Chapter 39

A Ghost Accuses me of Killing Myself

You could tell just how many places turned Bianca and me down from the fact that Prometheus and Emmitt, holding about five shopping bags each, made it back to the meeting spot before us.

"Ah, is this our guide?" Prometheus stepped forward, dropping half his bags to shake Michael's hand. "Lovely to meet you. What's your name?"

"Michael," said Michael. "I'll take you to Denali. Got to leave quick though. Storm brewing."

Prometheus gazed up at the sky. "Strange. The women in the department shop were simply gushing about the forecast. They were so thrilled to have three straight days of clear skies."

I grasped Aelia. Bianca was playing with her glove again. Behind Prometheus, Emmitt shifted his bags ready to swing them like the world's squishiest club.

"Forecast's always wrong," Michael said. "Lab coats don't know weather. Explorers do. And I say snow is coming. Gotta hurry."

Prometheus looked at him the same way he'd looked into the sky. I knew exactly what those gray eyes were up to— searching for tricks or disguises. Signs a monster was standing in front of him, dressed up like a person.

After ten seconds, Prometheus smiled. I released Aelia. All of us sighed in relief.

"I look forward to working with you," Prometheus said. "If you'd like we can leave as soon as ten minutes. Just let us see off our companions."

Michael stared dully back at him. "Okay."

And he sat down, one knee up and his chin resting on it, smack in the sidewalk's center.

As our group moved up the pier The Nautes was docked on, I asked, "You're sure he's not a monster?"

"Without doubt," Prometheus said. "There is no Mist around him. That is his true face."

"He's just a weirdo?"

"You were the one who put it that way, not I."

On deck the Daemons were enjoying some well-earned free time. One of them must've run onto shore and carried some snow back with them, because they had a pile big enough to build snowmen out of. And they were doing exactly that— making three balls for a body torso and head, sticking on buttons for eyes and a spare screwdriver for a nose, and then once every detail was perfect, kicking the crap out of it while cackling at the destruction.

Leaning her on the helm, Rose was just watching. The way she shook her head didn't fool me. I could see her smiling.

"We're about to be off," Prometheus announced.

Rose shifted her eyes to us. "That time already, huh? I don't imagine a boat will be much help where you're going."

"No," Prometheus said. "But it will be very important after. It would be such a shame to complete our mission, just find ourselves stranded in Anchorage."

Rose dipped her head. "Keep the old girl safe. Got it."

"Good luck," I said.

She laughed. "Keep it. I know which of us is going to need more."

Put like that, it seemed a good point.

Before leaving the boat we changed into our spiffy new clothes. Whoever picked what to buy had given each of us a color scheme. Prometheus' jacket and pants were the same sleet gray as his eyes. Emmitt's top was brown with green floral leaf patterns down the sleeves. Mine and Bianca's felt ironic. She was dressed from the toes to the tip of her head in ocean blue with bubble designs, while all my clothes were black except for a looming white cartoon skull centered on my chest.

Prometheus giggled when he saw us. "You two look smashing."

"Is this why you wouldn't let us go for the clothes?" Bianca demanded.

"I've no idea what you mean," he said.

I shared a look with my cousin. The clothes didn't bother me much, but I could tell he was making fun of us. That got under my skin.

"Truce?" I said.

"Just until we get him back," Bianca confirmed.

Emmitt looked between us and our protectee-turned-target. "Uh, guys? Are you sure that's a good—"

"It'll be fine," we said, and my foot didn't even end up stomped for it, so I guess the ceasefire really was official.

Prometheus didn't seem worried at all. He led the way off the boat, smiling casually. "Come along, kids. We've kept our guide waiting long enough."

Michael was exactly like we left him— and I don't mean that as a figure of speech. Not even his fingers had moved.

"Good," he said when he saw us, rising stiffly. "We leave now. Come."

I don't know what I expected from his car, but I at least thought it would have a key. Instead the beat-up Corolla had exposed wires hanging beside the steering wheel. Peeking from the backseat, I said, "Maybe I should've asked this before getting in, but did you steal this car?"

