by Rick Riordan
LAKE TEMESCAL
SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK
Typical of mortals: they warn you about drowning, but not about flesh-devouring ghouls.
Lavinia marched us to a small stone building that offered restrooms and a changing area. On the exterior back wall, half-hidden behind blackberry bushes, stood a nondescript metal door, which Lavinia kicked open. Inside, a concrete shaft sloped down into the darkness.
“I suppose the mortals don’t know about this,” I guessed.
Don giggled. “Nah, dude, they think it’s a generator room or something. Even most of the legionnaires don’t know about it. Only the cool ones like Lavinia.”
“You’re not getting out of helping, Don,” said Lavinia. “Let’s set down the coffin for a second.”
I said a silent prayer of thanks. My shoulders ached. My back was slick with sweat. I was reminded of the time Hera made me lug a solid-gold throne around her Olympian living room until she found exactly the right spot for it. Ugh, that goddess.
Lavinia pulled a pack of bubble gum from the pocket of her jeans. She stuffed three pieces in her mouth, then offered some to me and Meg.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“Sure,” said Meg.
“Sure!” said Don.
Lavinia jerked the bubble gum pack out of his reach. “Don, you know bubble gum doesn’t agree with you. Last time, you were hugging the toilet for days.”
Don pouted. “But it tastes good.”
Lavinia peered into the tunnel, her jaw working furiously at the gum. “It’s too narrow to carry the coffin with four people. I’ll lead the way. Don, you and Apollo”—she frowned as if she still couldn’t believe that was my name—“each take one end.”
“Just the two of us?” I protested.
“What he said!” Don agreed.
“Just carry it like a sofa,” said Lavinia, as if that was supposed to mean something to me. “And you—what’s your name? Peg?”
“Meg,” said Meg.
“Is there anything you don’t need to bring?” asked Lavinia. “Like…that poster-board thing under your arm—is that a school project?”
Meg must have been incredibly tired, because she didn’t scowl or hit Lavinia or cause geraniums to grow out of her ears. She just turned sideways, shielding Jason’s diorama with her body. “No. This is important.”
“Okay.” Lavinia scratched her eyebrow, which, like her hair, was frosted pink. “Just stay in back, I guess. Guard our retreat. This door can’t be locked, which means—”
As if on cue, from the far side of the lake came the loudest howl yet, filled with rage, as if the ghoul had discovered the dust and vulture diaper of its fallen comrade.
“Let’s go!” Lavinia said.
I began to revise my impression of our pink-haired friend. For a skittish baby giraffe, she could be very bossy.
We descended single-file into the passage, me carrying the back of the coffin, Don the front.
Lavinia’s gum scented the stale air, so the tunnel smelled like moldy cotton candy. Every time Lavinia or Meg popped a bubble, I flinched. My fingers quickly began to ache from the weight of the casket.
“How much farther?” I asked.
“We’re barely inside the tunnel,” Lavinia said.
“So…not far, then?”
“Maybe a quarter mile.”
I tried for a grunt of manly endurance. It came out as more of a snivel.
“Guys,” Meg said behind me, “we need to move faster.”
“You see something?” Don asked.
“Not yet,” Meg said. “Just a feeling.”
Feelings. I hated those.
Our weapons provided the only light. The gold fittings of the manubalista slung across Lavinia’s back cast a ghostly halo around her pink hair. The glow of Meg’s swords threw our elongated shadows across either wall, so we seemed to be walking in the midst of a spectral crowd. Whenever Don looked over his shoulder, his rainbow-tinted lenses seemed to float in the dark like patches of oil on water.
My hands and forearms burned from strain, but Don didn’t seem to be having any trouble. I was determined not to weep for mercy before the faun did.
The path widened and leveled out. I chose to take that as a good sign, though neither Meg nor Lavinia offered to help carry the casket.
Finally, my hands couldn’t take any more. “Stop.”
Don and I managed to set down Jason’s coffin a moment before I would’ve dropped it. Deep red gouges marred my fingers. Blisters were beginning to form on my palms. I felt like I’d just played a nine-hour set of dueling jazz guitar with Pat Metheny, using a six-hundred-pound iron Fender Stratocaster.
