TERRIFIED . . . annabeth chase

fifty four.

VAL HAD NEVER been scared of the dark. She could literally control it, after all.

But normally the dark wasn't forty feet tall. It didn't have black wings, a whip made out of stars, and a shadowy chariot pulled by vampire horses.

Nyx was almost too much to take in. Looming over the chasm, she was a churning figure of ash and smoke, as big as the Athena Parthenos statue, but very much alive. Her dress was void black, mixed with the colors of a space nebula, as if galaxies were being born in her bodice. Her face was hard to see except for the pinpoints of her eyes, which shone like quasars. When her wings beat, waves of darkness rolled over the cliffs, making Val feel heavy and sleepy, her eyesight dim.

The goddess's chariot was made of the same material as Nico's sword — Stygian iron — and pulled by two massive horses, all black except for their pointed silver fangs. The beasts' legs floated in the abyss, turning from solid to smoke as they moved.

The horses snarled and bared their fangs at Val. The goddess lashed her whip — a thin streak of stars like diamond barbs — and the horses reared back.

"No, Shade," the goddess said. "Down, Shadow. These little prizes are not for you."

Val, Percy, and Annabeth eyed the horses as they nickered. They were still shrouded in Death Mist, so they looked like an out-of-focus corpse. It also must not have been very good camouflage, since Nyx could obviously see them.

Val couldn't read the expression on Percy's ghoulish face very well. Apparently he didn't like whatever the horses were saying.

"Uh, so you won't let them eat us?" he asked the goddess. "They really want to eat us."

Nyx's quasar eyes burned. "Of course not. I would not let my horses eat you, any more than I would let Akhlys kill you. Such fine prizes, I will kill myself!"

"Oh, don't kill yourself!" Annabeth cried. "We're not that scary."

The goddess lowered her whip. "What? No, I didn't mean—"

"Well, I'd hope not!" Annabeth looked at Val and Percy and forced a laugh. "We wouldn't want to scare her, would we?"

"Ha, ha," Percy said weakly. "No, we wouldn't."

Val snickered at the tone of his voice.

The vampire horses looked confused. They reared and snorted and knocked their dark heads together. Nyx pulled back on the reins.

"Do you know who I am?" she demanded.

"Well, you're Night, I suppose," said Annabeth. "I mean, I can tell because you're dark and everything, though the brochure didn't say much about you."

Nyx's eyes winked out for a moment. "What brochure?"

Annabeth patted her pockets. "We had one, didn't we?"

Percy licked his lips. "Uh-huh." He was still watching the horses, his hand tight on his sword hilt.

"Anyway," Val said, sighing boredly, "I guess the brochure didn't say much, because you weren't spotlighted on the tour. We got to see the River Phlegethon, the wonderful monsters in the air, the arai, the poison glade of Akhlys, even some random Titans and giants, but Nyx . . . hmm, no, you weren't really featured."

"Featured? Spotlighted?"

"Yeah," Percy said. "We came down here for the Tartarus tour — like, exotic destinations, you know? The Underworld is overdone. Mount Olympus is a tourist trap—"

"Gods, totally!" Annabeth agreed. "So we booked the Tartarus excursion, but no one even mentioned we'd run into Nyx. Huh. Oh, well. Guess they didn't think you were important."