Percy woke up with his face in a plate of cold eggs and Annabeth poking him in the ear with a fork.
"He's alive," she announced. "Barely."
"How long was I out?" His voice came out thick. The fog was still there, heavy and gray, sitting on top of his brain like a wet towel.
[THREAD-WORN (Compounded): Remaining: 33 hours.]
"Forty minutes," Grover said. "The waitress kept refilling your hot chocolate. I think she felt sorry for you."
"I think she was scared of you," Ezra said. He was leaning back in the booth with his arms crossed, watching Percy with a strange look on his face. "You know. Since you called the god of war your brother. To his face." A pause. "That was either the bravest or the dumbest thing I've ever seen."
"Probably both," Percy mumbled, wiping egg off his cheek.
"That's what Clarisse always says about you."
"Clarisse is usually right."
Ezra snorted. It was almost a laugh. Annabeth looked between the two of them with narrowed eyes, like she'd noticed something had changed since St. Louis and couldn't figure out what.
"So," she said. "The water park."
"It's a trap," Percy said.
"Obviously it's a trap. Ares is the god of war. Everything he does is a trap." She leaned forward. "But you know what kind of trap. Don't you."
Percy rubbed his face with both hands, trying to scrub away the fog.
"It's not his trap," he said slowly. "It's Hephaestus's. Ares had a date at the water park. With Aphrodite."
"Aphrodite?" Grover squeaked. "But she's married to—"
"Hephaestus. Yeah." Percy nodded. "He found out. He rigged the whole park to catch them. The Tunnel of Love ride. There's a net, and spiders, mechanical ones, and cameras. He wanted to catch them in the act and broadcast it to Olympus. Embarrass them in front of everybody." He blinked slowly. "Ares got away. But he left his shield. And now the trap's still set, and he doesn't want to spring it himself."
The whole booth was staring at him.
"How," Ezra said, "do you know that?"
"I've been there before," Percy said. "Kind of."
Annabeth and Ezra exchanged a look. A real one, the first one Percy had seen pass between them that wasn't Ezra flirting. It was the look of two people realizing they were in the same boat. Neither of them understood the mortal kid with the static hair and the shadows. Both of them were starting to believe him anyway.
"So what do we do?" Ezra asked.
Percy thought about it, as best he could through the fog.
"We go get the shield," he said. "We spring the trap on purpose. And we let Hephaestus see us do it."
Waterland was three miles outside Denver, behind a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, in the middle of a weedy lot full of nothing. It had been closed for years. The signs were faded, the paint was peeling, and the water slides rose up against the gray Colorado sky like the skeletons of dinosaurs. Dry and cracked and empty.
They climbed the fence. Grover went first, of course, with goat legs. Then Annabeth, who swung over the top like a gymnast. Then Ezra, who ripped his jeans on the razor wire and swore. Then Percy, slow and careful and foggy, with Lupe in his jacket.
The park was quiet. Dead quiet. No birds. No wind. Just the creak of rusted metal and the faint buzz of something electrical, somewhere deep in the dry ride tunnels.
[Storm Sense: Electrical activity detected. Multiple sources. Pattern: Surveillance.]
Cameras, Percy thought. Lots of them.
The Tunnel of Love was at the back of the park. A long, low building painted pink and red, with peeling hearts and cupids all over the outside, and a dry concrete channel leading into a dark tunnel mouth. Parked at the entrance to the channel was a little swan boat, white and gold. And sitting in the swan boat, propped up against the seat like a forgotten umbrella, was a shield.
It was round and bronze and enormous, nearly as big as a manhole cover, and it was covered in scenes of battle. Soldiers dying, cities burning, armies clashing, all hammered into the metal in exquisite, horrible detail. It glowed faintly red, like coals.
[ITEM DETECTED: THE SHIELD OF ARES (Divine)]
[Warning: Currently resting within an active trap.]
"That's it," Annabeth breathed. "That's really it."
"I'll get it," Ezra said, and started forward.
Percy caught his arm.
"Wait."
He looked up. At the roof of the Tunnel of Love. At the little black domes tucked under the eaves, one every few feet, each with a tiny red light blinking inside it.
He walked out in front of the ride, stood in the middle of the dry channel, looked straight up into the nearest camera, and waved.
"Hi," he said. "Lord Hephaestus. I know you're watching."
Behind him, Grover made a tiny strangled noise.
