“Well,” Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. “A little nicer than Cabin Eleven, huh?”
He’d changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
He still had the scar under his eye—a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.
“Sit,” he told us. He waved his hand and three dining chairs scooted themselves into the center of the room.”
None of us sat.
Luke’s large friends were still pointing their javelins at us. They looked like twins, but they weren’t human. They stood about eight feet tall, for one thing, and wore only blue jeans, probably because their enormous chests were already shag-carpeted with thick brown fur. They had claws for fingernails, feet like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed canines.
“Where are my manners?” Luke said smoothly. “These are my assistants, Agrius and Oreius. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.”
I said nothing. Despite the javelins pointed at me, it wasn’t the bear twins who scared me.
I’d imagined meeting Luke again many times since he’d tried to kill me last summer. I’d pictured myself boldly standing up to him, challenging him to a duel. But now that we were face-to-face, I could barely stop my hands from shaking.
“You don’t know Agrius and Oreius’s story?” Luke asked. “Their mother . . . well, it’s sad, really. Aphrodite ordered the young woman to fall in love. She refused and ran to Artemis for help. Artemis let her become one of her maiden huntresses, but Aphrodite got her revenge. She bewitched the young woman into falling in love with a bear. When Artemis found out, she abandoned the girl in disgust. Typical of the gods, wouldn’t you say? They fight with one another and the poor humans get caught in the middle. The girl’s twin sons here, Agrius and Oreius, have no love for Olympus. They like half-bloods well enough, though . . .”
“For lunch,” Agrius growled. His gruff voice was the one I’d heard talking with Luke earlier.
“Hehe! Hehe!” His brother Oreius laughed, licking his fur-lined lips. He kept laughing like he was having an asthmatic fit until Luke and Agrius both stared at him.
“Shut up, you idiot!” Agrius growled. “Go punish yourself!”
Oreius whimpered. He trudged over to the corner of the room, slumped onto a stool, and banged his forehead against the dining table, making the silver plates rattle.
Luke acted like this was perfectly normal behavior. “He made himself comfortable on the sofa and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “Well, Percy, we let you survive another year. I hope you appreciated it. How’s your mom? How’s school?”
“You poisoned Thalia’s tree.”
Luke sighed. “Right to the point, eh? Okay, sure I poisoned the tree. So what?”
“How could you?” Annabeth sounded so angry I thought she’d explode. “Thalia saved your life! Our lives! How could you dishonor her—”
“I didn’t dishonor her!” Luke snapped. “The gods dishonored her, Annabeth! If Thalia were alive, she’d be on my side.”
“Liar!”
“If you knew what was coming, you’d understand—”
“I understand you want to destroy the camp!” she yelled. “You’re a monster!”
Luke shook his head. “The gods have blinded you. Can’t you imagine a world without them, Annabeth? What good is that ancient history you study? Three thousand years of baggage! The West is rotten to the core. It has to be destroyed. Join me! We can start the world anew. We could use your intelligence, Annabeth.”
“Because you have none of your own!”
His eyes narrowed. “I know you, Annabeth. You deserve better than tagging along on some hopeless quest to save the camp. Half-Blood Hill will be overrun by monsters within the month. The heroes who survive will have no choice but to join us or be hunted to extinction. You really want to be on a losing team . . . with company like this?” Luke pointed at Tyson.
“Hey!” I said.
“Traveling with a Cyclops,” Luke chided. “Talk about dishonoring Thalia’s memory! I’m surprised at you, Annabeth. You of all people—”
“Stop it!” she shouted.
I didn’t know what Luke was talking about, but Annabeth buried her head in her hands like she was about to cry.
“Leave her alone,” I said. “And leave Tyson out this.”
Luke laughed. “Oh, yeah, I heard. Your father claimed him.”
I must have looked surprised, because Luke smiled. “Yes, Percy, I know all about that. And about your plan to find the Fleece. What were those coordinates, again . . . 30, 31, 75, 12? You see, I still have friends at camp who keep me posted.”
“Spies, you mean.”
He shrugged. “How many insults from your father can you stand, Percy? You think he’s grateful to you? You think Poseidon cares for you any more than he cares for this monster?”
Tyson clenched his fists and made a rumbling sound down in his throat.
Luke just chuckled. “The gods are so using you, Percy. Do you have any idea what’s in store for you if you reach your sixteenth birthday? Has Chiron even told you the prophecy?”
I wanted to get in Luke’s face and tell him off, but as usual, he knew just how to throw me off balance.
