by Rick Riordan
The bad news: the fight was still going on all around us, and I let myself get distracted. Kelli pounced on me so fast I had no time to defend myself. My sword skittered away and I hit my head hard on a worktable as I fell. My eyesight went fuzzy. I couldn’t raise my arms.
Kelli laughed. “You will taste wonderful!”
She bared her fangs. Then suddenly her body went rigid. Her red eyes widened. She gasped, “No…school…spirit…”
And Annabeth took her knife out of the empousa’s back. With an awful screech, Kelli dissolved into yellow vapor.
Annabeth helped me up. I still felt dizzy, but we had no time to lose. Mrs. O’Leary and Daedalus were still locked in combat with the giants, and I could hear shouting in the tunnel. More monsters were coming toward the workshop.
“We have to help Daedalus!” I said.
“No time,” Rachel said. “Too many coming!”
She’d already fitted herself with wings and was working on Nico, who looked pale and sweaty from his struggle with Minos. The wings grafted instantly to his back and arms.
“Now you!” she told me.
In seconds, Nico, Annabeth, Rachel, and I had fitted ourselves with coppery wings. Already I could feel myself being lifted by the wind coming through the window. Greek fire was burning the tables and furniture, spreading up the circular stairs.
“Daedalus!” I yelled. “Come on!”
He was cut in a hundred places—but he was bleeding golden oil instead of blood. He’d found his sword and was using part of a smashed table as a shield against the giants. “I won’t leave Mrs. O’Leary!” he said. “Go!”
There was no time to argue. Even if we stayed, I wasn’t sure we could help.
“None of us know how to fly!” Nico protested.
“Great time to find out,” I said. And together, the four of us jumped out the window into open sky.
SIXTEEN
I OPEN A COFFIN
Jumping out a window five hundred feet aboveground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I’m wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.
I plummeted toward the valley and the red rocks below. I was pretty sure I was going to become a grease spot in the Garden of the Gods, as Annabeth yelled from somewhere above me, “Spread your arms! Keep them extended.”
The small part of my brain that wasn’t engulfed in panic heard her, and my arms responded. As soon as I spread them out, the wings stiffened, caught the wind, and my descent slowed. I soared downward, but at a controlled angle, like a kite in a dive.
Experimentally, I flapped my arms once. I arced into the sky, the wind whistling in my ears.
“Yeah!” I yelled. The feeling was unbelievable. After getting the hang of it, I felt like the wings were part of my body. I could soar and swoop and dive anywhere I wanted to.
I turned and saw my friends—Rachel, Annabeth, and Nico—spiraling above me, glinting in the sunlight. Behind them, smoke billowed from the windows of Daedalus’s workshop.
“Land!” Annabeth yelled. “These wings won’t last forever.”
“How long?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t want to find out!” Annabeth said.
We swooped down toward the Garden of the Gods. I did a complete circle around one of the rock spires and freaked out a couple of climbers. Then the four of us soared across the valley, over a road, and landed on the terrace of the visitor center. It was late afternoon and the place looked pretty empty, but we ripped off our wings as quickly as we could. Looking at them, I could see Annabeth was right. The self-adhesive seals that bound the wings to our backs were already melting, and we were shedding bronze feathers. It seemed a shame, but we couldn’t fix them, and couldn’t leave them around for the mortals, so we stuffed the wings in trash bins outside the cafeteria. I used the tourist binocular camera to look up at the hill where Daedalus’s workshop had been, but it had vanished. No more smoke. No broken windows. Just the side of a hill.
“The workshop moved,” Annabeth guessed. “There’s no telling where.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “How do we get back in the maze?”
Annabeth gazed at the summit of Pikes Peak in the distance. “Maybe we can’t. If Daedalus died…he said his life force was tied into the Labyrinth. The whole thing might’ve been destroyed. Maybe that will stop Luke’s invasion.”
I thought about Grover and Tyson, still down there somewhere. And Daedalus…even though he’d done some terrible things and put everybody I cared about at risk, it seemed like a pretty horrible way to die.
