The Heroes of Olympus: The Demigod Diaries (4 page)

Hal showed us the short novel he’d written:
You’re the ones!! You actually got the treasure!! I can’t believe it!! That safe has been sealed since before I was born!! Apollo told me my curse would end when the owner of the treasure claimed it!! If you’re the owner—

There was more, with plenty more exclamation points, but before I could finish reading, Thalia said, “Hold it. I’ve never seen this bracelet. How could I be the owner? And if your curse is supposed to end now, does that mean the monsters are gone?”

A
clack, clack, clack
from the hallway answered that question.

I frowned at Hal. “Do you have your voice back?”

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His shoulders slumped.

“Maybe Apollo meant we’re going to rescue you,” Thalia said.

Hal typed a new sentence:
Or maybe I die today.

“Thank you, Mr. Cheerful,” I said. “I thought
you
could tell the future. You don’t know what will happen?”

Hal typed:
I can’t look. It’s too dangerous. You can see what happened to me last time I tried to use my powers.

“Sure,” I grumbled. “Don’t take the risk. You might mess up this nice life you’ve got here.”

I knew that was mean. But the old man’s cowardice annoyed me. He’d let the gods use him as a punching bag for too long. It was time he fought back, preferably before Thalia and I became the leucrotae’s next meal.

Hal lowered his head. His chest was shaking, and I realized he was crying silently.

Thalia shot me an irritated look. “It’s okay, Hal. We’re not giving up. This bracelet must be the answer. It’s got to have a special power.”

Hal took a shaky breath. He turned to his keyboard and typed:
It’s silver. Even if it turns into a weapon, the monsters can’t be hurt by any metal.

Thalia turned to me with a silent plea in her eyes, like:
Your turn for a helpful idea.

I studied the empty enclosure, the metal panel through which the monsters had exited. If the apartment door wouldn’t open again, and the window was covered by man-eating acid drapes, then that panel might be our only exit. We couldn’t use metal weapons. I had a vial of poison, but if I was right about that stuff, it would kill everyone in the room as soon as it dispersed. I ran through another dozen ideas in my head, quickly rejecting them all.

“We’ll have to find a different kind of weapon,” I decided. “Hal, let me borrow your computer.”

Hal looked doubtful, but he gave me his seat.

I stared at the screen. Honestly, I’d never used computers much. Like I said, technology attracts monsters. But Hermes
was
the god of communication, roadways, and commerce. Maybe that meant he had some power over the Internet. I could really use a divine Google hit right about now.

“Just once,” I muttered to the screen, “cut me some slack. Show me there’s an upside to being your son.”

“What, Luke?” Thalia asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

I opened the Web browser and started typing. I looked up leucrotae, hoping to find their weaknesses. The Internet had almost nothing on them, except that they were legendary animals that lured their prey by imitating human voices.

I searched for “Greek weapons.” I found some great images of swords, spears, and catapults, but I doubted we could kill monsters with low-resolution JPEGs. I typed in a list of things we had in the room—torches, Celestial bronze, poison, Snickers bars, golf club—hoping that some sort of magic formula would pop up for a leucrota death ray. No such luck. I typed in “Help me kill leucrotae.” The closest hit I got was
Help me cure leukemia.

My head was throbbing. I didn’t have any concept of how long I’d been searching until I looked at the clock: four in the afternoon. How was that
possible
?

Meanwhile, Thalia had been trying to activate her new bracelet, with no luck. She’d twisted it, tapped it, shaken it, worn it on her ankle, thrown it against the wall, and swung it over her head yelling “Zeus!” Nothing happened.

We looked at each other, and I knew we were both out of ideas. I thought about what Hal Green had told us. All demigods started off hopeful. All of them had ideas for escape. All of them failed.

I couldn’t let that happen. Thalia and I had survived too much to give up now. But for the life of me (and I mean that literally) I couldn’t think of anything else to try.

Hal walked over and gestured at the keyboard.

“Go ahead,” I said dejectedly.

We changed places.

Running out of time,
he typed.
I’ll try to read the future.

Thalia frowned. “I thought you said that was too dangerous.”

It doesn’t matter,
Hal typed.
Luke is right. I’m a cowardly old man, but Apollo can’t punish me any worse than he already has. Perhaps I’ll
see something that will help you. Thalia, give me your hands.

