The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4)(53)

BANG! BANG!

It happened so fast, Hazel’s brain needed a moment to catch up.

Smoke curled from the side of Jason’s head. Just above his left ear, a groove cut through his hair like a racing stripe. One of Sciron’s flintlocks was still pointed at his face. The other flintlock was pointed down, over the side of the cliff, as if Sciron’s second shot had been fired at the Argo II.

Hazel choked from delayed shock. “What did you do?”

“Oh, don’t worry!” Sciron laughed. “If you could see that far—which you can’t—you’d see a hole in the deck between the shoes of the big young man, the one with the bow.”

“Frank!”

Sciron shrugged. “If you say so. That was just a demonstration. I’m afraid it could have been much more serious.”

He spun his flintlocks. The hammers reset, and Hazel had a feeling the guns had just magically reloaded.

Sciron waggled his eyebrows at Jason. “So! To answer your question—yes, I can attack you and hold your ship hostage at the same time. Celestial bronze ammunition. Quite deadly to demigods. You two would die first—bang, bang. Then I could take my time picking off your friends on that ship. Target practice is so much more fun with live targets running around screaming!”

Jason touched the new furrow that the bullet had plowed through his hair. For once, he didn’t look very confident.

Hazel’s ankles wobbled. Frank was the best shot she knew with a bow, but this bandit Sciron was inhumanly good.

“You’re a son of Poseidon?” she managed. “I would’ve thought Apollo, the way you shoot.”

The smile lines deepened around his eyes. “Why, thank you! It’s just from practice, though. The giant turtle—that’s due to my parentage. You can’t go around taming giant turtles without being a son of Poseidon! I could overwhelm your ship with a tidal wave, of course, but it’s terribly difficult work. Not nearly as fun as ambushing and shooting people.”

Hazel tried to collect her thoughts, stall for time, but it was difficult while staring down the smoking barrels of those flintlocks. “Uh…what’s the bandana for?”

“So no one recognizes me!” Sciron said.

“But you introduced yourself,” Jason said. “You’re Sciron.”

The bandit’s eyes widened. “How did you— Oh. Yes, I suppose I did.” He lowered one flintlock and scratched the side of his head with the other. “Terribly sloppy of me. Sorry. I’m afraid I’m a little rusty. Back from the dead, and all that. Let me try again.”

He leveled his pistols. “Stand and deliver! I am an anonymous bandit, and you do not need to know my name!”

An anonymous bandit. Something clicked in Hazel’s memory. “Theseus. He killed you once.”

Sciron’s shoulders slumped. “Now, why did you have to mention him? We were getting along so well!”

Jason frowned. “Hazel, you know this guy’s story?”

She nodded, though the details were murky. “Theseus met him on the road to Athens. Sciron would kill his victims by, um…”

Something about the turtle. Hazel couldn’t remember.

“Theseus was such a cheater!” Sciron complained. “I don’t want to talk about him. I’m back from the dead now. Gaea promised me I could stay on the coastline and rob all the demigods I wanted, and that’s what I’m going to do! Now…where were we?”

“You were about to let us go,” Hazel ventured.

“Hmm…” Sciron said. “No, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it. Ah, right! Money or your life. Where are your valuables? No valuables? Then I’ll have to—”

“Wait,” Hazel said. “I have our valuables. At least, I can get them.”

Sciron pointed a flintlock at Jason’s head. “Well, then, my dear, hop to it, or my next shot will cut off more than your friend’s hair!”

Hazel hardly needed to concentrate. She was so anxious, the ground rumbled beneath her and immediately yielded a bumper crop—precious metals popping to the surface as though the dirt was anxious to expel them.

She found herself surrounded by a knee-high mound of treasure—Roman denarii, silver drachmas, ancient gold jewelry, glittering diamonds and topaz and rubies—enough to fill several lawn bags.

Sciron laughed with delight. “How in the world did you do that?”

Hazel didn’t answer. She thought about all the coins that had appeared at the crossroads with Hecate. Here were even more—centuries’ worth of hidden wealth from every empire that had ever claimed this land—Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and so many others. Those empires were gone, leaving only a barren coastline for Sciron the bandit.

That thought made her feel small and powerless.

“Just take the treasure,” she said. “Let us go.”

Sciron chuckled. “Oh, but I did say all your valuables. I understand you’re holding something very special on that ship…a certain ivory-and-gold statue about, say, forty feet tall?”

The sweat started to dry on Hazel’s neck, sending a shiver down her back.

Jason stepped forward. Despite the gun pointed at his face, his eyes were as hard as sapphires. “The statue isn’t negotiable.”

“You’re right, it’s not!” Sciron agreed. “I must have it!”