‘I do not think he would approve. Or at least his brother would not,’ was the reply.
He? Brother? Now Hailey had no idea what they were talking about.
‘We can devise a plan later,’ Nemertes said, irritation clear in her voice. ‘First we need to find Amathia and repay her for attempting to murder us.’
‘Now I know Poseidon would not approve of us killing her.’
‘Well I do not believe Poseidon would approve of his palace being converted into a school for the very humans who stole his powers, Ligea,’ Nemertes snapped back. ‘We can banish her, at the very least.’
Next to Hailey, Alec stiffened and made a choking sound as his hand flew to his mouth.
‘Shh,’ Aaron said so quietly she barely heard.
Alec pressed his hand tighter to his mouth, but it didn’t stop his choking turning into a hacking cough that echoed down the passageway.
30
The Maze
‘What was that?’ Nemertes’s voice asked.
‘We have to go!’ Hailey hissed. She still wanted to confront them, since they hadn’t given up anything about what they’d done to everyone—or how to cure it—but she didn’t think her chances of winning against the nereids would be great if she was trapped in a tunnel.
Aaron took the lead, scurrying as quietly as possible down the lit passageway, which turned to the right. Please don’t let us be heading towards a hydra, Hailey thought, praying to the Tyches the passageway led to a secret spa or something, and not a poisonous monster.
They were moving so quietly that Hailey heard when the nereids removed the painting. ‘They’re coming.’
‘Good thing we’ve reached the end,’ Aaron whispered.
The back of what Hailey assumed was another painting blocked the end of the passageway. Aaron carefully pushed it off the wall, slowly lowering it to the ground. They scrambled out, Hailey breathing a sigh of relief when no monster charged them.
‘What is this place?’ Alec scratched his head as Aaron fixed the painting back on the wall, not that it would stop the nereids.
The hallway was a dead-end decorated in life-size paintings of beautiful women. The one that hid the secret passageway they’d come from was of a woman with emerald green eyes like Demi’s—it was Demeter.
‘I know her.’ Aaron walked up to the painting that covered the back wall, studying the woman with tanned skin and curly brown hair.
‘Medusa.’ Hailey recognised her from Ancient History.
‘Before Athena turned her into a gorgon,’ Alec added.
The painting of Demeter exploded from the wall, the sound of it clattering against the pearl floor echoing down the hallway. Six nereids glared at them from inside the passageway.
Nemertes lunged.
At least she tried to, but an invisible wall knocked her back.
‘You can’t touch us.’ Aaron’s hands were raised, his force field keeping the nereids from them.
‘This place is forbidden,’ Nemertes growled.
‘Why?’ Hailey glanced around, expecting to see something important—like Poseidon’s trident.
‘That does not concern you.’
‘They’re Poseidon’s mistresses,’ Alec interrupted, staring at the paintings, acting as if he hadn’t even noticed the nereids’ arrival. ‘I recognise most of them from stories… Demeter, Iphimedeia, Amymone—’
‘Who cares, Alec,’ Aaron snapped, keeping his palms raised at the Nereids, who continued to glare with their bloodthirsty eyes.
‘What have you done to the school?’ Hailey demanded, aiming her question at Nemertes.
‘Purged it.’
‘Give us the cure.’ Aaron nudged his palms forward, and Nemertes hissed as she stumbled back a step with her sisters.
‘There is no cure. You will all die, just as your friend is.’ Her venomous eyes settled on Alec as he sneezed.
‘Alec?’ Hailey asked, and suddenly realised that of course he was sick. He’d been coughing in the tunnel.
‘I… I…’
‘It’s okay,’ Aaron said. ‘We’ll make them give us the cure.’
‘On the contrary, we will kill you before you can even touch us.’
‘I can hold up my force field all day if I have to.’
‘There are other passages.’ Nemertes spun around, her dress glittering in the tunnel’s lights, and disappeared with her sisters back the way they’d come
‘Wait!’ Hailey called. ‘Give me the cure!’
