The Heroes of Olympus: The Demigod Diaries (10 page)

Roll left!
George said, which was one of the more helpful suggestions he’d ever made. I rolled to the left as the caduceus smashed into the pile of stone where I’d been lying.

I heard a
CLANG!
And the giant screamed, “Gah!”

I staggered to my feet. Annabeth had just smacked her shield across the giant’s backside. Being an expert at school expulsion, I’d gotten kicked out of several military academies where they still believed paddling was good for the soul. I had a fair idea how it felt to get spanked with a large flat surface, and my rump clenched in sympathy.

Cacus staggered, but before Annabeth could discipline him again, he turned and snatched the shield from her. He crumpled the Celestial bronze like paper and tossed it over his shoulder.

So much for that magic item.

“Enough!” Cacus leveled the staff at Annabeth.

I was still dizzy. My spine felt like it had been treated to a night at Crusty’s Water Bed Palace, but I stumbled forward, determined to help Annabeth. Before I could get there, the caduceus changed form. It became a cell phone and rang to the tune of “Macarena.” George and Martha, now the size of earthworms, curled around the screen.

Good one,
George said.

We danced to this at our wedding,
Martha said.
Remember, dear?

“Stupid snakes!” Cacus shook the cell phone violently.

Eek!
Martha said.

Help—me!
George’s voice quivered.
Must—obey—red—bathrobe!

The phone grew back into a staff.

“Now, behave!” Cacus warned the snakes. “Or I’ll turn you two into a fake Gucci handbag!”

Annabeth ran to my side. Together we backed up until we were next to the ladder.

“Our tag game strategy isn’t working so well,” she noticed. She was breathing heavily. The left sleeve of her T-shirt was smoldering, but otherwise she looked okay. “Any suggestions?”

My ears were ringing. Her voice still sounded like she was underwater.

Wait…
under water
.

I looked up the tunnel—all those broken pipes embedded in the rock: waterlines, sewer ducts. Being the son of the sea god, I could sometimes control water. I wondered…

“I don’t like you!” Cacus yelled. He stalked toward us, smoke pouring from his nostrils. “It’s time to end this.”

“Hold on,” I told Annabeth. I wrapped my free hand around her waist.

I concentrated on finding water above us. It wasn’t hard. I felt a dangerous amount of pressure in the city’s waterlines, and I summoned it all into the broken pipes.

Cacus towered over us, his mouth glowing like a furnace. “Any last words, demigod?”

“Look up,” I told him.

He did.

Note to self: When causing the sewer system of Manhattan to explode, do
not
stand underneath it.

The whole cavern rumbled as a thousand water pipes burst overhead. A not-so-clean waterfall slammed Cacus in the face. I yanked Annabeth out the way, then leaped back into the edge of the torrent, carrying Annabeth with me.

“What are you—?” She made a strangling sound. “Ahhh!”

I’d never attempted this before, but I willed myself to travel upstream like a salmon, jumping from current to current as the water gushed into the cavern. If you’ve ever tried running up a wet slide, it was kind of like that, except at a ninety-degree angle and with no slide—just water.

Far below I heard Cacus bellowing as millions, maybe even thousands of filthy gallons of water slammed into him. Meanwhile Annabeth alternately shouted, gagged, hit me, called me endearing pet names like “Idiot! Stupid—dirty—moron—” and topped it all off with “Kill you!”

Finally we shot out of the ground atop a disgusting geyser and landed safely on the pavement.

Pedestrians and cops backed away, yelling in alarm at our sewage version of Old Faithful. Brakes screeched and cars rear-ended each other as drivers stopped to watch the chaos.

I willed myself dry—a handy trick—but I still smelled pretty bad. Annabeth had old cotton balls stuck in her hair and a wet candy wrapper plastered to her face.

“That,” she said, “was horrible!”

“On the bright side,” I said, “we’re alive.”

“Without the caduceus!”

