17 | Annabeth with her obedience school
We stood in the shadows of Valencia Boulevard, looking up at gold letters etched in black marble: DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.
Underneath, stenciled on the glass doors: NO SOLICI-TORS. NO LOITERING. NO LIVING.
It was almost midnight, but the lobby was brightly lit and full of people. Behind the security desk sat a tough-looking guard with sunglasses and an earpiece.
Percy turned to face us. "Okay. You remember the plan."
"The plan," Grover gulped. "Yeah. I love the plan."
Annabeth said, "What happens if the plan doesn't work?"
"Don't think negative."
"Right," she said. "We're entering the Land of the Dead, and I shouldn't think negative."
"Makes total sense, yeah," I replied sarcastically.
Percy took the four pearls the Nereid gave him on his trip to the ocean. The white milky pearls that would save us should we ever get in trouble.
Annabeth put her hand on Percy's shoulder. "I'm sorry, Percy. You're right, we'll make it. It'll be fine."
She gave Grover a nudge.
"Oh, right!" he chimed in. "We got this far. We'll find the master bolt and save your mom. No problem."
Annabeth gave me a sublte glare. "Yeah, yeah. No problem. At all," I lied, but I tried lying to myself that I was confident, it usually worked out nice.
Percy stored the pearls in his pocket. "Let's whup some Underworld butt."
We walked inside the DOA lobby.
Muzak played softly on hidden speakers. The carpet and walls were steel gray. Pencil cactuses grew in the corners like skeleton hands. The furniture was black leather, and every seat was taken. There were people sitting on couches, people standing up, people staring out the windows or wait-ing for the elevator. Nobody moved, or talked, or did much of anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them all just fine, but if I focused on any one of them in partic-ular, they started looking ... transparent. I could see right through their bodies.
The security guard's desk was a raised podium, so we had to look up at him.
He was tall and elegant, with chocolate-colored skin and bleached-blond hair shaved military style. He wore tortoiseshell shades and a silk Italian suit that matched his hair. A black rose was pinned to his lapel under a silver name tag.
The name tag read, "Your name is Chiron?" I asked.
He leaned across the desk. I couldn't see anything in his glasses except our own reflections, but his smile was sweet and cold, like a pythons, right before it eats you.
"What a precious young lad." He had a strange accent-British, maybe, but also as if he had learned English as a second language. His voice looked strangely like a wave of petroleum, dark and pure black. "Tell me, mate, do I look like a centaur?"
"N-no?"
"Sir," he added smoothly.
"Sir," I corrected.
He pinched the name tag and ran his finger under the letters. "Can you read this, mate? It says C-H-A-R-O-N. Say it with me: CARE-ON."
"Charon."
"Amazing! Now: Mr. Charon."
"Mr. Charon," I repeated.
"Well done." He sat back. "I hate being confused with that old horse-man. And now, how may I help you little dead ones?"
The question made a lump form in my throat, already nervous about if we could actually pass to the Underworld by him. I looked over at Annabeth to seek support.
"We want to go the Underworld," she said.
Charon's mouth twitched. "Well, that's refreshing."
"It is?" she asked.
"Straightforward and honest. No screaming. No “There must be a mistake, Mr. Charon.”" He looked us over. "How did you die, then?"
"A, uh, bear attack," I nudged Percy before he could say anything stupid and answered myself. I knew Percy was clever, but on moments away from where he needed a sword, Percy couldn't be smart if he prayed for it.
"All four of you?" Charon asked. We nodded.
"Hm, unfortunate luck,"
Charon looked mildly impressed. "I don't suppose you have coins for passage. Normally, with adults, you see, I could charge your American Express, or add the ferry price to your last cable bill. But with children ... alas, you never die prepared. Suppose you'll have to take a seat for a few centuries."
"Oh, but we have coins." I set three golden drachmas on the counter, part of the stash I'd found in Crusty's office desk.
"Well, now ..." Charon moistened his lips. "Real drach-mas. Real golden drachmas. I haven't seen these in ..."
His fingers hovered greedily over the coins.
We were so close.
Then Charon looked at me. That cold stare behind his glasses seemed to bore a hole through my chest. "Here now," he said. "You couldn't read my name correctly. Are you dyslexic, lad?"
"No. I'm dead."
Charon leaned forward and took a sniff. "You're not dead. I should've known. You're a godling."
"We have to get to the Underworld," I insisted.
Charon made a growling sound deep in his throat.
Immediately, all the people in the waiting room got up and started pacing, agitated, lighting cigarettes, running hands through their hair, or checking their wristwatches.
"Leave while you can," Charon told us. "I'll just take these and forget I saw you." He started to go for the coins, but I snatched them back.
