I was vaguely aware of Hazel shouting, "Go! I'll take care of Nico!"
As if I was going to turn back. Sure, I hoped di Angelo was okay, but I had headaches of my own to worry about here.
I bounded up the steps with Jason, Peri, and Frank hot on my heels. I noticed the Omega-Blood already had a sword at her hip and a dagger strapped to her thigh. In the back of my mind, I wondered if she had already summoned them without blinking an eye, but there was no time to question it any further.
When we arrived, the situation on deck was even worse than I feared.
Coach Hedge and Piper were struggling against their duct tape bonds while one of the demon monkey dwarfs danced around the deck, picking up whatever wasn't tied down and sticking it in his bag. He was maybe four feet tall, even shorter than Coach Hedge, with bowed legs and chimp-like feet, his clothes so loud they gave me vertigo. His green-plaid pants were pinned at the cuffs, and held up with bright-red suspenders over a striped pink-and-black woman's blouse. He wore half a dozen gold watches on each arm, and a zebra-patterned cowboy hat with a price tag dangling from the brim. His skin was covered with patches of scraggly red fur, though ninety percent of his body hair seemed to be concentrated in his magnificent eyebrows.
I was just forming the thought Where's the other dwarf? when I heard a click behind me and realized I'd led my friends into a trap.
"Duck!" I hit the deck as the explosion blasted my eardrums.
Note to self, I thought groggily. Do not leave boxes of magic grenades where dwarfs can reach them.
At least I was alive.
I had been experimenting with all sorts of weapons based on the Archimedes sphere that I'd recovered in Rome. I'd built grenades that could spray acid, fire, shrapnel, or freshly buttered popcorn. (Hey, you never knew when you'd get hungry in battle.) Judging from the ringing in my ears, the dwarf had detonated the flash-bang grenade, which I had filled with a rare vial of Apollo's music, pure liquid extract. It didn't kill, but it left me feeling like I'd just done a belly flop off the deep end.
I tried to get up. My limbs were useless. Someone was tugging at my waist, maybe a friend trying to help me up? No. My friends didn't smell like heavily perfumed monkey cages.
I managed to turn over. My vision was out of focus and tinted pink, like the world had been submerged in strawberry jelly. A grinning, grotesque face loomed over me. The brown-furred dwarf was dressed even worse than his friend, in a green bowler hat like a leprechaun's, dangly diamond earrings, and a white-and-black referee's shirt. He showed off the prize he'd just stolen—my tool belt—then danced away.
I tried to grab him, but my fingers were numb. The dwarf frolicked over to the nearest ballista, which his red-furred friend was priming to launch. The brown-furred dwarf jumped onto the projectile like it was a skateboard, and his friend shot him into the sky.
Red Fur pranced over to Coach Hedge. He gave the satyr a big smack on the cheek, then skipped to the rail. He bowed to me, doffing his zebra cowboy hat, and did a backflip over the side.
I managed to get up. Jason and Peri were already on their feet, stumbling and running into things. Frank had turned into a silverback gorilla (why, I wasn't sure; maybe to commune with the monkey dwarfs?) but the flash grenade had hit him hard. He was sprawled on the deck with his tongue hanging out and his gorilla eyes rolled up in his head.
"Piper!" Jason staggered to the helm and carefully pulled the gag out of her mouth.
"Don't waste your time on me!" she said. "Go after them!"
At the mast, Coach Hedge mumbled, "HHHmmmmm-hmmm!"
I figured that meant: "KILL THEM!" Easy translation, since most of the coach's sentences involved the word kill.
I glanced at the control console. My Archimedes sphere was gone. I put my hand to my waist, where my tool belt should have been. My head started to clear, and my sense of outrage came to a boil. Those dwarfs had attacked my ship. They'd stolen my most precious possessions.
Below us spread the city of Bologna—a jigsaw puzzle of red-tiled buildings in a valley hemmed by green hills. Unless I could find the dwarfs somewhere in that maze of streets…Nope. Failure wasn't an option. Neither was waiting for my friends to recover.
I turned to Jason. "You feeling good enough to control the winds? I need a lift."
Jason frowned. "Sure, but—"
"Good," I said. "We've got some monkey dudes to catch."
Jason and I touched down in a big piazza lined with white marble government buildings and outdoor cafés. Bikes and Vespas clogged the surrounding streets, but the square itself was empty except for pigeons and a few old men drinking espresso.
None of the locals seemed to notice the huge Greek warship hovering over the piazza, or the fact that Jason and I had just flown down, Jason wielding a gold sword, and me…well, I was pretty much empty-handed.
