Chapter 69

There's Always a Bigger Mouth

By the time Annabeth exited one of the doors, Nera and I had separated. Kai took my spot, while I settled on a chair at the opposite end of the row. Kelli came out next. She took the seat beside me, and I moved one away. She looked like she would've followed if she didn't spot Aelia in my hand.

Bianca was next. She took the seat beside Kai. Mark slotted in on Kelli's opposite side. Then was Annabeth.

When she came into sight, she looked a little pale. But she walked with confident steps.

"You alright?" I asked quietly.

She sat up straight, smiling slightly. "Just about."

The atmosphere was tense. Everyone knew exactly what the others had been offered, but nobody knew who had accepted— you could be sitting next to someone that had been on your side until exactly five minutes ago, and you could have no idea anything changed.

Well, mostly it was tense. Nera kept prodding Bianca to ask about her favorite song, favorite color, or favorite unfathomable horror. Bianca mostly seemed confused, but she did admit cupcakes were her favorite dessert.

"Nico said that too," I mumbled.

"What?" Annabeth asked.

I was saved from making something up by the last door opening.

Thalia staggered out. She looked like she'd seen a ghost, if that ghost had spent all its time recounting every embarrassing story from her life in graphic detail. She walked to the last seat, between Bianca and Mark, without seeming to see the room at all.

Annabeth watched her every step of the way.

"Hi, everybody. I hope you can forgive the delay."

Agon had appeared at the front of the room. He'd ditched the lab coat. It was business casual only, now.

He smiled. "So. We've gotten know each other now. It was productive."

He paused, giving time for the competitors to glance at each other. I didn't take my eyes off him. He was trying to make us wonder, and I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.

"I suppose all that's left now is the event."

He walked to one of the doors, reached inside, and pulled out a whiteboard. No Mist tricks or teleportation. No Theoroi. No Sponsors. Just Agon, us, and now the dry-erase pen he pulled from a pocket.

He drew a straight line. At one end he wrote 'Start'. At the other he wrote 'Finish'. He showed it off like a work of art.

"Competition is the simplest thing in this world," he said. "You've got a goal, a winner, and a loser. Humans have found a million ways to do it. But when you strip away all the rules, balls, equipment, regulations, politics, distractions, you're left with the original. It doesn't get simpler than a race. So we're going to end it the way it started: a race to decide the world's fate."

"Every event has been a race," Annabeth pointed out.

"This one's different," Agon promised. "No trivia. No chariots. No fancy timers. You all start in the same place, and the first to reach the end wins. You can do anything. All that matters is you get there."

"Where is there?" Kai asked.

"The San Francisco Botanical Gardens," Agon said. "A beautiful setting for a beautiful chapter in history."

"When you say all of us start in the same place," I asked slowly, "do you mean all of us?"

I didn't like the way his smile shifted.

"Good luck," Agon said.

The first thing we heard was the roar.

Teleportation was as instant as ever. Even our chairs came with us. We showed up in a playground, which didn't seem all that grand a setting for a race to end the world. The ground was colored rubber and everywhere kids were clambering on scaled-up anatomically correct animal models. Two were playing tag around a five-foot sculpture of an ant. Another was riding a boa bigger than he was like it would carry him into battle. There was no sign of the Colchian Drakon other than its first bellow.

"A zoo?" Annabeth mumbled.

Kai looked around. "Where is—"

A white brick building labeled South American Rainforest and Aviary exploded.

Voices screamed. Mortals everywhere. Adults dropped their phones and took shocked steps back. Some ran. Only the kids didn't seem worried. Some cheered, thinking this was and event of some kind, and the boy on the boa eyed the emerging drakon like he wanted to upgrade steeds.

But whatever the kids thought, this was dangerous. Already the drakon was dragging itself free of the building. The faster it went, the less time mortals had to clear its path. Its one good eye locked onto us… Nera and I in particular. It hadn't forgotten our last meeting.

"Run!" I yelled.

We scattered.

At first Annabeth was on one side of me, Bianca on the other. Then the throng of bodies pushed us apart, and I was running with Kai. At one point I caught sight of Kelli's curly hair through the crowd. The sound of hissing and exhibits bursting filled the air behind me, getting closer, and I realized this wasn't going to work.

There were too many people. They were all rushing for the exit, getting in each other's way. At this rate the drakon was going to crush straight through them.

With a deep breath, I turned around.

It didn't take long to shove through the crowd going the other way, but it did earn me a few crazy looks. I stumbled free in an outdoor eating area littered with picnic tables and overturned chairs. The drakon actually stopped when it spotted me. It tilted its head. Behind it, I could see colorful parrots fluttering out of the aviary's ruptured roof. A bear ran past, fleeing its shattered enclosure and causing nearby mortals to panic even harder.

