by Rick Riordan
‘A half-blood hideout.’ I looked at Annabeth in awe. ‘You made this place?’
‘Thalia and I,’ she said quietly. ‘And Luke.’
That shouldn’t have bothered me. I mean, I knew Thalia and Luke had taken care of Annabeth when she was little. I knew the three of them had been runaways together, hiding from monsters, surviving on their own before Grover found them and tried to get them to Half-Blood Hill. But whenever Annabeth talked about the time she’d spent with them, I kind of felt … I don’t know. Uncomfortable?
No. That’s not the word.
The word was jealous.
‘So…’ I said. ‘You don’t think Luke will look for us here?’
She shook her head. ‘We made a dozen safe houses like this. I doubt Luke even remembers where they are. Or cares.’
She threw herself down on the blankets and started going through her duffel bag. Her body language made it pretty clear she didn’t want to talk.
‘Um, Tyson?’ I said. ‘Would you mind scouting around outside? Like, look for a wilderness convenience store or something?’
‘Convenience store?’
‘Yeah, for snacks. Powdered doughnuts or something. Just don’t go too far.’
‘Powdered doughnuts,’ Tyson said earnestly. ‘I will look for powdered doughnuts in the wilderness.’ He headed outside and started calling, ‘Here, doughnuts!’
Once he was gone, I sat down across from Annabeth. ‘Hey, I’m sorry about, you know, seeing Luke.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ She unsheathed her knife and started cleaning the blade with a rag.
‘He let us go too easily,’ I said.
I hoped I’d been imagining it, but Annabeth nodded. ‘I was thinking the same thing. What we overheard him say about a gamble, and “they’ll take the bait” … I think he was talking about us.’
‘The Fleece is the bait? Or Grover?’
She studied the edge of her knife. ‘I don’t know, Percy. Maybe he wants the Fleece for himself. Maybe he’s hoping we’ll do the hard work and then he can steal it from us. I just can’t believe he would poison the tree.’
‘What did he mean,’ I asked, ‘that Thalia would’ve been on his side?’
‘He’s wrong.’
‘You don’t sound sure.’
Annabeth glared at me, and I started to wish I hadn’t asked her about this while she was holding a knife.
‘Percy, you know who you remind me of most? Thalia. You guys are so much alike it’s scary. I mean, either you would’ve been best friends or you would’ve strangled each other.’
‘Let’s go with “best friends.” ’
‘Thalia got angry with her dad sometimes. So do you. Would you turn against Olympus because of that?’
I stared at the quiver of arrows in the corner. ‘No.’
‘Okay, then. Neither would she. Luke’s wrong.’ Annabeth stuck her knife blade into the dirt.
I wanted to ask her about the prophecy Luke had mentioned and what it had to do with my sixteenth birthday. But I figured she wouldn’t tell me. Chiron had made it pretty clear that I wasn’t allowed to hear it until the gods decided otherwise.
‘So what did Luke mean about Cyclopes?’ I asked. ‘He said you of all people –’
‘I know what he said. He … he was talking about the real reason Thalia died.’
I waited, not sure what to say.
Annabeth drew a shaky breath. ‘You can never trust a Cyclops, Percy. Six years ago, on the night Grover was leading us to Half-Blood Hill –’
She was interrupted when the door of the hut creaked open. Tyson crawled in.
‘Powdered doughnuts!’ he said proudly, holding up a pastry box.
Annabeth stared at him. ‘Where did you get that? We’re in the middle of the wilderness. There’s nothing around for –’
‘Fifteen metres,’ Tyson said. ‘Monster Doughnut shop – just over the hill!’
‘This is bad,’ Annabeth muttered.
We were crouching behind a tree, staring at the doughnut shop in the middle of the woods. It looked brand new, with brightly lit windows, a parking area and a little road leading off into the forest, but there was nothing else around, and no cars parked in the lot. We could see one employee reading a magazine behind the cash register. That was it. On the store’s awning, in huge black letters that even I could read, it said:
MONSTER DOUGHNUT
A cartoon ogre was taking a bite out of the O in MONSTER. The place smelled good, like fresh-baked chocolate doughnuts.