"No service, no tip." I sounded a lot more rude than I meant to.
Charon growled again-a deep, blood-chilling sound. The spirits of the dead started pounding on the elevator doors.
"It's a shame, too," I sighed. "We had more to offer. A lot more."
I held up the entire bag from Crusty's stash. I took out a fistful of drachmas and let the coins spill through my fingers.
Charon's growl changed into something more like a lion's purr. "Do you think I can be bought, godling? Eh ... just out of curiosity, how much have you got there?"
"A lot," I said. "I bet Hades doesn't pay you well enough for such hard work."
"Oh, you don't know the half of it. How would you like to babysit these spirits all day? Always “Please don't let me be dead” or “Please let me across for free.” I haven't had a pay raise in three thousand years. Do you imagine suits like this come cheap?"
"You deserve better," I agreed. "A little appreciation. Respect. Good pay."
With each word, I stacked another gold coin on the counter.
Charon glanced down at his silk Italian jacket, as if imagining himself in something even better. "I must say, lad, you're making some sense now. Just a little."
I stacked another few coins. "I could mention a pay raise while I'm talking to Hades."
He sighed. "The boat's almost full, anyway. I might as well add you four and be off."
He stood, scooped up our money, and said, "Come along."
We pushed through the crowd of waiting spirits, who started grabbing at our clothes like the wind, their voices whispering things I couldn't make out. Charon shoved them out of the way, grumbling, "Freeloaders."
He escorted us into the elevator, which was already crowded with souls of the dead, each one holding a green boarding pass. Charon grabbed two spirits who were trying to get on with us and pushed them back into the lobby.
"Right. Now, no one get any ideas while I'm gone," he announced to the waiting room. "And if anyone moves the dial off my easy-listening station again, I'll make sure you're here for another thousand years. Understand?"
He shut the doors. He put a key card into a slot in the elevator panel and we started to descend.
"What happens to the spirits waiting in the lobby?" Annabeth asked.
"Nothing," Charon said.
"For how long?"
"Forever, or until I'm feeling generous."
"Oh," she said. "That's ... fair."
Charon raised an eyebrow. "Whoever said death was fair, young miss? Wait until it's your turn. You'll die soon enough, where you're going."
"We'll get out alive," I said.
"Ha."
I got a sudden dizzy feeling. We weren't going down anymore, but forward. The air turned misty. Spirits around me started changing shape. Their modern clothes flickered, turning into gray hooded robes. The floor of the elevator began swaying.
I blinked hard. When I opened my eyes, Charon's creamy Italian suit had been replaced by a long black robe. His tortoiseshell glasses were gone. Where his eyes should've been were empty sockets-like Ares's eyes, except Charon's were totally dark, full of death and despair.
He saw me looking, and said, "Well?"
"Nothing," I managed. "Don't mind me."
I thought he was grinning, but that wasn't it. The flesh of his face was becoming transparent, letting me see straight through to his skull.
The floor kept swaying.
Grover said, "I think I'm getting seasick."
When I blinked again, the elevator wasn't an elevator anymore. We were standing in a wooden barge. Charon was poling us across a dark, oily river, swirling with bones, dead fish, and other, stranger things–plastic dolls, crushed car-nations, soggy diplomas with gilt edges
"The River Styx," Annabeth murmured. "It's so ..."
"Polluted," Charon said. "For thousands of years, you humans have been throwing in everything as you come across-hopes, dreams, wishes that never came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me."
Mist curled off the filthy water. Above us, almost lost in the gloom, was a ceiling of stalactites. Ahead, the far shore glimmered with greenish light, the color of poison.Panic closed up my throat. What was I doing here? These people around me ... they were dead.
Annabeth grabbed hold of my hand. Under normal cir-cumstances, this would've embarrassed me, but I knew she just felt really nervous and needed something to hold herself down.
I tried muttering a prayer to my mother, but even though it was dark here, I knew her powers didn't go this far. The only gods that I could pray to where the king, Hades, and the queen, his wife, Persephone.
The shoreline of the Underworld came into view. Craggy rocks and black volcanic sand stretched inland about a hundred yards to the base of a high stone wall, which marched off in either direction as far as we could see. A sound came from somewhere nearby in the green gloom, echoing off the stones-the howl of a large animal.
"Old Three-Face is hungry," Charon said. His smile turned skeletal in the greenish light. "Bad luck for you, godlings."
The bottom of our boat slid onto the black sand. The dead began to disembark. A woman holding a little
girl's hand. An old man and an old woman hobbling along arm in arm. A boy no older than I was,
shuffling silently along in his gray robe.
