The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

poison rolled towards her in tiny waves and rivulets.
    Akhlys shrieked. ‘What is this?’
    ‘Poison,’ Percy said. ‘That’s your speciality, right?’
    He stood, his anger growing hotter in his gut. As the flood of venom rolled towards the goddess, the fumes began to make her cough. Her eyes watered even more.
    Oh, good, Percy thought. More water.
    Percy imagined her nose and throat filling with her own tears.
    Akhlys gagged. ‘I –’ The tide of venom reached her feet, sizzling like droplets on a hot iron. She wailed and stumbled back.
    ‘Percy!’ Annabeth called.
    She’d retreated to the edge of the cliff, even though the poison wasn’t after her. She sounded terrified. It took Percy a moment to realize she was terrified of
him
.
    ‘Stop …’ she pleaded, her voice hoarse.
    He didn’t want to stop. He wanted to choke this goddess. He wanted to watch her drown in her own poison. He wanted to see just how much misery Misery could take.
    ‘Percy, please …’ Annabeth’s face was still pale and corpse-like, but her eyes were the same as always. The anguish in them made Percy’s anger fade.
    He turned to the goddess. He willed the poison to recede, creating a small path of retreat along the edge of the cliff.
    ‘Leave!’ he bellowed.
    For an emaciated ghoul, Akhlys could run pretty fast whenshe wanted to. She scrambled along the path, fell on her face and got up again, wailing as she sped into the dark.
    As soon as she was gone, the pools of poison evaporated. The plants withered to dust and blew away.
    Annabeth stumbled towards him. She looked like a corpse wreathed in smoke, but she felt solid enough when she gripped his arms.
    ‘Percy, please don’t ever …’ Her voice broke in a sob. ‘Some things aren’t meant to be controlled. Please.’
    His whole body tingled with power, but the anger was subsiding. The broken glass inside him was beginning to smooth at the edges.
    ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, okay.’
    ‘We have to get away from this cliff,’ Annabeth said. ‘If Akhlys brought us here as some kind of sacrifice …’
    Percy tried to think. He was getting used to moving with the Death Mist around him. He felt more solid, more like himself. But his mind still felt stuffed with cotton wool.
    ‘She said something about feeding us to the night,’ he remembered. ‘What was that about?’
    The temperature dropped. The abyss before them seemed to exhale.
    Percy grabbed Annabeth and backed away from the edge as a presence emerged from the void – a form so vast and shadowy he felt like he understood the concept of
dark
for the first time.
    ‘I imagine,’ said the darkness, in a feminine voice as soft as coffin lining, ‘that she meant Night, with a capital N. After all, I am the only one.’

XLIX
     

LEO
     
    T HE WAY L EO FIGURED IT, he spent more time crashing than he did flying.
    If there were a rewards card for frequent crashers, he’d be, like, double platinum level.
    He regained consciousness as he was free-falling through the clouds. He had a hazy memory of Khione taunting him right before he got shot into the sky. He hadn’t actually seen her, but he could never forget that snow witch’s voice. He had no idea how long he’d been gaining altitude, but at some point he must have passed out from the cold and the lack of oxygen. Now he was on his way down, heading for his biggest crash ever.
    The clouds parted around him. He saw the glittering sea far,
far
below. No sign of the
Argo II
. No sign of any coastline, familiar or otherwise, except for one tiny island at the horizon.
    Leo couldn’t fly. He had a couple of minutes at most before he’d hit the water and go
ker-splat
.
    He decided he didn’t like that ending to the Epic Ballad of Leo.
    He was still clutching the Archimedes sphere, which didn’t surprise him. Unconscious or not, he would never let go of his most valuable possession. With a little manoeuvring, he managed to pull some duct tape from his tool belt and strap the sphere to his chest. That made him look like a low-budget Iron Man, but at least he had both hands free. He started to work, furiously tinkering with the sphere, pulling out anything he thought would help from his magic tool belt: a drop cloth, metal extenders, some string and grommets.
    Working while falling was almost impossible. The wind roared in his ears. It kept ripping tools, screws and canvas out of his hands, but finally he constructed a makeshift frame. He popped open a