A/N: This chapter is rated PG-13/T because Clarisse has a potty mouth and the gods aren't great examples of relationship fidelity.
Chapter 28: Clarisse Plays Demolition (Wo)Man
It wasn't long before I saw Chiron and Clarisse again. On the first day of spring break, I made my way to Arizona to meet them.
A wave of scorching heat blasted me in the face the moment I taxi-ed to a stop on the Womack Airstrip. It hadn't been obvious at twenty thousand feet, but now that I'd landed, I could practically see the wavy columns rising off the tarmac. It was like stepping into a furnace.
I tugged off my aviator's helmet and shrugged out of my jacket. It had to be at least twenty degrees hotter than San Francisco, where everyone was still bemoaning the unnatural spring chill.
Chiron and Clarisse met me on the runway.
'I see you've picked up a new skill,' Chiron said.
I grinned. I'd only passed my flight test a week ago. My dad had generously allowed me to fly the trainer Camel down to Phoenix, probably because his research team had just taken a new delivery of planes. They were busy organising a historical re-enactment of the Battle of Ypres with the new Camels.
'Are we doing this or what?' Clarisse looked less than impressed. Her burly arms were crossed over her tank top. She'd pulled back her roughly-cut hair with an orange bandanna.
We headed for the Labyrinth entrance on the rez, the one Clarisse had found last fall. It was the last string to tie up before she and Chiron left Phoenix to bring Chris back to camp. I guess I didn't really need to be here for it—Clarisse never needed help blowing stuff up—but I wanted to follow through. After all, I'd been in on the Labyrinth investigation from the beginning.
The entrance was in a multi-storey building that might once have been a housing block for poor families. It had obviously been abandoned for years. Moss grew out of the cracks around its dusty, broken windows. Rusty fire escape steps with broken rungs twisted up the side of the building. The plaster walls were sun-bleached and faded, the paint peeling and streaked with dirt. The mark of Daedalus was carefully hidden amidst a wild spray of graffiti. If I hadn't been looking out for it specifically, I'd never have noticed it.
A demolition crew was already moving in equipment when we arrived, including a wrecking ball that swung from a thirty-foot-tall crane. The three workmen were skeletons with ghostly eyes that shone out of empty sockets, like the spartoi guards that had flanked Harmonia when she fled from her ancient city. Clarisse had had a similar crew of dead Confederate soldiers on her battleship last year, when she'd led the quest for the Golden Fleece—the losers of the Civil War who now had to serve Ares throughout their zombie afterlives (a good reason if any never to be on the losing side of a war). But these workmen wore a different uniform.
'Union soldiers?'
'Battle of Picacho Pass,' she said. 'The Confederates must've won that one.'
Clarisse stepped up to an elevated platform and whistled sharply. Her undead slaves turned to her and saluted.
'Ready when you are, miss!' one croaked. He hopped into the driver's seat of the crane.
'Wait!' I said. 'Are you sure that's safe? Did you make sure the foundations are—'
Clarisse threw me a scathing look. 'It's demolition, not design, Wise-Ass. Just knock it down!'
I hoped she knew what she was talking about. It was true that destroying things wasn't my forte. I usually left that part to Percy.
'Watch and learn!' With her nose in the air, Clarisse gave her undead officers the command: 'Smash it!'
The crane swivelled, swinging the wrecking ball like a pendulum. It slammed into the side of the building. Plaster crumbled. Whatever glass was left in the windows shattered. The rickety fire escape stairs snapped like a broken twig. We got a brief glimpse of the gaping hole in the side of the building before the wrecking ball came in for a second hit.
'Yeah!' Clarisse shouted, pumping her fist in the air. The building's foundations shuddered and began to give away along haphazard fracture lines. One large crack ran vertically up the splintering wall.
Chunks of plaster rained down perilously close to Clarisse's elevated platform. It looked like she hadn't planned out the fracture patterns (no surprise there). An entire side of the building was about to collapse on her.
'Clarisse, get out of there!'
