THE BEAR-MAN TWINS HERDED THEM ABOARD THE PRINCESS ANDROMEDA. They threw everyone but Naomi down on the aft deck in front of a swimming pool with sparkling fountains that sprayed into the air. Agrius kept a hold on Naomi, despite her numerous struggles to wiggle out of his grip.
"Her hand," Luke told the bear-twin.
Naomi had no idea what he was talking about, but she got her answer a second later as Agrius grabbed her hand and squeezed until pain flared like fire from her palm to the tips of her fingers. Tears welled up in her eyes as she felt her bones break one by one.
"What are you doing?" Annabeth yelled.
The bear giant dropped Naomi's now broken hand as Luke smirked. "Can't summon your sword now, can you?"
"Screw you," Naomi seethed, gritting her teeth against the throbbing pain.
"So, the Fleece," Luke mused. "Where is it?"
He looked them over, prodding Percy's shirt with the tip of his sword, poking Grover's jeans.
"Hey!" Grover yelled. "That's real goat fur under there!"
"Sorry, old friend." Luke smiled. "Just give me the Fleece and I'll leave you to return to your, ah, little nature quest."
"Blaa-ha-ha!" Grover protested. "Some old friend!"
"Maybe you didn't hear me." Luke's voice was dangerously calm. "Where—is—the—Fleece?"
"Not here," Percy said. "We sent it on ahead of us. You messed up."
Luke's eyes narrowed. "You're lying. You couldn't have..." His face reddened as a horrible possibility occurred to him. "Clarisse?"
Percy nodded.
"You trusted... you gave..."
"Yeah."
"Agrius!"
The bear giant flinched. Naomi hissed as he tightened his grip on her. "Y—yes?"
"Get below and prepare my steed. Bring it to the deck. I need to fly to the Miami Airport, fast!"
"But, boss—" Agrius nodded nervously down at Naomi.
Luke muttered something under his breath, grabbing Naomi's other arm and practically snatching her away from the bear. "Go—or I'll feed you to the drakon!"
The bear-man gulped and lumbered down.
Naomi fought against Luke's grip. "Get your hands off of me, traitor!"
"Careful, Naomi," he warned. "The Lord wants you alive, but he never said unharmed."
Luke shoved her at one of the demigods on the deck—Chris Rodriguez.
"Don't let her out of your sight," Luke hissed at him. "Got it?"
Chris nodded, tightening his grip as Naomi tried to catch him in the gut with her elbow.
"Stop fighting," he hissed as Luke walked away.
"Go to Hades, traitor," Naomi snarled.
"You'll understand soon enough," Chris told her. "This is what has to be done."
"You can shove your stupid Kronos propaganda up your puga."
"You've been toying with us all along," Percy said, glaring at Luke. "You wanted us to bring you the Fleece and save you the trouble of getting it."
Luke scowled. "Of course, you idiot! And you've messed everything up!"
"Traitor!" Percy threw his gold drachma at Luke, who, expectedly, dodged it with ease. The coin sailed into the spray of rainbow-colored water.
"You tricked all of us!" Percy yelled. "Even DIONYSUS at CAMP HALF-BLOOD."
He uncapped his sword.
Luke just sneered. "This is no time for heroics, Percy. Drop your puny little sword, or I'll have you killed sooner rather than later."
"Who poisoned Thalia's tree, Luke?"
"I did, of course," he snarled. "I already told you. I used elder python venom, straight from the depths of Tartarus."
"Chiron had nothing to do with it?" Percy clarified.
"Ha! You know he would never do that. The old fool wouldn't have the guts."
"You call it guts? Betraying your friends? Endangering the whole camp?" Percy demanded.
Luke raised his sword. "You don't understand the half of it. I was going to let you take the Fleece... once I was done with it."
That made Percy hesitate. "You were going to heal Kronos."
"Yes! The Fleece's magic would've sped his mending process by tenfold. But you haven't stopped us, Percy. You've only slowed us down a little."
"And so you poisoned the tree, you betrayed Thalia, you set us up—all to help Kronos destroy the gods."
Luke gritted his teeth. "You know that! Why do you keep asking me?"
"Because I want everybody in the audience to hear you."
"What audience?"
Then his eyes narrowed. He looked behind him, and Naomi did the same. Luke's goons gasped at what they saw.
Above the pool, shimmering in the rainbow mist, was an Iris-message vision of Dionysus, Tantalus, and the whole camp in the dining pavilion. They sat in stunned silence, watching them.
"Well," Dionysus said dryly, "some unplanned dinner entertainment."
