The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus #5)(9)

‘You’re a mania,’ Jason decided, the word coming to him from his studies at Camp Jupiter long ago. ‘A spirit of insanity. That’s what you’ve been reduced to.’

‘I am all that remains,’ Beryl Grace agreed. Her image flickered through a spectrum of colours. ‘Embrace me, son. I am all you have left.’

The memory of the South Wind spoke in his mind: You can’t choose your parentage. But you can choose your legacy.

Jason felt like he was being reassembled, one layer at a time. His heartbeat steadied. The chill left his bones. His skin warmed in the afternoon sun.

‘No,’ he croaked. He glanced at Annabeth and Piper. ‘My loyalties haven’t changed. My family has just expanded. I’m a child of Greece and Rome.’ He looked back at his mother for the last time. ‘I’m no child of yours.’

He made the ancient sign of warding off evil – three fingers thrust out from the heart – and the ghost of Beryl Grace disappeared with a soft hiss, like a sigh of relief.

The ghoul Antinous tossed aside his goblet. He studied Jason with a look of lazy disgust. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I suppose we’ll just kill you.’

All around Jason, the enemies closed in.

IV

Jason

THE FIGHT WAS GOING GREAT – until he got stabbed.

Jason slashed his gladius in a wide arc, vaporizing the nearest suitors, then he vaulted onto the table and jumped right over Antinous’s head. In midair he willed his blade to extend into a javelin – a trick he’d never tried with this sword – but somehow he knew it would work.

He landed on his feet holding a six-foot-long pilum. As Antinous turned to face him, Jason thrust the Imperial gold point through the ghoul’s chest.

Antinous looked down incredulously. ‘You –’

‘Enjoy the Fields of Punishment.’ Jason yanked out his pilum and Antinous crumbled to dirt.

Jason kept fighting, spinning his javelin – slicing through ghosts, knocking ghouls off their feet.

Across the courtyard, Annabeth fought like a demon, too. Her drakon-bone sword scythed down any suitors stupid enough to face her.

Over by the sand fountain, Piper had also drawn her sword – the jagged bronze blade she’d taken from Zethes the Boread. She stabbed and parried with her right hand, occasionally shooting tomatoes from the cornucopia in her left, while yelling at the suitors, ‘Save yourselves! I’m too dangerous!’

That must have been exactly what they wanted to hear, because her opponents kept running away, only to freeze in confusion a few yards downhill, then charge back into the fight.

The Greek tyrant Hippias lunged at Piper, his dagger raised, but Piper blasted him point-blank in the chest with a lovely pot roast. He tumbled backwards into the fountain and screamed as he disintegrated.

An arrow whistled towards Jason’s face. He blew it aside with a gust of wind, then cut through a line of sword-wielding ghouls and noticed a dozen suitors regrouping by the fountain to charge Annabeth. He lifted his javelin to the sky. A bolt of lightning ricocheted off the point and blasted the ghosts to ions, leaving a smoking crater where the sand fountain had been.

Over the last few months, Jason had fought many battles, but he’d forgotten what it was like to feel good in combat. Of course he was still afraid, but a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. For the first time since waking up in Arizona with his memories erased, Jason felt whole. He knew who he was. He had chosen his family, and it had nothing to do with Beryl Grace or even Jupiter. His family included all the demigods who fought at his side, Roman and Greek, new friends and old. He wasn’t going to let anyone break his family apart.

He summoned the winds and flung three ghouls off the side of the hill like rag dolls. He skewered a fourth, then willed his javelin to shrink back to a sword and hacked through another group of spirits.

Soon no more enemies faced him. The remaining ghosts began to disappear on their own. Annabeth cut down Hasdrubal the Carthaginian, and Jason made the mistake of sheathing his sword.

Pain flared in his lower back – so sharp and cold he thought Khione the snow goddess had touched him.

Next to his ear, Michael Varus snarled, ‘Born a Roman, die a Roman.’

The tip of a golden sword jutted through the front of Jason’s shirt, just below his ribcage.

Jason fell to his knees. Piper’s scream sounded miles away. He felt like he’d been immersed in salty water – his body weightless, his head swaying.

Piper charged towards him. He watched with detached emotion as her sword passed over his head and cut through Michael Varus’s armour with a metallic ka-chunk.

A burst of cold parted Jason’s hair from behind. Dust settled around him, and an empty legionnaire’s helmet rolled across the stones. The evil demigod was gone – but he had made a lasting impression.

‘Jason!’ Piper grabbed his shoulders as he began to fall sideways. He gasped as she pulled the sword out of his back. Then she lowered him to the ground, propping his head against a stone.

Annabeth ran to their side. She had a nasty cut on the side of her neck.

‘Gods.’ Annabeth stared at the wound in Jason’s gut. ‘Oh, gods.’

‘Thanks,’ Jason groaned. ‘I was afraid it might be bad.’

His arms and legs started to tingle as his body went into crisis mode, sending all the blood to his chest. The pain was dull, which surprised him, but his shirt was soaked red. The wound was smoking. He was pretty sure sword wounds weren’t supposed to smoke.