The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

wondered what his grandmother would say if she could see him.
    Stupid, Fai Zhang!
she would probably scold.
If all your friends were drinking poison, would you do it too?
    Frank went last. The taste of the green liquid reminded him of spoiled apple juice. He drained the chalice. It turned to smoke in his hands.
    Nico nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘Congratulations. Assuming the poison doesn’t kill us, we should be able to find our way through the Necromanteion’s first level.’
    ‘Just the
first
level?’ Piper asked.
    Nico turned to Hazel and gestured at the stairs. ‘After you, sister.’
    In no time, Frank felt completely lost. The stairs split in three different directions. As soon as Hazel chose a path, the stairs split again. They wound their way through interconnecting tunnels and rough-hewn burial chambers that all looked the same – the walls carved with dusty niches that might once have held bodies. The arches over the doors were painted with black cows, white poplar trees and owls.
    ‘I thought the owl was Minerva’s symbol,’ Jason murmured.
    ‘The screech owl is one of Hades’s sacred animals,’ Nico said. ‘Its cry is a bad omen.’
    ‘This way.’ Hazel pointed to a doorway that looked the same as all the others. ‘It’s the only one that won’t collapse on us.’
    ‘Good choice, then,’ Leo said.
    Frank began to feel like he was leaving the world of the living. His skin tingled, and he wondered if it was a side effect of the poison. The pouch with his firewood seemed heavier on his belt. In the eerie glow of their magic weapons, his friends looked like flickering ghosts.
    Cold air brushed against his face. In his mind, Ares and Mars had gone silent, but Frank thought he heard other voices whispering in the side corridors, beckoning him to veer off course, to come closer and listen to them speak.
    Finally they reached an archway carved in the shape of human skulls – or maybe they
were
human skulls embedded in the rock. In the purple light of Diocletian’s sceptre, the hollow eye sockets seemed to blink.
    Frank almost hit the ceiling when Hazel put a hand on his arm.
    ‘This is the entrance to the second level,’ she said. ‘I’d better take a look.’
    Frank hadn’t even realized that he’d moved in front of the doorway.
    ‘Uh, yeah …’ He made way for her.
    Hazel traced her fingers across the carved skulls. ‘No traps on the doorway, but … something is strange here. My underground sense is – is fuzzy, like someone is working against me, hiding what’s ahead of us.’
    ‘The sorceress that Hecate warned you about?’ Jason guessed. ‘The one Leo saw in his dream? What was her name?’
    Hazel chewed her lip. ‘It would be safer not to say her name. But stay alert. One thing I’m sure of: from this point on, the dead are stronger than the living.’
    Frank wasn’t sure how she knew that, but he believed her. The voices in the darkness seemed to whisper louder. He caught glimpses of movement in the shadows. From the way his friends’ eyes darted around, he guessed they were seeing things too.
    ‘Where are the monsters?’ he wondered aloud. ‘I thought Gaia had an army guarding the Doors.’
    ‘Don’t know,’ Jason said. His pale skin looked as green as the poison from the chalice. ‘At this point I’d almost prefer a straight-up fight.’
    ‘Careful what you wish for, man.’ Leo summoned a ball of fire to his hand, and for once Frank was glad to see the flames. ‘Personally, I’m hoping nobody’s home. We walk in, find Percy and Annabeth, destroy the Doors of Death and walk out. Maybe stop at the gift shop.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Frank said. ‘That’ll happen.’
    The tunnel shook. Rubble rained down from the ceiling.
    Hazel grabbed Frank’s hand. ‘That was close,’ she muttered. ‘These passageways won’t take much more.’
    ‘The Doors of Death just opened again,’ Nico said.
    ‘It’s happening like every fifteen minutes,’ Piper noted.
    ‘Every twelve,’ Nico corrected, though he didn’t explain how he knew. ‘We’d better hurry. Percy and Annabeth are close. They’re in danger. I can sense it.’
    As they travelled deeper, the corridors widened. Theceilings rose to six metres high, decorated with elaborate paintings of owls in the branches of white poplars. The extra space should have made Frank feel better, but all he could think about was the tactical situation. The tunnels were big enough to accommodate large monsters, even