If Percy Hadn't Caught Annabeth

Part 7: A Knock-Out Performance

"I am immortal!" Pasiphaё wailed. She took a step back, fingering her necklace. "You cannot stand against me!"

"You can't stand at all," Hazel countered. "Look."

She pointed at the feet of the sorceress. A trapdoor opened underneath Pasiphaё. She fell, screaming, into a bottomless pit that didn't really exist.

The floor solidified. The sorceress was gone.

Leo and Percy stared at Hazel in amazement. "How did you-"

Just then the elevator dinged. Rather than pushing the UP button, Clytius stepped back from the controls, keeping Annabeth trapped inside.

"No!" shouted Percy, who began a dash towards Clytius, armed with Riptide.

Hazel and Leo were thirty feet away--much too far to reach the elevator-- but Leo pulled out a screwdriver and chucked it like a throwing knife. An impossible shot. The screwdriver spun past Percy, past Clytius, and slammed into the UP button.

The Doors of Death opened with a hiss. Black smoke billowed out, and a body spilled face first onto the floor. Annabeth was as limp as a corpse.

Hazel sobbed. "Oh, gods..."

Percy was nearly to Clytius when the giant put out a hand. Tendrils of black haze traveled airborne to Percy. Riptide clattered to the ground as Percy fell to his knees, clutching his throat. He hit the floor face first and passed out cold.

"No!" Hazel ran toward him, but Gale the polecat chattered urgently on her shoulder--a clear warning.

The giant tilted his head. His diamond eyes gleamed. Annabeth lurched like she's hit a power line. She rolled onto her back, black smoke coiling from her mouth.

"Not quite dead." Annabeth spoke in a voice that wasn't hers--the words as deep as a bass guitar. "A terrible shock to the mortal body, I would imagine, coming back from Tartarus. She will be out for a while."

"Stop that!" Even from thirty feet away, Hazel could sense Annabeth's life force waning, her pulse becoming thready. Whatever Clytius was doing, pulling words from her mouth--it was killing her.

Clytius made his way to Percy's head and nudged it with his foot. Percy's face lolled to one side as black smoke spilled from his mouth.

"I'll tie them up and take them to Porphyrion in Athens." The words boomed from Percy's mouth. "Just the sacrifice we need. Unfortunately, that means I have no further use for you two."

"Leo," Hazel whispered desperately, her mind reeling. "Fire. He's weak against it."

"Oh, yeah?" Leo growled. He turned to the giant, his eyes burning. "Well, maybe you got the smoke, buddy, but I've got the fire."

His hands blazed. He shot white-hot columns of flame at the giant, but Clytius's smoky aura absorbed them on impact. Tendrils of black haze traveled back up the lines of fire, snuffing out the light and heat and covering Leo in darkness as Hazel screamed.

The giant chuckled, using Leo's vocal chords this time. "You were counting on that, eh? It is true I do not like fire. But Leo Valdez's flames are not strong enough to trouble me."

Somewhere, behind Hazel, a soft, lyrical voice said, "What about my flames, old friend?"

Gale squeaked excitedly and jumped from Hazel's shoulder, scampering to the entrance of the cavern where a blonde woman stood in a black dress, the Mist swirling around her. Hecate had arrived.