by Rick Riordan
‘Our destiny… assuming we know what that is.’
‘Relax,’ Chiron told me. ‘Keep a clear head. And remember, you may be about to prevent the biggest war in human history.’
‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I’m very relaxed.’
When I got to the bottom of the hill, I looked back. Under the pine tree that used to be Thalia, daughter of Zeus, Chiron was now standing in full horse-man form, holding his bow high in salute. Just your typical summer-camp send-off by your typical centaur.
* * *
Argus drove us out of the countryside and into western Long Island. It felt weird to be on a highway again, Annabeth and Grover sitting next to me as if we were normal carpoolers. After two weeks at Half-Blood Hill, the real world seemed like a fantasy. I found myself staring at every McDonald’s, every kid in the back of his parents’ car, every billboard and shopping mall.
‘So far so good,’ I told Annabeth. ‘Ten miles and not a single monster.’
She gave me an irritated look. ‘It’s bad luck to talk that way, seaweed brain.’
‘Remind me again – why do you hate me so much?’
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Could’ve fooled me.’
She folded her cap of invisibility. ‘Look… we’re just not supposed to get along, okay? Our parents are rivals.’
‘Why?’
She sighed. ‘How many reasons do you want? One time my mom caught Poseidon with his girlfriend in Athena’s temple, which is hugely disrespectful. Another time, Athena and Poseidon competed to be the patron god for the city of Athens. Your dad created some stupid saltwater spring for his gift. My mom created the olive tree. The people saw that her gift was better, so they named the city after her.’
‘They must really like olives.’
‘Oh, forget it.’
‘Now, if she’d invented pizza – that I could understand.’
‘I said, forget it!’
In the front seat, Argus smiled. He didn’t say anything, but one blue eye on the back of his neck winked at me.
Traffic slowed us down in Queens. By the time we got into Manhattan it was sunset and starting to rain.
Argus dropped us at the Greyhound Station on the Upper East Side, not far from my mom and Gabe’s apartment. Taped to a mailbox was a soggy flyer with my picture on it: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?
I ripped it down before Annabeth and Grover could notice.
Argus unloaded our bags, made sure we got our bus tickets, then drove away, the eye on the back of his hand opening to watch us as he pulled out of the parking lot.
I thought about how close I was to my old apartment. On a normal day, my mom would be home from the candy store by now. Smelly Gabe was probably up there right now, playing poker, not even missing her.
Grover shouldered his backpack. He gazed down the street in the direction I was looking. ‘You want to know why she married him, Percy?’
I stared at him. ‘Were you reading my mind or something?’
‘Just your emotions.’ He shrugged. ‘Guess I forgot to tell you satyrs can do that. You were thinking about your mom and your stepdad, right?’
I nodded, wondering what else Grover might’ve forgotten to tell me.
‘Your mom married Gabe for you,’ Grover told me. ‘You call him “Smelly”, but you’ve got no idea. The guy has this aura… Yuck. I can smell him from here. I can smell traces of him on you, and you haven’t been near him for a fortnight.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Where’s the nearest shower?’
‘You should be grateful, Percy. Your stepfather smells so repulsively human he could mask the presence of any demigod. As soon as I took a whiff inside his Camaro, I knew: Gabe has been covering your scent for years. If you hadn’t lived with him every summer, you probably would’ve been found by monsters a long time ago. Your mom stayed with him to protect you. She was a smart lady. She must’ve loved you a lot to put up with that guy – if that makes you feel any better.’
It didn’t, but I forced myself not to show it. I’ll see her again, I thought. She isn’t gone.
I wondered if Grover could still read my emotions, mixed up as they were. I was glad he and Annabeth were with me, but I felt guilty that I hadn’t been straight with them. I hadn’t told them the real reason I’d said yes to this crazy quest.
The truth was, I didn’t care about retrieving Zeus’s lightning bolt, or saving the world, or even helping my father out of trouble. The more I thought about it, I resented Poseidon for never visiting me, never helping my mom, never even sending a lousy child-support cheque. He’d only claimed me because he needed a job done.
All I cared about was my mom. Hades had taken her unfairly, and Hades was going to give her back.
You will be betrayed by one who calls you a friend, the Oracle whispered in my mind. You will fail to save what matters most in the end.
Shut up, I told it.
The rain kept coming down.
We got restless waiting for the bus and decided to play some Hacky Sack with one of Grover’s apples. Annabeth was unbelievable. She could bounce the apple off her knee, her elbow, her shoulder, whatever. I wasn’t too bad myself.
The game ended when I tossed the apple towards Grover and it got too close to his mouth. In one mega goat bite, our Hacky Sack disappeared – core, stem and all.
Grover blushed. He tried to apologize, but Annabeth and I were too busy cracking up.
Finally the bus came. As we stood in line to board, Grover started looking around, sniffing the air like he smelled his favourite school cafeteria delicacy – enchiladas.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said tensely. ‘Maybe it’s nothing.’
But I could tell it wasn’t nothing. I started looking over my shoulder, too.
I was relieved when we finally got on board and found seats together in the back of the bus. We stowed our backpacks. Annabeth kept slapping her Yankees cap nervously against her thigh.