She looked at me like I was a hydra. I met Chiron's eyes. He was still in his wheelchair and couldn't possibly get to her before the building fell. No time for arguments—I ran forward and pulled Clarisse off the platform. The moment our heads ducked under the hollow behind it, a ton of cement crashed onto the spot where she'd been standing.
'Geez, Chase, what's your problem?'
'Are you crazy?'
'That was foolish, child.' Chiron extracted his hindquarters from his chair and clopped over with stern disapproval stamped across his face.
Clarisse laughed and got to her feet. She surveyed her handiwork with smug satisfaction. 'That's the way you do it.'
The rest of the building had caved in on itself, forming a gigantic heap of dusty rubble. Daedalus's mark was still glowing faintly in the middle of it.
I brushed plaster dust out of my hair. 'Is the entrance still under all that? I can still see the mark.'
'Oh, we're not done,' Clarisse said. She rubbed her hands together gleefully. 'This is the best part.'
One of the undead workers got into a dump truck and reversed it up to the collapsed building. He offloaded its contents into the rubble—a truckload of dynamite.
'You are crazy!' I said. 'You're gonna blow us all sky high!'
'How else do you want to get rid of the entrance?'
'You're both right,' Chiron said. 'It will take a powerful blast to destroy it—if that is even possible. But we should put a safe distance between us and the blast site first.'
Clarisse grumbled, but allowed Chiron to carry us away. Her undead minions followed in the now-empty truck. I guess even if they couldn't die again, they were still averse to getting blown up. When we had put several football fields between us and the blast site, Clarisse pressed the detonator.
Even at this distance, the explosion shook the ground. Clarisse whooped and cheered. I could almost see the rush of heat spreading from the blast, turning the air wavy and translucent. Shrapnel exploded in all directions.
When the dust settled, we approached the smoking crater. Chiron and I cleared aside some of the debris.
'Is it gone?' Clarisse asked.
'I think so.' Chiron patted the ground with his hooves. There was no sign of an opening, nothing that resembled a possible tunnel into the earth. The mark of Daedalus had disappeared.
Then the ground trembled. Ten feet away from the crater, the earth cracked like a split seam. A jagged line zigzagged towards the nearest boulder and tunnelled under it with a deafening rumble.
We ran to the boulder. Three lines etched themselves into the stone, forming an isosceles triangle—the Greek letter Delta. Without thinking, I reached out to touch the mark.
'No!' Clarisse yelled, but it was too late. The moment my fingers brushed Daedalus's mark, the earth turned to quicksand, sucking us downwards. There was a swooping sensation in my stomach, and then my bum hit a hard, stone floor. A thump next to me heralded Clarisse's landing.
'Don't go anywhere!' Chiron's voice came from far above. I could barely make out his worried face peering into the hole. 'There must be a way back up. Quick, before—'
The sliver of sky at the top of the hole narrowed like a retractable roof. It slid shut, plunging us into darkness.
'No!' Clarisse howled. 'You idiot! You opened it!'
'So we're …'
'In the Labyrinth,' Clarisse was nearly hyperventilating. I'd never seen her so frazzled. 'The entrance is touch-activated—it opens if a half-blood touches it!'
'Okay,' I said, trying to stay calm. 'There's gotta be a way back out. How did you get out?'
'The mark,' she gasped. 'Look for the mark!'
I felt her shuffling around, banging her fists against the walls. I found two of them on either side of us, forming a passageway through which cool, damp air flowed. It had a metallic scent, like rust, or possibly blood. A steady drip, drip, drip echoed from somewhere further down. It paused as if something had interrupted the flow of water. Then came the sound of something slithering across the hard stone floor.
'Something's coming,' I said, pulling out my dagger. The dim glow of the celestial bronze blade lit up dark streaks on the wall. I didn't want to think too much about what they were.
'Shine that here!' Clarisse ordered. Her hands ran frantically over the cold stone. As I held up my blade to give her more light, the slithering noise grew louder.
'Do you hear that?'
