by Rick Riordan
The panels had started to slide apart, letting in a whiff of … ozone? Sulphur?
Percy pushed on his side furiously and the crack closed. His eyes blazed with anger. She hoped he wasn’t mad at her, but if he was she couldn’t blame him.
If it keeps him going, she thought, then let him be angry.
‘I will kill Gaia,’ he muttered. ‘I will tear her apart with my bare hands.’
Annabeth nodded, but she was thinking about Tartarus’s boast. He could not be killed. Neither could Gaia. Against such power, even Titans and giants were hopelessly outmatched. Demigods stood no chance.
She also remembered Bob’s warning: This may not be the last sacrifice you must make to stop Gaia.
She felt that truth deep in her bones.
‘Twelve minutes,’ she murmured. ‘Just twelve minutes.’
She prayed to Athena that Bob could hold the UP button that long. She prayed for strength and wisdom. She wondered what they would find once they reached the top of this elevator ride.
If their friends weren’t there, controlling the other side …
‘We can do this,’ Percy said. ‘We have to.’
‘Yeah,’ Annabeth said. ‘Yeah, we do.’
They held the Doors shut as the elevator shuddered and the music played, while somewhere below them a Titan and a giant sacrificed their lives for their escape.
LXXIII
HAZEL
Hazel wasn’t proud of crying.
After the tunnel collapsed, she wept and screamed like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. She couldn’t move the debris that separated her and Leo from the others. If the earth shifted any more, the entire complex might collapse on their heads. Still, she pounded her fists against the stones and yelled curses that would’ve earned her a mouth-washing with lye soap back at St Agnes Academy.
Leo stared at her, wide-eyed and speechless.
She wasn’t being fair to him.
The last time the two of them had been together, she’d zapped him into her past and shown him Sammy, his great-grandfather – Hazel’s first boyfriend. She’d burdened him with emotional baggage he didn’t need and left him so dazed they had almost been killed by a giant shrimp monster.
Now here they were, alone again, while their friends might be dying at the hands of a monster army, and she was throwing a fit.
‘Sorry.’ She wiped her face.
‘Hey, you know …’ Leo shrugged. ‘I’ve attacked a few rocks in my day.’
She swallowed with difficulty. ‘Frank is … he’s –’
‘Listen,’ Leo said. ‘Frank Zhang has moves. He’s probably gonna turn into a kangaroo and do some marsupial jujitsu on their ugly faces.’
He helped her to her feet. Despite the panic simmering inside her, she knew Leo was right. Frank and the others weren’t helpless. They would find a way to survive. The best thing she and Leo could do was carry on.
She studied Leo. His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. The biggest difference was his eyes. They constantly drifted, as if Leo was trying to spot something over the horizon.
‘Leo, I’m sorry,’ she said.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay. For what?’
‘For …’ She gestured around her helplessly. ‘Everything. For thinking you were Sammy, for leading you on. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but if I did –’
‘Hey.’ He squeezed her hand, though Hazel sensed nothing romantic in the gesture. ‘Machines are designed to work.’
‘Uh, what?’
‘I figure the universe is basically like a machine. I don’t know who made it, if it was the Fates or the gods or capital-G God or whatever. But it chugs along the way it’s supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly … things happen for a reason. Like you and me meeting.’
‘Leo Valdez,’ Hazel marvelled, ‘you’re a philosopher.’
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’m just a mechanic. But I figure my bisabuelo Sammy knew what was what. He let you go, Hazel. My job is to tell you that it’s okay. You and Frank – you’re good together. We’re all going to get through this. I hope you guys get a chance to be happy. Besides, Zhang couldn’t tie his shoes without your help.’
‘That’s mean,’ Hazel chided, but she felt like something was untangling inside her – a knot of tension she’d been carrying for weeks.
Leo really had changed. Hazel was starting to think she’d found a good friend.
‘What happened to you when you were on your own?’ she asked. ‘Who did you meet?’
Leo’s eye twitched. ‘Long story. I’ll tell you sometime, but I’m still waiting to see how it shakes out.’
