‘That’s your brilliant idea?’ Annabeth yelled. ‘You’re going to let Luke destroy our camp, kill hundreds of demigods and then attack Olympus? You’re going to bring down the entire world so you can get what you want?’
‘Your cause is doomed, my dear. I saw that as soon as I began to work at your camp. There is no way you can hold back the might of Kronos.’
‘That’s not true!’ she cried.
‘I am doing what I must, my dear. The offer was too sweet to refuse. I’m sorry.’
Annabeth pushed over an easel. Architectural drawings scattered across the floor. ‘I used to respect you. You were my hero! You – you built amazing things. You solved problems. Now… I don’t know what you are. Children of Athena are supposed to be wise, not just clever. Maybe you are just a machine. You should have died two thousand years ago.’
Instead of getting mad, Daedalus hung his head. ‘You should go warn your camp. Now that Luke has the string –’
Suddenly Mrs O’Leary pricked up her ears.
‘Someone’s coming!’ Rachel warned.
The doors of the workshop burst open, and Nico was pushed inside, his hands in chains. Then Kelli and two Laistrygonians marched in behind him, followed by the ghost of Minos. He looked almost solid now – a pale bearded king with cold eyes and tendrils of Mist coiling off his robes.
He fixed his gaze on Daedalus. ‘There you are, my old friend.’
Daedalus’s jaw clenched. He looked at Kelli. ‘What is the meaning of this?’
‘Luke sends his compliments,’ Kelli said. ‘He thought you might like to see your old employer, Minos.’
‘This was not part of our agreement,’ Daedalus said.
‘No indeed,’ Kelli said. ‘But we already have what we want from you, and we have other agreements to honour. Minos required something else from us, in order to turn over this fine young demigod.’ She ran a finger under Nico’s chin. ‘He’ll be quite useful. And all Minos asked in return was your head, old man.’
Daedalus paled. ‘Treachery.’
‘Get used to it,’ Kelli said.
‘Nico,’ I said. ‘Are you okay?’
He nodded morosely. ‘I – I’m sorry, Percy. Minos told me you were in danger. He convinced me to go back into the maze.’
‘You were trying to help us?’
‘I was tricked,’ he said. ‘He tricked all of us.’
I glared at Kelli. ‘Where’s Luke? Why isn’t he here?’
The she-demon smiled like we were sharing a private joke. ‘Luke is… busy. He is preparing for the assault. But don’t worry. We have more friends on the way. And in the meantime, I think I’ll have a wonderful snack!’ Her hands changed to claws. Her hair burst into flame and her legs turned to their true form – one donkey leg, one bronze.
‘Percy,’ Rachel whispered, ‘the wings. Do you think –’
‘Get them,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to buy you some time.’
And with that, all Hades broke loose. Annabeth and I charged at Kelli. The giants came right at Daedalus, but Mrs O’Leary leaped to his defence. Nico got pushed to the ground and struggled with his chains while the spirit of Minos wailed, ‘Kill the inventor! Kill him!’
Rachel grabbed the wings off the wall. Nobody paid her any attention. Kelli slashed at Annabeth. I tried to get to her, but the demon was quick and deadly. She turned over tables, smashed inventions and wouldn’t let us get close. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs O’Leary chomp her fangs into a giant’s arm. He wailed in pain and flung her around, trying to shake her off. Daedalus grabbed for his sword, but the second giant smashed the workbench with his fist, and the sword went flying. A clay jar of Greek fire broke on the floor and began to burn, green flames spreading quickly.
‘To me!’ Minos cried. ‘Spirits of the dead!’ He raised his ghostly hands and the air began to hum.
‘No!’ Nico cried. He was on his feet now. He’d somehow managed to remove his shackles.
‘You do not control me, young fool,’ Minos sneered. ‘All this time, I have been controlling you! A soul for a soul, yes. But it is not your sister who will return from the dead. It is I, as soon as I slay the inventor!’
Spirits began to appear around Minos – shimmering forms that slowly multiplied, solidifying into Cretan soldiers.
‘I am the son of Hades,’ Nico insisted. ‘Begone!’
Minos laughed. ‘You have no power over me. I am the lord of spirits! The ghost king!’
‘No.’ Nico drew his sword. ‘I am.’
He stabbed his black blade into the floor, and it cleaved through the stone like butter.
‘Never!’ Minos’s form rippled. ‘I will not –’
The ground rumbled. The windows cracked and shattered to pieces, letting in a blast of fresh air. A fissure opened in the stone floor of the workshop, and Minos and all his spirits were sucked into the void with a horrible wail.
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 vapour.
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 towards 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 of the window into open sky.
16 I Open a Coffin
Jumping out of a window one hundred and fifty metres above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I’m wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.
I plummeted towards 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 downwards, 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 – spiralling 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 cried.
‘I don’t want to find out!’ Annabeth said.
We swooped down towards 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 centre. 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 the bin 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 to 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 still 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 of finding an entrance to the Labyrinth will be better. 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 towards 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 at the 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 annoyed guy who’d rented it. A minute later we were cruising down the road. The seats were leather. There was plenty of leg room. The back seat had flat-panel TVs built into the headrests and a mini-fridge stocked with bottled water, drinks and snacks. We started pigging out.
‘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 towards 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 and Industry.’
For a museum, it didn’t look like much – a little house like an old-fashioned 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 ab
out 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 metres 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 become 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 black 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 spectres.
‘Is that the way?’ Annabeth asked.
‘No,’ Rachel said nervously. ‘Not at all.’
‘Why are we stopping, then?’ I asked.