THE HEALER| Heroes of Olympus

XIII

Reyna shrugged. "Says the demigod who fell into Tartarus and found his way back."

"He had help," Annabeth said.

"Oh, obviously," Reyna said. 'Without you, I doubt Percy could find his way out of a paper bag.'

"True," Annabeth agreed.

"Hey!" Percy complained.

We all laughed.

Leo pulled a tiny screwdriver from his tool belt. He stabbed a chocolate-covered strawberry and passed it to Coach Hedge. Then he pulled out another screwdriver and speared a second strawberry for himself.

"So, the twenty-million-peso question," Leo said. "We got this slightly used forty-foot-tall statue of Athena. What do we do with it?"

Reyna squinted at the Athena Parthenos. "As fine as it looks on this hill, I didn't come all this way to admire it. According to Annabeth, it must be returned to Camp Half-Blood by a Roman leader. Do I understand correctly?"

Annabeth nodded. "I had a dream down in ... you know, Tartarus. I was on Half-Blood Hill, and Athena's voice said, I must stand here. The Roman must bring me."

"It makes sense," Nico said.

The son of Hades sat at the other end of the circle, eating nothing but half a pomegranate, the fruit of the Underworld. I wondered if that was Nico's idea of a joke.

"The statue is a powerful symbol," Nico said. "A Roman returning it to the Greeks ... that could heal the historic rift, maybe even heal the gods of their split personalities."

Coach Hedge swallowed his strawberry along with half the screwdriver. "Now, hold on. I like peace as much as the next satyr –"

"You hate peace," Leo said.

"The point is, Valdez, we're only – what, a few days from Athens? We've got an army of giants waiting for us there. We went to all the trouble of saving this statue –"

"I went to most of the trouble," Annabeth reminded him.

"– because that prophecy called it the giants' bane," the coach continued. "So why aren't we taking it to Athens with us? It's obviously our secret weapon." He eyed the Athena Parthenos. "It looks like a ballistic missile to me. Maybe if Valdez strapped some engines to it –"

I cleared my throat. 'Uh, great idea, Coach, but a lot of us I've had visions of Gaia rising at Camp Half-Blood ..."

"Since we got back to the ship," I said, "I've been seeing some bad stuff. The Roman legion is almost within striking distance of Camp Half-Blood. They're gathering reinforcements: spirits, eagles, wolves."

"Octavian," Reyna growled. "I told him to wait."

"When we take over command," Jasper suggested, "our first order of business should be to load Octavian into the nearest catapult and fire him as far away as possible."

"Agreed," Reyna said. "But for now –"

"He's intent on war," Annabeth put in. "He'll have it, unless we stop him."

"Unfortunately, that's not the worst of it. I've seen images of a possible future – the camp in flames, Roman and Greek demigods lying dead. And Gaia ..." My voice failed me.

I had never felt such helplessness and terror. I remembered how my bow had slipped out of my hand from fear.

If Gaia was that powerful, and she had an army of giants at her side, I didn't see how nine demigods could stop her, especially when most of the gods were incapacitated. They had to stop the giants before Gaia woke, or it was game over.