‘The universe is a machine,’ Hazel said, ‘so it’ll be fine.’
‘Hopefully.’
‘As long as it’s not one of your machines,’ Hazel added. ‘Because your machines never do what they’re supposed to.’
‘Yeah, ha-ha.’ Leo summoned fire into his hand. ‘Now, which way, Miss Underground?’
Hazel scanned the path in front of them. About thirty feet down, the tunnel split into four smaller arteries, each one identical, but the one on the left radiated cold.
‘That way,’ she decided. ‘It feels the most dangerous.’
‘I’m sold,’ said Leo.
They began their descent.
As soon as they reached the first archway, the polecat Gale found them.
She scurried up Hazel’s side and curled around her neck, chittering crossly as if to say: Where have you been? You’re late.
‘Not the farting weasel again,’ Leo complained. ‘If that thing lets loose in close quarters like this, with my fire and all, we’re gonna explode.’
Gale barked a polecat insult at Leo.
Hazel hushed them both. She could sense the tunnel ahead, sloping gently down for about three hundred feet, then opening into a large chamber. In that chamber was a presence … cold, heavy and powerful. Hazel hadn’t felt anything like it since the cave in Alaska where Gaia had forced her to resurrect Porphyrion the giant king. Hazel had thwarted Gaia’s plans that time, but she’d had to pull down the cavern, sacrificing her life and her mother’s. She wasn’t anxious to have a similar experience.
‘Leo, be ready,’ she whispered. ‘We’re getting close.’
‘Close to what?’
A woman’s voice echoed down the corridor: ‘Close to me.’
A wave of nausea hit Hazel so hard her knees buckled. The whole world shifted. Her sense of direction, usually flawless underground, became completely unmoored.
She and Leo didn’t seem to move, but suddenly they were three hundred feet down the corridor, at the entrance of the chamber.
‘Welcome,’ said the woman’s voice. ‘I’ve looked forward to this.’
Hazel’s eyes swept the cavern. She couldn’t see the speaker.
The room reminded her of the Pantheon in Rome, except this place had been decorated in Hades Modern.
The obsidian walls were carved with scenes of death: plague victims, corpses on the battlefield, torture chambers with skeletons hanging in iron cages – all of it embellished with precious gems that somehow made the scenes even more ghastly.
As in the Pantheon, the domed roof was a waffle pattern of recessed square panels, but here each panel was a stela – a grave marker with Ancient Greek inscriptions. Hazel wondered if actual bodies were buried behind them. With her underground senses out of whack, she couldn’t be sure.
She saw no other exits. At the apex of the ceiling, where the Pantheon’s skylight would’ve been, a circle of pure black stone gleamed, as if to reinforce the sense that there was no way out of this place – no sky above, only darkness.
Hazel’s eyes drifted to the centre of the room.
‘Yep,’ Leo muttered. ‘Those are doors, all right.’
Fifty feet away was a set of freestanding elevator doors, the
ir panels etched in silver and iron. Rows of chains ran down either side, bolting the frame to large hooks in the floor.
The area around the doors was littered with black rubble. With a tightening sense of anger, Hazel realized that an ancient altar to Hades had once stood there. It had been destroyed to make room for the Doors of Death.
‘Where are you?’ she shouted.
‘Don’t you see us?’ taunted the woman’s voice. ‘I thought Hecate chose you for your skill.’
Another bout of queasiness churned through Hazel’s gut. On her shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which didn’t help.
Dark spots floated in Hazel’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors.
The giant Clytius was shrouded in the black smoke, just as she’d seen in her vision at the crossroads, but now Hazel could dimly make out his form – dragon-like legs with ash-coloured scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armour; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death’s (Hazel should know, since she had met Death personally). His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying.
Leo whistled. ‘You know, Clytius … for such a big dude, you’ve got a beautiful voice.’
‘Idiot,’ hissed the woman.
Halfway between Hazel and the giant, the air shimmered. The sorceress appeared.
