by Rick Riordan
They needed more firepower, but they couldn’t use ballistae. They needed to deliver a blast that wouldn’t destroy the ship. But how …?
Leo’s eyes fixed on a supply crate next to Hazel’s feet.
‘Hazel!’ he yelled. ‘That box! Open it!’
She hesitated, then saw the box he meant. The label read: WARNING. DO NOT OPEN.
‘Open it!’ Leo yelled again. ‘Coach, take the wheel! Turn us towards the monster, or we’ll capsize.’
Hedge danced through the tentacles with his nimble goat hooves, smashing away with gusto. He bounded towards the helm and took the controls.
‘Hope you got a plan!’ he shouted.
‘A bad one.’ Leo raced towards the mast.
The monster pushed against the Argo II. The deck lurched to forty-five degrees. Despite everyone’s efforts, the tentacles were just too numerous to fight. They seemed able to elongate as much as they wanted. Soon they’d have the Argo II completely entangled. Percy hadn’t appeared from below. The others were fighting for their lives against nose hair.
‘Frank!’ Leo called as he ran towards Hazel. ‘Buy us some time! Can you turn into a shark or something?’
Frank glanced over, scowling, and in that moment a tentacle slammed into the big guy, knocking him overboard.
Hazel screamed. She’d opened the supply box and almost dropped the two glass vials she was holding.
Leo caught them. Each was the size of an apple, and the liquid inside glowed poisonous green. The glass was warm to the touch. Leo’s chest felt like it might implode from guilt. He’d just distracted Frank and possibly got him killed, but he couldn’t think about it. He had to save the ship.
‘Come on!’ He handed Hazel one of the vials. ‘We can kill the monster – and save Frank!’
He hoped he wasn’t lying. Getting to the port rail was more like rock climbing than walking, but finally they made it.
‘What is this stuff?’ Hazel gasped, cradling her glass vial.
‘Greek fire!’
Her eyes widened. ‘Are you crazy? If these break, we’ll burn the whole ship!’
‘Its mouth!’ Leo said. ‘Just chuck it down its –’
Suddenly Leo was crushed against Hazel, and the world turned sideways. As they were lifted into the air, he realized they’d been wrapped together in a tentacle. Leo’s arms were free, but it was all he could do to keep hold of his Greek fire vial. Hazel struggled. Her arms were pinned, which meant at any moment the vial trapped between them might break … and that would be extremely bad for their health.
They rose ten feet, twenty feet, thirty feet above the monster. Leo caught a glimpse of his friends in a losing battle, yelling and slashing at the monster’s nose hairs. He saw Coach Hedge struggling to keep the ship from capsizing. The sea was dark, but in the moonlight he thought he saw a glistening object floating near the monster – maybe the unconscious body of Frank Zhang.
‘Leo,’ Hazel gasped, ‘I can’t – my arms –’
‘Hazel,’ he said. ‘Do you trust me?’
‘No!’
‘Me neither,’ Leo admitted. ‘When this thing drops us, hold your breath. Whatever you do, try to chuck your vial as far away from the ship as possible.’
‘Why – why would it drop us?’
Leo stared down at the monster’s head. This would be a tough shot, but he had no choice. He raised the vial in his left hand. He pressed his right hand against the tentacle and summoned fire to his palm – a narrowly focused, white-hot burst.
That got the creature’s attention. A tremble went all the way down the tentacle as its flesh blistered under Leo’s touch. The monster raised its maw, bellowing in pain, and Leo threw his Greek fire straight down its throat.
After that, things got fuzzy. Leo felt the tentacle release them. They fell. He heard a muffled explosion and saw a green flash of light inside the giant pink lampshade of the monster’s body. The water hit Leo’s face like a brick wrapped in sandpaper, and he sank into darkness. He clamped his mouth shut, trying not to breathe, but he could feel himself losing consciousness.
Through the sting of the salt water, he thought he saw the hazy silhouette of the ship’s hull above – a dark oval surrounded by a green fiery corona, but he couldn’t tell if the ship was actually on fire.
Killed by a giant shrimp, Leo thought bitterly. At least let the Argo II survive. Let my friends be okay.
His vision began to dim. His lungs burned.