"No," Michael said. "Definitely belonged to me. Lost the key."

"Doing what?" Emmitt asked.

"Exploring," he said.

At least the headlights worked. It was only six, but it had already been dark for hours. We navigated traffic and drove until the buildings got smaller and less common, and the other cars disappeared entirely.

It was just us, cruising down a dark highway lined with pine trees and shoveled snow. Prometheus blew on a CD and fed it into the car's dashboard. A moment later Fleetwood Mac grumbled from the beat-up sound system.

Prometheus snapped along with the music, grinning. "You have great taste in music, Michael."

Michael kept his eyes on the road. "I don't keep CDs."

Prometheus barely heard him, humming along. "How strange," he said, and a second CD materialized in his hands, ready for when the first one finished.

Staring out the window felt like being hypnotized. Every tree that blurred past, just a dark blob to my seventy-miles-per-hour eyes, made me feel like drifting off.

But I could hear Emmitt snoring, and the way Bianca's head bobbed down said she was just as asleep. I shook myself and sat forward.

"I saw you summon the CD," I told Prometheus.

"Did you now?"

"I thought you'd be powerless here."

"Well, I might have exaggerated a bit. There's a world of difference between a bit of music and self-defense, though."

"I guess That's fair. Hey, remember what I said last time? About somebody trying to kill me."

"Hypothetically trying," Prometheus said. "And of course. My memory's not that short."

"I think they're after us. They helped set up the attack on the train, and they didn't give up when it failed."

"Frightening. What makes you think that?"

"I dreamed about it."

Prometheus shook his head. "Damning evidence, then. Dreams might be confusing, but they nearly always prove reliable. Have you any clue who this person may be?"

"None. They were all wrapped up in a cloak, and their voice was definitely weird. Pretty sure they were hiding their real one."

We broke from the trees, entering a small town. After the dark forest the lights were blinding. I shut my eyes and heard Prometheus sigh.

"We'll just have to be vigilant. Now more so than ever."

That sounded look a good idea, so I felt like a bit of a hypocrite when barely ten minutes later I fell sound asleep.

I didn't wake up until somebody shook my shoulder.

"Get up, Percy," Emmitt said. "It's time to leave the car."

I blinked. It was still dark, but that didn't mean much with Alaska's nineteen-hour nights. "Wer ah Deh-nali?" I slurred.

Emmitt didn't look happy. "Well, we're as close as the car can get us."

Something in his tone woke me the rest of the way up. Shaking my head like Mrs. O'Leary after a bath, I pulled on my coat and hopped outside.

Ice crunched under my weight. The air bit my exposed skin, burning like an open freezer. We had pulled to a stop in the middle of the road, headlights reflecting blindingly off a wall of snow.

Emmitt, who'd followed me out, pointed straight ahead. "Right there."

The asphalt ran in a straight line, perfectly clear until it wasn't. The way the road went from no snow to fifteen feet of it immediately set off warning bells in my head. I made sure Aelia was in my hand and stalked to where the others were standing, right up against the snow wall.

"This isn't natural," I said.

"Get that by yourself?" Bianca asked.

Prometheus had one hand on the barricade. His long fingers traced a portion, coming away white for the trouble.

"Natural or not," he said, "this is more than a car can handle. We'll have to go by foot."

Michael was already unloading gear. Snowshoes, head lamps, tent bags— so much came out of that Corolla's trunk, I was shocked we hadn't been pulling wheelies while driving.

"Everyone take a bag," Michael said.

We divided up the supplies. Somehow I ended up with the most after Michael, followed by Emmitt then Bianca. Prometheus took the smallest bag, which was infuriating every time we looked at him, hoisting it over his seven-foot shoulder while the rest of us lugged our body weights in supplies. On the other hand, it pissed us off so much that we trudged faster, so maybe the bastard knew what he was doing.

