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BOOKS BY RICK RIORDAN
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book One:
The Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Two:
The Sea of Monsters
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Three:
The Titan’s Curse
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Four:
The Battle of the Labyrinth
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Five:
The Last Olympian
Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
The Demigod Files
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book One:
The Lightning Thief, The Graphic Novel
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Two:
The Sea of Monsters, The Graphic Novel
Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book Three:
The Titan’s Curse, The Graphic Novel
The Kane Chronicles, Book One:

The Red Pyramid
The Kane Chronicles, Book Two:
The Throne of Fire
The Kane Chronicles, Book Three:
The Serpent’s Shadow
The Kane Chronicles:
The Kane Chronicles Survival Guide
The Kane Chronicles, Book One
The Red Pyramid, The Graphic Novel
The Heroes of Olympus, Book One:
The Lost Hero
The Heroes of Olympus, Book Two:
The Son of Neptune
The Heroes of Olympus, Book Three:
The Mark of Athena
The Heroes of Olympus, Book Four:
The House of Hades
The Heroes of Olympus:
The Demigod Diaries
The Son of Sobek
A Carter Kane/Percy Jackson Short Story

Copyright © 2013 by Rick Riordan

Cover design by Joann Hill

Cover photo © 2013 by John Rocco

Excerpt from The Red Pyramid copyright © 2010 by Rick Riordan.

All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney
Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission
from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 125 West
End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

ISBN 978-1-4231-5515-7

Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com

Contents

Title Page

Books by Rick Riordan

Copyright

Dedication

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
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XXVII

XXVIII
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XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII

XLIX
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llI
LII
LIII
LIV
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LVI
LVII
LVIII
LIX
LX
LXI
LXII
LXIII
LXIV
LXV
LXVI
LXVII
LXVIII
LXIX

LXX
LXXI
LXXII
LXXIII
LXXIV
LXXV
LXXVI
LXXVII
LXXVIII
Glossary
Preview of The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid
To my wonderful readers:
Sorry about that last cliff-hanger.
Well, no, not really. HAHAHAHA.
But seriously, I love you guys.

DURING THE THIRD ATTACK, Hazel almost ate a boulder. She was
peering into the fog, wondering how it could be so difficult to fly across one
stupid mountain range, when the ship’s alarm bells sounded.

“Hard to port!” Nico yelled from the foremast of the flying ship.

Back at the helm, Leo yanked the wheel. The Argo II veered left, its aerial oars
slashing through the clouds like rows of knives.

Hazel made the mistake of looking over the rail. A dark spherical shape hurtled
toward her. She thought: Why is the moon coming at us? Then she yelped and hit
the deck. The huge rock passed so close overhead it blew her hair out of her
face.

CRACK!

The foremast collapsed—sail, spars, and Nico all crashing to the deck. The
boulder, roughly the size of a pickup truck, tumbled off into the fog like it had
important business elsewhere.

“Nico!” Hazel scrambled over to him as Leo brought the ship level.

“I’m fine,” Nico muttered, kicking folds of canvas off his legs.

She helped him up, and they stumbled to the bow. Hazel peeked over more
carefully this time.

The clouds parted just long enough to reveal the top of the mountain below
them: a spearhead of black rock jutting from mossy green slopes. Standing at the
summit was a mountain god—one of the numina montanum, Jason had called
them. Or ourae, in Greek. Whatever you called them, they were nasty.

Like the others they had faced, this one wore a simple white tunic over skin as
rough and dark as basalt. He was about twenty feet tall and extremely muscular,
with a flowing white beard, scraggly hair, and a wild look in his eyes, like a
crazy hermit. He bellowed something Hazel didn’t understand, but it obviously
wasn’t welcoming. With his bare hands, he pried another chunk of rock from his
mountain and began shaping it into a ball.

The scene disappeared in the fog, but when the mountain god bellowed again,
other numina answered in the distance, their voices echoing through the valleys.

“Stupid rock gods!” Leo yelled from the helm. “That’s the third time I’ve had to
replace that mast! You think they grow on trees?”

Nico frowned. “Masts are from trees.”

“That’s not the point!” Leo snatched up one of his controls, rigged from a
Nintendo Wii stick, and spun it in a circle. A few feet away, a trapdoor opened
in the deck. A Celestial bronze cannon rose. Hazel just had time to cover her
ears before it discharged into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trailed
green fire. The spheres grew spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and hurtled
away into the fog.

A moment later, a series of explosions crackled across the mountains, followed
by the outraged roars of mountain gods.

“Ha!” Leo yelled.

Unfortunately, Hazel guessed, judging from their last two encounters, Leo’s
newest weapon had only annoyed the numina.

Another boulder whistled through the air off to their starboard side.

Nico yelled, “Get us out of here!”

Leo muttered some unflattering comments about numina, but he turned the
wheel. The engines hummed. Magical rigging lashed itself tight, and the ship
tacked to port. The Argo II picked up speed, retreating northwest, as they’d been
doing for the past two days.

Hazel didn’t relax until they were out of the mountains. The fog cleared. Below
them, morning sunlight illuminated the Italian countryside—rolling green hills
and golden fields not too different from those in Northern California. Hazel
could almost imagine she was sailing home to Camp Jupiter.

The thought weighed on her chest. Camp Jupiter had only been her home for
nine months, since Nico had brought her back from the Underworld. But she
missed it more than her birthplace of New Orleans, and definitely more than
Alaska, where she’d died back in 1942.

She missed her bunk in the Fifth Cohort barracks. She missed dinners in the
mess hall, with wind spirits whisking platters through the air and legionnaires
joking about the war games. She wanted to wander the streets of New Rome,
holding hands with Frank Zhang. She wanted to experience just being a regular
girl for once, with an actual sweet, caring boyfriend.

Most of all, she wanted to feel safe. She was tired of being scared and worried
all the time.

She stood on the quarterdeck as Nico picked mast splinters out of his arms and
Leo punched buttons on the ship’s console.

“Well, that was sucktastic,” Leo said. “Should I wake the others?” Hazel was
tempted to say yes, but the other crew members had taken the night shift and had
earned their rest. They were exhausted from defending the ship. Every few
hours, it seemed, some Roman monster had decided the Argo II looked like a
tasty treat.

A few weeks ago, Hazel wouldn’t have believed that anyone could sleep through
a numina attack, but now she imagined her friends were still snoring away
belowdecks. Whenever she got a chance to crash, she slept like a coma patient.

“They need rest,” she said. “We’ll have to figure out another way on our own.”

“Huh.” Leo scowled at his monitor. In his tattered work shirt and grease-
splattered jeans, he looked like he’d just lost a wrestling match with a
locomotive.

Ever since their friends Percy and Annabeth had fallen into Tartarus, Leo had
been working almost nonstop. He’d been acting angrier and even more driven
than usual.

Hazel worried about him. But part of her was relieved by the change. Whenever
Leo smiled and joked, he looked too much like Sammy, his great-grandfather…
Hazel’s first boyfriend, back in 1942.

Ugh, why did her life have to be so complicated?

“Another way,” Leo muttered. “Do you see one?”

On his monitor glowed a map of Italy. The Apennine Mountains ran down the
middle of the boot-shaped country. A green dot for the Argo II blinked on the
western side of the range, a few hundred miles north of Rome. Their path should
have been simple. They needed to get to a place called Epirus in Greece and find
an old temple called the House of Hades (or Pluto, as the Romans called him; or
as Hazel liked to think of him: the World’s Worst Absent Father).

To reach Epirus, all they had to do was go straight east—over the Apennines and
across the Adriatic Sea. But it hadn’t worked out that way. Each time they tried
to cross the spine of Italy, the mountain gods attacked.