Two nereids stayed behind. They didn’t bother charging at Aaron’s force field. They just stood there, devious smiles on their faces, blocking Hailey and her friends from escaping back down the passageway.
‘We need to get out of here.’ Aaron stated the obvious. ‘They’re going to try and cut us off.’
‘But I’m sick,’ Alec protested, looking paler by the second.
‘I know,’ Aaron said. ‘But right now we need to run. There’s no one to protect us from the nereids. And they want to kill us.’
Alec swallowed. ‘Okay.’
Aaron dropped his hands. ‘Run!’
Hailey sprinted down the hallway with her friends.
‘You will never escape.’ The nereids slithered slowly after them.
Hailey kept running past walls of paintings—all of them of women—and at one point spied an archway with a giant clamshell bed through it. Gross. She cringed, assuming that was where Poseidon took his secret lovers.
The hallway curved to the right, and the three of them stopped so suddenly they ran into each other.
Hailey’s jaw dropped. Before her loomed a coral wall that stretched to the ceiling. Carved in its centre was an archway, and through it Hailey gazed two pathways and more coral walls. ‘What in Tartarus…?’
‘It’s a maze.’ Alec shook his head, completely baffled.
‘Why is there a maze in the palace?’ Hailey began doubting if they’d get out of this alive. She peeked back around the corner to check where the two nereids were. Still ages away, slowly gliding towards them. Thank the Tyches nereids don’t believe in running.
‘I guess Poseidon didn’t want Amphitrite finding out about his little love tribute,’ Aaron remarked.
Alec rubbed his chin. ‘This is good.’
Hailey turned on him. ‘What? We’ll never get out of that thing.’
‘You can escape a maze by following the left slash right-hand rule,’ Alec explained. ‘It’s where you put your left or right hand on the corresponding wall and only follow that wall. It’ll eventually lead to the exit.’
‘We don’t know what’s in there,’ Aaron pointed out. ‘It’s probably where Nemertes and the other nereids are coming from. I say we take on the two nereids in the hall and double back to the tunnel.’
Hailey moved to sprint back around the corner just as the painting to her left exploded from the wall and slammed against the ground. Nemertes climbed out of the hidden passageway with the other three nereids, blocking the hallway.
‘Going somewhere?’ Nemertes sneered.
‘Get in the maze!’ Aaron shouted.
The three of them bolted into it.
‘You will never make it out alive,’ Nemertes cackled.
‘Keep to the right,’ Alec instructed, pressing his hand to the right coral wall and slowing to a jog.
The coral wall turned to the left and then back to the right again. They passed through more arches and turns until eventually they came to a coral room with seaweed draping down the walls.
‘Weird,’ Aaron remarked as they strode towards the archway at the other end.
‘We will find you,’ Nemertes’s voice taunted somewhere in the distance.
Not if we move fast enough, Hailey thought just as something grabbed her leg. She whipped her head around, expecting to find a nereid hanging on to her ankle. But it wasn’t a nereid. It was seaweed. She tried to tug her leg free, but the seaweed yanked her backwards and she toppled to the ground, where she realised all the sea
weed in the room was moving. Slithering down the walls and along the floor like snakes.
‘Watch out!’ Hailey shouted to Alec and Aaron, who hadn’t realised she’d fallen.
They swung around. ‘Hailey!’ Aaron managed two steps before seaweed twisted around his legs. ‘Argh. Get off me!’
Another strand of seaweed wrapped around Hailey’s other leg and dragged her towards the wall. ‘Let me go!’ She dug her nails into the pearl floor.
More seaweed looped around her wrists and lifted her backwards. Please don’t eat me. Please don’t eat me. The seaweed secured her to the coral wall, where she struggled to break free as seaweed twisted around her waist and snaked towards her neck.
Aaron was tied up on the opposite wall, trying to tear at the seaweed with his teeth. ‘Alec, stop standing there and use your strength to get us out!’ Aaron shouted.
Alec stood where he’d stopped running, not a single piece of seaweed slithering towards him. ‘It will only make things worse.’
