BLOOD OF OLYMPUS

‘Like your zodiac sign?’ Percy asked. ‘I’m a Leo.’
‘No, stupid,’ Leo said. ‘I’m a Leo. You’re a Percy.’
‘Will you two stop it?’ Hazel chided. ‘I think he means gemini like doubled – half man, half snake.
That’s what his people are called. He’s a geminus, singular.’
‘Yes …’ Kekrops leaned away from Hazel as if she somehow offended him. ‘Millennia ago, we
were driven underground by the two-legged humans, but I know the ways of the city better than any. I
came to warn you. If you try to approach the Acropolis aboveground, you will be destroyed.’
Jason stopped nibbling his cake. ‘You mean … by you?’
‘By Porphyrion’s armies,’ said the snake king. ‘The Acropolis is ringed with great siege weapons
– onagers.’
‘More onagers?’ Frank protested. ‘Did they have a sale on them or something?’
‘The Cyclopes,’ Hazel guessed. ‘They’re supplying both Octavian and the giants.’
Percy grunted. ‘Like we needed more proof that Octavian is on the wrong side.’
‘That is not the only threat,’ Kekrops warned. ‘The air is filled with storm spirits and gryphons.
All roads to the Acropolis are patrolled by the Earthborn.’
Frank drummed his fingers on the Bundt cake cover. ‘So, what, we should just give up? We’ve
come too far for that.’
‘I offer you an alternative,’ said Kekrops. ‘Underground passage to the Acropolis. For the sake of
Athena, for the sake of the gods, I will help you.’
The back of Piper’s neck tingled. She remembered what the giantess Periboia had said in her
dream: that the demigods would find friends in Athens as well as enemies. Perhaps the giantess had
meant Kekrops and his snake people. But there was something in Kekrops’s voice that Piper didn’t
like – that razor-against-strop tone, as if he were preparing to make a sharp cut.
‘What’s the catch?’ she asked.
Kekrops turned those inscrutable dark eyes on her. ‘Only a small party of demigods – no more than
three – could pass undetected by the giants. Otherwise your scent would give you away. But our
underground passages could lead you straight into the ruins of the Acropolis. Once there, you could
disable the siege weapons by stealth and allow the rest of your crew to approach. With luck, you
could take the giants by surprise. You might be able to disrupt their ceremony.’
‘Ceremony?’ Leo asked. ‘Oh … like, to wake Gaia.’
‘Even now it has begun,’ Kekrops warned. ‘Can you not feel the earth trembling? We, the gemini,
are your best chance.’
Piper heard eagerness in his voice – almost hunger.
Percy looked around the table. ‘Any objections?’
‘Just a few,’ Jason said. ‘We’re on the enemy’s doorstep. We’re being asked to split up. Isn’t that
how people get killed in horror movies?’
‘Also,’ Percy said, ‘Gaia wants us to reach the Parthenon. She wants our blood to water the stones
and all that other psycho garbage. Won’t we be playing right into her hands?’
Annabeth caught Piper’s eye. She asked a silent question: What’s your feeling?
Piper still wasn’t used to that – the way Annabeth looked to her for advice now. Ever since Sparta,