The sun was sinking behind the mountains by the time we found the water park. Judging from the sign, it once had been called WATERLAND, but now some of the letters were smashed out, so it read WAT R A D.
The main gate was padlocked and topped with barbed wire. Inside, huge dry waterslides and tubes and pipes curled everywhere, leading to empty pools. Old tickets and advertisements fluttered around the asphalt. With night coming on, the place looked sad and creepy.
"If Ares brings his girlfriend here for a date," Percy said, staring up at the barbed wire, "I'd hate to see what she looks like." Aphrodite would kill him on the spot if she heard this.
"Percy," I warned. "Be more respectful."
"Why? I thought you hated Ares."
"He's still a god. And his girlfriend is very temperamental."
"You don't want to insult her looks," Grover added.
"Who is she? Echidna?" Idiot for the don't-know-how-many time.
"No, Aphrodite," Grover said, a little dreamily. "Goddess of love."
"I thought she was married to somebody," Percy said. "Hephaestus."
"What's your point?" he asked.
"Oh." Percy said suddenly changing the subject probably on purpose. "So how do we get in?"
"Maia!" Grover's shoes sprouted wings.
He flew over the fence, did an unintended somersault in midair, then stumbled to a landing on the opposite side. He dusted off his jeans, as if he'd planned the whole thing. "You guys coming?"
Percy and I had to climb the old-fashioned way, holding down the barbed wire for each other as we crawled over the top.
The shadows grew long as we walked through the park, checking out the attractions. There was Ankle Biter Island, Head Over Wedgie, and Dude, Where's My Swimsuit? No monsters came to get us. Nothing made the slightest noise.
We found a souvenir shop that had been left open. Merchandise still lined the shelves: snow globes, pencils, postcards, and racks of—
"Clothes," I said grinning. "Fresh clothes."
"Yeah," Percy said. "But you can't just—"
"Watch me." I learnt from the son of the God of Thieves before, you know.
I snatched an entire row of stuff of the racks and disappeared into the changing room. A few minutes later she came out in Waterland flower-print shorts, a big red Waterland T-shirt, and commemorative Waterland surf shoes. A Waterland backpack was slung over her shoulder, obviously stuffed with more goodies.
"What the heck." Grover shrugged. Soon, all three of us were decked out like walking advertisements for the defunct theme park. Well, they definitely needed some so we're sort of doing them a favour.
We continued searching for the Tunnel of Love. I got the feeling that the whole park was holding its breath. "So Ares and Aphrodite," Percy said, to keep my mind off the growing dark, "they have a thing going?"
"That's old gossip, Percy," I told Percy. "Three-thousand-year-old gossip."
"What about Aphrodite's husband?"
"Well, you know," I said. "Hephaestus. The black-smith. He was crippled when he was a baby, thrown off Mount Olympus by Zeus. So he isn't exactly handsome. Clever with his hands, and all, but Aphrodite isn't into brains and talent, you know?"
"She likes bikers."
"Whatever."
"Hephaestus knows?"
"Oh sure," I said. "He caught them together once. I mean, literally caught them, in a golden net, and invited all the gods to come and laugh at them. Hephaestus is always trying to embarrass them. That's why they meet in out-of-the-way places, like ..."
I stopped, looking straight ahead. "Like that."
In front of us was an empty pool that would've been awesome for skateboarding. It was at least fifty yards across and shaped like a bowl. Around the rim, a dozen bronze statues of Cupid stood guard with wings spread and bows ready to fire.
On the opposite side from us, a tunnel opened up, probably where the water flowed into when the pool was full. The signabove it read, THRILL RIDE O' LOVE: THIS IS NOT YOUR PARENTS' TUNNEL OF LOVE!
Grover crept toward the edge. "Guys, look."
Marooned at the bottom of the pool was a pink-and-white two-seater boat with a canopy over the top and little hearts painted all over it. In the left seat, glinting in the fading light, was Ares's shield, a polished circle of bronze.
"This is too easy," Percy said. "So we just walk down there and get it?"
I ran her fingers along the base of the nearest Cupid statue.
