The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

in the fog.
    The humming got louder, shaking the gravel at Annabeth’s feet. The noise seemed to be coming from immediately in front of them.
    ‘Ready?’ Bob murmured.
    Annabeth crouched, preparing to spring. ‘On three?’
    ‘One,’ Percy whispered. ‘Two –’
    A figure appeared in the fog. Bob raised his spear.
    ‘Wait!’ Annabeth shrieked.
    Bob froze just in time, the point of his spear hovering an inch above the head of a tiny calico kitten.
    ‘Rrow?’ said the kitten, clearly unimpressed by their attack plan. It butted its head against Bob’s foot and purred loudly.
    It seemed impossible, but the deep rumbling sound was coming from the kitten. As it purred, the ground vibrated and pebbles danced. The kitten fixed its yellow, lamp-like eyes on one particular rock, right between Annabeth’s feet, and pounced.
    The cat could’ve been a demon or a horrible Underworld monster in disguise. But Annabeth couldn’t help it. Shepicked it up and cuddled it. The little thing was bony under its fur, but otherwise it seemed perfectly normal.
    ‘How did …?’ She couldn’t even form the question. ‘What is a kitten doing …?’
    The cat grew impatient and squirmed out of her arms. It landed with a thump, padded over to Bob and started purring again as it rubbed against his boots.
    Percy laughed. ‘Somebody likes you, Bob.’
    ‘It must be a good monster.’ Bob looked up nervously. ‘Isn’t it?’
    Annabeth felt a lump in her throat. Seeing the huge Titan and this tiny kitten together, she suddenly felt insignificant compared to the vastness of Tartarus. This place had no respect for anything – good or bad, small or large, wise or unwise. Tartarus swallowed Titans and demigods and kittens indiscriminately.
    Bob knelt down and scooped up the cat. It fitted perfectly in Bob’s palm, but it decided to explore. It climbed the Titan’s arm, made itself at home on his shoulder and closed its eyes, purring like an earthmover. Suddenly its fur shimmered. In a flash, the kitten became a ghostly skeleton, as if it had stepped behind an X-ray machine. Then it was a regular kitten again.
    Annabeth blinked. ‘Did you see –?’
    ‘Yeah.’ Percy knitted his eyebrows. ‘Oh, man … I
know
that kitten. It’s one of the ones from the Smithsonian.’
    Annabeth tried to make sense of that. She’d never been to the Smithsonian with Percy … Then she recalled several years ago, when the Titan Atlas had captured her. Percy and Thalia had led a quest to rescue her. Along the way, they’dwatched Atlas raise some skeleton warriors from dragon teeth in the Smithsonian Museum.
    According to Percy, the Titan’s first attempt went wrong. He’d planted sabre-toothed tiger teeth by mistake and raised a batch of skeleton kittens from the soil.
    ‘
That
’s
one of them?’ Annabeth asked. ‘How did it get here?’
    Percy spread his hands helplessly. ‘Atlas told his servants to take the kittens away. Maybe they destroyed the cats and they were reborn in Tartarus? I don’t know.’
    ‘It’s cute,’ Bob said, as the kitten sniffed his ear.
    ‘But is it safe?’ Annabeth asked.
    The Titan scratched the kitten’s chin. Annabeth didn’t know if it was a good idea, carrying around a cat grown from a prehistoric tooth, but obviously it didn’t matter now. The Titan and the cat had bonded.
    ‘I will call him Small Bob,’ said Bob. ‘He is a good monster.’
    End of discussion. The Titan hefted his spear and they continued marching into the gloom.
    Annabeth walked in a daze, trying not to think about pizza. To keep herself distracted, she watched Small Bob the kitten pacing across Bob’s shoulders and purring, occasionally turning into a glowing kitty skeleton and then back to a calico fuzz-ball.
    ‘Here,’ Bob announced.
    He stopped so suddenly, Annabeth almost ran into him.
    Bob stared off to their left, as if deep in thought.
    ‘Is this the place?’ Annabeth asked. ‘Where we go
sideways
?’
    ‘Yes,’ Bob agreed. ‘Darker, then sideways.’
    Annabeth couldn’t tell if it was actually darker, but the air did seem colder and thicker, as if they’d stepped into a different microclimate. Again she was reminded of San Francisco, where you could walk from one neighbourhood to the next and the temperature might drop ten degrees. She wondered if the Titans had built their palace on Mount Tamalpais because the Bay Area reminded them of Tartarus.
    What a depressing thought. Only Titans would see such