"Where to?" Jason asked.
I stared at him. "Well, I dunno. Let me pull my dwarf-tracking GPS out of my tool belt.… Oh, wait! I don't have a dwarf-tracking GPS—or my tool belt!"
"Fine," Jason grumbled. He glanced up at the ship as if to get his bearings, then pointed across the piazza. "The ballista fired the first dwarf in that direction, I think. Come on."
We waded through a lake of pigeons, then maneuvered down a side street of clothing stores and gelato shops. The sidewalks were lined with white columns covered in graffiti. A few panhandlers asked for change (I didn't know Italian, but I got the message loud and clear).
I kept patting my waist, hoping my tool belt would magically reappear. It didn't. I tried not to freak, but I'd come to depend on that belt for almost everything. I felt like somebody had stolen one of my hands.
"We'll find it," Jason promised.
Usually, I would have felt reassured. Jason had a talent for staying levelheaded in a crisis, and he'd gotten me out of plenty of bad scrapes. Today, though, all I could think about was the stupid fortune cookie I had opened in Rome. The goddess Nemesis had promised me help, and I'd gotten it: the code to activate the Archimedes sphere. At the time, I had had no choice but to use it if I wanted to save my friends—but Nemesis had warned that her help came with a price.
I wondered if that price would ever be paid. Percy and Annabeth were gone. The ship was hundreds of miles off course, heading toward an impossible challenge. My friends were counting on me to beat a terrifying giant. And now I didn't even have my tool belt or my Archimedes sphere.
I was so absorbed with feeling sorry for myself that I didn't notice where we were until Jason grabbed my arm. "Check it out."
I looked up. We'd arrived in a smaller piazza. Looming over us was a huge bronze statue of a buck-naked Neptune.
"Ah, jeez." I averted my eyes. I really didn't need to see a godly groin this early in the morning.
The sea god stood on a big marble column in the middle of a fountain that wasn't working (which seemed kind of ironic). On either side of Neptune, little winged Cupid dudes were sitting, kind of chillin', like, What's up?
SNeptune himself (avoid the groin) was throwing his hip to one side in an Elvis Presley move. He gripped his trident loosely in his right hand and stretched his left hand out like he was blessing me, or possibly attempting to levitate me.
"Some kind of clue?" I wondered.
Jason frowned. "Maybe, maybe not. There are statues of the gods all over the place in Italy. I'd just feel better if we ran across Jupiter. Or Minerva. Anybody but Neptune, really."
I climbed into the dry fountain. I put my hand on the statue's pedestal, and a rush of impressions surged through my fingertips. I sensed Celestial Bronze gears, magical levers, springs, and pistons. Suddenly I wished that Peri was here to help. She was great with magic metal and might be able to offer some insight. Or at least a pretty smile.
"It's mechanical," I said finally. "Maybe a doorway to the dwarfs' secret lair?"
"Ooooo!" shrieked a nearby voice. "Secret lair?"
"I want a secret lair!" yelled another voice from above.
Jason stepped back, his sword ready. I almost got whiplash trying to look in two places at once. The red-furred dwarf in the cowboy hat was sitting about thirty feet away at the nearest café table, sipping an espresso held by his monkey-like foot. The brown-furred dwarf in the green bowler was perched on the marble pedestal at Neptune's feet, just above my head.
"If we had a secret lair," said Red Fur, "I would want a firehouse pole."
"And a waterslide!" said Brown Fur, who was pulling random tools out of my belt, tossing aside wrenches, hammers, and staple guns.
"Stop that!" I tried to grab the dwarf's feet, but I couldn't reach the top of the pedestal.
"Too short?" Brown Fur sympathized.
"You're calling me short?" I looked around for something to throw, but there was nothing but pigeons, and I doubted I could catch one. "Give me my belt, you stupid—"
"Now, now!" said Brown Fur. "We haven't even introduced ourselves. I'm Akmon. And my brother over there—"
"—is the handsome one!" The red-furred dwarf lifted his espresso. Judging from his dilated eyes and his maniacal grin, he didn't need any more caffeine. "Passalos! Singer of songs! Drinker of coffee! Stealer of shiny stuff!"
"Please!" shrieked his brother, Akmon. "I steal much better than you."
Passalos snorted. "Stealing naps, maybe!" He took out a knife—Piper's knife—and started picking his teeth with it.
"Hey!" Jason yelled. "That's my girlfriend's knife!"
He lunged at Passalos, but the red-furred dwarf was too quick. He sprang from his chair, bounced off Jason's head, did a flip, and landed next to me, his hairy arms around my waist.
