I tumbled sideways off Jason’s coffin, warm blood trickling into the waistline of my pants.
Hazel Levesque yelled in defiance. She vaulted over the coffin and drove her spatha straight through the eurynomos’s clavicle, creating the world’s first ghoul-on-a-stick.
The eurynomos screamed and lurched backward, ripping the spatha from Hazel’s grip. The wound smoked where the Imperial gold blade had entered. Then—there is no delicate way to put it—the ghoul burst into steaming, crumbling chunks of ash. The spatha clanged to the stone floor.
The second ghoul had stopped to face Meg, as one does when one has been slashed across the thighs by an annoying twelve-year-old, but when its comrade cried out, it spun to face us. This gave Meg an opening, but instead of striking, she pushed past the monster and ran straight to my side, her blades retracting back into her rings.
“You okay?” she demanded. “Oh, NO. You’re bleeding. You said don’t get scratched. You got scratched!”
I wasn’t sure whether to be touched by her concern or annoyed by her tone. “I didn’t plan it, Meg.”
“Guys!” yelled Lavinia.
The ghoul stepped forward, positioning itself between Hazel and her fallen spatha. Don continued to cower like a champ. Lavinia’s manubalista remained only half-primed. Meg and I were now wedged side by side next to Jason’s coffin.
That left Hazel, empty-handed, as the only obstacle between the eurynomos and a five-course meal.
The creature hissed, “You cannot win.”
Its voice changed. Its tone became deeper, its volume modulated. “You will join your comrades in my tomb.”
Between my throbbing head and my aching gut, I had trouble following the words, but Hazel seemed to understand.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “How about you stop hiding behind your creatures and show yourself!”
The eurynomos blinked. Its eyes turned from milky white to a glowing purple, like iodine flames. “Hazel Levesque. You of all people should understand the fragile boundary between life and death. But don’t be afraid. I will save a special place for you at my side, along with your beloved Frank. You will make glorious skeletons.”
Hazel clenched her fists. When she glanced back at us, her expression was almost as intimidating as the ghoul’s. “Back up,” she warned us. “As far as you can.”
Meg half dragged me to the front end of the coffin. My gut felt like it had been stitched with a molten-hot zipper. Lavinia grabbed Don by his T-shirt collar and pulled him to a safer cowering spot.
The ghoul chuckled. “How will you defeat me, Hazel? With this?” It kicked the spatha farther away behind him. “I have summoned more undead. They will be here soon.”
Despite my pain, I struggled to get up. I couldn’t leave Hazel by herself. But Lavinia put a hand on my shoulder.
“Wait,” she murmured. “Hazel’s got this.”
That seemed ridiculously optimistic, but to my shame, I stayed put. More warm blood soaked into my underwear. At least I hoped it was blood.
The eurynomos wiped drool from its mouth with one clawed finger. “Unless you intend to run and abandon that lovely coffin, you might as well surrender. We are strong underground, daughter of Pluto. Too strong for you.”
“Oh?” Hazel’s voice remained steady, almost conversational. “Strong underground. That’s good to know.”
The tunnel shook. Cracks appeared in the walls, jagged fissures branching up the stone. Beneath the ghoul’s feet, a column of white quartz erupted, skewering the monster against the ceiling and reducing it to a cloud of vulture-feather confetti.
Hazel faced us as if nothing remarkable had happened. “Don, Lavinia, get this…” She looked uneasily at the coffin. “Get this out of here. You”—she pointed at Meg—“help your friend, please. We have healers at camp who can deal with that ghoul scratch.”
“Wait!” I said. “Wh-what just happened? Its voice—”
“I’ve seen that happen before with a ghoul,” Hazel said grimly. “I’ll explain later. Right now, get going. I’ll follow in a sec.”
I started to protest, but Hazel stopped me with a shake of her head. “I’m just going to pick up my sword and make sure no more of those things can follow us. Go!”
Rubble trickled from new cracks in the ceiling. Perhaps leaving wasn’t such a bad idea.
Leaning on Meg, I managed to stagger farther down the tunnel. Lavinia and Don lugged Jason’s coffin. I was in so much pain I didn’t even have the energy to yell at Lavinia to carry it like a couch.
We’d gone perhaps fifty feet when the tunnel behind us rumbled even more strongly than before. I looked back just in time to get hit in the face with a billowing cloud of debris.
“Hazel?” Lavinia called into the swirling dust.
A heartbeat later, Hazel Levesque emerged, coated from head to toe in glittering powdered quartz. Her sword glowed in her hand.
“I’m fine,” she announced. “But nobody’s going to be sneaking out that way anymore. Now”—she pointed at the coffin—“somebody want to tell me who’s in there?”
I really didn’t.
Not after I’d seen how Hazel skewered her enemies.
Still…I owed it to Jason. Hazel had been his friend.
I steeled my nerves, opened my mouth to speak, and was beaten to the punch by Hazel herself.
“It’s Jason,” she said, as if the information had been whispered in her ear. “Oh, gods.”
She ran to the coffin. She fell to her knees and threw her arms across the lid. She let out a single devastated sob. Then she lowered her head and shivered in silence. Strands of her hair sketched through the quartz dust on the polished wood surface, leaving squiggly lines like the readings of a seismograph.
Without looking up, she murmured, “I had nightmares. A boat. A man on a horse. A…a spear. How did it happen?”
I did my best to explain. I told her about my fall into the mortal world, my adventures with Meg, our fight aboard Caligula’s yacht, and how Jason had died saving us. Recounting the story brought back all the pain and terror. I remembered the sharp ozone smell of the wind spirits swirling around Meg and Jason, the bite of zip-tie handcuffs around my wrists, Caligula’s pitiless, delighted boast: You don’t walk away from me alive!
It was all so awful, I momentarily forgot about the agonizing cut across my belly.
Lavinia stared at the floor. Meg did her best to stanch my bleeding with one of the extra dresses from her backpack. Don watched the ceiling, where a new crack was zigzagging over our heads.
“Hate to interrupt,” said the faun, “but maybe we should continue this outside?”
Hazel pressed her fingers against the coffin lid. “I’m so angry at you. Doing this to Piper. To us. Not letting us be there for you. What were you thinking?”
It took me a moment to realize she wasn’t talking to us. She was speaking to Jason.
Slowly, she stood. Her mouth trembled. She straightened, as if summoning internal columns of quartz to brace her skeletal system.
“Let me carry one side,” she said. “Let’s bring him home.”
We trudged along in silence, the sorriest pallbearers ever. All of us were covered in dust and monster ash. At the front of the coffin, Lavinia squirmed in her armor, occasionally glancing over at Hazel, who walked with her eyes straight ahead. She didn’t even seem to notice the random vulture feather fluttering from her shirtsleeve.