"My name's Percy Jackson," Percy said to the camera. "Son of Zeus. Kind of. It's complicated. We're here because Ares sent us to get his shield, and we know it's a trap, and we know it's your trap. And I just wanted to say, before we spring it..." He paused. "I think what he did was really messed up. And I'm sorry. Nobody should have to find out like that."
The red light on the camera blinked.
Then, very slowly, it turned. It swiveled on its mount, whirring, until it was pointing straight down at Percy. And from somewhere inside the Tunnel of Love, a speaker crackled to life. A voice came out of it, deep and rough and grinding, like gears that needed oil.
"No one," said Hephaestus, god of the forge, "has ever said that to me."
The four of them froze.
"Not in three thousand years," the voice went on. "They laugh. Every time. Every time I catch them, every time I show the others, they laugh. At me. Not at them. At the cripple, who couldn't keep his wife." A long pause. The speaker crackled. "You did not laugh."
"No, sir," Percy said quietly.
The camera stared at him for a long, long moment.
"The trap will still spring," Hephaestus said finally. "I built it. I cannot unbuild it. It is the nature of my things. But I will tell you how to survive it." A pause. "The spiders fear lightning. The net is woven from my own hair, and only something that has never lied can cut it. And the water..." The voice almost sounded amused. "The water will come from the walls, son of the sea. I imagine you know what to do with water."
Ezra blinked. "Me?"
"You," said Hephaestus. "And the boy with the sky in his blood. Together."
The speaker clicked off.
They sprang the trap on purpose.
Percy and Ezra climbed into the swan boat together. Annabeth and Grover waited at the tunnel mouth, ready. And the second Ezra's hand closed around the edge of the Shield of Ares, the whole Tunnel of Love came to life.
Lights blazed on, pink and red and gold. A tinny recording of a love song started blaring from the speakers. The swan boat lurched forward on a hidden track and carried them into the tunnel at frightening speed, past painted hearts and cupids and fake roses. And the doors slammed shut behind them with a boom.
From the walls of the tunnel, a thousand tiny holes opened at once.
And out of them poured the spiders.
They were mechanical. Bronze and gold, each one the size of a coin, with glowing ruby eyes and needle-sharp legs that clicked on the concrete like rain on a roof. There were thousands of them. Tens of thousands. A flood of clicking bronze pouring down the walls and across the ceiling and toward the boat.
"Percy!" Ezra yelled.
"I know!"
The spiders fear lightning.
Percy reached into his chest, past the fog, past the Thread-Worn cotton, down into the place where the sky lived. He was so tired. Every thought was slow. But he didn't have to think about lightning anymore. Not since the swamp. It was just there, like breathing.
[LIGHTNING CALL!]
He didn't throw it. He spread it. He put his palms flat on the floor of the swan boat and let the lightning run out of him into the metal track beneath them, and from the track into the walls, and from the walls into every one of the ten thousand bronze spiders at once.
The Tunnel of Love lit up blue.
The spiders froze. Then they twitched, all at once, in perfect unison. Then they fell. They dropped off the walls and the ceiling in a great clattering rain, rolling over on their backs with their little bronze legs curled up and smoke rising from their ruby eyes.
[Mechanical Spiders disabled: 11,404.]
[MP: 260 → 140]
"Whoa," Ezra breathed.
Then the net came down.
It dropped out of the ceiling like a falling cloud. A web of shimmering golden threads, finer than spider silk and stronger than steel, and it landed over the swan boat and wrapped around them both and pulled tight. Ezra yelled. Percy couldn't move his arms.
Woven from my own hair, Hephaestus had said. Only something that has never lied can cut it.
"Ezra," Percy said, through gritted teeth. "Riptide."
"I can't reach it! I can't move my—"
"It's a pen. It always comes back to your pocket. Think about it. Want it in your hand. It'll come."
Ezra closed his eyes. His face screwed up in concentration.
And the pen appeared in his fingers. It popped out of nowhere, glowing faintly, the way Riptide always had in Percy's first life.
"How did you—"
"Uncap it. Cut the net."
"It won't work! He said only something that's never lied—"
"It's a sword," Percy said. "Swords don't lie. Do it."
Ezra uncapped the pen. Riptide sprang out to its full length, bronze blade glowing, and Ezra twisted his wrist and slashed at the golden net.
It parted like cobwebs.
And then the water came.
