Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Demigod Files

and Deimos.
    “They’re minor gods,” she said. “Phobos is fear. Deimos is terror.”
    “What’s the difference?”
    She frowned. “Deimos is bigger and uglier, I guess. He’s good at freaking out entire crowds. Phobos is more, like, personal. He can get inside your head.”
    “That’s where they get the word phobia ?”
    “Yeah,” she grumbled. “He’s so proud of that. All those phobias named after him. The jerk.”
    “So why don’t they want you driving the chariot?”
    “It’s usually a ritual just for Ares’s sons when they turn fifteen. I’m the first daughter to get a shot in a long time.”
    “Good for you.”
    “Tell that to Phobos and Deimos. They hate me. I’ve got to get the chariot back to the temple.”
    “Where is the temple?”
    “Pier 86. The Intrepid .”
    “Oh.” It made sense, now that I thought about it. I’d never actually been on board the old aircraft carrier, but I knew they used it as some kind of military museum. It probably had a bunch of guns and bombs and other dangerous toys. Just the kind of place a war god would want to hang out.
    “We’ve got maybe four hours before sunset,” I guessed. “That should be enough time if we can find the chariot.”
    “But what did Phobos mean, ‘over the water’? We’re on an island, for Zeus’s sake. That could be any direction!”
    “He said something about wild animals,” I remembered. “Little wild animals.”
    “A zoo?”
    I nodded. A zoo over the water could be the one in Brooklyn, or maybe . . . someplace harder to get to, with little wild animals. Someplace nobody would ever think to look for a war chariot.
    “Staten Island,” I said. “They’ve got a small zoo.”
    “Maybe,” Clarisse said. “That sounds like the kind of out-of-the-way place Phobos and Deimos would stash something. But if we’re wrong—”
    “We don’t have time to be wrong.”
    We hopped off the train at Times Square and caught the Number 1 downtown, toward the ferry terminal.
    We boarded the Staten Island Ferry at three thirty, along with a bunch of tourists, who crowded the railings of the top deck, snapping pictures as we passed the Statue of Liberty.
    “He modeled that after his mom,” I said, looking up at the statue.
    Clarisse frowned at me. “Who?”
    “Bartholdi,” I said. “The dude who made the Statue of Liberty. He was a son of Athena, and he designed it to look like his mom. That’s what Annabeth told me, anyway.”
    Clarisse rolled her eyes. Annabeth was my best friend and a huge nut when it came to architecture and monuments. I guess her egghead facts rubbed off on me sometimes.
    “Useless,” Clarisse said. “If it doesn’t help you fight, it’s useless information.”
    I could’ve argued with her, but just then the ferry lurched like it had hit a rock. Tourists spilled forward, tumbling into each other. Clarisse and I ran to the front of the boat. The water below us started to boil. Then the head of a sea serpent erupted from the bay.
    The monster was at least as big as the boat. It was gray and green with a head like a crocodile and razor-sharp teeth. It smelled . . . well, like something that had just come up from the bottom of New York Harbor. Riding on its neck was a bulky guy in black Greek armor. His face was covered with ugly scars, and he held a javelin in his hand.
    “Deimos!” Clarisse yelled.
    “Hello, sister!” His smile was almost as horrible as the serpent’s. “Care to play?”
    The monster roared. Tourists screamed and scattered. I don’t know exactly what they saw. The Mist usually prevents mortals from seeing monsters in their true form, but whatever they saw, they were terrified.
    “Leave them alone!” I yelled.
    “Or what , son of the sea god?” Deimos sneered. “My brother tells me you’re a wimp! Besides, I love terror. I live on terror!”
    He spurred the sea serpent into head-butting the ferry, which sloshed backward. Alarms blared. Passengers fell over each other trying to get away. Deimos laughed with delight.
    “That’s it,” I grumbled. “Clarisse, grab on.”
    “What?”
    “Grab on to my neck. We’re going for a ride.”
    She didn’t protest. She grabbed on to me, and I said, “One, two, three—JUMP!”
    We leaped off the top deck and straight into the bay, but we were only under water for a moment. I felt the power of the ocean surging through me. I willed the water to swirl around me, building force until we burst out of the bay on top of a