‘Hazel’s Mist.’ Piper’s voice sounded deep and gravelly. She looked down and realized that she, too, now had a lovely Neanderthal body – belly hair, loincloth, stubby legs and oversized feet. If she concentrated, she could see her normal arms, but when she moved them they rippled like mirages, separating into three different sets of muscular Earthborn arms.
Percy grimaced, which looked even worse on his newly uglified face. ‘Wow, Annabeth … I’m really glad I kissed you before you changed.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ she said. ‘We should get going. I’ll move clockwise around the perimeter. Piper, you move counterclockwise. Percy, you scout the middle –’
‘Wait,’ Percy said. ‘We’re walking right into the whole blood-spilling sacrifice trap we’ve been warned about, and you want to split up even more?’
‘We’ll cover more ground that way,’ Annabeth said. ‘We have to hurry. That chanting …’
Piper hadn’t noticed it until then, but now she heard it: an ominous drone in the distance, like a hundred forklifts idling. She looked at the ground and noticed bits of gravel trembling, skittering southeast, as if pulled towards the Parthenon.
‘Right,’ Piper said. ‘We’ll meet up at the giant’s throne.’
At first it was easy.
Monsters were everywhere – hundreds of ogres, Earthborn and Cyclopes milling through the ruins – but most of them were gathered at the Parthenon, watching the ceremony in progress. Piper strolled along the cliffs of the Acropolis unchallenged.
Near the first onager, three Earthborn were sunning themselves on the rocks. Piper walked right up to them and smiled. ‘Hello.’
Before they could make a sound, she cut them down with her sword. All three melted into slag heaps. She slashed the onager’s spring cord to disable the weapon, then kept moving.
She was committed now. She had to do as much damage as possible before the sabotage was discovered.
She skirted a patrol of Cyclopes. The second onager was surrounded by an encampment of tattooed Laistrygonian ogres, but Piper managed to get to the machine without raising suspicion. She dropped a vial of Greek fire in the sling. With luck, as soon as they tried to load the catapult, it would explode in their faces.
She kept moving. Gryphons roosted on the colonnade of an old temple. A group of empousai had retreated into a shadowy archway and appeared to be slumbering, their fiery hair flickering dimly, their brass legs glinting. Hopefully the sunlight would make them sluggish if they had to fight.
Whenever she could, Piper slew isolated monsters. She walked past larger groups. Meanwhile the crowd at the Parthenon grew larger. The chanting got louder. Piper couldn’t see what was happening inside the ruins – just the heads of twenty or thirty giants standing in a circle, mumbling and swaying, maybe doing the evil monster version of ‘Kumbayah’.
She disabled a third siege weapon by sawing through the torsion ropes, which should give the Argo II a clear approach from the north.
She hoped Frank was watching her progress. She wondered how long it would take for the ship to arrive.
Suddenly, the chanting stopped. A BOOM echoed across the hillside. In the Parthenon, the giants roared in triumph. All around Piper, monsters surged towards the sound of celebration.
That couldn’t be good. Piper blended into a crowd of sour-smelling Earthborn. She bounded up the main steps of the temple, then climbed a section of metal scaffolding so she could see above the heads of the ogres and Cyclopes.
The scene in the ruins almost made her cry aloud.
Before Porphyrion’s throne, dozens of giants stood in a loose ring, hollering and shaking their weapons as two of their number paraded around the circle, showing off their prizes. The princess Periboia held Annabeth by the neck like a feral cat. The giant Enceladus had Percy wrapped in his massive fist.
Annabeth and Percy both struggled helplessly. Their captors displayed them to the cheering horde of monsters, then turned to face King Porphyrion, who sat in his makeshift throne, his white eyes gleaming with malice.
‘Right on time!’ the giant king bellowed. ‘The blood of Olympus to raise the Earth Mother!’
XLIII
Piper
PIPER WATCHED IN HORROR as the giant king rose to his full height – almost as tall as the temple columns. His face looked just as Piper remembered – green as bile, with a twisted sneer, his seaweed-coloured hair braided with swords and axes taken from dead demigods.
He loomed over the captives, watching them wriggle. ‘They arrived just as you foresaw, Enceladus! Well done!’
Piper’s old enemy bowed his head, braided bones clattering in his dreadlocks. ‘It was simple, my king.’