At first I wasn't sure how we would get past all that snow even on foot. Then I saw the right side. Just off the road, between the trees, was a much lower section that angled up to the top of the barrier. A ramp of snow. Any reservations I had left about this being natural shattered like the ice under my boots.

"This is so a trap," I said.

That opinion didn't change when we reached the top. The other side it sloped sharply down like a snowboard jump, right into an alley with snow walls on either side.

"Come," Michael said. "Forward is best here."

"You want us to walk into that?" Bianca asked.

I understood how she felt. It was clearly constructed, and the snow walls would be perfect for an ambush.

But something else was on my mind. The snow under our feet was fresh and fluffy. Perfect for a snowball fight, awful for a real one. If we tried defending ourselves on something like this we'd either slip and end up dead, or sink in and end up equally dead. Down below I could at least see solid ground— dark asphalt coated with just a thin layer of ice and snow.

"We can't fight here," I said, gesturing to the snow below our feet. "I think our chances are actually better down there."

Bianca opened her mouth — to argue, I'm sure — when the snow under her gave out. Her leg shot out over the fifteen-foot drop, and the rest of her would've followed if Emmitt and I didn't grab her arms and haul her back up.

She took a shaky breath. "You know, suddenly, going down seems like a great idea."

Michael hadn't waited for us to make our minds up. He'd trudged down to wait on the road.

When we reached the bottom I shouted, "You know, if anybody's waiting to ambush us, can we get this over with now!"

The night stayed quiet. The circle of light from my headlamp slid over the upper rim of the snow walls. Nothing moved. No shapes appeared from the looming pine trees. Only birds and distant, distant howls hung on the air.

"Did you really think that would work?" Bianca asked.

Something flew at the back of my head.

I hit the deck, which really hurt as ice scraped my elbows through my jacket. A pickaxe, thrown end-over-end like a hatchet, hit where I'd been standing with a CRACK!

"The hell!" Bianca yelped.

Shapes appeared above us. At first I thought they were humans, but they were too thin. Even thinner than the women on Graham Island, and those women had been nothing but skin and bones… which made sense, because when my light illuminated one of our attackers, he was only the second one.

"Skeletons!" I yelled.

There were ten of them, five either side of us. They leaped down and landed with clicks. Their only clothes were orange mining helmets. Five carried shovels, four pickaxes, and one was empty-handed. That must've been the one that tried to use my skull as a target-practice piñata. The skeletons didn't pause to give a dramatic speech; they just attacked.

Emmitt tackled Prometheus out of the way of one, pulling tent stakes out of his bag and wielding them like shortswords. Bianca drew her knife and tried to fight off three at once.

"Disintegrate!" She shouted. "Leave this world! Get un-summoned! Just… disappear! Grrr, it isn't working!"

One skeleton walked up to Michael, who didn't run away screaming. He didn't run away at all, even when the skeleton pulled its pickaxe back and swung.

The mining tool hit our guide in the stomach and I would've been freaking out about seeing a guy get murdered if the sound hadn't been all wrong. A CLINK! more like a rock cracking than skin being pierced. Michael put his hands to his stomach and slowly fell backward.

"Oh no," he narrated. "I have been killed by a mysterious attacker. How inconvenient."

A whole five skeletons came for me, which seemed targeted if you asked me. I yanked my gloves off for grip and brought out my spear.

With one swing Anthea knocked two skeletons' skulls straight off their shoulders like t-balls. I twisted and brought the shaft down hard enough to disconnect another's arm at the joint. Another swing bisected the fourth, and one stab was all it took to spear that fifth's head like an olive on a toothpick. The last skeleton standing, missing its arm, never stood a chance as its friend's skull, still stuck on Anthea, hit its own hard enough to shatter them both.

Looking around, the others were done too. Emmitt stood over a set of shattered bones. Bianca had given up on banishing the other four in favor of the old-fashioned way and sliced them to bits.

Luckily they were weak. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had such an easy fight. And that thought put me on edge.

Not soon enough. Right in the middle of us, someone appeared straight from the ground.