It came from the walls, just like Hephaestus had said. From a hundred hidden pipes at once, roaring, white and churning, filling the tunnel. A flash flood, rising fast, and the swan boat was swept off its track and spun around and slammed into the wall. The water was waist-deep. Chest-deep. The ceiling was coming down to meet it.
"EZRA!" Percy yelled. "It's your turn!"
And Ezra Coleman, son of Poseidon, did something Percy had never seen him do before.
He didn't try to fight the water. He didn't try to whip it, or throw it, or make a show of it. He just stood up in the sinking swan boat with Riptide in one hand and the Shield of Ares strapped to his other arm, closed his eyes, and listened to it.
The way Percy had once listened to the sea.
The water went still.
The whole roaring flood stopped moving. All at once. It just stopped, chest-deep, filling the tunnel, perfectly flat and perfectly calm, like glass.
Then Ezra opened his eyes, and pointed at the tunnel doors.
The water went out.
It hit the doors like a battering ram and blew them off their hinges and poured out into the dry park in a great white wave. It carried the swan boat with it, and Percy and Ezra in the swan boat, out of the dark and into the gray Colorado daylight. It rolled them across the dry concrete in a great sloshing tide and deposited them, soaking wet and gasping, right at Annabeth's and Grover's feet.
The four of them stared at each other.
Then Ezra started laughing. Wild and breathless and amazed, flat on his back in a puddle, the Shield of Ares on his arm.
"I did that," he gasped. "Did you see that? I did that. I just— I listened to it, and it listened back—"
"I saw," Percy said. He was smiling. He didn't even notice he was doing it. "That was really good, Ezra."
Ezra stopped laughing. He looked at Percy, and something went across his face. Surprise. Like nobody had ever told him he'd done something good before. Not without wanting something back.
"Yeah," he said, quieter. "Thanks."
On the roof of the Tunnel of Love, a single camera swiveled, and watched them, and its little red light blinked twice.
[QUEST COMPLETE: THE SHIELD OF ARES]
[+22,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 49 → Level 50]
[Level 50 milestone reached. All stats +3.]
[DIVINE FAVOR: Hephaestus, God of the Forge, regards the Host with gratitude.]
[Hidden Reward: ???]
Ares was waiting for them at the gate.
He was leaning against an enormous black motorcycle, all chrome and flame decals, with the engine rumbling low. His arms were crossed. He was grinning. The grin got wider when he saw them coming across the lot, soaking wet, with the shield.
"Well, well," he said. "Look at that. The little heroes survived." He held out his hand. "Shield."
Ezra started forward.
Percy put a hand on his arm.
"Wait here," he said quietly. "All of you. I need to talk to him."
Annabeth stared at him. "Percy. That's the god of war."
"I know." He held out his hand to Ezra. "Give me the shield."
Ezra hesitated. Then, slowly, he unstrapped the Shield of Ares from his arm and handed it over.
It was heavy. Heavier than anything Percy had ever held, and hot, like a skillet just off the stove. When he touched it, he heard things. Screams. Battle cries. The clash of swords. The roar of a thousand wars, all happening at once, very far away.
He walked across the lot toward the god of war, alone.
Ares watched him come. The grin stayed on his face, but it got a little sharper.
"What's this, little brother?" he said. "Delivering it personally? How sweet."
"Can we walk?" Percy said. "Just you and me."
Ares raised an eyebrow above his sunglasses. Then he shrugged and pushed off the motorcycle.
They walked around the corner of a dead concession stand, out of sight and out of earshot of the others. The air was hot and red around Ares, the way it always was, heavy with gunpowder and fury. Percy's Thread-Worn brain was slow and foggy, but he'd had a lot of time to think about this on the walk across the lot. He'd thought about it for two lifetimes, actually.
He stopped. He held the Shield of Ares against his chest.
And he said, quietly: "I know you have the bolt."
Ares went very, very still.
It was the stillest Percy had ever seen him, in either life. The god of war was all motion, all aggression, all restless rage. But for one second he went as still as a statue, and the fire behind his sunglasses guttered.
"What," he said softly, "did you just say?"
"The Master Bolt," Percy said. His heart was slamming. He kept his voice level anyway. "And the Helm of Darkness. Hades's helm. You've got both. Or you know exactly where they are. Somebody stole them off Olympus during the winter solstice, and gave them to you. And you're supposed to plant them on the son of Poseidon, so Zeus and Hades both think Poseidon stole them, and all three of them go to war."
