THE GOLD WINGS WERE OVERKILL.
Leo could dig the chariot and the two white horses. He was okay with Nike’s glittering sleeveless dress (Calypso totally rocked that style, but that wasn’t relevant) and Nike’s piled-up braids of dark hair circled with a gilded laurel wreath.
Her expression was wide-eyed and a little crazy, like she’d just had twenty espressos and ridden a roller coaster, but that didn’t bother Leo. He could even deal with the gold-tipped spear pointed at his chest.
But those wings – they were polished gold, right down to the last feather. Leo could admire the intricate workmanship, but it was too much, too bright, too flashy. If her wings had been solar panels, Nike would’ve produced enough energy to power Miami.
‘Lady,’ he said, ‘could you fold your flappers, please? You’re giving me a sunburn.’
‘What?’ Nike’s head jerked towards him like a startled chicken’s. ‘Oh … my brilliant plumage. Very well. I suppose you can’t die in glory if you are blinded and burned.’
She tucked in her wings. The temperature dropped to a normal hundred-and-twenty-degree summer afternoon.
Leo glanced at his friends. Frank stood very still, sizing up the goddess. His backpack hadn’t yet morphed into a bow and quiver, which was probably prudent. He couldn’t have been too freaked out, because he’d avoided turning into a giant goldfish.
Hazel was having trouble with Arion. The roan stallion nickered and bucked, avoiding eye contact with the white horses pulling Nike’s chariot.
As for Percy, he held his magic ballpoint pen like he was trying to decide whether to bust out some sword moves or autograph Nike’s chariot.
Nobody stepped forward to talk. Leo kind of missed having Piper and Annabeth with them. They were good at the whole talking thing.
He decided somebody had better say something before they all died in glory.
‘So!’ He pointed his index fingers at Nike. ‘I didn’t get the briefing, and I’m pretty sure the information wasn’t covered in Frank’s pamphlet. Could you tell me what’s going on here?’
Nike’s wide-eyed stare unnerved him. Was Leo’s nose on fire? That happened sometimes when he got stressed.
‘We must have victory!’ the goddess shrieked. ‘The contest must be decided! You have come here to determine the winner, yes?’
Frank cleared his throat. ‘Are you Nike or Victoria?’
‘Argghh!’ The goddess clutched the side of her head. Her horses reared, causing Arion to do the same.
The goddess shuddered and split into two separate images, which reminded Leo – ridiculously – of when he used to lie on the floor in his apartment as a kid and play with the coiled doorstop on the skirting board. He would pull it back and let it fly: sproing! The stopper would shudder back and forth so fast it looked like it was splitting into two separate coils.
That’s what Nike looked like: a divine doorstop, splitting in two.
On the left was the first version: glittery sleeveless dress, dark hair circled with laurels, golden wings folded behind her. On the right was a different version, dressed for war in a Roman breastplate and greaves. Short auburn hair peeked out from the rim of a tall helmet. Her wings were feathery white, her dress purple, and the shaft of her spear was fixed with a plate-sized Roman insignia – a golden SPQR in a laurel wreath.
‘I am Nike!’ cried the image on the left.
‘I am Victoria!’ cried the one on the right.
For the first time, Leo understood the old saying his abuelo used to use: talking out of the side of your mouth. This goddess was literally saying two different things at once. She kept shuddering and splitting, making Leo dizzy. He was tempted to get out his tools and adjust the idle on her carburettor, because that much vibration would make her engine fly apart.
‘I am the decider of victory!’ Nike screamed. ‘Once I stood here at the corner of Zeus’s temple, venerated by all! I oversaw the games of Olympia. Offerings from every city-state were piled at my feet!’
‘Games are irrelevant!’ yelled Victoria. ‘I am the goddess of success in battle! Roman generals worshipped me! Augustus himself erected my altar in the Senate House!’
‘Ahhhh!’ both voices screamed in agony. ‘We must decide! We must have victory!’
Arion bucked so violently that Hazel had to slide off his back to avoid getting thrown. Before she could calm him down, the horse disappeared, leaving a vapour trail through the ruins.
‘Nike,’ Hazel said, stepping forward slowly, ‘you’re confused, like all the gods. The Greeks and Romans are on the verge of war. It’s causing your two aspects to clash.’
‘I know that!’ The goddess shook her spear, the tip rubber-banding into two points. ‘I cannot abide unresolved conflict! Who is stronger? Who is the winner?’
‘Lady, nobody’s the winner,’ Leo said. ‘If that war happens, everybody loses.’
‘No winner?’ Nike looked so shocked, Leo was pretty sure his nose must be on fire. ‘There is always a winner! One winner. Everyone else is a loser! Otherwise victory is meaningless. I suppose you want me to give certificates to all the contestants? Little plastic trophies to every single athlete or soldier for participation? Should we all line up and shake hands and tell each other, Good game? No! Victory must be real. It must be earned. That means it must be rare and difficult, against steep odds, and defeat must be the other possibility.’