Only one person could pop out of shadows like that. I wanted to shout Hey, Bianca, look! It's your brother I said was alive!

Faster than I could blink Nico grabbed Emmitt and Prometheus by the wrists and dragged them through the ground. And they were gone. Just like that.

Bianca shot me a skittish frightened look. "Who the hell was that?"

"I don't think you'll like me if I answer that."

She let out a strangled noise something like a hellhound with its head in a plastic bag.

"Are you seriously telling me that– that that was…?"

"One way to know for sure," I said. I advanced on Michael.

Our guide was still on his back. He didn't look the part of a stabbing victim though, or maybe just one the ambulance got to too late. His back was stiff, his hands crossed over his stomach, his bloodshot eyes stuck open, trained on the starry sky.

"How long are you going to stay like that?"

"Percy, he got stabbed," Bianca said. "He's not a monster, remember? Normal people don't pop up after a pickaxe to the chest. I think… I think he's dead."

"Check again," I said.

Bianca squinted. She leaned up close and got a good look. Then she recoiled. "He's not dead. But… he's not alive, either. I don't know what he is."

"Then let's ask him."

I put Anthea's point to his forehead. "Who are you? Why did you lead us here?"

No reaction. I guess death threats weren't all that effective when the target didn't have a life to lose.

So instead I pried his hands away from his chest. It was surprisingly hard. His limbs were stuck like they'd been encased in super glue. Eventually, with my best push, the hands snapped up.

The wound looked like a regular person's, except for the fact all the blood has frozen solid. When the wound was revealed Michael raised his head to look at his own chest.

"Ah," he said. "You figured me out."

"Who are you?" I asked again, hoping take two would be more effective. "Why did you lead us here?"

He sat up. One of his hood straps was stuck in his eye, but he didn't seem to notice at all.

"I'm a guide," he said. "I led you here because you hired me. To take you to Denali."

"You're lying," Bianca said.

"I am," he agreed.

"What point is there in lying?" I asked. "We caught you. Just give up who you're working for."

"I'm not lying," he said. "I'm a guide. I'm taking you to Denali."

Bianca's grip on her knife got dangerously tight. "You just admitted you were lying!"

"I did."

I said, "Then why–"

He interrupted me. "I'm not lying. I'll take your to Denali. I'm a guide."

Bianca snarled and lunged at him, but I held her back by the hood. "Wait! I think I get it. You ask him."

"Fine." Reluctantly, Bianca lowered her knife. "Let's hear it. Why are you lying?"

"Master ordered me to deceive you. I was to gain your trust and lead you here. You were not to suspect anything. Once I led you here, my job was finished."

"He can't lie to you," I realized. "Remember, back when we hired him, how he said we couldn't reach Denali when you asked? He tried to cover it up as a joke. But it wasn't a joke. He has to answer your questions, and he can't lie."

"He must be a spirit," Bianca said. "But then, how come Prometheus couldn't tell? He should've been able to spot possession easily. Honestly, after last time, I don't think I would miss something like that either."

I remembered how dead Michael had looked lying on the road. How blue his lips were; the way his eyes hadn't blinked since meeting him. An idea came to my head that made my stomach descend a long flight of stairs.

"What if that is his real body," I said, "and that is his spirit. What if he died. What if… What if he was brought back possessing his own corpse?"

"Is that true?" Bianca demanded. "Is that what you are?"

I could see on her face what she wanted the answer to be. She wasn't convinced yet that our attacker was Nico. But she knew, if I was right about him and about Michael, what that would mean he had done– dig up a real corpse and bend it to his will, just to catch us.

"I'm an explorer," Michael said. "Well, I was an explorer. Then the storm caught me, and I never made it back. Now I can explore again. Praise the Master. Hire me."

Bianca leaned over him, knife to his stiff forehead. This time, I didn't stop her. "Who is your Master?"

Michael opened his mouth, and the shadows around them opened like a much bigger mouth, swallowing its food in one gulp.

"NO!" I shouted, reaching for Bianca.