As the last passengers got on, Annabeth clamped her hand onto my knee. ‘Percy.’
An old lady had just boarded the bus. She wore a crumpled velvet dress, lace gloves and a shapeless orange-knit hat that shadowed her face, and she carried a big paisley purse. When she tilted her head up, her black eyes glittered, and my heart skipped a beat.
It was Mrs Dodds. Older, more withered, but definitely the same evil face.
I scrunched down in my seat.
Behind her came two more old ladies: one in a green hat, one in a purple hat. Otherwise they looked exactly like Mrs Dodds – same gnarled hands, paisley handbags, wrinkled velvet dresses. Triplet demon grandmothers.
They sat in the front row, right behind the driver. The two on the aisle crossed their legs over the walkway, making an X. It was casual enough, but it sent a clear message: nobody leaves.
The bus pulled out of the station, and we headed through the slick streets of Manhattan. ‘She didn’t stay dead long,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from quivering. ‘I thought you said they could be dispelled for a lifetime.’
‘I said if you’re lucky,’ Annabeth said. ‘You’re obviously not.’
‘All three of them,’ Grover whimpered. ‘Di immortales!’
‘It’s okay,’ Annabeth said, obviously thinking hard. ‘The Furies. The three worst monsters from the Underworld. No problem. No problem. We’ll just slip out the windows.’
‘They don’t open,’ Grover moaned.
‘A back exit?’ she suggested.
There wasn’t one. Even if there had been, it wouldn’t have helped. By that time, we were on Ninth Avenue, heading for the Lincoln Tunnel.
‘They won’t attack us with witnesses around,’ I said. ‘Will they?’
‘Mortals don’t have good eyes,’ Annabeth reminded me. ‘Their brains can only process what they see through the Mist.’
‘They’ll see three old ladies killing us, won’t they?’
She thought about it. ‘Hard to say.
But we can’t count on mortals for help. Maybe an emergency exit in the roof…?’
We hit the Lincoln Tunnel, and the bus went dark except for the running lights down the aisle. It was eerily quiet without the sound of the rain.
Mrs Dodds got up. In a flat voice, as if she’d rehearsed it, she announced to the whole bus: ‘I need to use the restroom.’
‘So do I,’ said the second sister.
‘So do I,’ said the third sister.
They all started coming down the aisle.
‘I’ve got it,’ Annabeth said. ‘Percy, take my hat.’
‘What?’
‘You’re the one they want. Turn invisible and go up the aisle. Let them pass you. Maybe you can get to the front and get away.’
‘But you guys –’
‘There’s an outside chance they might not notice us,’ Annabeth said. ‘You’re a son of one of the Big Three. Your smell might be overpowering.’
‘I can’t just leave you.’
‘Don’t worry about us,’ Grover said. ‘Go!’
My hands trembled. I felt like a coward, but I took the Yankees cap and put it on.
When I looked down, my body wasn’t there any more.
I started creeping up the aisle. I managed to get up ten rows, then duck into an empty seat just as the Furies walked past.
Mrs Dodds stopped, sniffing, and looked straight at me. My heart was pounding.
Apparently she didn’t see anything. She and her sisters kept going.
I was free. I made it to the front of the bus. We were almost through the Lincoln Tunnel now. I was about to press the emergency stop button when I heard hideous wailing from the back row.
The old ladies were not old ladies any more. Their faces were still the same – I guess those couldn’t get any uglier – but their bodies had shrivelled into leathery brown hag bodies with bat’s wings and hands and feet like gargoyle claws. Their handbags had turned into fiery whips.
The Furies surrounded Grover and Annabeth, lashing their whips, hissing: ‘Where is it? Where?’
The other people on the bus were screaming, cowering in their seats. They saw something, all right.
‘He’s not here!’ Annabeth yelled. ‘He’s gone!’
The Furies raised their whips.
Annabeth drew her bronze knife. Grover grabbed a tin can from his snack bag and prepared to throw it.
What I did next was so impulsive and dangerous I should’ve been named ADHD poster child of the year.
The bus driver was distracted, trying to see what was going on in his rearview mirror.
Still invisible, I grabbed the wheel from him and jerked it to the left. Everybody howled as they were thrown to the right, and I heard what I hoped was the sound of three Furies smashing against the windows.
‘Hey!’ the driver yelled. ‘Hey – whoa!’
We wrestled for the wheel. The bus slammed against the side of the tunnel, grinding metal, throwing sparks a mile behind us.
We careened out of the Lincoln Tunnel and back into the rainstorm, people and monsters tossed around the bus, cars ploughed aside like bowling pins.
Somehow the driver found an exit. We shot off the highway, through half a dozen traffic lights, and ended up barrelling down one of those New Jersey rural roads where you can’t believe there’s so much nothing right across the river from New York. There were woods to our left, the Hudson River to our right and the driver seemed to be veering towards the river.
Another great idea: I hit the emergency brake.
The bus wailed, spun a full circle on the wet tar and crashed into the trees. The emergency lights came on. The door flew open. The bus driver was the first one out, the passengers yelling as they stampeded after him. I stepped into the driver’s seat and let them pass.