For the past two days they’d skirted north, hoping to find a safe pass, with no
luck. The numina montanum were sons of Gaea, Hazel’s least favorite goddess.
That made them very determined enemies. The Argo II couldn’t fly high enough
to avoid their attacks; and even with all its defenses, the ship couldn’t make it
across the range without being smashed to pieces.

“It’s our fault,” Hazel said. “Nico’s and mine. The numina can sense us.” She
glanced at her half brother. Since they’d rescued him from the giants, he’d
started to regain his strength, but he was still painfully thin. His black shirt and
jeans hung off his skeletal frame. Long dark hair framed his sunken eyes. His
olive complexion had turned a sickly greenish white, like the color of tree sap.

In human years, he was barely fourteen, just a year older than Hazel, but that

didn’t tell the whole story. Like Hazel, Nico di Angelo was a demigod from
another era. He radiated a kind of old energy

—a melancholy that came from knowing he didn’t belong in the modern world.

Hazel hadn’t known him very long, but she understood, even shared, his sadness.
The children of Hades (Pluto—whichever) rarely had happy lives. And judging
from what Nico had told her the night before, their biggest challenge was yet to
come when they reached the House of Hades—a challenge he’d implored her to
keep secret from the others.

Nico gripped the hilt of his Stygian iron sword. “Earth spirits don’t like children
of the Underworld. That’s true. We get under their skin— literally. But I think
the numina could sense this ship anyway. We’re carrying the Athena Parthenos.
That thing is like a magical beacon.” Hazel shivered, thinking of the massive
statue that took up most of the hold. They’d sacrificed so much saving it from
the cavern under Rome; but they had no idea what to do with it. So far the only
thing it seemed to be good for was alerting more monsters to their presence.

Leo traced his finger down the map of Italy. “So crossing the mountains is out.
Thing is, they go a long way in either direction.”

“We could go by sea,” Hazel suggested. “Sail around the southern tip of Italy.”

“That’s a long way,” Nico said. “Plus, we don’t have…” His voice cracked.
“You know…our sea expert, Percy.”

The name hung in the air like an impending storm.

Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon…probably the demigod Hazel admired most.
He’d saved her life so many times on their quest to Alaska; but when he had
needed Hazel’s help in Rome, she’d failed him. She’d watched, powerless, as he
and Annabeth had plunged into that pit.

Hazel took a deep breath. Percy and Annabeth were still alive. She knew that in
her heart. She could still help them if she could get to the House of Hades, if she
could survive the challenge Nico had warned her about.…

“What about continuing north?” she asked. “There has to be a break in the
mountains, or something.”

Leo fiddled with the bronze Archimedes sphere that he’d installed on the console
—his newest and most dangerous toy. Every time Hazel looked at the thing, her
mouth went dry. She worried that Leo would turn the wrong combination on the
sphere and accidentally eject them all from the deck, or blow up the ship, or turn
the Argo II into a giant toaster.

Fortunately, they got lucky. The sphere grew a camera lens and projected a 3-D
image of the Apennine Mountains above the console.

“I dunno.” Leo examined the hologram. “I don’t see any good passes to the
north. But I like that idea better than backtracking south. I’m done with Rome.”
No one argued with that. Rome had not been a good experience.

“Whatever we do,” Nico said, “we have to hurry. Every day that Annabeth and
Percy are in Tartarus…”

He didn’t need to finish. They had to hope Percy and Annabeth could survive
long enough to find the Tartarus side of the Doors of Death. Then, assuming the
Argo II could reach the House of Hades, they might be able to open the Doors on
the mortal side, save their friends, and seal the entrance, stopping Gaea’s forces
from being reincarnated in the mortal world over and over.

Yes…nothing could go wrong with that plan.

Nico scowled at the Italian countryside below them. “Maybe we should wake the
others. This decision affects us all.”

“No,” Hazel said. “We can find a solution.”

She wasn’t sure why she felt so strongly about it, but since leaving Rome, the
crew had started to lose its cohesion. They’d been learning to work as a team.
Then bam…their two most important members fell into Tartarus. Percy had been
their backbone. He’d given them confidence as they sailed across the Atlantic
and into the Mediterranean. As for Annabeth—she’d been the de facto leader of
the quest. She’d recovered the Athena Parthenos single-handedly. She was the
smartest of the seven, the one with the answers.

If Hazel woke up the rest of the crew every time they had a problem, they’d just
start arguing again, feeling more and more hopeless.

She had to make Percy and Annabeth proud of her. She had to take the initiative.
She couldn’t believe her only role in this quest would be what Nico had warned
her of—removing the obstacle waiting for them in the House of Hades. She
pushed the thought aside.

“We need some creative thinking,” she said. “Another way to cross those
mountains, or a way to hide ourselves from the numina.”

Nico sighed. “If I was on my own, I could shadow-travel. But that won’t work
for an entire ship.

And honestly, I’m not sure I have the strength to even transport myself
anymore.”

“I could maybe rig some kind of camouflage,” Leo said, “like a smoke screen to
hide us in the clouds.” He didn’t sound very enthusiastic.

Hazel stared down at the rolling farmland, thinking about what lay beneath it—
the realm of her father, lord of the Underworld. She’d only met Pluto once, and
she hadn’t even realized who he was.

She certainly had never expected help from him—not when she was alive the
first time, not during her time as a spirit in the Underworld, not since Nico had
brought her back to the world of the living.

Her dad’s servant Thanatos, god of death, had suggested that Pluto might be
doing Hazel a favor by ignoring her. After all, she wasn’t supposed to be alive. If
Pluto took notice of her, he might have to return her to the land of the dead.

Which meant calling on Pluto would be a very bad idea. And yet…

Please, Dad, she found herself praying. I have to find a way to your temple in
Greece—the House of Hades. If you’re down there, show me what to do.

At the edge of the horizon, a flicker of movement caught her eye—something
small and beige racing across the fields at incredible speed, leaving a vapor trail
like a plane’s.

Hazel couldn’t believe it. She didn’t dare hope, but it had to be…“Arion.”

“What?” Nico asked.
Leo let out a happy whoop as the dust cloud got closer. “It’s her horse, man!
You missed that whole part. We haven’t seen him since Kansas!”
Hazel laughed—the first time she’d laughed in days. It felt so good to see her old
friend.
About a mile to the north, the small beige dot circled a hill and stopped at the
summit. He was difficult to make out, but when the horse reared and whinnied,
the sound carried all the way to the Argo II. Hazel had no doubt—it was Arion.
“We have to meet him,” she said. “He’s here to help.”
“Yeah, okay.” Leo scratched his head. “But, uh, we talked about not landing the
ship on the ground anymore, remember? You know, with Gaea wanting to
destroy us and all.”
“Just get me close, and I’ll use the rope ladder.” Hazel’s heart was pounding. “I
think Arion wants to tell me something.”

HAZEL HAD NEVER FELT SO HAPPY. Well, except for maybe on the
night of the victory feast at Camp Jupiter, when she’d kissed Frank for the first
time…but this was a close second.

As soon as she reached the ground, she ran to Arion and threw her arms around
him. “I missed you!” She pressed her face into the horse’s warm neck, which
smelled of sea salt and apples. “Where have you been?”

Arion nickered. Hazel wished she could speak Horse like Percy could, but she
got the general idea. Arion sounded impatient, as if saying, No time for
sentiment, girl! Come on!

“You want me to go with you?” she guessed.

Arion bobbed his head, trotting in place. His dark brown eyes gleamed with
urgency.

Hazel still couldn’t believe he was actually here. He could run across any
surface, even the sea; but she’d been afraid he wouldn’t follow them into the
ancient lands. The Mediterranean was too dangerous for demigods and their
allies.

He wouldn’t have come unless Hazel was in dire need. And he seemed so
agitated.… Anything that could make a fearless horse skittish should have
terrified Hazel.

