by Rick Riordan
Grover hovered above the pool in his flying trainers, trying to pull the net loose, but it wouldn’t budge.
Think, I told myself. Think.
The tunnel of love entrance was under the net. We could use it as an exit, except that it was blocked by a million robot spiders.
‘Fifteen, fourteen,’ the loudspeaker called.
Water, I thought. Where does the ride’s water come from?
Then I saw them: huge water pipes behind the mirrors, where the spiders had come from. And up above the net, next to one of the Cupids, a glass-windowed booth that must be the controller’s station.
‘Grover!’ I yelled. ‘Get into that booth! Find the “on” switch!’
‘But –’
‘Do it!’ It was a crazy hope, but it was our only chance. The spiders were all over the prow of the boat now. Annabeth was screaming her head off. I had to get us out of here.
Grover was in the controller’s booth now, slamming away at the buttons.
‘Five, four –’
Grover looked up at me hopelessly, raising his hands. He was letting me know that he’d pushed every button, but still nothing was happening.
I closed my eyes and thought about waves, rushing water, the Mississippi River. I felt a familiar tug in my gut. I tried to imagine that I was dragging the ocean all the way to Denver.
‘Two, one, zero!’
Water exploded out of the pipes. It roared into the pool, sweeping away the spiders. I pulled Annabeth into the seat next to me and fastened her seatbelt just as the tidal wave slammed into our boat, over the top, whisking the spiders away and dousing us completely, but not capsizing us. The boat turned, lifted in the flood, and spun in circles around the whirlpool.
The water was full of short-circuiting spiders, some of them smashing against the pool’s concrete wall with such force they burst.
Spotlights glared down at us. The Cupid-cams were rolling, live to Olympus.
But I could only concentrate on controlling the boat. I willed it to ride the current, to keep away from the wall. Maybe it was my imagination, but the boat seemed to respond. At least, it didn’t break into a million pieces. We spun around one last time, the water level now almost high enough to shred us against the metal net. Then the boat’s nose turned towards the tunnel and we rocketed through into the darkness.
Annabeth and I held tight, both of us screaming as the boat shot curls and hugged corners and took forty-five degree plunges past pictures of Romeo and Juliet and a bunch of other Valentine’s Day stuff.
Then we were out of the tunnel, the night air whistling through our hair as the boat barrelled straight towards the exit.
If the ride had been in working order, we would’ve sailed off a ramp between the golden Gates of Love and splashed down safely in the exit pool. But there was a problem. The Gates of Love were chained. Two boats that had been washed out of the tunnel before us were now piled against the barricade – one submerged, the other cracked in half.
‘Unfasten your seat belt,’ I yelled to Annabeth.
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Unless you want to get smashed to death.’ I strapped Ares’s shield to my arm. ‘We’re going to have to jump for it.’ My idea was simple and insane. As the boat struck, we would use its force like a springboard to jump the gate. I’d heard of people surviving car crashes that way, getting thrown ten or fifteen metres away from an accident. With luck, we would land in the pool.
Annabeth seemed to understand. She gripped my hand as the gates got closer.
‘When I say go,’ I said.
‘No! When I say go!’
‘What?’
‘Simple physics!’ she yelled. ‘Force times the trajectory angle –’
‘Fine!’ I shouted. ‘When you say go!’
She hesitated… hesitated… then yelled, ‘Now!’
Crack!
Annabeth was right. If we’d jumped when I thought we should’ve, we would’ve crashed into the gates. She got us maximum lift.
Unfortunately, that was a little more than we needed. Our boat smashed into the pileup and we were thrown into the air, straight over the gates, over the pool, and down towards solid tarmac.
Something grabbed me from behind.
Annabeth yelled, ‘Ouch!’
Grover!
In midair, he had grabbed me by the shirt, and Annabeth by the arm, and was trying to pull us out of a crash landing, but Annabeth and I had all the momentum.
‘You’re too heavy!’ Grover said. ‘We’re going down!’
We spiralled towards the ground, Grover doing his best to slow the fall.