The Furies regained their balance. They lashed their whips at Annabeth while she waved her knife and yelled in Ancient Greek, telling them to back off. Grover threw tin cans.
I looked at the open doorway. I was free to go, but I couldn’t leave my friends. I took off the invisible cap. ‘Hey!’
The Furies turned, baring their yellow fangs at me, and the exit suddenly sounded like an excellent idea. Mrs Dodds stalked up the aisle, just as she used to do in class, about to deliver my F- maths test. Every time she flicked her whip, red flames danced along the barbed leather.
Her two ugly sisters hopped on top of the seats on either side of her and crawled towards me like huge nasty lizards.
‘Perseus Jackson,’ Mrs Dodds said, in an accent that was definitely from somewhere further south than Georgia. ‘You have offended the gods. You shall die.’
‘I liked you better as a maths teacher,’ I told her.
She growled.
Annabeth and Grover moved up behind the Furies cautiously, looking for an opening.
I took the ballpoint pen out of my pocket and uncapped it. Riptide elongated into a shimmering double-edged sword.
The Furies hesitated.
Mrs Dodds had felt Riptide’s blade before. She obviously didn’t like seeing it again.
‘Submit now,’ she hissed. ‘And you will not suffer eternal torment.’
‘Nice try,’ I told her.
‘Percy, look out!’ Annabeth cried.
Mrs Dodds lashed her whip around my sword hand while the Furies on the either side lunged at me.
My hand felt like it was wrapped in molten lead, but I managed not to drop Riptide. I struck the Fury on the left with its hilt, sending her toppling backwards into a seat. I turned and sliced the Fury on the right. As soon as the blade connected with her neck, she screamed and exploded into dust. Annabeth got Mrs Dodds in a wrestler’s hold and yanked her backwards while Grover ripped the whip out of her hands.
‘Ow!’ he yelled. ‘Ow! Hot! Hot!’
The Fury I’d hilt-slammed came at me again, talons ready, but I swung Riptide and she broke open like a piñata.
Mrs Dodds was trying to get Annabeth off her back. She kicked, clawed, hissed and bit, but Annabeth held on while Grover got Mrs Dodds’s legs tied up in her own whip. Finally they both shoved her backwards into the aisle. Mrs Dodds tried to get up, but she didn’t have room to flap her bat wings, so she kept falling down.
‘Zeus will destroy you!’ she promised. ‘Hades will have your soul!’
‘Braccas meas vescimini!’ I yelled.
I wasn’t sure where the Latin came from. I think it meant ‘Eat my pants!’
Thunder shook the bus. The hair rose on the back of my neck.
‘Get out!’ Annabeth yelled at me. ‘Now!’ I didn’t need any encouragement.
We rushed outside and found the other passengers wandering around in a daze, arguing with the driver, or running around in circles yelling, ‘We’re going to die!’ A Hawaiian-shirted tourist with a camera snapped my photograph before I could recap my sword.
‘Our bags!’ Grover realized. ‘We left our –’
BOOOOOM!
The windows of the bus exploded as the passengers ran for cover. Lightning shredded a huge crater in the roof, but an angry wail from inside told me Mrs Dodds was not yet dead.
‘Run!’ Annabeth said. ‘She’s calling for reinforcements! We have to get out of here!’
We plunged into the woods as the rain poured down, the bus in flames behind us and nothing but darkness ahead.
11 We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium
In a way, it’s nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you’re walking away from a bus that’s just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it’s raining on top of everything else, most people might think that’s just really bad luck; when you’re a half-blood, you understand that some divine force really is trying to mess up your day.
So there we were, Annabeth and Grover and I, walking through the woods on the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky yellow behind us and the smell of the Hud
son reeking in our noses.
Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupilled and full of terror. ‘Three Kindly Ones. All three at once.’
I was pretty much in shock myself. The explosion of bus windows still rang in my ears. But Annabeth kept pulling us along, saying: ‘Come on! The further away we get, the better.’
‘All our money was back there,’ I reminded her. ‘Our food and clothes. Everything.’
‘Well, maybe if you hadn’t decided to jump into the fight –’
‘What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?’
‘You didn’t need to protect me, Percy. I would’ve been fine.’
‘Sliced like sandwich bread,’ Grover put in, ‘but fine.’
‘Shut up, goat boy,’ said Annabeth.
Grover brayed mournfully. ‘Tin cans… a perfectly good bag of tin cans.’
We sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like sour laundry.
After a few minutes, Annabeth fell into line next to me. ‘Look, I…’ Her voice faltered. ‘I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave.’
‘We’re a team, right?’
She was silent for a few more steps. ‘It’s just that if you died… aside from the fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This may be my only chance to see the real world.’
The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind us, leaving us in almost total darkness. I couldn’t see anything of Annabeth except a glint of her blonde hair.
‘You haven’t left Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?’ I asked her.
‘No… only short field trips. My dad –’
‘The history professor.’
‘Yeah. It didn’t work out for me living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood is my home.’ She was rushing her words out now, as if she were afraid somebody might try to stop her. ‘At camp you train and train. And that’s all cool and everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That’s where you learn whether you’re any good or not.’