Instead, she felt elated. She was so tired of being seasick and airsick. Aboard the
Argo II, she felt about as useful as a box of ballast. She was glad to be back on
solid ground, even if it was Gaea’s territory. She was ready to ride.

“Hazel!” Nico called down from the ship. “What’s going on?”

“It’s fine!” She crouched down and summoned a gold nugget from the earth. She
was getting better at controlling her power. Precious stones hardly ever popped
up around her by accident anymore, and pulling gold from the ground was easy.

She fed Arion the nugget…his favorite snack. Then she smiled up at Leo and
Nico, who were watching her from the top of the ladder a hundred feet above.
“Arion wants to take me somewhere.” The boys exchanged nervous looks.

“Uh…” Leo pointed north. “Please tell me he’s not taking you into that?” Hazel
had been so focused on Arion, she hadn’t noticed the disturbance. A mile away,
on the crest of the next hill, a storm had gathered over some old stone ruins—
maybe the remains of a Roman temple or a fortress. A funnel cloud snaked its

way down toward the hill like an inky black finger.

Hazel’s mouth tasted like blood. She looked at Arion. “You want to go there?”
Arion whinnied, as if to say, Uh, duh!

Well…Hazel had asked for help. Was this her dad’s answer?

She hoped so, but she sensed something besides Pluto at work in that storm…
something dark, powerful, and not necessarily friendly.

Still, this was her chance to help her friends—to lead instead of follow.

She tightened the straps of her Imperial gold cavalry sword and climbed onto
Arion’s back.

“I’ll be okay!” she called up to Nico and Leo. “Stay put and wait for me.”

“Wait for how long?” Nico asked. “What if you don’t come back?”

“Don’t worry, I will,” she promised, hoping it was true.

She spurred Arion, and they shot across the countryside, heading straight for the
growing tornado.

THE STORM SWALLOWED THE HILL in a swirling cone of black vapor.

Arion charged straight into it.

Hazel found herself at the summit, but it felt like a different dimension. The
world lost its color.

The walls of the storm encircled the hill in murky black. The sky churned gray.
The crumbling ruins were bleached so white, they almost glowed. Even Arion
had turned from caramel brown to a dark shade of ash.

In the eye of the tempest, the air was still. Hazel’s skin tingled coolly, as if she’d
been rubbed with alcohol. In front of her, an arched gateway led through mossy
walls into some sort of enclosure.

Hazel couldn’t see much through the gloom, but she felt a presence within, as if
she were a chunk of iron close to a large magnet. Its pull was irresistible,
dragging her forward.

Yet she hesitated. She reined in Arion, and he clopped impatiently, the ground
crackling under his hooves. Wherever he stepped, the grass, dirt, and stones
turned white like frost. Hazel remembered the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska—how
the surface had cracked under their feet. She remembered the floor of that
horrible cavern in Rome crumbling to dust, plunging Percy and Annabeth into
Tartarus.

She hoped this black-and-white hilltop wouldn’t dissolve under her, but she
decided it was best to keep moving.

“Let’s go, then, boy.” Her voice sounded muffled, as if she were speaking into a
pillow.

Arion trotted through the stone archway. Ruined walls bordered a square
courtyard about the size of a tennis court. Three other gateways, one in the
middle of each wall, led north, east, and west.

In the center of the yard, two cobblestone paths intersected, making a cross. Mist
hung in the air—

hazy shreds of white that coiled and undulated as if they were alive.

Not mist, Hazel realized. The Mist.

All her life, she’d heard about the Mist—the supernatural veil that obscured the
world of myth from the sight of mortals. It could deceive humans, even
demigods, into seeing monsters as harmless animals, or gods as regular people.

Hazel had never thought of it as actual smoke, but as she watched it curling
around Arion’s legs, floating through the broken arches of the ruined courtyard,
the hairs stood up on her arms. Somehow she knew: this white stuff was pure
magic.

In the distance, a dog howled. Arion wasn’t usually scared of anything, but he
reared, huffing nervously.

“It’s okay.” Hazel stroked his neck. “We’re in this together. I’m going to get
down, all right?” She slid off Arion’s back. Instantly he turned and ran.

“Arion, wai—”

But he’d already disappeared the way he’d come.

So much for being in this together.

Another howl cut through the air—closer this time.

Hazel stepped toward the center of the courtyard. The Mist clung to her like
freezer fog.

“Hello?” she called.

“Hello,” a voice answered.

The pale figure of a woman appeared at the northern gateway. No, wait…she
stood at the eastern entrance. No, the western. Three smoky images of the same
woman moved in unison toward the center of the ruins. Her form was blurred,
made from Mist, and she was trailed by two smaller wisps of smoke, darting at
her heels like animals. Some sort of pets?

She reached the center of the courtyard and her three forms merged into one. She
solidified into a young woman in a dark sleeveless gown. Her golden hair was

gathered into a high-set ponytail, Ancient Greek style. Her dress was so silky, it
seemed to ripple, as if the cloth were ink spilling off her shoulders. She looked
no more than twenty, but Hazel knew that meant nothing.

“Hazel Levesque,” said the woman.

She was beautiful, but deathly pale. Once, back in New Orleans, Hazel had been
forced to attend a wake for a dead classmate. She remembered the lifeless body
of the young girl in the open casket.

Her face had been made up prettily, as if she were resting, which Hazel had
found terrifying.

This woman reminded Hazel of that girl—except the woman’s eyes were open
and completely black. When she tilted her head, she seemed to break into three
different people again…misty afterimages blurring together, like a photograph of
someone moving too fast to capture.

“Who are you?” Hazel’s fingers twitched at the hilt of her sword. “I mean…
which goddess?” Hazel was sure of that much. This woman radiated power.
Everything around them—the swirling Mist, the monochromatic storm, the eerie
glow of the ruins—was because of her presence.

“Ah.” The woman nodded. “Let me give you some light.”

She raised her hands. Suddenly she was holding two old-fashioned reed torches,
guttering with fire. The Mist receded to the edges of the courtyard. At the
woman’s sandaled feet, the two wispy animals took on solid form. One was a
black Labrador retriever. The other was a long, gray, furry rodent with a white
mask around its face. A weasel, maybe?

The woman smiled serenely.

“I am Hecate,” she said. “Goddess of magic. We have much to discuss if you’re
to live through tonight.”

HAZEL WANTED TO RUN, but her feet seemed stuck to the white-glazed
ground.

On either side of the crossroads, two dark metal torch-stands erupted from the
dirt like plant stalks. Hecate fixed her torches in them, then walked a slow circle
around Hazel, regarding her as if they were partners in some eerie dance.

The black dog and the weasel followed in her wake.

“You are like your mother,” Hecate decided.

Hazel’s throat constricted. “You knew her?”

“Of course. Marie was a fortune-teller. She dealt in charms and curses and gris-
gris. I am the goddess of magic.”

Those pure black eyes seemed to pull at Hazel, as if trying to extract her soul.
During her first lifetime in New Orleans, Hazel had been tormented by the kids
at St. Agnes School because of her mother. They called Marie Levesque a witch.
The nuns muttered that Hazel’s mother was trading with the Devil.

If the nuns were scared of my mom, Hazel wondered, what would they make of
this goddess?

“Many fear me,” Hecate said, as if reading her thoughts. “But magic is neither
good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.”

“My—my mother…” Hazel stammered. “She didn’t believe in magic. Not
really. She was just faking it, for the money.”

The weasel chittered and bared its teeth. Then it made a squeaking sound from
its back end.

Under other circumstances, a weasel passing gas might have been funny, but
Hazel didn’t laugh. The rodent’s red eyes glared at her balefully, like tiny coals.

