The House of Hades (The Heros of Olympus, Book 4)

LEO SPENT THE NIGHT WRESTLING with a forty-foot-tall Athena.

Ever since they’d brought the statue aboard, Leo had been obsessed with figuring out how it worked. He was sure it had primo powers. There had to be a secret switch or a pressure plate or something.

He was supposed to be sleeping, but he just couldn’t. He spent hours crawling over the statue, which took up most of the lower deck. Athena’s feet stuck into sick bay, so you had to squeeze past her ivory toes if you wanted some Advil. Her body ran the length of the port corridor, her outstretched hand jutting into the engine room, offering the life-sized figure of Nike that stood in her palm, like, Here, have some Victory! Athena’s serene face took up most of the aft pegasus stables, which were fortunately unoccupied. If Leo were a magic horse, he wouldn’t have wanted to live in a stall with an oversized goddess of wisdom staring at him.

The statue was wedged tight in the corridor, so Leo had to climb over the top and wriggle under her limbs, searching for levers and buttons.

As usual, he found nothing.

He’d done some research on the statue. He knew it was made from a hollow wooden frame covered in ivory and gold, which explained why it was so light. It was in pretty good shape, considering it was more than two thousand years old, had been pillaged from Athens, toted to Rome, and secretly stored in a spider’s cavern for most of the past two millennia. Magic must’ve kept it intact, Leo figured, combined with really good craftsmanship.

Annabeth had said…well, he tried not to think about Annabeth. He still felt guilty about her and Percy falling into Tartarus. Leo knew it was his fault. He should have gotten everyone safely on board the Argo II before he started securing the statue. He should have realized the cavern floor was unstable.

Still, moping around wasn’t going to get Percy and Annabeth back. He had to concentrate on fixing the problems he could fix.

Anyway, Annabeth had said the statue was the key to defeating Gaea. It could heal the rift between Greek and Roman demigods. Leo figured there had to be more to it than just symbolism. Maybe Athena’s eyes shot lasers, or the snake behind her shield could spit poison. Or maybe the smaller figure of Nike came to life and busted out some ninja moves.

Leo could think of all kinds of fun things the statue might do if he had designed it, but the more he examined it, the more frustrated he got. The Athena Parthenos radiated magic. Even he could feel that. But it didn’t seem to do anything except look impressive.

The ship careened to one side, taking evasive maneuvers. Leo resisted the urge to run to the helm. Jason, Piper, and Frank were on duty with Hazel now. They could handle whatever was going on. Besides, Hazel had insisted on taking the wheel to guide them through the secret pass that the magic goddess had told her about.

Leo hoped Hazel was right about the long detour north. He didn’t trust this Hecate lady. He didn’t see why such a creepy goddess would suddenly decide to be helpful.

Of course, he didn’t trust magic in general. That’s why he was having so much trouble with the Athena Parthenos. It had no moving parts. Whatever it did, it apparently operated on pure sorcery…and Leo didn’t appreciate that. He wanted it to make sense, like a machine.

Finally he got too exhausted to think straight. He curled up with a blanket in the engine room and listened to the soothing hum of the generators. Buford the mechanical table sat in the corner on sleep mode, making little steamy snores: Shhh, pfft, shh, pfft.

Leo liked his quarters okay, but he felt safest here in the heart of the ship—in a room filled with mechanisms he knew how to control. Besides, maybe if he spent more time close to the Athena Parthenos, he would eventually soak in its secrets.

“It’s you or me, Big Lady,” he murmured as he pulled the blanket up to his chin. “You’re gonna cooperate eventually.”

He closed his eyes and slept. Unfortunately, that meant dreams.

He was running for his life through his mother’s old workshop, where she’d died in a fire when Leo was eight.

He wasn’t sure what was chasing him, but he sensed it closing fast—something large and dark and full of hate.

He stumbled into workbenches, knocked over toolboxes, and tripped on electrical cords. He spotted the exit and sprinted toward it, but a figure loomed in front of him—a woman in robes of dry swirling earth, her face covered in a veil of dust.

Where are you going, little hero? Gaea asked. Stay, and meet my favorite son.

Leo darted to the left, but the Earth Goddess’s laughter followed him.

The night your mother died, I warned you. I said the Fates would not allow me to kill you then. But now you have chosen your path. Your death is near, Leo Valdez.

He ran into a drafting table—his mother’s old workstation. The wall behind it was decorated with Leo’s crayon drawings. He sobbed in desperation and turned, but the thing pursuing him now stood in his path—a colossal being wrapped in shadows, its shape vaguely humanoid, its head almost scraping the ceiling twenty feet above.

Leo’s hands burst into flame. He blasted the giant, but the darkness consumed his fire. Leo reached for his tool belt. The pockets were sewn shut. He tried to speak—to say anything that would save his life—but he couldn’t make a sound, as if the air had been stolen from his lungs.