Sixteenth birthday?
I mean, I knew Chiron had received a prophecy from the Oracle many years ago. I knew part of it was about me. But, if I reached my sixteenth birthday? I didn’t like the sound of that.
“I know what I need to know,” I managed. “Like, who my enemies are.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
Tyson smashed the nearest dining chair to splinters. “Percy is not a fool!”
Before I could stop him, he charged Luke. His fists came down toward Luke’s head—a double overhead blow that would’ve knocked a hole in titanium—but the bear twins intercepted. They each caught one of Tyson’s arms and stopped him cold. They pushed him back and Tyson stumbled. He fell to the carpet so hard the deck shook.
“Too bad, Cyclops,” Luke said. “Looks like my grizzly friends together are more than a match for your strength. Maybe I should let them—”
“Luke,” I cut in. “Listen to me. Your father sent us.”
His face turned the color of pepperoni. “Don’t—even— mention him.”
“He told us to take this boat. I thought it was just for a ride, but he sent us here to find you. He told me he won’t give up on you, no matter how angry you are.”
“Angry?” Luke roared. “Give up on me? He abandoned me, Percy! I want Olympus destroyed! Every throne crushed to rubble! You tell Hermes it’s going to happen, too. Each time a half-blood joins us, the Olympians grow weaker and we grow stronger. He grows stronger.” Luke pointed to the gold sarcophagus.
The box creeped me out, but I was determined not to show it. “So?” I demanded. “What’s so special . . .”
Then it hit me, what might be inside the sarcophagus. The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. “Whoa, you don’t mean—”
“He is re-forming,” Luke said. “Little by little, we’re calling his life force out of the pit. With every recruit who pledges our cause, another small piece appears—”
“That’s disgusting!” Annabeth said.”
“Luke sneered at her. “Your mother was born from Zeus’s split skull, Annabeth. I wouldn’t talk. Soon there will be enough of the titan lord so that we can make him whole again. We will piece together a new body for him, a work worthy of the forges of Hephaestus.”
“You’re insane,” Annabeth said.”
“Join us and you’ll be rewarded. We have powerful friends, sponsors rich enough to buy this cruise ship and much more. Percy, your mother will never have to work again. You can buy her a mansion. You can have power, fame—whatever you want. Annabeth, you can realize your dream of being an architect. You can build a monument to last a thousand years. A temple to the lords of the next age!”
“Go to Tartarus,” she said.
Luke sighed. “A shame.”
He picked up something that looked like a TV remote and pressed a red button. Within seconds the door of the stateroom opened and two uniformed crew members came in, armed with nightsticks. They had the same glassy-eyed look as the other mortals I’d seen, but I had a feeling this wouldn’t make them any less dangerous in a fight.
“Ah, good, security,” Luke said, “I’m afraid we have some stowaways.”
“Yes, sir,” they said dreamily.
Luke turned to Oreius. “It’s time to feed the Aethiopian drakon. Take these fools below and show them how it’s done.”
Oreius grinned stupidly. “Hehe! Hehe!”
“Let me go, too,” Agrius grumbled. “My brother is worthless. That Cyclops—”
“Is no threat,” Luke said. He glanced back at the golden casket, as if something were troubling him. “Agrius, stay here. We have important matters to discuss.”
“But—”
“Oreius, don’t fail me. Stay in the hold to make sure the drakon is properly fed.” Oreius prodded us with his javelin and herded us out of the stateroom, followed by the two human security guards.
---
“A half-blood hideout.” I looked at Annabeth in awe. “You made this place?”
“Thalia and I,” she said quietly. “And Luke.”
That shouldn’t have bothered me. I mean, I knew Thalia and Luke had taken care of Annabeth when she was little. I knew the three of them had been runaways together, hiding from monsters, surviving on their own before Grover found them and tried to get them to Half-Blood Hill. But whenever Annabeth talked about the time she’d spent with them, I kind of felt . . . I don’t know. Uncomfortable?
No. That’s not the word.
The word was jealous.
“So . . .” I said. “You don’t think Luke will look for us here?”
She shook her head. “We made a dozen safe houses like this. I doubt Luke even remembers where they are. Or cares.”
---
Once he was gone, I sat down across from Annabeth. “Hey, I’m sorry about, you know, seeing Luke.”
“It’s not your fault.” She unsheathed her knife and started cleaning the blade with a rag.
“He let us go too easily,” I said.