“Ow,” I muttered, because I was once the god of poetry and have great descriptive powers.
“We can’t rest long,” Lavinia warned. “My sentry shift must have ended by now. My partner’s probably wondering where I am.”
I almost wanted to laugh. I’d forgotten we were supposed to be worried about Lavinia playing hooky along with all our other problems. “Will your partner report you?”
Lavinia stared into the dark. “Not unless she has to. She’s my centurion, but she’s cool.”
“Your centurion gave you permission to sneak off?” I asked.
“Not exactly.” Lavinia tugged at her Star of David pendant. “She just kinda turned a blind eye, you know? She gets it.”
Don chuckled. “You mean having a crush on someone?”
“No!” Lavinia said. “Like, just standing on guard duty for five hours straight. Ugh. I can’t do it! Especially after all that’s happened recently.”
I considered the way Lavinia fiddled with her necklace, viciously chewed her bubble gum, wobbled constantly about on her gangly legs. Most demigods have some form of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. They are hardwired to be in constant movement, jumping from battle to battle. But Lavinia definitely put the H in ADHD.
“When you say ‘all that’s happened recently…’” I prompted, but before I could finish the question, Don’s posture stiffened. His nose and goatee quivered. I’d spent enough time in the Labyrinth with Grover Underwood to know what that meant.
“What do you smell?” I demanded.
“Not sure…” He sniffed. “It’s close. And funky.”
“Oh.” I blushed. “I did shower this morning, but when I exert myself, this mortal body sweats—”
“It’s not that. Listen!”
Meg faced the direction we’d come. She raised her swords and waited. Lavinia unslung her manubalista and peered into the shadows ahead of us.
Finally, over the pounding of my own heartbeat, I heard the clink of metal and the echo of footsteps on stone. Someone was running toward us.
“They’re coming,” Meg said.
“No, wait,” said Lavinia. “It’s her!”
I got the feeling Meg and Lavinia were talking about two different things, and I wasn’t sure I liked either one.
“Her who?” I demanded.
“Them where?” Don squeaked.
Lavinia raised her hand and shouted, “I’m here!”
“Shhhh!” Meg said, still facing the way we’d come. “Lavinia, what are you doing?”
Then, from the direction of Camp Jupiter, a young woman jogged into our circle of light.
She was about Lavinia’s age, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with dark skin and amber eyes. Curly brown hair fell around her shoulders. Her legionnaire greaves and breastplate glinted over jeans and a purple T-shirt. Affixed to her breastplate was the insignia of a centurion, and strapped to her side was a spatha—a cavalry sword. Ah, yes…I recognized her from the crew of the Argo II.
“Hazel Levesque,” I said. “Thank the gods.”
Hazel stopped in her tracks, no doubt wondering who I was, how I knew her, and why I was grinning like a fool. She glanced at Don, then Meg, then the coffin. “Lavinia, what’s going on?”
“Guys,” Meg interrupted. “We have company.”
She did not mean Haze
l. Behind us, at the edge of the light from Meg’s swords, a dark form prowled, its blue-black skin glistening, its teeth dripping saliva. Then another, identical ghoul emerged from the gloom behind it.
Just our luck. The eurynomoi were having a kill one, get two free special.
Ukulele song?
No need to remove my guts
A simple “no” works
“OH,” DON SAID IN a small voice. “That’s what smells.”
“I thought you said they travel in pairs,” I complained.
“Or threes,” the faun whimpered. “Sometimes in threes.”
The eurynomoi snarled, crouching just out of reach of Meg’s blades. Behind me, Lavinia hand-cranked her manubalista—click, click, click—but the weapon was so slow to prime, she wouldn’t be ready to fire until sometime next Thursday. Hazel’s spatha rasped as she slid the blade from its scabbard. That, too, wasn’t a great weapon for fighting in close quarters.
Meg seemed unsure whether she should charge, stand her ground, or drop from exhaustion. Bless her stubborn little heart, she still had Jason’s diorama wedged under her arm, which would not help her in battle.