"There's a Greek letter carved here," I said. "Eta. I wonder ..."
"Grover," Percy said, "you smell any monsters?"
He sniffed the wind. "Nothing."
"Nothing—like, in-the-Arch-and-you-didn't-smell-Echidna nothing, or really nothing?"
Grover looked hurt. "I told you, that was underground."
"Okay, I'm sorry." Percy took a deep breath. "I'm going down there."
"I'll go with you." Grover didn't sound too enthusiastic, but I got the feeling he was trying to make up for what had happened in St. Louis.
"No," Percy told him. "I want you to stay up top with the flying shoes. You're the Red Baron, a flying ace, remember? I'll be counting on you for backup, in case something goes wrong."
Grover puffed up his chest a little. "Sure. But what could go wrong?"
"I don't know. Just a feeling. Annabeth, come with me—"
"Are you kidding?" I stared at him. No way I am going to go with him for the Thrill Ride of Love. My cheeks burned bright red.
"What's the problem now?" Percy demanded.
"Me, go with you to the ... the 'Thrill Ride of Love'? How embarrassing is that? What if somebody saw me?"
"Who's going to see you?" But Percy face was burning now, too. "Fine," Percy told me. "I'll do it myself." But when Percy started down the side of the pool, I followed him knowing he'd probably mess up anyway.
We reached the boat. The shield was propped on one seat, and next to it was a lady's silk scarf. I tried to imagine Ares and Aphrodite here, a couple of gods meeting in a junked-out amusement-park ride.
Why? Then I noticed something I hadn't seen from up top: mirrors all the way around the rim of the pool, facing this spot. We could see ourselves no matter which direction we looked. That must be it. While Ares and Aphrodite were smooching with each other they could look at their favorite people: themselves.
Out of the blue, Percy picked up the scarf. It shimmered pink, and the perfume was indescribable—rose, or mountain laurel. Something good. He smiled, a little dreamy and weird, and was about to rub the scarf against my cheek when I ripped it out of Percy's hand and stuffed it in my pocket. "Oh, no you don't. Stay away from that love magic."
"What?"
"Just get the shield, Seaweed Brain, and let's get out of here."
The moment I touched the shield, I knew we were in trouble. My hand broke through something that had been connecting it to the dashboard. A cobweb, I thought, but then I looked at a strand of it on my palm and saw it was some kind of metal filament, so fine it was almost invisible. A trip wire.
"Wait," I said.
"Too late."
"There's another Greek letter on the side of the boat, another Eta. This is a trap."
Noise erupted all around us, of a million gears grinding, as if the whole pool were turning into one giant machine.
Grover yelled, "Guys!"
Up on the rim, the Cupid statues were drawing their bows into firing position. Before I could suggest taking cover, they shot, but not at us. They fired at each other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk. Then smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the main strands, making a net.
"We have to get out," Percy said.
"Duh!" I replied. I should've known this was a trap. Percy grabbed the shield and we ran, but going up the slope of the pool was not as easy as going down.
"Come on!" Grover shouted.
He was trying to hold open a section of the net for us, but wherever he touched it, the golden threads started to wrap around his hands. The Cupids' heads popped open. Out came video cam-eras. Spotlights rose up all around the pool, blinding us with illumination, and a loudspeaker voice boomed: "Live to Olympus in one minute ... Fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight ..."
"Hephaestus!" I screamed. "I'm so stupid.' Eta is H.' He made this trap to catch his wife with Ares. Now we're going to be broadcast live to Olympus and look like absolute fools!"
We'd almost made it to the rim when the row of mirrors opened like hatches and thousands of… of metallic spiders poured out. I screamed, naturally. Spiders were enemies of Athena too.
"Spiders!" Annabeth said. "Sp—sp—aaaah!"
I never thought anyone but Thalia and Luke would see this. Percy? Oh gods. My concentration whirled back to the spiders as one of them jumped onto my shoulder. I fell backward in terror and almost got overwhelmed by the spider robots before Percy pulled me up and dragged me back toward the boat.
