On top of all this, Jason"s worst memories were flooding back. He knew for certain he"d done many dangerous things in his life, but he"d never been closer to death than he was right now.
The enemy was beautiful. Khione smiled, her dark eyes glittering, as a dagger of ice grew in her hand.
"What"ve you done?" Jason demanded.
"Oh, so many things," the snow G.o.ddess purred. "Your sister"s not dead, if that"s what you mean. She and her Hunters will make fine toys for our wolves. I thought we"d defrost them one at a time and hunt them down for amus.e.m.e.nt. Let them be the prey for once."
The wolves snarled appreciatively.
"Yes, my dears." Khione kept her eyes on Jason. "Your sister almost killed their king, you know. Lycaon"s off in a cave somewhere, no doubt licking his wounds, but his minions have joined us to take revenge for their master. And soon Porphyrion will arise, and we shall rule the world."
"Traitor!" Hera shouted. "You meddlesome, D-list G.o.ddess! You aren"t worthy to pour my wine, much less rule the world."
Khione sighed. "Tiresome as ever, Queen Hera. I"ve been wanting to shut you up for millennia."
Khione waved her hand, and ice encased the prison, sealing in the s.p.a.ces between the earthen tendrils.
"That"s better," the snow G.o.ddess said. "Now, demiG.o.ds, about your death-"
"You"re the one who tricked Hera into coming here," Jason said. "You gave Zeus the idea of closing Olympus."
The wolves snarled, and the storm spirits whinnied, ready to attack, but Khione held up her hand. "Patience, my loves. If he wants to talk, what matter? The sun is setting, and time is on our side. Of course, Jason Grace. Like snow, my voice is quiet and gentle, and very cold. It"s easy for me to whisper to the other G.o.ds, especially when I am only confirming their own deepest fears. I also whispered in Aeolus"s ear that he should issue an order to kill demiG.o.ds. It is a small service for Gaea, but I"m sure I will be well rewarded when her sons the giants come to power."
"You could"ve killed us in Quebec," Jason said. "Why let us live?"
Khione wrinkled her nose. "Messy business, killing you in my father"s house, especially when he insists on meeting all visitors. I did try, you remember. It would"ve been lovely if he"d agreed to turn you to ice. But once he"d given you guarantee of safe pa.s.sage, I couldn"t openly disobey him. My father is an old fool. He lives in fear of Zeus and Aeolus, but he"s still powerful. Soon enough, when my new masters have awakened, I will depose Boreas and take the throne of the North Wind, but not just yet. Besides, my father did have a point. Your quest was suicidal. I fully expected you to fail."
"And to help us with that," Leo said, "you knocked our dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Those frozen wires in his head-that was your fault. You"re gonna pay for that."
"You"re also the one who kept Enceladus informed about us," Piper added. "We"ve been plagued by snowstorms the whole trip."
"Yes, I feel so close to all of you now!" Khione said. "Once you made it past Omaha, I decided to asked Lycaon to track you down so Jason could die here, at the Wolf House." Khione smiled at him. "You see, Jason, your blood spilled on this sacred ground will taint it for generations. Your demiG.o.d brethren will be outraged, especially when they find the bodies of these two from Camp Half-Blood. They"ll believe the Greeks have conspired with giants. It will be ... delicious."
Piper and Leo didn"t seem to understand what she was saying. But Jason knew. His memories were returning enough for him to realize how dangerously effective Khione"s plan could be.
"You"ll set demiG.o.ds against demiG.o.ds," he said.
"It"s so easy!" said Khione. "As I told you, I only encourage what you would do anyway."
"But why?" Piper spread her hands. "Khione, you"ll tear the world apart. The giants will destroy everything. You don"t want that. Call off your monsters."
Khione hesitated, then laughed. "Your persuasive powers are improving, girl. But I am a G.o.ddess. You can"t charm-speak me. We wind G.o.ds are creatures of chaos! I"ll overthrow Aeolus and let the storms run free. If we destroy the mortal world, all the better! They never honored me, even in Greek times. Humans and their talk of global warming. Pah! I"ll cool them down quickly enough. When we retake the ancient places, I will cover the Acropolis in snow."
"The ancient places." Leo"s eyes widened. "That"s what Enceladus meant about destroy the roots of the G.o.ds. He meant Greece."