"Mr. D, you heard him," Percy said. "You all heard Luke. The poisoning of the tree wasn't Chiron's fault."
Mr. D sighed. "I suppose not."
"The Iris-message could be a trick," Tantalus suggested, but his attention was mostly on his cheeseburger, which he was trying to corner with both hands.
"I fear not," Mr. D said, looking with distaste at Tantalus. "It appears I shall have to reinstate Chiron as activities director. I suppose I do miss the old horse's pinochle games."
Tantalus grabbed the cheeseburger. It didn't bolt away from him. He lifted it from the plate and stared at it in amazement, as if it were the largest diamond in the world. "I got it!" he cackled.
"We are no longer in need of your services, Tantalus," Mr. D announced.
Tantalus looked stunned. "What? But—"
"You may return to the Underworld. You are dismissed."
"No! But—Nooooooooooo!"
As he dissolved into mist, his fingers clutched at the cheeseburger, trying to bring it to his mouth. But it was too late. He disappeared and the cheeseburger fell back onto its plate. The campers exploded into cheering.
Luke bellowed with rage. He slashed his sword through the fountain and the Iris-message dissolved, but the deed was done.
Luke turned his glare on Percy. "Kronos was right, Percy. You're an unreliable weapon. And unlike Naomi—you can be replaced."
Naomi wasn't sure what he was talking about, but Luke didn't give them much time to think about it. One of his men blew a brass whistle, and the deck doors flew open. A dozen more warriors poured out, making a circle around them, the brass tips of their spears bristling.
Luke smiled at Percy. "You'll never leave this boat alive."
"One on one," Percy challenged. "What are you afraid of?"
Luke curled his lip. The soldiers who were about to attack hesitated, waiting for his order.
Before he could say anything, Agrius burst onto the deck leading a flying horse. It was a pure-black pegasus with wings like a giant raven. The steed bucked and whinnied.
"Sir!" Agrius called, dodging a pegasus hoof. "Your steed is ready!"
Luke kept his eyes on Percy.
"I told you last summer," he said. "You can't bait me into a fight."
"And you keep avoiding one," Percy noted. "Scared your warriors will see you get whipped?"
Luke glanced at his men, and he saw that Percy had trapped him. If he backed down now, he would look weak. If he fought Percy, he'd lose valuable time chasing after Clarisse.
"I'll kill you quickly," the son of Hermes decided, and raised his weapon. Backbiter's blade glinted with an evil gray-and-gold light where the human steel had been melded with celestial bronze. He whistled at one of his men, who threw him a round leather-and-bronze shield.
He grinned at Percy wickedly.
"Luke," Annabeth said, "at least give him a shield."
"Sorry, Annabeth," he sad. "You bring your own equipment to this party."
The shield was going to be a problem. Fighting two-handed with just a sword gave you more power, but fighting one-handed with a shield gave you better defense and versatility. There were more moves, more options, more ways to kill.
Luke lunged and almost killed Percy on the first try. His sword went under Percy's arm, slashing through his shirt.
Percy jumped back, then counter-attacked with Riptide, but Luke slammed his blade away with his shield.
"My, Percy," Luke chided. "You're out of practice."
He came at Percy again with a swipe to the head. Percy parried, returned with a thrust. Luke sidestepped easily.
When Luke lunged again, Percy jumped backward into the swimming pool. He blasted out of the deep end, straight at Luke's face.
The force of the water knocked Luke down, spluttering and blinded. But before Percy could strike, Luke rolled aside and was on his feet again.
Percy attacked and sliced off the edge of Luke's shield, but that didn't even faze him. He dropped to a crouch and jabbed at Percy's legs. Percy collapsed, his jeans ripped above the knee. Luke hacked downward and Percy rolled behind a deckchair. He tried to stand, but he faltered.
"Perrrrrcy!" Grover bleated.
Percy rolled again as Luke's sword slashed the deckchair in half, metal pipes and all.
Naomi watched helplessly as Percy crawled toward the swimming pool. Luke advanced slowly, smiling. The edge of his sword was tinged with red.
"One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy." Luke looked at the bear-man Oreius, who was still holding Annabeth and Grover by the necks. "You can eat your dinner now, Oreius. Bon appétit."
"He-he! He-he!" The bear-man lifted Annabeth and Grover and bared his teeth.
That's when all Hades broke loose.
Whish!
A red-feathered arrow sprouted from Oreius's mouth. With a surprised look on his hairy face, he crumpled to the deck.