Just as he was about to give up, a strange face hovered over him – a man who looked like Chiron, their trainer back at Camp Half-Blood. He had the same curly hair, shaggy beard and intelligent eyes – a look somewhere between wild hippie and fatherly professor, except this man’s skin was the colour of a lima bean. The man silently held up a dagger. His expression was grim and reproachful, as if to say: Now, hold still, or I can’t kill you properly.
Leo blacked out.
When Leo woke, he wondered if he was a ghost in another flashback, because he was floating weightlessly. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light.
‘About time.’ Frank’s voice had too much reverb, like he was speaking through several layers of plastic wrap.
Leo sat up … or rather he drifted upright. He was underwater, in a cave about the size of a two-car garage. Phosphorescent moss covered the ceiling, bathing the room in a blue-and-green glow. The floor was a carpet of sea urchins, which would have been uncomfortable to walk on, so Leo was glad he was floating. He didn’t understand how he could be breathing with no air.
Frank levitated nearby in meditation position. With his chubby face and his grumpy expression, he looked like a Buddha who’d achieved enlightenment and wasn’t thrilled about it.
The only exit to the cave was blocked by a massive abalone shell – its surface glistening in pearl and rose and turquoise. If this cave was a prison, at least it had an awesome door.
‘Where are we?’ Leo asked. ‘Where is everyone else?’
‘Everyone?’ Frank grumbled. ‘I don’t know. As far as I can tell, it’s just you and me and Hazel down here. The fish-horse guys took Hazel about an hour ago, leaving me with you.’
Frank’s tone made it obvious he didn’t approve of those arrangements. He didn’t look injured, but Leo realized that he no longer had his bow or quiver. In a panic, Leo patted his waist. His tool belt was gone.
‘They searched us,’ Frank said. ‘Took anything that could be a weapon.’
‘Who?’ Leo demanded. ‘Who are these fish-horse –?’
‘Fish-horse guys,’ Frank clarified, which wasn’t very clear. ‘They must have grabbed us when we fell in the ocean and dragged us … wherever this is.’
Leo remembered the last thing he’d seen before he passed out – the lima-bean-coloured face of the bearded man with the dagger. ‘The shrimp monster. The Argo II – is the ship okay?’
‘I don’t know,’ Frank said darkly. ‘The others might be in trouble or hurt, or – or worse. But I guess you care more about your ship than your friends.’
Leo felt like his face had just hit the water again. ‘What kind of stupid thing –?’
Then he realized why Frank was so angry: the flashback. Things had happened so fast with the monster attack that Leo had almost forgotten. Coach Hedge had made that stupid comment about Leo and Hazel holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. It probably hadn’t helped that Leo had got Frank knocked overboard right after that.
Suddenly Leo found it hard to meet Frank’s gaze.
‘Look, man … I’m sorry I got us into this mess. I totally jacked things up.’ He took a deep breath, which felt surprisingly normal, considering he was underwater. ‘Me and Hazel holding hands … it’s not what you think. She was showing me this flashback from her past, trying to figure out my connection with Sammy.’
Frank’s angry expression started to unknot, replaced by curiosity. ‘Did she … did you figure it out?’
‘Yeah,’ Leo said. ‘Well, sort of. We di
dn’t get a chance to talk about it afterwards because of Shrimpzilla, but Sammy was my great-grandfather.’
He told Frank what they’d seen. The weirdness hadn’t fully registered yet, but now, trying to explain it aloud, Leo could hardly believe it. Hazel had been sweet on his bisabuelo, a guy who had died when Leo was a baby. Leo hadn’t made the connection before, but he had a vague memory of older family members calling his grandfather Sam Junior. Which meant Sam Senior was Sammy, Leo’s bisabuelo. At some point, Tía Callida – Hera herself – had talked with Sammy, consoling him and giving him a glimpse into the future, which meant that Hera had been shaping Leo’s life generations before he was even born. If Hazel had stayed in the 1940s, if she’d married Sammy, Leo might’ve been her great-grandson.
‘Oh, man,’ Leo said when he had finished the story. ‘I don’t feel so good. But I swear on the Styx that’s what we saw.’
