The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus #5)(42)

He wasn’t a mountain goat, but he found a set of stairs at the back of the temple and raced to the top. He reached the base of the columns and squinted up at Coach Hedge, who was precariously perched at the feet of the Athena Parthenos, unravelling ropes and knotting a ladder.

‘Hurry!’ Nico yelled.

‘Oh, really?’ the coach called down. ‘I thought we had tons of time!’

The last thing Nico needed was satyr sarcasm. Down in the square, more wolves broke free of their bone restraints. Reyna swatted them aside with her modified duct-tape-coin-sword, but a handful of change wasn’t going to hold back a pack of werewolves for long. Aurum snarled and snapped in frustration, unable to hurt the enemy. Argentum did his best, sinking his claws into the throat of another wolf, but the silver dog was already damaged. Soon he’d be hopelessly outnumbered.

Lycaon freed both his arms. He started pulling his legs from their ribcage restraints. There were only a few seconds until he would be loose.

Nico was out of tricks. Summoning that wall of bones had drained him. It would take all his remaining energy to shadow-travel – assuming he could even find a shadow to travel into.

A shadow.

He looked at the silver pocketknife in his hand. An idea came to him – possibly the stupidest, craziest idea he’d had since he thought, Hey, I’ll get Percy to swim in the River Styx! He’ll love me for that!

‘Reyna, get up here!’ he yelled.

She slammed another wolf in the head and ran. In mid-stride, she flicked her sword, which elongated into a javelin, then used it to launch herself up like a pole-vaulter. She landed next to Nico.

‘What’s the plan?’ she asked, not even out of breath.

‘Show-off,’ he grumbled.

A knotted rope fell from above.

‘Climb, ya silly non-goats!’ Hedge yelled.

‘Go,’ Nico told her. ‘Once you’re up there, hang on tight to the rope.’

‘Nico –’

‘Do it!’

Her javelin shrank back into a sword. Reyna sheathed it and began to climb, scaling the column despite her armour and her supplies.

Down in the plaza, Aurum and Argentum were nowhere to be seen. Either they’d retreated or they’d been destroyed.

Lycaon broke free of his bone cage with a triumphant howl. ‘You will suffer, son of Hades!’

What else is new? Nico thought.

He palmed the pocketknife. ‘Come get me, you mutt! Or do you have to stay like a good dog until your master shows up?’

Lycaon sprang through the air, his claws extended, his fangs bared. Nico wrapped his free hand around the rope and concentrated, a bead of sweat trickling down his neck.

As the wolf king fell on him, Nico thrust the silver knife into Lycaon’s chest. All around the temple, wolves howled as one.

The wolf king sank his claws into Nico’s arms. His fangs stopped less than an inch from Nico’s face. Nico ignored his own pain and jabbed the pocketknife to the hilt between Lycaon’s ribs.

‘Be useful, dog,’ he snarled. ‘Back to the shadows.’

Lycaon’s eyes rolled up in his head. He dissolved into a pool of inky darkness.

Then several things happened at once. The outraged pack of wolves surged forward. From a nearby rooftop, a booming voice yelled, ‘STOP THEM!’

Nico heard the unmistakable sound of a large bow being drawn taut.

Then he melted into the pool of Lycaon’s shadow, taking his friends and the Athena Parthenos with him – slipping into cold ether with no idea where he would emerge.

XVII

Piper

PIPER COULDN’T BELIEVE how hard it was to find deadly poison.

All morning she and Frank had scoured the port of Pylos. Frank allowed only Piper to come with him, thinking her charmspeak might be useful if they ran into his shape-shifting relatives.

As it turned out, her sword was more in demand. So far, they’d slain a Laistrygonian ogre in the bakery, battled a giant warthog in the public square and defeated a flock of Stymphalian birds with some well-aimed vegetables from Piper’s cornucopia.

She was glad for the work. It kept her from dwelling on her conversation with her mother the night before – that bleak glimpse of the future Aphrodite had made her promise not to share …

Meanwhile, Piper’s biggest challenge in Pylos was the ads plastered all over town for her dad’s new movie. The posters were in Greek, but Piper knew what they said: TRISTAN MCLEAN IS JAKE STEEL: SIGNED IN BLOOD.

Gods, what a horrible title. She wished her father had never taken on the Jake Steel franchise, but it had become one of his most popular roles. There he was on the poster, his shirt ripped open to reveal perfect abs (gross, Dad!), an AK-47 in each hand, a rakish smile on his chiselled face.

Halfway across the world, in the smallest, most out-of-the-way town imaginable, there was her dad. It made Piper feel sad, disoriented, homesick and annoyed all at once. Life went on. So did Hollywood. While her dad pretended to save the world, Piper and her friends actually had to. In eight more days, unless Piper could pull off the plan Aphrodite had explained … well, there wouldn’t be any more movies, or theatres, or people.

Around one in the afternoon, Piper finally put her charmspeak to work. She spoke with an Ancient Greek ghost in a Laundromat (on a one-to-ten scale for weird conversations, definitely an eleven) and got directions to an ancient stronghold where the shape-shifting descendants of Periclymenus supposedly hung out.