This Cold Year ― Percy Jackson & Annabeth Chase²

―ii. carrying an old hippie and her things across a river

THE THING ABOUT PLUMMETING DOWNHILL at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter: once you realize how dangerous an idea it is, it's too late to stop.

They narrowly missed a tree, glanced off a boulder, and spun a three-sixty as they shot toward the highway. Naomi could hear the gorgon sisters screaming and caught a glimpse of Euryale's coral-snake hair at the top of the hill, but he didn't have time to worry about it. The roof of the apartment building loomed below them like the prow of a battleship. Head-on collision in ten, nine, eight...

Percy managed to swivel them sideways to avoid breaking their legs on impact. The snack platter skittered across the roof and sailed through the air. The platter went one way. Naomi and Percy went the other.

As they fell toward the highway, Naomi summoned a shadow. One second they were airborne, the next—they were in a clump of bushes.

Naomi blinked hard against the usual bout of dizziness. "Ow."

"Yeah," Percy agreed with a groan. He struggled to his feet, helping Naomi to hers as well. The shadow-travel had saved them from a hard fall, so they were relatively unscathed, and Percy still had their backpack.

Naomi glanced up the hill. The gorgons were hard to miss, with their colorful snake hair and their bright green Bargain Mart vests. They were picking their way down the slope, going slower than Naomi and Percy but with a lot more control. Those chicken feet must've been good for climbing. Naomi figured they had maybe five minutes before the gorgons reached them.

Next to them, a tall chain-link fence separated the highway from a neighborhood of winding streets, cozy houses, and tall eucalyptus trees. The fence was probably there to keep people from getting onto the highway and doing stupid things—like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays—but the chain-link was full of big holes. They could easily slip through into the neighborhood. Maybe they could find a car and drive west to the ocean. They'd be safe there.

She glanced east. Just as she'd figured, a hundred yards uphill the highway cut through the base of the cliff. Two tunnel entrances, one for each direction of traffic, stared down at them like eye sockets of a giant skull. In the middle, where the nose would have been, a cement wall jutted from the hillside, with a metal door like the entrance to a bunker.

It might have been a maintenance tunnel. That's probably what mortals thought, if they noticed the door at all. But they couldn't see through the Mist. Naomi knew the door was more than that.

Two kids in armor flanked the entrance. They wore a bizarre mix of plumed Roman helmets, breastplates, scabbards, blue jeans, purple T-shirts, and white athletic shoes. The guard on the right was shorter, and she looked like a girl, though Naomi couldn't be too sure with all that armor. The one on the left was about a foot taller, with a stocky build and a bow and quiver on his back. Both kids held spears taller than them both.

Naomi's internal radar was pinging like crazy. After so many awful days and near-death experiences, they'd finally reached their goal. Her instincts told her that if they could make it inside that door, they might find safety for the first time since the wolves had sent them south.

So why was she conflicted?

Farther up the hill, the gorgons were scrambling over the roof of the apartment complex. Three minutes now—probably less.

All Naomi wanted to do was run to the door in the hill. They'd have to cross the median of the highway, but then it would be a short sprint. They could make it before the gorgons reached them—they'd be safe there.

But Percy's gaze was trained west, toward the ocean.

"You're right, of course," said a voice next to them.