“Peace, Gale,” said Hecate. She gave Hazel an apologetic shrug. “Gale does not
like hearing about nonbelievers and con artists. She herself was once a witch,
you see.”

“Your weasel was a witch?”

“She’s a polecat, actually,” Hecate said. “But, yes—Gale was once a
disagreeable human witch.

She had terrible personal hygiene, plus extreme—ah, digestive issues.” Hecate
waved her hand in front of her nose. “It gave my other followers a bad name.”

“Okay.” Hazel tried not to look at the weasel. She really didn’t want to know
about the rodent’s intestinal problems.

“At any rate,” Hecate said, “I turned her into a polecat. She’s much better as a
polecat.” Hazel swallowed. She looked at the black dog, which was
affectionately nuzzling the goddess’s hand. “And your Labrador…?”

“Oh, she’s Hecuba, the former queen of Troy,” Hecate said, as if that should be
obvious.

The dog grunted.

“You’re right, Hecuba,” the goddess said. “We don’t have time for long
introductions. The point is, Hazel Levesque, your mother may have claimed not
to believe, but she had true magic. Eventually, she realized this. When she
searched for a spell to summon the god Pluto, I helped her find it.”

“You…?”

“Yes.” Hecate continued circling Hazel. “I saw potential in your mother. I see
even more potential in you.”

Hazel’s head spun. She remembered her mother’s confession just before she had
died: how she’d summoned Pluto, how the god had fallen in love with her, and
how, because of her greedy wish, her daughter Hazel had been born with a curse.
Hazel could summon riches from the earth, but anyone who used them would
suffer and die.

Now this goddess was saying that she had made all that happen.

“My mother suffered because of that magic. My whole life—”

“Your life wouldn’t have happened without me,” Hecate said flatly. “I have no
time for your anger. Neither do you. Without my help, you will die.”

The black dog snarled. The polecat snapped its teeth and passed gas.

Hazel felt like her lungs were filling with hot sand.

“What kind of help?” she demanded.

Hecate raised her pale arms. The three gateways she’d come from—north, east,
and west—

began to swirl with Mist. A flurry of black-and-white images glowed and
flickered, like the old silent movies that were still playing in theaters sometimes
when Hazel was small.

In the western doorway, Roman and Greek demigods in full armor fought one
another on a hillside under a large pine tree. The grass was strewn with the
wounded and the dying. Hazel saw herself riding Arion, charging through the
melee and shouting—trying to stop the violence.

In the gateway to the east, Hazel saw the Argo II plunging through the sky above
the Apennines.

Its rigging was in flames. A boulder smashed into the quarterdeck. Another

punched through the hull.

The ship burst like a rotten pumpkin, and the engine exploded.

The images in the northern doorway were even worse. Hazel saw Leo,
unconscious—or dead—

falling through the clouds. She saw Frank staggering alone down a dark tunnel,
clutching his arm, his shirt soaked in blood. And Hazel saw herself in a vast
cavern filled with strands of light like a luminous web. She was struggling to
break through while, in the distance, Percy and Annabeth lay sprawled and
unmoving at the foot of two black-and-silver metal doors.

“Choices,” said Hecate. “You stand at the crossroads, Hazel Levesque. And I am
the goddess of crossroads.”

The ground rumbled at Hazel’s feet. She looked down and saw the glint of silver
coins…

thousands of old Roman denarii breaking the surface all around her, as if the
entire hilltop was coming to a boil. She’d been so agitated by the visions in the
doorways that she must have summoned every bit of silver in the surrounding
countryside.

“The past is close to the surface in this place,” Hecate said. “In ancient times,
two great Roman roads met here. News was exchanged. Markets were held.
Friends met, and enemies fought. Entire armies had to choose a direction.
Crossroads are always places of decision.”

“Like…like Janus.” Hazel remembered the shrine of Janus on Temple Hill back
at Camp Jupiter.

Demigods would go there to make decisions. They would flip a coin, heads or
tails, and hope the two-faced god would guide them well. Hazel had always
hated that place. She’d never understood why her friends were so willing to let a
god take away their responsibility for choosing. After all Hazel had been
through, she trusted the wisdom of the gods about as much as she trusted a New
Orleans slot machine.

The goddess of magic made a disgusted hiss. “Janus and his doorways. He

would have you believe that all choices are black or white, yes or no, in or out.
In fact, it’s not that simple. Whenever you reach the crossroads, there are always
at least three ways to go…four, if you count going backward. You are at such a
crossing now, Hazel.”

Hazel looked again at each swirling gateway: a demigod war, the destruction of
the Argo II, disaster for herself and her friends. “All the choices are bad.”

“All choices have risks,” the goddess corrected. “But what is your goal?”

“My goal?” Hazel waved helplessly at the doorways. “None of these.” The dog
Hecuba snarled. Gale the polecat skittered around the goddess’s feet, farting and
gnashing her teeth.

“You could go backward,” Hecate suggested, “retrace your steps to Rome…but
Gaea’s forces are expecting that. None of you will survive.”

“So…what are you saying?”

Hecate stepped to the nearest torch. She scooped a handful of fire and sculpted
the flames until she was holding a miniature relief map of Italy.

“You could go west.” Hecate let her finger drift away from her fiery map. “Go
back to America with your prize, the Athena Parthenos. Your comrades back
home, Greek and Roman, are on the brink of war. Leave now, and you might
save many lives.”

“Might,” Hazel repeated. “But Gaea is supposed to wake in Greece. That’s
where the giants are gathering.”

“True. Gaea has set the date of August first, the Feast of Spes, goddess of hope,
for her rise to power. By waking on the Day of Hope, she intends to destroy all
hope forever. Even if you reached Greece by then, could you stop her? I do not
know.” Hecate traced her finger along the tops of the fiery Apennines. “You
could go east, across the mountains, but Gaea will do anything to stop you from
crossing Italy. She has raised her mountain gods against you.”

“We noticed,” Hazel said.

“Any attempt to cross the Apennines will mean the destruction of your ship.

Ironically, this might be the safest option for your crew. I foresee that all of you
would survive the explosion. It is possible, though unlikely, you could still reach
Epirus and close the Doors of Death. You might find Gaea and prevent her rise.
But by then, both demigod camps would be destroyed. You would have no home
to return to.” Hecate smiled. “More likely, the destruction of your ship would
strand you in the mountains. It would mean the end of your quest, but it would
spare you and your friends much pain and suffering in the days to come. The war
with the giants would have to be won or lost without you.” Won or lost without
us.

A small, guilty part of Hazel found that appealing. She’d been wishing for the
chance to be a normal girl. She didn’t want any more pain or suffering for
herself and her friends. They’d already been through so much.

She looked behind Hecate at the middle gateway. She saw Percy and Annabeth
sprawled helplessly before those black-and-silver doors. A massive dark shape,
vaguely humanoid, now loomed over them, its foot raised as if to crush Percy.

“What about them?” Hazel asked, her voice ragged. “Percy and Annabeth?”
Hecate shrugged. “West, east, or south…they die.”

“Not an option,” Hazel said.

“Then you have only one path, though it is the most dangerous.” Hecate’s finger
crossed her miniature Apennines, leaving a glowing white line in the red flames.

“There is a secret pass here in the north, a place where I hold sway, where
Hannibal once crossed when he marched against Rome.”

The goddess made a wide loop…to the top of Italy, then east to the sea, then
down along the western coast of Greece. “Once through the pass, you would
travel north to Bologna, and then to Venice. From there, sail the Adriatic to your
goal, here: Epirus in Greece.” Hazel didn’t know much about geography. She
had no idea what the Adriatic Sea was like.

She’d never heard of Bologna, and all she knew about Venice was vague stories
about canals and gondolas. But one thing was obvious. “That’s so far out of the
way.”