I fumbled for a weapon and came up with my ukulele. Why not? It was only slightly more ridiculous than a spatha or a manubalista.
My nose might have been busted from the hearse’s air bag, but my sense of smell was sadly unaffected. The combination of ghoul stench with the scent of bubble gum made my nostrils burn and my eyes water.
“FOOD,” said the first ghoul.
“FOOD!” agreed the second.
They sounded delighted, as if we were favorite meals they hadn’t been served in ages.
Hazel spoke, calm and steady. “Guys, we fought these things in the battle. Don’t let them scratch you.”
The way she said the battle made it sound like there could only be one horrible event to which she might be referring. I flashed back to what Leo Valdez had told us in Los Angeles—that Camp Jupiter had suffered major damage, lost good people in their last fight. I was beginning to appreciate how bad it must have been.
“No scratches,” I agreed. “Meg, hold them at bay. I’m going to try a song.”
My idea was simple: strum a sleepy tune, lull the creatures into a stupor, then kill them in a leisurely, civilized fashion.
I underestimated the eurynomoi’s hatred of ukuleles. As soon as I announced my intentions, they howled and charged.
I shuffled backward, sitting down hard on Jason’s coffin. Don shrieked and cowered. Lavinia kept cranking her manubalista. Hazel yelled, “Make a hole!” Which in the moment made no sense to me.
Meg burst into action, slicing an arm off one ghoul, swiping at the legs of the other, but her movements were sluggish, and with the diorama under one arm, she could only use a single sword effectively. If the ghouls had been interested in killing her, she would’ve been overwhelmed. Instead, they shoved past her, intent on stopping me before I could strum a chord.
Everyone is a music critic.
“FOOD!” screamed the one-armed ghoul, lunging at me with its five remaining claws.
I tried to suck in my gut. I really did.
But, oh, cursed flab! If I had been in my godly form, the ghoul’s claws never would have connected. My hammered-bronze abs would have scoffed at the monster’s attempt to reach them. Alas, Lester’s body failed me yet again.
The eurynomos raked its hand across my midsection, just below my ukulele. The tip of its middle finger—barely, just barely—found flesh. Its claw sliced through my shirt and across my belly like a dull razor.
I tumbled sideways off Jason’s coffin, warm blood trickling into the waistline of my pants.
Hazel Levesque yelled in defiance. She vaulted over the coffin and drove her spatha straight through the eurynomos’s clavicle, creating the world’s first ghoul-on-a-stick.
The eurynomos screamed and lurched backward, ripping the spatha from Hazel’s grip. The wound smoked where the Imperial gold blade had entered. Then—there is no delicate way to put it—the ghoul burst into steaming, crumbling chunks of ash. The spatha clanged to the stone floor.
The second ghoul had stopped to face Meg, as one does when one has been slashed across the thighs by an annoying twelve-year-old, but when its comrade cried out, it spun to face us. This gave Meg an opening, but instead of striking, she pushed past the monster and ran straight to my side, her blades retracting back into her rings.
“You okay?” she demanded. “Oh, NO. You’re bleeding. You said don’t get scratched. You got scratched!”
I wasn’t sure whether to be touched by her concern or annoyed by her tone. “I didn’t plan it, Meg.”
“Guys!” yelled Lavinia.
The ghoul stepped forward, positioning itself between Hazel and her fallen spatha. Don continued to cower like a champ. Lavinia’s manubalista remained only half-primed. Meg and I were now wedged side by side next to Jason’s coffin.
That left Hazel, empty-handed, as the only obstacle between the eurynomos and a five-course meal.
The creature hissed, “You cannot win.”
Its voice changed. Its tone became deeper, its volume modulated. “You will join your comrades in my tomb.”
Between my throbbing head and my aching gut, I had trouble following the words, but Hazel seemed to understand.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “How about you stop hiding behind your creatures and show yourself!”
The eurynomos blinked. Its eyes turned from milky white to a glowing purple, like iodine flames. “Hazel Levesque. You of all people should understand the fragile boundary between life and death. But don’t be afraid. I will save a special place for you at my side, along with your beloved Frank. You will make glorious skeletons.”
