IV
Once they were aboard the Ferry of the Dead, riding down the River Styx with Charon in his proper creepy and grim black robe, Alabaster stopped vomiting. The ship was an old Greek vessel, something Matthias could have identified immediately. They sat as far from the stern as possible. Apparently this boat was usually brimming with ghosts, but Charon had shoved the three of them aboard in such a hurry, less ghosts had flooded the space.
This gave them the room to sit on the edge of the boat so Pax, Lou Ellen, and Alabaster could stare off at the inky, polluted river. They wanted to be as far from the ferryman as possible. Charon was cursing under his breath, something about children being electrocuted in bathtubs and getting into car accidents.
Maybe, in a normal tour, Pax might have been excited by the black stalactites and terrifying horror movie set. For now, all he could do was rub Alabaster's back. Lou Ellen sat on his other side, pulling one finger off and putting it back in a different one's place, frequently messing it up. This was her way of acting concerned.
After he was certain Charon couldn't overhear them, Pax whispered, "You died coming after us?!"
Before now, he couldn't process what was happening enough to ask. The sight of Alabaster with his intestines dragging on the floor and blood spewing out of his mouth—it was enough to make Pax tremble more. And he was already trembling pretty hard in this cold cavern.
"Of course I died!" Alabaster's voice rose, making Pax and Lou Ellen flinch. "How else would I be in the Underworld?!"
Tears threatened to spill down Pax's cheeks. He could hear Lou Ellen sniffling. Crying would really make her missing-eye illusion less believable.
Alabaster sighed. Pax thought he was reaching for something in his pocket.
Alabaster wasn't. He grabbed the end of his intestines. Casually, the child of Hecate wound them up around one wrist. Once he got towards the end, he ripped off a chunk.
Pax shrieked.
"Be quiet," Alabaster snarled. Softer, he grumbled, "And Mercedes thinks you can keep it cool in enemy territory."
Pax wanted to point out that enemies (hopefully) wouldn't be ripping off pieces of their organs. Was that a thing they did in Camp Half-Blood? Did Percy Jackson, in fact, an organ-eating zombie?
Before Pax could withdraw his hand, Alabaster shoved the chunk into Pax's palm.
Pax almost screamed again. Maybe this was an experience he should have smiled upon—after all, it isn't every day that your crush tries to hand you an organ, granted, a heart might be better.
"I knew you idiots wouldn't bring enough snacks," Alabaster hissed, shoving another chunk into Lou Ellen's hands.
"Oh my mother…" Lou Ellen whispered.
Pax didn't want to watch as she held up the chunk for investigation. Then he saw what she saw. The scent of iron vanished like it had been a whiff from a distant breeze. That chunk had some kind of label covered in blood—not blood.
Pax sniffed.
The scent of barbeque sauce became overwhelming.
He rubbed his own chunk with his thumb. The sauce smeared to reveal a packaged sausage, like the kind you'd have on a cheese platter. There was even a bright label on the protective packaging.
Pax stared at his hand. The spell had been so convincing.
Lou Ellen made a low whistle. "You're good," she said, "Titans, can you teach me how to do that?"
"When you have enough discipline to pull off your nose instead of your chin," Alabaster scolded.
Pax couldn't think about the spell or the sausage.
He threw his arms around Alabaster.
Alabaster made a grunt of annoyance.
Slowly and firmly, as though not to draw attention to them, Alabaster removed Pax's arms. There was an embarrassed hue to his pale cheeks as he scowled from Pax to Lou Ellen. "You didn't come to me to devise this plan?" he demanded.
"We thought you'd be mad," Lou Ellen meeped. She sheepishly poked at the fake dent in her head. By comparison to Alabaster's effects, hers looked like something out of a D-rate horror movie.
"Oh, I am mad. When we get back, I'm killing you, and then you'll have to march right back in there and explain to Charon how you've shown up twice, then you'll have to see what he does with you," Alabaster said.
Pax couldn't help but grin. Threats aside, he couldn't handle looking at this very-much-alive Alabaster. It was cute thinking about it: Alabaster finding their, "Went to Underworld. Will bring back souvenirs," note and stuffing a bunch of sausage links into his shirt, cussing at the confused centaur that could swear he just took Alabaster and Lou Ellen off the ship. He really cared. At least about Lou Ellen.
"Are you making us go back?" she whispered, shuffling away from a wandering soul and closer to her brother. Pax understood. Everything here was cold. Touching another warm person was a nice reminder of the above world.