The goddess’s two horses nipped at each other, as if getting into the spirit.
‘Uh … okay,’ Leo said. ‘I can tell you’ve got strong feelings about that. But the real war is against Gaia.’
‘He’s right,’ Hazel said. ‘Nike, you were Zeus’s charioteer in the last war with the giants, weren’t you?’
‘Of course!’
‘Then you know Gaia is the real enemy. We need your help to defeat her. The war isn’t between the Greeks and Romans.’
Victoria roared, ‘The Greeks must perish!’
‘Victory or death!’ Nike wailed. ‘One side must prevail!’
Frank grunted. ‘I get enough of this from my dad screaming in my head.’
Victoria glared down at him. ‘A child of Mars, are you? A praetor of Rome? No true Roman would spare the Greeks. I cannot abide to be split and confused – I cannot think straight! Kill them! Win!’
‘Not happening,’ Frank said, though Leo noticed Zhang’s right eye was twitching.
Leo was struggling, too. Nike was sending off waves of tension, setting his nerves on fire. He felt like he was crouched at the starting line, waiting for someone to yell ‘Go!’ He had the irrational desire to wrap his hands around Frank’s neck, which was stupid, since his hands wouldn’t even fit around Frank’s neck.
‘Look, Miss Victory …’ Percy tried for a smile. ‘We don’t want to interrupt your crazy time. Maybe you can just finish this conversation with yourself and we’ll come back later, with, um, some bigger weapons and possibly some sedatives.’
The goddess brandished her spear. ‘You will determine the matter once and for all! Today, now, you will decide the victor! Four of you? Excellent! We will have teams. Perhaps girls versus boys!’
Hazel said, ‘Uh … no.’
‘Shirts versus skins!’
‘Definitely no,’ said Hazel.
‘Greeks versus Romans!’ Nike cried. ‘Yes, of course! Two and two. The last demigod standing wins. The others will die gloriously.’
A competitive urge pulsed through Leo’s body. It took all of his effort not to reach in his tool belt, grab a mallet and whop Hazel and Frank upside their heads.
He realized how right Annabeth had been not to send anyone whose parents had natural rivalries. If Jason were here, he and Percy would probably already be on the ground, bashing each other’s brains out.
He forced his fists to unclench. ‘Look, lady, we’re not going to go all Hunger Games on each other. Isn’t going to happen.’
‘But you will win a fabulous honour!’ Nike reached into a basket at her side and produced a wreath of thick green laurels. ‘This crown of leaves could be yours! You can wear it on your head! Think of the glory!’
‘Leo’s right,’ Frank said, though his eyes were fixed on the wreath. His expression was a little too greedy for Leo’s taste. ‘We don’t fight each other. We fight the giants. You should help us.’
‘Very well!’ The goddess raised the laurel wreath in one hand and her spear in the other.
Percy and Leo exchanged looks.
‘Uh … does that mean you’ll join us?’ Percy asked. ‘You’ll help us fight the giants?’
‘That will be part of the prize,’ Nike said. ‘Whoever wins, I will consider you an ally. We will fight the giants together, and I will bestow victory upon you. But there can only be one winner. The others must be defeated, killed, destroyed utterly. So what will it be, demigods? Will you succeed in your quest, or will you cling to your namby-pamby ideas of friendship and everybody wins participation awards?’
Percy uncapped his pen. Riptide grew into a Celestial bronze sword. Leo was worried he might turn it on them. Nike’s aura was that hard to resist.
Instead, Percy pointed his blade at Nike. ‘What if we fight you instead?’
‘Ha!’ Nike’s eyes gleamed. ‘If you refuse to fight each other, you shall be persuaded!’
Nike spread her golden wings. Four metal feathers fluttered down, two on either side of the chariot. The feathers twirled like gymnasts, growing larger, sprouting arms and legs, until they touched the ground as four metallic, human-sized replicas of the goddess, each armed with a golden spear and a Celestial bronze laurel wreath that looked suspiciously like a barbed-wire Frisbee.
‘To the stadium!’ the goddess cried. ‘You have five minutes to prepare. Then blood shall be spilled!’
Leo was about to say, What if we refuse to go to the stadium?
He got his answer before asking the question.
‘Run!’ Nike bellowed. ‘To the stadium with you, or my Nikai will kill you where you stand!’
The metal ladies unhinged their jaws and blasted out a sound like a Super Bowl crowd mixed with feedback. They shook their spears and charged the demigods.
It wasn’t Leo’s finest moment. Panic seized him, and he took off. His only comfort was that his friends did, too – and they weren’t the cowardly type.