I hoped I’d been imagining it, but Annabeth nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. What we overheard him say about a gamble, and ‘they’ll take the bait’ . . . I think he was talking about us.”
“The Fleece is the bait? Or Grover?”
She studied the edge of her knife. “I don’t know, Percy. Maybe he wants the Fleece for himself. Maybe he’s hoping we’ll do the hard work and then he can steal it from us. I just can’t believe he would poison the tree.”
“What did he mean,” I asked, “that Thalia would’ve been on his side?”
“He’s wrong.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
Annabeth glared at me, and I started to wish I hadn’t asked her about this while she was holding a knife.
“Percy, you know who you remind me of most? Thalia. You guys are so much alike it’s scary. I mean, either you would’ve been best friends or you would’ve strangled each other.”
“Let’s go with ‘best friends.’”
“Thalia got angry with her dad sometimes. So do you. Would you turn against Olympus because of that?”
I stared at the quiver of arrows in the corner. “No.”
“Okay, then. Neither would she. Luke’s wrong.” Annabeth stuck her knife blade into the dirt.
I wanted to ask her about the prophecy Luke had mentioned and what it had to do with my sixteenth birthday. But I figured she wouldn’t tell me. Chiron had made it pretty clear that I wasn’t allowed to hear it until the gods decided otherwise.
“So what did Luke mean about Cyclopes?” I asked. “He said you of all people—”
“I know what he said. He . . . he was talking about the real reason Thalia died.”
I waited, not sure what to say.
Annabeth drew a shaky breath. “You can never trust a Cyclops, Percy. Six years ago, on the night Grover was leading us to Half-Blood Hill—”
---
Annabeth twisted her Yankees cap in her hands. “Percy, I don’t know the full prophecy, but it warns about a half-blood child of the Big Three—the next one who lives to the age of sixteen. That’s the real reason Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swore a pact after World War II not to have any more kids. The next child of the Big Three who reaches sixteen will be a dangerous weapon.”
“Why?”
“Because that hero will decide the fate of Olympus. He or she will make a decision that either saves the Age of the Gods, or destroys it.”
I let that sink in. I don’t get seasick, but suddenly I felt ill. “That’s why Kronos didn’t kill me last summer.”
She nodded. “You could be very useful to him. If he can get you on his side, the gods will be in serious trouble.”
“But if it’s me in the prophecy—”
---
“I looked at Annabeth. “The reason you hate Cyclopes so much . . . the story about how Thalia really died. What happened?” It was hard to see her expression in the dark. “I guess you deserve to know,” she said finally. “The night Grover was escorting us to camp, he got confused, took some wrong turns. You remember he told you that once?” I nodded. “Well, the worst wrong turn was into a Cyclops’s lair in Brooklyn.” “They’ve got Cyclopes in Brooklyn?” I asked. “You wouldn’t believe how many, but that’s not the point. This Cyclops, he tricked us. He managed to split us up inside this maze of corridors in an old house in Flatbush. “And he could sound like anyone, Percy. Just the way Tyson did aboard the Princess Andromeda. He lured us, one at time. Thalia thought she was running to save Luke. Luke thought he heard me scream for help. And me . . . I was alone in the dark. I was seven years old. I couldn’t even find the exit.” She brushed the hair out of her face. “I remember finding the main room. There were bones all over the floor. And there were Thalia and Luke and Grover, tied up and gagged, hanging from the ceiling like smoked hams. The Cyclops was starting a fire in the middle of the floor. I drew my knife, but he heard me. He turned and smiled. He spoke, and somehow he knew my dad’s voice. I guess he just plucked it out of my mind. He said, ‘Now, Annabeth, don’t you worry. I love you. You can stay here with me. You can stay forever.’” “I shivered. The way she told it—even now, six years later—freaked me out worse than any ghost story I’d ever heard. “What did you do?” “I stabbed him in the foot.” I stared at her. “Are you kidding? You were seven years old and you stabbed a grown Cyclops in the foot?” “Oh, he would’ve killed me. But I surprised him. It gave me just enough time to run to Thalia and cut the ropes on her hands. She took it from there.” “Yeah, but still . . . that was pretty brave, Annabeth.” She shook her head. “We barely got out alive. I still have nightmares, Percy. The way that Cyclops talked in my father’s voice. It was his fault we took so long getting to camp. All the monsters who’d been chasing us had time to catch up. That’s really why Thalia died. If it hadn’t been for that Cyclops, “she’d still be alive today.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
SEA OF MONSTERS pt 2;
---
“Well,” Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. “A little nicer than Cabin Eleven, huh?”