The flame designs gleamed on his armour. His spear burned with purplish fire. He only needed one hand to hold his captive. Despite all of Percy Jackson’s power, despite everything he had survived, in the end he was helpless against the sheer strength of the giant – and the inevitability of the prophecy.
‘I knew these two would lead the assault,’ Enceladus continued. ‘I understand how they think. Athena and Poseidon … they were just like these children! They both came here thinking to claim this city. Their arrogance has undone them!’
Over the roar of the crowd, Piper could barely hear herself think, but she replayed Enceladus’s words: these two would lead the assault. Her heart raced.
The giants had expected Percy and Annabeth. They didn’t expect her.
For once, being Piper McLean, the daughter of Aphrodite, the one nobody took seriously, might play to her advantage.
Annabeth tried to say something, but the giantess Periboia shook her by the neck. ‘Shut up! None of your silver-tongued trickery!’
The princess drew a hunting knife as long as Piper’s sword. ‘Let me do the honours, Father!’
‘Wait, Daughter.’ The king stepped back. ‘The sacrifice must be done properly. Thoon, destroyer of the Fates, come forward!’
The wizened grey giant shuffled into sight, holding an oversized meat cleaver. He fixed his milky eyes on Annabeth.
Percy shouted. At the other end of the Acropolis, a hundred yards away, a geyser of water shot into the sky.
King Porphyrion laughed. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, son of Poseidon. The earth is too powerful here. Even your father wouldn’t be able to summon more than a salty spring. But never fear. The only liquid we require from you is your blood!’
Piper scanned the sky desperately. Where was the Argo II?
Thoon knelt and touched the blade of his cleaver reverently against the earth.
‘Mother Gaia …’ His voice was impossibly deep, shaking the ruins, making the metal scaffold resonate under Piper’s feet. ‘In ancient times, blood mixed with your soil to create life. Now, let the blood of these demigods return the favour. We bring you to full wakefulness. We greet you as our eternal mistress!’
Without thinking, Piper leaped from the scaffolding. She sailed over the heads of the Cyclopes and ogres, landed in the centre of the courtyard and pushed her way into the circle of giants. As Thoon rose to use his cleaver, Piper slashed upward with her sword. She took off Thoon’s hand at the wrist.
The old giant wailed. The cleaver and severed hand lay in the dust at Piper’s feet. She felt her Mist disguise burn away until she was just Piper again – one girl in the midst of an army of giants, her jagged bronze blade like a toothpick compared to their massive weapons.
‘WHAT IS THIS?’ Porphyrion thundered. ‘How dare this weak, useless creature interrupt?’
Piper followed her gut. She attacked.
Piper’s advantages: she was small, she was quick, and she was absolutely insane. She drew her knife Katoptris and threw it at Enceladus, hoping she wouldn’t hit Percy by accident. She veered aside without witnessing the results, but, judging from the giant’s painful howl, she’d aimed well.
Several giants ran at her at once. Piper dodged between their legs and let them bash their heads together.
She wove through the crowd, jabbing her sword into dragon-scale feet at every opportunity and yelling, ‘RUN! RUN AWAY!’ to sow confusion.
‘NO! STOP HER!’ Porphyrion shouted. ‘KILL HER!’
A spear almost impaled her. Piper swerved and kept running. It’s just like capture the flag, she told herself. Only the enemy team is all thirty feet tall.
A huge sword sliced across her path. Compared to her sparring practice with Hazel, the strike was ridiculously slow. Piper leaped over the blade and zigzagged towards Annabeth, who was still kicking and writhing in Periboia’s grip. Piper had to free her friend.
Unfortunately, the giantess seemed to anticipate her plan.
‘I think not, demigod!’ Periboia yelled. ‘This one bleeds!’
The giantess raised her knife.
Piper screamed in charmspeak: ‘MISS!’
At the same time, Annabeth kicked up with her legs to make herself a smaller target.
Periboia’s knife passed beneath Annabeth’s legs and stabbed the giantess’s own palm.
‘OWWW!’
Periboia dropped Annabeth – alive, but not unscathed. The dagger had sliced a nasty gash across the back of her thigh. As Annabeth rolled away, her blood soaked into the earth.
The blood of Olympus, Piper thought with dread.
But she couldn’t do anything about that. She had to help Annabeth.
Piper lunged at the giantess. Her jagged blade suddenly felt ice cold in her hands. The surprised giantess glanced down as the sword of the Boread pierced her gut. Frost spread across her bronze breastplate.