We smashed into a photo-board, Grover’s head going straight into the hole where tourists would put their faces, pretending to be Noo-Noo the Friendly Whale. Annabeth and I tumbled to the ground, banged up but alive. Ares’s shield was still on my arm.
Once we caught our breath, Annabeth and I got Grover out of the photo-board and thanked him for saving our lives. I looked back at the Thrill Ride of Love. The water was subsiding. Our boat had been smashed to pieces against the gates.
A hundred metres away, at the entrance pool, the Cupids were still filming. The statues had swivelled so that their cameras were trained straight on us, the spotlights in our faces.
‘Show’s over!’ I yelled. ‘Thank you! Goodnight!’
The Cupids turned back to their original positions. The lights shut off. The park went quiet and dark again, except for the gentle trickle of water into the Thrill Ride of Love’s exit pool. I wondered if Olympus had gone to a commercial break, or if our ratings had been any good.
I hated being teased. I hated being tricked. And I had plenty of experience handling bullies who liked to do that stuff to me. I hefted the shield on my arm and turned to my friends. ‘We need to have a little talk with Ares.’
16 We Take a Zebra to Vegas
The war god was waiting for us in the diner parking lot.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘You didn’t get yourself killed.’
‘You knew it was a trap,’ I said.
Ares gave me a wicked grin. ‘Bet that crippled blacksmith was surprised when he netted a couple of stupid kids. You looked good on TV.’
I shoved his shield at him. ‘You’re a jerk.’
Annabeth and Grover caught their breath.
Ares grabbed the shield and spun it in the air like pizza dough. It changed form, melting into a bulletproof vest. He slung it across his back.
‘See that truck over there?’ He pointed to an eighteen-wheeler parked across the street from the diner. ‘That’s your ride. Take you straight to L.A., with one stop in Vegas.’
The eighteen-wheeler had a sign on the back, which I could read only because it was reverse-printed white on black, a good combination for dyslexia: KINDNESS INTERNATIONAL: HUMANE ZOO TRANSPORT. WARNING: LIVE WILD ANIMALS.
I said, ‘You’re kidding.’
Ares snapped his fingers. The back door of the truck unlatched. ‘Free ride west, punk. Stop complaining. And here’s a little something for doing the job.’
He slung a blue nylon backpack off his handlebars and tossed it to me.
Inside were fresh clothes for all of us, twenty bucks in cash, a pouch full of golden drachmas and a bag of Double Stuf Oreos.
I said, ‘I don’t want your lousy –’
‘Thank you, Lord Ares,’ Grover interrupted, giving me his best red-alert warning look. ‘Thanks a lot.’
I gritted my teeth. It was probably a deadly insult to refuse something from a god, but I didn’t want anything that Ares had touched. Reluctantly, I slung the backpack over my shoulder. I knew my anger was being caused by the war god’s presence, but I was still itching to punch him in the nose. He reminded me of every bully I’d ever faced: Nancy Bobofit, Clarisse, Smelly Gabe, sarcastic teachers – every jerk who’d called me stupid in school or laughed at me when I’d got expelled.
I looked back at the diner, which had only a couple of customers now. The
waitress who’d served us dinner was watching nervously out the window, like she was afraid Ares might hurt us. She dragged the cook out from the kitchen to see. She said something to him. He nodded, held up a little disposable camera and snapped a picture of us.
Great, I thought. We’ll make the papers again tomorrow.
I imagined the headline: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD OUTLAW BEATS UP DEFENCELESS BIKER.
‘You owe me one more thing,’ I told Ares, trying to keep my voice level. ‘You promised me information about my mother.’
‘You sure you can handle the news?’ He kick-started his motorcycle. ‘She’s not dead.’
The ground seemed to spin beneath me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean she was taken away from the Minotaur before she could die. She was turned into a shower of gold, right? That’s metamorphosis. Not death. She’s being kept.’
‘Kept. Why?’
‘You need to study war, punk. Hostages. You take somebody to control somebody else.’
‘Nobody’s controlling me.’
He laughed. ‘Oh yeah? See you around, kid.’
I balled up my fists. ‘You’re pretty smug, Lord Ares, for a guy who runs from Cupid statues.’