“Which is why Gaea will not expect you to take this route,” Hecate said. “I can

obscure your progress somewhat, but the success of your journey will depend on
you, Hazel Levesque. You must learn to use the Mist.”

“Me?” Hazel’s heart felt like it was tumbling down her rib cage. “Use the Mist
how?” Hecate extinguished her map of Italy. She flicked her hand at the black
dog Hecuba. Mist collected around the Labrador until she was completely
hidden in a cocoon of white. The fog cleared with an audible poof! Where the
dog had stood was a disgruntled-looking black kitten with golden eyes.

“Mew,” it complained.

“I am the goddess of the Mist,” Hecate explained. “I am responsible for keeping
the veil that separates the world of the gods from the world of mortals. My
children learn to use the Mist to their advantage, to create illusions or influence
the minds of mortals. Other demigods can do this as well.

And so must you, Hazel, if you are to help your friends.”

“But…” Hazel looked at the cat. She knew it was actually Hecuba, the black
Labrador, but she couldn’t convince herself. The cat seemed so real. “I can’t do
that.”

“Your mother had the talent,” Hecate said. “You have even more. As a child of
Pluto who has returned from the dead, you understand the veil between worlds
better than most. You can control the Mist. If you do not…well, your brother
Nico has already warned you. The spirits have whispered to him, told him of
your future. When you reach the House of Hades, you will meet a formidable
enemy.

She cannot be overcome by strength or sword. You alone can defeat her, and you
will require magic.” Hazel’s legs felt wobbly. She remembered Nico’s grim
expression, his fingers digging into her arm. You can’t tell the others. Not yet.
Their courage is already stretched to the limit.

“Who?” Hazel croaked. “Who is this enemy?”

“I will not speak her name,” Hecate said. “That would alert her to your presence
before you are ready to face her. Go north, Hazel. As you travel, practice
summoning the Mist. When you arrive in Bologna, seek out the two dwarfs.
They will lead you to a treasure that may help you survive in the House of

Hades.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Mew,” the kitten complained.

“Yes, yes, Hecuba.” The goddess flicked her hand again, and the cat
disappeared. The black Labrador was back in its place.

“You will understand, Hazel,” the goddess promised. “From time to time, I will
send Gale to check on your progress.”

The polecat hissed, its beady red eyes full of malice.

“Wonderful,” Hazel muttered.

“Before you reach Epirus, you must be prepared,” Hecate said. “If you succeed,
then perhaps we will meet again…for the final battle.”

A final battle, Hazel thought. Oh, joy.

Hazel wondered if she could prevent the revelations she saw in the Mist—Leo
falling through the sky; Frank stumbling through the dark, alone and gravely
wounded; Percy and Annabeth at the mercy of a dark giant.

She hated the gods’ riddles and their unclear advice. She was starting to despise
crossroads.

“Why are you helping me?” Hazel demanded. “At Camp Jupiter, they said you
sided with the Titans in the last war.”

Hecate’s dark eyes glinted. “Because I am a Titan—daughter of Perses and
Asteria. Long before the Olympians came to power, I ruled the Mist. Despite
this, in the First Titan War, millennia ago, I sided with Zeus against Kronos. I
was not blind to Kronos’s cruelty. I hoped Zeus would prove a better king.”

She gave a small, bitter laugh. “When Demeter lost her daughter Persephone,
kidnapped by your father, I guided Demeter through the darkest night with my
torches, helping her search. And when the giants rose the first time, I again sided
with the gods. I fought my archenemy Clytius, made by Gaea to absorb and

defeat all my magic.”

“Clytius.” Hazel had never heard that name— Clai-tee-us—but saying it made
her limbs feel heavy. She glanced at the images in the northern doorway—the
massive dark shape looming over Percy and Annabeth. “Is he the threat in the
House of Hades?”

“Oh, he waits for you there,” Hecate said. “But first you must defeat the witch.
Unless you manage that…”

She snapped her fingers, and all of the gateways turned dark. The Mist
dissolved, the images gone.

“We all face choices,” the goddess said. “When Kronos arose the second time, I
made a mistake.

I supported him. I had grown tired of being ignored by the so-called major gods.
Despite my years of faithful service, they mistrusted me, refused me a seat in
their hall…” The polecat Gale chittered angrily.

“It does not matter anymore.” The goddess sighed. “I have made peace again
with Olympus.

Even now, when they are laid low—their Greek and Roman personas fighting
each other—I will help them. Greek or Roman, I have always been only Hecate.
I will assist you against the giants, if you prove yourself worthy. So now it is
your choice, Hazel Levesque. Will you trust me…or will you shun me, as the
Olympian gods have done too often?”

Blood roared in Hazel’s ears. Could she trust this dark goddess, who’d given her
mother the magic that ruined her life? Sorry, no. She didn’t much like Hecate’s
dog or her gassy polecat, either.

But she also knew she couldn’t let Percy and Annabeth die.

“I’ll go north,” she said. “We’ll take your secret pass through the mountains.”
Hecate nodded, the slightest hint of satisfaction in her face. “You have chosen
well, though the path will not be easy. Many monsters will rise against you.
Even some of my own servants have sided with Gaea, hoping to destroy your
mortal world.”

The goddess took her double torches from their stands. “Prepare yourself,
daughter of Pluto. If you succeed against the witch, we will meet again.”

“I’ll succeed,” Hazel promised. “And Hecate? I’m not choosing one of your
paths. I’m making my own.”

The goddess arched her eyebrows. Her polecat writhed, and her dog snarled.

“We’re going to find a way to stop Gaea,” Hazel said. “We’re going to rescue
our friends from Tartarus. We’re going keep the crew and the ship together, and
we’re going to stop Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood from going to war.
We’re going to do it all.” The storm howled, the black walls of the funnel cloud
swirling faster.

“Interesting,” Hecate said, as if Hazel were an unexpected result in a science
experiment. “That would be magic worth seeing.”

A wave of darkness blotted out the world. When Hazel’s sight returned, the
storm, the goddess, and her minions were gone. Hazel stood on the hillside in the
morning sunlight, alone in the ruins except for Arion, who paced next to her,
nickering impatiently.

“I agree,” Hazel told the horse. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What happened?” Leo asked as Hazel climbed aboard the Argo II.

Hazel’s hands still shook from her talk with the goddess. She glanced over the
rail and saw the dust of Arion’s wake stretching across the hills of Italy. She had
hoped her friend would stay, but couldn’t blame him for wanting to get away
from this place as fast as possible.

The countryside sparkled as the summer sun hit the morning dew. On the hill,
the old ruins stood white and silent—no sign of ancient paths, or goddesses, or
farting weasels.

“Hazel?” Nico asked.

Her knees buckled. Nico and Leo grabbed her arms and helped her to the steps
of the foredeck.

She felt embarrassed, collapsing like some fairy-tale damsel, but her energy was
gone. The memory of those glowing scenes at the crossroads filled her with
dread.

“I met Hecate,” she managed.

She didn’t tell them everything. She remembered what Nico had said: Their
courage is already stretched to the limit. But she told them about the secret
northern pass through the mountains, and the detour Hecate described that could
take them to Epirus.

When she was done, Nico took her hand. His eyes were full of concern. “Hazel,
you met Hecate at a crossroads. That’s…that’s something many demigods don’t
survive. And the ones who do survive are never the same. Are you sure you’re
—”

“I’m fine,” she insisted.

But she knew she wasn’t. She remembered how bold and angry she’d felt, telling
the goddess she’d find her own path and succeed at everything. Now her boast
seemed ridiculous. Her courage had abandoned her.

“What if Hecate is tricking us?” Leo asked. “This route could be a trap.” Hazel
shook her head. “If it was a trap, I think Hecate would’ve made the northern
route sound tempting. Believe me, she didn’t.”