My son will not allow any fires tonight, Gaea said from the depths of the warehouse. He is the void that consumes all magic, the cold that consumes all fire, the silence that consumes all speech.

Leo wanted to shout: And I’m the dude that’s all out of here!

His voice didn’t work, so he used his feet. He dashed to the right, ducking under the shadowy giant’s grasping hands, and burst through the nearest doorway.

Suddenly, he found himself at Camp Half-Blood, except the camp was in ruins. The cabins were charred husks. Burned fields smoldered in the moonlight. The dining pavilion had collapsed into a pile of white rubble, and the Big House was on fire, its windows glowing like demon eyes.

Leo kept running, sure the shadow giant was still behind him.

He wove around the bodies of Greek and Roman demigods. He wanted to check if they were alive. He wanted to help them. But somehow he knew he was running out of time.

He jogged toward the only living people he saw—a group of Romans standing at the volleyball pit. Two centurions leaned casually on their javelins, chatting with a tall skinny blond guy in a purple toga. Leo stumbled. It was that freak Octavian, the augur from Camp Jupiter, who was always screaming for war.

Octavian turned to face him, but he seemed to be in a trance. His features were slack, his eyes closed. When he spoke, it was in Gaea’s voice: This cannot be prevented. The Romans move east from New York. They advance on your camp, and nothing can slow them down.

Leo was tempted to punch Octavian in the face. Instead he kept running.

He climbed Half-Blood Hill. At the summit, lightning had splintered the giant pine tree.

He faltered to a stop. The back of the hill was shorn away. Beyond it, the entire world was gone. Leo saw nothing but clouds far below—a rolling silver carpet under the dark sky.

A sharp voice said, “Well?”

Leo flinched.

At the shattered pine tree, a woman knelt at a cave entrance that had cracked open between the tree’s roots.

The woman wasn’t Gaea. She looked more like a living Athena Parthenos, with the same golden robes and bare ivory arms. When she rose, Leo almost stumbled off the edge of the world.

Her face was regally beautiful, with high cheekbones, large dark eyes, and braided licorice-colored hair piled in a fancy Greek hairdo, set with a spiral of emeralds and diamonds so that it reminded Leo of a Christmas tree. Her expression radiated pure hatred. Her lip curled. Her nose wrinkled.

“The tinkerer god’s child,” she sneered. “You are no threat, but I suppose my vengeance must start somewhere. Make your choice.”

Leo tried to speak, but he was about to crawl out of his skin with panic. Between this hate queen and the giant chasing him, he had no idea what to do.

“He’ll be here soon,” the woman warned. “My dark friend will not give you the luxury of a choice. It’s the cliff or the cave, boy!”

Suddenly Leo understood what she meant. He was cornered. He could jump off the cliff, but that was suicide. Even if there was land under those clouds, he would die in the fall, or maybe he would just keep falling forever.

But the cave… He stared at the dark opening between the tree roots. It smelled of rot and death. He heard bodies shuffling inside, voices whispering in the shadows.

The cave was the home of the dead. If he went down there, he would never come back.

“Yes,” the woman said. Around her neck hung a strange bronze-and-emerald pendant, like a circular labyrinth. Her eyes were so angry, Leo finally understood why mad was a word for crazy. This lady had been driven nuts by hatred. “The House of Hades awaits. You will be the first puny rodent to die in my maze. You have only one chance to escape, Leo Valdez. Take it.”

She gestured toward the cliff.

“You’re bonkers,” he managed.

That was the wrong thing to say. She seized his wrist. “Perhaps I should kill you now, before my dark friend arrives?”

Steps shook the hillside. The giant was coming, wrapped in shadows, huge and heavy and bent on murder.

“Have you heard of dying in a dream, boy?” the woman asked. “It is possible, at the hands of a sorceress!”

Leo’s arm started to smoke. The woman’s touch was acid. He tried to free himself, but her grip was like steel.

He opened his mouth to scream. The massive shape of the giant loomed over him, obscured by layers of black smoke.

The giant raised his fist, and a voice cut through the dream.

“Leo!” Jason was shaking his shoulder. “Hey, man, why are you hugging Nike?”

Leo’s eyes fluttered open. His arms were wrapped around the human-sized statue in Athena’s hand. He must have been thrashing in his sleep. He clung to the victory goddess like he used to cling to his pillow when he had nightmares as a kid. (Man, that had been so embarrassing in the foster homes.)

He disentangled himself and sat up, rubbing his face.

“Nothing,” he muttered. “We were just cuddling. Um, what’s going on?”

Jason didn’t tease him. That’s one thing Leo appreciated about his friend. Jason’s ice-blue eyes were level and serious. The little scar on his mouth twitched like it always did when he had bad news to share.

“We made it through the mountains,” he said. “We’re almost to Bologna. You should join us in the mess hall. Nico has new information.”