"Remember me?" I called.

The drakon definitely did. It was eying me eagerly. It wanted to prove that nobody rode it and lived.

I drew Aelia. "Well, I remember you, too. And they aren't good memories."

The drakon blew warm air out its flat nose and shot forward in a running slither. I tensed. I just had to hold it off until the mortals escaped. That was all.

Part of me realized I was smiling.

It was close enough for me to smell the old meat on its breath when a voice yelled, "Hey, scaly!"

The drakon twisted around so fast, I felt the hair blow back on my head.

Apparently, the only one it hated more than me was the person that took its eye. Nera was standing at the other end of the eating area holding… a stuffed giraffe?

It was two feet tall, pretty cute, and a burnt shade of gold. As I watched, Nera hurled it like a baseball.

It soared, bouncing to a stop beneath a sign for the Leaping Lemur Cafe, and despite all its rage the drakon chased after it.

Somebody grabbed my shoulder.

"It's obsessed with gold!" Annabeth said, dragging me toward the exit. "It thinks anything could be the fleece that it lost! We don't have to fight it, we just need to keep it distracted!"

Behind us, the drakon reached the toy. It sniffed it, realized it had been tricked, and released a roar that made a pair of lions cower in their exhibit.

The crowd had cleared some, but as the exit came into sight it was clogged with people. There was a big courtyard, with ticket windows separating us from the parking lot. On our side was a gift shop, public restrooms, and nothing between us and the deadly monster on our tail.

A gust of warm air had me tackling Annabeth sideways.

The drakon thundered past, snapping its jaws down on nothing but air. Before it could reorient, Kai appeared on the roof of the restroom and emptied a lemur-shaped bottle of golden slushie. The drakon rushed over.

The exit was totally blocked by the crowd. It didn't matter that people were speeding up, it would be ages before a path opened to the parking lot.

"We have to fight," I said.

Annabeth scowled. "Nobody has ever beaten it!"

"Nobody's ever fought a drakon in a zoo before, either," I said. "Probably. That just means we have to be the first ones."

I wished had as much confidence as I put into the words. This was the worst place to fight— mortals and kids everywhere. We couldn't pull anything big without worrying who would get caught in the crossfire.

The drakon lurched up from sniffing the slushie stain. When it turned back to us, its red eyes lit up. I traced where it was looking.

"Annabeth," I said, "I don't mean to scare you, but has anyone ever told you your hair is pretty?"

"Percy, what?"

"In the sun, it's really bright," I said. "Like gold."

It looked even more golden against pale skin.

Annabeth cursed in Greek and started fumbling with her pocket. The drakon got there first.

Instead of using its mouth, it reached out with one of its creepy human-like front legs, like it wanted to snatch Annabeth's head in its palm. I swung Aelia into its claws with all my strength and managed to knock the hand off course.

The heat of its breath skyrocketed.

That was all the warning we got before its mouth opened to reveal a smoldering throat. I searched for water around us, but the aquatic exhibits must've been on the opposite side of the zoo. The drakon was about to cook us alive. Somebody laid on a horn.

The mortals crowding the exit screamed even louder. They parted as a full-sized bus with pictures of penguins on the sides careened in from the parking lot. I caught a glimpse of Nera driving through the windshield before it hit the drakon at fourty miles an hour.

The drakon's head snapped up, spewing a column of flames straight into the air. In the brief pause, Annabeth disappeared. She'd used the time to pull out a blue baseball cap and turn invisible.

I'd forgotten about that trick.

I could tell she was still near me, because she whispered, "Run."

The drakon was still seeing stars. Across the courtyard, everybody was disappearing. Bianca ducked out of the gift shop with Thalia in tow and ducked into a shadow, disappearing. Kai clambered onto the bus while Nera completed a three-point turn, and although they couldn't see it, Kelli sprinted out of the bushes with Mark tossed over her shoulder, clambering onto the sloped roof.

Annabeth and I didn't have fancy tricks. We just ran, slipping through the crowd before it could close again.

Minutes later, the drakon let out a bellow that shook the asphalt of the parking lot. It had lost its prey.

San Francisco was the most vertical city I'd ever met, and I don't mean that endearingly.

We ran uphill for blocks. If a street ever sloped downward, it was only to get you to a steeper one. Annabeth, visible again, led us straight before eventually hanging a left off of a four-lane street onto a six-lane one.

We caught our breath for a second in the shade of a row of towering Eucalyptus.