"You could join me, son of Hephaestus," Khione said. "I know you find me beautiful. It would be enough for my plan if these other two were to die. Reject that ridiculous destiny the Fates have given you. Live and be my champion, instead. Your skills would be quite useful."
Leo looked stunned. He glanced behind him, like Khione might be talking to somebody else. For a second Jason was worried. He figured Leo didn"t have beautiful G.o.ddesses make him offers like this every day.
Then Leo laughed so hard, he doubled over. "Yeah, join you. Right. Until you get bored of me and turn me into a Leosicle? Lady, n.o.body messes with my dragon and gets away with it. I can"t believe I thought you were hot."
Khione"s face turned red. "Hot? You dare insult me? I am cold, Leo Valdez. Very, very cold."
She shot a blast of wintry sleet at the demiG.o.ds, but Leo held up his hand. A wall of fire roared to life in front of them, and the snow dissolved in a steamy cloud.
Leo grinned. "See, lady, that"s what happens to snow in Texas. It-freaking-melts."
Khione hissed. "Enough of this. Hera is failing. Porphyrion is rising. Kill the demiG.o.ds. Let them be our king"s first meal!"
Jason hefted his icy wooden plank-a stupid weapon to die fighting with-and the monsters charged.
A WOLF LAUNCHED ITSELF AT JASON. He stepped back and swung his sc.r.a.p wood into the beast"s snout with a satisfying crack. Maybe only silver could kill it, but a good old-fashioned board could still give it a Tylenol headache.
He turned toward the sound of hooves and saw a storm spirit horse bearing down on him. Jason concentrated and summoned the wind. Just before the spirit could trample him, Jason launched himself into the air, grabbed the horse"s smoky neck, and pirouetted onto its back.
The storm spirit reared. It tried to shake Jason, then tried to dissolve into mist to lose him; but somehow Jason stayed on. He willed the horse to remain in solid form, and the horse seemed unable to refuse. Jason could feel it fighting against him. He could sense its raging thoughts-complete chaos straining to break free. It took all Jason"s willpower to impose his own wishes and bring the horse under control. He thought about Aeolus, overseeing thousands and thousands of spirits like this, some much worse. No wonder the Master of the Winds had gone a little mad after centuries of that pressure. But Jason had only one spirit to master, and he had to win.
"You"re mine now," Jason said.
The horse bucked, but Jason held fast. Its mane flickered as it circled around the empty pool, its hooves causing miniature thunderstorms-tempests-whenever they touched.
"Tempest?" Jason said. "Is that your name?"
The horse spirit shook its mane, evidently pleased to be recognized.
"Fine," Jason said. "Now, let"s fight."
He charged into battle, swinging his icy piece of wood, knocking aside wolves and plunging straight through other venti. Tempest was a strong spirit, and every time he plowed through one of his brethren, he discharged so much electricity, the other spirit vaporized into a harmless cloud of mist.
Through the chaos, Jason caught glimpses of his friends. Piper was surrounded by Earthborn, but she seemed to be holding her own. She was so impressive-looking as she fought, almost glowing with beauty, that the Earthborn stared at her in awe, forgetting that they were supposed to kill her. They"d lower their clubs and watch dumbfounded as she smiled and charged them. They"d smile back-until she sliced them apart with her dagger, and they melted into mounds of mud.
Leo had taken on Khione herself. While fighting a G.o.ddess should"ve been suicide, Leo was the right man for the job. She kept summoning ice daggers to throw at him, blasts of winter air, tornadoes of snow. Leo burned through all of it. His whole body flickered with red tongues of flame like he"d been doused with gasoline. He advanced on the G.o.ddess, using two silver-tipped ball-peen hammers to smash any monsters that got in his way.
Jason realized that Leo was the only reason they were still alive. His fiery aura was heating up the whole courtyard, countering Khione"s winter magic. Without him, they would"ve been frozen like the Hunters long ago. Wherever Leo went, ice melted off the stones. Even Thalia started to defrost a little when Leo stepped near her.
Khione slowly backed away. Her expression went from enraged to shocked to slightly panicked as Leo got closer.