“No,” Nico said. “He isn’t dead.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“I know when people die. It’s this feeling I get, like a buzzing in my ears.”
“What about Tyson and Grover, then?”
Nico shook his head. “That’s harder. They’re not humans or half-bloods. They don’t have mortal souls.”
“We have to get into town,” Annabeth decided. “Our chances will be better of finding an entrance to the Labyrinth. We have to make it back to camp before Luke and his army.”
“We could just take a plane,” Rachel said.
I shuddered. “I don’t fly.”
“But you just did.”
“That was low flying,” I said, “and even that’s risky. Flying up really high—that’s Zeus’s territory. I can’t do it. Besides, we don’t even have time for a flight. The labyrinth is the quickest way back.”
I didn’t want to say it, but I was also hoping that maybe, just maybe, we would find Grover and Tyson along the way.
“So we need a car to take us into the city,” Annabeth said. Rachel looked down into the parking lot. She grimaced, as if she were about to do something she regretted. “I’ll take care of it.”
“How?” Annabeth asked.
“Just trust me.”
Annabeth looked uneasy, but she nodded. “Okay, I’m going to buy a prism in the gift shop, try to make a rainbow, and send an Iris-message to camp.”
“I’ll go with you,” Nico said. “I’m hungry.”
“I’ll stick with Rachel, then,” I said. “Meet you guys in the parking lot.”
Rachel frowned like she didn’t want me with her. That made me feel kind of bad, but I followed her down to the parking lot anyway. She headed toward a big black car parked at the edge of the lot. It was a chauffeured Lexus, like the kind I always saw driving around Manhattan. The driver was out front, reading a newspaper. He wore a dark suit and tie.
“What are you going to do?” I asked Rachel.
“Just wait here,” she said miserably. “Please.”
Rachel marched straight up to the driver and talked to him. He frowned. Rachel said something else. He turned pale and hastily folded up his magazine. He nodded and fumbled for his cell phone. After a brief call, he opened the back door of the car for Rachel to get in. She pointed back in my direction, and the driver bobbed his head some more, like Yes, ma’am. Whatever you want.
I couldn’t figure out why he was acting so flustered.
Rachel came back to get me just as Nico and Annabeth appeared from the gift shop.
“I talked to Chiron,” Annabeth said. “They’re doing their best to prepare for battle, but he still wants us back. They’re going to need every hero they can get. Did we find a ride?”
“The driver’s ready when we are,” Rachel said.
The chauffeur was now talking to another guy in khakis and a polo shirt, probably his client who’d rented the car. The client was complaining, but I could hear the driver saying, “I’m sorry, sir. Emergency. I’ve ordered another car for you.”
“Come on,” Rachel said. She led us to the car and got in without even looking at the flustered guy who’d rented it. A minute later we were cruising down the road. The seats were leather. There was plenty of legroom. The backseat had flat-panel TVs built into the headrests and a mini-fridge stocked with bottled water, sodas, and snacks. We started pigging out.
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br /> “Where to, Miss Dare?” the driver asked.
“I’m not sure yet, Robert,” she said. “We just need to drive through town and, uh, look around.”
“Whatever you say, miss.”
I looked at Rachel. “Do you know this guy?”
“No.”
“But he dropped everything to help you. Why?”
“Just keep your eyes peeled,” she said. “Help me look.”
Which didn’t exactly answer my question.
We drove through Colorado Springs for about half an hour and saw nothing that Rachel considered a possible Labyrinth entrance. I was very aware of Rachel’s shoulder pressing against mine. I kept wondering who she was exactly, and how she could walk up to some random chauffeur and immediately get a ride.
After about an hour we decided to head north toward Denver, thinking that maybe a bigger city would be more likely to have a Labyrinth entrance, but we were all getting nervous. We were losing time.
Then right as we were leaving Colorado Springs, Rachel sat bolt upright.
“Get off the highway!”