I came up with frozen air. It took a very deep, very controlled breath to keep from taking out my anger on the scattered bones behind me.

I was alone, freezing, my only company the moon and the frigid air scraping my nostrils with every measured inhale.

Think, Percy, think. He was taking us one by one. Where to I didn't know. But he clearly wanted to separate us, probably to make easier targets. I was sure of one thing. On the train Nico had called me a hypnotizer and said I'd been alive a thousand years, which I still didn't understand, but I could tell he was angry with me in particular. I was his main target. He would be back for me.

So I did what I was best at– following the first crazy plan that came to my head.

I rushed to the walls of snow and began shoveling it with my arms. Once I had as much as I could carry I threw it in a pile in the middle of the road. Like the Daemons with their snowmen, I smashed the pile until it was a thin blanket on the ground. Then, using the body heat from my hands, I melted as much as I could into water.

With a bit of concentration, I could keep the water from refreezing. So I sat criss-cross applesauce in my puddle and waited.

I never thought I'd be thankful for playing prisoner in The Competition, but without that experience I never would've been able to sit still long enough to wait until the hands grabbed my ankles and hauled me straight down.

I knew the trip wouldn't be long. So as soon as I realized what was happening I hurled my surprise gift at Nico.

The water I'd dragged with us fired down past my ankles. Without me regulating its temperature it immediately froze in the frigid cold of the shadows. Nico yelped, probably part ice block. And I only had time to wonder if I had just sent both of us tumbling into whatever awful place shadows came from when Nico lost his grip on me and I was spat out into equally-frigid fresh air.

"Percy!"

As I lay coughing on the ground, I realized a few things in a very short span of time, all helpful for keeping me alive.

First: Nico wasn't with me. My trick had thrown him off course at the last second, sending him to who knows where while I just about squeezed out at the right place.

Second: This was the right place. I knew for sure from the sight of my friends… and the army of ghouls holding them captive. Skeletons, spirits, zombies, you name it, all arrayed over a vast stretch of open ice that ran at least a mile wide between polar peaks. If it was dead it was here, looking threatening. Some of the skeletons carried swords. One had a shotgun that, luckily for us, looked like it'd spent a few too many decades in a snowdrift to be firing slugs. A zombie in an army officer's uniform carried one solitary grenade, looking as eager to throw it as a bride holding a bouquet. The ghosts didn't have limbs – or forms – to threaten us with, but their glares were boiling even with the temperature in the negatives.

Third: Right smack in the middle of that graveyard welcome brigade were my friends, Prometheus and Emmitt on their knees with swords to their backs, Bianca standing free but very much blocked in.

She was the one that had called my name when I arrived. The other two didn't seem eager to shout with the swords brushing them.

I leaped up, raising Anthea defensively. I might as well not have bothered. None of the spirits had taken a single step toward me.

"Why aren't they attacking?" I wondered.

Then the answer came to me. Nobody was here to give the order. The guy that summoned them was off-thawing somewhere. But he wasn't the only one that could give instructions.

"Bianca!" I yelled. "Tell them to let you go!"

"You think I haven't tried that?" she shouted back. "They won't listen! Just like those skeletons earlier!"

"Try again! I think It'll be different now!"

I couldn't see her expression across the football field between us, but I got the feeling she was rolling her eyes.

"Move out of my way," she said. "I want to talk to my friends."

Every skeleton between her and the others scrambled aside so fast, I was surprised they didn't leave a few toe bones stuck in the snow.

"What in the world…" Bianca said.

"They weren't ignoring you, they just had overriding orders! But right now, you're the one in charge!"

Because I sent your brother to gods knows where, I added in my head, but that part I kept to myself.

Bianca walked up to Emmitt and Prometheus. "Back," she said, and the zombies pulled their swords away, sheathing them to stand at attention.

Emmitt stood up, patting himself down as if the remind his head that he still had a body. "That was horrible! Everything went black and all of a sudden I'm here, with a sword to my head. I thought I was going to die!"