Clarisse wasn't listening. She'd found a triangular-shaped depression in the stone wall and pressed both hands to it. A faint blue light shone out of the recess—the same mark I'd touched on the boulder outside. Clarisse hammered it desperately.
Light flooded in from above. The ceiling slid open mere feet away from our heads. Chiron's face reappeared, his relief at seeing us evident.
A loud hiss reverberated in the tunnel, sounding alarmingly close.
'Go!' I pushed at Clarisse's back.
She was already reaching for the top of the opening and heaving herself out. I scrambled after her, wedging my feet into the uneven crevices of the wall. It was slick and slippery. Chiron caught my hand and pulled me out of the dank hole, back onto hot, sandy ground.
A pair of mustard-coloured rattlesnakes as thick as Clarisse's forearms slithered out after us. The ground slid shut behind them, concealing the Labyrinth entrance. The mark of Daedalus shimmered once on the boulder, then subsided into a faint etching.
One of the snakes raised its head to strike. Chiron backed up, lifting his hooves in alarm. Horse reflexes, I guess.
Clarisse picked up a jagged piece of shrapnel. I drew my dagger.
The snake's body spiralled so quickly, it raised a tiny whirlwind of dust. Clarisse flung her shrapnel at it. The other snake darted in front of the swirling one and batted the sharp implement away with the rattle on its tail.
'Oh no you don't!' The dust storm settled into the shape of a young woman. She tossed her head, making her honey-coloured tresses billow. Her china-blue eyes flashed angrily at the dagger in my hand. They bore a striking resemblance to Silena Beauregard's, which made me realise I actually had seen her before—and not just in dreams. She'd been on Mount Olympus nearly a year ago, arguing with her mother, Aphrodite, about her lost jewellery.
My hand flew to the necklace in my pocket.
Clarisse gasped. 'I know you! You're one of my dad's b—'
'Ares's daughter,' Chiron cut in, before Clarisse could unwisely (and hypocritically) declare her illegitimacy. 'Harmonia, goddess of peace.'
The other snake wound itself around Harmonia's legs, hissing plaintively. Harmonia picked it up and draped it around her neck, where it swayed contentedly from her shoulders.
'Wait, how can you be the goddess of peace if our dad's the god of war?' Clarisse asked.
Harmonia gave a snort of disgust. 'You sound just like him.' She mimicked Ares's loud, obnoxious tone: '"No kid of mine can stay out of a fight!" Well, it's not like I knew he was my dad when they were giving out domains.' She pointed an accusing finger at Chiron. 'You knew all about it, didn't you?'
'I wasn't always up to date on Olympus gossip …' Chiron attempted a smile that was utterly unconvincing. Aphrodite and Ares's scandalous love affair was a worse-kept secret than WikiLeaks. One of Hephaestus's hobbies had been setting traps to catch and humiliate them. (Like the one Percy and I had unwittingly sprung a couple of years ago. Which had been humiliating for me.)
At Harmonia's derisive sniff, Chiron sighed. 'We suspected. Your mother wasn't exactly, shall we say, discreet.'
'Couldn't keep her legs shut, you mean,' Harmonia muttered.
'Harmonia was one of Aphrodite's first children after her marriage to Hephaestus,' Chiron explained. 'It wasn't until after, when he caught her with Ares, that he began to suspect his "daughter" wasn't who he thought she was either.'
'Parents!' Harmonia groused. 'Like it's my fault she was sleeping around. But he had to go and take it out on me, playing that dirty trick with my wedding present.'
'This necklace!' I took it out of my pocket. Maybe this was my chance to be rid of its mysterious curse once and for all.
Harmonia's hand flew to her chest. She made a three-fingered claw over her heart and held it out to me, a ward against evil. 'Keep that thing away from me! It ruined my life!'
'But—'
'He gave me that thing when I married Cadmus.' Her fingers trailed along the scales of her snake, who nuzzled her fondly. 'Conveniently forgot to mention he'd cursed it, of course.'
'Hephaestus cursed this necklace?'
