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Two U. S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.
'You know,' Grover mumbled, 'I bet Hades doesnt have trouble with door-to-door salesmen. '
My backpack weighed a ton now. I couldnt figure out why. I wanted to open it, check to see if I had somehow picked up a stray bowling ball, but this wasnt the time.
'Well, guys,' I said. 'I suppose we should . . . knock?'
A hot wind blew down the corridor, and the doors swung open. The guards stepped aside.
'I guess that means entrez-vous,' Annabeth said.
The room inside looked just like in my dream, except this time the throne of Hades was occupied.
He was the third god Id met, but the first who really struck me as godlike.
He was at least ten feet tall, for one thing, and dressed in black silk robes and a crown of braided gold. His skin was albino white, his hair shoulder-length and jet black. He wasnt bulked up like Ares, but he radiated power. He lounged on his throne of fused human bones, looking lithe, graceful, and dangerous as a panther.
I immediately felt like he should be giving the orders. He knew more than I did. He should be my master. Then I told myself to snap out of it.
Hadess aura was affecting me, just as Aress had. The Lord of the Dead resembled pictures Id seen of Adolph Hitler, or Napoleon, or the terrorist leaders who direct suicide bombers. Hades had the same intense eyes, the same kind of mesmerizing, evil charisma.
'You are brave to come here, Son of Poseidon,' he said in an oily voice. 'After what you have done to me, very brave indeed. Or perhaps you are simply very foolish. '
Numbness crept into my joints, tempting me to lie down and just take a little nap at Hadess feet. Curl up here and sleep forever.
I fought the feeling and stepped forward. I knew what I had to say. 'Lord and Uncle, I come with two requests. '
Hades raised an eyebrow. When he sat forward in his throne, shadowy faces appeared in the folds of his black robes, faces of torment, as if the garment were stitched of trapped souls from the Fields of Punishment, trying to get out. The ADHD part of me wondered, off-task, whether the rest of his clothes were made the same way. What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get woven into Hadess underwear?
'Only two requests?' Hades said. 'Arrogant child. As if you have not already taken enough. Speak, then. It amuses me not to strike you dead yet. '
I swallowed. This was going about as well as Id feared.
I glanced at the empty, smaller throne next to Hadess. It was shaped like a black flower, gilded with gold. I wished Queen Persephone were here. I recalled something in the myths about how she could calm her husbands moods. But it was summer. Of course, Persephone would be above in the world of light with her mother, the goddess of agriculture, Demeter. Her visits, not the tilt of the planet, create the seasons.
Annabeth cleared her throat. Her finger prodded me in the back.
'Lord Hades,' I said. 'Look, sir, there cant be a war among the gods. It would be . . . bad. '
'Really bad,' Grover added helpfully.
'Return Zeuss master bolt to me,' I said. 'Please, sir. Let me carry it to Olympus. '
Hadess eyes grew dangerously bright. 'You dare keep up this pretense, after what you have done?'
I glanced back at my friends. They looked as confused as I was.
'Um . . . Uncle,' I said. 'You keep saying after what youve done. What exactly have I done?'
The throne room shook with a tremor so strong, they probably felt it upstairs in Los Angeles. Debris fell from the cavern ceiling. Doors burst open all along the walls, and skeletal warriors marched in, hundreds of them, from every time period and nation in Western civilization. They lined the perimeter of the room, blocking the exits.
Hades bellowed, 'Do you think I want war, godling?'
I wanted to say, Well, these guys dont look like peace activists. But I thought that might be a dangerous answer.
'You are the Lord of the Dead,' I said carefully. 'A war would expand your kingdom, right?'
'A typical thing for my brothers to say! Do you think I need more subjects? Did you not see the sprawl of the Asphodel Fields?'
'Well. . . '
'Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century alone, how many subdivisions Ive had to open?'
I opened my mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now.
'More security ghouls,' he moaned. 'Traffic problems at the judgment pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!'