"Save me?" the dwarf pleaded.
"Get off!" I tried to shove him away, but Passalos did a backward somersault and landed out of reach. My pants promptly fell around my knees.
I stared at Passalos, who was now grinning and holding a small zigzaggy strip of metal. Somehow, the dwarf had stolen the zipper right off my pants.
"Give—stupid—zipper!" I stuttered, trying to shake my fist and hoist up my pants at the same time.
"Eh, not shiny enough." Passalos tossed it away.
Jason lunged with his sword. Passalos launched himself straight up and was suddenly sitting on the statue's pedestal next to his brother.
"Tell me I don't have moves," Passalos boasted.
"Okay," Akmon said. "You don't have moves."
"Bah!" Passalos said. "Give me the tool belt. I want to see."
"No!" Akmon elbowed him away. "You got the knife and the shiny ball."
"Yes, the shiny ball is nice." Passalos took off his cowboy hat. Like a magician producing a rabbit, he pulled out the Archimedes sphere and began tinkering with the ancient bronze dials.
"Stop!" I yelled. "That's a delicate machine."
Jason came to my side and glared up at the dwarfs. "Who are you two, anyway?"
"The Kerkopes!" Akmon narrowed his eyes at Jason. "I bet you're a son of Jupiter, eh? I can always tell."
"Just like Black Bottom," Passalos agreed.
"Black Bottom?" I resisted the urge to jump at the dwarfs' feet again. I was sure Passalos was going to ruin the Archimedes sphere any second now.
"Yes, you know." Akmon grinned. "Hercules. We called him Black Bottom because he used to go around without clothes. He got so tan that his backside, well—"
"At least he had a sense of humor!" Passalos said. "He was going to kill us when we stole from him, but he let us go because he liked our jokes. Not like you two. Grumpy, grumpy!"
"Hey, I've got a sense of humor," I snarled. "Give me back our stuff, and I'll tell you a joke with a good punch line."
"Nice try!" Akmon pulled a ratchet wrench from the tool belt and spun it like a noisemaker. "Oh, very nice! I'm definitely keeping this! Thanks, Blue Bottom!"
Blue Bottom?
I glanced down. My pants had slipped around my ankles again, revealing my blue underwear. Never mind, I was definitely glad Peri wasn't here to see this.
"That's it!" I shouted. "My stuff. Now. Or I'll show you how funny a flaming dwarf is."
My hands caught fire.
"Now we're talking." Jason thrust his sword into the sky. Dark clouds began to gather over the piazza. Thunder boomed.
"Oh, scary!" Akmon shrieked.
"Yes," Passalos agreed. "If only we had a secret lair to hide in."
"Alas, this statue isn't the doorway to a secret lair," Akmon said. "It has a different purpose."
My gut twisted. The fires died in my hands, and I realized something was very wrong. I yelled, "Trap!" and dove out of the fountain. Unfortunately, Jason was too busy summoning his storm.
I rolled on my back as five golden cords shot from the Neptune statue's fingers. One barely missed my feet. The rest homed in on Jason, wrapping him like a rodeo calf and yanking him upside down.
A bolt of lightning blasted the tines of Neptune's trident, sending arcs of electricity up and down the statue, but the Kerkopes had already disappeared.
"Bravo!" Akmon applauded from a nearby café table. "You make a wonderful piñata, son of Jupiter!"
"Yes!" Passalos agreed. "Hercules hung us upside down once, you know. Oh, revenge is sweet!"
I summoned a fireball and lobbed it at Passalos, who was trying to juggle two pigeons and the Archimedes sphere.
"Eek!" The dwarf jumped free of the explosion, dropping the sphere and letting the pigeons fly.
"Time to leave!" Akmon decided.
He tipped his bowler and sprang away, jumping from table to table. Passalos glanced at the Archimedes sphere, which had rolled between my feet.
I summoned another fireball. "Try me," I snarled.
"Bye!" Passalos did a backflip and ran after his brother.
I scooped up the Archimedes sphere and ran over to Jason, who was still hanging upside down, thoroughly hog-tied except for his sword arm. He was trying to cut the cords with his gold blade but having no luck.
"Hold on," I said. "If I can find a release switch or—"
"Just go!" Jason growled. "I'll follow you when I get out of this."
"But—"
"Don't lose them!"
The last thing I wanted was some alone time with the monkey dwarfs, but the Kerkopes were already disappearing around the far corner of the piazza. Reluctantly, I left Jason hanging and ran after them.