Piper yanked out her sword. The giantess toppled backwards – steaming white and frozen solid. Periboia hit the ground with a thud.
‘My daughter!’ King Porphyrion levelled his spear and charged.
But Percy had other ideas.
Enceladus had dropped him … probably because the giant was busy staggering around with Piper’s knife embedded in his forehead, ichor streaming into his eyes.
Percy had no weapon – perhaps his sword had been confiscated or lost in the fighting – but he didn’t let that stop him. As the giant king ran towards Piper, Percy grabbed the tip of Porphyrion’s spear and forced it down into the ground. The giant’s own momentum lifted him off his feet in an unintentional pole-vault manoeuvre and he flipped over onto his back.
Meanwhile Annabeth dragged herself across the ground. Piper ran to her side. She stood over her friend, sweeping her blade back and forth to keep the giants at bay. Cold blue steam now wreathed her blade.
‘Who wants to be the next Popsicle?’ she yelled, channelling anger into her charmspeak. ‘Who wants to go back to Tartarus?’
That seemed to hit a nerve. The giants shuffled uneasily, glancing at the frozen body of Periboia.
And why shouldn’t Piper intimidate them? Aphrodite was the most ancient Olympian, born of the sea and the blood of Ouranos. She was older than Poseidon or Athena or even Zeus. And Piper was her daughter.
More than that, she was a McLean. Her father had come from nothing. Now he was known all over the world. The McLeans didn’t retreat. Like all Cherokee, they knew how to endure suffering, keep their pride and, when necessary, fight back. This was the time to fight back.
Forty feet away, Percy bent over the giant king, trying to yank a sword from the braids of his hair. But Porphyrion wasn’t as stunned as he let on.
‘Fools!’ Porphyrion backhanded Percy like a pesky fly. The son of Poseidon flew into a column with a sickening crunch.
Porphyrion rose. ‘These demigods cannot kill us! They do not have the help of the gods. Remember who you are!’
The giants closed in. A dozen spears were pointed at Piper’s chest.
Annabeth struggled to her feet. She retrieved Periboia’s hunting knife, but she could barely stand upright, much less fight. Each time a drop of her blood hit the ground it bubbled, turning from red to gold.
Percy tried to stand, but he was obviously dazed. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself.
Piper’s only choice was to keep the giants focused on her.
‘Come on, then!’ she yelled. ‘I’ll destroy you all myself if I have to!’
A metallic smell of storm filled the air. All the hairs on Piper’s arms stood up.
‘The thing is,’ said a voice from above, ‘you don’t have to.’
Piper’s heart could’ve floated out of her body. At the top of the nearest colonnade stood Jason, his sword gleaming gold in the sun. Frank stood at his side, his bow ready. Hazel sat astride Arion, who reared and whinnied in challenge.
With a deafening blast, a white-hot bolt arced from the sky, straight through Jason’s body as he leaped, wreathed in lightning, at the giant king.
XLIV
Piper
FOR THE NEXT THREE MINUTES, LIFE WAS GREAT.
So much happened at once that only an ADHD demigod could have kept track.
Jason fell on King Porphyrion with such force that the giant crumpled to his knees – blasted with lightning and stabbed in the neck with a golden gladius.
Frank unleashed a hail of arrows, driving back the giants nearest to Percy.
The Argo II rose above the ruins and all the ballistae and catapults fired simultaneously. Leo must have programmed the weapons with surgical precision. A wall of Greek fire roared upward all around the Parthenon. It didn’t touch the interior, but in a flash most of the smaller monsters around it were incinerated.
Leo’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker: ‘SURRENDER! YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY ONE SPANKING HOT WAR MACHINE!’
The giant Enceladus howled in outrage. ‘Valdez!’
‘WHAT’S UP, ENCHILADAS?’ Leo’s voice roared back. ‘NICE DAGGER IN YOUR FOREHEAD.’
‘GAH!’ The giant pulled Katoptris out of his head. ‘Monsters: destroy that ship!’
The remaining forces tried their best. A flock of gryphons rose to attack. Festus the figurehead blew flames and chargrilled them out of the sky. A few Earthborn launched a volley of rocks, but from the sides of the hull a dozen Archimedes spheres sprayed out, intercepting the boulders and blasting them to dust.
‘PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!’ Buford ordered.