‘This shouldn’t be here,’ Annabeth whispered. ‘It’s wrong.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘It’s a doughnut shop.’
‘Shhh!’
‘Why are we whispering? Tyson went in and bought a dozen. Nothing happened to him.’
‘He’s a monster.’
‘Aw, c’mon, Annabeth. Monster Doughnut doesn’t mean monsters! It’s a chain. We’ve got them in New York.’
‘A chain,’ she agreed. ‘And don’t you think it’s strange that one appeared immediately after you told Tyson to get doughnuts? Right here in the middle of the woods?’
I thought about it. It did seem a little weird, but, I mean, doughnut shops weren’t real high on my list of sinister forces.
‘It could be a nest,’ Annabeth explained.
Tyson whimpered. I doubt he understood what Annabeth was saying any better than I did, but her tone was making him nervous. He’d ploughed through half a dozen doughnuts from his box and was getting powdered sugar all over his face.
‘A nest for what?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t you ever wondered how franchise stores pop up so fast?’ she asked. ‘One day there’s nothing and then the next day – boom, there’s a new burger place or a coffee shop or whatever? First a single store, then two, then four – exact replicas spreading across the country?’
‘Um, no. Never thought about it.’
‘Percy, some of the chains multiply so fast because all their locations are magically linked to the life force of a monster. Some children of Hermes figured out how to do it back in the 1950s. They breed –’
She froze.
‘What?’ I demanded. ‘They breed what?’
‘No – sudden – moves,’ Annabeth said, like her life depended on it. ‘Very slowly, turn around.’
Then I heard it: a scraping noise, like something large dragging its belly through the leaves.
I turned and saw a rhino-size thing moving through the shadows of the trees. It was hissing, its front half writhing in all different directions. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing at first. Then I realized the thing had multiple necks – at least seven, each topped with a hissing reptilian head. Its skin was leathery, and under each neck it wore a plastic bib that read: I’M A MONSTER DOUGHNUT KID!
I took out my ballpoint pen, but Annabeth locked eyes with me – a silent warning. Not yet.
I understood. A lot of monsters have terrible eyesight. It was possible the Hydra might pass us by. But if I uncapped my sword now, the bronze glow would certainly get its attention.
We waited.
The Hydra was only a metre or so away. It seemed to be sniffing the ground and the trees like it was hunting for something. Then I noticed that two of the heads were ripping apart a piece of yellow canvas – one of our duffel bags. The thing had already been to our campsite. It was following our scent.
My heart pounded. I’d seen a stuffed Hydra-head trophy at camp before, but that did nothing to prepare me for the real thing. Each head was diamond-shaped, like a rattlesnake’s, but the mouths were lined with jagged rows of sharklike teeth.
Tyson was trembling. He stepped back and accidentally snapped a twig. Immediately, all seven heads turned towards us and hissed.
‘Scatter!’ Annabeth yelled. She dived to the right.
I rolled to the left. One of the Hydra heads spat an arc of green liquid that shot past my shoulder and splashed against an elm. The trunk smoked and began to disi
ntegrate. The whole tree toppled straight towards Tyson, who still hadn’t moved, petrified by the monster that was now right in front of him.
‘Tyson!’ I tackled him with all my might, knocking him aside just as the Hydra lunged and the tree crashed on top of two of its heads.
The Hydra stumbled backwards, yanking its heads free and wailing in outrage at the fallen tree. All seven heads shot acid, and the elm melted into a steaming pool of muck.
‘Move!’ I told Tyson. I ran to one side and uncapped Riptide, hoping to draw the monster’s attention.
It worked.
The sight of celestial bronze is hateful to most monsters. As soon as my glowing blade appeared, the Hydra whipped towards it with all its heads, hissing and baring its teeth.
The good news: Tyson was momentarily out of danger. The bad news: I was about to be melted into a puddle of goo.
One of the heads snapped at me experimentally. Without thinking, I swung my sword.
‘No!’ Annabeth yelled.
Too late. I sliced the Hydra’s head clean off. It rolled away into the grass, leaving a flailing stump, which immediately stopped bleeding and began to swell like a balloon.
In a matter of seconds the wounded neck split into two necks, each of which grew a full-size head. Now I was looking at an eight-headed Hydra.
