The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus)(29)

The naiad looked like she wanted to bolt, but Piper’s voice was hard to resist.

“Brooke,” the blue girl said reluctantly.

“Brooke the brook?” Jason asked.

Piper swatted his leg. “Okay, Brooke. I’m Piper. We won’t let anyone harm you. Just tell us who you’re afraid of.”

The naiad’s face became more agitated. The water boiled around her. “My crazy cousins. You can’t stop them. They’ll tear you apart. None of us is safe! Now go away. I have to hide!”

Brooke melted into water.

Piper stood. “Crazy cousins?” She frowned at Jason. “Any idea what she was talking about?”

Jason shook his head. “Maybe we should keep our voices down.”

Leo stared at the stream. He was trying to figure what was so horrible that it could tear apart a river spirit. How do you tear up water? Whatever it was, he didn’t want to meet it.

Yet he could see Buford’s tracks on the opposite bank—little square prints in the mud, leading in the direction the naiad had warned them about.

“We have to follow the trail, right?” he said, mostly to convince himself. “I mean…we’re heroes and stuff. We can handle whatever it is. Right?”

Jason drew his sword—a wicked Roman-style gladius with an Imperial gold blade. “Right. Of course.”

Piper unsheathed her dagger. She stared into the blade as if hoping Katoptris would show her a helpful vision. Sometimes the dagger did that. But if she saw anything important, she didn’t say.

“Crazy cousins,” she muttered. “Here we come.”

There was no more talking as they followed the table tracks deeper into the woods. The birds were silent. No monsters growled. It was as if all the other living creatures in the woods had been smart enough to leave.

Finally they came to a clearing the size of a mall parking lot. The sky overhead was heavy and gray. The grass was dry yellow, and the ground was scarred with pits and trenches as if someone had done some crazy driving with construction equipment. In the center of the clearing stood a pile of boulders about thirty feet tall.

“Oh,” Piper said. “This isn’t good.”

“Why?” Leo asked.

“It’s bad luck to be here,” Jason said. “This is the battle site.”

Leo scowled. “What battle?”

Piper raised her eyebrows. “How can you not know about it? The other campers talk about this place all the time.”

“Been a little busy,” Leo said.

He tried not to feel bitter about it, but he’d missed out on a lot of regular camp stuff—the trireme fights, the chariot races, flirting with the girls. That was the worst part. Leo finally had an “in” with the hottest girls at camp, since Piper was the senior counselor for Aphrodite cabin, and he was too busy for her to fix him up. Sad.

“The Battle of the Labyrinth.” Piper kept her voice down, but she explained to Leo how the pile of rocks used to be called Zeus’s Fist, back when it looked like something, not just a pile of rocks. There’d been an entrance to a magical labyrinth here, and a big army of monsters had come through it to invade camp. The campers won—obviously, since camp was still here—but it had been a hard battle. Several demigods had died. The clearing was still considered cursed.

“Great,” Leo grumbled. “Buford has to run to the most dangerous part of the woods. He couldn’t just, like, run to the beach or a burger shop.”

“Speaking of which…” Jason studied the ground. “How are we going to track him? There’s no trail here.”

Though Leo would’ve preferred to stay in the cover of the trees, he followed his friends into the clearing. They searched for table tracks, but as they made their way to the pile of boulders they found nothing. Leo pulled a watch from his tool belt and strapped it to his wrist. Roughly forty minutes until the big ka-boom.

“If I had more time,” he said, “I could make a tracking device, but—”

“Does Buford have a round tabletop?” Piper interrupted. “With little steam vents sticking up on one side?”

Leo stared at her. “How did you know?”

“Because he’s right over there.” She pointed.

Sure enough, Buford was waddling toward the far end of the clearing, steam puffing from his vents. As they watched, he disappeared into the trees.

“That was easy.” Jason started to follow, but Leo held him back.

The hairs on the back of Leo’s neck stood up. He wasn’t sure why. Then he realized he could hear voices from the woods on their left. “Someone’s coming!”

He pulled his friends behind the boulders.

Jason whispered, “Leo—”

“Shh!”

A dozen barefoot girls skipped into the clearing. They were teenagers with tunic-style dresses of loose purple and red silk. Their hair was tangled with leaves, and most wore laurel wreaths. Some carried strange staffs that looked like torches. The girls laughed and swung each other around, tumbling in the grass and spinning like they were dizzy. They were all really gorgeous, but Leo wasn’t tempted to flirt.

Piper sighed. “They’re just nymphs, Leo.”

Leo gestured frantically at her to stay down. He whispered, “Crazy cousins!”