"This is Nineteenth," Annabeth said, nodding to the traffic in front of us. "That's good. If we follow this straight, we'll only be six blocks off the botanical gardens once we hit Golden Gate Park."

I glanced up at the little green street signs, and sure enough, they said Nineteenth.

"You know your way around the city," I said.

Her face looked defensive, even though I hadn't said much.

"You looked up maps. Just in case you ever visited your dad."

"Let's not talk about this now," she said. "Or ever."

I let it drop. In the distance, the sound of car horns and angry shouts was starting to get louder. We made eye contact and nodded. Time to move.

"Thalia didn't look good," I said as we hurried down the sidewalk, past blocky houses painted bright colors.

"She didn't," Annabeth agreed.

"Agon mentioned her. Specifically. He made it sound like she'd be tempted."
"By what?"

"His offer. And…"

I explained his trump card, the Ophioutaurus, and the quick summary Agon had given of his plans.

"Do you think it's possible? Would she change sides?"

"She wouldn't," Annabeth said.

But it came off uncertain, as if she had to convince herself before she convinced me.

Realization has a way of sneaking up on you, then hitting all at once. It started with the little things. Honking cars were sounding just a little closer. Annabeth was staring a little harder at each cross-street, and frowning slightly at each's name. We hit another incline and slowed down to keep from exhausting ourselves. Once we reached the top, I made the mistake of looking back.

I'd been wrong about something. The Colchian Drakon wasn't chasing us. It was just carving a slice straight through the city, leaving fires and rubble in its wake.

You could see it— a line of ruined buildings and fleeing people halfway between us and the ocean, only a few blocks away.

"It needs to be stopped," I said.

Annabeth paused and looked where I was. She winced, but her eyes were already hardening.

"We can't," she said.

There were two meanings in that. We couldn't waste the time. And, even if we could, fighting would just mean losing or running.

But for me, it was the opposite. I couldn't leave this. My body wouldn't have taken another step away if I tried.

"Sorry," I said. I smiled. "If it finds us here, we'll be helpless. It needs to be fought in the right spot."

"But the plan—"

"I'll catch up," I said. "I promise."

I took off without waiting for an answer. If anyone could talk me out of this it was her, and I didn't want to give her the chance.

It was at least twenty blocks, all downhill, before the street leveled out at the beach. As I ran my eyes fell on a bike chained up outside of a coffee shop.

"Sorry," I muttered, as if the owner could hear me. "But if you live around here, this might just save your house."

Celestial bronze swords work really well on bike locks. I'm not advocating that you do anything with that knowledge, but just in case… now you know.

Hooking my legs over the sides, I just about avoided toppling over. It had been a long time since I rode a bicycle, but there was an entire saying about how that shouldn't matter.

Riding might've been an exaggeration, anyway. I tucked my chin to the handlebars and let gravity do the rest.

If I hadn't remembered what was waiting for me, I might've let out a whoop. The feeling of the wind on my face was fantastic. Like flying, without the scary part of actually leaving the ground and risking vaporization.

Halfway down, the drakon came into sight.

It had a yellow minivan picked up in its arms, but I guess the car didn't pass its test. The drakon grunted, hurling the car backward where it bowled over a fire hydrant and skittered into a garage door with a spray of sparks.

I couldn't really shout with the wind in my face, but I didn't have to. I zipped past, slipping under the drakon's ridiculously long tail, and it immediately slithered after me like a cat after a bird. Golden or not, a high-speed demigod was too much of a delicacy to pass up.

On the bike, I was just faster than it, and even that only because it kept tripping over parked cars every few seconds. The bottom of the hill was starting to loom beneath us. The street ended in a patch of grass and trees that separated it from the beach. That would've been a problem, considering breaking wasn't an option, but I didn't need to worry. I was on my home court now.

By the time the cypresses were filling my view, a wave had risen above the rest, crossing the entire beach. It swallowed my borrowed bike and yanked us out to sea like the world's friendliest riptide.

About fifteen feet off-shore I stood up, right on the surface of the water. The drakon was still coming. It looked confused (if thousand-pound murder reptiles can look confused) but it hadn't given up the chase.

I have a confession to make: I lied to Annabeth.

I did want to lead the drakon away. I did want to stop it from chewing apart the city. But I wanted more than that.

Angelo and Lulu were dead because of this thing, and I wanted to make it hurt, even if that took pulling it apart scale by slimy scale.

The drakon charged the water, and the water charged back.

A wave rose under my feet, propelling me into the air. It crashed into the drakon, and I landed on the head, driving my sword straight down.

The scales were too tough. Anfisa's blade deflected off. I slid down the cool scales and landed back in the water.