I grimaced. Yeah…minor detail. Maybe the giant would drown. Then he’d dissolve and return to Tartarus the way most defeated monsters do, and we could go collect the caduceus.

That sounded reasonable enough.

The geyser receded, followed by the horrendous sound of water draining down the tunnel, like somebody up on Olympus had flushed the godly toilet.

Then a distant snaky voice spoke in my mind.
Gag me,
said George.
Even for me that was disgusting, and I eat rats.

Incoming!
Martha warned.
Oh, no! I think the giant has figured out—

An explosion shook the street. A beam of blue light shot out of the tunnel, carving a trench up the side of a glass office building, melting windows and vaporizing concrete. The giant climbed from the pit, his velour housecoat steaming, and his face spattered with slime.

He did not look happy. In his hands, the caduceus now resembled a bazooka with snakes wrapped around the barrel and a glowing blue muzzle.

“Okay,” Annabeth said faintly. “Um, what is that?”

“That,” I guessed, “would be laser mode.”

To all of you who live in the Meatpacking District, I apologize. Because of the smoke, debris, and chaos, you probably just call it the Packing District now, since so many of you had to move out.

Still, the real surprise is that we didn’t do
more
damage.

Annabeth and I fled as another laser bolt gouged a ditch through the street to our left. Chunks of asphalt rained down like confetti.

Behind us, Cacus yelled, “You ruined my fake Rolexes! They aren’t waterproof, you know! For that, you die!”

We kept running. My hope was to get this monster away from innocent mortals, but that’s kind of hard to do in the middle of New York. Traffic clogged the streets. Pedestrians screamed and ran in every direction. The two police officers I’d seen earlier were nowhere in sight, maybe swept away by the mob.

“The park!” Annabeth pointed to the elevated tracks of the High Line. “If we can get him off street level—”

BOOM! The laser cut through a nearby food truck. The vendor dove out his service window with a fistful of shish kebabs.

Annabeth and I sprinted for the park stairs. Sirens screamed in the distance, but I didn’t want more police involved. Mortal law enforcement would only make things more complicated, and through the Mist, the police might even think Annabeth and I were the problem. You just never knew.

We climbed up to the park. I tried to get my bearings. Under different circumstances, I would’ve enjoyed the view of the glittering Hudson River and the rooftops of the surrounding neighborhood. The weather was nice. The park’s flower beds were bursting with color.

The High Line was empty, though—maybe because it was a workday, or maybe because the visitors were smart and ran when they heard the explosions.

Somewhere below us, Cacus was roaring, cursing, and offering panicked mortals deep discounts on slightly damp Rolexes. I figured we only had a few seconds before he found us.

I scanned the park, hoping for something that would help. All I saw were benches, walkways, and lots of plants. I wished we had a child of Demeter with us. Maybe they could entangle the giant in vines, or turn flowers into ninja throwing stars. I’d never actually seen a child of Demeter do that, but it would be cool.

I looked at Annabeth. “Your turn for a brilliant idea.”

“I’m working on it.” She was beautiful in combat. I know that’s a crazy thing to say, especially after we’d just climbed a sewage waterfall, but her gray eyes sparkled when she was fighting for her life. Her face shone like a goddess’s, and believe me, I’ve seen goddesses. The way her Camp Half-Blood beads rested against her throat—Okay, sorry. Got a little distracted.

She pointed. “There!”

A hundred feet away, the old railroad tracks split and the elevated platform formed a Y. The shorter piece of the Y was a dead end—part of the park that was still under construction. Stacks of potting soil bags and plant flats sat on the gravel. Jutting over the edge of the railing was the arm of a crane that must’ve been sitting down at ground level. Far above us, a big metal claw hung from the crane’s arm—probably what they’d been using to hoist garden supplies.

Suddenly I understood what Annabeth was planning, and I felt like I was trying to swallow a quarter. “No,” I said. “Too dangerous.”

Annabeth raised her eyebrow. “Percy, you
know
I rock at grabber-arm games.”

That was true. I’d taken her to the arcade at Coney Island, and we’d come back with a sackful of stuffed animals. But this crane was
massive
.

