The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(132)

Hazel scanned the path in front of them. About thirty feet down, the tunnel split into four smaller arteries, each one identical, but the one on the left radiated cold.

“That way,” she decided. “It feels the most dangerous.”

“I’m sold,” said Leo.

They began their descent.

As soon as they reached the first archway, the polecat Gale found them.

She scurried up Hazel’s side and curled around her neck, chittering crossly as if to say: Where have you been? You’re late.

“Not the farting weasel again,” Leo complained. “If that thing lets loose in close quarters like this, with my fire and all, we’re gonna explode.”

Gale barked a polecat insult at Leo.

Hazel hushed them both. She could sense the tunnel ahead, sloping gently down for about three hundred feet, then opening into a large chamber. In that chamber was a presence…cold, heavy, and powerful. Hazel hadn’t felt anything like it since the cave in Alaska where Gaea had forced her to resurrect Porphyrion the giant king. Hazel had thwarted Gaea’s plans that time, but she’d had to pull down the cavern, sacrificing her life and her mother’s. She wasn’t anxious to have a similar experience.

“Leo, be ready,” she whispered. “We’re getting close.”

“Close to what?”

A woman’s voice echoed down the corridor: “Close to me.”

A wave of nausea hit Hazel so hard her knees buckled. The whole world shifted. Her sense of direction, usually flawless underground, became completely unmoored.

She and Leo didn’t seem to move, but suddenly they were three hundred feet down the corridor, at the entrance of the chamber.

“Welcome,” said the woman’s voice. “I’ve looked forward to this.”

Hazel’s eyes swept the cavern. She couldn’t see the speaker.

The room reminded her of the Pantheon in Rome, except this place had been decorated in Hades Modern.

The obsidian walls were carved with scenes of death: plague victims, corpses on the battlefield, torture chambers with skeletons hanging in iron cages—all of it embellished with precious gems that somehow made the scenes even more ghastly.

As in the Pantheon, the domed roof was a waffle pattern of recessed square panels, but here each panel was a stela—a grave marker with Ancient Greek inscriptions. Hazel wondered if actual bodies were buried behind them. With her underground senses out of whack, she couldn’t be sure.

She saw no other exits. At the apex of the ceiling, where the Pantheon’s skylight would’ve been, a circle of pure black stone gleamed, as if to reinforce the sense that there was no way out of this place—no sky above, only darkness.

Hazel’s eyes drifted to the center of the room.

“Yep,” Leo muttered. “Those are doors, all right.”

Fifty feet away was a set of freestanding elevator doors, their panels etched in silver and iron. Rows of chains ran down either side, bolting the frame to large hooks in the floor.

The area around the doors was littered with black rubble. With a tightening sense of anger, Hazel realized that an ancient altar to Hades had once stood there. It had been destroyed to make room for the Doors of Death.

“Where are you?” she shouted.

“Don’t you see us?” taunted the woman’s voice. “I thought Hecate chose you for your skill.”

Another bout of queasiness churned through Hazel’s gut. On her shoulder, Gale barked and passed gas, which didn’t help.

Dark spots floated in Hazel’s eyes. She tried to blink them away, but they only turned darker. The spots consolidated into a twenty-foot-tall shadowy figure looming next to the Doors.

The giant Clytius was shrouded in the black smoke, just as she’d seen in her vision at the crossroads, but now Hazel could dimly make out his form—dragon-like legs with ash-colored scales; a massive humanoid upper body encased in Stygian armor; long, braided hair that seemed to be made from smoke. His complexion was as dark as Death’s (Hazel should know, since she had met Death personally). His eyes glinted cold as diamonds. He carried no weapon, but that didn’t make him any less terrifying.

Leo whistled. “You know, Clytius…for such a big dude, you’ve got a beautiful voice.”

“Idiot,” hissed the woman.

Halfway between Hazel and the giant, the air shimmered. The sorceress appeared.

She wore an elegant sleeveless dress of woven gold, her dark hair piled into a cone, encircled with diamonds and emeralds. Around her neck hung a pendant like a miniature maze, on a cord set with rubies that made Hazel think of crystallized blood drops.

The woman was beautiful in a timeless, regal way—like a statue you might admire but could never love. Her eyes sparkled with malice.

“Pasiphaë,” Hazel said.

The woman inclined her head. “My dear Hazel Levesque.”

Leo coughed. “You two know each other? Like Underworld chums, or—”

“Silence, fool.” Pasiphaë’s voice was soft, but full of venom. “I have no use for demigod boys—always so full of themselves, so brash and destructive.”

“Hey, lady,” Leo protested. “I don’t destroy things much. I’m a son of Hephaestus.”

“A tinkerer,” snapped Pasiphaë. “Even worse. I knew Daedalus. His inventions brought me nothing but trouble.”