"Brother!" Agrius wailed. He let the pegasus's reins go slack just long enough for the black steed to kick him in the head and take flight over Miami Bay.
For a split second, Luke's guards were too stunned to do anything except watch the bear twins' bodies dissolve into smoke.
Then there was a wild chorus of war cries and hooves thundering against metal. A dozen centaurs charged out of the main stairwell.
"Ponies!" Tyson cried with delight.
Naomi had trouble fully comprehending what was happening. Chiron was among the crowd, but his relatives were almost nothing like him. There were centaurs with black Arabian stallion bodies, others with gold palomino coats, others with orange-and-white spots like paint horses. Some wore brightly colored T-shirts with Day-Glo letters that said PARTY PONIES: SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER. Some were armed with bows, some with baseball bats, some with paintball guns. One was bare-chested and painted entirely green. Another had googly-eye glasses with the eyeballs bouncing around on Slinky coils, and one of those baseball caps with soda-can-and-straw attachments on either side.
They exploded onto the deck with such ferocity and color that for a moment even Luke was stunned. Naomi wasn't sure whether they'd come for a battle or a party.
Both, apparently. As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool.
Luke's warriors scattered. Naomi ducked out of Chris's hold, which wasn't hard given the fact that he was in as much shock as everyone else. She punched him in the face with her uninjured hand and ran toward Percy, who was having trouble getting up with his wounded leg.
Luke was crawling out of the pool.
"Attack, you fools!" he ordered his troops. Somewhere down below deck, a large alarm bell thrummed.
Naomi knew they didn't have much time before they were swamped by Luke's reinforcements. Already, his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords and spears drawn.
Tyson slapped half a dozen of them aside, knocking them over the guardrail into Miami Bay. But more warriors were coming up the stairs.
"Withdraw, brothers!" Chiron said. Naomi spotted Annabeth and Grover on his back.
"You won't get away with this, horse-man!" Luke shouted. He raised his sword, but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow, and sat down hard in a deckchair.
A palomino centaur hoisted Naomi and Percy onto his back, and another gathered Tyson.
Luke's warriors were organizing themselves into a phalanx. But by the time they were ready to advance, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the deck and fearlessly jumped the guardrail, as if it were a steeplechase and not ten stories above the ground. Naomi was sure they'd die, but the centaurs hit the tarmac with hardly a jolt and galloped off, whooping and yelling taunts at the Princess Andromeda as they raced into the streets of downtown Miami.
Streets and buildings began to blur as the centaurs picked up speed. It felt as if space were compacting—as if each centaur step took us miles and miles. In no time, they'd left the city behind. They raced through marshy fields of high grass and ponds and stunted trees.
Finally, they found themselves in a trailer park at the edge of the lake. The trailers were all horse trailers, tricked out with televisions and mini-refrigerators and mosquito netting.
They were in a centaur camp.
Naomi and Percy dismounted their palomino ride, Percy swaying and sitting down immediately. Naomi collapsed next to him, careful of her broken hand.
"Dude!" said a party pony as he unloaded his gear. "Did you see that bear guy? He was all like: 'Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!'"
The centaur with the googly-eye glasses laughed. "That was awesome! Head slam!"
The two centaurs charged at each other full-force and knocked heads, then went staggering off in different directions with crazy grins on their faces.
Chiron sighed. He set Annabeth and Grover down next to Naomi and Percy. "I really wish my cousins wouldn't slam their heads together. They don't have the brain cells to spare."
"Chiron," Percy said, still a little stunned. "You saved us."
Chiron gave him a dry smile. "Well, now, I couldn't very well let you die, especially since you've cleared my name."
"But how did you know where we were?" Annabeth asked.
"Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up near Miami."
"Gee, thanks," Grover mumbled.
"No, no," Chiron said. "I didn't mean... Oh, never mind. I am glad to see you, my young satyr. The point is, I was able to eavesdrop on Percy's Iris-message and trace the signal. Iris and I have been friends for centuries. I asked her to alert me to any important communications in this area. It then took no effort to convince my cousins to ride to your aid. As you see, centaurs can travel quite fast when we wish to. Distance for us is not the same as distance for humans."
"So, what now?" Percy asked. "We just let Luke sail away? He's got Kronos aboard that ship. Or parts of him, anyway."
Chiron knelt, carefully folding his front legs underneath him. He opened the medicine pouch on his belt and started to treat Percy's wounds. "I'm afraid, Percy, that today has been something of a draw. We didn't have the strength of numbers to take that ship. Luke was not organized enough to pursue us. Nobody won."
"But we got the Fleece!" Annabeth said. "Clarisse is on her way back to camp with it right now."
