Since they’d rescued him from the giants, he’d started to regain his strength, but he was still painfully thin. The Argo II couldn’t fly high enough to avoid their attacks and even with all its defenses, the ship couldn’t make it across the range without being smashed to pieces. The numina montanum were sons of Gaea, Hazel’s least favorite goddess. Each time they tried to cross the spine of Italy, the mountain gods attacked.įor the past two days they’d skirted north, hoping to find a safe pass, with no luck. To reach Epirus, all they had to do was go straight east-over the Apennines and across the Adriatic Sea. They needed to get to a place called Epirus in Greece and find an old temple called the House of Hades (or Pluto, as the Romans called him or as Hazel liked to think of him: the World’s Worst Absent Father). A green dot for the Argo II blinked on the western side of the range, a few hundred miles north of Rome. The Apennine Mountains ran down the middle of the boot-shaped country.
Ugh, why did her life have to be so complicated? Whenever Leo smiled and joked, he looked too much like Sammy, his great-grandfather…Hazel’s first boyfriend back in 1942. But part of her was relieved by the change. He’d been acting angrier and even more driven than usual. In his tattered work shirt and grease-splattered jeans, he looked like he’d just lost a wrestling match with a locomotive.Įver since their friends Percy and Annabeth had fallen into Tartarus, Leo had been working almost nonstop. “We’ll have to figure out another way on our own.” Whenever she got a chance to crash, she slept like a coma patient. Every few hours, it seemed, some Roman monster had decided the Argo II looked like a tasty treat.Ī few weeks ago, Hazel wouldn’t have believed that anyone could sleep through a numina attack, but now she imagined her friends were still snoring away belowdecks. They were exhausted from defending the ship. Hazel was tempted to say yes, but the other crewmembers had taken the night shift and had earned their rest. She stood on the quarterdeck as Nico picked mast splinters out of his arms and Leo punched buttons on the ship’s console. She was tired of being scared and worried all the time. She wanted to experience just being a regular girl for once, with an actual sweet, caring boyfriend. She wanted to wander the streets of New Rome, holding hands with Frank Zhang. She missed dinners in the mess hall, with wind spirits whisking platters through the air and legionnaires joking about the war games. She missed her bunk in the Fifth Cohort barracks. But she missed it more than her birthplace of New Orleans, and definitely more than Alaska, where she’d died back in 1942. Camp Jupiter had only been her home for nine months, since Nico had brought her back from the Underworld. Hazel could almost imagine she was sailing home to Camp Jupiter. Below them, morning sunlight illuminated the Italian countryside-rolling green hills and golden fields not too different from those in Northern California. Hazel didn’t relax until they were out of the mountains. The Argo II picked up speed, retreating northwest, as they’d been doing for the past two days. Magical rigging lashed itself tight, and the ship tacked to port. Leo muttered some unflattering comments about numina, but he turned the wheel. Unfortunately, Hazel guessed, judging from their last two encounters, Leo’s newest weapon had only annoyed the numina.Īnother boulder whistled through the air off to their starboard side.
#The son of sobek .pdf series#
The spheres grew spikes in midair, like helicopter blades, and spun away into the fog.Ī moment later, a series of explosions crackled across the mountains, followed by the outraged roar of mountain gods. Hazel just had time to cover her ears before it discharged into the sky, spraying a dozen metal spheres that trailed green fire. A few feet away, a trapdoor opened in the deck. “That’s not the point!” Leo snatched up one of his controls, a jury-rigged Nintendo Wii stick, and spun it in a circle. “That’s the third time I’ve had to replace that mast! You think they grow on trees?” “Stupid rock gods!” Leo yelled from the helm.
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