𐌙/𐌍 Ᏽ𐌵𐌀𐌋𐌄 & 𐌕𐋅𐌄 Ᏽ𐌐𐌄𐌀𐌕 𐌌𐌙𐌕𐋅𐌔 ¹

Chapter 8

Eight
ꕤ

I Take The Worst Bath Ever

  My sword reappeared in my palm.

  Yeah, great timing. Now I could attack the walls all I wanted. My cell had no bars, no windows, not even a door. The skeletal guards shoved me straight through a wall, and it became solid behind me. I wasn't sure if the room was airtight. Probably. Hades's dungeon was meant for dead people, and they don't breathe. So forget fifty or sixty years. I'd be dead in fifty or sixty minutes. Meanwhile, if Hades wasn't lying, some big trap was going to be sprung in New York by the end of the day, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

  I sat on the cold stone floor, feeling miserable.

  I don't remember dozing off. Then again, it must've been about seven in the morning, mortal time, and I'd been through a lot.

  I dreamed I was on the porch of Rachel's beach house in St. Thomas. The sun was rising over the Caribbean. Dozens of wooded islands dotted the sea, and white sails cut across the water. The smell of salt air made me wonder if I would ever see the ocean again.

  Rachel's parents sat at the patio table while a personal chef fixed them omelets. Mr. Dare was dressed in a white linen suit. He was reading The Wall Street Journal. The lady across the table was probably Mrs. Dare, though all I could see of her were hot pink fingernails and the cover of Condé Nast Traveler. Why she'd be reading about vacations while she was on vacation, I wasn't sure.

  Rachel stood at the porch railing and sighed. She wore Bermuda shorts and her van Gogh T-shirt. (Yeah, Rachel was trying to teach me about art, but don't get too impressed. I only remembered the dude's name because he cut his ear off.)

  I wondered if she was thinking about me, and how much it sucked that I wasn't with them on vacation. I know that's what I was thinking.

  Then a door opened from thin air and the scene changed. I was in St. Louis, standing downtown under the Arch. I'd been there before. In fact, I'd almost fallen to my death there before.

  Over the city, a thunderstorm boiled—a wall of absolute black with lightning streaking across the sky. A few blocks away, swarms of emergency vehicles gathered with their lights flashing. A column of dust rose from a mound of rubble, which I realized was a collapsed skyscraper.

  A nearby reporter was yelling into her microphone: "Officials are describing this as a structural failure, Dan, though no one seems to know if it is related to the storm conditions."

  Wind whipped her hair. The temperature was dropping rapidly, like ten degrees just since I'd been standing there.

  "Thankfully, the building had been abandoned for demolition," she said. "But police have evacuated all nearby buildings for fear the collapse might trigger—"

  She faltered as a mighty groan cut through the sky. A blast of lightning hit the center of the darkness. The entire city shook. The air glowed, and every hair on my body stood up. The blast was so powerful I knew it could only be one thing: Zeus's master bolt. It should have vaporized its target, but the dark cloud only staggered backward. A smoky fist appeared out of the clouds. It smashed another tower, and the whole thing collapsed like children's blocks.

  The reporter screamed. People ran through the streets. Emergency lights flashed. I saw a streak of silver in the sky—a chariot pulled by reindeer, but it wasn't Santa Claus driving. It was my mother, Artemis, riding the storm, shooting shafts of moonlight into the darkness. A fiery golden comet crossed her path ... maybe her brother Apollo.