𐌙/𐌍 Ᏽ𐌵𐌀𐌋𐌄 & 𐌕𐋅𐌄 Ᏽ𐌐𐌄𐌀𐌕 𐌌𐌙𐌕𐋅𐌔 ¹

Chapter 14

Fourteen
ꕤ

My Cousin Battles Me To Death

  The metal door was half hidden behind a laundry bin full of dirty hotel towels. I didn’t see anything strange about it, but Rachel showed me where to look, and I recognized the faint blue symbol etched in the metal.

  "It hasn’t been used in a long time," Annabeth said.

  "I tried to open it once," Rachel said, "just out of curiosity. It’s rusted shut."

  "No." Annabeth stepped forward. "It just needs the touch of a half-blood."

  Sure enough, as soon as Annabeth put her hand on the mark, it glowed blue. The metal door unsealed and creaked open, revealing a dark staircase leading down.

  "Wow." Rachel looked calm, but I couldn’t tell if she was pretending or not. She’d changed into a ratty Museum of Modern Art T-shirt and her regular marker-colored jeans, her blue plastic hairbrush sticking out of her pocket. Her red hair was tied back, but she still had flecks of gold in it, and traces of the gold glitter on her face. "So…after you?"

  "You’re the guide," Annabeth said with mock politeness. "Lead on."

  The stairs led down to a large brick tunnel. It was so dark I couldn’t see two feet in front of us, even with my vision in the dark, but Annabeth and I had restocked on flashlights. As soon as we switched them on, Rachel yelped.

  A skeleton was grinning at us. It wasn’t human. It was huge, for one thing—at least ten feet tall. It had been strung up, chained by its wrists and ankles so it made a kind of giant X over the tunnel. But what really sent shivers down my spine was the single black eye socket in the center of its skull.

  "A Cyclops," Annabeth said. "It’s very old. It’s not…anybody we know."

  It wasn’t Tyson, she meant. But that didn’t make me feel much better. I still felt like it had been put here as a warning. Whatever could kill a grown Cyclops, I didn’t want to meet.

  Rachel swallowed. "You have a friend who’s a Cyclops?"

  "Tyson," I said. "Percy's half brother."

  "His half brother."

  "Hopefully we’ll find them down here," I said. "And Grover. He’s a satyr."

  "Oh." Her voice was small. "Well then, we’d better keep moving."

  She stepped under the skeleton’s left arm and kept walking. Annabeth and I exchanged looks. Annabeth shrugged. We followed Rachel deeper into the maze.

  After fifty feet we came to a crossroads. Ahead, the brick tunnel continued. To the right, the walls were made of ancient marble slabs. To the left, the tunnel was dirt and tree roots.

  I pointed left. "That looks like the tunnel Grover took."

  Annabeth frowned. "Yeah, but the architecture to the right—those old stones—that’s more likely to lead to an ancient part of the maze, toward Daedalus’s workshop."

  "We need to go straight," Rachel said.
Annabeth and I both looked at her.

  "That’s the least likely choice," Annabeth said.