He’d changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
He still had the scar under his eye—a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.
“Sit,” he told us. He waved his hand and three dining chairs scooted themselves into the center of the room.”
None of us sat.
Luke’s large friends were still pointing their javelins at us. They looked like twins, but they weren’t human. They stood about eight feet tall, for one thing, and wore only blue jeans, probably because their enormous chests were already shag-carpeted with thick brown fur. They had claws for fingernails, feet like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed canines.
“Where are my manners?” Luke said smoothly. “These are my assistants, Agrius and Oreius. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.”
I said nothing. Despite the javelins pointed at me, it wasn’t the bear twins who scared me.
I’d imagined meeting Luke again many times since he’d tried to kill me last summer. I’d pictured myself boldly standing up to him, challenging him to a duel. But now that we were face-to-face, I could barely stop my hands from shaking.
“You don’t know Agrius and Oreius’s story?” Luke asked. “Their mother . . . well, it’s sad, really. Aphrodite ordered the young woman to fall in love. She refused and ran to Artemis for help. Artemis let her become one of her maiden huntresses, but Aphrodite got her revenge. She bewitched the young woman into falling in love with a bear. When Artemis found out, she abandoned the girl in disgust. Typical of the gods, wouldn’t you say? They fight with one another and the poor humans get caught in the middle. The girl’s twin sons here, Agrius and Oreius, have no love for Olympus. They like half-bloods well enough, though . . .”
“For lunch,” Agrius growled. His gruff voice was the one I’d heard talking with Luke earlier.
“Hehe! Hehe!” His brother Oreius laughed, licking his fur-lined lips. He kept laughing like he was having an asthmatic fit until Luke and Agrius both stared at him.
“Shut up, you idiot!” Agrius growled. “Go punish yourself!”
Oreius whimpered. He trudged over to the corner of the room, slumped onto a stool, and banged his forehead against the dining table, making the silver plates rattle.
Luke acted like this was perfectly normal behavior. “He made himself comfortable on the sofa and propped his feet up on the coffee table. “Well, Percy, we let you survive another year. I hope you appreciated it. How’s your mom? How’s school?”
“You poisoned Thalia’s tree.”
Luke sighed. “Right to the point, eh? Okay, sure I poisoned the tree. So what?”
“How could you?” Annabeth sounded so angry I thought she’d explode. “Thalia saved your life! Our lives! How could you dishonor her—”
“I didn’t dishonor her!” Luke snapped. “The gods dishonored her, Annabeth! If Thalia were alive, she’d be on my side.”
“Liar!”
“If you knew what was coming, you’d understand—”
“I understand you want to destroy the camp!” she yelled. “You’re a monster!”
Luke shook his head. “The gods have blinded you. Can’t you imagine a world without them, Annabeth? What good is that ancient history you study? Three thousand years of baggage! The West is rotten to the core. It has to be destroyed. Join me! We can start the world anew. We could use your intelligence, Annabeth.”
“Because you have none of your own!”
His eyes narrowed. “I know you, Annabeth. You deserve better than tagging along on some hopeless quest to save the camp. Half-Blood Hill will be overrun by monsters within the month. The heroes who survive will have no choice but to join us or be hunted to extinction. You really want to be on a losing team . . . with company like this?” Luke pointed at Tyson.
“Hey!” I said.
“Traveling with a Cyclops,” Luke chided. “Talk about dishonoring Thalia’s memory! I’m surprised at you, Annabeth. You of all people—”
“Stop it!” she shouted.
I didn’t know what Luke was talking about, but Annabeth buried her head in her hands like she was about to cry.
“Leave her alone,” I said. “And leave Tyson out this.”
Luke laughed. “Oh, yeah, I heard. Your father claimed him.”
I must have looked surprised, because Luke smiled. “Yes, Percy, I know all about that. And about your plan to find the Fleece. What were those coordinates, again . . . 30, 31, 75, 12? You see, I still have friends at camp who keep me posted.”
“Spies, you mean.”
He shrugged. “How many insults from your father can you stand, Percy? You think he’s grateful to you? You think Poseidon cares for you any more than he cares for this monster?”
Tyson clenched his fists and made a rumbling sound down in his throat.
Luke just chuckled. “The gods are so using you, Percy. Do you have any idea what’s in store for you if you reach your sixteenth birthday? Has Chiron even told you the prophecy?”
I wanted to get in Luke’s face and tell him off, but as usual, he knew just how to throw me off balance.