Charon said, "I'd wish you luck, mate, but there isn't any down here. Mind you, don't forget to mention
my pay raise."
He counted our golden coins into his pouch, then took up his pole. He warbled something that sounded like a Barry Manilow song as he ferried the empty barge back across the river. We followed the spirits up a well-worn path. I'm not sure what I was expecting–Pearly Gates, or a big black portcullis, or close to that. But the entrance to the Underworld looked like a cross between airport security and the Jersey Turnpike.
There were three separate entrances under one huge black archway that said YOU ARE NOW ENTERING EREBUS. Each entrance had a pass-through metal detector with secu-rity cameras mounted on top. Beyond this were tollbooths manned by black-robed ghouls like Charon.
The howling of the hungry animal was really loud now, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. The three-headed dog, Cerberus, who was supposed to guard Hades's door, was nowhere to be seen.
The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked ATTENDANT ON DUTY, and one marked EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving right along. The other two were crawling.
"What do you figure?" I asked Annabeth.
"The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields," she said. "No contest. They don't want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them."
"There's a court for dead people?"
"Yeah. Three judges. They switch around who sits on the bench. King Minos, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare–people like that. Sometimes they look at a life and decide that person needs a special reward–the Fields of Elysium. Sometimes they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived. Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Asphodel Fields."
"And do what?"
Grover said, "Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas. Forever."
"Uhm... Boring? I mean, you'd be standing in the middle of nowhere," I shrugged.
"Not as boring," Grover muttered. "Look."
A couple of black-robbed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking him at the security desk. The face of the dead man looked vaguely familiar.
"He's that preacher who made the news, do you know him?" Grover asked.
"Of course I do." I did, in fact. We'd seen him on TV a couple of times at the Hive dorm. He was this annoying televangelist from upstate New York who'd raised millions of dollars for our orphanage and then got caught spending the money on stuff for his mansion, like gold-plated toilet seats, and an indoor putt-putt golf course. He'd died in a police chase when his "Lamborghini for the Lord" went off a cliff.
Prick.
I said, "What're they doing to him?"
"Special punishment from Hades," Grover guessed. "The really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The Fur–the Kindly Ones will set up an eter-nal torture for him."
"But if he's a preacher," I said, "and he believes in a dif-ferent hell... ."
Grover shrugged. "Who says he's seeing this place the way we're seeing it? Humans see what they want to see. You're very stubborn–er, persistent, that way."
We got closer to the gates. The orange howling was so loud now it shook the ground at my feet, but I still couldn't fig-ure out where it was coming from. Then, about fifty feet in front of us, the green mist shimmered. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.
I hadn't seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked solid. And it was staring straight at me.
"He's a Rottweiler," I could hear Percy muttering.
I always imagined Cerberus would be a Husky, considering he has a huge playful side in most representations. But he's obviously a huge, three headed, and barely visible, pure-breed Rottweiler.
The dead walked right up to him-no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even having to crouch.
"I'm starting to see him better," I muttered. "Why is that?"
"I think ..." Annabeth moistened her lips. "I'm afraid it's because we're getting closer to being dead."
The dog's middle head craned toward us. It sniffed the air and growled.
"Can't he smell living things?" I said.
"But that's okay," Grover said, trembling next to me. "Because we have a plan."
"Right," Annabeth said. I'd never heard her voice sound and seem so small. "A plan."
We moved toward the monster.
The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled.
I could hear a loud shout, so deep that my ears felt tingley. But the word he said didn't make any sense in my head, even when I had already understood ancient Greek before. The color was a deep and spiky rumble of scarlet.
"Can you understand it?" Percy asked me.
"Uhm, not quite."
"Grover?" Percy switched.
"Oh yeah," he said. "I can understand it."
"What's it saying?"
"I don't think humans have a four-letter word that translates, exactly."
Percy took a broken piece of a bedpost from Ares bag. He held it up and forced a awkward smile.
"Hey, Big Fella," Percy called up. "I bet they don't play with you much."
"GROWWWLLLL!"
"Good boy," he said weakly.
Percy waved the stick above his body, Cerberus's middle head followed the movement with its eyes, the other two kept their eyes burning through Percy. Percy had Cerberus's full attention, but whether that was good or bad was a matter I didn't know of.
"Fetch!" Percy threw the stick, it was even a nice one. I heard it go ker-sploosh in the River Styx.
Cerberus glared at Percy, not a single ounce of him being impressed. Not even the most playful head.
So much for the plan.
Cerberus was now making a new kind of growl, deeper down in his three throats.
I could barely figure something out, but this time I could interpret something.
"I'll give you ten seconds."
"F- For what?" I asked, trembling.