Behind his sunglasses, fire glowed. I felt a hot wind in my hair. ‘We’ll meet again, Percy Jackson. Next time you’re in a fight, watch your back.’
He revved his Harley, then roared off down Delancy Street.
Annabeth said, ‘That was not smart, Percy.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You don’t want a god as your enemy. Especially not that god.’
‘Hey, guys,’ Grover said. ‘I hate to interrupt, but…’
He pointed towards the diner. At the cash register, the last two customers were paying their bill, two men in identical black coveralls, with a white logo on their backs that matched the one on the KINDNESS INTERNATIONAL truck.
‘If we’re taking the zoo express,’ Grover said, ‘we need to hurry.’
I didn’t like it, but we had no better option. Besides, I’d seen enough of Denver.
We ran across the street and climbed in the back of the big lorry, closing the doors behind us.
The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was like the world’s biggest pan of kitty litter.
The trailer was dark inside until I uncapped Anaklusmos. The blade cast a faint bronze light over a very sad scene. Sitting in a row of filthy metal cages were three of the most pathetic zoo animals I’d ever beheld: a zebra, a male albino lion and some weird antelope thing I didn’t know the name for.
Someone had thrown the lion a sack of turnips, which he obviously didn’t want to eat. The zebra and the antelope had each got a polystyrene tray of hamburger meat. The zebra’s mane was matted with chewing gum, like somebody had been spitting on it in their spare time. The antelope had a stupid silver birthday balloon tied to one of his horns that read OVER THE HILL!
Apparently, nobody had wanted to get close enough to the lion to mess with him, but the poor thing was pacing around on soiled blankets, in a space way too small for him, panting from the stuffy heat of the trailer. He had flies buzzing around his pink eyes and his ribs showed through his white fur.
‘This is kindness?’ Grover yelled. ‘Humane zoo transport?’
He probably would’ve gone right back outside to beat up the truckers with his reed pipes, and I would’ve helped him, but just then the truck’s engine roared to life, the trailer started shaking, and we were forced to sit down or fall down.
We huddled in the corner on some mildewed feed sacks, trying to ignore the smell and the heat and the flies. Grover talked to the animals in a series of goat bleats, but they just stared at him sadly. Annabeth was in favour of breaking the cages and freeing them on the spot, but I pointed out it wouldn’t do much good until the truck stopped moving. Besides, I had a feeling we might look a lot better to the lion than those turnips.
I found a water jug and refilled their bowls, then used Anaklusmos to drag the mismatched food out of their cages. I gave the meat to the lion and the turnips to the zebra and the antelope.
Grover calmed the antelope down, while Annabeth used her knife to cut the balloon off his horn. She wanted to cut the gum out of the zebra’s mane, too, but we decided that would be too risky with the truck bumping around. We told Grover to promise the animals we’d help them more in the morning, then we settled in for the night.
Grover curled up on a turnip sack; Annabeth opened our bag of Double Stuf Oreos and nibbled on one half-heartedly; I tried to cheer myself up by concentrating on the fact that we were halfway to Los Angeles. Halfway to our destination. It was only June fourteenth. The solstice wasn’t until the twenty-first. We could make it in plenty of time.
On the other hand, I had no idea what to expect next. The gods kept toying with me. At least Hephaestus had the decency to be honest about it – he’d put up cameras and advertised me as entertainment. But even when the cameras weren’t rolling, I had a feeling my quest was being watched. I was a source of amusement for the gods.
‘Hey,’ Annabeth said, ‘I’m sorry for freaking out back at the water park, Percy.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘It’s just…’ She shuddered. ‘Spiders.’
‘Because of the Arachne story,’ I guessed. ‘She got turned into a spider for challenging your mom to a weaving contest, right?’
Annabeth nodded. ‘Arachne’s children have been taking revenge on the children of Athena ever since. If there’s a spider within a mile of me, it’ll find me. I hate the creepy little things. Anyway, I owe you.’
‘We’re a team, remember?’ I said. ‘Besides, Grover did the fancy flying.’
I thought he was asleep, but he mumbled from the corner, ‘I was pretty amazing, wasn’t I?’