Sixteenth birthday?
I mean, I knew Chiron had received a prophecy from the Oracle many years ago. I knew part of it was about me. But, if I reached my sixteenth birthday? I didn’t like the sound of that.
“I know what I need to know,” I managed. “Like, who my enemies are.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
Tyson smashed the nearest dining chair to splinters. “Percy is not a fool!”
Before I could stop him, he charged Luke. His fists came down toward Luke’s head—a double overhead blow that would’ve knocked a hole in titanium—but the bear twins intercepted. They each caught one of Tyson’s arms and stopped him cold. They pushed him back and Tyson stumbled. He fell to the carpet so hard the deck shook.
“Too bad, Cyclops,” Luke said. “Looks like my grizzly friends together are more than a match for your strength. Maybe I should let them—”
“Luke,” I cut in. “Listen to me. Your father sent us.”
His face turned the color of pepperoni. “Don’t—even— mention him.”
“He told us to take this boat. I thought it was just for a ride, but he sent us here to find you. He told me he won’t give up on you, no matter how angry you are.”
“Angry?” Luke roared. “Give up on me? He abandoned me, Percy! I want Olympus destroyed! Every throne crushed to rubble! You tell Hermes it’s going to happen, too. Each time a half-blood joins us, the Olympians grow weaker and we grow stronger. He grows stronger.” Luke pointed to the gold sarcophagus.
The box creeped me out, but I was determined not to show it. “So?” I demanded. “What’s so special . . .”
Then it hit me, what might be inside the sarcophagus. The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. “Whoa, you don’t mean—”
“He is re-forming,” Luke said. “Little by little, we’re calling his life force out of the pit. With every recruit who pledges our cause, another small piece appears—”
“That’s disgusting!” Annabeth said.”
“Luke sneered at her. “Your mother was born from Zeus’s split skull, Annabeth. I wouldn’t talk. Soon there will be enough of the titan lord so that we can make him whole again. We will piece together a new body for him, a work worthy of the forges of Hephaestus.”
“You’re insane,” Annabeth said.”
“Join us and you’ll be rewarded. We have powerful friends, sponsors rich enough to buy this cruise ship and much more. Percy, your mother will never have to work again. You can buy her a mansion. You can have power, fame—whatever you want. Annabeth, you can realize your dream of being an architect. You can build a monument to last a thousand years. A temple to the lords of the next age!”
“Go to Tartarus,” she said.
Luke sighed. “A shame.”
He picked up something that looked like a TV remote and pressed a red button. Within seconds the door of the stateroom opened and two uniformed crew members came in, armed with nightsticks. They had the same glassy-eyed look as the other mortals I’d seen, but I had a feeling this wouldn’t make them any less dangerous in a fight.
“Ah, good, security,” Luke said, “I’m afraid we have some stowaways.”
“Yes, sir,” they said dreamily.
Luke turned to Oreius. “It’s time to feed the Aethiopian drakon. Take these fools below and show them how it’s done.”
Oreius grinned stupidly. “Hehe! Hehe!”
“Let me go, too,” Agrius grumbled. “My brother is worthless. That Cyclops—”
“Is no threat,” Luke said. He glanced back at the golden casket, as if something were troubling him. “Agrius, stay here. We have important matters to discuss.”
“But—”
“Oreius, don’t fail me. Stay in the hold to make sure the drakon is properly fed.” Oreius prodded us with his javelin and herded us out of the stateroom, followed by the two human security guards.
---
“A half-blood hideout.” I looked at Annabeth in awe. “You made this place?”
“Thalia and I,” she said quietly. “And Luke.”
That shouldn’t have bothered me. I mean, I knew Thalia and Luke had taken care of Annabeth when she was little. I knew the three of them had been runaways together, hiding from monsters, surviving on their own before Grover found them and tried to get them to Half-Blood Hill. But whenever Annabeth talked about the time she’d spent with them, I kind of felt . . . I don’t know. Uncomfortable?
No. That’s not the word.
The word was jealous.
“So . . .” I said. “You don’t think Luke will look for us here?”
She shook her head. “We made a dozen safe houses like this. I doubt Luke even remembers where they are. Or cares.”
---
Once he was gone, I sat down across from Annabeth. “Hey, I’m sorry about, you know, seeing Luke.”
“It’s not your fault.” She unsheathed her knife and started cleaning the blade with a rag.
“He let us go too easily,” I said.
