𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐢━━Nico di Angelo

38

"Finally!" Sciron cried. "That was much longer than two minutes!"

"Sorry," Jason said. "It was a big decision...which foot."

Making illusions that were stationary was easy. Doing it on a large scale was harder, and duping someone to make them believe they were seeing something else was even more difficult.

Ajax tried to clear his mind and imagine the scene through Sciron's eyes—what he desired, what he expected.

That was the key to using the Mist. He couldn't force someone to see the world his way. He couldn't make Sciron's reality appear less believable. But if he showed him what Sciron wanted to see...well, he was a child of Hecate. he'd spent months with the dead, listening to them yearn for past lives that were only half-remembered, distorted by nostalgia.

The dead saw what they believed they would see. So did the living.

He could do this.

Of course he could be wrong, in which case he and Jason were about to be turtle food.

Jason stepped forward, his hands open in surrender. "I'll go first, Sciron. I'll wash your left foot."

"Excellent choice!" Sciron wriggled his hairy, corpse-like toes. "I may have stepped on something with that foot. It felt a little squishy inside my boot. But I'm sure you'll clean it properly."

Jason's ears reddened. From the tension in his neck, Ajax could tell that he was tempted to drop the charade and attack—one quick slash with his Imperial gold blade. But Ajax knew if he tried, he would fail.

"Sciron," he broke in, "do you have water? Soap? How are we supposed to wash—"

"Like this!" Sciron spun his left flintlock. Suddenly it became a squirt bottle with a rag. He tossed it to Jason.

Jason squinted at the label. "You want me to wash your feet with glass cleaner?"

"Of course not!" Sciron knit his eyebrows. "It says multi-surface cleanser. My feet definitely qualify as multi-surface. Besides, it's antibacterial. I need that. Believe me, water won't do the trick on these babies."

Sciron wiggled his toes, and more zombie café odor wafted across the cliffs.

Jason gagged. "Oh, gods, no..."

Sciron shrugged. "You can always choose what's in my other hand." He hefted his right flintlock.

"He'll do it," Ajax said.

Jason glared at him, but Ajax won the staring contest.

"Fine," he muttered.

"Excellent! Now..." Sciron hopped to the nearest chunk of limestone that was the right size for a footstool. He faced the water and planted his foot, so he looked like some explorer who'd just claimed a new country. "I'll watch the horizon while you scrub my bunions. It'll be much more enjoyable."

"Yeah," Jason said. "I bet."

Jason knelt in front of the bandit, at the edge of the cliff, where he was an easy target. One kick, and he'd topple over.

Ajax concentrated. He imagined he was Sciron, the lord of bandits. he was looking down at a pathetic blond-haired kid who was no threat at all—just another defeated demigod about to become his victim.

In his mind, he saw what would happen. He summoned the Mist, calling it from the depths of the earth. He imagined it swirling around himself, like it did around his mother. He may not be a god, but he had powers. He had practiced. He could do this.

Jason squirted the cleaning fluid. His eyes watered. He wiped Sciron's big toe with his rag and turned aside to gag. Ajax could barely watch. When the kick happened, he almost missed it.

Sciron slammed his foot into Jason's chest. Jason tumbled backward over the edge, his arms flailing, screaming as he fell. When he was about to hit the water, the turtle rose up and swallowed him in one bite, then sank below the surface.

Alarm bells sounded on the Argo II. Ajax's friends scrambled on deck, manning the catapults. Ajax heard Piper wailing all the way from the ship.

It was so disturbing, Ajax almost lost his focus.

He had given up on the illusion of treasure behind him. Sciron was too focussed on the task at hand to remember about the treasure.

Ajax forced his mind to split into two parts—one intensely focused on his task, one playing the role Sciron needed to see.

He screamed in outrage. "What did you do?"

"Oh, dear..." Sciron sounded sad, but Ajax got the impression he was hiding a grin under his bandana. "That was an accident, I assure you."

"My friends will kill you now!"

"They can try," Sciron said. "But in the meantime, I think you have time to wash my other foot! Believe me. My turtle is full now. He doesn't want you too. You'll be quite safe, unless you refuse."

He leveled the flintlock pistol at his head.

Ajax hesitated, letting Sciron see his anguish. He couldn't agree too easily, or he wouldn't think he was beaten.

"Don't kick me," he said, half-sobbing.

His eyes twinkled. This was exactly what he expected. He was broken and helpless. Sciron, the son of Poseidon, had won again.

Ajax could hardly believe this guy had the same father as Percy Jackson. Then he remembered that Poseidon had a changeable personality, like the sea. Maybe his children reflected that. Percy was a child of Poseidon's better nature—powerful, but gentle and helpful, the kind of sea that sped ships safely to distant lands. Sciron was a child of Poseidon's other side—the kind of sea that battered relentlessly at the coastline until it crumbled away, or carried the innocents from shore and let them drown, or smashed ships and killed entire crews without mercy.

Ajax snatched up the spray bottle Jason had dropped.

"Sciron," he spat, "your feet are the least disgusting thing about you."

His green eyes hardened. "Just clean."

He knelt, trying to ignore the smell. He shuffled to one side, forcing Sciron to adjust his stance, but he imagined that the sea was still at his back. He held that vision in his mind as he shuffled sideways again.

"Just get on with it!" Sciron said.

Ajax suppressed a smile. He'd managed to turn Sciron one hundred and eighty degrees, but he still saw the water in front of him, the rolling countryside at his back.

He started to clean.

Ajax had done plenty of ugly work before. He'd been in charge of feeding the monsters that allied with Luke, cleaning monster dust and gross stuff off used weapons. This is nothing, he told himself. But it was hard not to retch when he looked at Sciron's toes.

When the kick came, he flew backward, but he didn't go far. He landed on his butt in the grass a few yards away.

Sciron stared at him. "But..."

Suddenly the world shifted. The illusion melted, leaving Sciron totally confused. The sea was at his back. He'd only succeeded in kicking Ajax away from the ledge.

He lowered his flintlock. "How—"

"Stand and deliver," Ajax told him.

Jason swooped out of the sky, right over his head, and body-slammed the bandit over the cliff.

Sciron screamed as he fell, firing his flintlock wildly, but for once hitting nothing. Ajax got to his feet. He reached the cliff's edge in time to flip Sciron off as the turtle lunged and snapped Sciron out of the air.

Jason grinned. "Ajax, that was amazing. Seriously...Ajax? Hey, Ajax?"

Ajax collapsed to his knees, suddenly dizzy.

Distantly, he could hear his friends cheering from the ship below. Jason stood over him, but he was moving in slow motion, his outline blurry, his voice nothing but static.