Hazel clenched her fists. When she glanced back at us, her expression was almost as intimidating as the ghoul’s. “Back up,” she warned us. “As far as you can.”
Meg half dragged me to the front end of the coffin. My gut felt like it had been stitched with a molten-hot zipper. Lavinia grabbed Don by his T-shirt collar and pulled him to a safer cowering spot.
The ghoul chuckled. “How will you defeat me, Hazel? With this?” It kicked the spatha farther away behind him. “I have summoned more undead. They will be here soon.”
Despite my pain, I struggled to get up. I couldn’t leave Hazel by herself. But Lavinia put a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait,” she murmured. “Hazel’s got this.”
That seemed ridiculously optimistic, but to my shame, I stayed put. More warm blood soaked into my underwear. At least I hoped it was blood.
The eurynomos wiped drool from its mouth with one clawed finger. “Unless you intend to run and abandon that lovely coffin, you might as well surrender. We are strong underground, daughter of Pluto. Too strong for you.”
“Oh?” Hazel’s voice remained steady, almost conversational. “Strong underground. That’s good to know.”
The tunnel shook. Cracks appeared in the walls, jagged fissures branching up the stone. Beneath the ghoul’s feet, a column of white quartz erupted, skewering the monster against the ceiling and reducing it to a cloud of vulture-feather confetti.
Hazel faced us as if nothing remarkable had happened. “Don, Lavinia, get this…” She looked uneasily at the coffin. “Get this out of here. You”—she pointed at Meg—“help your friend, please. We have healers at camp who can deal with that ghoul scratch.”
“Wait!” I said. “Wh-what just happened? Its voice—”
“I’ve seen that happen before with a ghoul,” Hazel said grimly. “I’ll explain later. Right now, get going. I’ll follow in a sec.”
I started to protest, but Hazel stopped me with a shake of her head. “I’m just going to pick up my sword and make sure no more of those things can follow us. Go!”
Rubble trickled from new cracks in the ceiling. Perhaps leaving wasn’t such a bad idea.
Leaning on Meg, I managed to stagger farther down the tunnel. Lavinia an
d Don lugged Jason’s coffin. I was in so much pain I didn’t even have the energy to yell at Lavinia to carry it like a couch.
We’d gone perhaps fifty feet when the tunnel behind us rumbled even more strongly than before. I looked back just in time to get hit in the face with a billowing cloud of debris.
“Hazel?” Lavinia called into the swirling dust.
A heartbeat later, Hazel Levesque emerged, coated from head to toe in glittering powdered quartz. Her sword glowed in her hand.
“I’m fine,” she announced. “But nobody’s going to be sneaking out that way anymore. Now”—she pointed at the coffin—“somebody want to tell me who’s in there?”
I really didn’t.
Not after I’d seen how Hazel skewered her enemies.
Still…I owed it to Jason. Hazel had been his friend.
I steeled my nerves, opened my mouth to speak, and was beaten to the punch by Hazel herself.
“It’s Jason,” she said, as if the information had been whispered in her ear. “Oh, gods.”
She ran to the coffin. She fell to her knees and threw her arms across the lid. She let out a single devastated sob. Then she lowered her head and shivered in silence. Strands of her hair sketched through the quartz dust on the polished wood surface, leaving squiggly lines like the readings of a seismograph.
Without looking up, she murmured, “I had nightmares. A boat. A man on a horse. A…a spear. How did it happen?”
I did my best to explain. I told her about my fall into the mortal world, my adventures with Meg, our fight aboard Caligula’s yacht, and how Jason had died saving us. Recounting the story brought back all the pain and terror. I remembered the sharp ozone smell of the wind spirits swirling around Meg and Jason, the bite of zip-tie handcuffs around my wrists, Caligula’s pitiless, delighted boast: You don’t walk away from me alive!
It was all so awful, I momentarily forgot about the agonizing cut across my belly.
Lavinia stared at the floor. Meg did her best to stanch my bleeding with one of the extra dresses from her backpack. Don watched the ceiling, where a new crack was zigzagging over our heads.
“Hate to interrupt,” said the faun, “but maybe we should continue this outside?”
