The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

Doors of Death.
    Once, the demons sped up in excitement and swarmed something that looked like a beached carcass on the riverbank. Percy couldn’t tell what it was – a fallen monster? An animal of some kind? The
empousai
attacked it with relish.
    When the demons moved on, Percy and Annabeth reached the spot and found nothing left except a few splintered bones and glistening stains drying in the heat of the river. Percy had no doubt the
empousai
would devour demigods with the same gusto.
    ‘Come on.’ He led Annabeth gently away from the scene. ‘We don’t want to lose them.’
    As they walked, Percy thought about the first time he’dfought the
empousa
Kelli at Goode High School’s freshman orientation, when he and Rachel Elizabeth Dare got trapped in the band hall. At the time, it had seemed like a hopeless situation. Now, he’d give anything to have a problem that simple. At least he’d been in the mortal world then. Here, there was nowhere to run.
    Wow. When he started looking back on the war with Kronos as the good old days – that was sad. He kept hoping things would get better for Annabeth and him, but their lives just got more and more dangerous, as if the Three Fates were up there spinning their futures with barbed wire instead of thread just to see how much two demigods could tolerate.
    After a few more miles, the
empousai
disappeared over a ridge. When Percy and Annabeth caught up, they found themselves at the edge of another massive cliff. The River Phlegethon spilled over the side in jagged tiers of fiery waterfalls. The demon ladies were picking their way down the cliff, jumping from ledge to ledge like mountain goats.
    Percy’s heart crept into his throat. Even if he and Annabeth reached the bottom of the cliff alive, they didn’t have much to look forward to. The landscape below them was a bleak ash-grey plain bristling with black trees, like insect hair. The ground was pocked with blisters. Every once in a while, a bubble would swell and burst, disgorging a monster like a larva from an egg.
    Suddenly Percy wasn’t hungry any more.
    All the newly formed monsters were crawling and hobbling in the same direction – towards a bank of black fog that swallowed the horizon like a storm front. The Phlegethonflowed in the same direction until about halfway across the plain, where it met another river of black water – maybe the Cocytus? The two floods combined in a steaming, boiling cataract and flowed on as one towards the black fog.
    The longer Percy looked into that storm of darkness, the less he wanted to go there. It could be hiding anything – an ocean, a bottomless pit, an army of monsters. But if the Doors of Death were in that direction it was their only chance to get home.
    He peered over the edge of the cliff.
    ‘Wish we could fly,’ he muttered.
    Annabeth rubbed her arms. ‘Remember Luke’s winged shoes? I wonder if they’re still down here somewhere.’
    Percy remembered. Those shoes had been cursed to drag their wearer into Tartarus. They’d almost taken his best friend, Grover. ‘I’d settle for a hang glider.’
    ‘Maybe not a good idea.’ Annabeth pointed. Above them, dark winged shapes spiralled in and out of the blood-red clouds.
    ‘ Furies ?’ Percy wondered.
    ‘Or some other kind of demon,’ Annabeth said. ‘Tartarus has thousands.’
    ‘Including the kind that eats hang gliders,’ Percy guessed. ‘Okay, so we climb.’
    He couldn’t see the
empousai
below them any more. They’d disappeared behind one of the ridges, but that didn’t matter. It was clear where he and Annabeth needed to go. Like all the maggot monsters crawling over the plains of Tartarus, they should head towards the dark horizon. Percy was just brimming with enthusiasm for that.

XIV
     

PERCY
     
    A S THEY STARTED DOWN THE CLIFF, Percy concentrated on the challenges at hand: keeping his footing, avoiding rockslides that would alert the
empousai
to their presence and of course making sure he and Annabeth didn’t plummet to their deaths.
    About halfway down the precipice, Annabeth said, ‘Stop, okay? Just a quick break.’
    Her legs wobbled so badly, Percy cursed himself for not calling a rest earlier.
    They sat together on a ledge next to a roaring fiery waterfall. Percy put his arm around Annabeth, and she leaned against him, shaking from exhaustion.
    He wasn’t much better. His stomach felt like it had shrunk to the size of a gumdrop. If they came across any more monster