I hoped I’d been imagining it, but Annabeth nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. What we overheard him say about a gamble, and ‘they’ll take the bait’ . . . I think he was talking about us.”
“The Fleece is the bait? Or Grover?”
She studied the edge of her knife. “I don’t know, Percy. Maybe he wants the Fleece for himself. Maybe he’s hoping we’ll do the hard work and then he can steal it from us. I just can’t believe he would poison the tree.”
“What did he mean,” I asked, “that Thalia would’ve been on his side?”
“He’s wrong.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
Annabeth glared at me, and I started to wish I hadn’t asked her about this while she was holding a knife.
“Percy, you know who you remind me of most? Thalia. You guys are so much alike it’s scary. I mean, either you would’ve been best friends or you would’ve strangled each other.”
“Let’s go with ‘best friends.’”
“Thalia got angry with her dad sometimes. So do you. Would you turn against Olympus because of that?”
I stared at the quiver of arrows in the corner. “No.”
“Okay, then. Neither would she. Luke’s wrong.” Annabeth stuck her knife blade into the dirt.
I wanted to ask her about the prophecy Luke had mentioned and what it had to do with my sixteenth birthday. But I figured she wouldn’t tell me. Chiron had made it pretty clear that I wasn’t allowed to hear it until the gods decided otherwise.
“So what did Luke mean about Cyclopes?” I asked. “He said you of all people—”
“I know what he said. He . . . he was talking about the real reason Thalia died.”
I waited, not sure what to say.
Annabeth drew a shaky breath. “You can never trust a Cyclops, Percy. Six years ago, on the night Grover was leading us to Half-Blood Hill—”
---
Annabeth twisted her Yankees cap in her hands. “Percy, I don’t know the full prophecy, but it warns about a half-blood child of the Big Three—the next one who lives to the age of sixteen. That’s the real reason Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swore a pact after World War II not to have any more kids. The next child of the Big Three who reaches sixteen will be a dangerous weapon.”
“Why?”
“Because that hero will decide the fate of Olympus. He or she will make a decision that either saves the Age of the Gods, or destroys it.”
I let that sink in. I don’t get seasick, but suddenly I felt ill. “That’s why Kronos didn’t kill me last summer.”
She nodded. “You could be very useful to him. If he can get you on his side, the gods will be in serious trouble.”
“But if it’s me in the prophecy—”
---
“I looked at Annabeth. “The reason you hate Cyclopes so much . . . the story about how Thalia really died. What happened?”
It was hard to see her expression in the dark.
“I guess you deserve to know,” she said finally. “The night Grover was escorting us to camp, he got confused, took some wrong turns. You remember he told you that once?”
I nodded.
“Well, the worst wrong turn was into a Cyclops’s lair in Brooklyn.”
“They’ve got Cyclopes in Brooklyn?” I asked.
“You wouldn’t believe how many, but that’s not the point. This Cyclops, he tricked us. He managed to split us up inside this maze of corridors in an old house in Flatbush. “And he could sound like anyone, Percy. Just the way Tyson did aboard the Princess Andromeda. He lured us, one at time. Thalia thought she was running to save Luke. Luke thought he heard me scream for help. And me . . . I was alone in the dark. I was seven years old. I couldn’t even find the exit.”
She brushed the hair out of her face. “I remember finding the main room. There were bones all over the floor. And there were Thalia and Luke and Grover, tied up and gagged, hanging from the ceiling like smoked hams. The Cyclops was starting a fire in the middle of the floor. I drew my knife, but he heard me. He turned and smiled. He spoke, and somehow he knew my dad’s voice. I guess he just plucked it out of my mind. He said, ‘Now, Annabeth, don’t you worry. I love you. You can stay here with me. You can stay forever.’”
“I shivered. The way she told it—even now, six years later—freaked me out worse than any ghost story I’d ever heard. “What did you do?”
“I stabbed him in the foot.”
I stared at her. “Are you kidding? You were seven years old and you stabbed a grown Cyclops in the foot?”
“Oh, he would’ve killed me. But I surprised him. It gave me just enough time to run to Thalia and cut the ropes on her hands. She took it from there.”
“Yeah, but still . . . that was pretty brave, Annabeth.”
She shook her head. “We barely got out alive. I still have nightmares, Percy. The way that Cyclops talked in my father’s voice. It was his fault we took so long getting to camp. All the monsters who’d been chasing us had time to catch up. That’s really why Thalia died. If it hadn’t been for that Cyclops, “she’d still be alive today.”
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