Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson And The Olympians, #4)

by Rick Riordan

The last thing I wanted to do on my summer break was blow up another school.

‘Think positive. Tomorrow you’re off to camp! After orientation, you’ve got your date –’ ‘It’s not a date!’ I protested. ‘It’s just Annabeth, Mom. Jeez!’ ‘She’s coming all the way from camp to meet you.’ ‘Well, yeah.’ ‘You’re going to the movies.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Just the two of you.’ ‘Mom!’ She held up her hands in surrender, but I could tell she was trying hard not to smile.

We’d spent maybe ten minutes together, during which time I’d accidentally swung a sword at her, she’d saved my life and I’d run away, chased by a band of supernatural killing machines. You know, your typical chance meeting.

Now, as far as I knew, he was still sailing around on his demon-infested cruise ship while his chopped-up Lord Kronos re-formed, bit by bit, in a golden sarcophagus, biding his time until he had enough power to challenge the Olympian gods. In demigod-speak, we call this a ‘problem’.

If you’ve never been charged by an enthusiastic Cyclops wearing a flowered apron and rubber cleaning gloves, I’m telling you, it’ll wake you up quick.

‘Yay!’ he said. ‘Now we can eat peanut butter sandwiches and ride fish ponies! We can fight monsters and see Annabeth and make things go BOOM!’ I hoped he didn’t mean all at the same time, but I told him absolutely, we’d have a lot of fun this summer. I couldn’t help smiling; he was so enthusiastic about everything.

It was hard to concentrate on what she was saying, because everybody in the dining pavilion was stealing glances at us and whispering. And Annabeth was right next to me. I mean right next to me.

Ya bring me some sugar cubes? ‘You know those aren’t good for you, Blackjack.’ Yeah, so you brought me some, huh? I smiled and fed him a handful.

‘Percy Jackson with Annabeth Chase.’ ‘Nice.’ I grinned at Annabeth. ‘Your armour is crooked,’ was her only comment, and she redid my straps for me.

Annabeth’s hand slipped into mine. Under different circumstances I would’ve been embarrassed, but here in the dark I was glad to know where she was. It was about the only thing I was sure of.

‘Look, the point is, I have to go in. I’ll find the workshop and stop Luke. And … I need help.’ She turned to me. ‘Will you come?’ I didn’t even hesitate. ‘I’m in.’ She smiled for the first time in days, and that made it all worthwhile.

Then she did something that really surprised me. She blinked back tears and put out her arms. I stepped forward and hugged her. Butterflies started turning my stomach into a mosh pit.

I was aware of everything in the room. I felt like I could read the tiniest print on any book on the shelves. Annabeth’s hair smelled like lemon soap. She was shivering.

‘I’m breaking the rules. But I don’t know what else to do. I need you three. It just feels right.’

I nodded, feeling more confused than I ever had in my life. I wanted to run from the cabin … but then again I didn’t.

I figured maybe this was how he tortured people. He embarrassed them to death, riding around in the moo-mobile.

‘You’re a monster,’ Annabeth decided. Geryon stopped the moo-mobile and turned to look at her. ‘What gave it away? Was it the three bodies?’

She was scared of tiny spiders, but not of plummeting to her death from a set of monkey bars. Go figure.

‘I’m a child of Athena,’ she insisted. ‘And this is an insult to my intelligence. I won’t answer these questions.’

Hephaestus glowered up at us. ‘I didn’t make you, did I?’ ‘Uh,’ Annabeth said, ‘no, sir.’ ‘Good,’ the god grumbled. ‘Shoddy workmanship.’

The truth is, my mother likes families, but she likes a certain kind of family. Perfect families. She took one look at me and … well, I don’t fit the image, do I?’

As a young sea demon matures, the narrator said, changes happen in the monster’s body. You may notice your fangs getting longer and you may have a sudden desire to devour human beings. These changes are perfectly normal and happen to all young monsters.

Annabeth glared at me like she was going to punch me. And then she did something that surprised me even more. She kissed me.

I probably would’ve sat there for the rest of the day, staring at the lava and trying to remember what my name was, but the sea demons jarred me back to reality.

People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.’

‘Go, please.’ Her voice broke. ‘The Fates are cruel, Percy. Just remember me.’ Then a little trace of her smile returned. ‘Plant a garden in Manhattan for me, will you?’

‘Came here to practise yesterday,’ she grumbled. ‘Dog tried to chew me up.’ ‘She’s an intelligent dog,’ I said. ‘Funny.’

‘He is a genius,’ Aelia said. ‘And he believes a woman is just as smart as a man. He was the first ever to teach us as if we had minds of our own. Perhaps your daughter felt the same way.’

‘I can’t get him to clean his room, but he’ll clean a hundred tons of horse manure out of some monster’s stables!’

‘It’s going to eat you!’ Grover yelled at Tyson. ‘How do you know?’ ‘It just told me! Run!’

There were a lot of answers I might’ve given, from ‘I knew that’ to ‘LIAR!’ to ‘Yeah right, and I’m Zeus.’

Minos laughed. ‘You have no power over me. I am the lord of spirits! The ghost king!’ ‘No.’ Nico drew his sword. ‘I am.’

Jumping out of a window one hundred and fifty metres above ground is not usually my idea of fun. Especially when I’m wearing bronze wings and flapping my arms like a duck.

‘It hasn’t been easy, you know. Having only the dead for company. Knowing that I’ll never be accepted by the living. Only the dead respect me, and they only do that out of fear.’

I remembered the last time Annabeth and I had parted ways, when she’d given me a kiss for luck in Mount St Helens. This time, all I got was the hat.

Something flew past me, and a blue plastic hairbrush hit Kronos in the eye.

‘You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.’

I was thinking that my mom’s apartment wouldn’t allow dogs, especially dogs bigger than the apartment, but I said, ‘Yeah. Of course I will.’

The god of wine looked around at the assembled crowd. ‘Miss me?’ The satyrs fell over themselves nodding and bowing. ‘Oh, yes, very much, sire!’ ‘Well, I did not miss this place!’ Dionysus snapped.

‘I was beginning to feel better, so I thought I would talk with you a bit. You always manage to annoy me.’

‘I am nice! I simply ooze niceness, Perry Johansson. Haven’t you noticed?’

Annabeth and I pretty much skirted around each other. I was glad to be with her, but it also kind of hurt, and it hurt when I wasn’t with her, too.

She looked just the way she had when she’d faced the Sphinx – like she wasn’t going to accept an easy answer, even if it got her in serious trouble. I realized that was one of the things I liked best about Annabeth.

I wanted to tell Annabeth that I didn’t really want to be so distant from her.

I would still be allowed to start as a freshman at Goode next month. If I wanted to keep my record of getting kicked out of school every year, I’d have to try harder.

I thought about Paul and my mom, how she smiled and laughed more whenever he was around, and how Paul had gone out of his way to get me into high school. I found myself saying, ‘I think that’s a great idea, Paul. Go for it.’ He smiled really wide then. ‘Cheers, Percy. Let’s join the party.’

‘Hi, I’m Paul Blofis.’ Poseidon raised his eyebrows as they shook hands. ‘Blowfish, did you say?’

‘Percy, lesser beings do many horrible things in the name of the gods. That does not mean we gods approve. The way our sons and daughters act in our names … well, it usually says more about them than it does about us. And you, Percy, are my favourite son.’ He smiled, and at that moment, just being in the kitchen with him was the best birthday present I ever got.

For a second I thought he was talking about Annabeth kissing me, and I blushed, but then I realized he was talking about something a lot bigger.

‘Minos wanted to boil him in cheese fondue for eternity, but my father had other ideas.