The Sea of Monsters(32)

Their voices receded down the corridor.

Tyson whimpered. “Leave now?”

Annabeth and I exchanged looks and came to a silent agreement.

“We can’t,” I told Tyson.

“We have to find out what Luke is up to,” Annabeth agreed. “And if possible, we’re going to beat him up, bind him in chains, and drag him to Mount Olympus.”

Chapter Nine: I Have The Worst Family Reunion Ever

Annabeth volunteered to go alone since she had the cap of invisibility, but I convinced her it was too dangerous. Either we all went together, or nobody went.

“Nobody!” Tyson voted. “Please?”

But in the end he came along, nervously chewing on his huge fingernails. We stopped at our cabin long enough to gather our stuff. We figured whatever happened, we would not be staying another night aboard the zombie cruise ship, even if they did have million-dollar bingo. I made sure Riptide was in my pocket and the vitamins and thermos from Hermes were at the top of my bag. I didn’t want Tyson to carry everything, but he insisted, and Annabeth told me not to worry about it.

Tyson could carry three full duffel bags over his shoulder as easily as I could carry a backpack.

We sneaked through the corridors, following the ship’s YOU ARE HERE signs toward the admiralty suite. Annabeth scouted ahead invisibly. We hid whenever someone passed by, but most of the people we saw were just glassy-eyed zombie passengers.

As we came up the stairs to deck thirteen, where the admiralty suite was supposed to be, Annabeth hissed, “Hide!” and shoved us into a supply closet.

I heard a couple of guys coming down the hall.

“You see that Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?” one of them said.

The other laughed. “Yeah, it’s awesome.”

Annabeth was still invisible, but she squeezed my arm hard. I got a feeling I should know that second guy’s voice.

“I hear they got two more coming,” the familiar voice said. “They keep arriving at this rate, oh, man—no contest!”

The voices faded down the corridor.

“That was Chris Rodriguez!” Annabeth took off her cap and turned visible. “You remember—from Cabin Eleven.”

I sort of recalled Chris from the summer before. He was one of those undetermined campers who got stuck in the Hermes cabin because his Olympian dad or mom never claimed him. Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t seen Chris at camp this summer. “What’s another half-blood doing here?”

Annabeth shook her head, clearly troubled.

We kept going down the corridor. I didn’t need maps anymore to know I was getting close to Luke. I sensed something cold and unpleasant—the presence of evil.

“Percy.” Annabeth stopped suddenly. “Look.”

She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistory canyon that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade—a mall full of shops— but that’s not what had caught Annabeth’s attention.

A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen Laistrygonian giants like the ones who’d attacked me with dodge balls, two hellhounds, and a few even stranger creatures—humanoid females with twin serpent tails instead of legs.

“Scythian Dracaenae,” Annabeth whispered. “Dragon women.”

The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armor who was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in my throat when I realized the dummy was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As we watched, the guy in armor stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upward. Straw flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled.

Annabeth stepped away from the window. Her face was ashen.

“Come on,” I told her, trying to sound braver than I felt. “The sooner we find Luke the better.”

At the end of the hallway were double oak doors that looked like they must lead somewhere important. When we were thirty feet away, Tyson stopped. “Voices inside.”

“You can hear that far?” I asked.

Tyson closed his eye like he was concentrating hard. Then his voice changed, becoming a husky approximation of Luke’s. “—the prophecy ourselves. The fools won’t know which way to turn.”

Before I could react, Tyson’s voice changed again, becoming deeper and gruffer, like the other guy we’d heard talking to Luke outside the cafeteria. “You really think the old horseman is gone for good?”

Tyson laughed Luke’s laugh. “They can’t trust him. Not with the skeletons in his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw.”

Annabeth shivered. “Stop that, Tyson! How do you do that? It’s creepy.”

Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. “Just listening.”

“Keep going,” I said. “What else are they saying?”

Tyson closed his eye again.

He hissed in the gruff man’s voice: “Quiet!” Then Luke’s voice, whispering: “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Tyson said in the gruff voice. “Right outside.”

Too late, I realized what was happening.

I just had time to say, “Run!” when the doors of the stateroom burst open and there was Luke, flanked by two hairy giants armed with javelins, their bronze tips aimed right at our chests.