She wore an elegant sleeveless dress of woven gold, her dark hair piled into a cone, encircled with diamonds and emeralds. Around her neck hung a pendant like a miniature maze, on a cord set with rubies that made Hazel think of crystallized blood drops.
The woman was beautiful in a timeless, regal way – like a statue you might admire but could never love. Her eyes sparkled with malice.
‘Pasiphaë,’ Hazel said.
The woman inclined her head. ‘My dear Hazel Levesque.’
Leo coughed. ‘You two know each other? Like Underworld chums, or –’
‘Silence, fool.’ Pasiphaë’s voice was soft, but full of venom. ‘I have no use for demigod boys – always so full of themselves, so brash and destructive.’
‘Hey, lady,’ Leo protested. ‘I don’t destroy things much. I’m a son of Hephaestus.’
‘A tinkerer,’ snapped Pasiphaë. ‘Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.’
Leo blinked. ‘Daedalus … like, the Daedalus? Well, then, you should know all about us tinkerers. We’re more into fixing, building, occasionally sticking wads of oilcloth in the mouths of rude ladies –’
‘Leo.’ Hazel put her arm across his chest. She had a feeling the sorceress was about to turn him into something unpleasant if he didn’t shut up. ‘Let me take this, okay?’
‘Listen to your friend,’ Pasiphaë said. ‘Be a good boy and let the women talk.’
Pasiphaë paced in front of them, examining Hazel, her eyes so full of hate it made Hazel’s skin tingle. The sorceress’s power radiated from her like heat from a furnace. Her expression was unsettling and vaguely familiar …
Somehow, though, the giant Clytius unnerved Hazel more.
He stood in the background, silent and motionless except for the dark smoke pouring from his body, pooling around his feet. He was the cold presence Hazel had felt earlier – like a vast deposit of obsidian, so heavy that Hazel couldn’t possibly move it, powerful and indestructible and completely devoid of emotion.
‘Your – your friend doesn’t say much,’ Hazel noted.
Pasiphaë looked back at the giant and sniffed with disdain. ‘Pray he stays silent, my dear. Gaia has given me the pleasure of dealing with you, but Clytius is my, ah, insurance. Just between you and me, as sister sorceresses, I think he’s also here to keep my powers in check, in case I forget my new mistress’s orders. Gaia is careful that way.’
Hazel was tempted to protest that she wasn’t a sorceress. She didn’t want to know how Pasiphaë planned to ‘deal’ with them, or how the giant kept her magic in check. But she straightened her back and tried to look confident.
‘Whatever you’re planning,’ Hazel said, ‘it won’t work. We’ve cut through every monster Gaia’s put in our path. If you’re smart, you’ll get out of our way.’
Gale the polecat gnashed her teeth in approval, but Pasiphaë didn’t seem impressed.
‘You don’t look like much,’ the sorceress mused. ‘But then you demigods never do. My husband, Minos, king of Crete? He was a son of Zeus. You would never have known it by looking at him. He was almost as scrawny as that one.’ She flicked a hand towards Leo.
‘Wow,’ muttered Leo. ‘Minos must’ve done something really horrible to deserve you.’
Pasiphaë’s nostrils flared. ‘Oh … you have no idea. He was too proud to make the proper sacrifices to Poseidon, so the gods punished me for his arrogance.’
‘The Minotaur,’ Hazel suddenly remembered.
The story was so revolting and grotesque Hazel had always shut her ears when they told it at Camp Jupiter. Pasiphaë had been cursed to fall in love with her husband’s prize bull. She’d given birth to the Minotaur – half man, half bull.
Now, as Pasiphaë glared daggers at her, Hazel realized why her expression was so familiar.
The sorceress had the same bitterness and hatred in her eyes that Hazel’s mother sometimes had. In her worst moments, Marie Levesque would look at Hazel as if Hazel were a monstrous child, a curse from the gods, the source of all Marie’s problems. That’s why the Minotaur story bothered Hazel – not just the repellent idea of Pasiphaë and the bull but the idea that a child, any child, could be considered a monster, a punishment to its parents, to be locked away and hated. To Hazel, the Minotaur had always seemed like a victim in the story.
