The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

golden cords shot from the Neptune statue’s fingers. One barely missed Leo’s feet. Therest homed in on Jason, wrapping him like a rodeo calf and yanking him upside down.
    A bolt of lightning blasted the tines of Neptune’s trident, sending arcs of electricity up and down the statue, but the Kerkopes had already disappeared.
    ‘Bravo!’ Akmon applauded from a nearby café table. ‘You make a wonderful piñata, son of Jupiter!’
    ‘Yes!’ Passalos agreed. ‘Hercules hung us upside down once, you know. Oh, revenge is sweet!’
    Leo summoned a fireball. He lobbed it at Passalos, who was trying to juggle two pigeons and the Archimedes sphere.
    ‘Eek!’ The dwarf jumped free of the explosion, dropping the sphere and letting the pigeons fly.
    ‘Time to leave!’ Akmon decided.
    He tipped his bowler and sprang away, jumping from table to table. Passalos glanced at the Archimedes sphere, which had rolled between Leo’s feet.
    Leo summoned another fireball. ‘Try me,’ he snarled.
    ‘Bye!’ Passalos did a backflip and ran after his brother.
    Leo scooped up the Archimedes sphere and ran over to Jason, who was still hanging upside down, thoroughly hog-tied except for his sword arm. He was trying to cut the cords with his gold blade but having no luck.
    ‘Hold on,’ Leo said. ‘If I can find a release switch –’
    ‘Just go!’ Jason growled. ‘I’ll follow you when I get out of this.’
    ‘But –’
    ‘Don’t lose them!’
    The last thing Leo wanted was some alone time with the monkey dwarfs, but the Kerkopes were already disappearing around the far corner of the piazza. Leo left Jason hanging and ran after them.

XII
     

LEO
     
    T HE DWARFS DIDN’T TRY VERY HARD TO LOSE HIM, which made Leo suspicious. They stayed just at the edge of his vision, scampering over red-tiled rooftops, knocking over window boxes, whooping and hollering and leaving a trail of screws and nails from Leo’s tool belt – almost as if they
wanted
Leo to follow.
    He jogged after them, cursing every time his trousers fell down. He turned a corner and saw two ancient stone towers jutting into the sky, side by side, much taller than anything else in the neighbourhood – maybe mediaeval watch-towers? They leaned in different directions like gearshifts on a race car.
    The Kerkopes scaled the tower on the right. When they reached the top, they climbed around the back and disappeared.
    Had they gone inside? Leo could see some tiny windows at the top, covered with metal grates, but he doubted thosewould stop the dwarfs. He watched for a minute, but the Kerkopes didn’t reappear. Which meant Leo had to get up there and look for them.
    ‘Great,’ he muttered. No flying friend to carry him up. The ship was too far away to call for help. He could rig the Archimedes sphere into some sort of flying device, maybe, but only if he had his tool belt – which he didn’t. He scanned the neighbourhood, trying to think. Half a block down, a set of double glass doors opened and an old lady hobbled out, carrying plastic shopping bags.
    A grocery store? Hmm …
    Leo patted his pockets. To his amazement, he still had some euro notes from his time in Rome. Those stupid dwarfs had taken everything
except
his money.
    He ran for the store as fast as his zipperless trousers allowed.
    Leo scoured the aisles, looking for things he could use. He didn’t know the Italian for
Hello, where are your dangerous chemicals, please?
But that was probably just as well. He didn’t want to end up in an Italian jail.
    Fortunately, he didn’t need to read labels. He could tell just from picking up a toothpaste tube whether it contained potassium nitrate. He found charcoal. He found sugar and baking soda. The store sold matches and bug spray and aluminium foil. Pretty much everything he needed, plus a laundry cord he could use as a belt. He added some Italian junk food to the basket, just to sort of disguise his more suspicious purchases, then dumped his stuff at the till. A wide-eyed checkout lady asked him some questions he didn’t understand, but he managed to pay, get a bag and race out.
    He ducked into the nearest doorway where he could keep an eye on the towers. He started to work, summoning fire to dry out materials and do a little cooking that otherwise would have taken days to complete.
    Every once in a while he sneaked a look at the tower, but there was no sign of the dwarfs. Leo could only hope they were still up there. Making his arsenal took