steam-train wheels. The grip was polished bronze, studded with dials and buttons.
He had no arrow nocked. He made no threatening moves. He smiled so dazzlingly it was hard to remember he was an enemy – someone who’d killed at least half a dozen Hunters and Amazons to get here.
Hylla drew her knives. ‘Reyna, go. I will deal with this monster.’
Orion chuckled. ‘Hylla Twice-Kill, you have courage. So did your lieutenants. They are dead.’
Hylla took a step forward.
Reyna grabbed her arm. ‘Orion!’ she said. ‘You have enough Amazon blood on your hands. Perhaps it’s time you try a Roman.’
The giant’s eyes clicked and dilated. Red laser dots floated across Reyna’s breastplate. ‘Ah, the young praetor. I admit, I’ve been curious. Before I slay you, perhaps you’ll enlighten me. Why would a child of Rome go to such lengths to help the Greeks? You have forfeited your rank, abandoned your legion, made yourself an outlaw – and for what? Jason Grace scorned you. Percy Jackson refused you. Haven’t you been … what’s the word … dumped enough?’
Reyna’s ears buzzed. She recalled Aphrodite’s warning, two years ago in Charleston: You will not find love where you wish or where you hope. No demigod shall heal your heart.
She forced herself to meet the giant’s gaze. ‘I don’t define myself by the boys who may or may not like me.’
‘Brave words.’ The giant’s smile was infuriating. ‘But you are no different from the Amazons, or the Hunters, or Artemis herself. You speak of strength and independence. As soon as you face a man of true prowess, your confidence crumbles. You feel threatened by my dominance and how it attracts you. So you run, or you surrender, or you die.’
Hylla shrugged off Reyna’s hand. ‘I will kill you, giant. I will chop you into pieces so small –’
‘Hylla,’ Reyna interrupted. Whatever else happened here, she could not watch her sister die. Reyna had to keep the giant focused on her. ‘Orion, you claim to be strong. Yet you couldn’t keep the vows of the Hunt. You died rejected. And now you’re running errands for your mother. So tell me again, how exactly are you threatening?’
Orion’s jaw muscles clenched. His smile became thinner and colder.
‘A good try,’ he admitted. ‘You’re hoping to unbalance me. You think, perhaps, if you keep me talking, reinforcements will save you. Alas, Praetor, there are no reinforcements. I burned your sister’s underground lair with her own Greek fire. No one survived.’
Hylla roared and attacked. Orion hit her with the butt of his bow. She flew backwards into the street. Orion pulled an arrow from his quiver.
‘Stop!’ Reyna yelled.
Her heart hammered in her ribcage. She needed to find the giant’s weakness.
Barrachina was only a few blocks away. If they could make it that far, Nico might be able to shadow-travel them away. And the Hunters couldn’t all be dead … They’d been patrolling the entire perimeter of the old city. Surely some of them were still out there …
‘Orion, you asked what motivates me.’ She kept her voice level. ‘Don’t you want your answer before you kill us? Surely it must puzzle you, why women keep rejecting a big handsome guy like you.’
The giant nocked his arrow. ‘Now you have mistaken me for Narcissus. I cannot be flattered.’
‘Of course not,’ Reyna said. Hylla rose with a murderous look on her face, but Reyna reached out with her senses, trying to share with her sister the most difficult kind of strength – restraint. ‘Still … it must infuriate you. First you were dumped by a mortal princess –’
‘Merope.’ Orion sneered. ‘A beautiful girl, but stupid. If she’d had any sense, she would have understood I was flirting with her.’
‘Let me guess,’ Reyna said. ‘She screamed and called for the guards instead.’
‘I was without my weapons at the time. You don’t bring your bow and knives when you’re courting a princess. The guards took me easily. Her father the king had me blinded and exiled.’
Just above Reyna’s head, a pebble skittered across a clay-tiled roof. It might have been her imagination, but she remembered that sound from the many nights Hylla would sneak out of her own locked room and creep across the roof to check on her.
It took all of Reyna’s willpower not to glance up.
‘But you got new eyes,’ she said to the giant. ‘Hephaestus took pity on you.’
‘Yes …’ Orion’s gaze became unfocused. Reyna could tell, because the laser targets disappeared from her chest. ‘I ended up on Delos, where I met Artemis. Do you know how strange it is to meet your mortal enemy and end up being attracted to her?’ He laughed. ‘Praetor, what am I saying? Of course you know. Perhaps you feel for the Greeks as I felt for Artemis – a guilty fascination, an admiration that turns to love. But too much love is poison, especially when that love is not returned. If you do not understand that already, Reyna Ramírez-Arellano, you soon will.’
Hylla limped forward, her knives still in hand. ‘Sister, why do you let this beast talk? Let’s put him down.’
‘Can you?’ Orion mused. ‘Many have tried. Even Artemis’s own brother, Apollo, was not able to kill me back in the ancient times. He had to use trickery to get rid of me.’
‘He didn’t like you hanging out with his sister?’ Reyna listened for more sounds from the roofs, but heard nothing.
