Haunted || Leo Valdez

89 - Leo Has No Idea What Is Happening

It took a lot for Leo not to start throwing a fit and pounding his fists against the wall like Hazel had earlier.

What had Pasiphaë said? She was going to capture Rebecca so the Malignant Spirit would help them?

Leo tried to calm down. Rebecca was strong. She would never fall to the Malignant Spirit's influence. Pasiphaë would give up, and since the only way to release the Spirit's hold on Rebecca would be to kill her —

Leo froze. No. They couldn't.

Leo pressed his hands against the stone, trying to press down the rising panic as well. "What the heck? Where are we?"

A corridor stretched out to their left and right. Torches guttered in iron sconces. The air smelled of mildew, as in an old tomb. On Hazel's shoulder, the farting weasel barked angrily, digging her claws into Hazel's collarbone.

"Yes, I know," Hazel muttered to the weasel. "It's an illusion."

Leo pounded on the wall. "Pretty solid illusion."

He took out a ball-peen hammer and started tapping at the wall with it. Rebecca was on the other side. He had to get past this wall.

Pasiphaë laughed. Her voice sounded watery and far away. "Is it an illusion, Hazel Levesque, or something more? Don't you see what I have created?"

"The Labyrinth," Hazel said. "She's remaking the Labyrinth."

"What now?" Leo turned and frowned at her. "I thought the Labyrinth collapsed during that battle at Camp Half-Blood—like, it was connected to Daedalus's life force or something, and then he died."

Pasiphaë's voice clucked disapprovingly. "Ah, but I am still alive. You credit Daedalus with all the maze's secrets? I breathed magical life into his Labyrinth. Daedalus was nothing compared to me — the immortal sorceress, daughter of Helios, sister of Circe! Now the Labyrinth will be my domain."

"Wait," Leo said. "If we can hear Pasiphaë, maybe we can —" He cut off abruptly and raised his voice. "Rebecca? Are you still there?"

Pasiphaë snickered. "Ah, you poor lovesick boy. She can't hear you where she is."

Where she is.

The Underworld.

"No," Leo muttered. After everything they'd been through, they'd killed her that easily? There was no way. Even if Rebecca hadn't been able to defend herself, the Malignant Spirit would've kicked in and defended its host. She couldn't be dead.

"She's not gone, Leo. I would've felt it," Hazel said, but she looked so unsure and thrown off that Leo couldn't believe her. "It's an illusion. We just have to break through it."

"Too late, too late," Pasiphaë crooned. "The maze is already awake. It will spread under the skin of the earth once more while your mortal world is leveled. You demigods... you heroes... will wander its corridors, dying slowly of thirst and fear and misery. Or perhaps, if I am feeling merciful, you will die quickly, in great pain!"

Holes opened in the floor beneath their feet. Hazel grabbed Leo and pushed him aside as a row of spikes shot upward, impaling the ceiling. Leo winced as one of them grazed his leg, ripping his pants leg.

"Run!" she yelled.

Pasiphaë's laughter echoed down the corridor. "Where are you going, young sorceress? Running from an illusion?"

Hazel didn't answer. Probably she was too busy trying to stay alive. Behind them, row after row of spikes shot toward the ceiling with a persistent thunk, thunk, thunk. She pulled Leo down a side corridor, leaped over a tripwire, then stumbled to a halt in front of a pit twenty feet across.