The Mark of Athena

Piper blinked. “I am?”



“We can’t let things get out of control,” the giant agreed. “Everything has to be timed perfectly. But don’t worry. I’ve choreographed your deaths. You’ll love it.”



Nico started to crawl away, groaning. Percy wanted him to move faster and to groan less. He considered throwing his Wonder bread at him.



Jason switched his sword hand. “And if we refuse to cooperate with your spectacle?”



“Well, you can’t kill us.” Ephialtes laughed, as if the idea was ridiculous. “You have no gods with you, and that’s the only way you could hope to triumph. So really, it would be much more sensible to die painfully. Sorry, but the show must go on.”



This giant was even worse than that sea god Phorcys back in Atlanta, Percy realized. Ephialtes wasn’t so much the anti-Dionysus. He was Dionysus gone crazy on steroids. Sure, Dionysus was the god of revelry and out-of-control parties. But Ephialtes was all about riot and ruin for pleasure.



Percy looked at his friends. “I’m getting tired of this guy’s shirt.”



“Combat time?” Piper grabbed her horn of plenty.



“I hate Wonder bread,” Jason said.



Together, they charged.



Chapter 46



Things went wrong immediately.The giants vanished in twin puffs of smoke. They reappeared halfway across the room, each in a different spot. Percy sprinted toward Ephialtes, but slots in the floor opened under his feet, and metal walls shot up on either side, separating him from his friends.



The walls started closing in on him like the sides of a vise grip. Percy jumped up and grabbed the bottom of the hydra’s cage. He caught a brief glimpse of Piper leaping across a hopscotch pattern of fiery pits, making her way toward Nico, who was dazed and weaponless and being stalked by a pair of leopards.



Meanwhile Jason charged at Otis, who pulled his spear and heaved a great sigh, as if he would much rather dance Swan Lake than kill another demigod.



Percy registered all this in a split second, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. The hydra snapped at his hands. He swung and dropped, landing in a grove of painted plywood trees that sprang up from nowhere. The trees changed positions as he tried to run through them, so he slashed down the whole forest with Riptide.



“Wonderful!” Ephialtes cried. He stood at his control panel about sixty feet to Percy’s left. “We’ll consider this a dress rehearsal. Shall I unleash the hydra onto the Spanish Steps now?”



He pulled a lever, and Percy glanced behind him. The cage he had just been hanging from was now rising toward a hatch in the ceiling. In three seconds it would be gone. If Percy attacked the giant, the hydra would ravage the city.



Cursing, he threw Riptide like a boomerang. The sword wasn’t designed for that, but the Celestial bronze blade sliced through the chains suspending the hydra. The cage tumbled sideways. The door broke open, and the monster spilled out—right in front of Percy.



“Oh, you are a spoilsport, Jackson!” Ephialtes called. “Very well. Battle it here, if you must, but your death won’t be nearly as good without the cheering crowds.”



Percy stepped forward to confront the monster—then realized he’d just thrown his weapon away. A bit of bad planning on his part.



He rolled to one side as all eight hydra heads spit acid, turning the floor where he’d been standing into a steaming crater of melted stone. Percy really hated hydras. It was almost a good thing that he’d lost his sword, since his gut instinct would’ve been to slash at the heads, and a hydra simply grew two new ones for each one it lost.



The last time he’d faced a hydra, he’d been saved by a battleship with bronze cannons that blasted the monster to pieces. That strategy couldn’t help him now…or could it?



The hydra lashed out. Percy ducked behind a giant hamster wheel and scanned the room, looking for the boxes he’d seen in his dream. He remembered something about rocket launchers.



At the dais, Piper stood guard over Nico as the leopards advanced. She aimed her cornucopia and shot a pot roast over the cats’ heads. It must have smelled pretty good, because the leopards raced after it.



About eighty feet to Piper’s right, Jason battled Otis, sword against spear. Otis had lost his diamond tiara and looked angry about it. He probably could have impaled Jason several times, but the giant insisted on doing a pirouette with every attack, which slowed him down.



Meanwhile Ephialtes laughed as he pushed buttons on his control board, cranking the conveyor belts into high gear and opening random animal cages.



The hydra charged around the hamster wheel. Percy swung behind a column, grabbed a garbage bag full of Wonder bread, and threw it at the monster. The hydra spit acid, which was a mistake. The bag and wrappers dissolved in midair. The Wonder bread absorbed the acid like fire extinguisher foam and splattered against the hydra, covering it in a sticky, steaming layer of high-calorie poisonous goo.



As the monster reeled, shaking its heads and blinking Wonder acid out of its eyes, Percy looked around desperately. He didn’t see the rocket-launcher boxes, but tucked against the back wall was a strange contraption like an artist’s easel, fitted with rows of missile launchers. Percy spotted a bazooka, a grenade launcher, a giant Roman candle, and a dozen other wicked-looking weapons. They all seemed to be wired together, pointing in the same direction and connected to a single bronze lever on the side. At the top of the easel, spelled in carnations, were the words: HAPPY DESTRUCTION, ROME!



