The Lightning Thief

could suggest taking cover, they shot, but not at us. They fired at each other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk. Then smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the main strands, making a net.
    “We have to get out,” I said.
    “Duh!” Annabeth said.
    I grabbed the shield and we ran, but going up the slope of the pool was not as easy as going down.
    “Come on!” Grover shouted.
    He was trying to hold open a section of the net for us, but wherever he touched it, the golden threads started to wrap around his hands.
    The Cupids’ heads popped open. Out came video cameras. Spotlights rose up all around the pool, blinding us with illumination, and a loudspeaker voice boomed: “Live to Olympus in one minute . . . Fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight . . .”
    “Hephaestus!” Annabeth screamed. “I’m so stupid! Eta is ‘H.’ He made this trap to catch his wife with Ares. Now we’re going to be broadcast live to Olympus and look like absolute fools!”
    We’d almost made it to the rim when the row of mirrors opened like hatches and thousands of tiny metallic . . . things poured out.
    Annabeth screamed.
    It was an army of wind-up creepy-crawlies: bronze-gear bodies, spindly legs, little pincer mouths, all scuttling toward us in a wave of clacking, whirring metal.
    “Spiders!” Annabeth said. “Sp—sp—aaaah!”
    I’d never seen her like this before. She fell backward in terror and almost got overwhelmed by the spider robots before I pulled her up and dragged her back toward the boat.
    The things were coming out from all around the rim now, millions of them, flooding toward the center of the pool, completely surrounding us. I told myself they probably weren’t programmed to kill, just corral us and bite us and make us look stupid. Then again, this was a trap meant for gods. And we weren’t gods.
    Annabeth and I climbed into the boat. I started kicking away the spiders as they swarmed aboard. I yelled at Annabeth to help me, but she was too paralyzed to do much more than scream.
    “Thirty, twenty-nine,” called the loudspeaker.
    The spiders started spitting out strands of metal thread, trying to tie us down. The strands were easy enough to break at first, but there were so many of them, and the spiders just kept coming. I kicked one away from Annabeth’s leg and its pincers took a chunk out of my new surf shoe.
    Grover hovered above the pool in his flying sneakers, trying to pull the net loose, but it wouldn’t budge.
    Think, I told myself. Think.
    The Tunnel of Love entrance was under the net. We could use it as an exit, except that it was blocked by a million robot spiders.
    “Fifteen, fourteen,” the loudspeaker called.
    Water, I thought. Where does the ride’s water come from?
    Then I saw them: huge water pipes behind the mirrors, where the spiders had come from. And up above the net, next to one of the Cupids, a glass-windowed booth that must be the controller’s station.
    “Grover!” I yelled. “Get into that booth! Find the ‘on’ switch!”
    “But—”
    “Do it!” It was a crazy hope, but it was our only chance. The spiders were all over the prow of the boat now. Annabeth was screaming her head off. I had to get us out of there.
    Grover was in the controller’s booth now, slamming away at the buttons.
    “Five, four—”
    Grover looked up at me hopelessly, raising his hands. He was letting me know that he’d pushed every button, but still nothing was happening.
    I closed my eyes and thought about waves, rushing water, the Mississippi River. I felt a familiar tug in my gut. I tried to imagine that I was dragging the ocean all the way to Denver.
    “Two, one, zero !”
    Water exploded out of the pipes. It roared into the pool, sweeping away the spiders. I pulled Annabeth into the seat next to me and fastened her seat belt just as the tidal wave slammed into our boat, over the top, whisking the spiders away and dousing us completely, but not capsizing us. The boat turned, lifted in the flood, and spun in circles around the whirlpool.
    The water was full of short-circuiting spiders, some of them smashing against the pool’s concrete wall with such force they burst.
    Spotlights glared down at us. The Cupid-cams were rolling, live to Olympus.
    But I could only concentrate on controlling the boat. I willed it to ride the current, to keep away