The drakon was still lightning-quick, but each time it lunged for me water propelled me away like an eel. And with every miss, it ended up a little further from shore.

Anfisa was gone, shrunken down and stowed in my pocket. I didn't need a weapon for what was coming. I clenched my fist.

We were a hundred yards out from the beach now. The water wasn't as deep as the open ocean, but it was deep enough. Currents converged, and with a startled shriek the drakon was dragged beneath the waves. Its cry cut abruptly into bubbles.

I descended with it, watching how it sunk, focusing on keeping the tides strong enough to chain it. It was going down, and yet…

It was glaring at me.

Not in the way of something that knew it had lost. Soon it was pressed to the sandy ocean floor, and it was still glaring, just waiting for the tide to weaken even slightly so it could snap out and swallow me in a gulp.

I was sure I could outlast it. But five minutes later it was no closer to drowning.

Nerves started to seep in. Mark could be swearing himself in as an uber-god's top lieutenant right now, and here I was at the bottom of the ocean having a hate-fueled staring contest with a monstrous serpent.

The teeth were inches from swallowing me before the current caught the monster again.

One second. My focus slipped for one second, and I was nearly eaten. I stared ahead into a throat that looked like a pink tube slide dotted with bits of gristle and shards of bones that had been lodged inside so long the skin grew around them. Something orange sparked way at the back, but breathing fire only created a column of boiling water that wafted toward the surface.

The current forced the drakon down again, and it went without a fight. It refused to suffocate. It was just waiting, certain I would slip up one more time.

It wasn't scared at all.

I didn't like that. Even if I outlasted it and it drowned thirty minutes or an hour later, it wouldn't feel fear. It wouldn't understand how everyone trapped in heats with it felt.

Fueled by the thought, I reached out my free hand and turned it into fist, making a matching pair.

Two different parts that had never come together met, fitting together like old friends. The ocean was mine, currents and bubbles and all. So was the earth. I told it to split.

And that's what it did.

San Francisco was a city made to shake. The ground felt desperate to move, as if it were as ADHD as any demigod. Underneath the drakon, a fissure opened like a mouth.

This mouth wasn't like the drakon's. It was cold, rocky, and pitch-black instead of pink and fleshy. It didn't allow bits of gristle to get stuck. The things it swallowed, it consumed in one gulp.

The drakon fought now

"There was this guy I knew," I said, even though my words were lost in the water. "We didn't know each other long. Barely two days. But in that time, he almost sacrificed himself for strangers twice. His friend was like that too. I don't know how they felt when they died. But in a second, you just might."

I brought both my fists together in a clap. The mouth snapped shut. The last glimpse inside was two red eyes, flickering frantically against the dark.

The seismic disturbance created a miniature tsunami travelling back to shore. I let it carry me, washing up in the middle of a two-lane beachfront highway.

Mortals had smartphones out, snapping pictures of the wave and the crazy kid it spat out. I pushed quickly through the crowd before they could start asking question like Hey, how is he totally dry?

On the way, I tried to take deep breaths. I let my emotions mellow. Taking each corner completely at a guess, I groaned quietly.

"Great job, Percy. Unkillable monster killed. Now, for the real challenge— how in Hades do I reach the botanical gardens?"

"Would you like to see the way?"

I just about jumped out of my skin. Twisting around, I discovered a familiar face sitting at the outdoor table of a nearby seafood restaurant.

It was a place that looked fancy just from the lavish awning. There wasn't any food on the table, just four bottles of wine. There were two chairs, one empty and the other occupied by none other than Hecate.

She was back in her Kate disguise, dressed this time in a nice red dress. There was an odd smile on her face that seemed too cheerful for the chilly goddess.

"Would you like to see the way?" she repeated.

"Isn't that cheating?" I asked. "And why do you look like that?"

"Oh, this?" She plucked at the hem of her dress and smiled apologetically, as if I was asking about her clothes and not her face. "This spot is a bit pricey, see, so I thought it best to look the part. Do you want to know how to find your friends? Final offer. Time is ticking."

"I–" With a bit of effort, I swallowed the questions swimming around my head. "Yes. I want to see the way. Can you show me?"

She grinned, showing teeth. "That's all you had to say."

A glow caught my attention, and I looked down to find a white thread sprouting from my chest. When I looked up to ask again what her angle was, I found the restaurant gone. I'd been teleported to a completely different street.

I didn't have time to think on it, either. In front of me, looking about as surprised as I felt, was none other than Bianca and Thalia.

I waved awkwardly. "Uh, hi, guys. Crazy running into you here…"

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