The Mark of Athena

Apparently Percy didn’t realize what Hazel meant either. Then something yanked Annabeth backward and dragged her toward the pit. Percy lunged. He grabbed her arm, but the momentum carried him along as well.

“Help them!” Hazel yelled.

Annabeth glimpsed Nico hobbling in their direction, Hazel trying to disentangle her cavalry sword from the rope ladder. Their other friends were still focused on the statue, and Hazel’s cry was lost in the general shouting and the rumbling of the cavern.

Annabeth sobbed as she hit the edge of the pit. Her legs went over the side. Too late, she realized what was happening: she was tangled in the spider silk. She should have cut it away immediately. She had thought it was just loose line, but with the entire floor covered in cobwebs, she hadn’t noticed that one of the strands was wrapped around her foot—and the other end went straight into the pit. It was attached to something heavy down in the darkness, something that was pulling her in.

“No,” Percy muttered, light dawning in his eyes. “My sword…”

But he couldn’t reach Riptide without letting go of Annabeth’s arm, and Annabeth’s strength was gone. She slipped over the edge. Percy fell with her.

Her body slammed into something. She must have blacked out briefly from the pain. When she could see again, she realized that she’d fallen partway into the pit and was dangling over the void. Percy had managed to grab a ledge about fifteen feet below the top of the chasm. He was holding on with one hand, gripping Annabeth’s wrist with the other, but the pull on her leg was much too strong.

No escape, said a voice in the darkness below. I go to Tartarus, and you will come too.

Annabeth wasn’t sure if she actually heard Arachne’s voice or if it was just in her mind.

The pit shook. Percy was the only thing keeping her from falling. He was barely holding on to a ledge the size of a bookshelf.

Nico leaned over the edge of the chasm, thrusting out his hand, but he was much too far away to help. Hazel was yelling for the others, but even if they heard her over all the chaos, they’d never make it in time.

Annabeth’s leg felt like it was pulling free of her body. Pain washed everything in red. The force of the Underworld tugged at her like dark gravity. She didn’t have the strength to fight. She knew she was too far down to be saved.

“Percy, let me go,” she croaked. “You can’t pull me up.”

His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless.

“Never,” he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above. “The other side, Nico! We’ll see you there. Understand?”

Nico’s eyes widened. “But—”

“Lead them there!” Percy shouted. “Promise me!”

“I—I will.”

Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.

Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth’s wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome.

“We’re staying together,” he promised. “You’re not getting away from me. Never again.”

Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.

“As long as we’re together,” she said.

She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw the sunlight far, far above—maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.

Then Percy let go of his tiny ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.

LEO WAS STILL IN SHOCK.

Everything had happened so quickly. They had secured grappling lines to the Athena Parthenos just as the floor gave way, and the final columns of webbing snapped. Jason and Frank dove down to save the others, but they’d only found Nico and Hazel hanging from the rope ladder. Percy and Annabeth were gone. The pit to Tartarus had been buried under several tons of debris. Leo pulled the Argo II out of the cavern seconds before the entire place imploded, taking the rest of the parking lot with it.

The Argo II was now parked on a hill overlooking the city. Jason, Hazel, and Frank had returned to the scene of the catastrophe, hoping to dig through the rubble and find a way to save Percy and Annabeth, but they’d come back demoralized. The cavern was simply gone. The scene was swarming with police and rescue workers. No mortals had been hurt, but the Italians would be scratching their heads for months, wondering how a massive sinkhole had opened right in the middle of a parking lot and swallowed a dozen perfectly good cars.

Dazed with grief, Leo and the others carefully loaded the Athena Parthenos into the hold, using the ship’s hydraulic winches with an assist from Frank Zhang, part-time elephant. The statue just fit, though what they were going to do with it, Leo had no idea.

Coach Hedge was too miserable to help. He kept pacing the deck with tears in his eyes, pulling at his goatee and slapping the side of his head, muttering, “I should have saved them! I should have blown up more stuff!”

Finally Leo told him to go belowdecks and secure everything for departure. He wasn’t doing any good beating himself up.

The six demigods gathered on the quarterdeck and gazed at the distant column of dust still rising from the site of the implosion.