"Indeed." Prometheus rose next to him. "It would have been terrible if I was killed… for you all especially."

"Clear a path," Bianca told the other dead. "We're leaving."

The army began parting like they had before. Only, when my friends were halfway to me, something changed.

A voice I knew bellowed, "Stop! I command you, stop!"

It wasn't Nico's, but it was the next worst thing. His ghost buddy, bodiless but no less commanding, roared orders.

"Do not let them go! In the name of the Ghost King bring them to their knees!"

"No!" Bianca shouted. "Don't listen to him. I am the daughter of Hades. Clear my path!"

The skeletons hesitated. One zombie literally split down the middle, his right leg listening to the ghost while his left did as Bianca asked. Even the spirits couldn't decide. They were wailing and moaning, floating one direction before flipping around and floating in the other.

Then mist swirled in front of me like cigarette smoke in a blender. The funnel cloud whirred and whooshed before taking the shape of a human taller than a basketball basket.

"IN FORMATION!" It was like the ghost was using Rose's megaphone, except it was all-natural to his see-through vocal cords. "I AM YOUR MASTER, NOT BY BLOOD BUT BY TITLE! YOU. WILL. OBEY ME!"

The dead formed ranks, weapons aimed at my friends. My heart drooped and the ghost turned to me, looking over his translucent shoulder.

"Well look who's here." The ghost's voice was no longer as loud as when he was giving orders, but that didn't change the force his words with said with. He had the casual authority of someone that was used to being in charge. Which was funny, because every time I'd seen him he'd been taking orders. "It's been a while, old friend."

My memory wasn't always the greatest, but I was pretty sure I would remember meeting a twenty-foot ghost with a sore spot for his authority being challenged. "Old friend?"

The ghost stroked his angular beard (people really did that?) and chuckled. "You can drop the ruse. You will not fool me again."

Apparently he was the gullible type so, "Hey, your sandal's untied!"
He shook his head. "Not that kind of ruse. And you never would have tricked me alone. It was all those princesses!" He seemed to be making himself mad just talking. He slammed a sandaled foot onto the ice so hard, it dispersed and had to reform. "Down with the daughters of Cocalus! Though they've been dead for two thousand years now… Still! The nerve of them!"

The daughters of Cocalus. Out of every myth they were the easiest for me to remember, because I carried a reminder everywhere in my pocket. Aelia, Anfisa, and Anthea, princesses that studied under my teacher while he was on the run from…

"You're Minos," I said. "And you… think I'm Daedalus?"

"Oh yes, yes." Minos waved his hand. "Minos, I'm just an innocent son of Poseidon!' Get it all out and over with now, because it'll not work on me. I know your tricks, from experience and from a very good friend."

All I could think to say was, "What?"

"Hm? You didn't even know you were being set up? I've heard all about it. Your newest automaton body, built in the image of a child killed by Zeus. Or maybe he survived, and you made the vacancy yourself. You, saving a child? Even if I hadn't been told all about your scheme I'd never have believed it. I do wonder. Did you murder this 'Percy' the same way you did Perdix, or did you change methods for variety?"

For a guy that was wrong about everything, he sure sounded smug about it. But that name… it wasn't one I'd heard before. I was expecting Icarus to be the punchline, something about how he fell to his death on Daedalus's makeshift wings.

Wings they'd only worn because the king in front of me locked them in his dungeon, throwing a tantrum that they helped stop his murder party. I remembered something Daedalus told me, way back when he gifted me my weapon. The worst monsters don't let death stop them from coming after you.

"Alright, Minos," I said, lining my spearpoint up with his porta-potty-sized torso. "I don't care what you say about me. I'll let slide what you said about my teacher. But if you're going to lecture at me, let my friends go. I'll be an extra good listener then. Promise."

Minos took a step back. I was all ready to feel good about how scary I could be when I realized it wasn't my weapon he cared about. It was the way the motion showed off my neck.

"You don't have the mark," he said. "You… you aren't Daedalus? But how could–"

I didn't let him finish. He wasn't going to move, not without a little persuasion. So I attacked now, while he was as off-balance as he was going to get.

