The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(127)

Nico kept summoning more legionnaires to join the fight. Over the history of the empire, thousands of Romans had served and died in Greece. Now they were back, answering the call of Diocletian’s scepter.

Frank waded forward, destroying everything in his path.

“I will burn you!” a telkhine squeaked, desperately waving a vial of Greek fire. “I have fire!”

Frank took him down. As the vial dropped toward the ground, Frank kicked it over the cliff before it could explode.

An empousa raked her claws across Frank’s chest, but Frank felt nothing. He sliced the demon into dust and kept moving. Pain was unimportant. Failure was unthinkable.

He was a leader of the legion now, doing what he was born to do—fighting the enemies of Rome, upholding its legacy, protecting the lives of his friends and comrades. He was Praetor Frank Zhang.

His forces swept the enemy away, breaking their every attempt to regroup. Jason and Piper fought at his side, yelling defiantly. Nico waded through the last group of Earthborn, slashing them into mounds of wet clay with his black Stygian sword.

Before Frank knew it, the battle was over. Piper chopped through the last empousa, who vaporized with an anguished wail.

“Frank,” Jason said, “you’re on fire.”

He looked down. A few drops of oil must have splattered on his pants, because they were starting to smolder. Frank batted at them until they stopped smoking, but he wasn’t particularly worried. Thanks to Leo, he no longer had to fear fire.

Nico cleared his throat. “Uh…you also have an arrow sticking through your arm.”

“I know.” Frank snapped off the point of the arrow and pulled out the shaft by the tail. He felt only a warm, tugging sensation. “I’ll be fine.”

Piper made him eat a piece of ambrosia. As she bandaged his wound, she said, “Frank, you were amazing. Completely terrifying, but amazing.”

Frank had trouble processing her words. Terrifying couldn’t apply to him. He was just Frank.

His adrenaline drained away. He looked around him, wondering where all the enemies had gone. The only monsters left were his own undead Romans, standing in a stupor with their weapons lowered.

Nico held up his scepter, its orb dark and dormant. “The dead won’t stay much longer, now that the battle is over.”

Frank faced his troops. “Legion!”

The zombie soldiers snapped to attention.

“You fought well,” Frank told them. “Now you may rest. Dismissed.”

They crumbled into piles of bones, armor, shields, and weapons. Then even those disintegrated.

Frank felt as if he might crumble too. Despite the ambrosia, his wounded arm began to throb. His eyes were heavy with exhaustion. The blessing of Mars faded, leaving him depleted. But his work wasn’t done yet.

“Hazel and Leo,” he said. “We need to find them.”

His friends peered across the chasm. At the other end of the cavern, the tunnel Hazel and Leo had entered was buried under tons of rubble.

“We can’t go that way,” Nico said. “Maybe…”

Suddenly he staggered. He would have fallen, if Jason hadn’t caught him.

“Nico!” Piper said. “What is it?”

“The Doors,” Nico said. “Something’s happening. Percy and Annabeth…we need to go now.”

“But how?” Jason said. “That tunnel is gone.”

Frank clenched his jaw. He hadn’t come this far to stand around helplessly while his friends were in trouble. “It won’t be fun,” he said, “but there’s another way.”

GETTING KILLED BY TARTARUS didn’t seem like much of an honor.

As Annabeth stared up at his dark whirlpool face, she decided she’d rather die in some less memorable way—maybe falling down the stairs, or going peacefully in her sleep at age eighty, after a nice quiet life with Percy. Yes, that sounded good.

It wasn’t the first time Annabeth had faced an enemy she couldn’t defeat by force. Normally, this would’ve been her cue to stall for time with some clever Athena-like chitchat.

Except her voice wouldn’t work. She couldn’t even close her mouth. For all she knew, she was drooling as badly as Percy did when he slept.

She was dimly aware of the army of monsters swirling around her, but after their initial roar of triumph, the horde had fallen silent. Annabeth and Percy should have been ripped to pieces by now. Instead, the monsters kept their distance, waiting for Tartarus to act.

The god of the pit flexed his fingers, examining his own polished black talons. He had no expression, but he straightened his shoulders as if he were pleased.

It is good to have form, he intoned. With these hands, I can eviscerate you.

His voice sounded like a backward recording—as if the words were being sucked into the vortex of his face rather than projected. In fact, everything seemed to be drawn toward the face of this god—the dim light, the poisonous clouds, the essence of the monsters, even Annabeth’s own fragile life force. She looked around and realized that every object on this vast plain had grown a vaporous comet’s tail—all pointing toward Tartarus.

Annabeth knew she should say something, but her instincts told her to hide, to avoid doing anything that would draw the god’s attention.

Besides, what could she say? You won’t get away with this!