The driver glanced back. “Miss?”
“I saw something, I think. Get off here.”
The driver swerved across traffic and took the exit.
“What did you see?” I asked, because we were pretty much out of the city now. There wasn’t anything around except hills, grassland, and some scattered farm buildings. Rachel had the driver turn down this unpromising dirt road. We drove by a sign too fast for me to read it, but Rachel said,
“Western Museum of Mining & Industry.”
For a museum, it didn’t look like much—a little house like an oldfashioned railroad station, some drills and pumps and old steam shovels on display outside.
“There.” Rachel pointed to a hole in the side of a nearby hill—a tunnel that was boarded up and chained. “An old mine entrance.”
“A door to the Labyrinth?” Annabeth asked. “How can you be sure?”
“Well, look at it!” Rachel said. “I mean… I can see it, okay?”
She thanked the driver and we all got out. He didn’t ask for money or anything. “Are you sure you’ll be all right, Miss Dare? I’d be happy to call your—”
“No!” Rachel said. “No, really. Thanks, Robert. But we’re fine.”
The museum seemed to be closed, so nobody bothered us as we climbed the hill to the mine shaft. When we got to the entrance, I saw the mark of Daedalus engraved on the padlock, though how Rachel had seen something so tiny all the way from the highway I had no idea. I touched the padlock and the chains fell away. We kicked down a few boards and walked inside. For better or worse, we were back in the Labyrinth.
* * *
The dirt tunnels turned to stone. They wound around and split off and basically tried to confuse us, but Rachel had no trouble guiding us. We told her we needed to get back to New York, and she hardly even paused when the tunnels offered a choice.
To my surprise, Rachel and Annabeth started up a conversation as we walked. Annabeth asked her more about her background, but Rachel was evasive, so they started talking about architecture. It turned out that Rachel knew something about it from studying art. They talked about different facades on buildings around New York—“Have you seen this one,” blah, blah, blah, so I hung back and walked next to Nico in uncomfortable silence.
“Thanks for coming after us,” I told him at last.
Nico’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t seem as angry as he used to—just suspicious, careful. “I owed you for the ranch, Percy. Plus…I wanted to see Daedalus for myself. Minos was right, in a way. Daedalus should die. Nobody should be able to avoid death that long. It’s not natural.”
“That’s what you were after all along,” I said. “Trading Daedalus’s soul for your sister’s.”
Nico walked for another fifty yards before answering. “It hasn’t been easy, you know. Having only the dead for company. Knowing that I’ll never be accepted by the living. Only the dead respect me, and they only do that out of fear.”
“You could be accepted,” I said. “You could have friends at camp.”
He stared at me. “Do you really believe that, Percy?”
I didn’t answer. The truth was, I didn’t know. Nico had always been a little different, but since Bianca’s death, he’d gotten almost…scary. He had his father’s eyes—that intense, manic fire that made you suspect he was either a genius or a madman. And the way he’d banished Minos, and called himself the king of ghosts—it was kind of impressive, but it made me uncomfortable too.
Before I could figure out what to tell him, I ran into Rachel, who’d stopped in front of me. We’d come to a crossroads. The tunnel continued straight ahead, but a side tunnel T’d off to the right—a circular shaft carved from volcanic rock.
“What is it?” I asked.
Rachel stared down the dark tunnel. In the dim flashlight beam, her face looked like one of Nico’s specters.
“Is it that way?” Annabeth asked.
“No,” Rachel said nervously. “Not at all.”
“Why are we stopping then?” I asked.
“Listen,” Nico said.
I heard wind coming down the tunnel, as if the exit were close. And I smelled something vaguely familiar—something that brought back bad memories.
“Eucalyptus trees,” I said. “Like in California.”
Last winter, when we’d faced Luke and the Titan Atlas on top of Mount Tamalpais, the air had smelled like that.
“There’s something evil down that tunnel,” Rachel said. “Something very powerful.”
“And the smell of death,” Nico added, which made me feel a whole lot better.
