The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5)(50)

‘They weren’t doing this before.’ Annabeth walked a wide arc around the pits. She still looked shaky and pale, but her mind was now obviously engaged in the problem at hand. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any pattern. The timing, the colour, the height of the fire … I don’t get it.’

‘Did we activate them somehow?’ Piper wondered. ‘Maybe that surge of fear you felt on the hill … Uh, I mean we both felt.’

Annabeth didn’t seem to hear her. ‘There must be some kind of mechanism … a pressure plate, a proximity alarm.’

Flames shot from the middle pit. Annabeth counted silently. The next time, a geyser erupted on the left. She frowned. ‘That’s not right. It’s inconsistent. It has to follow some kind of logic.’

Piper’s ears started to ring. Something about these pits …

Each time one ignited, a horrible thrill went through her – fear, panic, but also a strong desire to get closer to the flames.

‘It isn’t rational,’ she said. ‘It’s emotional.’

‘How can fire pits be emotional?’

Piper held her hand over the pit on the right. Instantly, flames leaped up. Piper barely had time to withdraw her fingers. Her nails steamed.

‘Piper!’ Annabeth ran over. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I wasn’t. I was feeling. What we want is down there. These pits are the way in. I’ll have to jump.’

‘Are you crazy? Even if you don’t get stuck in the tube, you have no idea how deep it is.’

‘You’re right.’

‘You’ll be burned alive!’

‘Possibly.’ Piper unbuckled her sword and tossed it into the pit on the right. ‘I’ll let you know if it’s safe. Wait for my word.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Annabeth warned.

Piper jumped.

For a moment she was weightless in the dark, the sides of the hot stone pit burning her arms. Then the space opened up around her. Instinctively she tucked and rolled, absorbing most of the impact as she hit the stone floor.

Flames shot up in front of her, singeing her eyebrows, but Piper snatched up her sword, unsheathed it and swung before she’d even stopped rolling. A bronze dragonhead, neatly decapitated, wobbled across the floor.

Piper stood, trying to get her bearings. She looked down at the fallen dragonhead and felt a moment of guilt, as if she’d killed Festus. But this wasn’t Festus.

Three bronze dragon statues stood in a row, aligned with the holes in the roof. Piper had decapitated the middle one. The two intact dragons were each three feet tall, their snouts pointed upward and their steaming mouths open. They were clearly the source of the flames, but they didn’t seem to be automatons. They didn’t move or try to attack her. Piper calmly sliced off the heads of the other two.

She waited. No more flames shot upward.

‘Piper?’ Annabeth’s voice echoed from far above like she was yelling down a chimney.

‘Yeah!’ Piper shouted.

‘Thank the gods! You okay?’

‘Yeah. Hold on a sec.’

Her eyesight adjusted to the dark. She scanned the chamber. The only light came from her glowing blade and the openings above. The ceiling was about thirty feet high. By all rights, Piper should’ve broken both legs in the fall, but she wasn’t going to complain.

The chamber itself was round, about the size of a helicopter pad. The walls were made of rough-hewn stone blocks chiselled with Greek inscriptions – thousands and thousands of them, like graffiti.

At the far end of the room, on a stone dais, stood the human-sized bronze statue of a warrior – the god Ares, Piper guessed – with heavy bronze chains wrapped around his body, anchoring him to the floor.

On either side of the statue loomed two dark doorways, ten feet high, with a gruesome stone face carved over each archway. The faces reminded Piper of gorgons, except they had lions’ manes instead of snakes for hair.

Piper suddenly felt very much alone.

‘Annabeth!’ she called. ‘It’s a long drop, but it’s safe to come down. Maybe … uh, you have a rope you could fasten so we can get back up?’

‘On it!’

A few minutes later a rope dropped from the centre pit. Annabeth shinned down.

‘Piper McLean,’ she grumbled, ‘that was without a doubt the dumbest risk I’ve ever seen anyone take, and I date a dumb risk-taker.’

‘Thank you.’ Piper nudged the nearest decapitated dragonhead with her foot. ‘I’m guessing these are the dragons of Ares. That’s one of his sacred animals, right?’

‘And there’s the chained god himself. Where do you think those doorways –’

Piper held up her hand. ‘Do you hear that?’

The sound was like a drumbeat … with a metallic echo.

‘It’s coming from inside the statue,’ Piper decided. ‘The heartbeat of the chained god.’

Annabeth unsheathed her drakon-bone sword. In the dim light, her face was ghostly pale, her eyes colourless. ‘I – I don’t like this, Piper. We need to leave.’

The rational part of Piper agreed. Her skin crawled. Her legs ached to run. But something about this room felt strangely familiar …

‘The shrine is ramping up our emotions,’ she said. ‘It’s like being around my mom, except this place radiates fear, not love. That’s why you started feeling overwhelmed on the hill. Down here, it’s a thousand times stronger.’