The four metal women swept behind them in a loose semicircle, herding them to the northeast. All the tourists had vanished. Perhaps they’d fled to the air-conditioned comfort of the museum, or maybe Nike had somehow forced them to leave.
The demigods ran, tripping over stones, leaping over crumbled walls, dodging around columns and informational placards. Behind them, Nike’s chariot wheels rumbled and her horses whinnied.
Every time Leo thought about slowing down, the metal ladies screamed again – what had Nike called them? Nikai? Nikettes? – filling Leo with terror.
He hated being filled with terror. It was embarrassing.
‘There!’ Frank sprinted towards a kind of trench between two earthen walls with a stone archway above. It reminded Leo of those tunnels that football teams run through when they enter the field. ‘That’s the entrance to the old Olympic stadium. It’s called the crypt!’
‘Not a good name!’ Leo yelled.
‘Why are we going there?’ Percy gasped. ‘If that’s where she wants us –’
The Nikettes screamed again and all rational thought abandoned Leo. He ran for the tunnel.
When they reached the arch, Hazel yelled, ‘Hold it!’
They stumbled to a stop. Percy doubled over, wheezing. Leo had noticed that Percy seemed to get winded more easily these days – probably because of that nasty acid air he’d been forced to breathe in Tartarus.
Frank peered back the way they’d come. ‘I don’t see them any more. They disappeared.’
‘Did they give up?’ Percy asked hopefully.
Leo scanned the ruins. ‘Nah. They just herded us where they wanted us. What were those things, anyway? The Nikettes, I mean.’
‘Nikettes?’ Frank scratched his head. ‘I think it was Nikai, plural, like victories.’
‘Yes.’ Hazel looked deep in thought, running her hands along the stone archway. ‘In some legends, Nike had an army of little victories she could send all over the world to do her bidding.’
‘Like Santa’s elves,’ Percy said. ‘Except evil. And metal. And really loud.’
Hazel pressed her fingers against the arch, as if taking its pulse. Beyond the narrow tunnel, the earthen walls opened into a long field with gently rising slopes on either side, like seating for spectators.
Leo guessed it would have been an open-air stadium back in the day – big enough for discus-throwing, javelin-catching, naked shot-put, or whatever else those crazy Greeks used to do to win a bunch of leaves.
‘Ghosts linger in this place,’ Hazel murmured. ‘A lot of pain is embedded in these stones.’
‘Please tell me you have a plan,’ Leo said. ‘Preferably one that doesn’t involve embedding my pain in the stones.’
Hazel’s eyes were stormy and distant, the way they’d been in the House of Hades – like she was peering into a different layer of reality. ‘This was the players’ entrance. Nike said we have five minutes to prepare. Then she’ll expect us to pass under this archway and begin the games. We won’t be allowed to leave that field until three of us are dead.’
Percy leaned on his sword. ‘I’m pretty sure death matches weren’t an Olympic sport.’
‘Well, they are today,’ Hazel warned. ‘But I might be able to give us an edge. When we pass through, I could raise some obstacles on the field – hiding places to buy us some time.’
Frank frowned. ‘You mean like on the Field of Mars – trenches, tunnels, that kind of thing? You can do that with the Mist?’
‘I think so,’ Hazel said. ‘Nike would probably like to see an obstacle course. I can play her expectations against her. But it would be more than that. I can use any subterranean gateway – even this arch – to access the Labyrinth. I can raise part of the Labyrinth to the surface.’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’ Percy made a time-out sign. ‘The Labyrinth is bad. We discussed this.’
‘Hazel, he’s right.’ Leo remembered all too well how she’d led him through the illusionary maze in the House of Hades. They’d almost died about every six feet. ‘I mean, I know you’re good with magic. But we’ve already got four screaming Nikettes to worry about –’
‘You’ll have to trust me,’ she said. ‘We’ve only got a couple of minutes now. When we pass through the arch, I can at least manipulate the playing field to our advantage.’
Percy exhaled through his nose. ‘Twice now, I’ve been forced to fight in stadiums – once in Rome, and before that in the Labyrinth. I hate playing games for people’s amusement.’
‘We all do,’ Hazel said. ‘But we have to put Nike off guard. We’ll pretend to fight until we can neutralize those Nikettes – ugh, that’s an awful name. Then we subdue Nike, like Juno said.’
‘Makes sense,’ Frank agreed. ‘You felt how powerful Nike was, trying to put us at each other’s throats. If she’s sending out those vibes to all the Greeks and Romans, there’s no way we’ll be able to prevent a war. We’ve got to get her under control.’
‘And how do we do that?’ Percy asked. ‘Bonk her on the head and stuff her in a sack?’
Leo’s mental gears started to turn.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘you’re not far off. Uncle Leo brought some toys for all you good little demigods.’
