The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus #5)(33)

FOOM! Metal filaments shot upward, wrapping Nike in a bronze net. She wailed, falling sideways as the net constricted, forcing her two forms – Greek and Roman – into a quivering, out-of-focus whole.

‘Trickery!’ Her doubled voices buzzed like muffled alarm clocks. ‘Your death ray did not even kill me!’

‘I don’t need to kill you,’ Leo said. ‘I vanquished you just fine.’

‘I will simply change form!’ she cried. ‘I will rip apart your silly net! I will destroy you!’

‘Yeah, see, you can’t.’ Leo hoped he was right. ‘That’s high-quality Celestial bronze netting, and I’m a son of Hephaestus. He’s kind of an expert on catching goddesses in nets.’

‘No. Nooooo!’

Leo left her thrashing and cursing, and went to check on his friends. Percy looked all right, just sore and bruised. Frank had propped Hazel up and was feeding her ambrosia. The cut on her leg had stopped bleeding, though her jeans were pretty much ruined.

‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘Just too much magic.’

‘You were awesome, Levesque.’ Leo did his best Hazel imitation: ‘Popcorn! Our fatal weakness!’

She smiled wanly. Together the four of them walked over to Nike, who was still writhing and flapping her wings in the net like a golden chicken.

‘What do we do with her?’ Percy asked.

‘Take her aboard the Argo II,’ Leo said. ‘Chuck her in one of the horse stalls.’

Hazel’s eyes widened. ‘You’re going to keep the goddess of victory in the stable?’

‘Why not? Once we sort things out between Greeks and Romans, the gods should go back to their normal selves. Then we can free her and she can … you know … grant us victory.’

‘Grant you victory?’ the goddess cried. ‘Never! You will suffer for this outrage! Your blood shall be spilled! One of you here – one of you four – is fated to die battling Gaia!’

Leo’s intestines tied themselves into a slipknot. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I can foresee victories!’ Nike yelled. ‘You will have no success without death! Release me and fight each other! It is better you die here than face what is to come!’

Hazel stuck the point of her spatha under Nike’s chin. ‘Explain.’ Her voice was harder than Leo had ever heard. ‘Which of us will die? How do we stop it?’

‘Ah, child of Pluto! Your magic helped you cheat in this contest, but you cannot cheat destiny. One of you will die. One of you must die!’

‘No,’ Hazel insisted. ‘There’s another way. There is always another path.’

‘Hecate taught you this?’ Nike laughed. ‘You would hope for the physician’s cure, perhaps? But that is impossible. Too much stands in your way: the poison of Pylos, the chained god’s heartbeat in Sparta, the curse of Delos! No, you cannot cheat death.’

Frank knelt. He gathered up the net under Nike’s chin and raised her face to his. ‘What are you talking about? How do we find this cure?’

‘I will not help you,’ Nike growled. ‘I will curse you with my power, net or no!’

She began to mutter in Ancient Greek.

Frank looked up, scowling. ‘Can she really cast magic through this net?’

‘Heck if I know,’ Leo said.

Frank let go of the goddess. He took off one of his shoes, peeled off his sock and stuffed it in the goddess’s mouth.

‘Dude,’ Percy said, ‘that is disgusting.’

‘Mpppphhh!’ Nike complained. ‘Mppppphhh!’

‘Leo,’ Frank said grimly, ‘you got duct tape?’

‘Never leave home without it.’ He fished a roll from his tool belt, and in no time Frank had wrapped it around Nike’s head, securing the gag in her mouth.

‘Well, it’s not a laurel wreath,’ Frank said, ‘but it’s a new kind of victory circle: the gag of duct tape.’

‘Zhang,’ Leo said, ‘you got style.’

Nike thrashed and grunted until Percy nudged her with his toe. ‘Hey, shut up. You behave or we’ll get Arion back here and let him nibble your wings. He loves gold.’

Nike shrieked once, then became still and quiet.

‘So …’ Hazel sounded a little nervous. ‘We have one tied-up goddess. Now what?’

Frank folded his arms. ‘We go looking for this physician’s cure … whatever that is. Because, personally, I like cheating death.’

Leo grinned. ‘Poison in Pylos? A chained god’s heartbeat in Sparta? A curse in Delos? Oh, yeah. This is gonna be fun!’

XIII

Nico

THE LAST THING NICO HEARD was Coach Hedge grumbling, ‘Well, this isn’t good.’

He wondered what he’d done wrong this time. Maybe he’d teleported them into a den of Cyclopes, or a thousand feet above another volcano. There was nothing he could do about it. His vision was gone. His other senses were shutting down. His knees buckled and he passed out.

He tried to make the most of his unconsciousness.

Dreams and death were old friends of his. He knew how to navigate their dark borderland. He sent out his thoughts, searching for Thalia Grace.

He rushed past the usual fragments of painful memories – his mother smiling down at him, her face illuminated by the sunlight rippling off the Venetian Grand Canal; his sister Bianca laughing as she pulled him across the Mall in Washington, D.C., her green floppy hat shading her eyes and the splash of freckles across her nose. He saw Percy Jackson on a snowy cliff outside Westover Hall, shielding Nico and Bianca from the manticore as Nico clutched a Mythomagic figurine and whispered, I’m scared. He saw Minos, his old ghostly mentor, leading him through the Labyrinth. Minos’s smile was cold and cruel. Don’t worry, son of Hades. You will have your revenge.