¹On This Spring Day.

005.

               "I know this place," Annabeth said. "This is Alcatraz."

               "Alcatraz?" Violet hissed. "That big prison in San Fran—Isn't it haunted?"

               Percy snorted. "Afraid of ghosts, Love Bug?"

               "Yeah." She nodded. "They're old, ugly, and vengeful. All things I hate."

               Annabeth shook her head. "My school took a field trip here. It's like a museum."

               "'Museum' full of ghosts ..." Violet grumbled.

               "But ..." Percy frowned. "Alcatraz is on that island near San Francisco, isn't it? How'd we get that far in less than a day? That's halfway across the country!"

               "I told you," said Annabeth. "The Labyrinth just works differently."

               "Freeze," Grover warned them.

               But Tyson kept going. Grover grabbed his arm and pulled him back with all his strength. "Stop, Tyson!" he whispered. "Can't you see it?"

               Grover pointed, and Violet felt like all the blood drained from her body. On the second-floor balcony, across the courtyard, was a monster more horrible than anything she had ever seen before.

               It was sort of like a centaur, with a woman's body from the waist up. But instead of a horse's lower body, it had the body of a dragon—at least twenty feet long, black and scaly with enormous claws and a barbed tail. Her legs looked like they were tangled in vines, but then Violet realized they were sprouting snakes, hundreds of vipers darting around, constantly looking for something to bite. The woman's hair was also made of snakes, like Medusa's. Weirdest of all, around her waist, where the woman part met the dragon part; her skin bubbled and morphed, occasionally producing the heads of animals—a vicious wolf, a bear, a lion, as if she were wearing a belt of ever-changing creatures. Violet got the feeling she was looking at something half-formed, a monster so old it was from the beginning of time, before shapes had been fully defined.

               "It's her," Tyson whimpered.

               "Get down!" Grover said.

               They all crouched in the shadows, but the monster wasn't paying them any attention at all. It seemed to be talking to someone inside a cell on the second floor. That's where the sobbing was coming from. The dragon woman said something in her weird rumbling language.

               "What is she saying?" Violet muttered. "I have no idea what kind of language that is ..."

               "The tongue of the old times." Tyson shivered. "What Mother Earth spoke to Titans and ... her other children. Before the gods."

               "You understand it?" Percy asked. "Can you translate?"

               Tyson closed his eyes and began to speak in a horrible, raspy woman's voice. "You will work for the master or suffer."

               Annabeth shuddered. "I hate it when he does that."

               Like all Cyclopes, Tyson had superhuman hearing and an uncanny ability to mimic voices. It was almost like he entered a trance when he spoke in other voices. Violet hated it, safe to say.

               "I will not serve," Tyson said in a deep, wounded voice.

               He switched to the monster's voice: "Then I shall enjoy your pain, Briares." Tyson faltered when he said that name. He let out a strangled gulp, but continued in the monster's voice. "If you thought your first imprisonment was unbearable, you have yet to feel true torment. Think on this until I return."