She made a face. 'To determine if I was the product of a broken wedding vow. It used to be my mom's, see? He made it for her at their wedding. So if she'd cheated on him when she conceived me, the curse would activate. And it did—right in the middle of my wedding. Those damned snake clasps started hissing about unfaithfulness right in the middle of my vows!'
'Why didn't you get rid of it, then?'
Harmonia chewed at her thumbnail. 'Well … I was just so pretty in it …'
'Part of the curse, no doubt,' Chiron said. 'Making the wearer irresistibly beautiful. It would attract its victims like Siren song.'
'Let's pulverise it, then!' Clarisse said. 'Where's the dynamite?'
Harmonia let out a bitter laugh. 'Good luck with that, child. It isn't so easy getting rid of Hephaestus's creations. If there's one thing the old blacksmith knows how to do, it's to make stuff that lasts.' She waved a hand at the boulder with Daedalus's mark. 'Look what good blowing up the Labyrinth entrance did.'
'But Hephaestus didn't make the Labyrinth,' I protested.
'His descendent did. And when it comes to Daedalus, same difference, really. Guess Hephaestus's bitterness skipped a couple of generations. So did his genius … though some of that was his mother's talent, I suppose.' She glanced at my owl earrings. 'No worse combination than a bitter old inventor. Except maybe pineapple on pizza. Like, what is that?'
'Guess she's been hanging out in Delaware,' Clarisse muttered.
'But surely there has to be a way to break the curse,' I said.
'Why bother? You're doomed anyway. It didn't end when my real dad turned me into a snake, you know. It hung around for ages. Well, I guess Kitty had something to do with that.'
'Kitty—you mean—'
'That sly fox, of course. Heard she picked up a Japanese name at some point. What was it, again?'
'Kitsune?'
'That's the one! Should've known she had a bit of devilry in her. She served in the Titan army, after all. Anyway, she took the necklace, passed it on to all my daughters, and theirs … I lost count how many generations it passed down. None of them came to a good end. It's like Hephaestus couldn't stand to let anyone have a happy family.'
'But you just said Kitsune passed it on.'
'Oh, Kitty was just the messenger. It was still Hephaestus's curse, though she certainly parasitised it. I think she found a way to steal some of the lives the curse took. None of them were pretty: madness … filicide … suicide … look—you can see all of it.'
Harmonia shook her head at the necklace. Images wavered in its moonstone sheen, just as they had the first time I'd laid eyes on it.
I saw Hephaestus at his forge, hammering away at the necklace, a gift for his beautiful wife-to-be. Anger contorted his face when he realised he'd been cuckolded. His hurt tunnelled into the necklace, lodging like another inlaid jewel, forming the base of the curse.
I saw Kitsune take it after it had fallen from Harmonia's neck—only the messenger, but a vital one in keeping the curse alive from generation to generation, preying on the foibles of her victims and feeding on their deaths.
I saw the women who had been seduced by the visions the necklace bestowed of beauty, wealth, and love. I saw the acts they committed while wearing it—the backstabbing and betrayals that wove into the necklace as well, compounding the curse. I saw the tragic fates that finally befell them.
'Agave and Ino—went mad and killed their sons. Poor Semele, everyone knows what happened to her … and maybe the worst was Jocasta—that story's not one for the faint-hearted. Took her life when she realised she'd married her own son. And then their sons ended up murdering each other …'
The twisted history of Harmonia's cursed necklace finally came together. It hadn't always claimed a life, but the families it touched had fallen irreparably apart. And whenever a life had been forfeit, Kitsune had gleefully siphoned away its essence to extend her own.
I'd watch my step if I were you. Curses can build on the actions of their owners.
Horkos had sensed it at the winter solstice. Every betrayal committed by its owner had intensified the curse on the Necklace of Harmonia. But it had all started with one false oath.
I knew who I had to go to if I wanted to end the curse.