He turned to her.

Thalia hesitated.

Outside the apartment, the leucrotae growled and scraped against the corridor. They sounded hungry.

Thalia placed her hands in Halcyon Green’s. The old man closed his eyes and concentrated, the same way I do when I’m reading a complicated lock.

He winced, then took a shaky breath. He looked up at Thalia with an expression of sympathy. He turned to the keyboard and hesitated a long time before starting to type.

You are destined to survive today,
Hal typed.

“That’s—that’s good, right?” she asked. “Why do you look so sad?”

Hal stared at the blinking cursor. He typed,
Someday soon, you will sacrifice yourself to save your friends. I see things that are…hard to describe. Years of solitude. You will stand tall and still, alive but sleeping. You will change once, and then change again. Your path will be sad and lonely. But someday you will find your family again.

Thalia clenched her fists. She started to speak, then paced the room. Finally she slammed her palm against the bookshelves. “That doesn’t make any
sense
. I’ll sacrifice myself, but I’ll live. Changing, sleeping? You call that a future? I—I don’t even
have
a family. Just my mom, and there’s no way I’m going back to her.”

Hal pursed his lips. He typed,
I’m sorry. I don’t control what I see. But I didn’t mean your mother.

Thalia almost backed up into the drapes. She caught herself just in time, but she looked dizzy, as if she’d just stepped off a roller coaster.

“Thalia?” I asked, as gently as I could. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

She gave me a cornered look. I didn’t understand why she seemed so rattled. I knew she didn’t like to talk about her life back in L.A., but she’d told me she was an only child, and she’d never mentioned any relatives beside her mom.

“It’s nothing,” she said at last. “Forget it. Hal’s fortune-telling skills are rusty.”

I’m pretty sure not even Thalia believed that.

“Hal,” I said, “there’s got to be more. You told us that Thalia will survive.
How?
Did you see anything about the bracelet? Or the goat? We need
something
that will help.”

He shook his head sadly. He typed,
I saw nothing about the bracelet. I’m sorry. I know a little about Amaltheia the goat, but I doubt it will help. The goat nursed Zeus when he was a baby. Later, Zeus slew her and used her skin to make his shield—the aegis.

I scratched my chin. I was pretty sure that was the story I’d been trying to remember earlier about the goat’s hide. It seemed important, though I couldn’t figure out why. “So Zeus killed his own mama goat. Typical god thing to do. Thalia, you know anything about the shield?”

She nodded, clearly relieved to change the subject. “Athena put the head of Medusa on the front of it and had the whole thing covered in Celestial bronze. She and Zeus took turns using it in battle. It would frighten away their enemies.”

I didn’t see how the information could help. Obviously, the goat Amaltheia had come back to life. That happened a lot with mythological monsters—they eventually re-formed from the pit of Tartarus. But why had Amaltheia led us here?

A bad thought occurred to me. If
I’d
been skinned by Zeus, I definitely wouldn’t be interested in helping him anymore. In fact, I might have a vendetta against Zeus’s children. Maybe that’s why Amaltheia had brought us to the mansion.

Hal Green held out his hands to me. His grim expression told me it was my turn for a fortune-telling.

A wave of dread washed over me. After hearing Thalia’s future, I didn’t want to know mine. What if she survived, and I didn’t? What if we both survived, but Thalia sacrificed herself to save me somewhere down the line, like Hal had mentioned? I couldn’t bear that.

“Don’t, Luke,” Thalia said bitterly. “The gods were right. Hal’s prophecies don’t help anybody.”

The old man blinked his watery eyes. His hands were so frail, it was hard to believe he carried the blood of an immortal god. He had told us his curse would end today, one way or another. He’d foreseen Thalia surviving. If he saw anything in my future that would help, I had to try.

I gave him my hands.

Hal took a deep breath and closed his eyes. His snakeskin jacket glistened as if it were trying to shed. I forced myself to stay calm.

I could feel Hal’s pulse in my fingers—one, two, three.

His eyes flew open. He yanked his hands away and stared at me in terror.

“Okay,” I said. My tongue felt like sandpaper. “I’m guessing you didn’t see anything good.”

