Act II

Several monsters threw fits when Axel left so quickly. "And with a half-blood? Augh, I thought he'd have better taste!" the Empousa from before complained. Kally knew, to play her part, she should have upturned her chin or maybe insulted the Empousa with something witty like, "maybe if you weren't such a sucker he'd want someone like you—" No—no that wasn't right. She couldn't begin to focus with Tresus's last comment.

Once they were out of sight of the club, Axel let go of Kally's shoulder, reinserting his hands into his pockets. The air felt chilly without his warmth.

Kally swallowed hard. "So, you're not going to explain anything that happened back there?"

Axel shrugged. "Tresus is cursed by Hecate to speak three options at all times: one mouth will always lie, one tells the truth, and one speaks jibberish. Which mouth says what changes depending on the day, so you need to be careful."

The thought made Kally flinch. "So Pax's location could be a lie?"

"I'm pretty sure he was speaking what he thought was the truth," Axel said.

Upon considering the comment about her being able to handle Axel, she felt like she should get offended. She was too embarrassed to. Instead, she brought up the more relevant topic. "Is Lamia the monster you suspected?"

Axel nodded. "She's a magic user and a monster. Listen to me carefully when we get into her lair. She likes traps. I will be able to see them, but she'll likely hide them from you with the Mist…" A frown tugged at his mouth. "I was worried about her coming after Pax, so we made a protocol. There was no way Lamia could pass up showing Pax off at the Monster Mash and we both knew Tresus couldn't keep his mouth shut…"

Now didn't seem the time to push Axel and ask exactly why Lamia had a vendetta against Pax, but she could come up with a number of reasons. Pax had the beautiful ability to know exactly how to piss people off. She'd never heard of a monster capturing a demigod and keeping them, but obviously Pax must have been alive to go into the bar, right?

Normally, Axel would bark out the battle orders by now. At his silence, Kally grew uneasy. "Uh—so how do we fight her?"

"Stay close to me, but if things go wrong, focus on getting Pax out of there. He's most important."

Kally really didn't like how Axel didn't make eye contact. They should be focusing on the up and coming attack, but without his typical instructions, Kally had to find something to say. "So... we're not talking about the fact that you were in a band?" she asked.

Axel smiled faintly as they approached the van. "The guitarist and backup singer."

"And?"

"And what?" he asked while opening his door.

"You're not going to tell me anything more about that? Or that you're really popular at a bar for monsters? Or-"

"Nope."

Lamia's street wasn't far. Axel parked a block away, so they could approach silently on foot. Kally would never have been able to pick out the right building. All of the townhouses on 53rd street were dilapidated. Ivy overtook the tiny garden lots. Crackles along the pavement preceded the crumbling stone walls encasing each house, like the walls of forgotten pigpens, where the corpses of the neglected and starved rot.

Kally trembled. That was much darker than her normal predictions.

Most of the houses didn't have glass in their windows, or if they did, it was broken. How could a street this ruined exist so close to the city? Do the mortals not see it? Kally thought about DC and realized, you don't need the Mist to hide the impoverished in plain sight.

The house Axel stopped in front of had a low, wrap-around porch, partially caved in. The door was wide open, revealing nothing but the blackness of an unlit interior.

"This is it," Axel said. He had less weapons than she'd ever seen him take into battle. Strangest, when they were suiting up in the van, he'd picked up his Leonis Caput helmet, toyed with it, then set it back down. He hated going near that thing.

"How do you know?" Kally asked, unsure she wanted the answer. A part of her hoped the Mist was concealing some beautiful mansion here that Axel had the privilege of seeing, but she doubted it.

"This," he pointed at something she couldn't see, "is an alarm spell. It will alert Lamia that someone is inside the barrier. If we're lucky, she'll be out and have to return. If she's in, she'll have time to set up an ambush."

As soon as he finished explaining, Axel stepped forward. "Come on."

The house was silent. Her footsteps groaned through the floorboards, regardless of how carefully she mimicked Axel's soundless progression. Kally reached to withdraw one of her glow sticks-figuring Lamia would already know they were there, so trying to be stealthy was kinda like covering up a security camera after you already robbed the bank. Axel stopped her though. The window frames hardly filtered in light, but Axel crept like he was trained to do this blindfolded. He took her hand to lead her through the entry hallway.

Although she wasn't afraid of Python appearing out of the dim anymore, darkness still left Kally clammy. She couldn't see anything but shadows up the front stairwell, or into any of the open doors along the hallway. All the doors were open. They would never hear someone move from one room to the next, not if that person was as quiet as Axel. Lamia could be anywhere.