Ares didn't move. Didn't breathe.
"You love war," Percy said. "I get it. That's your whole thing. A war between the Big Three? That's the biggest war there could ever be. That's Christmas for you." He paused. "But you didn't come up with this. Did you? Somebody's been whispering in your ear. In your dreams. Somebody old. Somebody buried. Somebody who promised you the biggest war in history if you'd just do one little favor."
The air around them was getting hotter. The ground under their feet was starting to smoke.
"Be very careful, little brother," Ares said. His voice was low and quiet and terrible. "You are a mortal. You have no idea what you're playing with."
"Yeah, I do," Percy said. "I've met him. In another life. He's not your friend, Ares. He's using you. When it's over, when the Big Three are tearing each other apart, he's going to climb out of the Pit and eat every single one of you. Including you."
Ares stared at him. The fire behind his sunglasses was flaring and dimming, flaring and dimming.
"You can't prove any of this," he said finally.
"I don't have to," Percy said. "I just have to say it. Out loud. To my dad."
Silence.
"He talks to me," Percy went on. "Did you know that? Through the statue in my cabin. Every night. He calls me my son. He came out of the sky when a hellhound had me underwater, before he even knew why he was doing it. He'd listen to me, Ares. If I told him his favorite son had his bolt in a backpack somewhere. If I told him who was whispering in your ear." Percy shrugged, as casually as he could with his heart going like a drum. "I don't think he'd wait for proof."
The god of war's jaw was clenched so tight a muscle was jumping in his cheek.
"What," Ares said, very slowly, "do you want?"
Percy held up the Shield of Ares.
"This," he said.
Ares stared at him.
"I keep the shield," Percy said. "You let me keep it. And I keep my mouth shut. About the bolt, about the helm, about the voice in your dreams. I won't tell my dad. I won't tell anybody. You do whatever you're going to do, and I'll do whatever I'm going to do, and we'll see who comes out on top." He paused. "And you give us the ride to Vegas, like you promised. And the information."
The god of war looked at him for a long, long time.
Percy could see him thinking about it. Weighing it. The fire behind his sunglasses flickered, calculating. Percy could almost see the thoughts moving behind it. Kill the mortal now. No. Zeus claimed him. Zeus would know. Zeus would come. Take the shield back by force. The mortal has shadows. And the sky. And something else. Something that walked out of a Gorgon's den alive and blew up the Furies on a bus and killed a god in a swamp.
And he's not wrong, Percy imagined Ares thinking. About the voice.
That was the part that made Ares hesitate longest. Percy saw it. A flicker, deep in the fire. Uncertainty.
He's not wrong.
"You've got guts, little brother," Ares said at last. Softly. "I'll give you that. More guts than any mortal I've met in a thousand years."
He uncrossed his arms.
"Fine," he said. "Keep it. Keep the shield. Consider it a gift. From one brother to another." The grin came back, slow and sharp and dangerous. "And I'll keep quiet too. About you. About your shadows and your sky and whatever that thing behind your eyes is. I won't tell my friend in the dark about you." He leaned in, close enough that Percy could feel the heat coming off him like a furnace. "For now."
"For now," Percy agreed.
"But understand something, little brother." Ares's voice dropped to a whisper. "This isn't over. You've just made yourself the most interesting thing in my world. And I always, always finish what I start."
"I know," Percy said. "I'm counting on it."
Ares laughed. A short, sharp bark of genuine surprise.
[HIDDEN QUEST COMPLETE: THE WAR GOD'S SECRET.]
[The Host leveraged knowledge of Ares's complicity to claim the Shield of Ares.]
[Item acquired: THE SHIELD OF ARES (Divine) — DEF +120. Aura of Dread: Enemies who strike the shield feel the terror of a thousand battlefields. Note: The god of war may attempt to reclaim this item.]
[CHA +2.]
[Note: Ares now regards the Host as a rival.]
[Great Sage notes: The Host has blackmailed a god. Great Sage was not consulted.]
Would you have said yes?
[No.]
That's why I didn't ask.
They walked back around the concession stand together. Ares strolled. Percy carried the shield.
The others were waiting exactly where he'd left them. Annabeth was white-faced and gripping her knife. Grover was trembling. Ezra was standing in front of both of them, Riptide drawn, like he was ready to fight a god if he had to.
They all stared at Percy, with the Shield of Ares on his arm.
