The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

with them in person. That depends on
you
two.’
    Hazel’s mouth tasted like tin. She didn’t want to ask, but she had to. ‘How exactly does it depend on us?’
    ‘Well, obviously, we need only one set of demigods alive,’ Pasiphaë said. ‘The lucky two will be taken to Athens and sacrificed to Gaia at the Feast of Hope.’
    ‘Obviously,’ Leo muttered.
    ‘So will it be you two or your friends in the elevator?’ The sorceress spread her hands. ‘Let’s see who is still alive in twelve … actually, eleven minutes, now.’
    The cavern dissolved into darkness.

LXXIV
     

HAZEL
     
    H AZEL’S INTERNAL COMPASS SPUN WILDLY.
    She remembered when she had been very small, in New Orleans in the late 1930s, her mother had taken her to the dentist to get a bad tooth pulled. It was the first and only time Hazel had ever received ether. The dentist promised it would make her sleepy and relaxed, but Hazel felt like she was floating away from her own body, panicky and out of control. When the ether wore off, she’d been sick for three days.
    This felt like a massive dose of ether.
    Part of her knew she was still in the cavern. Pasiphaë stood only a few feet in front of them. Clytius waited silently at the Doors of Death.
    But layers of Mist enfolded Hazel, twisting her sense of reality. She took one step forward and bumped into a wall that shouldn’t have been there.
    Leo pressed his hands against the stone. ‘What the heck? Where are we?’
    A corridor stretched out to their left and right. Torches guttered in iron sconces. The air smelled of mildew, as in an old tomb. On Hazel’s shoulder, Gale barked angrily, digging her claws into Hazel’s collarbone.
    ‘Yes, I know,’ Hazel muttered to the weasel. ‘It’s an illusion.’
    Leo pounded on the wall. ‘Pretty solid illusion.’
    Pasiphaë laughed. Her voice sounded watery and far away. ‘Is it an illusion, Hazel Levesque, or something more? Don’t you see what I have created?’
    Hazel felt so off-balance she could barely stand, much less think straight. She tried to extend her senses, to see through the Mist and find the cavern again, but all she felt were tunnels splitting off in a dozen directions, going everywhere
except
forward.
    Random thoughts glinted in her mind, like gold nuggets coming to the surface:
Daedalus. The Minotaur locked away. Die slowly in my new domain.
    ‘The Labyrinth ,’ Hazel said. ‘She’s remaking the Labyrinth.’
    ‘
What
now?’ Leo had been tapping the wall with a ball-peen hammer, but he turned and frowned at her. ‘I thought the Labyrinth collapsed during that battle at Camp Half-Blood – like, it was connected to Daedalus’s life force or something, and then he died.’
    Pasiphaë’s voice clucked disapprovingly. ‘Ah, but
I
am still alive. You credit Daedalus with all the maze’s secrets?
I
breathed magical life into his Labyrinth. Daedalus was nothing compared to me – the immortal sorceress, daughter of Helios, sister of Circe! Now the Labyrinth will be
my
domain.’
    ‘It’s an illusion,’ Hazel insisted. ‘We just have to break through it.’
    Even as she said it, the walls seemed to grow more solid, the smell of mildew more intense.
    ‘Too late, too late,’ Pasiphaë crooned. ‘The maze is already awake. It will spread under the skin of the earth once more while your mortal world is levelled. You demigods … you
heroes …
will wander its corridors, dying slowly of thirst and fear and misery. Or perhaps, if I am feeling merciful, you will die quickly, in great pain!’
    Holes opened in the floor beneath Hazel’s feet. She grabbed Leo and pushed him aside as a row of spikes shot upward, impaling the ceiling.
    ‘Run!’ she yelled.
    Pasiphaë’s laughter echoed down the corridor. ‘Where are you going, young sorceress? Running from an illusion?’
    Hazel didn’t answer. She was too busy trying to stay alive. Behind them, row after row of spikes shot towards the ceiling with a persistent
thunk
,
thunk
,
thunk.
    She pulled Leo down a side corridor, leaped over a trip wire, then stumbled to a halt in front of a pit twenty feet across.
    ‘How deep is that?’ Leo gasped for breath. His trouser leg was ripped where one of the spikes had grazed him.
    Hazel’s senses told her that the pit was at least fifty feet straight down, with a pool of poison at the bottom. Could she trust her senses? Whether or not Pasiphaë had created a new Labyrinth, Hazel believed they were still in the same