Home|| Leo Valdez

20

Alex's bound legs started quaking. She'd seen some weird things so far-storm spirits and winged gods and a metal dragon that liked Tabasco sauce. But this was different. These were actual, flesh-and-blood, ten-foot-tall living monsters who wanted to eat her for dinner.

Alex decided to talk. "Hey mister cyclopses? Cyclops? what's the plural of cyclops?"

Which apparently was the wrong thing to say because the third and considerably bigger cyclops grunted and looked like it wanted to strangle her. 

"I mean, uh... never mind. But listen to me, you don't want to kill us." 

One of the twins took out Piper's gag so the two girls started talking. 

"Oh, Mr. Cyclops, you don't want to kill us. It would be much better if you let us go." Piper said in a cool and confident tone. 

"Yeah, Piper and I were just talking about how handsome you two are and maybe-"

Loincloth scratched his ugly head. He turned to his friend in the fiber glass toga. "They're kind of pretty, Torque. Maybe I should let them go."

Torque, the dude in the toga, growled. "I saw the black haired girl first, Sump. I'll let her go!" Sump and Torque started to argue, but the third Cyclops rose and shouted, "Fools!"

Alex gasped in shock, the third Cyclops was a female. She was several feet taller than Torque or Sump, and even beefier. She wore a tent of chain mail cut. Her greasy black hair was matted in pigtails, woven with copper wires and metal washers. Her nose and mouth were thick and smashed together, like she spent her free time ramming her face into walls; but her single red eye glittered with evil intelligence.

The woman Cyclops stalked over to Sump and pushed him aside, knocking him over the conveyor belt. Torque backed up quickly.

"One girl is Venus spawn," the lady Cyclops snarled. "She's using charmspeak on you, and the other is lying"

Piper started to say, "Please, ma'am-"

"Rarr!" The lady Cyclops grabbed Piper around the waist. "Don't try your pretty talk on me, girl! I'm Ma Gasket! I've eaten heroes tougher than you for lunch!"

Alex kept wishing Leo would break them out of there, she knew he was smart enough to realise something was amiss when Alex didn't meet up with him. So Alex decided he must be working on a way to free them. She tuned back into the cyclops' conversation.

"-eat her last, Ma?" Sump was saying.

"Idiot!" Ma Gasket yelled, and Alex realised Sump and Torque must be her sons. If so, ugly definitely ran in the family. "I should've thrown you out on the streets when you were babies, like proper Cyclops children. You might have learned some useful skills. Curse my soft heart that I kept you!"

"Soft heart?" Torque muttered.

"What was that, you ingrate?"

"Nothing, Ma. I said you got a soft heart. We get to work for you, feed you, file your toenails-"

"And you should be grateful!" Ma Gasket bellowed. "Now, stoke the fire, Torque! And Sump, you idiot, my case of salsa is in the other warehouse. Don't tell me you expect me to eat these demigods without salsa!"

Yes, Ma," Sump said. "I mean no, Ma. I mean-"

"Go get it!" Ma Gasket picked up a nearby truck chassis and slammed it over Sump's head. Sump crumpled to his knees. Alex was sure a hit like that would kill him, but Sump apparently got hit by trucks a lot. He managed to push the chassis off his head. Then he staggered to his feet and ran off to fetch the salsa.