The Battle of the Labyrinth

maybe this was how he tortured people. He embarrassed them to death riding around in the moo-mobile.
    Nico sat in the very back, probably so he could keep an eye on us. Eurytion crawled in next to him with his spiked club and pulled his cowboy hat over his eyes like he was going to take a nap. Orthus jumped in the front seat next to Geryon and began barking happily in two-part harmony.
    Annabeth, Tyson, Grover, and I took the middle two cars.
    “We have a huge operation!” Geryon boasted as the moo-mobile lurched forward. “Horses and cattle mostly, but all sorts of exotic varieties, too.”
    We came over a hill, and Annabeth gasped. “Hippalektryons? I thought they were extinct!”
    At the bottom of the hill was a fenced-in pasture with a dozen of the weirdest animals I’d ever seen. Each had the front half of a horse and the back half of a rooster. Their rear feet were huge yellow claws. They had feathery tails and red wings. As I watched, two of them got in a fight over a pile of seed. They reared up on their back legs and whinnied and flapped their wings at each other until the smaller one galloped away, its rear bird legs putting a little hop in its step.
    “Rooster ponies,” Tyson said in amazement. “Do they lay eggs?”
    “Once a year!” Geryon grinned in the rearview mirror. “Very much in demand for omelettes!”
    “That’s horrible!” Annabeth said. “They must be an endangered species!”
    Geryon waved his hand. “Gold is gold, darling. And you haven’t tasted the omelettes.”
    “That’s not right,” Grover murmured, but Geryon just kept narrating the tour.
    “Now, over here,” he said, “we have our fire-breathing horses, which you may have seen on your way in. They’re bred for war, naturally.”
    “What war?” I asked.
    Geryon grinned slyly. “Oh, whichever one comes along. And over yonder, of course, are our prize red cows.”
    Sure enough, hundreds of the cherry-colored cattle were grazing the side of a hill.
    “So many,” Grover said.
    “Yes, well, Apollo is too busy to see to them,” Geryon explained, “so he subcontracts to us. We breed them vigorously because there’s such a demand.”
    “For what?” I asked.
    Geryon raised an eyebrow. “Meat, of course! Armies have to eat.”
    “You kill the sacred cows of the sun god for hamburger meat?” Grover said. “That’s against the ancient laws!”
    “Oh, don’t get so worked up, satyr. They’re just animals.”
    “Just animals!”
    “Yes, and if Apollo cared, I’m sure he would tell us.”
    “If he knew,” I muttered.
    Nico sat forward. “I don’t care about any of this, Geryon. We had business to discuss, and this wasn’t it!”
    “All in good time, Mr. di Angelo. Look over here; some of my exotic game.”
    The next field was ringed in barbed wire. The whole area was crawling with giant scorpions.
    “Triple G Ranch,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Your mark was on the crates at camp. Quintus got his scorpions from you.”
    “Quintus . . .” Geryon mused. “Short gray hair, muscular, swordsman?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Never heard of him,” Geryon said. “Now, over here are my prize stables! You must see them.”
    I didn’t need to see them, because as soon as we got within three hundred yards I started to smell them. Near the banks of a green river was a horse corral the size of a football field. Stables lined one side of it. About a hundred horses were milling around in the muck—and when I say muck, I mean horse poop. It was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen, like a poop blizzard had come through and dumped four feet of the stuff overnight. The horses were really gross from wading through it, and the stables were just as bad. It reeked like you would not believe—worse than the garbage boats on the East River.
    Even Nico gagged. “What is that?”
    “My stables!” Geryon said. “Well, actually they belong to Aegeas, but we watch over them for a small monthly fee. Aren’t they lovely?”
    “They’re disgusting!” Annabeth said.
    “Lots of poop,” Tyson observed.
    “How can you keep animals like that?” Grover cried.
    “Y’all gettin’ on my nerves,” Geryon said. “These are flesh-eating horses, see? They like these conditions.”
    “Plus, you’re too cheap to have them cleaned,” Eurytion mumbled from under his hat.
    “Quiet!” Geryon snapped. “All right, perhaps the stables are a bit challenging to clean. Perhaps they do make me nauseous when the wind blows