"For you to pray. And then, I'll tear all four of you. Limb. By. Limb." Cerberus stomped one of its paws on the ground, making me flinch really badly.
"Uh, thanks. Yeah," I gulped down on my now dry mouth. "So... We have ten seconds."
"For what, exactly?" Percy raised a brow.
"Cerberus said, uhm, we could have ten seconds to pray and then, well ... You know." I whistled and ran my thumb over my throat, jerking my head to the side and sticking my tongue out.
"Wait!" Annabeth said. She started rifling through her pack.
"Five, moon boy." Cerberus huffed.
"Five seconds," I obeyed Cerberus's wishes and really started praying. Maybe my mother would do me some kind of mural like Zeus did to Thalia. "Should we run? I don't really think we have that much of a chance, but we could try?"
"Three."
Annabeth produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. It was labeled WATERLAND, DENVER, CO. My breath caught down on my throat.
She shouted, "See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!"
I hate this. Please stop.
All three of his heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated.
"Sit!" Annabeth called again.
I bit down on my lip. What is she doing?! I asked myself.
Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who'd been passing underneath him in the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissi-pated, like the air let out of tires.
Annabeth said, "Good boy!"
She threw Cerberus the ball.
He caught it in his middle mouth. It was barely big enough for him to chew, and the other heads started snap-ping at the middle, trying to get the new toy.
"Drop it.'" Annabeth ordered.
Cerberus's heads stopped fighting and looked at her. The ball was wedged between two of his teeth like a tiny piece of gum. He made a loud, scary whimper, then dropped the ball, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at Annabeth's feet.
"Good boy." She picked up the ball, ignoring the mon-ster spit all over it.
She turned toward us. "Go now. EZ DEATH line–it's faster."
I said, "But-"
"Now.'" She ordered, in the same tone she was using on the dog–or dogs, technically.
I flinched and whimpered, quickly setting up my feet to dash forward, as Annabeth demanded.
Cerberus started to growl, but he was looking more at Percy and Grover, not much to me.
"Stay!" Annabeth ordered the monster. "If you want the ball, stay!"
Cerberus whimpered, but he stayed where he was.
Percy and Grover were quick to catch up to me, though they were pretty hesitant to do so.
We made it through. Cerberus wasn't any less scary-looking from the back.
Annabeth said, "Good dog!"
She held up the tattered red ball, and probably came to the same conclusion I did–if she rewarded Cerberus, there'd be nothing left for another trick.
She threw the ball anyway. The monster's left mouth immediately snatched it up, only to be attacked by the mid-dle head, while the right head moaned in protest.
While the monster was distracted, Annabeth walked briskly under its belly and joined us at the metal detector.
"Please don't ever do that again," I told as soon as Annabeth neared me.
"What do you mean?" Annabeth had a small amount of tears built in her eyes, that she was quickly wiping off.
"That was super dangerous."
"Are you sure you just were holding back to do what I was ordering Cerberus to do?" Annabeth raised a brow, nudging my arm with her shoulder as she passed me.
I scoffed. " 'course not."
"Sure," Annabeth rolled her eyes, before she whistled in a loud way, but it felt as if it pierced into my ears more than it should.
I quickly increased my pace and started walking right behind Annabeth. "How do you do that?" I frowned.
"Obedience school," she said. "When I was little, at my dad's house, we had a Doberman ..."
"Never mind that," Grover said, tugging at my shirt. "Come on!"
We were about to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned pitifully from all three mouths. I could hear him whining "Come back." Annabeth stopped.
She turned to face the dog, which had done a one-eighty to look at us.
Cerberus panted expectantly, the tiny red ball in pieces in a puddle of drool at its feet.
"Good boy," Annabeth said, but her voice sounded melancholy and uncertain.
The monster's heads turned sideways, as if worried about her.
"I'll bring you another ball soon," Annabeth promised faintly. "Would you like that?"
The monster whimpered. I didn't even need to speak dog to know Cerberus was still waiting for the ball.
"Good dog. I'll come visit you soon. I-I promise." Annabeth turned to us. "Let's go."
Grover and I pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed and set off flashing red lights. "Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!"
Cerberus started to bark.
We burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which started even more alarms blaring, and raced into the Underworld.
A few minutes later, we were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk of an immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the Furies.
Grover murmured, "Well, Percy, what have we learned today?"
"That three-headed dogs prefer red rubber balls over sticks?"
"No," Grover told him. "We've learned that your plans really, really bite!"
"And that (y/n) responds to dog commands."
"No, I don't." I glared at her.
"Sit."
I sat, on the ground, with my legs criss-crossed. "Damn it."
"Good boy," Annabeth teased, repeating what she said to Cerberus.