'Charon wants a pay raise,' I blurted, just remembering the fact. As soon as I said it, I wished I could sew up my mouth.
'Dont get me started on Charon!' Hades yelled. 'Hes been impossible ever since he discovered Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and Ive got to handle all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving. No, godling. I need no help getting subjects! I did not ask for this war. '
'But you took Zeuss master bolt. '
'Lies!' More rumbling. Hades rose from his throne, towering to the height of a football goalpost. 'Your father may fool Zeus, boy, but I am not so stupid. I see his plan. '
'His plan?'
'You were the thief on the winter solstice,' he said. 'Your father thought to keep you his little secret. He directed you into the throne room on Olympus, You took the master bolt and my helm. Had I not sent my Fury to discover you at YancyAcademy, Poseidon might have succeeded in hiding his scheme to start a war. But now you have been forced into the open. You will be exposed as Poseidons thief, and I will have my helm back!'
'But . . . ' Annabeth spoke. I could tell her mind was going a million miles an hour. 'Lord Hades, your helm of darkness is missing, too?'
'Do not play innocent with me, girl. You and the satyr have been helping this hero—coming here to threaten me in Poseidons name, no doubt—to bring me an ultimatum. Does Poseidon think I can be blackmailed into supporting him?'
'No!' I said. 'Poseidon didnt—I didnt—'
'I have said nothing of the helms disappearance,' Hades snarled, 'because I had no illusions that anyone on Olympus would offer me the slightest justice, the slightest help. I can ill afford for word to get out that my most powerful weapon of fear is missing. So I searched for you myself, and when it was clear you were coming to me to deliver your threat, I did not try to stop you. '
'You didnt try to stop us? But—'
'Return my helm now, or I will stop death,' Hades threatened. 'That is my counterproposal. I will open the earth and have the dead pour back into the world. I will make your lands a nightmare. And you, Percy Jackson—your skeleton will lead my army out of Hades. '
The skeletal soldiers all took one step forward, making their weapons ready.
At that point, I probably should have been terrified. The strange thing was, I felt offended. Nothing gets me angrier than being accused of something I didnt do. Ive had a lot of experience with that.
'Youre as bad as Zeus,' I said. 'You think I stole from you? Thats why you sent the Furies after me?'
'Of course,' Hades said.
'And the other monsters?'
Hades curled his lip. 'I had nothing to do with them. I wanted no quick death for you—I wanted you brought before me alive so you might face every torture in the Fields of Punishment. Why do you think I let you enter my kingdom so easily?'
'Easily?'
'Return my property!'
'But I dont have your helm. I came for the master bolt. '
'Which you already possess!' Hades shouted. 'You came here with it, little fool, thinking you could you threaten me!'
'But I didnt!'
'Open your pack, then. '
A horrible feeling struck me. The weight in my backpack, like a bowling ball. It couldnt be. . . .
I slung it off my shoulder and unzipped it. Inside was a two-foot-long metal cylinder, spiked on both ends, humming with energy.
'Percy,' Annabeth said. 'How—'
'I—I dont know. I dont understand. '
'You heroes are always the same,' Hades said. 'Your pride makes you foolish, thinking you could bring such a weapon before me. I did not ask for Zeuss master bolt, but since it is here, you will yield it to me. I am sure it will make an excellent bargaining tool. And now . . . my helm. Where is it?'
I was speechless. I had no helm. I had no idea how the master bolt had gotten into my backpack. I wanted to think Hades was pulling some kind of trick. Hades was the bad guy. But suddenly the world turned sideways. I realized Id been played with. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades had been set at each others throats by someone else. The master bolt had been in the backpack, and Id gotten the backpack from . . .
'Lord Hades, wait,' I said. 'This is all a mistake. '
'A mistake?' Hades roared.
The skeletons aimed their weapons. From high above, there was a fluttering of leathery wings, and the three Furies swooped down to perch on the back of their masters throne. The one with Mrs. Doddss face grinned at me eagerly and flicked her whip.