Jason was running out of enemies. Wolves lay in dazed heaps. Some slunk away into the ruins, yelping from their wounds. Piper stabbed the last Earthborn, who toppled to the ground in a pile of sludge. Jason rode Tempest through the last ventus, breaking it into vapor. Then he wheeled around and saw Leo bearing down on the G.o.ddess of snow.
"You"re too late," Khione snarled. "He"s awake! And don"t think you"ve won anything here, demiG.o.ds. Hera"s plan will never work. You"ll be at each other"s throats before you can ever stop us."
Leo set his hammers ablaze and threw them at the G.o.ddess, but she turned into snow-a white powdery image of herself. Leo"s hammers slammed into the snow woman, breaking it into a steaming mound of mush.
Piper was breathing hard, but she smiled up at Jason. "Nice horse."
Tempest reared on his hind legs, arcing electricity across his hooves. A complete show-off.
Then Jason heard a cracking sound behind him. The melting ice on Hera"s cage sloughed off in a curtain of slush, and the G.o.ddess called, "Oh, don"t mind me! Just the queen of the heavens, dying over here!"
Jason dismounted and told Tempest to stay put. The three demiG.o.ds jumped into the pool and ran to the spire.
Leo frowned. "Uh, Ta Callida, are you getting shorter?"
"No, you dolt! The earth is claiming me. Hurry!"
As much as Jason disliked Hera, what he saw inside the cage alarmed him. Not only was Hera sinking, the ground was rising around her like water in a tank. Liquid rock had already covered her shins. "The giant wakes!" Hera warned. "You only have seconds!"
"On it," Leo said. "Piper, I need your help. Talk to the cage."
"What?" she said.
"Talk to it. Use everything you"ve got. Convince Gaea to sleep. Lull her into a daze. Just slow her down, try to get the tendrils to loosen while I-"
"Right!" Piper cleared her throat and said, "Hey, Gaea. Nice night, huh? Boy, I"m tired. How about you? Ready for some sleep?"
The more she talked, the more confident she sounded. Jason felt his own eyes getting heavy, and he had to force himself not to focus on her words. It seemed to have some effect on the cage. The mud was rising more slowly. The tendrils seemed to soften just a little-becoming more like tree root than rock. Leo pulled a circular saw out of his tool belt. How it fit in there, Jason had no idea. Then Leo looked at the cord and grunted in frustration. "I don"t have anywhere to plug it in!"
The spirit horse Tempest jumped into the pit and whinnied.
"Really?" Jason asked.
Tempest dipped his head and trotted over to Leo. Leo looked dubious, but he held up the plug, and a breeze whisked it into the horse"s flank. Lighting sparked, connecting with the p.r.o.ngs of the plug, and the circular saw whirred to life.
"Sweet!" Leo grinned. "Your horse comes with AC outlets!"
Their good mood didn"t last long. On the other side of the pool, the giant"s spire crumbled with a sound like a tree snapping in half. Its outer sheath of tendrils exploded from the top down, raining stone and wood shards as the giant shook himself free and climbed out of the earth.
Jason hadn"t thought anything could be scarier than Enceladus.
He was wrong.
Porphyrion was even taller, and even more ripped. He didn"t radiate heat, or show any signs of breathing fire, but there was something more terrible about him-a kind of strength, even magnetism, as if the giant were so huge and dense he had his own gravitational field.
Like Enceladus, the giant king was humanoid from the waist up, clad in bronze armor, and from the waist down he had scaly dragon"s legs; but his skin was the color of lima beans. His hair was green as summer leaves, braided in long locks and decorated with weapons-daggers, axes, and full-size swords, some of them bent and b.l.o.o.d.y-maybe trophies taken from demiG.o.ds eons before. When the giant opened his eyes, they were blank white, like polished marble. He took a deep breath.
"Alive!" he bellowed. "Praise to Gaea!"
Jason made a heroic little whimpering sound he hoped his friends couldn"t hear. He was very sure no demiG.o.d could solo this guy. Porphyrion could lift mountains. He could crush Jason with one finger.
"Leo," Jason said.
"Huh?" Leo"s mouth was wide open. Even Piper seemed dazed.
"You guys keep working," Jason said. "Get Hera free!"
"What are you going to do?" Piper asked. "You can"t seriously-"
"Entertain a giant?" Jason said. "I"ve got no choice."
