The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus #5)(39)

The god vanished.

Suddenly the chapel felt oppressive – thousands of hollow eye sockets staring at Nico. We, the bones that are here, await yours.

He hurried out of the church, hoping he remembered the way back to his friends.

XV

Nico

‘WOLVES?’ REYNA ASKED.

They were eating dinner from the nearby pavement café.

Despite Hades’s warning to hurry back, Nico had found nothing much changed at the camp. Reyna had just awoken. The Athena Parthenos still lay sideways across the top of the temple. Coach Hedge was entertaining a few locals with tap dancing and martial arts, occasionally singing into his megaphone, though nobody seemed to understand what he was saying.

Nico wished the coach hadn’t brought the megaphone. Not only was it loud and obnoxious but also, for no reason Nico understood, it occasionally blurted out random Darth Vader lines from Star Wars or yelled, ‘THE COW GOES MOO!’

As the three of them sat on the lawn to eat, Reyna seemed alert and rested. She and Coach Hedge listened as Nico described his dreams, then his meeting with Hades at the Chapel of Bones. Nico held back a few personal details from his talk with his father, though he sensed that Reyna knew plenty about wrestling with one’s feelings.

When he mentioned Orion and the wolves that were supposedly on their way, Reyna frowned.

‘Most wolves are friendly to Romans,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard stories about Orion hunting with a pack.’

Nico finished his ham sandwich. He eyed the plate of pastries and was surprised to find he still had an appetite. ‘It could have been a figure of speech: very little time before the wolves arrive. Perhaps Hades didn’t literally mean wolves. At any rate, we should leave as soon as it’s dark enough for shadows.’

Coach Hedge stuffed an issue of Guns & Ammo into his bag. ‘Only problem: the Athena Parthenos is still thirty feet in the air. Gonna be fun hauling you guys and your gear to the top of that temple.’

Nico tried a pastry. The lady at the café had called them farturas. They looked like spiral doughnuts and tasted great – just the right combination of crispy, sugary and buttery – but when Nico first heard fartura he knew Percy would have made a joke out of the name.

America has dough-nuts, Percy would have said. Portugal has fart-nuts.

The older Nico got, the more juvenile Percy seemed to him, though Percy was three years older. Nico found his sense of humour equal parts endearing and annoying. He decided to concentrate on the annoying.

Then there were the times Percy was deadly serious: looking up at Nico from that chasm in Rome – The other side, Nico! Lead them there. Promise me!

And Nico had promised. It didn’t seem to matter how much he resented Percy Jackson; Nico would do anything for him. He hated himself for that.

‘So …’ Reyna’s voice jarred him from his thoughts. ‘Will Camp Half-Blood wait for August first, or will they attack?’

‘We have to hope they wait,’ Nico said. ‘We can’t … I can’t get the statue back any faster.’

Even at this rate, my dad thinks I might die. Nico kept that thought private.

He wished Hazel was with him. Together they had shadow-travelled the entire crew of the Argo II out of the House of Hades. When they shared their power, Nico felt like anything was possible. The trip to Camp Half-Blood could’ve been done in half the time.

Besides, Hades’s words about one of the crew dying had sent a chill through him. He couldn’t lose Hazel. Not another sister. Not again.

Coach Hedge looked up from counting the change in his baseball cap. ‘And you’re sure Clarisse said Mellie was okay?’

‘Yes, Coach. Clarisse is taking good care of her.’

‘That’s a relief. I don’t like what Grover said about Gaia whispering to the nymphs and dryads. If the nature spirits turn evil … that’s not going to be pretty.’

Nico had never heard of such a thing happening. Then again, Gaia hadn’t been awake since the dawn of humanity.

Reyna took a bite of her pastry. Her chain mail glittered in the afternoon sun. ‘I wonder about these wolves … Is it possible we’ve misunderstood the message? The goddess Lupa has been very quiet. Perhaps she is sending us aid. The wolves could be from her – to defend us from Orion and his pack.’

The hopefulness in her voice was as thin as gauze. Nico decided not to rip through it.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But wouldn’t Lupa be busy with the war between the camps? I thought she’d be sending wolves to help your legion.’

Reyna shook her head. ‘Wolves are not front-line fighters. I don’t think she would help Octavian. Her wolves might be patrolling Camp Jupiter, defending it in the legion’s absence, but I just don’t know …’

She crossed her legs at the ankles, and the iron tips of her combat boots glinted. Nico made a mental note not to get into any kicking contests with Roman legionnaires.

‘There’s something else,’ she said. ‘I haven’t had any luck contacting my sister, Hylla. It makes me uneasy that both the wolves and the Amazons have gone silent. If something has happened on the West Coast … I fear the only hope for either camp lies with us. We must return the statue soon. That means the greatest burden is on you, son of Hades.’

Nico tried to swallow his bile. He wasn’t mad at Reyna. He kind of liked Reyna. But so often he’d been called on to do the impossible. Normally, as soon as he accomplished it, he was forgotten.