"He's keeping it," Ares announced loudly, slinging a leg over his motorcycle. "My gift. To my little brother. Because I'm generous like that." He revved the engine, a sound like a dragon clearing its throat. "There's a truck behind the gas station on the highway. Big rig, full of animals headed for Vegas. Climb in the back and you'll be there by morning."
"And the information?" Percy said.
Ares looked at him over his sunglasses. The fire behind them burned.
"The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles," he said. "Crusty's Water Bed Palace. No. Wait. That's the other guy." He grinned. "DOA Recording Studios. West Hollywood. Ask for Charon. Bring cash." He looked at Ezra. "And kid. Before you go down there. You might want to swing by the beach. Santa Monica. I hear your daddy wants a word."
Ezra's mouth fell open.
Ares laughed and gunned the engine. The motorcycle roared off down the empty road, trailing fire and smoke and the smell of burning rubber. In about four seconds it was gone.
Silence.
Annabeth turned to Percy. Slowly. Her gray eyes were enormous.
"What," she said, "did you say to him?"
Percy looked down at the shield on his arm. At the battles hammered into the bronze, the burning cities, the dying soldiers.
"I told him I knew a secret," he said. "And that I'd keep it."
"What secret?"
He looked up at her.
"One that's going to matter a lot," he said quietly. "Later."
Annabeth looked at him for a long time. Then she shook her head, slowly, like she'd given up trying to understand him. But there was something almost like a smile at the corner of her mouth.
"You're the strangest person I have ever met," she said.
"Yeah," Percy said. "I get that a lot."
He slung the Shield of Ares onto his back, and they walked toward the highway.
Behind them, on the roof of the Tunnel of Love, a single camera swiveled to follow them all the way to the gate. When they were gone, its little red light blinked three times. And from somewhere deep in the earth, in a forge at the heart of a volcano, a lame god put down his hammer and smiled for the first time in a very long while.
They found the truck behind the gas station, exactly where Ares had said. It was a big eighteen-wheeler with Kindness International Animal Transport painted on the side in cheerful letters. When Grover put his ear to the back doors, he went pale.
"They're in there," he whispered. "A zebra. And a lion. And some antelope. They're scared. They're so scared. They haven't been fed in days." His hands were shaking. "Percy, they're being taken to Vegas to be... to be..."
"I know," Percy said.
He remembered this too. In his first life, they'd ridden in the back of this truck. Grover had cried all night. And at a rest stop in Las Vegas, Percy had snuck out and freed the animals, and sent them off into the desert.
He looked at the lock on the back doors. A big padlock. Steel.
He touched it with one finger.
[Static discharge.]
It fell apart.
Grover stared at him.
"We ride with them tonight," Percy said. "And in the morning, in Vegas, before the truck stops, we let them all go." He looked at the satyr. "Every single one, G-man. I promise."
Grover threw his arms around him so hard he nearly knocked the Shield of Ares off his back.
They climbed into the dark of the truck, into the smell of hay and fear and animal sweat. The zebra looked at them with huge frightened eyes. The lion growled from its cage. Grover went straight to it and started talking to it, low and soft, in the language of the wild. After a while the lion lay down and closed its eyes.
Percy sat down in the hay in the corner with Lupe in his lap and the Shield of Ares across his knees, and leaned his head back against the wall of the truck.
The engine rumbled to life. The truck pulled out onto the highway, heading west.
Vegas, he thought, foggy and slow and so, so tired. The Lotus Hotel.
In his first life, they'd lost five days in there. Five days that felt like an afternoon. They'd almost missed the solstice. They'd almost lost everything.
He thought about the Lotus Hotel. About the endless games and the endless food and the people trapped there for years, decades, without ever knowing.
About two kids in particular. A brother and sister in old-fashioned clothes, who'd been there since the 1940s.
Nico, he thought. Bianca.
And under that, slower, through the fog, an idea started to take shape. A dangerous one. A crazy one. The kind of idea that only made sense when you'd been awake for thirty hours and had just blackmailed a god.
The Lotus Hotel had cards. Special cards. LotusCash cards, they called them. Credit cards with no limit, that refilled themselves forever.
And somewhere back on the East Coast, there were three people he loved who'd promised to follow him into the world of gods and monsters. And there was a city that needed to be bought.
Percy Jackson fell asleep in the back of a truck full of frightened animals, with the Shield of Ares across his knees and a wolf cub on his chest.
He was smiling.