Hal turned to his computer. He stared at the screen so long I thought he’d gone into a trance.

Finally he typed,
Fire. I saw fire.

Thalia frowned. “Fire? You mean today? Is that going to help us?”

Hal looked up miserably. He nodded.

“There’s more,” I pressed. “What scared you so badly?”

He avoided my eyes. Reluctantly he typed,
Hard to be sure. Luke, I also saw a sacrifice in your future. A choice. But also a betrayal.

I waited. Hal didn’t elaborate.

“A betrayal,” Thalia said. Her tone was dangerous. “You mean
someone betrays Luke? Because Luke would never betray anyone.”

Hal typed,
His path is hard to see. But if he survives today, he will betray—

Thalia grabbed the keyboard. “Enough! You lure demigods here, then you take away their hope with your horrible predictions? No wonder the others gave up—just like you gave up. You’re pathetic!”

Anger kindled in Hal’s eyes. I didn’t think the old man had it in him, but he rose to his feet. For a moment, I thought he might lunge at Thalia.

“Go ahead,” Thalia growled. “Take a swing, old man. You have any fire left?”

“Stop it!” I ordered. Hal Green immediately backed down. I could swear the old man was terrified of me now, but I didn’t want to know what he saw in his visions. Whatever nightmares were in my future, I had to survive today first.

“Fire,” I said. “You mentioned fire.”

He nodded, then spread his hands to indicate he had no further details.

An idea buzzed in the back of my head. Fire. Greek weapons. Some of the supplies we had in this apartment…the list I’d put into the search engine, hoping for a magic formula.

“What is it?” Thalia asked. “I know that look. You’re on to something.”

“Let me see the keyboard.” I sat at the computer and did a new Web search.

An article popped up immediately.

Thalia peered over my shoulder. “Luke, that would be perfect! But I thought that stuff was just a legend.”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “If it’s real, how do we make it? There’s no recipe here.”

Hal rapped his knuckles on the desk to get our attention. His face was animated. He pointed at his bookshelves.

“Ancient history books,” Thalia said. “Hal’s right. A lot of those are really old. They probably have information that wouldn’t be on the Internet.”

All three of us ran to the shelves. We started pulling out books. Soon Hal’s library looked like it had been hit by a hurricane, but the old man didn’t seem to care. He tossed titles and flipped through pages as fast as we did. In fact, without him, we never would’ve found the answer. After lots of fruitless searching, he came racing over, tapping a page in an old leather-bound book.

I scanned the list of ingredients, and my excitement built. “This is it. The recipe for Greek fire.”

How had I known to search for it? Perhaps my dad, Hermes, the jack-of-all-trades god, was guiding me, since he’s got a way with potions and alchemy. Perhaps I’d seen the recipe somewhere before, and searching the apartment had triggered that memory.

Everything we needed was in this room. I’d seen all of the ingredients when we’d gone through the supplies from defeated demigods: pitch from the old torches, a bottle of godly nectar, alcohol from Hal’s first-aid kit…

Actually, I shouldn’t write down the whole recipe, even in this diary. If someone came across it and learned the secret of Greek fire…well, I don’t want to be responsible for burning down the mortal world.

I read to the end of the list. There was only one thing missing.

“A catalyst.” I looked at Thalia. “We need lightning.”

Her eyes widened. “Luke, I can’t. Last time—”

Hal dragged us to the computer and typed,
You can summon lightning????

“Sometimes,” Thalia admitted. “It’s a Zeus thing. But I can’t do it indoors. And even if we were outside, I’d have trouble controlling the strike. Last time, I almost killed Luke.”

The hairs on my neck stood up as I remembered that accident.

“It’ll be fine.” I tried to sound confident. “I’ll prepare the mixture. When it’s ready, there’s an outlet under the computer. You can call down a lightning strike on the house and blast it through the electrical wiring.”

“And set the house on fire,” Thalia added.

Hal typed,
You’ll do that anyway if you succeed. You
do
understand how dangerous Greek fire is?

I swallowed. “Yeah. It’s magical fire. Whatever it touches, it burns. You can’t put it out with water, or a fire extinguisher, or anything else. But if we can make enough for some kind of bomb and throw it at the leucrotae—”