EIGHT
I MAKE A DANGEROUS
PROMISE
Blackjack gave me a ride down the beach, and I have to admit it was cool. Being on a flying horse, skimming over the waves at a hundred miles an hour with the wind in my hair and the sea spray in my face—hey, it beats waterskiiing any day.
Here. Blackjack slowed and turned in a circle. Straight down.
“Thanks.” I tumbled off his back and plunged into the icy sea.
I’d gotten more comfortable doing stunts like that the past couple of years. I could pretty much move however I wanted to underwater, just by willing the ocean currents to change around me and propel me along. I could breathe underwater, no problem, and my clothes never got wet unless I wanted them to.
I shot down into the darkness.
Twenty, thirty, forty feet. The pressure wasn’t uncomfortable. I’d never tried to push it—to see if there was a limit to how deep I could dive. I knew most regular humans couldn’t go past two hundred feet without crumpling like an aluminum can. I should’ve been blind, too, this deep in the water at night, but I could see the heat from living forms, and the cold of the currents. It’s hard to describe. It wasn’t like regular seeing, but I could tell where everything was.
As I got closer to the bottom, I saw three hippocampi—fish-tailed horses—swimming in a circle around an overturned boat. The hippocampi were beautiful to watch. Their fish tails shimmered in rainbow colors, glowing phosphorescent. Their manes were white, and they were galloping through the water the way nervous horses do in a thunderstorm. Something was upsetting them.
I got closer and saw the problem. A dark shape—some kind of animal—was wedged halfway under the boat and tangled in a fishing net, one of those big nets they use on trawlers to catch everything at once. I hated those things. It was bad enough they drowned porpoises and dolphins, but they also occasionally caught mythological animals. When the nets got tangled, some lazy fisherman would just cut them loose and let the trapped animals die.
Apparently this poor creature had been mucking around the bottom of Long Island Sound and had somehow gotten itself tangled in the net of this sunken fishing boat. It had tried to get out and managed to get even more hopelessly stuck, shifting the boat in the process. Now the wreckage of the hull, which was resting against a big rock, was teetering and threatening to collapse on top of the tangled animal.
The hippocampi were swimming around frantically, wanting to help but not sure how. One was trying to chew the net, but hippocampi teeth just aren’t meant for cutting rope. Hippocampi are really strong, but they don’t have hands, and they’re not (shhh) all that smart.
Free it, lord! A hippocampus said when it saw me. The others joined in, asking the same thing.
I swam in for a closer look at the tangled creature. At first I thought it was a young hippocampus. I’d rescued several of them before. But then I heard a strange sound. Something that did not belong underwater.
“Mooooooo!”
I got next to the thing and saw that it was a cow. I mean…I’d heard of sea cows, like manatees and stuff, but this really was a cow with the back end of a serpent. The front half was a calf—a baby, with black fur and big, sad brown eyes and a white muzzle—and its back half was a black-and-brown snaky tail with fins running down the top and bottom, like an enormous eel.
“Who, little one,” I said. “Where did you come from?”
The creature looked at me sadly. “Moooo!”
But I couldn’t understand its thoughts. I only speak horse.
We don’t know what it is, lord, one of the hippocampi said. Many strange things are stirring.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “So I’ve heard.”
I uncapped Riptide, and the sword grew to full length in my hands, its bronze blade gleaming in the dark.
The cow serpent freaked out and started struggling against the net, its eyes full of terror. “Whoa!” I said. “I’m not going to hurt you! Just let me cut the net.”
But the cow serpent thrashed around and got even more tangled. The boat started to tilt, stirring up the muck on the sea bottom and threatening to topple onto the cow serpent. The hippocampi whinnied in a panic and thrashed in the water, which didn’t help.
“Okay, okay!” I said. I put away the sword and started speaking as calmly as I could so the hippocampi and the cow serpent would stop panicking. I didn’t know if it was possible to get stampeded underwater, but I didn’t really want to find out. “It’s cool. No sword. See? No sword. Calm thoughts. Sea grass. Mama cows. Vegetarianism.”