Harmonia grumbled on bitterly, 'I had to wait through all of it until a daughter of Thebes finally wised up and prayed to Athena to end it all. Cadmus and I finally retired to Elysium. I thought that'd be the end of it. But these damned Stirrings, regenerating all and sundry. Next thing I knew, I was dragged out of retirement and sent to find the thing. Like it was my responsibility! And look at poor Cadmus, stuck in snake form!'
'Perhaps there is a reason for all of this,' Chiron ventured. 'It may be a good thing that you've returned. The world needs peace, after all. With a war on our doorsteps, you could be of great help.'
'Peace,' Harmonia scoffed. 'What a joke. That's all I wanted, you know. But would the gods leave me alone?' She tossed her head petulantly. 'Maybe Kitty had it right all along. The Titan army's the way to go.'
Chiron paled. 'Harmonia—'
She shook a warning finger at him. 'Don't you start. I wouldn't be the first, anyway. I hear Hecate's already cast in her lot with them. We won't be the last, either. See how our parents like it when their kids fight back!'
With a final, scathing look at her necklace, Harmonia shrank into the large rattlesnake that had chased us out of the Labyrinth. She and Cadmus disappeared into a scraggly bush.
'This is bad,' Chiron said. 'If the goddess of peace is no longer on our side …'
'Doesn't look like she was doing much to begin with,' Clarisse said. 'Hiding away in the Underworld for centuries … well, good riddance. We wouldn't get any good fights with her around!'
'We don't want a big fight!' I reminded her.
Clarisse just smacked her fist against her palm with relish. Sometimes I really wondered whose side the Ares cabin was on. Probably whichever one brought about the most mayhem.
'Olympus needs to know that the minor deities are defecting,' Chiron said. 'I must return immediately.'
This distracted Clarisse from her cheerful contemplation of a big fight. 'What about Chris? And the Labyrinth?'
'We've done all we can about the Labyrinth,' Chiron said. 'I guess it was a long shot that we could destroy it by brute force.'
'Prof Daly was right about that,' I said.
'Yes,' Chiron agreed. 'But we had to try. We will just have to hope there is no entrance at camp. As for Chris, can he stay with you here for a few weeks, Clarisse? If Gleeson Hedge is ready to extract his half-blood charge, you can all travel together. Between you and Hedge, I am confident you will be able to bring them both safely to camp. Few of our counsellors are as well-trained as yourself in fighting monsters.'
Clarisse didn't look happy at being told to wait around, but Chiron's nod to her fighting abilities seemed to mollify her.
'Annabeth's not bad either,' she said. 'Maybe she can—'
'Annabeth has another task ahead of her.' Chiron turned to me. 'You understand what you must do?'
I nodded and held up the Necklace of Harmonia.
I had a curse to break.
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A/N: For the record, I'm fine with pineapple on pizza. But I couldn't help poking fun at the Internet debate from a while back. And from what I read, Delaware apparently hates it, but my apologies to any Delawareans who don't!
The stories referenced in this chapter (and alluded to throughout this fic) are all part of the legends of Thebes. Harmonia is pretty much only famous in mythology thanks to her association with the necklace, but she was the wife and queen of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, both of whom were turned into serpents. Percy Jackson's Greek Gods attributes this punishment to Ares, so that's the story I've gone with here, though I haven't followed it precisely to the letter. We saw Agave last chapter, but her sister Ino was Dionysus's surrogate mother who also ended up stricken with madness (although Hera is usually credited with that one). Semele, mother of Dionysus, is the most famous of the sisters. And Jocasta is of course from the story of Oedipus (of Freudian fame).
The necklace's possession is traced in legend through Harmonia to Semele to Jocasta and her son Polynices, and eventually to its sacrifice at the Temple of Athena, although I have given Izzy the leading role instead of following the male-dominated stories.
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So, two more chapters to go! I know some of you have been wondering when and how this thing is going to get wrapped up … we're getting there, I promise! Thanks for sticking with it this far. And to Hello, OverLordRevan, CQ816, and Athenachild101, thanks for your comments last chapter! I really did love writing that one so much, so it was nice to see your enthusiasm for it!