Percy and I climbed into the boat. I saw Percy started kicking away the spiders as they swarmed aboard. I heard him yelling at me to help him too but I was too terrorized by the spiders to do much more than scream.
"Thirty, twenty-nine," called the loudspeaker.
Then amidst screams I heard…
"Fifteen, fourteen," the loudspeaker called.
"Grover!" Percy yelled. "Get into that booth! Find the 'on' switch!"
"But—"
"Do it!"
"Five, four—"
"Two, one,zero!"
Suddenly, water exploded out of the pipes, pulling me back to reality. It roared into the pool, sweeping away the spiders. He pulled me into the seat next to him and fastened my seat belt just as the tidal wave slammed into our boat, over the top, whisking the spiders away and dousing us completely, but not capsizing us. The boat turned, lifted in the flood, and spun in circles around the whirlpool.
The water was full of short-circuiting spiders, some of them smashing against the pool's concrete wall with such force they burst. Spotlights glared down at us. The Cupid-cams were rolling, live to Olympus. But I could only concentrate on controlling the boat. I willed it to ride the current, to keep away from the wall. Maybe it was my imagination, but the boat seemed to respond. At least, it didn't break into a million pieces. We spun around one last time, the water level now almost high enough to shred us against the metal net. Then the boat's nose turned toward the tunnel and we rocketed through into the darkness.
Percy and I held tight, both of us screaming as the boat shot curls and hugged corners and took forty-five-degree plunges past pictures of Romeo and Juliet and a bunch of other Valentine's Day stuff.
Then we were out of the tunnel, the night air whistling through our hair as the boat barreled straight toward the exit. If the ride had been in working order, we would've sailed off a ramp between the golden Gates of Love and splashed down safely in the exit pool. But there was a problem. The Gates of Love were chained. Two boats that had been washed out of the tunnel before us were now piled against the barricade—one submerged, the other cracked in half.
"Unfasten your seat belt," Percy yelled to me.
"Are you crazy?" but inside I thought that was pretty brilliant.
"Unless you want to get smashed to death." I strapped Ares's shield to my arm. "We're going to have to jump for it." I guessed his idea was using the boat. As the boat struck, we would use its force like a springboard to jump the gate. With luck, we would land in the pool.
"On my mark," Percy said.
"No! On my mark!"
"What?"
"Simple physics!" I yelled. "Force times the trajectory angle—" plus I was smarted than Seaweed Brain, though I wasn't going to say that to him.
"Fine.'" I shouted. "On your mark!" His streak of obedience again?
I hesitated ... hesitated ... then yelled, "Now!"
Crack!
Yes, I got us maximum lift. Unfortunately, that was a little more than we needed. Our boat smashed into the pileup and we were thrown into the air, straight over the gates, over the pool, and down toward solid asphalt. Something grabbed me from behind.
I yelled, "Ouch!" Grover!
In midair, he had grabbed Percy by the shirt, and me by the arm, and was trying to pull us out of a crash landing, but Percy and I had all the momentum.
"You're too heavy!" Grover said. "We're going down!"
We spiraled toward the ground, Grover doing his best to slow the fall.
We smashed into a photo-board, Grover's head going straight into the hole where tourists would put their faces, pretending to be Noo-Noo the Friendly Whale. Percy and I tumbled to the ground, banged up but alive. Ares's shield was still on my arm.
Once we caught our breath, Percy and I got Grover out of the photo-board and thanked him for saving our lives. I looked back at the Thrill Ride of Love. The water was subsiding. Our boat had been smashed to pieces against the gates.
A hundred yards away, at the entrance pool, the Cupids were still filming. The statues had swiveled so that their cameras were trained straight on us, the spotlights in our faces.
Unexpectedly, Percy yelled, "Show's over! Thank you! Good night!"
The Cupids turned back to their original positions. The lights shut off. The park went quiet and dark again, except for the gentle trickle of water into the Thrill Ride of Love's exit pool. I wondered if Olympus had gone to a commercial break, or if our ratings had been any good.
"We need to have a little talk with Ares."