There was minimal furnishing in the house. She could see some ruined couches and chairs when they passed one doorway. Cans and bottles cluttered the corners under heavy layers of dust. Squatters, Kally assumed. Thinking about Axel and Pax living in a place like this weighed her down with guilt. She should have offered for them to stay at her house. It would be weeks before her parents would notice or realize they weren't John's friends. Plus, John's reaction. John's reaction would be beautiful.

The stairs to the basement were inside the second door down the hallway. Axel's grip tightened on hers as he led them down. Occasionally, he'd have to let go, to crouch and examine the area. Kally didn't know how he could see anything. Without windows from the outside, she was trying to quell her mounting panic at her blindness.

A bronze dagger latched to Axel's back acted as their only light source. She hadn't noticed it as much with the window light above. Boxes, newspapers, and trash littered the basement, worse than the upstairs hallway. No sign of Pax. No sign of another exit.

Without hesitation, Axel walked towards one of the stone walls. Kally trailed after him, the hand not in his clutching her Argonaut statue, ready to smash a monster's face in. He didn't slow down when he got close to the wall. For a horrified moment, Kally wondered if Lamia was using the Mist against him—that he might knock himself out in a duel against some ghostly interior decoration.

Kally squeaked a warning, but Axel walked right through the wall. The stone dissolved into green smoke. Behind it, there was another set of stairs.

Something was different about these. As before, Kally couldn't see down into what she assumed was a cellar—but there was something down there. She thought about the collapsed sectors of the house and wondered what it would be like to be stuck down there, stairs gone with no other way out.

She shuddered.

As they crept down, a chill slithered up Kally's leggings and choked her with foreboding. She knew the temperature was supposed to drop when you descended, and she knew cellars should be chilly in comparison to the level above, but it felt like she'd stepped into an industrial meat freezer and was about to be diced and packaged.

The stench of rotten meat and cat urine slowed Kally's steps. A really dirty meat freezer, she corrected. Although they tried to be quiet as they went down the flight of stairs, their footsteps resounded back to them from below. Other than that, all she could hear was the subtle drip of a leak.

When they reached the last step, Kally trembled. Despite their experiences against Python and Phobetor, there was a wrongness to this place she hadn't felt before.

The cellar was a single, unfinished room. The walls were cement; the floor dirt with a sewage grate in the center. A single torch cast shadows along the boxes and empty jars leaning on the right wall. Pax's duster jacket was hanging from a hook on the wall, beside a sledge hammer.

In Pax's absence, she imagined his running commentary, "A cellar? How cliché! Couldn't you have gotten creative and made the creepy room a bad-ass ball pit—"

Then she saw him.

Kally wanted to cry out, to run to Pax's side, but Axel immediately put a hand out in front of her.

Beside the boxes and trash was a five-by-five foot metal cage. One of those upside down water drippers was latched onto one of the crossbars, like you'd give a hamster. On the metal floor was a matching food bowl filled with Reese's Sticks wrappers. In one corner of the cage, she could see a shivering teenager.

Pax's hair was disheveled, like it always was. His Camp Othrys shirt was torn at the shoulder, the green blackened with dried blood. That shoulder slumped awkwardly down, and that arm lay motionless beside him. His knees were crunched up against his chest. He kept his other arm tucked against him. Kally assumed he'd have that fist balled, maybe tucked under an armpit for warmth, but his functional hand was delicately placed atop one knee.

When he heard them, Pax didn't look up. He flinched and said, "It's not going to work this time, Lamia. I'm not going to fall for it again." His voice quivered with false bravado.

"Ajax—" Axel whispered. Kally could see he shivered as well, but she assumed it wasn't from the cold. He cleared his throat. This time, he addressed Kally, "There are Mist traps all over this room. Step exactly where I tell you to, and nowhere else—"

"I can't hear you—" Pax hissed loudly. He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the ground. "See? La la la la!"

Kally could feel tears warming her cheeks. To accompany those words, Pax should have been holding his hands to his ears, scrunching his face into a cute expression of protest, and walking back and forth. From what she could see, he couldn't even stand.

Axel took a step forward, carefully lifting one foot high like he was avoiding a tripwire. He pointed at some invisible point he'd stepped over, and used his other hand to point at a floor tile. She tore her eyes from Pax, trying to focus. Get Pax out of here, she reminded herself, that's the most important thing. You need to avoid the Mist traps first, right? Then you'll get to Pax.

Although she didn't want to, she found herself whispering, "Pax, it's—it's us—"

"Shut up!" Pax screamed. "How dare you use her voice!"

Kally jumped and put a hand over her mouth. She quickly stepped how Axel directed. He took two more steps forward, then dropped to the ground and crawled. Once on the other side of whatever invisible barrier was there, he leveled his hand with it, so she knew how low to stay.

