The Son of Neptune

Hazel spurred Arion. They raced across the cavern, weaving around pallets and forklifts. An arrow whizzed past Hazel’s head. Something exploded behind her, but she didn’t look back.

‘The stairs!’ Frank yelled. ‘No way this horse can pull a chariot up that many flights of – OH MY GODS!’

Thankfully the stairs were wide enough for the chariot, because Arion didn’t even slow down. He shot up the steps with the chariot rattling and groaning. Hazel glanced back a few times to make sure Frank and Percy hadn’t fallen off. Their knuckles were white on the sides of the chariot, their teeth chattering like wind-up Halloween skulls.

Finally they reached the lobby. Arion crashed through the main doors into the plaza and scattered a bunch of guys in business suits.

Hazel felt the tension in Arion’s rib cage. The fresh air was making him crazy to run, but Hazel pulled back on his reins.

‘Ella!’ Hazel shouted at the sky. ‘Where are you? We have to leave!’

For a horrible second, she was afraid the harpy might be too far away to hear. She might be lost, or captured by the Amazons.

Behind them a battle forklift clattered up the stairs and roared through the lobby, a mob of Amazons behind it.

‘Surrender!’ Otrera screamed.

The forklift raised its razor-sharp tines.

‘Ella!’ Hazel cried desperately.

In a flash of red feathers, Ella landed in the chariot. ‘Ella is here. Amazons are pointy. Go now.’

‘Hold on!’ Hazel warned. She leaned forward and said, ‘Arion, run!’

The world seemed to elongate. Sunlight bent around them. Arion shot away from the Amazons and sped through downtown Seattle. Hazel glanced back and saw a line of smoking pavement where Arion’s hooves had touched the ground. He thundered towards the docks, leaping over cars, barrelling through intersections.

Hazel screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was a scream of delight. For the first time in her life – in her two lives – she felt absolutely unstoppable. Arion reached the water and leaped straight off the docks.

Hazel’s ears popped. She heard a roar that she later realized was a sonic boom, and Arion tore over Puget Sound, seawater turning to steam in his wake as the skyline of Seattle receded behind them.

XXXIII Frank

FRANK WAS RELIEVED WHEN THE WHEELS FELL OFF.

He’d already thrown up twice from the back of the chariot, which was not fun at the speed of sound. The horse seemed to bend time and space as he ran, blurring the landscape and making Frank feel like he’d just drunk a gallon of whole milk without his lactose-intolerance medicine. Ella didn’t help matters. She kept muttering: ‘Seven hundred and fifty miles per hour. Eight hundred. Eight hundred and three. Fast. Very fast.’

The horse sped north across Puget Sound, zooming past islands and fishing boats and very surprised pods of whales. The landscape ahead began to look familiar – Crescent Beach, Boundary Bay. Frank had gone sailing here once on a school trip. They’d crossed into Canada.

The horse rocketed onto dry land. He followed Highway 99 north, running so fast that the cars seemed to be standing still. Finally, just as they were getting into Vancouver, the chariot wheels began to smoke.

‘Hazel!’ Frank yelled. ‘We’re breaking up!’

She got the message and pulled the reins. The horse didn’t seem happy about it, but he slowed to subsonic as they zipped through the city streets. They crossed the Ironworkers bridge into North Vancouver, and the chariot started to rattle dangerously. At last Arion stopped at the top of a wooded hill. He snorted with satisfaction, as if to say, That’s how we run, fools. The smoking chariot collapsed, spilling Percy, Frank and Ella onto the wet, mossy ground.

Frank stumbled to his feet. He tried to blink the yellow spots out of his eyes. Percy groaned and started unhitching Arion from the ruined chariot. Ella fluttered around in dizzy circles, bonking into the trees and muttering, ‘Tree. Tree. Tree.’

Only Hazel seemed unaffected by the ride. Grinning with pleasure, she slid off the horse’s back. ‘That was fun!’

‘Yeah.’ Frank swallowed back his nausea. ‘So much fun.’

Arion whinnied.

‘He says he needs to eat,’ Percy translated. ‘No wonder. He probably burned about six million calories.’

Hazel studied the ground at her feet and frowned. ‘I’m not sensing any gold around here … Don’t worry, Arion. I’ll find you some. In the meantime, why don’t you go graze? We’ll meet you -’

The horse zipped off, leaving a trail of steam in his wake.

Hazel knitted her eyebrows. ‘Do you think he’ll come back?’

‘I don’t know,’ Percy said. ‘He seems kind of … spirited.’

Frank almost hoped the horse would stay away. He didn’t say that, of course. He could tell Hazel was distressed by the idea of losing her new friend. But Arion scared him, and Frank was pretty sure the horse knew it.

Hazel and Percy started salvaging supplies from the chariot wreckage. There had been a few boxes of random Amazon merchandise in the front, and Ella shrieked with delight when she found a shipment of books. She snatched up a copy of The Birds of North America, fluttered to the nearest branch, and began scratching through the pages so fast, Frank wasn’t sure if she was reading or shredding.

Frank leaned against a tree, trying to control his vertigo. He still hadn’t recovered from his Amazon imprisonment – getting kicked across the lobby, disarmed, caged and insulted as a baby man by an egomaniacal horse. That hadn’t exactly helped his self-esteem.

Even before that, the vision he had shared with Hazel had left him rattled. He felt closer to her now. He knew he’d done the right thing in giving her the piece of firewood. A huge weight had been taken off his shoulders.

On the other hand, he’d seen the Underworld firsthand. He had felt what it was like to sit forever doing nothing, just regretting your mistakes. He’d looked up at those creepy gold masks on the judges of the dead and realized that he would stand before them some day, maybe very soon.

Frank had always dreamed of seeing his mother again when he died. But maybe that wasn’t possible for demigods. Hazel had been in Asphodel for something like seventy years and never found her mom. Frank hoped he and his mom would both end up in Elysium. But if Hazel hadn’t got there – sacrificing her life to stop Gaia, taking responsibility for her actions so that her mother wouldn’t end up in Punishment – what chance did Frank have? He’d never done anything that heroic.

He straightened and looked around, trying to get his bearings.

To the south, across Vancouver Harbor, the downtown skyline gleamed red in the sunset. To the north, the hills and rainforests of Lynn Canyon Park snaked between the subdivisions of North Vancouver until they gave way to the wilderness.

Frank had explored this park for years. He spotted a bend in the river that looked familiar. He recognized a dead pine tree that had been split by lightning in a nearby clearing. Frank knew this hill.

‘I’m practically home,’ he said. ‘My grandmother’s house is right over there.’

Hazel squinted. ‘How far?’

‘Just over the river and through the woods.’

Percy raised an eyebrow. ‘Seriously? To Grandmother’s house we go?’

Frank cleared his throat. ‘Yeah, anyway.’

Hazel clasped her hands in prayer. ‘Frank, please tell me she’ll let us spend the night. I know we’re on a deadline, but we’ve got to rest, right? And Arion saved us some time. Maybe we could get an actual cooked meal?’