"How, pray tell, am I to make you go back in our current situation?" Alabaster closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids. "Mercedes warned me you'd want to go after Axel. I didn't think the two of you would be stupid enough to throw away your life chasing him or smart enough to get off the boat undetected."
Lou Ellen and Pax exchanged a glance over Alabaster's shoulders. Neither could decide if the comment was more compliment or insult.
"So, we're going after Axel?" Pax clarified.
"We're certainly not going back the way we came. I have no interest in angering Charon on his own boat," Alabaster said.
That meant that Alabaster had come down here with his own plan. Even if he didn't have one when he left, trying to catch them before they went into DOA Recording Studios, he would have come up with one by now. Before Pax could hear any awesome details, their ship pulled up along black sand.
Pax guessed that Hades hadn't heard the memo—that pink was the new black. If Pax ever got scared while he was down here, he would have to remember to visualize the Underworld in various shades of Easter egg with magenta stalactites meeting a sparkling, rose floor. His stomach dropped about what shade of pink the river would be with its thick eddies. That went too Mayan in his head.
Alabaster tossed the plastic-wrapped suit backwards into the boat, quickly shuffling the younger two off. They didn't wait to hear what Charon thought of the contents.
They walked towards the airport-like security with ghoulish attendants separating people into various lines. There were signs above the lines, ones that Pax couldn't read since the letters jumbled into incomprehension.
A low whine, like that of an injured puppy, echoed around the chamber. Yea, there were wails too, but those were human wails. Pax was way less interested in those. He couldn't find the source of the animal noises until Lou Ellen tugged furiously on his jacket.
Pax didn't know how he missed the view before. Unlike Alabaster, Lou Ellen, and Axel, he struggled to see through the Mist. Even so, the Mist deserved a pay raise.
A few yards ahead of them was a massive Rottweiler with three heads. Maybe the truck-sized dog would have normally been intimidating; Pax had heard some intimidating stories about Cerberus. Instead, the dog just looked pathetic, curled up and nursing a paw. Pax could see why.
There was a sword imbedded between two toes.
"He's hurt!" Pax cried.
"Ajax, no," Alabaster growled.
Lou Ellen joined in the cry, "We have to help him."
"What part of—"
"Please!" Pax and Lou Ellen said together.
"Grant me the patience of the Furies," Alabaster said under his breath.
One of the heads must have caught their scent. It perked up and glanced in their direction, growling.
The other two were licking at the injured paw still. He looked cute, the way a monster truck might if painted with bambis and rabbits.
Alabaster stopped in his tracks. He fumbled with his intestines—sausages. Pax really needed to stop thinking of sausage as intestines. "Who do you think stabbed him?" he asked in his you're stupid if you can't answer this question and I know you too well to let you play dumb. "See many stray demigods wandering down here with blades?"
"It wasn't Axel," Pax said. Axel was obsessed with mythical creature rights and would have known Cerberus was just doing his job. One caged animal to another—Axel would have likely tried to play-wrestle with the beast. "I'll bet it was Luke."
"Yea, Luke's an asshole," Lou Ellen said.
The two of them vigorously nodded their heads towards Alabaster.
"Lou Ellen," Alabaster chided, "I expect more creative insults than vulgarity. And you aren't going to win me over by insulting Castellan."
Despite him saying that, the corner of his lips twitched into a smile. Until then, Pax hadn't realized how glad he was to have Alabaster along. The Witch Boy would know his way around the Underworld, or Pax guessed he would. Alabaster held that easy calm, even amongst the dead.
Pax and Lou Ellen would have feigned calm confidence. But, uh, that would have only lasted so long as they got closer to the line's attendants.
Another of Cerberus' heads noticed their movement. It raised and joined in the low growl.
The noise didn't seem to bother Alabaster. "How were you planning on getting past?" he asked, gathering the rest of the sausages from his waist—he must have wrapped them under his shirt, and withdrawing them like a towel around a hand wound.
"We brought a chew toy," Lou Ellen said. Pax could tell that she wanted to sound proud, but had realized a flaw in their plan. There were three heads and only one chew toy.
"Seriously?" Alabaster's growl chimed in with Cerberus'.
"I heard it worked for Annabeth," Pax said.
Although Pax couldn't see it, he could feel Alabaster roll his eyes. "The amount of inconvenience that girl has caused," he said under his breath.