While she followed, Axel cleared his throat. "Ajax," Axel said. "The first real battle we had against Romans, you and Chris both soiled your pants, but were so scared of admitting it to one another that you used the same lie about falling in pegasus manu-"

Pax's eyes snapped up from the ground with a crazed hope. He let out a sob of relief. "Axel? Kally? Is that really you—you jerk!" Although tears were cleaning some of the dirt off his cheeks, Pax managed to look offended. "How could you tell that story in front of Kally? R-r-remember th-that t-time—" Kally was sure Pax had a hilarious story to embarrass Axel, but sobs cut him off. He shifted onto his knees, inching towards them, his limp arm dragging across the cage and his other hand cradled against his chest.

For the last trap, Axel gently placed a hand on either of Kally's shoulders and shifted her two feet to the right, forward, then a few feet to the left. The warmth of his touch made Kally remember they were okay, they could do this, and they were almost there.

As soon as Axel released her, he sprinted to the cage. She followed directly after. Axel knelt down across from Pax, grabbing the bars. When Kally caught up to them, the look on Axel's face made her tremble more than the cold. His jaw clenched tightly in rage and his eyes blazed.

Kally dropped to her knees beside him, reaching out to touch Pax who leaned against the bars. When she touched his face—sweaty with fever—he nuzzled into her palm.

"There's no lock—" Pax sobbed.

At his despair, Kally glanced at the cage. There wasn't a lock or an opening.

"Yes, there is dumbass," Axel snapped. "You can pick it—"

Pax extended his mobile hand. His fingers were bent at odd angles and the entire hand was bruised.

Kally grabbed her mouth again. The sledge hammer, she thought. A wave of nausea made her swallow. She kept one hand on Pax's face, to assure herself he was still there, and fumbled in her messenger bag for some ambrosia with the other.

"I-I can't—she—she broke—smashed m-my—" Pax couldn't get the sentence out.

Finally, Kally found the ambrosia square. She withdrew it and went to break off a piece—

"Give him the whole thing," Axel directed.

Will said never to eat a full square of ambrosia. It would burn a demigod up. "Wha—"

"He can handle it," Axel snapped.

She didn't want to question Axel, but hesitated. Under her touch, she could feel Pax nod his head in agreement.

Cautiously, she pressed the ambrosia to Pax's lips.

As he chewed weakly, Kally felt around his injuries with her magic. "What did she do to you?" she whispered in disbelief.

Pax relaxed as the ambrosia took effect. His sobs quieted and he smiled weakly. "I used to have a really bad taste in women before I started to like you," he said.

Kally stared at him for a moment. "Taste in… She—she's—"

"My ex-girlfriend. Yea," Pax finished. "Ex-ghoul-friend."

"We need to relocate your shoulder," Axel said, interrupting Kally's ability to comprehend how dumb Pax could be, the semantics of how that could work, or why she wanted to know how monster-demigod relationships worked. "Lay down."

Without protest, Pax lay flat on his back with his knees tucked up; he couldn't stretch them out in the cage. Kally let him bite down on her messenger bag's strap as she lifted his dislocated arm at a 90 degree angle and placed her feet against the bars for leverage. She held Pax's limp, but unbroken hand with both of hers. "You ready?" she asked him.

He nodded, already whimpering.

She gently pulled on his arm.

Axel stood vigilant, jaw still clenched.

Pax screamed into the messenger bag. I'm sorry Pax—I'm sorry—we have to—I'm sorry, she thought until she felt the arm clunk. Both she and Pax relaxed. He exhaled shakily.

"Thank you," he whispered.

"Now his fingers," Axel immediately instructed.

Pax gaped, "By the Titans, Axel, a Fury would give me more time-"

"Fix his fingers," Axel snapped at Kally.

At first, Kally wanted to protest. Pax was sickly white, had taken more ambrosia than any demigod was recommended to, and looked ready to pass out. A water break might do him some good.

But Axel's tone scared Kally. Worse, she realized why he was so impatient.

Something was coming.

The walls began to glow faintly green. A rumbling, like an approaching storm, shook the building. The sickening reek of blood permeated the cellar.

Pax wailed. "Leave! Get out of here—please—"

"No," Axel hissed, examining the walls. He placed a hand against one. Where he touched, the glow darkened to a turquoise, then muted back into a concrete slab. "This trap wasn't meant for us," he said. "She's not expecting to fight my magic."

Pax shook his head. "N-No—get out—Kally, make him lea—" his voice choked.

From behind Axel, a figure materialized.

Kally could only focus on the eyes at first. They beamed neon green and, when the woman blinked, her slits folded vertically. Her face was distorted and leathery, with plaits of black hair dangling long down her back. She wore the dark folds of a mourner's toga, reptilian claws peaking from the ends of the material. Blood smeared her chin.

She frowned. "You're not Alabaster," she hissed in disappointment.