‘Percy!’ Annabeth scolded. ‘You just opened another Monster Doughnut shop somewhere!’
I dodged a spray of acid. ‘I’m about to die and you’re worried about that? How do we kill it?’
‘Fire!’ Annabeth said. ‘We have to have fire!’
As soon as she said that, I remembered the story. The Hydra’s heads would only stop multiplying if we burned the stumps before they regrew. That’s what Heracles had done, anyway. But we had no fire.
I backed up towards the river. The Hydra followed.
Annabeth moved in on my left and tried to distract one of the heads, parrying its teeth with her knife, but another head swung sideways like a club and knocked her into the muck.
‘No hitting my friends!’ Tyson charged in, putting himself between the Hydra and Annabeth. As Annabeth got to her feet, Tyson started smashing at the monster heads with his fists so fast it reminded me of the whack-a-mole game at the arcade. But even Tyson couldn’t fend off the Hydra forever.
We kept inching backwards, dodging acid splashes and deflecting snapping heads without cutting them off, but I knew we were only postponing our deaths. Eventually, we would make a mistake and the thing would kill us.
Then I heard a strange sound – a chug-chug-chug that at first I thought was my heartbeat. It was so powerful it made the riverbank shake.
‘What’s that noise?’ Annabeth shouted, keeping her eyes on the Hydra.
‘Steam engine,’ Tyson said.
‘What? I ducked as the Hydra spat acid over my head.
Then from the river behind us, a familiar female voice shouted, ‘There! Prepare the thirty-two-pounder!’
I didn’t dare look away from the Hydra, but if that was who I thought it was behind us, I figured we now had enemies on two fronts.
A gravelly male voice said, ‘They’re too close, m’lady!’
‘Damn the heroes!’ the girl said. ‘Full steam ahead!’
‘Aye, m’lady.’
‘Fire at will, Captain!’
Annabeth understood what was happening a split second before I did. She yelled, ‘Hit the dirt!’ and we dived for the ground as an earth-shattering BOOM echoed from the river. There was a flash of light, a column of smoke and the Hydra exploded right in front of us, showering us with nasty green slime that vaporized as soon as it hit, the way monster guts tend to do.
‘Gross!’ screamed Annabeth.
‘Steamship!’ yelled Tyson.
I stood, coughing from the cloud of gunpowder smoke that was rolling across the banks.
Chugging towards us down the river was the strangest ship I’d ever seen. It rode low in the water like a submarine, its deck plated with iron. In the middle was a trapezoid-shaped casemate with slats on each side for cannons. A flag waved from the top – a wild boar and spear on a blood-red field. Lining the deck were zombies in grey uniforms – dead soldiers with shimmering faces that only partially covered their skulls, like the ghouls I’d seen in the Underworld guarding Hades’s palace.
The ship was an ironclad. A Civil War battle cruiser. I could just make out the name along the prow in moss-covered letters: CSS Birmingham.
And standing next to the smoking cannon that had almost killed us, wearing full Greek battle armour, was Clarisse.
‘Losers,’ she sneered. ‘But I suppose I have to rescue you. Come aboard.’
11 Clarisse Blows Up Everything
‘You are in so much trouble,’ Clarisse said.
We’d just finished a ship tour we didn’t want, through dark rooms overcrowded with dead sailors. We’d seen the coal bunker, the boilers and engine, which huffed and groaned like it would explode any minute. We’d seen the pilot house and the powder magazine and gunnery deck (Clarisse’s favourite) with two Dahlgren smoothbore cannons on the port and starboard sides and a Brooke nine-inch rifled gun fore and aft – all specially refitted to fire celestial bronze cannonballs.
Everywhere we went, dead Confederate sailors stared at us, their ghostly bearded faces shimmering over their skulls. They approved of Annabeth because she told them she was from Virginia. They were interested in me, too, because my name was Jackson – like the Southern general – but then I ruined it by telling them I was from New York. They all hissed and muttered curses about Yankees.
Tyson was terrified of them. All through the tour, he insisted Annabeth hold his hand, which she didn’t look too thrilled about.
