The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(122)

Frank found it eerie how Hazel could tell so much about an underground place just by being there. He’d never known her to be mistaken.

“A manor house?” he asked. “Please don’t tell me we’re in the wrong place.”

“The House of Hades is below us,” Nico assured him. “But Hazel’s right, these upper levels are much newer. When the archaeologists first excavated this site, they thought they’d found the Necromanteion. Then they realized the ruins were too recent, so they decided it was the wrong spot. They were right the first time. They just didn’t dig deep enough.”

They turned a corner and stopped. In front of them, the tunnel ended in a huge block of stone.

“A cave-in?” Jason asked.

“A test,” Nico said. “Hazel, would you do the honors?”

Hazel stepped forward. She placed her hand on the rock, and the entire boulder crumbled to dust.

The tunnel shuddered. Cracks spread across the ceiling. For a terrifying moment, Frank imagined they’d all be crushed under tons of earth—a disappointing way to die, after all they’d been through. Then the rumbling stopped. The dust settled.

A set of stairs curved deeper into the earth, the barreled ceiling held up by more repeating arches, closer together and carved from polished black stone. The descending arches made Frank feel dizzy, as if he were looking into an endlessly reflecting mirror. Painted on the walls were crude pictures of black cattle marching downward.

“I really don’t like cows,” Piper muttered.

“Agreed,” Frank said.

“Those are the cattle of Hades,” Nico said. “It’s just a symbol of—”

“Look.” Frank pointed.

On the first step of the stairwell, a golden chalice gleamed. Frank was pretty sure it hadn’t been there a moment before. The cup was full of dark-green liquid.

“Hooray,” Leo said halfheartedly. “I suppose that’s our poison.”

Nico picked up the chalice. “We’re standing at the ancient entrance of the Necromanteion. Odysseus came here, and dozens of other heroes, seeking advice from the dead.”

“Did the dead advise them to leave immediately?” Leo asked.

“I would be fine with that,” Piper admitted.

Nico drank from the chalice, then offered it to Jason. “You asked me about trust, and taking a risk? Well, here you go, son of Jupiter. How much do you trust me?”

Frank wasn’t sure what Nico was talking about, but Jason didn’t hesitate. He took the cup and drank.

They passed it around, each taking a sip of poison. As he waited his turn, Frank tried to keep his legs from shaking and his gut from churning. He wondered what his grandmother would say if she could see him.

Stupid, Fai Zhang! she would probably scold. If all your friends were drinking poison, would you do it too?

Frank went last. The taste of the green liquid reminded him of spoiled apple juice. He drained the chalice. It turned to smoke in his hands.

Nico nodded, apparently satisfied. “Congratulations. Assuming the poison doesn’t kill us, we should be able to find our way through the Necromanteion’s first level.”

“Just the first level?” Piper asked.

Nico turned to Hazel and gestured at the stairs. “After you, sister.”

In no time, Frank felt completely lost. The stairs split in three different directions. As soon as Hazel chose a path, the stairs split again. They wound their way through interconnecting tunnels and rough-hewn burial chambers that all looked the same—the walls carved with dusty niches that might once have held bodies. The arches over the doors were painted with black cows, white poplar trees, and owls.

“I thought the owl was Minerva’s symbol,” Jason murmured.

“The screech owl is one of Hades’s sacred animals,” Nico said. “Its cry is a bad omen.”

“This way.” Hazel pointed to a doorway that looked the same as all the others. “It’s the only one that won’t collapse on us.”

“Good choice, then,” Leo said.

Frank began to feel like he was leaving the world of the living. His skin tingled, and he wondered if it was a side effect of the poison. The pouch with his firewood seemed heavier on his belt. In the eerie glow of their magic weapons, his friends looked like flickering ghosts.

Cold air brushed against his face. In his mind, Ares and Mars had gone silent, but Frank thought he heard other voices whispering in the side corridors, beckoning him to veer off course, to come closer and listen to them speak.

Finally they reached an archway carved in the shape of human skulls—or maybe they were human skulls embedded in the rock. In the purple light of Diocletian’s scepter, the hollow eye sockets seemed to blink.

Frank almost hit the ceiling when Hazel put a hand on his arm.

“This is the entrance to the second level,” she said. “I’d better take a look.”

Frank hadn’t even realized that he’d moved in front of the doorway.

“Uh, yeah…” He made way for her.

Hazel traced her fingers across the carved skulls. “No traps on the doorway, but…something is strange here. My underground sense is—is fuzzy, like someone is working against me, hiding what’s ahead of us.”

“The sorceress that Hecate warned you about?” Jason guessed. “The one Leo saw in his dream? What was her name?”