‘Apollo was jealous.’ The giant’s fingers curled around his bowstring. He drew it back, setting the bow’s wheels and pulleys spinning. ‘He feared I might charm Artemis into forgetting her vows of maidenhood. And who knows? Without Apollo’s interference, perhaps I would have. She would have been happier.’
‘As your servant?’ Hylla growled. ‘Your meek little housewife?’
‘It hardly matters now,’ Orion said. ‘At any rate, Apollo inflicted me with madness – a bloodlust to kill all the beasts of the earth. I slaughtered thousands before my mother, Gaia, finally put a stop to my rampage. She summoned a giant scorpion from the earth. It stabbed me in the back and its poison killed me. I owe her for that.’
‘You owe Gaia,’ Reyna said, ‘for killing you.’
Orion’s mechanical pupils spiralled into tiny, glowing points. ‘My mother showed me the truth. I was fighting against my own nature, and it brought me nothing but misery. Giants are not meant to love mortals or gods. Gaia helped me accept what I am. Eventually we all must return home, Praetor. We must embrace our past, no matter how bitter and dark.’ He nodded his chin towards the villa behind her. ‘Just as you have done. You have your own share of ghosts, eh?’
Reyna drew her sword. You can’t learn anything from ghosts, she had told her sister. Perhaps she couldn’t learn anything from giants, either.
‘This is not my home,’ she said. ‘And we are not alike.’
‘I have seen the truth.’ The giant sounded truly sympathetic. ‘You cling to the fantasy that you can make your enemies love you. You cannot, Reyna. There is no love for you at Camp Half-Blood.’
Aphrodite’s words echoed in her head: No demigod shall heal your heart.
Reyna studied the giant’s handsome, cruel face, his glowing mechanical eyes. For a terrible moment, she could understand how even a goddess, even an eternal maiden like Artemis, might fall for Orion’s honeyed words.
‘I could have killed you twenty times by now,’ the giant said. ‘You realize that, don’t you? Let me spare you. A simple show of faith is all I need. Tell me where the statue is.’
Reyna almost dropped her sword. Where the statue is …
Orion hadn’t located the Athena Parthenos. The Hunters’ camouflage had worked. All this time, the giant had been tracking Reyna, which meant that even if she died right now Nico and Coach Hedge might stay safe. The quest was not doomed.
She felt as if she’d shed a hundred pounds of armour. She laughed. The sound echoed down the cobblestone street.
‘Phoebe outsmarted you,’ she said. ‘By tracking me, you lost the statue. Now my friends are free to co
ntinue their mission.’
Orion curled his lip. ‘Oh, I will find them, Praetor. After I deal with you.’
‘Then I suppose,’ Reyna said, ‘we will have to deal with you first.’
‘That is my sister,’ Hylla said proudly.
Together they charged.
The giant’s first shot would have skewered Reyna, but Hylla was fast. She sliced the arrow out of the air and lunged at Orion. Reyna stabbed at his chest. The giant intercepted both of their attacks with his bow.
He kicked Hylla backwards into the hood of an old Chevy. Half a dozen cats scattered from underneath it. The giant spun, a dagger suddenly in his hand, and Reyna just managed to dodge the blade.
She stabbed again, ripping through his leather jerkin, but only managed to graze his chest.
‘You fight well, Praetor,’ he admitted. ‘But not well enough to live.’
Reyna willed her blade to extend into a pilum. ‘My death means nothing.’
If her friends could continue their quest in peace, she was fully prepared to go down fighting. But first she intended to hurt this giant so badly he would never forget her name.
‘What about your sister’s death?’ Orion asked. ‘Does that mean something?’
Faster than Reyna could blink, he sent an arrow flying towards Hylla’s chest. A scream built in Reyna’s throat, but somehow Hylla caught the arrow.
Hylla slid off the hood of the car and snapped the arrow with one hand. ‘I am the queen of the Amazons, you idiot. I wear the royal belt. With the strength it gives me, I will avenge the Amazons you killed today.’
Hylla grabbed the front bumper of the Chevy and flipped the entire car towards Orion, as easily as if she were splashing him with water in a swimming pool.
The Chevy sandwiched Orion against the wall of the nearest house. Stucco cracked. A banana tree toppled. More cats fled.
Reyna ran towards the wreckage, but the giant bellowed and shoved away the car.
‘You will die together!’ he promised. Two arrows appeared nocked in his bow, the string fully drawn back.
Then the rooftops exploded with noise.
‘DIE!’ Gleeson Hedge dropped directly behind Orion, smacking his baseball bat over the giant’s head so hard the Louisville Slugger cracked in half.
At the same time, Nico di Angelo dropped in front. He slashed his Stygian sword across the giant’s bowstring, causing pulleys and gears to zip and creak, the string recoiling with hundreds of pounds of force until it whacked Orion in the nose like a hydraulic bullwhip.
‘OOOOOOOOW!!’ Orion staggered backwards, dropping his bow.
Hunters of Artemis appeared along the rooftops, shooting Orion full of silver arrows until he resembled a glowing hedgehog. He staggered blindly, holding his nose, his face streaming with golden ichor.
Someone grabbed Reyna’s arm. ‘Come on!’ Thalia Grace had returned.