The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus #3)(92)

“Go!” she told Jason, who’d forgotten his part of the plan and was staring in amazement at the fruit pile. “Go!”

He grabbed Piper’s waist and summoned the wind. They shot away from the island so quickly, Piper almost got whiplash; but it wasn’t a second too soon.

As the island retreated from view, Hercules’s head broke above the mound of goodies. Half a coconut was stuck on his noggin like a war helmet. “Kill!” he bellowed, like he’d had a lot of practice saying it.

Jason touched down on the deck of the Argo II. Thankfully, Leo had done his part. The ship’s oars were already in aerial mode. The anchor was up. Jason summoned a gale so strong, it pushed them into the sky, while Percy sent a ten-foot-tall wave against the shore, knocking Hercules down a second time, in a cascade of seawater and pineapples.

By the time the god regained his feet and started lobbing coconuts at them from far below, the Argo II was already sailing through the clouds above the Mediterranean.

Chapter 29

Percy was not feeling the love.

Bad enough he’d been run out of Atlanta by evil sea gods. Then he had failed to stop a giant shrimp attack on the Argo II. Then the ichthyocentaurs, Chiron’s brothers, hadn’t even wanted to meet him.

After all that, they had arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, and Percy had to stay aboard ship while Jason the Big Shot visited his half brother. Hercules, the most famous demigod of all time, and Percy didn’t get to meet him either.

Okay, sure, from what Piper said afterward, Hercules was a jerk, but still…Percy was getting kind of tired of staying aboard ship and pacing the deck.

The open sea was supposed to be his territory. Percy was supposed to step up, take charge, and keep everybody safe. Instead, all the way across the Atlantic, he’d done pretty much nothing except make small talk with sharks and listen to Coach Hedge sing TV theme songs.

To make matters worse, Annabeth had been distant ever since they had left Charleston. She spent most of her time in her cabin, studying the bronze map she’d retrieved from Fort Sumter, or looking up information on Daedalus’s laptop.

Whenever Percy stopped by to see her, she was so lost in thought that the conversation went something like this:

Percy: “Hey, how’s it going?”

Annabeth: “Uh, no thanks.”

Percy: “Okay…have you eaten anything today?”

Annabeth: “I think Leo is on duty. Ask him.”

Percy: “So, my hair is on fire.”

Annabeth: “Okay. In a while.”

She got like this sometimes. It was one of the challenges of dating an Athena girl. Still, Percy wondered what he had to do to get her attention. He was worried about her after her encounter with the spiders at Fort Sumter, and he didn’t know how to help her, especially if she shut him out.

After leaving the Pillars of Hercules—unscathed except for a few coconuts lodged in the hull’s bronze plating—the ship traveled by air for a few hundred miles.

Percy hoped the ancient lands wouldn’t be as bad as they’d heard. But it was almost like a commercial: You’ll notice the difference immediately!

Several times an hour, something attacked the ship. A flock of flesh-eating Stymphalian birds swooped out of the night sky, and Festus torched them. Storm spirits swirled around the mast, and Jason blasted them with lightning. While Coach Hedge was having dinner on the foredeck, a wild pegasus appeared from nowhere, stampeded over the coach’s enchiladas, and flew off again, leaving cheesy hoof prints all across the deck.

“What was that for?” the coach demanded.

The sight of the pegasus made Percy wish Blackjack were here. He hadn’t seen his friend in days. Tempest and Arion also hadn’t shown themselves. Maybe they didn’t want to venture into the Mediterranean. If so, Percy couldn’t blame them.

Finally around midnight, after the ninth or tenth aerial attack, Jason turned to him. “How about you get some sleep? I’ll keep blasting stuff out of the sky as long as I can. Then we can go by sea for a while, and you can take point.”

Percy wasn’t sure that he’d be able to sleep with the boat rocking through the clouds as it was shaken by angry wind spirits, but Jason’s idea made sense. He went belowdecks and crashed on his bunk.

His nightmares, of course, were anything but restful.

He dreamed he was in a dark cavern. He could only see a few feet in front of him, but the space must have been vast. Water dripped from somewhere nearby, and the sound echoed off distant walls. The way the air moved made Percy suspect the cave’s ceiling was far, far above.

He heard heavy footsteps, and the twin giants Ephialtes and Otis shuffled out of the gloom. Percy could distinguish them only by their hair—Ephialtes had the green locks braided with silver and gold coins; Otis had the purple ponytail braided with…were those firecrackers?

Otherwise they were dressed identically, and their outfits definitely belonged in a nightmare. They wore matching white slacks and gold buccaneer shirts with V-necks that showed way too much chest hair. A dozen sheathed daggers lined their rhinestone belts. Their shoes were open-toed sandals, proving that—yes, indeed—they had snakes for feet. The straps wrapped around the serpents’ necks. Their heads curled up where the toes should be. The snakes flicked their tongues excitedly and turned their gold eyes in every direction, like dogs looking out the window of a car. Maybe it had been a long time since they’d had shoes with a view.