"Excellent!" the giant roared as Jason approached. "An appetizer! Who are you-Hermes? Ares?"
Jason thought about going with that idea, but something told him not to.
"I"m Jason Grace," he said. "Son of Jupiter."
Those white eyes bored into him. Behind him, Leo"s circular saw whirred, and Piper talked to the cage in soothing tones, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.
Porphyrion threw back his head and laughed. "Outstanding!" He looked up at the cloudy night sky. "So, Zeus, you sacrifice a son to me? The gesture is appreciated, but it will not save you."
The sky didn"t even rumble. No help from above. Jason was on his own.
He dropped his makeshift club. His hands were covered in splinters, but that didn"t matter now. He had to buy Leo and Piper some time, and he couldn"t do that without a proper weapon.
It was time to act a whole lot more confident than he felt.
"If you knew who I was," Jason yelled up at the giant, "you"d be worried about me, not my father. I hope you enjoyed your two and a half minutes of rebirth, giant, because I"m going to send you right back to Tartarus."
The giant"s eyes narrowed. He planted one foot outside the pool and crouched to get a better look at his opponent. "So ... we"ll start by boasting, will we? Just like old times! Very well, demiG.o.d. I am Porphryion, king of the giants, son of Gaea. In olden times, I rose from Tatarus, the abyss of my father, to challenge the G.o.ds. To start the war, I stole Zeus"s queen." He grinned at the G.o.ddess"s cage. "h.e.l.lo, Hera."
"My husband destroyed you once, monster!" Hera said. "He"ll do it again!"
"But he didn"t, my dear! Zeus wasn"t powerful enough to kill me. He had to rely on a puny demiG.o.d to help, and even then, we almost won. This time, we will complete what we started. Gaea is waking. She has provisioned us with many fine servants. Our armies will shake the earth-and we will destroy you at the roots."
"You wouldn"t dare," Hera said, but she was weakening. Jason could hear it in her voice. Piper kept whispering to the cage, and Leo kept sawing, but the earth was still rising inside Hera"s prison, covering her up to her waist.
"Oh, yes," the giant said. "The t.i.tans sought to attack your new home in New York. Bold, but ineffective. Gaea is wiser and more patient. And we, her greatest children, are much, much stronger than Kronos. We know how to kill you Olympians once and for all. You must be dug up completely like rotten trees-your eldest roots torn out and burned."
The giant frowned at Piper and Leo, as if he"d just noticed them working at the cage. Jason stepped forward and yelled to get back Porphyrion"s attention.
"You said a demiG.o.d killed you," he shouted. "How, if we"re so puny?"
"Ha! You think I would explain it to you? I was created to be Zeus"s replacement, born to destroy the lord of the sky. I shall take his throne. I shall take his wife-or, if she will not have me, I will let the earth consume her life force. What you see before you, child, is only my weakened form. I will grow stronger by the hour, until I am invincible. But I am already quite capable of smashing you to a grease spot!"
He rose to his full height and held out his hand. A twenty-foot spear shot from the earth. He grasped it, then stomped the ground with his dragon"s feet. The ruins shook. All around the courtyard, monsters started to regather-storm spirits, wolves, and Earthborn, all answering the giant king"s call.
"Great," Leo muttered. "We needed more enemies."
"Hurry," Hera said.
"I know!" Leo snapped.
"Go to sleep, cage," Piper said. "Nice, sleepy cage. Yes, I"m talking to a bunch of earthen tendrils. This isn"t weird at all."
Porphyrion raked his spear across the top of the ruins, destroying a chimney and spraying wood and stone across the courtyard. "So, child of Zeus! I have finished my boasting. Now it"s your turn. What were you saying about destroying me?"
Jason looked at the ring of monsters, waiting impatiently for their master"s order to tear them to shreds. Leo"s circular saw kept whirring, and Piper kept talking, but it seemed hopeless. Hera"s cage was almost completely filled with earth.
"I"m the son of Jupiter!" he shouted, and just for effect, he summoned the winds, rising a few feet off the ground. "I"m a child of Rome, consul to demiG.o.ds, praetor of the First Legion." Jason didn"t know quite what he was saying, but he rattled off the words like he"d said them many times before. He held out his arms, showing the tattoo of the eagle and SPQR, and to his surprise the giant seemed to recognize it.