Chapter 14

Alexander considered his options: a staircase going up, or two dark hallways. He squinted down the hall to the left. He could make out a pair of small red lights glowing near the floor. Maybe night-lights?

Then the lights moved. They bobbed up and down, growing brighter and closer. A growl made his hair stand on end.

And then he looked at the other hallway. Another pair of glowing red eyes glared at him from the shadows. From both hallways came a strange hollow clack, clack, clack, like someone playing bone castanets.

"The stairs are looking pretty good," he mumbled.

As if in reply, a man's voice called from somewhere above him: "Yes, this way."

The voice was heavy with sadness.

"Who are you?" Alex shouted.

"Hurry," the voice called down, but he didn't sound excited about it.

To Alex's right, the same voice echoed, "Hurry." Clack, clack, clack.

He did a double-take. The voice seemed to have come from the thing in the hallway — the thing with the glowing red eyes. But how could one voice come from two different places?

Then the same voice called out from the hallway on the left: "Hurry." Clack, clack, clack.

Now, Alex could say he'd faced some scary stuff before — an invulnerable giant lion, an amalgamation of beasts that breathed fire, the mother of monsters herself — not to mention a set of oily black man-eating draperies. But something about those voices echoing all around him, those glowing eyes advancing from either direction and the weird clacking noises made him feel like a deer surrounded by wolves. Every muscle in his body tensed. His instincts said, Run.

He bolted up the stairs. Even if it was another trap, he had no choice. He had to get away from those things downstairs.

Alex was afraid to look back, but he could hear the creature closing in — snarling like wildcats, pounding across the marble floor with a sound like horse's hooves. What the hell were they?

At the top of the stairs, he plunged down another hallway. Dimly flickering wall sconces made the doors along either side seem to dance. He jumped over a pile of bones, accidentally kicking a human skull.

Somewhere ahead of him, the man's voice called, "This way!" He sounded more urgent than before. "Last door on the left! Hurry!"

Behind him, the creatures echoed his words: "Left! Hurry!"

Maybe the creatures were just mimicking like parrots. Or maybe the voice in front of him belonged to a monster too. Still, something about the man's tone felt real. He sounded alone and miserable, like a hostage.

Alex charged ahead. The corridor became more dilapidated—wallpaper peeling away like tree bark, light sconces smashed to pieces. The carpet was ripped to shreds and littered with bones. Light seeped from underneath the last door on the left.

Behind him, the pounding of hooves got louder.

He reached the door and launched himself against it, but it opened on its own. He spilt inside, face-planting on the carpet.

The door slammed shut.

Outside, the creatures growled in frustration and scraped against the walls.

"Hello," said the man's voice, much closer now. "I'm very sorry."

Alex's head was spinning. He thought he'd heard him off to my left, but when he looked up, the man was standing right in front of him.

He wore snakeskin boots and a mottled green-and-brown suit that might've been made from the same material. He was tall and gaunt, with spiky grey hair. He looked like a very old, sickly, fashionably dressed version of the doctor from Back to the Future.

His shoulders slumped. His sad green eyes were underscored with bags. He might've been handsome once, but the skin of his face hung loose as if he'd been partially deflated.

His room was arranged like a studio apartment. Unlike the rest of the house, it was in fairly good shape. Against the far wall was a twin bed, a desk with a computer, and a window covered with dark drapes like the ones downstairs. Along the right wall stood a bookcase, a small kitchenette, and two doorways — one leading into a bathroom, the other into a large closet.

"Um… hi?"

But the man didn't say anything and looked to Alex's left. His heart almost burst out of his rib cage.

The left side of the room had a row of iron bars like a prison cell. Inside was the scariest zoo exhibit Alex had ever seen. A gravel floor was littered with bones and pieces of armour, and prowling back and forth was a monster with a lion's body and rust-red fur. Instead of paws, it had hooves like a horse, and its tail lashed around like a bullwhip. Its head was a mixture of horse and wolf — with pointed ears, an elongated snout, and black lips that looked disturbingly human.

The monster snarled. For a second he thought it was wearing one of those mouthguards that boxers use. Instead of teeth, it had two solid horseshoe-shaped plates of bone. When it snapped its mouth, the bone plates made the jarring clack, clack, clack he'd heard downstairs.

The monster fixed its glowing red eyes on Alex. Saliva dripped from its weird bony ridges. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. He could still hear the other creatures — at least two of them — growling out in the hallway.

"Who are you?" Alex demanded. "What's that thing in the cage?"

The old man grimaced. His expression was so full of misery that Alex thought he might cry. He opened his mouth, but when he spoke, the words didn't come from him.

Like some horrific ventriloquist act, the monster spoke for him, in the voice of an old man: "I am Halcyon Green. I'm terribly sorry, but you are in the cage. You've been lured here to die."

Alex left his sword downstairs in a hurry, so he had just one weapon — his fists. He pointed them at the old man, but he made no threatening moves. He looked so pitiful and depressed Alex couldn't bring himself to punch him even with all his rage.

"Y-you'd better explain," Alex stammered. "Why — how — what…?"

Behind the bars, the monster clacked its bone-plated jaws.