Frank had the same expression as the monster catfish head – wide glassy eyes and an open mouth. ‘Hazel … Hazel liked your great-grandfather? That’s why she likes you?’
‘Frank, I know this is weird. Believe me. But I don’t like Hazel – not that way. I’m not moving in on your girl.’
Frank knitted his eyebrows. ‘No?’
Leo hoped he wasn’t blushing. Truthfully, he had no idea how he felt about Hazel. She was awesome and cute, and Leo had a weakness for awesome cute girls. But the flashback had complicated his feelings a lot.
Besides, his ship was in trouble.
I guess you care more about your ship than your friends, Frank had said.
That wasn’t true, was it? Leo’s dad, Hephaestus, had admitted once that he wasn’t good with organic life forms. And, yes, Leo had always been more comfortable with machines than people. But he did care about his friends. Piper and Jason … he’d known them the longest, but the others were important to him, too. Even Frank. They were like family.
The problem was it had been so long since Leo had had a family he couldn’t even remember how it felt. Sure, last winter he’d become senior counsellor of Hephaestus cabin, but most of his time had been spent building the ship. He liked his cabin mates. He knew how to work with them – but did he really know them?
If Leo had a family, it was the demigods on the Argo II – and maybe Coach Hedge, which Leo would never admit aloud.
You will always be the outsider, warned Nemesis’s voice, but Leo tried to push that thought aside.
‘Right, so …’ He looked around him. ‘We need to make a plan. How are we breathing? If we’re under the ocean, shouldn’t we be crushed by the water pressure?’
Frank shrugged. ‘Fish-horse magic, I guess. I remember the green guy touching my head with the point of a dagger. Then I could breathe.’
Leo studied the abalone door. ‘Can you bust us out? Turn into a hammerhead shark or something?’
Frank shook his head glumly. ‘My shape-shifting doesn’t work. I don’t know why. Maybe they cursed me, or maybe I’m too messed up to focus.’
‘Hazel could be in trouble,’ Leo said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
He swam to the door and ran his fingers along the abalone. He couldn’t feel any kind of latch or other mechanism. Either the door could only be opened by magic, or sheer force was required – neither of which was Leo’s speciality.
‘I’ve already tried,’ Frank said. ‘Even if we get out, we have no weapons.’
‘Hmm …’ Leo held up his hand. ‘I wonder.’
He concentrated, and fire flickered over his fingers. For a split second, Leo was excited, because he hadn’t expected it to work underwater. Then his plan started working a little too well. Fire raced up his arm and over his body until he was completely shrouded in a thin veil of flame. He tried to breathe, but he was inhaling pure heat.
‘Leo!’ Frank flailed backwards like he was falling off a bar stool. Instead of racing to Leo’s aid, he hugged the wall to get as far away as possible.
Leo forced himself to stay calm. He understood what was going on. The fire itself couldn’t hurt him. He willed the flames to die and counted to five. He took a shallow breath. He had oxygen again.
Frank stopped trying to merge with the cave wall. ‘You’re … you’re okay?’
‘Yeah,’ Leo grumbled. ‘Thanks for the assist.’
‘I – I’m sorry.’ Frank looked so horrified and ashamed it was hard for Leo to stay mad at him. ‘I just … what happened?’
‘Clever magic,’ Leo said. ‘There’s a thin layer of oxygen around us, like an extra skin. Must be self-regenerating. That’s how we’re breathing and staying dry. The oxygen gave the fire fuel – except the fire also suffocated me.’
‘I really don’t …’ Frank gulped. ‘I don’t like that fire summoning you do.’ He started getting cosy with the wall again.
Leo didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help laughing. ‘Man, I’m not going to attack you.’
‘Fire,’ Frank repeated, like that one word explained everything.
Leo remembered what Hazel had said – that his fire made Frank nervous. He’d seen the discomfort in Frank’s face before, but Leo hadn’t taken it seriously. Frank seemed way more powerful and scary than Leo was.
Now it occurred to him that Frank might have had a bad experience with fire. Leo’s own mom had died in a machine-shop blaze. Leo had been blamed for it. He’d grown up being called a freak, an arsonist, because whenever he got angry things burned.
‘Sorry I laughed,’ he said, and he meant it. ‘My mom died in a fire. I understand being afraid of it. Did, uh … did something like that happen with you?’
