The Lightning Thief

in the darkness, and the evil voice seemed to falter, just for a moment, before resuming its chant.
    I could almost make out words now, ancient, ancient words, older even than Greek. As if . . .
    “Magic,” I said.
    “We have to get out of here,” Annabeth said.
    Together, we dragged Grover to his hooves and started back up the tunnel. My legs wouldn’t move fast enough. My backpack weighed me down. The voice got louder and angrier behind us, and we broke into a run.
    Not a moment too soon.
    A cold blast of wind pulled at our backs, as if the entire pit were inhaling. For a terrifying moment, I lost ground, my feet slipping in the gravel. If we’d been any closer to the edge, we would’ve been sucked in.
    We kept struggling forward, and finally reached the top of the tunnel, where the cavern widened out into the Fields of Asphodel. The wind died. A wail of outrage echoed from deep in the tunnel. Something was not happy we’d gotten away.
    “What was that?” Grover panted, when we’d collapsed in the relative safety of a black poplar grove. “One of Hades’s pets?”
    Annabeth and I looked at each other. I could tell she was nursing an idea, probably the same one she’d gotten during the taxi ride to L.A., but she was too scared to share it. That was enough to terrify me.
    I capped my sword, put the pen back in my pocket. “Let’s keep going.” I looked at Grover. “Can you walk?”
    He swallowed. “Yeah, sure. I never liked those shoes, anyway.”
    He tried to sound brave about it, but he was trembling as badly as Annabeth and I were. Whatever was in that pit was nobody’s pet. It was unspeakably old and powerful. Even Echidna hadn’t given me that feeling. I was almost relieved to turn my back on that tunnel and head toward the palace of Hades.
    Almost.
    The Furies circled the parapets, high in the gloom. The outer walls of the fortress glittered black, and the two-story-tall bronze gates stood wide open.
    Up close, I saw that the engravings on the gates were scenes of death. Some were from modern times—an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a trench filled with gas mask– wearing soldiers, a line of African famine victims waiting with empty bowls—but all of them looked as if they’d been etched into the bronze thousands of years ago. I wondered if I was looking at prophecies that had come true.
    Inside the courtyard was the strangest garden I’d ever seen. Multicolored mushrooms, poisonous shrubs, and weird luminous plants grew without sunlight. Precious jewels made up for the lack of flowers, piles of rubies as big as my fist, clumps of raw diamonds. Standing here and there like frozen party guests were Medusa’s garden statues— petrified children, satyrs, and centaurs—all smiling grotesquely.
    In the center of the garden was an orchard of pomegranate trees, their orange blooms neon bright in the dark. “The garden of Persephone,” Annabeth said. “Keep walking.”
    I understood why she wanted to move on. The tart smell of those pomegranates was almost overwhelming. I had a sudden desire to eat them, but then I remembered the story of Persephone. One bite of Underworld food, and we would never be able to leave. I pulled Grover away to keep him from picking a big juicy one.
    We walked up the steps of the palace, between black columns, through a black marble portico, and into the house of Hades. The entry hall had a polished bronze floor, which seemed to boil in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling, just the cavern roof, far above. I guess they never had to worry about rain down here.
    Every side doorway was guarded by a skeleton in military gear. Some wore Greek armor, some British redcoat uniforms, some camouflage with tattered American flags on the shoulders. They carried spears or muskets or M-16s. None of them bothered us, but their hollow eye sockets followed us as we walked down the hall, toward the big set of doors at the opposite end.
    Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.
    “You know,” Grover mumbled, “I bet Hades doesn’t have trouble with door-to-door salesmen.”
    My backpack weighed a ton now. I couldn’t figure out why. I wanted to open it, check to see if I had somehow picked up a stray bowling ball, but this wasn’t the time.
    “Well, guys,” I said. “I suppose we should . . . knock?”
    A hot wind blew down the corridor, and the doors swung open. The