'You think not?' The giant's eyes glittered with amusement. He wrapped his hands around his sledgehammer and pulled it from the floor.

'This is the temple of my brothers, Deimos and Phobos.' Piper's voice shook, but she didn't try to hide it. 'The Spartans came here to prepare for battle, to face their fears. Ares was chained to remind them that war has consequences. His power the spirits of battle, the makhai should never be unleashed unless you understand how terrible they are, unless you've felt fear.'

Mimas laughed. 'A child of the love goddess lectures me about war. What do you know of the makhai?'

'We'll see.' Piper ran straight at the giant, unbalancing his stance. At the sight of her jagged blade coming at him, his eyes widened and he stumbled backwards, cracking his head against the wall. A jagged fissure snaked upward in the stones. Dust rained from the ceiling.

'Piper, this place is unstable!' Annabeth warned. 'If we don't leave '

'Don't think about escape!' Piper ran towards their rope, which dangled from the ceiling. She leaped as high as she could and cut it.

'Piper, have you lost your mind?'

Probably, she thought. But Piper knew this was the only way to survive. She had to go against reason, follow emotion instead, keep the giant off balance.

'That hurt!' Mimas rubbed his head. 'You realize you cannot kill me without the help of a god and Ares is not here! The next time I face that blustering idiot, I will smash him to bits. I wouldn't have had to fight him in the first place if that cowardly fool Damasen had done his job '

Annabeth let loose a guttural cry. 'Do not insult Damasen!'

She ran at Mimas, who barely managed to parry her drakon-blade with the handle of his hammer. He tried to grab Annabeth, and Piper lunged, slashing her blade across the side of the giant's face.

'GAHHH!' Mimas staggered.

A severed pile of dreadlocks fell to the floor along with something else a large fleshy thing lying in a pool of golden ichor.

'My ear!' Mimas wailed. Before he could recover his wits, Piper grabbed Annabeth's arm and together they plunged through the second doorway.

'I will bring down this chamber!' the giant thundered. 'The Earth Mother shall deliver me, but you shall be crushed!'

The floor shook. The sound of breaking stone echoed all around them.

'Piper, stop,' Annabeth begged. 'How how are you dealing with this? The fear, the anger '

'Don't try to control it. That's what the temple is about. You have to accept the fear, adapt to it, ride it like the rapids on a river.'

'How do you know that?'

'I don't know it. I just feel it.'

Somewhere nearby, a wall crumbled with a sound like an artillery blast.

'You cut the rope,' Annabeth said. 'We're going to die down here!'

Piper cupped her friend's face. She pulled Annabeth forward until their foreheads touched. Through her fingertips, she could feel Annabeth's rapid pulse. 'Fear can't be reasoned with. Neither can hate. They're like love. They're almost identical emotions. That's why Ares and Aphrodite like each other. Their twin sons Fear and Panic were spawned from both war and love.'

'But I don't ... this doesn't make sense.'

'No,' Piper agreed. 'Stop thinking about it. Just feel.'

'I hate that.'

'I know. You can't plan for feelings. Like with Percy, and your future you can't control every contingency. You have to accept that. Let it scare you. Trust that it'll be okay anyway.'

Annabeth shook her head. 'I don't know if I can.'

'Then for right now concentrate on revenge for Damasen. Revenge for Bob.'

A moment of silence. 'I'm good now.'

'Great, because I need your help. We're going to run out there together.'

'Then what?'

'I have no idea.'

'Gods, I hate it when you lead.'

Piper laughed, which surprised even her. Fear and love really were related. At that moment she clung to the love she had for her friend. 'Come on!'

They ran in no particular direction and found themselves back in the shrine room, right behind the giant Mimas. They each slashed one of his legs and brought him to his knees.

The giant howled. More chunks of stone tumbled from the ceiling.

'Weak mortals!' Mimas struggled to stand. 'No plan of yours can defeat me!'

'That's good,' Piper said. 'Because I don't have a plan.'

She ran towards the statue of Ares. 'Annabeth, keep our friend occupied!'

'Oh, he's occupied!'

'GAHHHHH!'

Piper stared at the cruel bronze face of the war god. The statue thrummed with a low metallic pulse.

The spirits of battle, she thought. They're inside, waiting to be freed.

But they weren't hers to unleash not until she'd proven herself.

The chamber shook again. More cracks appeared in the walls. Piper glanced at the stone carvings above the doorways: the scowling twin faces of Fear and Panic.

'My brothers,' Piper said, 'sons of Aphrodite ... I give you a sacrifice.'

At the feet of Ares, she set her cornucopia. The magic horn had become so attuned to her emotions it could amplify her anger, love or grief and spew forth its bounty accordingly. She hoped that would appeal to the gods of fear. Or maybe they would just appreciate some fresh fruits and vegetables in their diets.

'I'm terrified,' she confessed. 'I hate doing this. But I accept that it's necessary.'

She swung her blade and took off the bronze statue's head.