Hazel spurred Arion off the colonnade and they leaped into battle. The forty-foot fall would have broken any other horse’s legs, but Arion hit the ground running. Hazel zipped from giant to giant, stinging them with the blade of her spatha.
With extremely bad timing, Kekrops and his snake people chose that moment to join the fight. In four or five places around the ruins, the ground turned to green goo and armed gemini burst forth, Kekrops himself in the lead.
‘Kill the demigods!’ he hissed. ‘Kill the tricksters!’
Before many of his warriors could follow, Hazel pointed her blade at the nearest tunnel. The ground rumbled. All the gooey membranes popped and the tunnels collapsed, billowing plumes of dust. Kekrops looked around at his army, now reduced to six guys.
‘SLITHER AWAY!’ he ordered.
Frank’s arrows cut them down as they tried to retreat.
The giantess Periboia had thawed with alarming speed. She tried to grab Annabeth, but, despite her bad leg, Annabeth was holding her own. She stabbed at the giantess with her own hunting knife and led her in a deadly game of tag around the throne.
Percy was back on his feet, Riptide once again in his hands. He still looked dazed. His nose was bleeding. But he seemed to be standing his ground against the old giant Thoon, who had somehow reattached his hand and found his meat cleaver.
Piper stood back to back with Jason, fighting every giant who dared to come close. For a moment she felt elated. They were actually winning!
But too soon their element of surprise faded. The giants overcame their confusion.
Frank ran out of arrows. He changed into a rhinoceros and leaped into battle, but as fast as he could knock down the giants they got up again. Their wounds seemed to be healing faster.
Annabeth lost ground against Periboia. Hazel was knocked out of her saddle at sixty miles an hour. Jason summoned another lightning strike, but this time Porphyrion simply deflected it off the tip of his spear.
The giants were bigger, stronger and more numerous. They couldn’t be killed without the help of the gods. And they didn’t seem to be tiring.
The six demigods were forced into a defensive ring.
Another volley of Earthborn rocks hit the Argo II. This time Leo couldn’t return fire fast enough. Rows of oars were sheared off. The ship shuddered and tilted in the sky.
Then Enceladus threw his fiery spear. It pierced the ship’s hull and exploded inside, sending spouts of fire through the oar openings. An ominous black cloud billowed from the deck. The Argo II began to sink.
‘Leo!’ Jason cried.
Porphyrion laughed. ‘You demigods have learned nothing. There are no gods to aid you. We need only one more thing from you to make our victory complete.’
The giant king smiled expectantly. He seemed to be looking at Percy Jackson.
Piper glanced over. Percy’s nose was still bleeding. He seemed unaware that a trickle of blood had made its way down his face to the end of his chin.
‘Percy, look out …’ Piper tried to say, but for once her voice failed her.
A single drop of blood fell from his chin. It hit the ground between his feet and sizzled like water on a frying pan.
The blood of Olympus watered the ancient stones.
The Acropolis groaned and shifted as the Earth Mother woke.
XLV
Nico
ABOUT FIVE MILES EAST OF CAMP, a black SUV was parked on the beach.
They tied up the boat at a private dock. Nico helped Dakota and Leila haul Michael Kahale ashore. The big guy was still only half-conscious, mumbling what Nico assumed were football calls: ‘Red twelve. Right thirty-one. Hike.’ Then he giggled uncontrollably.
‘We’ll leave him here,’ Leila said. ‘Just don’t bind him. Poor guy …’
‘What about the car?’ Dakota asked. ‘The keys are in the glove compartment, but, uh, can you drive?’
Leila frowned. ‘I thought you could drive. Aren’t you seventeen?’
‘I never learned!’ Dakota said. ‘I was busy.’
‘I’ve got it covered,’ Nico promised.
They both looked at him.
‘You’re, like, fourteen,’ Leila said.
Nico enjoyed how nervous the Romans acted around him, even though they were older and bigger and more experienced fighters. ‘I didn’t say I would be behind the wheel.’
He knelt and placed his hand on the ground. He felt the nearest graves, the bones of forgotten humans buried and scattered. He searched deeper, extending his senses into the Underworld. ‘Jules-Albert. Let’s go.’
The ground split. A zombie in a ragged nineteenth-century motoring outfit clawed his way to the surface. Leila stepped back. Dakota screamed like a kindergartner.
‘What is that, man?’ Dakota protested.