‘How?’ Aaron yelled. ‘If we don’t get out of here soon, the nereids will find us and we’ll be tied up for them to kill.’
‘If the seaweed doesn’t kill us first,’ Hailey added, tensing as the seaweed coiled around her neck.
‘This is strangulation seaweed.’ Alec remained statue still. ‘It only attacks when it detects movement. If you stop moving, it’ll let you go.’
Aaron wriggled, the seaweed winding around his chest. ‘Like the sea-anemone in the dungeon?’
‘Exactly.’
The seaweed tightened around Hailey’s neck, and she struggled to gasp in air. It wasn’t as though she had too many choices at this point, and fighting definitely wasn’t working. She went limp. Come on. Let me go. She could feel the nereids closing in, tracking them down.
The seaweed tightened around Hailey, squeezing the air from her lungs like a boa constrictor, and then it turned as slack as… well, ordinary seaweed… and flopped to the ground. Hailey sucked in a breath as her feet hit the pearl floor, and rubbed her tender neck. ‘Now what?’
The seaweed untied Aaron too. ‘We run.’
They sprinted towards the archway near Alec. The seaweed wriggled to life again, diving through the air towards them, striking like a snake, and then it just stopped—falling mid-air back to the ground the second Hailey and her friends passed through the archway. Thank the Tyches, Hailey thought, grateful for whatever magic kept the seaweed contained in the coral room. The nereids were already hunting them down—the last thing she needed was to worry about killer seaweed coming after her too.
‘Well, this maze just got a whole lot more dangerous.’ Aaron slowed to a walk and followed the right wall down another divide. ‘I think—Ah!’ Aaron shouted and stumbled back, his hand flying to his ankle where the edge of an oyster shell had embedded itself. He gasped in a breath and yanked it out. ‘I guess this maze was designed to do more than get someone lost.’
‘Should we go back and choose another path?’ Hailey stared back the way they’d come. She doubted the nereids had missed Aaron’s shout. And she didn’t particularly want razor-sharp shells slicing into her skin.
Alec shook his head. ‘We can’t. We’ll get lost.’
‘So we have to let shells stab us?’ Is he serious?
‘Let’s see how far they go.’ Aaron tossed the bloodied oyster shell down the hallway. A shell fired from both walls when it landed, reminding Hailey of the dart-blowing trees back on the Isle of Trials.
Alec tapped his lip. ‘They’re designed to hit people’s ankles. Interesting.’
‘It’s also good,’ Aaron said.
‘How?’ If anything Hailey figured it was worse, because if the shells shot them in the ankles too many times, they wouldn’t be able to walk—or run.
‘Because we can jump over them,’ Aaron explained.
‘We have to look for the slits.’ Alec knelt down and examined the wall. He pressed a finger a few inches from where a tiny slit the length of Hailey’s pinkie finger was carved in the coral. ‘Here. It looks like there’s about fifteen inches between each set.’
‘Let’s do this,’ Aaron prompted.
They lined up next to each other.
‘Jump when I say go,’ Aaron instructed. ‘Go.’
Hailey jumped forward. She waited to feel the sting of her ankle slicing open, but nothing happened. She jumped over the next set, and the next.
‘We’re almost there,’ Aaron said when they leapt over the tenth pair.
‘Wait.’ Alec’s breath was fast. He leaned over and coughed.
‘It’s okay, we’ll get out of this soon,’ Hailey assured him.
Alec regained his breath and straightened. ‘And find the cure, I hope.’
‘It’s a promise,’ Aaron said.
They jumped again. At the same time, someone said, ‘Found you.’
The voice surprised Hailey and she shot a glance back, losing her balance and hitting the ground on her hands and knees. Searing pain tore through her legs. ‘AH!’ she cried.
Aaron yanked her to her feet before the coral walls could shoot more shells at her. ‘Are you okay?’
Hailey bit down and pulled the shells from her throbbing calves. ‘Uh huh.’
‘If only Poseidon had been wise enough to poison the shells.’ Hailey glared back at Nemertes, who leered with the other nereids. ‘Come, sisters, let us find another way.’