Annabeth and I exchanged glances.
“Luke’s entrance,” she guessed. “The one to Mount Othrys—the Titans’
palace.”
“I have to check it out,” I said.
“Percy, no.”
“Luke could be right here,” I said. “Or…or Kronos. I have to find out what’s going on.”
Annabeth hesitated. “Then we’ll all go.”
“No,” I said. “It’s too dangerous. If they got hold of Nico, or Rachel for that matter, Kronos could use them. You stay here and guard them.”
What I didn’t say: I was also worried about Annabeth. I didn’t trust what she would do if she saw Luke again. He had fooled her and manipulated her too many times before.
“Percy, don’t,” Rachel said. “Don’t go up there alone.”
“I’ll be quick,” I promised. “I won’t do anything stupid.”
Annabeth took her Yankees cap out of her pocket. “At least take this. And be careful.”
“Thanks.” I remembered the last time Annabeth and I had parted ways, when she’d given me a kiss for luck in Mount St. Helens. This time, all I got was the hat.
I put it on. “Here goes nothing.” And I sneaked invisibly down the dark stone tunnel.
* * *
Before I even got to the exit I heard voices: the growling, barking sounds of sea-demon smiths, the telekhines.
“At least we salvaged the blade,” one said. “The master will still reward us.”
“Yes! Yes!” a second shrieked. “Rewards beyond measure!”
Another voice, this one more human, said: “Um, yeah, well that’s great. Now, if you’re done with me—”
“No, half-blood!” a telekhine said. “You must help us make the presentation. It is a great honor!”
“Gee, thanks,” the half-blood said, and I realized it was Ethan Nakamura, the guy who’d run away after I’d saved his sorry life in the arena. I crept toward the end of the tunnel. I had to remind myself I was invisible. They shouldn’t be able to see me.
A blast of cold air hit me as I emerged. I was standing near the top of Mount Tam. The Pacific Ocean spread out below, gray under a cloudy sky. About twenty feet downhill, two telekhines were placing something on a big rock—something long and thin and wrapped in a black cloth. Ethan w
as helping them open it.
“Careful, fool,” the telekhine scolded. “One touch, and the blade will sever your soul from your body.”
Ethan swallowed nervously. “Maybe I’ll let you unwrap it, then.”
I glanced up at the mountain’s peak, where a black marble fortress loomed, just like I’d seen in my dreams. It reminded me of an oversized mausoleum, with walls fifty feet high. I had no idea how mortals could miss the fact that it was here. But then again, everything below the summit seemed fuzzy to me, as if there were a thick veil between me and the lower half of the mountain. There was magic going on here—really powerful Mist. Above me, the sky swirled into a huge funnel cloud. I couldn’t see Atlas, but I could hear him groaning in the distance, still laboring under the weight of the sky, just beyond the fortress.
“There!” the telekhine said. Reverently, he lifted the weapon, and my blood turned to ice.
It was a scythe—a six foot-long blade curved like a crescent moon, with a wooden handle wrapped in leather. The blade glinted two different colors—
steel and bronze. It was the weapon of Kronos, the one he’d used to slice up his father, Ouranos, before the gods had taken it away from him and cut Kronos to pieces, casting him into Tartarus. Now the weapon was re-forged.
“We must sanctify it in blood,” the telekhine said. “Then you, half-blood, shall help present it when the lord awakes.”
I ran toward the fortress, my pulse pounding in my ears. I didn’t want to get anywhere close to that horrible black mausoleum, but I knew what I had to do. I had to stop Kronos from rising. This might be my only chance. I dashed through a dark foyer and into the main hall. The floor shined like a mahogany piano—pure black and yet full of light. Black marble statues lined the walls. I didn’t recognize the faces, but I knew I was looking at images of the Titans who’d ruled before the gods. At the end of the room, between two bronze braziers, was a dais. And on the dais, the golden sarcophagus.
The room was silent except for the crackle of the fires. Luke wasn’t here. No guards. Nothing.