Finally, we were escorted to dinner. The CSS Birmingham captain’s quarters were about the size of a walk-in closet, but still much bigger than any other room on board. The table was set with white linen and china. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips and Dr Peppers were served by skeletal crewmen. I didn’t want to eat anything served by ghosts, but my hunger overruled my fear.
‘Tantalus expelled you for eternity,’ Clarisse told us smugly. ‘Mr D said if any of you show your face at camp again, he’ll turn you into squirrels and run you over with his SUV.’
‘Did they give you this ship?’ I asked.
‘Course not. My father did.’
‘Ares?’
Clarisse sneered. ‘You think your daddy is the only one with sea power? The spirits on the losing side of every war owe a tribute to Ares. That’s their curse for being defeated. I prayed to my father for a naval transport and here it is. These guys will do anything I tell them. Won’t you, Captain?’
The captain stood behind her looking stiff and angry. His glowing green eyes fixed me with a hungry stare. ‘If it means an end to this infernal war, ma’am, peace at last, we’ll do anything. Destroy anyone.’
Clarisse smiled. ‘Destroy anyone. I like that.’
Tyson gulped.
‘Clarisse,’ Annabeth said, ‘Luke might be after the Fleece, too. We saw him. He’s got the coordinates and he’s heading south. He has a cruise ship full of monsters –’
‘Good! I’ll blow him out of the water.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Annabeth said. ‘We have to combine forces. Let us help you –’
‘No!’ Clarisse pounded the table. ‘This is my quest, smart girl! Finally I get to be the hero, and you two will not steal my chance.’
‘Where are your cabin mates?’ I asked. ‘You were allowed to take two friends with you, weren’t you?’
‘They didn’t … I let them stay behind. To protect the camp.’
‘You mean even the people in your own cabin wouldn’t help you?’
‘Shut up, Prissy! I don’t need them! Or you!’
‘Clarisse,’ I said, ‘Tantalus is using you. He doesn’t care about the camp. He’d love to see it destroyed. He’s setting you up to fail.’
‘N
o! I don’t care what the Oracle –’ She stopped herself.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What did the Oracle tell you?’
‘Nothing.’ Clarisse’s ears turned pink. ‘All you need to know is that I’m finishing this quest and you’re not helping. On the other hand, I can’t let you go…’
‘So we’re prisoners?’ Annabeth asked.
‘Guests. For now.’ Clarisse propped her feet up on the white linen tablecloth and opened another Dr Pepper. ‘Captain, take them below. Assign them hammocks on the berth deck. If they don’t mind their manners, show them how we deal with enemy spies.’
The dream came as soon as I fell asleep.
Grover was sitting at his loom, desperately unravelling his wedding train, when the boulder door rolled aside and the Cyclops bellowed, ‘Aha!’
Grover yelped. ‘Dear! I didn’t – you were so quiet!’
‘Unravelling!’ Polyphemus roared. ‘So that’s the problem!’
‘Oh, no. I-I wasn’t –’
‘Come!’ Polyphemus grabbed Grover around the waist and half carried, half dragged him through the tunnels of the cave. Grover struggled to keep his high heels on his hooves. His veil kept tilting on his head, threatening to come off.
The Cyclops pulled him into a warehouse-size cavern decorated with sheep junk. There was a wool-covered Lay-Z-Boy recliner and a wool-covered television set, crude bookshelves loaded with sheep collectibles – coffee mugs shaped like sheep faces, plaster figurines of sheep, sheep board games and picture books and action figures. The floor was littered with piles of sheep bones, and other bones that didn’t look exactly like sheep – the bones of satyrs who’d come to the island looking for Pan.
Polyphemus set Grover down only long enough to move another huge boulder. Daylight streamed into the cave, and Grover whimpered with longing. Fresh air!
The Cyclops dragged him outside to a hilltop overlooking the most beautiful island I’d ever seen.
It was shaped kind of like a saddle cut in half by an axe. There were lush green hills on either side and a wide valley in the middle, split by a deep chasm that was spanned by a rope bridge. Beautiful streams rolled to the edge of the canyon and dropped off in rainbow-coloured waterfalls. Parrots fluttered in the trees. Pink and purple flowers bloomed on the bushes. Hundreds of sheep grazed in the meadows, their wool glinting strangely like copper and silver coins.
