The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus)(49)

Alabaster swung again. This time Lamia did the impossible—she stopped the blade, catching the Imperial gold edge with her reptilian claw.

Alabaster tried to pull his sword free, but Lamia held it fast. She put her face close to his.

“You know what happened next, brother?” she whispered. Her breath smelled like freshly spilled blood. “My life as queen may have been over, but my hatred was just beginning. Using Mother’s power I crafted a very special incantation, one that allowed all the monsters in the world to sense the taint of half-bloods…” She smiled. “Maybe after a few thousand more of you die, Hera, the goddess of family, will finally understand my pain!”

Alabaster caught his breath. “What did you just say?”

“Yes, you heard me! I was the one who made all of your lives a living nightmare! I gave monsters the ability to track demigods! I am Lamia, the butcher of the tainted! And once you are dead, our other siblings will follow me as their queen. They will join me or die! My mistress—Mother Earth herself—has promised she will return my children to me.” Lamia laughed with delight. “They will live again, and all I have to do is kill you!”

Alabaster managed to tug his sword from her grip, but Lamia was too close. She thrust out her claws to tear out his heart. There was a sharp BANG! and Lamia staggered backward, a bullet hole in her scaly chest. Alabaster swung his blade, cutting her in half at the waist, and Lamia crumbled into a pile of black sand.

Alabaster glanced back at Claymore, who was standing ten feet to his right, holding a gun. “What are you doing here? She could have killed you!”

Claymore smiled. “I saw that you were doing just as pitiful a job as I, so I thought I’d lend a hand. I had to do something with my last bullet.”

Alabaster stared at him in amazement. “Gods, you really are arrogant.”

“I’ve heard that a lot lately. I’m going to start taking it as a compliment.” Claymore looked down at Lamia’s body, which was already re-forming. “A Swiffer would be helpful right now. She’ll be back any minute.”

Alabaster tried to think, but he felt exhausted. Most of his incantations were gone. His defenses were destroyed. “We have to get out of here.”

Claymore shook his head. “Running hasn’t helped you before. We need a way to deal with her. She said her life was sustained by her mistress…”

“Mother Earth,” Alabaster said. “Gaea. She tried to overthrow the gods once before in the ancient times. But how does that help us?”

Claymore picked up a handful of black sand and watched it writhing, trying to re-form. “Earth…” he mused. “If sending Lamia back to Tartarus doesn’t work, if she won’t stay dead, isn’t there a way to imprison her on this earth?”

Alabaster frowned. Then a lightbulb went off in his head.

He had expected this man, this genius, to have a more complicated answer. Alabaster expected that if he told Claymore about the Underworld and what caused death for monsters, the best mind of the century could tell him how to kill Lamia permanently.

But the answer was much simpler than that. Claymore had just unwittingly solved the problem.

They couldn’t kill Lamia for good. The earth goddess Gaea would simply let her back into the mortal world again and again. But what if they didn’t try to send her to Tartarus? What if this earth became Lamia’s prison instead?

Alabaster looked him in the eyes. “We have to get back inside my house! I think I know a way to stop her.”

“Are you sure?” Claymore asked. “How?”

Alabaster shook his head. “No time! Just look for the book on my nightstand. If we get that, we can stop her. Now go!”

Claymore nodded, and they ran toward the front door.

Alabaster had had the power to stop her all along and he just hadn’t known it. But now he had the answer. And there wasn’t a monster in the world that could stop him.

Claymore was tired of running.

His young friend Alabaster looked like he could still go for miles despite the hundred-pound sword he was carrying. And Alabaster had been withstanding Lamia’s attacks for weeks.

Claymore was a different story. After evading Lamia for only a few hours, he was about to collapse. Half-bloods must have been made of sterner stuff than humans.

Alabaster tore through the living room. He glanced back, grinning ear to ear, and gestured at Claymore to hurry. “It was here all along! Gods, I wish I had known!”

Thunder cracked outside, and Claymore frowned. “You can save that talk for after we win. Let’s hope your magic bullet actually works.”

Alabaster nodded. “I’m sure of it! Every form of invincibility has a weak point. Tanks have a hatch, Achilles had a heel, and Lamia has this.”

Looking at Alabaster’s expression, Claymore almost smiled. This was the happy-go-lucky boy that he was supposed to be—not a half-blood warrior who expected to die by the age of twenty.

He seemed like a normal sixteen-year-old with a full life ahead of him.…

Maybe after Lamia was dead, Alabaster could live that life. Maybe, if the gods would let him have it.…

But what was Claymore going to do? His entire life had been devoted to finding an answer to death, but in the past day he’d discovered that everything he’d come to believe was a lie. Or rather, the lies he’d dismissed all his life were actually true.