TERRIFIED . . . annabeth chase

forty eight.

VAL DECIDED THE monsters wouldn't kill her. Neither would the poisonous atmosphere, nor the treacherous landscape with its pits, cliffs, and jagged rocks.

Nope. Most likely she would die from an overload of weirdness that would make her brain explode.

First, she had had to drink fire to stay alive. Then her, Percy, and Annabeth were attacked by a gaggle of vampires, led by a cheerleader that had the hots for the same guy as Val did. Finally, they were rescued by a Titan janitor named Bob who had Einstein hair, silver eyes, and wicked broom skills.

Sure. Why not?

They followed Bob through the wasteland, tracing the route of the Phlegethon as they approached the storm front of darkness. Every so often they stopped to drink firewater, which kept them alive, but Val wasn't happy about it. Her throat felt like she was constantly gargling with battery acid.

She didn't even have any comforts down here, because she felt as if she was third wheeling Percy and Annabeth, who were behind her now that they had Bob. And she couldn't talk to Nico because she didn't have paper or a pen to talk to him with. At least Bob made for good conversation.

"Bob knows what he's doing," Percy promised behind Val.

"You have interesting friends," Annabeth murmured.

"Bob is interesting!" The Titan turned and grinned, interrupting their conversation. "Yes, thank you!"

"So, Bob . . ." Annabeth put on her "trying to be Val" voice. "How did you get to Tartarus?"

"I jumped," he said, like it was obvious.

"You jumped into Tartarus," she said, "because Percy and Tina said your name?"

"They needed me." Those silver eyes gleamed in the darkness. "It is okay. I was tired of sweeping the palace. Come along! We are almost at a rest stop."

A rest stop.

Val couldn't imagine what those words meant in Tartarus. She remembered all the times she and Kayla tried to find a hotel and ended up going the wrong side of town.

Wherever Bob was taking them, she hoped it had clean restrooms and a snack machine. And coffee.

Val hobbled along, trying to ignore the rumble in her stomach. She looked up and talked to Bob as he led them toward the wall of darkness, now only a few hundred yards away. His blue janitor's coveralls were ripped between the shoulder blades, as if someone had tried to stab him. Cleaning rags stuck out of his pocket. A squirt bottle swung from his belt, the blue liquid inside sloshing hypnotically.

They picked their way across the ashen wasteland as red lightning flashed overhead in the poisonous clouds. Just another lovely day in the dungeon of creation. Val couldn't see far in the hazy air, but the longer they walked, the more certain she became that the entire landscape was a downward curve.

They passed a blister in the ground — a writhing, translucent bubble the size of a minivan. Curled inside was the half-formed body of a drakon. Bob speared the blister without a second thought. It burst in a geyser of steaming yellow slime, and the drakon dissolved into nothing.

Bob kept walking.

Monsters are zits on the skin of Tartarus, if not the bloodstream, if Tartarus didn't have acne. Just as Gaea inhabited the surface of the earth, Tartarus inhabited the pit. Val hated the analogies, and cursed herself mentally.

"Here," Bob said.

They stopped at the top of a ridge. Below them, in a sheltered depression like a moon crater, stood a ring of broken black marble columns surrounding a dark stone altar.