The Titan's Curse - Banishing

“She’s dead.” He closed his eyes. His whole body trembled with rage. “I should’ve known it earlier. She’s in the Fields of Asphodel, standing before the judges right now, being evaluated. I can feel it.”

“What do you mean, you can feel it?”

Before he could answer, I heard a new sound behind me. A hissing, clattering noise I recognized all too well.

I drew my sword and Nico gasped. I whirled and found myself facing four skeleton warriors. They grinned fleshless grins and advanced with swords drawn. I wasn’t sure how they’d made it inside the camp, but it didn’t matter. I’d never get help in time.

“You’re trying to kill me!” Nico screamed. “You brought these . . . these things?”

“No! I mean, yes, they followed me, but no! Nico, run. They can’t be destroyed.”

“I don’t trust you!”

The first skeleton charged. I knocked aside its blade, but the other three kept coming. I sliced one in half, but immediately it began to knit back together. I knocked another’s head off but it just kept fighting.

“Run, Nico!” I yelled. “Get help!”

“No!” He pressed his hands to his ears.

I couldn’t fight four at once, not if they wouldn’t die. I slashed, whirled, blocked, jabbed, but they just kept advancing. It was only a matter of seconds before the zombies overpowered me.

“No!” Nico shouted louder. “Go away!”

The ground rumbled beneath me. The skeletons froze. I rolled out of the way just as a crack opened at the feet of the four warriors. The ground ripped apart like a snapping mouth. Flames erupted from the fissure, and the earth swallowed the skeletons in one loud CRUNCH!

Silence.

In the place where the skeletons had stood, a twenty-foot-long scar wove across the marble floor of the pavilion. Otherwise there was no sign of the warriors.

Awestruck, I looked to Nico. “How did you—”

“Go away!” he yelled. “I hate you! I wish you were dead!”

The ground didn’t swallow me up, but Nico ran down the steps, heading toward the woods. I started to follow but slipped and fell to the icy steps. When I got up, I noticed what I’d slipped on.

I picked up the god statue Bianca had retrieved from the junkyard for Nico. The only statue he didn’t have, she’d said. A last gift from his sister.

I stared at it with dread, because now I understood why the face looked familiar. I’d seen it before.

It was a statue of Hades, Lord of the Dead.


- The Titan's Curse, Chapter 20