Leo pulled a calculator out of his tool belt and punched in some numbers.
“That’s…something like three hundred miles out of our way to get to Venice.
Then we’d have to backtrack down the Adriatic. And you said something about
baloney dwarfs?”

“Dwarfs in Bologna,” Hazel said. “I guess Bologna is a city. But why we have to
find dwarfs there…I have no idea. Some sort of treasure to help us with the
quest.”

“Huh,” Leo said. “I mean, I’m all about treasure, but—”

“It’s our best option.” Nico helped Hazel to her feet. “We have to make up for
lost time, travel as fast as we can. Percy’s and Annabeth’s lives might depend on
it.”

“Fast?” Leo grinned. “I can do fast.”

He hurried to the console and started flipping switches.

Nico took Hazel’s arm and guided her out of earshot. “What else did Hecate
say? Anything about

—”

“I can’t.” Hazel cut him off. The images she’d seen had almost overwhelmed
her: Percy and Annabeth helpless at the feet of those black metal doors, the dark
giant looming over them, Hazel herself trapped in a glowing maze of light,
unable to help.

You must defeat the witch, Hecate had said. You alone can defeat her. Unless
you manage that…

The end, Hazel thought. All gateways closed. All hope extinguished.

Nico had warned her. He’d communed with the dead, heard them whispering
hints about their future. Two children of the Underworld would enter the House
of Hades. They would face an impossible foe. Only one of them would make it
to the Doors of Death.

Hazel couldn’t meet her brother’s eyes.

“I’ll tell you later,” she promised, trying to keep her voice from trembling.
“Right now, we should rest while we can. Tonight, we cross the Apennines.”

NINE DAYS.

As she fell, Annabeth thought about Hesiod, the old Greek poet who’d
speculated it would take nine days to fall from earth to Tartarus.

She hoped Hesiod was wrong. She’d lost track of how long she and Percy had
been falling—

hours? A day? It felt like an eternity. They’d been holding hands ever since they
dropped into the chasm. Now Percy pulled her close, hugging her tight as they
tumbled through absolute darkness.

Wind whistled in Annabeth’s ears. The air grew hotter and damper, as if they
were plummeting into the throat of a massive dragon. Her recently broken ankle
throbbed, though she couldn’t tell if it was still wrapped in spiderwebs.

That cursed monster Arachne. Despite having been trapped in her own webbing,
smashed by a car, and plunged into Tartarus, the spider lady had gotten her
revenge. Somehow her silk had entangled Annabeth’s leg and dragged her over
the side of the pit, with Percy in tow.

Annabeth couldn’t imagine that Arachne was still alive, somewhere below them
in the darkness.

She didn’t want to meet that monster again when they reached the bottom. On
the bright side, assuming there was a bottom, Annabeth and Percy would
probably be flattened on impact, so giant spiders were the least of their worries.

She wrapped her arms around Percy and tried not to sob. She’d never expected
her life to be easy. Most demigods died young at the hands of terrible monsters.
That was the way it had been since ancient times. The Greeks invented tragedy.
They knew the greatest heroes didn’t get happy endings.

Still, this wasn’t fair. She’d gone through so much to retrieve that statue of
Athena. Just when she’d succeeded, when things had been looking up and she’d
been reunited with Percy, they had plunged to their deaths.

Even the gods couldn’t devise a fate so twisted.

But Gaea wasn’t like other gods. The Earth Mother was older, more vicious,
more bloodthirsty.

Annabeth could imagine her laughing as they fell into the depths.

Annabeth pressed her lips to Percy’s ear. “I love you.”

She wasn’t sure he could hear her—but if they were going to die she wanted
those to be her last words.

She tried desperately to think of a plan to save them. She was a daughter of
Athena. She’d proven herself in the tunnels under Rome, beaten a whole series
of challenges with only her wits. But she couldn’t think of any way to reverse or
even slow their fall.

Neither of them had the power to fly—not like Jason, who could control the
wind, or Frank, who could turn into a winged animal. If they reached the bottom
at terminal velocity…well, she knew enough science to know it would be
terminal.

She was seriously wondering whether they could fashion a parachute out of their
shirts— that’s how desperate she was—when something about their
surroundings changed. The darkness took on a gray-red tinge. She realized she
could see Percy’s hair as she hugged him. The whistling in her ears turned into
more of a roar. The air became intolerably hot, permeated with a smell like

rotten eggs.

Suddenly, the chute they’d been falling through opened into a vast cavern.
Maybe half a mile below them, Annabeth could see the bottom. For a moment
she was too stunned to think properly. The entire island of Manhattan could have
fit inside this cavern—and she couldn’t even see its full extent.

Red clouds hung in the air like vaporized blood. The landscape—at least what
she could see of it—

was rocky black plains, punctuated by jagged mountains and fiery chasms. To
Annabeth’s left, the ground dropped off in a series of cliffs, like colossal steps
leading deeper into the abyss.

The stench of sulfur made it hard to concentrate, but she focused on the ground
directly below them and saw a ribbon of glittering black liquid—a river.

“Percy!” she yelled in his ear. “Water!”

She gestured frantically. Percy’s face was hard to read in the dim red light. He
looked shell-shocked and terrified, but he nodded as if he understood.

Percy could control water—assuming that was water below them. He might be
able to cushion their fall somehow. Of course Annabeth had heard horrible
stories about the rivers of the Underworld. They could take away your
memories, or burn your body and soul to ashes. But she decided not to think
about that. This was their only chance.

The river hurtled toward them. At the last second, Percy yelled defiantly. The
water erupted in a massive geyser and swallowed them whole.

THE IMPACT DIDN’T KILL HER, but the cold nearly did.

Freezing water shocked the air right out of her lungs. Her limbs turned rigid, and
she lost her grip on Percy. She began to sink. Strange wailing sounds filled her
ears—millions of heartbroken voices, as if the river were made of distilled
sadness. The voices were worse than the cold. They weighed her down and made
her numb.

What’s the point of struggling? they told her. You’re dead anyway. You’ll never
leave this place.

She could sink to the bottom and drown, let the river carry her body away. That
would be easier.

She could just close her eyes.…

Percy gripped her hand and jolted her back to reality. She couldn’t see him in the
murky water, but suddenly she didn’t want to die. Together they kicked upward
and broke the surface.

Annabeth gasped, grateful for the air, no matter how sulfurous. The water
swirled around them, and she realized Percy was creating a whirlpool to buoy
them up.

Though she couldn’t make out their surroundings, she knew this was a river.
Rivers had shores.

“Land,” she croaked. “Go sideways.”

Percy looked near dead with exhaustion. Usually water reinvigorated him, but
not this water.

Controlling it must have taken every bit of his strength. The whirlpool began to
dissipate. Annabeth hooked one arm around his waist and struggled across the
current. The river worked against her: thousands of weeping voices whispering
in her ears, getting inside her brain.

Life is despair, they said. Everything is pointless, and then you die.

“Pointless,” Percy murmured. His teeth chattered from the cold. He stopped
swimming and began to sink.

“Percy!” she shrieked. “The river is messing with your mind. It’s the Cocytus—
the River of Lamentation. It’s made of pure misery!”

“Misery,” he agreed.

“Fight it!”

She kicked and struggled, trying to keep both of them afloat. Another cosmic
joke for Gaea to laugh at: Annabeth dies trying to keep her boyfriend, the son of
Poseidon, from drowning.

Not going to happen, you hag, Annabeth thought.

She hugged Percy tighter and kissed him. “Tell me about New Rome,” she
demanded. “What were your plans for us?”

