son of Neptune
THESNAKE-HAIREDLADIES WEREstarting to annoy Percy.
They should have died three days ago when he dropped a crate of bowling balls on them at the Napa Bargain Mart. They should have died two
days ago when he ran over them with a police car in Martinez. They definitely should have died this morning when he cut off their heads in Tilden
Park.
No matter how many times Percy killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just kept re-forming like large evil dust bunnies. He
couldn’t even seem to outrun them.
He reached the top of the hill and caught his breath. How long since he’d last killed them? Maybe two hours. They never seemed to stay dead
longer than that.
The past few days, he’d hardly slept. He’d eaten whatever he could scrounge—vending machine gummi bears, stale bagels, even a Jack in the
Crack burrito, which was a new personal low. His clothes were torn, burned, and splattered with monster slime.
He’d only survived this long because the two snake-haired-ladies—gorgons, they called themselves—couldn’t seem to kill him either. Their
claws didn’t cut his skin. Their teeth broke whenever they tried to bite him. But Percy couldn’t keep going much longer. Soon he’d collapse from
exhaustion, and then—as hard as he was to kill, he was pretty sure the gorgons would find a way.
Where to run?
He scanned his surroundings. Under different circumstances, he might’ve enjoyed the view. To his left, golden hills rolled inland, dotted with
lakes, woods, and a few herds of cows. To his right, the flatlands of Berkeley and Oakland marched west—a vast checkerboard of neighborhoods,
with several million people who probably did not want their morning interrupted by two monsters and a filthy demigod.
Farther west, San Francisco Bay glittered under a silvery haze. Past that, a wall of fog had swallowed most of San Francisco, leaving just the
tops of skyscrapers and the towers of the GoldenGate Bridge.
A vague sadness weighed on Percy’s chest. Something told him he’d been to San Francisco before. The city had some connection to
Annabeth—the only person he could remember from his past. His memory of her was frustratingly dim. The wolf had promised he would see her
again and regain his memory—if he succeeded in his journey.
Should he try to cross the bay?
It was tempting. He could feel the power of the ocean just over the horizon. Water always revived him. Salt water was the best. He’d discovered
that two days ago when he had strangled a sea monster in the Carquinez Strait. If he could reach the bay, he might be able to make a last stand.
Maybe he could even drown the gorgons. But the shore was at least two miles away. He’d have to cross an entire city.
He hesitated for another reason. The she-wolf Lupa had taught him to sharpen his senses—to trust the instincts that had been guiding him
south. His homing radar was tingling like crazy now. The end of his journey was close—almost right under his feet. But how could that be? There
was nothing on the hilltop.
The wind changed. Percy caught the sour scent of reptile. A hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods—snapping
branches, crunching leaves, hissing.
Gorgons.
For the millionth time, Percy wished their noses weren’t so good. They had always said they could smell him because he was a demigod—the
half-blood son of some old Roman god. Percy had tried rolling in mud, splashing through creeks, even keeping air-freshener sticks in his pockets
so he’d have that new car smell; but apparently demigod stink was hard to mask.
He scrambled to the west side of the summit. It was too steep to descend. The slope plummeted eighty feet, straight to the roof of an apartment
complex built into the hillside. Fifty feet below that, a highway emerged from the hill’s base and wound its way toward Berkeley.
Great. No other way off the hill.
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