Annabeth and I laughed.
She pulled apart an Oreo, handed me half. ‘In the Iris message… did Luke really say nothing?’
I munched my cookie and thought about how to answer. The conversation via rainbow had bothered me all evening. ‘Luke said you and he go way back. He also said Grover wouldn’t fail this time. Nobody would turn into a pine tree.’
In the dim bronze light of the sword blade, it was hard to read their expressions.
Grover let out a mournful bray.
‘I should’ve told you the truth from the beginning.’ His voice trembled. ‘I thought if you knew what a failure I was, you wouldn’t want me along.’
‘You were the satyr who tried to rescue Thalia, the daughter of Zeus.’
He nodded glumly.
And the other two half-bloods Thalia befriended, the ones who got safely to camp…’ I looked at Annabeth. ‘That was you and Luke, wasn’t it?’
She put down her Oreo, uneaten. ‘Like you said, Percy, a seven-year-old half-blood wouldn’t have made it very far alone. Athena guided me towards help. Thalia was twelve. Luke was fourteen. They’d both run away from home, like me. They were happy to take me with them. They were… amazing monster-fighters, even without training. We travelled north from Virginia without any real plans, fending off monsters for about two weeks before Grover found us.’
‘I was supposed to escort Thalia to camp,’ he said, sniffling. ‘Only Thalia. I had strict orders from Chiron: don’t do anything that would slow down the rescue. We knew Hades was after her, see, but I couldn’t just leave Luke and Annabeth by themselves. I thought… I thought I could lead all three of them to safety. It was my fault the Kindly Ones caught up with us. I froze. I got scared on the way back to camp and took some wrong turns. If I’d just been a little quicker…’
‘Stop it,’ Annabeth said. ‘No one blames you. Thalia didn’t blame you either.’
‘She sacrificed herself to save us,’ he said miserably. ‘Her death was my fault. The Council of Cloven Elders said so.’
‘Because you wouldn’t leave two other half-bloods behind?’ I said. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Percy’s right,’ Annabeth said. ‘
I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you, Grover. Neither would Luke. We don’t care what the council says.’
Grover kept sniffling in the dark. ‘It’s just my luck. I’m the lamest satyr ever, and I find the two most powerful half-bloods of the century, Thalia and Percy.’
‘You’re not lame,’ Annabeth insisted. ‘You’ve got more courage than any satyr I’ve ever met. Name one other who would dare go to the Underworld. I bet Percy is really glad you’re here right now.’
She kicked me in the shin.
‘Yeah,’ I said, which I would’ve done even without the kick. ‘It’s not luck that you found Thalia and me, Grover. You’ve got the biggest heart of any satyr ever. You’re a natural searcher. That’s why you’ll be the one who finds Pan.’
I heard a deep, satisfied sigh. I waited for Grover to say something, but his breathing only got heavier. When the sound turned to snoring, I realized he’d fallen sleep.
‘How does he do that?’ I marvelled.
‘I don’t know,’ Annabeth said. ‘But that was really a nice thing you told him.’
‘I meant it.’
We rode in silence for a few miles, bumping around on the feed sacks. The zebra munched a turnip. The lion licked the last of the hamburger meat off his lips and looked at me hopefully.
Annabeth rubbed her necklace like she was thinking deep, strategic thoughts.
‘That pine-tree bead,’ I said. ‘Is that from your first year?’
She looked. She hadn’t realized what she was doing.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Every August, the counsellors pick the most important event of the summer, and they paint it on that year’s beads. I’ve got Thalia’s pine tree, a Greek trireme on fire, a centaur in a prom dress – now that was a weird summer…’
‘And the college ring is your father’s?’
‘That’s none of your –’ She stopped herself. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it is.’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘No… it’s okay.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘My dad sent it to me folded up in a letter, two summers ago. The ring was, like, his main keepsake from Athena. He wouldn’t have got through his doctoral programme at Harvard without her… That’s a long story. Anyway, he said he wanted me to have it. He apologized for being a jerk, said he loved me and missed me. He wanted me to come home and live with him.’