The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

all its fantastic programs and data, but she had worse problems. Her Celestial bronze dagger was missing – the weapon she’d carried since she was seven years old.
    The realization almost broke her, but she couldn’t let herself dwell on it. Time to grieve later. What else did they have?
    No food, no water … basically no supplies at all.
    Yep. Off to a promising start.
    Annabeth glanced at Percy. He looked pretty bad. His dark hair was plastered across his forehead, his T-shirt ripped to shreds. His fingers were scraped raw from holding on to that ledge before they fell. Most worrisome of all, he was shivering and his lips were blue.
    ‘We should keep moving or we’ll get hypothermia,’ Annabeth said. ‘Can you stand?’
    He nodded. They both struggled to their feet.
    Annabeth put her arm around his waist, though she wasn’t sure who was supporting whom. She scanned their surroundings. Above, she saw no sign of the tunnel they’d fallen down. She couldn’t even see the cavern roof – justblood-coloured clouds floating in the hazy grey air. It was like staring through a thin mix of tomato soup and cement.
    The black-glass beach stretched inland about fifty yards, then dropped off the edge of a cliff. From where she stood, Annabeth couldn’t see what was below, but the edge flickered with red light as if illuminated by huge fires.
    A distant memory tugged at her – something about Tartarus and fire. Before she could think too much about it, Percy inhaled sharply.
    ‘Look.’ He pointed downstream.
    A hundred feet away, a familiar-looking baby-blue Italian car had crashed headfirst into the sand. It looked just like the Fiat that had smashed into Arachne and sent her plummeting into the pit.
    Annabeth hoped she was wrong, but how many Italian sports cars could there be in Tartarus? Part of her didn’t want to go anywhere near it, but she had to find out. She gripped Percy’s hand, and they stumbled towards the wreckage. One of the car’s tyres had come off and was floating in a back-water eddy of the Cocytus. The Fiat’s windows had shattered, sending brighter glass like frosting across the dark beach. Under the crushed hood lay the tattered, glistening remains of a giant silk cocoon – the trap that Annabeth had tricked Arachne into weaving. It was unmistakably empty. Slash marks in the sand made a trail downriver … as if something heavy, with multiple legs, had scuttled into the darkness.
    ‘She’s alive.’ Annabeth was so horrified, so outraged by the unfairness of it all, she had to suppress the urge to throw up.
    ‘It’s Tartarus,’ Percy said. ‘Monster home court. Down here, maybe they can’t be killed.’
    He gave Annabeth an embarrassed look, as if realizing he wasn’t helping team morale. ‘Or maybe she’s badly wounded, and she crawled away to die.’
    ‘Let’s go with that,’ Annabeth agreed.
    Percy was still shivering. Annabeth wasn’t feeling any warmer either, despite the hot, sticky air. The glass cuts on her hands were still bleeding, which was unusual for her. Normally, she healed fast. Her breathing got more and more laboured.
    ‘This place is killing us,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s
literally
going to kill us, unless …’
    Tartarus. Fire.
That distant memory came into focus. She gazed inland towards the cliff, illuminated by flames from below.
    It was an absolutely crazy idea. But it might be their only chance.
    ‘Unless what?’ Percy prompted. ‘You’ve got a brilliant plan, haven’t you?’
    ‘It’s a plan,’ Annabeth murmured. ‘I don’t know about brilliant. We need to find the River of Fire.’

VII
     

ANNABETH
     
    W HEN THEY REACHED THE LEDGE, Annabeth was sure she’d signed their death warrants.
    The cliff dropped more than eighty feet. At the bottom stretched a nightmarish version of the Grand Canyon: a river of fire cutting a path through a jagged obsidian crevasse, the glowing red current casting horrible shadows across the cliff faces.
    Even from the top of the canyon, the heat was intense. The chill of the River Cocytus hadn’t left Annabeth’s bones, but now her face felt raw and sunburnt. Every breath took more effort, as if her chest were filled with styrofoam peanuts. The cuts on her hands bled more rather than less. Annabeth’s ankle, which had almost healed, now seemed to be broken again. She’d taken off her makeshift cast, but now she regretted it. Each step made her wince.
    Assuming they could make it down to the