“New Rome…For us…”

“Yeah, Seaweed Brain. You said we could have a future there! Tell me!”
Annabeth had never wanted to leave Camp Half-Blood. It was the only real
home she’d ever known. But days ago, on the Argo II, Percy had told her that he
imagined a future for the two of them among the Roman demigods. In their city

of New Rome, veterans of the legion could settle down safely, go to college, get
married, even have kids.

“Architecture,” Percy murmured. The fog started to clear from his eyes.
“Thought you’d like the houses, the parks. There’s one street with all these cool
fountains.” Annabeth started making progress against the current. Her limbs felt
like bags of wet sand, but Percy was helping her now. She could see the dark
line of the shore about a stone’s throw away.

“College,” she gasped. “Could we go there together?”

“Y-yeah,” he agreed, a little more confidently.

“What would you study, Percy?”

“Dunno,” he admitted.

“Marine science,” she suggested. “Oceanography?”

“Surfing?” he asked.

She laughed, and the sound sent a shock wave through the water. The wailing
faded to background noise. Annabeth wondered if anyone had ever laughed in
Tartarus before—just a pure, simple laugh of pleasure. She doubted it.

She used the last of her strength to reach the riverbank. Her feet dug into the
sandy bottom. She and Percy hauled themselves ashore, shivering and gasping,
and collapsed on the dark sand.

Annabeth wanted to curl up next to Percy and go to sleep. She wanted to shut
her eyes, hope all of this was just a bad dream, and wake up to find herself back
on the Argo II, safe with her friends (well…as safe as a demigod can ever be).

But, no. They were really in Tartarus. At their feet, the River Cocytus roared
past, a flood of liquid wretchedness. The sulfurous air stung Annabeth’s lungs
and prickled her skin. When she looked at her arms, she saw they were already
covered with an angry rash. She tried to sit up and gasped in pain.

The beach wasn’t sand. They were sitting on a field of jagged black-glass chips,
some of which were now embedded in Annabeth’s palms.

So the air was acid. The water was misery. The ground was broken glass.
Everything here was designed to hurt and kill. Annabeth took a rattling breath
and wondered if the voices in the Cocytus were right. Maybe fighting for
survival was pointless. They would be dead within the hour.

Next to her, Percy coughed. “This place smells like my ex-stepfather.” Annabeth
managed a weak smile. She’d never met Smelly Gabe, but she’d heard enough
stories.

She loved Percy for trying to lift her spirits.

If she’d fallen into Tartarus by herself, Annabeth thought, she would have been
doomed. After all she’d been through beneath Rome, finding the Athena
Parthenos, this was simply too much. She would’ve curled up and cried until she
became another ghost, melting into the Cocytus.

But she wasn’t alone. She had Percy. And that meant she couldn’t give up.

She forced herself to take stock. Her foot was still wrapped in its makeshift cast
of board and Bubble Wrap, still tangled in cobwebs. But when she moved it, it
didn’t hurt. The ambrosia she’d eaten in the tunnels under Rome must have
finally mended her bones.

Her backpack was gone—lost during the fall, or maybe washed away in the
river. She hated losing Daedalus’s laptop, with all its fantastic programs and
data, but she had worse problems. Her Celestial bronze dagger was missing—the
weapon she’d carried since she was seven years old.

The realization almost broke her, but she couldn’t let herself dwell on it. Time to
grieve later.

What else did they have?

No food, no water…basically no supplies at all.

Yep. Off to a promising start.

Annabeth glanced at Percy. He looked pretty bad. His dark hair was plastered
across his forehead, his T-shirt ripped to shreds. His fingers were scraped raw
from holding on to that ledge before they fell. Most worrisome of all, he was

shivering and his lips were blue.

“We should keep moving or we’ll get hypothermia,” Annabeth said. “Can you
stand?” He nodded. They both struggled to their feet.

Annabeth put her arm around his waist, though she wasn’t sure who was
supporting whom. She scanned their surroundings. Above, she saw no sign of
the tunnel they’d fallen down. She couldn’t even see the cavern roof—just
blood-colored clouds floating in the hazy gray air. It was like staring through a
thin mix of tomato soup and cement.

The black-glass beach stretched inland about fifty yards, then dropped off the
edge of a cliff.

From where she stood, Annabeth couldn’t see what was below, but the edge
flickered with red light as if illuminated by huge fires.

A distant memory tugged at her—something about Tartarus and fire. Before she
could think too much about it, Percy inhaled sharply.

“Look.” He pointed downstream.

A hundred feet away, a familiar-looking baby-blue Italian car had crashed
headfirst into the sand. It looked just like the Fiat that had smashed into Arachne
and sent her plummeting into the pit.

Annabeth hoped she was wrong, but how many Italian sports cars could there be
in Tartarus?

Part of her didn’t want to go anywhere near it, but she had to find out. She
gripped Percy’s hand, and they stumbled toward the wreckage. One of the car’s
tires had come off and was floating in a backwater eddy of the Cocytus. The
Fiat’s windows had shattered, sending brighter glass like frosting across the dark
beach. Under the crushed hood lay the tattered, glistening remains of a giant silk
cocoon—the trap that Annabeth had tricked Arachne into weaving. It was
unmistakably empty. Slash marks in the sand made a trail downriver…as if
something heavy, with multiple legs, had scuttled into the darkness.

“She’s alive.” Annabeth was so horrified, so outraged by the unfairness of it all,
she had to suppress the urge to throw up.

“It’s Tartarus,” Percy said. “Monster home court. Down here, maybe they can’t
be killed.” He gave Annabeth an embarrassed look, as if realizing he wasn’t
helping team morale. “Or maybe she’s badly wounded, and she crawled away to
die.”

“Let’s go with that,” Annabeth agreed.

Percy was still shivering. Annabeth wasn’t feeling any warmer either, despite the
hot, sticky air.

The glass cuts on her hands were still bleeding, which was unusual for her.
Normally, she healed fast.

Her breathing got more and more labored.

“This place is killing us,” she said. “I mean, it’s literally going to kill us,
unless…” Tartarus. Fire. That distant memory came into focus. She gazed
inland toward the cliff, illuminated by flames from below.

It was an absolutely crazy idea. But it might be their only chance.

“Unless what?” Percy prompted. “You’ve got a brilliant plan, haven’t you?”

“It’s a plan,” Annabeth murmured. “I don’t know about brilliant. We need to
find the River of Fire.”

WHEN THEY REACHED THE LEDGE, Annabeth was sure she’d signed
their death warrants.

The cliff dropped more than eighty feet. At the bottom stretched a nightmarish
version of the Grand Canyon: a river of fire cutting a path through a jagged
obsidian crevasse, the glowing red current casting horrible shadows across the
cliff faces.

Even from the top of the canyon, the heat was intense. The chill of the River
Cocytus hadn’t left Annabeth’s bones, but now her face felt raw and sunburned.
Every breath took more effort, as if her chest was filled with Styrofoam peanuts.
The cuts on her hands bled more rather than less. Annabeth’s foot, which had
been almost healed, seemed to be reinjuring itself. She’d taken off her makeshift
cast, but now she regretted it. Each step made her wince.

Assuming they could make it down to the fiery river, which she doubted, her
plan seemed certifiably insane.

“Uh…” Percy examined the cliff. He pointed to a tiny fissure running diagonally
from the edge to the bottom. “We can try that ledge there. Might be able to climb
down.” He didn’t say they’d be crazy to try. He managed to sound hopeful.
Annabeth was grateful for that, but she also worried that she was leading him to
his doom.

Of course if they stayed here, they would die anyway. Blisters had started to
form on their arms from exposure to the Tartarus air. The whole environment
was about as healthy as a nuclear blast zone.

Percy went first. The ledge was barely wide enough to allow a toehold. Their
hands clawed for any crack in the glassy rock. Every time Annabeth put pressure
on her bad foot, she wanted to yelp.