I ran in between his legs, swinging my spear at his kneecap. It didn't dig in like it would with a monster, but the Stygian Iron flakes made the vapor break apart, swirling as it tried to reform.

"Ouch!" Minos said. "How did you do that, little rat!"

I kept running. With a tap Anthea morphed into Anfisa, and I plunged into the army of the dead.

I was lucky. The only order Minos had given was to capture the others, so the first fifteen just stood there as I cut them to pieces. Every sliced enemy disintegrated, not into dust but into little black flakes like coal which sunk underground.

Then Minos bellowed, "Stop him! Destroy that boy!"

Ever had a hundred dead eyes train on you at once? Horror movies should take notes. It was just the right mix of gross, creepy, and terrifying to make me want to sleep with a nightlight.

For exactly thirty seconds, I felt like I was still doing well. My blade was a blur. I was a blur, ducking and weaving, bisecting exposed ribcages.

Then I took my first hit. A shovel clipped my shoulder in a way I knew was going to leave a killer bruise. When I slashed its wielder, a skeleton sliced my side with a climber's pick. Something went CLANG! and a force shoved me forward. A zombie had gotten behind me and put a sword through my backpack. It would've gone through me, too, if the point hadn't rebounded off of Andi's magic kitchenware. I thanked the utensils for saving my life, even if it wasn't in the way I imagined when I brought them along.

Minos was having a blast. Leaning back watching with a wide smile, he was so happy with his minions that he was clapping for them, although his ethereal hands passed through each other every time they met.

"This is much better," he said. "If you are not Daedalus, I've no use for you. And now that you've mounted this little rebellion, the excuse is right under my nose to get rid of all the thorns. When Master returns to a pile of bodies, all I've to say is you were trying to esca–"

A quiet whistling was the only warning before an arrow sprouted from

Minos's forehead, ending his sentence mid-syllable. He didn't disappear, but boy did he bellow in pain.

A hand grabbed my shoulder and dragged me past disoriented ghouls.

"Come on!" Emmitt shouted, pulling us to where I saw Bianca, her gloves off, a bow in her hand, second arrow already notched.

It was the bow from Graham Island. I'd been wondering what happened to it. But now it was here, and boy was I glad to see it.

When we skidded to a stop beside her and Prometheus, I almost asked where in Hades she'd been keeping the thing before my eyes landed on her bare hands. Her mittens had been yanked off and dropped. But the fingerless glove she'd been wearing everywhere, the one her hand kept drifting to at the first sign of a fight, was nowhere to be seen.

"That bow is like my weapon?"

"Later," Bianca said, and she loosed the second arrow into Minos's chest.

I guess the Ghost King was getting used to involuntary acupuncture. This time he spoke through the pain– or snarled through it, at least.

"Slay them! Every last one, and start with the girl. I want them to bleed!"

Bianca panned her bow and disintegrated the closest zombie. Five more filled the space it left.

"We're trapped," she said grimly.

I cut a spirit diagonally like a finished tic-tac-toe board. "Anyone have any ideas? Very open to suggestions!"

"Well," Prometheus said as he sidestepped a skeleton to let me deal with it, "on the bright side, we've reached Denali. This is Ruth Glacier."

"Not the time!" Bianca said.

"But it's really quite beautiful. Ten miles long you know, and over a mile wide." Emmitt, who'd borrowed Bianca's knife, barely tackled a zombie before it could bang Prometheus over the head with a bat made of ice. The titan kept talking. "The distance from its base to the mountains around us is greater than the Grand Canyon. Millions of pounds of ice. Just a wonder."

I was about to tell him to read the room when inspiration hit me like a bus. Reaching out with my senses I double-checked and realized the titan was right. We were standing on ice. Lots and lots of ice, and nothing but it. As the waves of enemy's constricted around us I shouted, "Get close to me!"

I might as well not have bothered. All of us were already pressed together. It wasn't like there was anywhere else to go.