"I understand your confusion," it said in the old man's voice. Its sympathetic tone didn't match the homicidal glow in its eyes. "The creature you see here is a leucrota. It has a talent for imitating human voices. That is how it lures its prey."

Alex looked back and forth from the man to the monster. "But…the voice is yours? I mean, the dude in the snakeskin suit — I'm hearing what he wants to say?"

"That is correct." The leucrota sighed heavily. "I am, as you say, the dude in the snakeskin suit. Such is my curse. My name is Halcyon Green, son of Apollo."

Alex stumbled backwards. "You're a demigod? But you're so—"

"Old?" the leucrota asked. The man, Halcyon Green, studied his liver-spotted hands as if he couldn't believe they were his. "Yes, I am."

What bothered Alex was what Echidna had said to him before 'Demigods always die young'. So how did one get to be so wrinkly?

"How long have you been here?" Alex asked.

Halcyon shrugged listlessly. The monster spoke for him: "I have lost count. Decades? Because my father is the god of oracles, I was born with the curse of seeing the future. Apollo warned me to keep quiet. He told me I should never share what I saw because it would anger the gods. But many years ago…I simply had to speak. I met a young girl who was destined to die in an accident. I saved her life by telling her the future."

Alex tried to focus on the old man, but it was hard not to look at the monster's mouth—those black lips, the slavering bone-plated jaws.

"I don't get it…" He forced himself to meet Halcyon's eyes. "You did something good. Why would that anger the gods?"

"They don't like mortals meddling with fate," the leucrota said. "My father cursed me. He forced me to wear these clothes, the skin of Python, who once guarded the Oracle of Delphi, as a reminder that I was not an oracle. He took away my voice and locked me in this mansion, my boyhood home. Then the gods set the leucrotae to guard me. Normally, leucrotae only mimic human speech, but these are linked to my thoughts. They speak for me. They keep me alive as bait, to lure other demigods. It was Apollo's way of reminding me, forever, that my voice would only lead others to their doom."

An angry coppery taste filled Alex's mouth. He already knew the gods could be cruel. His deadbeat mother had ignored him for eleven years. But Halcyon Green's curse was just plain wrong. It was evil.

"You should fight back," Alex said. "You didn't deserve this. Break out. Kill the monsters. I'll help you. My name is Alexander; call me Alex. Son of… no idea."

"Call me Hal," the leucrota said. The old man shook his head dejectedly. "But you don't understand. You're not the first to come here. I'm afraid all the demigods feel there's hope when they first arrive. Sometimes I try to help them. It never works. The windows are guarded by deadly drapes—"

"I noticed," Alex muttered.

"—and the door is heavily enchanted. It will let you in, but not out."

"We'll see about that." He turned and tried to force the door open. He twisted the knob until sweat trickled down his neck, but nothing happened.

"I told you," the leucrota said bitterly. "None of us can leave. Fighting the monsters is hopeless. They can't be hurt by any metal known to man or god."

To prove his point, the old man brushed aside the edge of his snakeskin jacket and revealed a dagger on his belt. He unsheathed the wicked-looking Celestial bronze blade and approached the monster's cell.

The leucrota snarled at him. Hal jabbed his knife between the bars, straight at the monster's head. Normally, according to his dad, Alex knew celestial bronze would disintegrate a monster with one hit. The blade simply glanced off the leucrota's snout, leaving no mark. The leucrota kicked its hooves at the bars, and Hal backed away.

"You see?" the monster spoke for Hal.

"So you just give up?" Alex demanded. "You help the monsters lure us in and wait for them to kill us?"

Hal sheathed his dagger. "I'm so sorry, child, but I have little choice. I'm trapped here, too. If I don't cooperate, the monsters let me starve. The monsters could have killed you the moment you entered the house, but they used me to lure you upstairs. They allow me your company for a while. It eases my loneliness. And then…well, the monsters like to eat at sundown. Today, that will be at 7:03." He gestured to a digital clock on his desk, which read 10:34 AM. "After you are gone, I… I subsist on whatever rations you carried." He glanced hungrily at Alex's backpack, and a shiver went down his spine.

"You're as bad as the monsters," The young demigod said, his temper rising.

The old man winced. Alex didn't care much if he hurt his feelings. In his backpack, he had two Snickers bars, a ham sandwich, a canteen of water, and an empty bottle of nectar. He didn't want to get killed for that.

"You're right to hate me," the leucrota said in Hal's voice, "but I can't save you. At sunset, those bars will rise. The monsters will drag you away and kill you. There is no escape."

Inside the monster's enclosure, a square panel on the back wall ground open. Alex hadn't even noticed the panel before, but it must have led to another room. Two more leucrotae stalked into the cage. All three fixed their glowing red eyes on him, their bony mouthplates snapping with anticipation.

He wondered how the monsters could eat with such strange mouths. As if to answer his question, a leucrota picked up an old piece of armour in its mouth. The Celestial bronze breastplate looked thick enough to stop a spear thrust, but the leucrota clamped down with the force of a vice grip and bit a horseshoe-shaped hole in the metal.

"As you see," said another leucrota in Hal's voice, "the monsters are remarkably strong."

Really? He couldn't tell.