She’d ripped off the sleeves of her T-shirt and used the cloth to wrap her bloody
palms, but her fingers were still slippery and weak.

A few steps below her, Percy grunted as he reached for another handhold. “So…
what is this fire river called?”

“The Phlegethon,” she said. “You should concentrate on going down.”

“The Phlegethon?” He shinnied along the ledge. They’d made it roughly a third
of the way down the cliff—still high enough up to die if they fell. “Sounds like a
marathon for hawking spitballs.”

“Please don’t make me laugh,” she said.

“Just trying to keep things light.”

“Thanks,” she grunted, nearly missing the ledge with her bad foot. “I’ll have a
smile on my face as I plummet to my death.”

They kept going, one step at a time. Annabeth’s eyes stung with sweat. Her arms
trembled. But to her amazement, they finally made it to the bottom of the cliff.

When she reached the ground, she stumbled. Percy caught her. She was alarmed
by how feverish his skin felt. Red boils had erupted on his face, so he looked like
a smallpox victim.

Her own vision was blurry. Her throat felt blistered, and her stomach was
clenched tighter than a fist.

We have to hurry, she thought.

“Just to the river,” she told Percy, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. “We

can do this.” They staggered over slick glass ledges, around massive boulders,
avoiding stalagmites that would’ve impaled them with any slip of the foot. Their
tattered clothes steamed from the heat of the river, but they kept going until they
crumpled to their knees at the banks of the Phlegethon.

“We have to drink,” Annabeth said.

Percy swayed, his eyes half-closed. It took him a three-count to respond. “Uh…
drink fire?”

“The Phlegethon flows from Hades’s realm down into Tartarus.” Annabeth
could barely talk.

Her throat was closing up from the heat and the acidic air. “The river is used to
punish the wicked.

But also…some legends call it the River of Healing.”

“ Some legends?”

Annabeth swallowed, trying to stay conscious. “The Phlegethon keeps the
wicked in one piece so that they can endure the torments of the Fields of
Punishment. I think…it might be the Underworld equivalent of ambrosia and
nectar.”

Percy winced as cinders sprayed from the river, curling around his face. “But it’s
fire. How can we—”

“Like this.” Annabeth thrust her hands into the river.

Stupid? Yes, but she was convinced they had no choice. If they waited any
longer, they would pass out and die. Better to try something foolish and hope it
worked.

On first contact, the fire wasn’t painful. It felt cold, which probably meant it was
so hot it was overloading Annabeth’s nerves. Before she could change her mind,
she cupped the fiery liquid in her palms and raised it to her mouth.

She expected a taste like gasoline. It was so much worse. Once, at a restaurant
back in San Francisco, she’d made the mistake of tasting a ghost chili pepper

that came with a plate of Indian food. After barely nibbling it, she thought her
respiratory system was going to implode. Drinking from the Phlegethon was like
gulping down a ghost chili smoothie. Her sinuses filled with liquid flame.

Her mouth felt like it was being deep-fried. Her eyes shed boiling tears, and
every pore on her face popped. She collapsed, gagging and retching, her whole
body shaking violently.

“Annabeth!” Percy grabbed her arms and just managed to stop her from rolling
into the river.

The convulsions passed. She took a ragged breath and managed to sit up. She
felt horribly weak and nauseous, but her next breath came more easily. The
blisters on her arms were starting to fade.

“It worked,” she croaked. “Percy, you’ve got to drink.”

“I…” His eyes rolled up in his head, and he slumped against her.

Desperately, she cupped more fire in her palm. Ignoring the pain, she dripped the
liquid into Percy’s mouth. He didn’t respond.

She tried again, pouring a whole handful down his throat. This time he spluttered
and coughed.

Annabeth held him as he trembled, the magical fire coursing through his system.
His fever disappeared. His boils faded. He managed to sit up and smack his lips.

“Ugh,” he said. “Spicy, yet disgusting.”

Annabeth laughed weakly. She was so relieved, she felt light-headed. “Yeah.
That pretty much sums it up.”

“You saved us.”

“For now,” she said. “The problem is, we’re still in Tartarus.” Percy blinked. He
looked around as if just coming to terms with where they were. “Holy Hera. I
never thought…well, I’m not sure what I thought. Maybe that Tartarus was
empty space, a pit with no bottom. But this is a real place.”

Annabeth recalled the landscape she’d seen while they fell—a series of plateaus
leading ever downward into the gloom.

“We haven’t seen all of it,” she warned. “This could be just the first tiny part of
the abyss, like the front steps.”

“The welcome mat,” Percy muttered.

They both gazed up at the blood-colored clouds swirling in the gray haze. No
way would they have the strength to climb back up that cliff, even if they wanted
to. Now there were only two choices: downriver or upriver, skirting the banks of
the Phlegethon.

“We’ll find a way out,” Percy said. “The Doors of Death.” Annabeth shuddered.
She remembered what Percy had said just before they fell into Tartarus.

He’d made Nico di Angelo promise to lead the Argo II to Epirus, to the mortal
side of the Doors of Death.

We’ll see you there, Percy had said.

That idea seemed even crazier than drinking fire. How could the two of them
wander through Tartarus and find the Doors of Death? They’d barely been able
to stumble a hundred yards in this poisonous place without dying.

“We have to,” Percy said. “Not just for us. For everybody we love. The Doors
have to be closed on both sides, or the monsters will just keep coming through.
Gaea’s forces will overrun the world.” Annabeth knew he was right. Still…when
she tried to imagine a plan that could succeed, the logistics overwhelmed her.
They had no way of locating the Doors. They didn’t know how much time it
would take, or even if time flowed at the same speed in Tartarus. How could
they possibly synchronize a meeting with their friends? And Nico had mentioned
a legion of Gaea’s strongest monsters guarding the Doors on the Tartarus side.
Annabeth and Percy couldn’t exactly launch a frontal assault.

She decided not to mention any of that. They both knew the odds were bad.
Besides, after swimming in the River Cocytus, Annabeth had heard enough
whining and moaning to last a lifetime.

She promised herself never to complain again.

“Well.” She took a deep breath, grateful at least that her lungs didn’t hurt. “If we
stay close to the river, we’ll have a way to heal ourselves. If we go downstream
—” It happened so fast, Annabeth would have been dead if she’d been on her
own.

Percy’s eyes locked on something behind her. Annabeth spun as a massive dark
shape hurtled down at her—a snarling, monstrous blob with spindly barbed legs
and glinting eyes.

She had time to think: Arachne. But she was frozen in terror, her senses
smothered by the sickly sweet smell.

Then she heard the familiar SHINK of Percy’s ballpoint pen transforming into a
sword. His blade swept over her head in a glowing bronze arc. A horrible wail
echoed through the canyon.

Annabeth stood there, stunned, as yellow dust—the remains of Arachne—rained
around her like tree pollen.

“You okay?” Percy scanned the cliffs and boulders, alert for more monsters, but
nothing else appeared. The golden dust of the spider settled on the obsidian
rocks.

Annabeth stared at her boyfriend in amazement. Riptide’s Celestial bronze blade
glowed even brighter in the gloom of Tartarus. As it passed through the thick hot
air, it made a defiant hiss like a riled snake.

“She…she would’ve killed me,” Annabeth stammered.

Percy kicked the dust on the rocks, his expression grim and dissatisfied. “She
died too easily, considering how much torture she put you through. She deserved
worse.” Annabeth couldn’t argue with that, but the hard edge in Percy’s voice
made her unsettled. She’d never seen someone get so angry or vengeful on her
behalf. It almost made her glad Arachne had died quickly. “How did you move
so fast?”

Percy shrugged. “Gotta watch each other’s backs, right? Now, you were
saying…downstream?” Annabeth nodded, still in a daze. The yellow dust
dissipated on the rocky shore, turning to steam.