Pax hesitated. Cerberus' growls were making his body vibrate. This dog was massive, the size of a truck. Pax didn't even come up to Cerberus' chest and Cerberus was half-laying down. One of his heads still licked the sword hilt imbedded in his paw. Focus on that, Pax thought, and not on how his teeth are about as long as that sword.
"We have a treat for you!" Alabaster called. His voice was way too cold for dealing with a ball of cute fluffiness and death. Pax had a feeling that Alabaster had never been allowed pets as a child. Other than Axel and Pax. Pax was fairly certain that they were pets to Alabaster.
Cerberus stood up. When he applied pressure to his front paw, all three heads whimpered. They pulled the paw up slightly, to alleviate the pressure.
"Go fix his paw if you wish. I can only hold him for a few moments with this," Alabaster said. "If you take too long or are sloppy, you'll get yourself killed."
For an instant, Pax wondered if Alabaster was nervous. The Witch Boy unwrapped a link of sausage and tossed it into the air towards Cerberus.
The two heads less affected by the wound snapped at it, nipping at each other to bite it to pieces, probably the same way they would do with Pax's limbs if he was caught.
Its breath flooded over them, almost as bad as Pax's little brother's, Hiro's breath.
"You suck at this," Lou Ellen said, pulling a link from Alabaster. "You heard him, Pax. Have fun getting that sword out. Hey puppers! Look what I got for you puppers!"
Her voice raised in pitch and excitement. The sentiment worked. Cerberus sat upright, letting his butt drop back onto the ground. From what Pax had heard of Annabeth's interactions with this dog, he thought their red ball plan might have worked with Lou Ellen's charm. Uh—natural charm. No witchy charm required.
Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them, realizing Lou Ellen had volunteered him for the harder job. His heartbeat pounded in his head. It's just a cute, injured puppy, he told himself, It just so happens that it wouldn't need to chew to swallow you.
Alabaster gave Lou Ellen a look that might have been reproachful or approving. He handed her the rest of the sausage as Cerberus' short tail thumped against the black sand, echoing around the chamber. Pax thought it was weird that interacting with this dog wasn't a red flag for the Underworld Security. What dead person wanted to poke at the landowner's attack dog?
Alabaster made a few signs in the air around Pax's head, muttering in Latin. Was he making him invisible? Or at least making him blend in with the stone? Or smell less like a delicious treat? Pax hoped all of the above. When Pax glanced down at his hands, they still looked visible and potentially delicious to a monster.
"We don't have enough sausages for you to hesitate," Lou Ellen said.
Pax swallowed. He thought about Juana, Axel's jaguar. Their father bought it for him a few months after they were forced back "home." Axel warned his siblings not to go near Juana without him, since she could tear them to shreds. Juana was a tenth the size of Cerberus.
From what he knew of Juana, there was no point in trying to sneak up. He approached Cerberus' injured paw, hands outstretched in attempt to look non-threatening. Not that a 4'7 rail of cuteness could look threatening.
The other two heads were locked on Lou Ellen, or fighting over bits of sausage she threw.
The last head faced him. The eyes didn't quite focus on Pax, showing Alabaster's spell must have done something. Pax heartbeat thudded in his head as he took the last few steps to Cerberus' foot. The dog hadn't batted him out of existence yet.
The head whimpered and pulled its paw closer to its body.
"It's okay," Pax said, the way he did when his littlest brother had a nightmare. "I just want to help. It'll be quick, like ripping off a Band Aid."
That felt like a threat to Pax. Just gonna take that sharp, pointy thing in your paw and move it around a bit.
"Pax," Alabaster said in warning.
Pax didn't look over to see why. He figured it had to do with how the middle head had turned to sniff furiously in his direction.
Now or to Xibalba, Pax thought. He wrapped his fingers around the cold metal of the hilt and pulled up, trying not to twist the blade or yank at an angle.
It slid out easily.
Pax wanted to gloat about the Sword in the Paw and how he'd be king of the Cerberi.
His mouth went dry instead.
When he wretched the blade out, dark liquid splattered up from the paw. Something clear and goopy dropped on his head from above—saliva.
Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them, looking up. The other two heads glowered down at him. Their teeth were barred within inches of his face. Their low growl rattled his skull.
He trembled, thinking at least one good thing would come out of this: if he died in the Underworld, he didn't need to worry about going through Charon's Waiting Room again.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! And I hope you and your loved ones are staying healthy and safe!
Stay tuned next week for part X!