Sadie fished something out of her pack – a small animal figurine. She curled her fingers round it, then began to change form.
Annabeth had seen people turn into animals before, but it never got easier to watch. Sadie shrank to a tenth of her size. Her nose elongated into a beak. Her hair and clothes and backpack melted into a sleek coat of feathers. She became a small bird of prey – a kite, maybe – her blue eyes now brilliant gold. With the little figurine still clutched in her talons, Sadie spread her wings and launched herself into the storm.
Annabeth winced as a cluster of bricks ploughed into her friend – but somehow the debris went straight through without turning Sadie into feather puree. Sadie’s form just shimmered as if she were travelling under a deep layer of water.
Sadie was in the Duat, Annabeth realized – flying on a different level of reality.
The idea made Annabeth’s mind heat up with possibilities. If a demigod could learn to pass through walls like that, run straight through monsters …
But that was a conversation for another time. Right now she needed to move. She charged up the steps and into the maelstrom. Metal bars and copper pipes clanged against her force field. The golden sphere flashed a little more dimly each time it deflected debris.
She raised Sadie’s staff in one hand and her new dagger in the other. In the magical torrent, the Celestial bronze blade guttered like a dying torch.
‘Hey!’ she yelled at ledge far above. ‘Mr God Person!’
No response. Her voice probably couldn’t carry over the storm.
The shell of the building started to groan. Mortar trickled from the walls and swirled into the mix like candy-floss tufts.
Sadie the hawk was still alive, flying towards the three-headed monster as it spiralled upward. The beast was about halfway to the top now, flailing its legs and glowing ever more brightly, as if soaking up the power of the tornado.
Annabeth was running out of time.
She reached into her memory, sifting through old myths, the most obscure tales Chiron had ever told her at camp. When she was younger, she’d been like a sponge, soaking up every fact and name.
The three-headed staff. The god of Alexandria, Egypt.
The god’s name came to her. At least, she hoped she was right.
One of the first lessons she’d learned as a demigod: Names have power. You never said the name of a god or monster unless you were prepared to draw its attention.
Annabeth took a deep breath. She shouted at the top of her lungs: ‘SERAPIS!’
The storm slowed. Huge sections of pipe hovered in midair. Clouds of bricks and timber froze and hung suspended.
Becalmed in the middle of the tornado, the three-headed monster tried to stand. Sadie swooped overhead, opened her talons and dropped her figurine, which instantly grew into a full-sized camel.
The shaggy dromedary slammed into the monster’s back. Both creatures tumbled out of the air and crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and heads. The staff monster continued to struggle, but the camel lay on top of it with its legs splayed, bleating and spitting and basically going limp like a thousand-pound toddler throwing a tantrum.
From the thirtieth-floor ledge, a man’s voice boomed: ‘WHO DARES INTERRUPT MY TRIUMPHAL RISE?’
‘I do!’ yelled Annabeth. ‘Come down and face me!’
She didn’t like taking credit for other people’s camels, but she wanted to keep the god focused on her so Sadie could do … whatever Sadie decided to do. The young magician clearly had some good tricks up her sleeve.
The god Serapis leaped from his ledge. He plummeted thirty storeys and landed on his feet in the middle of the ground floor, an easy dagger throw away from Annabeth.
Not that she was tempted to attack.
Serapis stood fifteen feet tall. He wore only a pair of swimming trunks in a Hawaiian floral pattern. His body rippled with muscles. His bronze skin was covered in shimmering tattoos of hieroglyphs, Greek letters and other languages Annabeth didn’t recognize.
His face was framed with long, nappy hair like Rastafarian dreadlocks. A curly Greek beard grew down to his collarbone. His eyes were sea green – so much like Percy’s that Annabeth got goosebumps.
Normally she didn’t like hairy bearded dudes, but she had to admit this god was attractive in an older, wild-surfer kind of way.
His headgear, however, ruined the look. What Annabeth had taken for a stovepipe hat was actually a cylindrical wicker basket embroidered with images of pansies.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Is that a flowerpot on your head?’