“Don’t worry,” she promised. “I’ve supervised bigger equipment on Mount Olympus.”

My girlfriend: sophomore honors student, demigod, and—oh, yeah—head architect for redesigning the palace of the gods on Mount Olympus in her spare time.

“But can you operate it?” I asked.

“Cakewalk. Just lure him over there. Keep him occupied while I grab him.”

“And then what?”

She smiled in a way that made me glad I wasn’t the giant.

“You’ll see. If you can snag the caduceus while he’s distracted, that would be great.”

“Anything else?” I asked. “Would you like fries and a drink, maybe?”

“Shut up, Percy.”

“DEATH!” Cacus stormed up the steps and onto the High Line. He spotted us and lumbered over with slow, grim determination.

Annabeth ran. She reached the crane and leaped over the side of the railing, shinnying down the metal arm like it was a tree branch. She disappeared from view.

I raised my sword and faced the giant. His red velour robe was in tatters. He’d lost his slippers. His ginger hair was plastered to his head like a greasy shower cap. He aimed his glowing bazooka.

“George, Martha,” I called, hoping they could hear me. “Please change out of laser mode.”

We’re trying, dear!
Martha said.

My stomach hurts,
George said.
I think he bruised my tummy.

I backed up slowly down the dead end tracks, edging toward the crane. Cacus followed. Now that he had me trapped, he seemed in no hurry to kill me. He stopped twenty feet away, just beyond the shadow of the crane’s hook. I tried to look cornered and panicked. It wasn’t hard.

“So,” Cacus growled. “Any last words?”

“Help,”
I said. “
Yikes. Ouch.
How are those? Oh, and Hermes is a
way
better salesman than you.”

“Gah!” Cacus lowered the caduceus laser.

The crane didn’t move. Even if Annabeth could get it started, I wondered how she could see her target from down below. I probably should’ve thought of that sooner.

Cacus pulled the trigger, and suddenly the caduceus changed form. The giant tried to zap me with a credit card–swiping machine, but the only thing that came out was a paper receipt.

Oh, yeah!
George yelled in my mind.
One for the snakes!

“Stupid staff!” Cacus threw down the caduceus in disgust, which was the chance I’d been waiting for. I launched myself forward, snatched the staff, and rolled under the giant’s legs.

When I got to my feet, we’d changed positions. Cacus had his back to the crane. Its arm was right behind him, the claw perfectly positioned above his head.

Unfortunately, the crane still wasn’t moving. And Cacus still wanted to kill me.

“You put out my fire with that cursed sewage,” he growled. “Now you steal my staff.”

“Which
you
wrongfully stole,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter.” Cacus cracked his knuckles. “You can’t use the staff either. I’ll simply kill you with my bare hands.”

The crane shifted, slowly and almost silently. I realized there were mirrors fixed along the side of the arm—like rearview mirrors to guide the operator. And reflected in one of those mirrors were Annabeth’s gray eyes.

The claw opened and began to drop.

I smiled at the giant. “Actually, Cacus, I have another secret weapon.”

The giant’s eyes lit up with greed. “Another weapon? I will steal it! I will copy it and sell the knockoffs for a profit! What is this secret weapon?”

“Her name is Annabeth,” I said. “And she’s one of a kind.”

The claw dropped, smacking Cacus on the head and knocking him to the ground. While the giant was dazed, the claw closed around his chest and lifted him into the air.

“Wh—what is this?” The giant came to his senses twenty feet up. “Put me down!”

He squirmed uselessly and tried to blow fire, but only managed to cough up some mud.

Annabeth swung the crane arm back and forth, building momentum as the giant cursed and struggled. I was afraid the whole crane would tip over, but Annabeth’s control was perfect. She swung the arm one last time and opened the claw when the giant was at the top of his arc.

“Aahhhhhhhhh!” The giant sailed over the rooftops, straight over Chelsea Piers, and began falling toward the Hudson River.