‘At least they’re not immune to the rooms,’ Alec remarked.
They leapt through the last of the hallway, Hailey’s legs flaring with pain each time and leaving tiny droplets of blood on the white floor.
Aaron shook his head when they reached another intersection. ‘Will this thing ever end?’
They veered to the right.
‘What do you think will happen next?’ Hailey imagined a room of sea-urchins that exploded the second someone entered, the urchins’ razor spikes stabbing into their flesh.
‘Flowers.’ Aaron sounded bemused.
Hailey frowned. ‘Flowers?’
‘Flowers,’ he repeated and pointed to the pink, purple, and blue flower buds growing along the coral hallway they’d turned down.
‘Maybe they’re just flowers.’ Hailey inched towards them.
The flowers bloomed open, freezing her, Alec, and Aaron in their tracks. Hailey waited for something to shoot out and grab her, but the hallway only filled with the sweet scent of blossoms.
‘Huh.’ Aaron ran a hand through his dishevelled hair. ‘I guess they are just flowers.’
‘Poseidon probably liked bringing his lovers here,’ Alec mused as they began moving again.
‘Uck.’ Aaron cringed. ‘I’d rather not think about that.’
A roar tore through the air, paralysing Hailey’s legs and sending her fingers into a tingling frenzy.
‘What was that?’ Alec squeaked.
‘Stay behind me,’ Aaron instructed and began edging forward.
The roar bellowed again, quadrupling Hailey’s heartrate. ‘Stop,’ she begged Aaron, voice barely a whisper. She didn’t want to find out what was making that noise.
‘That’s where the sound is coming from,’ Alec yelped.
‘We should run,’ Aaron said.
They whipped around, about to sprint back when the nereids appeared in the hallway—about ten yards away—blocking their escape route.
Hailey swung back to run in the opposite direction. Her heart slammed against her chest as her legs turned limp and she fought the urge to collapse.
At the other end of the hallway stood a monster on two hooved legs. Thick black fur coated its body, and giant curving horns stuck from its head.
A roar tore from its snout.
31
Confrontation
Aaron’s hands shot up, blocking the monster with his force field. It didn’t even bother swiping out one of its black fur-covered arms. It just stood there.
‘A minotaur!’ Alec choked out. ‘There’s a minotaur in here!’
The smile on Nemertes’s face widened. ‘Why would I do that when I wish you all dead? And you are a Zeus, potentially destined to destroy the gods. Poseidon will reward me for ending your life.’
Nemertes prowled towards them.
‘What now?’ Hailey asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Aaron glanced from the growling minotaur to the approaching nereids, and then at the flowers. Realisation sparkled in his eyes and his hands dropped.
‘What are you doing?’ Alec cried. ‘The minotaur!’
Aaron darted in front of Hailey and Alec. Guess it’s death by minotaur, Hailey thought, clutching her necklace. Aaron shoved his palms towards the nereids so hard that they flew into the coral wall at the other end of the hallway, a few bits of coral chipping off and raining down on their unmoving bodies.
‘Follow me.’ Aaron marched right up to the minotaur. Hailey’s breath caught as she waited for it to attack. To rip Aaron apart. But it only growled. And then Aaron passed straight through it.
Alec gaped. ‘How’s that possible?’
‘It’s not real,’ Aaron explained. ‘We didn’t hear or see it until those flowers bloomed. I’m guessing they released a hallucinogenic.’
‘Incredible.’ Alec studied the flowers and then the minotaur. ‘It looks so real.’
‘Come on,’ Aaron prompted. ‘The nereids won’t stay knocked out forever.’
Hailey edged towards the minotaur, clutching her necklace tighter. Its eyes glowed red and focused on her. It’s just a hallucination, she told herself, squeezing her eyes shut as she walked into it. She waited to hit solid muscle and fur.
Someone grabbed her wrist and yanked her. ‘Come on, Hailey.’
Poseidon's Academy Box Set Page 57