Frank seemed to be weighing up how much to say. ‘My house … my grandmother’s place. It burned down. But it’s more than that …’ He stared at the sea urchins on the floor. ‘Annabeth said I could trust the crew. Even you.’
‘Even me, huh?’ Leo wondered how that had come up in conversation. ‘Wow, high praise.’
‘My weakness …’ Frank started, like the words cut his mouth. ‘There’s this piece of firewood –’
The abalone door rolled open.
Leo turned and found himself face to face with Lima Bean Man, who wasn’t actually a man at all. Now that Leo could see him clearly, the guy was by far the weirdest creature he’d ever met, and that was saying a lot.
From the waist up, he was more or less human – a thin, bare-chested dude with a dagger in his belt and a band of seashells strapped across his chest like a bandolier. His skin was green, his beard scraggly brown, and his longish hair was tied back in a seaweed bandanna. A pair of lobster claws stuck up from his head like horns, turning and snapping at random.
Leo decided he didn’t look so much like Chiron. He looked more like the poster Leo’s mom used to keep in her workspace – that old Mexican bandit Pancho Villa, except with seashells and lobster horns.
From the waist down, the guy was more complicated. He had the forelegs of a blue-green horse, sort of like a centaur, but towards the back his horse body morphed into a long fishy tail about ten feet long, with a rainbow-coloured, V-shaped tail fin.
Now Leo understood what Frank meant about fish-horse guys.
‘I am Bythos,’ said the green man. ‘I will interrogate Frank Zhang.’
His voice was calm and firm, leaving no room for debate.
‘Why did you capture us?’ Leo demanded. ‘Where’s Hazel?’
Bythos narrowed his eyes. His expression seemed to say: Did this tiny creature just talk to me? ‘You, Leo Valdez, will go with my brother.’
‘Your brother?’
Leo realized that a much larger figure was looming behind Bythos, with a shadow so wide it filled the entire cave entrance.
‘Yes,’ Bythos said with a dry smile. ‘Try not to make Aphros mad.’
XXIV
Leo
Aphros looked like his brother, except he was blue instead of green and much, much bigger. He had Arnold-as-Terminator abs and arms, and a square, brutish head. A huge Conan-approved swo
rd was strapped across his back. Even his hair was bigger – a massive globe of blue-black frizz so thick that his lobster claw horns appeared to be drowning as they tried to swim their way to the surface.
‘Is that why they named you Aphros?’ Leo asked as they glided down the path from the cave. ‘Because of the Afro?’
Aphros scowled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing,’ Leo said quickly. At least he would never have trouble remembering which fish dude was which. ‘So what are you guys, exactly?’
‘Ichthyocentaurs,’ Aphros said, like it was a question he was tired of answering.
‘Uh, icky what?’
‘Fish centaurs. We are the half brothers of Chiron.’
‘Oh, he’s a friend of mine!’
Aphros narrowed his eyes. ‘The one called Hazel told us this, but we will determine the truth. Come.’
Leo didn’t like the sound of determine the truth. It made him think of torture racks and red-hot pokers.
He followed the fish centaur through a massive forest of kelp. Leo could’ve darted to one side and got lost in the plants pretty easily, but he didn’t try. For one thing, he figured Aphros could travel much faster in the water, and the guy might be able to shut off the magic that let Leo move and breathe. Inside or outside the cave, Leo was just as much a captive.
Also, Leo had no clue where he was.
They drifted between rows of kelp as tall as apartment buildings. The green-and-yellow plants swayed weightlessly, like columns of helium balloons. High above, Leo saw a smudge of white that might have been the sun.
He guessed that meant they’d been here overnight. Was the Argo II all right? Had it sailed on without them, or were their friends still searching?
Leo couldn’t even be sure how deep they were. Plants could grow here – so not too deep, right? Still, he knew he couldn’t just swim for the surface. He’d heard about people who ascended too quickly and developed nitrogen bubbles in their blood. Leo wanted to avoid carbonated blood.
They drifted along for maybe half a mile. Leo was tempted to ask where Aphros was taking him, but the big sword strapped to the centaur’s back sort of discouraged conversation.