Percy bolted toward the device. The hydra hissed and charged after him.



“I know!” Ephialtes cried out happily. “We can start with explosions along the Via Labicana! We can’t keep our audience waiting forever.”



Percy scrambled behind the easel and turned it toward Ephialtes. He didn’t have Leo’s skill with machines, but he knew how to aim a weapon.



The hydra barreled toward him, blocking his view of the giant. Percy hoped this contraption would have enough firepower to take down two targets at once. He tugged at the lever. It didn’t budge.



All eight hydra heads loomed over him, ready to melt him into a pool of sludge. He tugged the lever again. This time the easel shook and the weapons began to hiss.



“Duck and cover!” Percy yelled, hoping his friends got the message.



Percy leaped to one side as the easel fired. The sound was like a fiesta in the middle of an exploding gunpowder factory. The hydra vaporized instantly. Unfortunately, the recoil knocked the easel sideways and sent more projectiles shooting all over the room. A chunk of ceiling collapsed and crushed a waterwheel. More cages snapped off their chains, unleashing two zebras and a pack of hyenas. A grenade exploded over Ephialtes’s head, but it only blasted him off his feet. The control board didn’t even look damaged.



Across the room, sandbags rained down around Piper and Nico. Piper tried to pull Nico to safety, but one of the bags caught her shoulder and knocked her down.



“Piper!” Jason cried. He ran toward her, completely forgetting about Otis, who aimed his spear at Jason’s back.



“Look out!” Percy yelled.



Jason had fast reflexes. As Otis threw, Jason rolled. The point sailed over him and Jason flicked his hand, summoning a gust of wind that changed the spear’s direction. It flew across the room and skewered Ephialtes through his side just as he was getting to his feet.



“Otis!” Ephialtes stumbled away from his control board, clutching the spear as he began to crumble into monster dust. “Will you please stop killing me!”



“Not my fault!”



Otis had barely finished speaking when Percy’s missile-launching contraption spit out one last sphere of Roman candle fire. The fiery pink ball of death (naturally it had to be pink) hit the ceiling above Otis and exploded in a beautiful shower of light. Colorful sparks pirouetted gracefully around the giant. Then a ten-foot section of roof collapsed and crushed him flat.



Jason ran to Piper’s side. She yelped when he touched her arm. Her shoulder looked unnaturally bent, but she muttered, “Fine. I’m fine.” Next to her, Nico sat up, looking around him in bewilderment as if just realizing he’d missed a battle.



Sadly, the giants weren’t finished. Ephialtes was already re-forming, his head and shoulders rising from the mound of dust. He tugged his arms free and glowered at Percy.



Across the room, the pile of rubble shifted, and Otis busted out. His head was slightly caved in. All the firecrackers in his hair had popped, and his braids were smoking. His leotard was in tatters, which was just about the only way it could’ve looked less attractive on him.



“Percy!” Jason shouted. “The controls!”



Percy unfroze. He found Riptide in his pocket again, uncapped his sword, and lunged for the switchboard. He slashed his blade across the top, decapitating the controls in a shower of bronze sparks.



“No!” Ephialtes wailed. “You’ve ruined the spectacle!”



Percy turned too slowly. Ephialtes swung his spear like a bat and smacked him across the chest. He fell to his knees, the pain turning his stomach to lava.



Jason ran to his side, but Otis lumbered after him. Percy managed to rise and found himself shoulder to shoulder with Jason. Over by the dais, Piper was still on the floor, unable to get up. Nico was barely conscious.



The giants were healing, getting stronger by the minute. Percy was not.



Ephialtes smiled apologetically. “Tired, Percy Jackson? As I said, you cannot kill us. So I guess we’re at an impasse. Oh, wait…no we’re not! Because we can kill you!”



“That,” Otis grumbled, picking up his fallen spear, “is the first thing sensible thing you’ve said all day, brother.”



The giants pointed their weapons, ready to turn Percy and Jason into a demigod-kabob.



“We won’t give up,” Jason growled. “We’ll cut you into pieces like Jupiter did to Saturn.”



“That’s right,” Percy said. “You’re both dead. I don’t care if we have a god on our side or not.”



“Well, that’s a shame,” said a new voice.



To his right, another platform lowered from the ceiling. Leaning casually on a pinecone-topped staff was a man in a purple camp shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals with white socks. He raised his broad-brimmed hat, and purple fire flickered in his eyes. “I’d hate to think I made a special trip for nothing.”



Chapter 47



Percy had never thought of Mr. D as a calming influence, but suddenly everything got quiet. The machines ground to a halt. The wild animals stopped growling.



The two leopards paced over—still licking their lips from Piper’s pot roast—and butted their heads affectionately against the god’s legs. Mr. D scratched their ears.



“Really, Ephialtes,” he chided. “Killing demigods is one thing. But using leopards for your spectacle? That’s over the line.”



The giant made a squeaking sound. “This—this is impossible. D-D—”



“It’s Bacchus, actually, my old friend,” said the god. “And of course it’s possible. Someone told me there was a party going on.”