Chiron nodded, though he still looked uneasy. "You are all true heroes. And as soon as we get Percy and Naomi fixed up, you must return to Half-Blood Hill. The centaurs shall carry you."
"You're coming, too, right?" Naomi asked.
"Oh yes, Naomi," Chiron said. "I'll be relieved to get home. My brethren here simply do not appreciate Dean Martin's music. Besides, I must have some words with Mr. D. There's the rest of the summer to plan. So much training to do. And I want to see... I'm curious about the Fleece."
Over by the campfire, Tyson let loose with a paintball gun. A blue projectile splattered against one of the centaurs, hurling him backward into the lake. The centaur came up grinning, covered in swamp muck and blue paint, and gave Tyson two thumbs up.
"Annabeth," Chiron said, "perhaps you and Grover would go supervise Tyson and my cousins before they, ah, teach each other too many bad habits?"
Annabeth met his eyes. Some kind of understanding passed between them.
"Sure, Chiron," Annabeth said. "Come on, goat boy."
"But I don't like paintball."
"Yes, you do." She hoisted Grover to his hooves and led him off toward the campfire.
Chiron finished bandaging Percy's leg and took Naomi's hand to examine it. "I had a talk with Annabeth on the way here. A talk about the prophecy."
"It wasn't her fault," Percy said. "I made her tell me."
Naomi frowned, trying to figure out when they'd talked about a prophecy. She must have been asleep during this conversation.
Chiron's eyes flickered with irritation, but then weariness took over. "I suppose I could not expect to keep it secret forever."
"So am I the one in the prophecy?" Percy asked.
Chiron wrapped Naomi's hand in bandages, securing it with a clip. "I wish I knew, Percy. You're not yet seventeen. For now we must simply train you as best we can, and leave the future to the Fates."
Percy and Naomi looked at each other, both of them remembering the three old women on the highway.
"That's what it meant," Percy said.
Chiron frowned. "That's what what meant?"
"Last summer. The omen from the Fates, when I saw them snip somebody's life string. I thought it meant I was going to die right away, but it's worse than that. It's got something to do with your prophecy. The death they foretold—it's going to happen when I'm seventeen."
Chiron's tail whisked nervously in the grass. "My boy, you can't be sure of that. We don't even know if the prophecy is about you."
"But there isn't any other half-blood child of the Big Three!" Percy protested.
"That we know of."
"And Kronos is rising. He's going to destroy Mount Olympus!"
"He will try," " Chiron agreed. "And Western Civilization along with it, if we don't stop him. But we will stop him. You will not be alone in that fight."
"I'm just a kid, Chiron," Percy said miserably. "What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?"
Chiron managed a smile. "'What good is one lousy hero'? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War."
He pulled an arrow from his quiver and turned the razor-sharp tip so it glinted in the firelight. "Celestial bronze, Percy. An immortal weapon. What would happen if you shot this at a human?"
"Nothing," Percy said. "It would pass right through."
"That's right," Chiron said. "Humans don't exist on the same level as the immortals. They can't even be hurt by our weapons. But you, Percy—you are part god, part human. You live in both worlds. You can be harmed by both, and you can affect both. That's what makes heroes so special. You carry the hopes of humanity into the realm of the eternal. Monsters never die. They are reborn from the chaos and barbarism that is always bubbling underneath civilization, the very stuff that makes Kronos stronger. They must be defeated again and again, kept at bay. Heroes embody that struggle. You fight the battles humanity must win, every generation, in order to stay human. Do you understand?"
"I... I don't know."
"You must try, Percy. Because whether or not you are the child of the prophecy, Kronos thinks you might be. And after today, he will finally despair of turning you to his side. That is the only reason he hasn't killed you yet, you know. As soon as he's sure he can't use you, he will destroy you."
"You talk like you know him."
Chiron pursed his lips. "I do know him."
Naomi stared at him. It was easy to forget just how old Chiron was. "Is that why Mr. D blamed you when the tree was poisoned? Why you said some people don't trust you?"
"Indeed."
"But, Chiron... I mean, come on!" Percy said. "Why would they think you'd ever betray the camp for Kronos?"
Chiron's eyes were deep brown, full of thousands of years of sadness. "Percy, remember your training. Remember your study of mythology. What is my connection to the titan lord?"
Percy shook his head. "You, uh, owe Kronos a favor or something? He spared your life?"
"Percy," Chiron said, his voice impossibly soft. "The titan Kronos is my father."
❊
DUN DUN DUUUUUN!!!