'There is no mistake,' Hades said. 'I know why you have come—I know the real reason you brought the bolt. You came to bargain for her. '
Hades loosed a ball of gold fire from his palm. It exploded on the steps in front of me, and there was my mother, frozen in a shower of gold, just as she was at the moment when the Minotaur began to squeeze her to death.
I couldnt speak. I reached out to touch her, but the light was as hot as a bonfire.
'Yes,' Hades said with satisfaction. 'I took her. I knew, Percy Jackson, that you would come to bargain with me eventually. Return my helm, and perhaps I will let her go. She is not dead, you know. Not yet. But if you displease me, that will change. '
I thought about the pearls in my pocket. Maybe they could get me out of this. If I could just get my mom free . . .
'Ah, the pearls,' Hades said, and my blood froze. 'Yes, my brother and his little tricks. Bring them forth, Percy Jackson. '
My hand moved against my will and brought out the pearls.
'Only three,' Hades said. 'What a shame. You do realize each only protects a single person. Try to take your mother, then, little godling. And which of your friends will you leave behind to spend eternity with me? Go on. Choose. Or give me the backpack and accept my terms. '
I looked at Annabeth and Grover. Their faces were grim.
'We were tricked,' I told them. 'Set up. '
'Yes, but why?' Annabeth asked. 'And the voice in the pit—'
'I dont know yet,' I said. 'But I intend to ask. '
'Decide, boy!' Hades yelled.
'Percy. ' Grover put his hand on my shoulder. 'You cant give him the bolt,'
'I know that. '
'Leave me here,' he said. 'Use the third pearl on your mom. '
Page 1
The Lightning Thief Online
1. I ACCIDENTALLY VAPORIZE MY PRE-ALGEBRA TEACHER
Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.
If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.
Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.
If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.
But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
My name is Percy Jackson.
I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at YancyAcademy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.
Am I a troubled kid?
Yeah. You could say that.
I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.
I know—it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.
But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.
Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.
I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.
Boy, was I wrong.
See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.
This trip, I was determined to be good.
All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.
Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.
'I'm going to kill her,' I mumbled.
Grover tried to calm me down. 'It's okay. I like peanut butter.'
He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.
'That's it.' I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.
'You're already on probation,' he reminded me. 'You know who'll get blamed if anything happens.'
Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.
Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.
He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.
It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.
He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.
Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.
From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, 'Now, honey,' real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.
One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, 'You're absolutely right.'
Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.
Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, 'Will you shut up?'
It came out louder than I meant it to.
The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.
'Mr. Jackson,' he said, 'did you have a comment?'
My face was totally red. I said, 'No, sir.'
Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. 'Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?'
I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. 'That's Kronos eating his kids, right?'
'Yes,' Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. 'And he did this because ...'
'Well...' I racked my brain to remember. 'Kronos was the king god, and—'
'God?' Mr. Brunner asked.
'Titan,' I corrected myself. 'And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—'
'Eeew!' said one of the girls behind me.
'—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans,' I continued, 'and the gods won.'
Some snickers from the group.
Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, 'Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'
'And why, Mr. Jackson,' Brunner said, 'to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?'
'Busted,' Grover muttered.
'Shut up,' Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.
At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.
I thought about his question, and shrugged. 'I don't know, sir.'
'I see.' Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. 'Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?'
The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.
Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, 'Mr. Jackson.'
I knew that was coming.
I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. 'Sir?'
Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.
'You must learn the answer to my question,' Mr. Brunner told me.
'About the Titans?'
'About real life. And how your studies apply to it.'
'Oh.'
'What you learn from me,' he said, 'is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.'
I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.
I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: 'What ho!' and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C– in my life. No—he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.
I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.
He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.
The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.
Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.
Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.
Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.
'Detention?' Grover asked.
'Nah,' I said. 'Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean—I'm not a genius.'
Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, 'Can I have your apple?'
I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.
I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.