‘Yes,’ Pasiphaë said at last. ‘My disgrace was unbearable. After my son was born and locked in the Labyrinth, Minos refused to have anything to do with me. He said I had ruined his reputation! And do you know what happened to Minos, Hazel Levesque? For his crimes and his pride? He was rewarded. He was made a judge of the dead in the Underworld, as if he had any right to judge others! Hades gave him that position. Your father.’
‘Pluto, actually.’
Pasiphaë sneered. ‘Irrelevant. So you see, I hate demigods as much as I hate the gods. Any of your brethren who survive the war, Gaia has promised to me, so that I may watch them die slowly in my new domain. I only wish I had more time to torture you two properly. Alas –’
In the centre of the room, the Doors of Death made a pleasant chiming sound. The green UP button on the right side of the frame began to glow. The chains shook.
‘There, you see?’ Pasiphaë shrugged apologetically. ‘The Doors are in use. Twelve minutes, and they will open.’
Hazel’s gut trembled almost as much as the chains. ‘More giants?’
‘Thankfully, no,’ said the sorceress. ‘They are all accounted for – back in the mortal world and in place for the final assault.’ Pasiphaë gave her a cold smile. ‘No, I would imagine the Doors are being used by someone else … someone unauthorized.’
Leo inched forward. Smoke rose from his fists. ‘Percy and Annabeth.’
Hazel couldn’t speak. She wasn’t sure whether the lump in her throat was from joy or frustration. If their friends had made it to the Doors, if they were really going to show up here in twelve minutes …
‘Oh, not to worry.’ Pasiphaë waved her hand dismissively. ‘Clytius will handle them. You see, when the chime sounds again, someone on our side needs to push the UP button or the Doors will fail to open and whoever is inside – poof. Gone. Or perhaps Clytius will let them out and deal with them in person. That depends on you two.’
Hazel’s mouth tasted like tin. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. ‘How exactly does it depend on us?’
‘Well, obviously, we need only one set of demigods alive,’ Pasiphaë said. ‘The lucky two will be
taken to Athens and sacrificed to Gaia at the Feast of Hope.’
‘Obviously,’ Leo muttered.
‘So will it be you two or your friends in the elevator?’ The sorceress spread her hands. ‘Let’s see who is still alive in twelve … actually, eleven minutes, now.’
The cavern dissolved into darkness.
LXXIV
HAZEL
Hazel’s internal compass spun wildly.
She remembered when she had been very small, in New Orleans in the late 1930s, her mother had taken her to the dentist to get a bad tooth pulled. It was the first and only time Hazel had ever received ether. The dentist promised it would make her sleepy and relaxed, but Hazel felt like she was floating away from her own body, panicky and out of control. When the ether wore off, she’d been sick for three days.
This felt like a massive dose of ether.
Part of her knew she was still in the cavern. Pasiphaë stood only a few feet in front of them. Clytius waited silently at the Doors of Death.
But layers of Mist enfolded Hazel, twisting her sense of reality. She took one step forward and bumped into a wall that shouldn’t have been there.
Leo pressed his hands against the stone. ‘What the heck? Where are we?’
A corridor stretched out to their left and right. Torches guttered in iron sconces. The air smelled of mildew, as in an old tomb. On Hazel’s shoulder, Gale barked angrily, digging her claws into Hazel’s collarbone.
‘Yes, I know,’ Hazel muttered to the weasel. ‘It’s an illusion.’
Leo pounded on the wall. ‘Pretty solid illusion.’
Pasiphaë laughed. Her voice sounded watery and far away. ‘Is it an illusion, Hazel Levesque, or something more? Don’t you see what I have created?’
Hazel felt so off-balance she could barely stand, much less think straight. She tried to extend her senses, to see through the Mist and find the cavern again, but all she felt were tunnels splitting off in a dozen directions, going everywhere except forward.
Random thoughts glinted in her mind, like gold nuggets coming to the surface: Daedalus. The Minotaur locked away. Die slowly in my new domain.
