The darkness lifted.
Ares looked stunned.
Police cars were burning behind us. The crowd of spectators had fled. Annabeth and Grover stood on the beach, in shock, watching the water flood back around Ares’s feet, his glowing golden ichor dissipating in the tide.
Ares lowered his sword.
“You have made an enemy, godling,” he told me. “You have sealed your fate. Every time you raise your blade in battle, every time you hope for success, you will feel my curse. Beware, Perseus Jackson. Beware.”
His body began to glow.
“Percy!” Annabeth shouted. “Don’t watch!”
I turned away as the god Ares revealed his true immortal form. I somehow knew that if I looked, I would disintegrate into ashes.
The light died.
I looked back. Ares was gone. The tide rolled out to reveal Hades’s bronze helm of darkness. I picked it up and walked toward my friends.
But before I got there, I heard the flapping of leathery wings. Three evil-looking grandmothers with lace hats and fiery whips drifted down from the sky and landed in front of me.
The middle Fury, the one who had been Mrs. Dodds, stepped forward. Her fangs were bared, but for once she didn’t look threatening. She looked more disappointed, as if she’d been planning to have me for supper, but had decided I might give her indigestion.
“We saw the whole thing,” she hissed. “So…it truly was not you?”
I tossed her the helmet, which she caught in surprise.
“Return that to Lord Hades,” I said. “Tell him the truth. Tell him to call off the war.”
She hesitated, then ran a forked tongue over her green, leathery lips. “Live well, Percy Jackson. Become a true hero.
Because if you do not, if you ever come into my clutches again…”
She cackled, savoring the idea. Then she and her sisters rose on their bats’ wings, fluttered into the smoke-filled sky, and disappeared.
I joined Grover and Annabeth, who were staring at me in amazement. “Percy…” Grover said. “That was so incredibly…”
“Terrifying,” said Annabeth. “Cool!” Grover corrected. I didn’t feel terrified. I certainly didn’t feel cool. I was tired and sore and completely drained of energy. “Did you guys feel that…whatever it was?” I asked. They both nodded uneasily. “Must’ve been the Furies overhead,” Grover said. But I wasn’t so sure. Something had stopped Ares from killing me, and whatever could do that was a lot stronger than the Furies.
I looked at Annabeth, and an understanding passed between us. I knew now what was in that pit, what had spoken from the entrance of Tartarus.
I reclaimed my backpack from Grover and looked inside. The master bolt was still there. Such a small thing to almost cause World War III.
“We have to get back to New York,” I said. “By tonight.”
“That’s impossible,” Annabeth said, “unless we—”
“Fly,” I agreed. She stared at me. “Fly, like, in an airplane, which you were warned never to do lest Zeus strike you out of the sky, and carrying a weapon that has more destructive power than a nuclear bomb?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty much exactly like that. Come on.”
TWENTY ONE
I SETTLE MY TAB
It’s funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their version of reality. Chiron had told me that long ago. As usual, I didn’t appreciate his wisdom until much later.
According to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had been caused when a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He accidentally hit a gas main that had ruptured during the earthquake.
This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted me and two other adolescents in New York and brought us across country on a ten-day odyssey of terror.
Poor little Percy Jackson wasn’t an international criminal after all. He’d caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away from his captor (and afterward, witnesses would even swear they had seen the leather-clad man on the bus—“Why didn’t I remember him before?”). The crazy man had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. After all, no kid could’ve done that. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo, and notified the police. Finally, brave Percy Jackson (I was beginning to like this kid) had stolen a gun from his captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the beach. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. Percy Jackson and his two friends were safely in police custody.
The reporters fed us this whole story. We just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted (which wasn’t hard), and played victimized kids for the cameras.
“All I want,” I said, choking back my tears, “is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew…somehow…we would be okay. And I know he’ll want to reward each and every person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here’s the phone number.” The police and reporters were so moved that they passed around the hat and raised money for three tickets on the next plane to New York.
I knew there was no choice but to fly. I hoped Zeus would cut me some slack, considering the circumstances. But it was still hard to force myself on board the flight.
Takeoff was a nightmare. Every spot of turbulence was scarier than a Greek monster. I didn’t unclench my hands from the armrests until we touched down safely at La Guardia. The local press was waiting for us outside security, but we managed to evade them thanks to Annabeth, who lured them away in her invisible Yankees cap, shouting, “They’re over by the frozen yogurt! Come on!,” then rejoined us at baggage claim.
We split up at the taxi stand. I told Annabeth and Grover to get back to Half-Blood Hill and let Chiron know what had happened. They protested, and it was hard to let them go after all we’d been through, but I knew I had to do this last part of the quest by myself. If things went wrong, if the gods didn’t believe me…I wanted Annabeth and Grover to survive to tell Chiron the truth.
I hopped in a taxi and headed into Manhattan.
Thirty minutes later, I walked into the lobby of the Empire State Building.
I must have looked like a homeless kid, with my tattered clothes and my scraped-up face. I hadn’t slept in at least twenty-four hours.
I went up to the guard at the front desk and said, “Six hundredth floor.”
He was reading a huge book with a picture of a wizard on the front. I wasn’t much into fantasy, but the book must’ve been good, because the guard took a while to look up. “No such floor, kiddo.”
“I need an audience with Zeus.”
He gave me a vacant smile. “Sorry?”
“You heard me.”
I was about to decide this guy was just a regular mortal, and I’d better run for it before he called the straitjacket patrol, when he said, “No appointment, no audience, kiddo. Lord Zeus doesn’t see anyone unannounced.”
“Oh, I think he’ll make an exception.” I slipped off my backpack and unzipped the top.