'No!' Mimas yelled.

Flames roared up from the statue's severed neck. They swirled around Piper, filling the room with a firestorm of emotions: hatred, bloodlust and fear, but also love because no one could face battle without caring for something: comrades, family, home.

Piper held out her arms and the makhai made her the centre of their whirlwind.

We will answer your call, they whispered in her mind. Once only, when you need us, destruction, waste, carnage shall answer. We shall complete your cure.

The flames vanished along with the cornucopia, and the chained statue of Ares crumbled into dust.

'Foolish girl!' Mimas charged her, Annabeth at his heels. 'The makhai have abandoned you!'

'Or maybe they've abandoned you,' Piper said.

Mimas raised his hammer, but he'd forgotten about Annabeth. She jabbed him in the thigh and the giant staggered forward, off balance. Piper stepped in calmly and stabbed him in the gut.

Mimas crashed face-first into the nearest doorway. He turned over just as the stone face of Panic cracked off the wall above him and toppled down for a one-ton kiss.

The giant's cry was cut short. His body went still. Then he disintegrated into a twenty-foot pile of ash.

Annabeth stared at Piper. 'What just happened?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Piper, you were amazing, but those fiery spirits you released '

'The makhai.'

'How does that help us find the cure we're looking for?'

'I don't know. They said I could summon them when the time comes. Maybe Artemis and Apollo can explain '

A section of the wall calved like a glacier.

Annabeth stumbled and almost slipped on the giant's severed ear. 'We need to get out of here.'

'I'm working on it,' Piper said.

'And, uh, I think this ear is your spoil of war.'

'Gross.'

'Would make a lovely shield.'

'Shut up, Chase.' Piper stared at the second doorway, which still had the face of Fear above it. 'Thank you, brothers, for helping to kill the giant. I need one more favour an escape. And, believe me, I am properly terrified. I offer you this, uh, lovely ear as a sacrifice.'

The stone face made no answer. Another section of the wall peeled away. A starburst of cracks appeared in the ceiling.

Piper grabbed Annabeth's hand. 'We're going through that doorway. If this works, we might find ourselves back on the surface.'

'And if it doesn't?'

Piper looked up at the face of Fear. 'Let's find out.'

The room collapsed around them as they plunged into the dark.

XXI.

Reyna

AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T END UP ON ANOTHER CRUISE SHIP.

The jump from Portugal had landed them in the middle of the Atlantic, where Reyna had spent her whole day on the lido deck of the Azores Queen, shooing little kids off the Athena Parthenos, which they seemed to think was a waterslide.

Unfortunately, the next jump brought Reyna home.

They appeared ten feet in the air, hovering over a restaurant courtyard that Reyna recognized. She and Nico dropped onto a large birdcage, which promptly broke, dumping them into a cluster of potted ferns along with three very alarmed parrots. Coach Hedge hit the canopy over a bar. The Athena Parthenos landed on her feet with a THUMP, flattening a patio table and flipping a dark green umbrella, which settled onto the Nike statue in Athena's hand, so the goddess of wisdom looked like she was holding a tropical drink.

'Gah!' Coach Hedge yelled. The canopy ripped and he fell behind the bar with a crash of bottles and glasses. The satyr recovered well. He popped up with a dozen miniature plastic swords in his hair, grabbed the soda gun and served himself a drink.

'I like it!' He tossed a wedge of pineapple into his mouth. 'But next time, kid, can we land on the floor and not ten feet above it?'

Nico dragged himself out of the ferns. He collapsed into the nearest chair and waved off a blue parrot that was trying to land on his head. After the fight with Lycaon, Nico had discarded his shredded aviator jacket. His black skull-pattern T-shirt wasn't in much better shape. Reyna had stitched up the gashes on his biceps, which gave Nico a slightly creepy Frankenstein look, but the cuts were still swollen and red. Unlike bites, werewolf claw marks wouldn't transmit lycanthropy, but Reyna knew firsthand that they healed slowly and burned like acid.

'I've gotta sleep.' Nico looked up in a daze. 'Are we safe?'

Reyna scanned the courtyard. The place seemed deserted, though she didn't understand why. This time of night, it should've been packed. Above them, the evening sky glowed a murky terracotta, the same colour as the building's walls. Ringing the atrium, the second-storey balconies were empty except for potted azaleas hanging from the white metal railings. Behind a wall of glass doors, the restaurant's interior was dark. The only sound was the fountain gurgling forlornly and the occasional squawk of a disgruntled parrot.

'This is Barrachina,' Reyna said.

'What kind of bear?' Hedge opened a jar of maraschino cherries and chugged them down.

'It's a famous restaurant,' Reyna said, 'in the middle of Old San Juan. They invented the pina colada here, back in the 1960s, I think.'

Nico pitched out of his chair, curled up on the floor and started snoring.

Coach Hedge belched. 'Well, it looks like we're staying for a while. If they haven't invented any new drinks since the sixties, they're overdue. I'll get to work!'