So when I stabbed Anfisa down, burying it halfway to the hilt, I didn't have to worry about anybody being left behind in what was coming.

Ice was too stiff to control like water. I couldn't make it float in the air, change shape, or materialize it from thin air to put in my drink on a hot day, as awesome as that would be. What I could do, though, was rip apart those stiff pieces apart.

In other words, I could make it break.

The ground shook. I could hear Emmitt's teeth chattering. Section by section, ice disintegrated into tiny sparkling pieces. Turns out spirits couldn't float with no ground underneath them. Just like their skeleton and zombie friends, they plunged hundreds of feet as what they were standing on disappeared.

I panted, surveying the damage. Huge trenches had appeared in the glacier on three sides of us. Minos and most of his minions were on the opposite side of the largest one, far enough that I had to squint to see his massive scowl. His mouth was moving but even his booming voice couldn't compete with the sound of displaced ice chunks falling and smashing way beneath us.

Only a few enemies were lucky enough to end up on our side of the chasm and not lose their footing. I was about to pull myself up to fend them off when Bianca spoke.

"Jump," she commanded. With Minos too far away to give conflicting orders, they marched to the drop and stepped off like nothing. And then it was just us, three teens breathing hard and one titan with his hands linked behind his back.

"Really left that to the last minute," Bianca said.

"I didn't know this was a glacier," I said. "Do you see how big it is? I thought it was just a field or something."

"What do we do now?" Emmitt wondered.

For the moment we were safe. Despite Minos's best efforts, no order he gave succeeded in doing more than making his servants kamikaze themselves one by one. I wasn't too hot on waiting around for him to come up with a better plan, though.

"We should get out of here," I said. "We're at Denali, right?"

"On it," Prometheus said. "Partway. So, in a way, I suppose this could count as a shortcut."

"We have to cross it," I agreed.

"Now?" Emmitt pulled an impression of one of those ghouls with how pale he got. "We don't even have supplies!"

"That's true," I said, "but we don't know how far back they are, or even where the road is from here. We'll be just as likely to freeze, and at least this way we can maybe get to the Hyporboreans sooner. Right, Bianca?"

She didn't answer. That was the first clue something was wrong, because she always had something to say, even if it was just making fun of me. I spun around.

Her bow was teetering on loose fingers, one gust away from tumbling to the ground. Her mouth was hanging open. I couldn't see her eyes, but from the way her head was pointed, I could follow where they were looking– due across the chasm.

Minos was gone. The remaining dead had collapsed where they stood, beginnning to sink through the snow while their spirit friends dissipated. And in the place of it all was a lone figure.

A pale boy in all black except for specks of ice stuck on his clothes, not even trying to speak, facing his sister the exact same way she was facing him.

The Di Angelo siblings watched each other like this, and I couldn't say what was on the other's mind, but as for Bianca I figured it was nothing but the word she muttered so softly that the wind nearly snatched it away.

"...Nico?"

(-)

This chapter is going out a day early because, well, I'm not sure I'll have free time even to post a chapter tomorrow. It'll be back to the usual Sunday chapters next week :)

While writing this story I've gotten a few reviews now about Percy's abilities, some commenting on how powerful he seems while others say he's been nerfed compared to canon, so I thought I would summarize how I'm approaching it real quick.

At this point we're at almost exactly the same time as when The Titan's Curse would be happening, so that's the canon counterpart I'll be comparing him with. I see Percy here as a more skilled fighter when it comes to weapons, both because he can switch between the spear and the sword and because he's had years of tutelage under Daedalus, one of the few characters cannon Percy describes as being at least as skilled as him. He is only fourteen though, so he's still got some growing to do for things like speed and strength.

On the other hand, he's way more out of touch with his powers from his dad. He can use them, but it's only been about a month and a half since Andi helped over his mental block. He's still very much figuring out what he can and can't do, which I think you can see as he travels and fights more. He's missing a lot of the life-and-death experience that drives growth. At least, for now he is…