The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus #2)(22)

The gold bar popped out of the ground just in time for her foot to hit it. Nico tried to catch her, but she took a spill and scraped her hands.

“You okay?” Nico knelt next to her and reached for the bar of gold.

“Don’t!” Hazel warned.

Nico froze. “Right. Sorry. It’s just…jeez. That thing is huge.” He pulled a flask of nectar from his aviator jacket and poured a little on Hazel’s hands. Immediately the cuts started to heal. “Can you stand?”

He helped her up. They both stared at the gold. It was the size of a bread loaf, stamped with a serial number and the words u.s. treasury.

Nico shook his head. “How in Tartarus—?”

“I don’t know,” Hazel said miserably. “It could’ve been buried there by robbers or dropped off a wagon a hundred years ago. Maybe it migrated from the nearest bank vault. Whatever’s in the ground, anywhere close to me—it just pops up. And the more valuable it is—”

“The more dangerous it is.” Nico frowned. “Should we cover it up? If the fauns find it…”

Hazel imagined a mushroom cloud billowing up from the road, char-broiled fauns tossed in every direction. It was too horrible to consider. “It should sink back underground after I leave, eventually, but just to be sure…”

She’d been practicing this trick, but never with something so heavy and dense. She pointed at the gold bar and tried to concentrate.

The gold levitated. She channeled her anger, which wasn’t hard—she hated that gold, she hated her curse, she hated thinking about her past and all the ways she’d failed. Her fingers tingled. The gold bar glowed with heat.

Nico gulped. “Um, Hazel, are you sure…?”

She made a fist. The gold bent like putty. Hazel forced it to twist into a giant, lumpy ring. Then she flicked her hand toward the ground. Her million-dollar doughnut slammed into the earth. It sank so deep, nothing was left but a scar of fresh dirt.

Nico’s eyes widened. “That was…terrifying.”

Hazel didn’t think it was so impressive compared to the powers of a guy who could reanimate skeletons and bring people back from the dead, but it felt good to surprise him for a change.

Inside the camp, horns blew again. The cohorts would be starting roll call, and Hazel had no desire to be sewn into a sack of weasels.

“Hurry!” she told Nico, and they ran for the gates.

The first time Hazel had seen the legion assemble, she’d been so intimidated, she’d almost slunk back to the barracks to hide. Even after being at camp for nine months, she still found it an impressive sight.

The first four cohorts, each forty kids strong, stood in rows in front of their barracks on either side of the Via Praetoria. The Fifth Cohort assembled at the very end, in front of the principia, since their barracks were tucked in the back corner of camp next to the stables and the latrines. Hazel had to run right down the middle of the legion to reach her place.

The campers were dressed for war. Their polished chain mail and greaves gleamed over purple T-shirts and jeans. Sword-and-skull designs decorated their helmets. Even their leather combat boots looked ferocious with their iron cleats, great for marching through mud or stomping on faces.

In front of the legionnaires, like a line of giant dominoes, stood their red and gold shields, each the size of a refrigerator door. Every legionnaire carried a harpoonlike spear called a pilum, a gladius, a dagger, and about a hundred pounds of other equipment. If you were out of shape when you came to the legion, you didn’t stay that way for long. Just walking around in your armor was a full-body workout.

Hazel and Nico jogged down the street as everyone was coming to attention, so their entrance was really obvious. Their footsteps echoed on the stones. Hazel tried to avoid eye contact, but she caught Octavian at the head of the First Cohort smirking at her, looking smug in his plumed centurion’s helmet with a dozen medals pinned on his chest.

Hazel was still seething from his blackmail threats earlier. Stupid augur and his gift of prophecy—of all the people at camp to discover her secrets, why did it have to be him? She was sure he would have told on her weeks ago, except that he knew her secrets were worth more to him as leverage. She wished she’d kept that bar of gold so she could hit him in the face with it.

She ran past Reyna, who was cantering back and forth on her pegasus Scipio—nicknamed Skippy because he was the color of peanut butter. The metal dogs Aurum and Argentum trotted at her side. Her purple officer’s cape billowed behind her.

“Hazel Levesque,” she called, “so glad you could join us.”

Hazel knew better than to respond. She was missing most of her equipment, but she hurried to her place in line next to Frank and stood at attention. Their lead centurion, a big seventeen-year-old guy named Dakota, was just calling her name—the last one on the roll.

“Present!” she squeaked.

Thank the gods. Technically, she wasn’t late.

Nico joined Percy Jackson, who was standing off to one side with a couple of guards. Percy’s hair was wet from the baths. He’d put on fresh clothes, but he still looked uncomfortable. Hazel couldn’t blame him. He was about to be introduced to two hundred heavily armed kids.

The Lares were the last ones to fall in. Their purple forms flickered as they jockeyed for places. They had an annoying habit of standing halfway inside living people, so that the ranks looked like a blurry photograph, but finally the centurions got them sorted out.