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He was in Tartarus. Death was all around him.

It was time to use that to his favour.

‘Will, hold on to my feet.’

‘What?’

‘Just do it!’

Will grabbed him by the ankles. Nico spread out flat with his belly pressed against the bow of the boat, his head sticking over the prow like he was sledding in the Winter Olympics, skeleton-style … which only seemed appropriate. The ground kept rushing up to meet them – a depressingly familiar terrain of jagged hills; fleshy, pockmarked plains; and bubbling, poisonous swamps. From the base of the waterfall, the Acheron snaked away through a deep canyon, but Nico had no faith they would hit the water, if that was even a survivable option.

Hehadto make his plan work.

Nico opened his mouth and screamed – unleashing all his power, his desperation, his will to live. Far below, the ground splintered in a web of fissures. Skeletons began clawing their way out of the soil – thousands of human, animal, giant and monster bones cobbling themselves together, climbing atop one another to form an ever-growing scaffold of undeath. Nico commanded them into the shape he needed, and the skeletons complied.

When the boat hit the top of the bone ramp, Will screamed, but he kept his grip on Nico’s ankles. Their canoe skittered down the slope perilously fast and bumpy at first, but the bones reshaped around their hull, slowing and guiding their descent. Moments later, the boat skidded to a gentle halt on the banks of the Acheron.

Nico rolled out of the boat and collapsed on his back, gazing up at the blood-red clouds in Tartarus’s sky.

That’s when he heard the laughter.

Nico sat upright, worried that some horrible demon had already found them. But it wasWill, sitting in the dirt, hugging his belly as tears streamed down his face.

His giddiness was infectious. Nico couldn’t help it. The enormity of what they’d just survived hit him, and the only thing hecoulddo was laugh.

‘Nico, you –’ Will dissolved into giggling. ‘You just built a halfpipe of the dead.’

‘I’d like to thank Tony Hawk,’ he said, ‘and all the dead who made this moment possible.’

Right on cue, the towering slope of skeletons collapsed into a lifeless mountain of bones.

Nico crawled over to Will and rested his head on Will’s thigh.

‘Welcome to Tartarus,’ Nico said. Then he passed out.

As Nico slept, Will ran his fingers through his boyfriend’s dark hair.

He wasn’t alarmed that Nico had passed out. He knew Nico would need a serious nap after summoning so many dead. In fact, Will was feeling strangely upbeat and excited. When Nico woke, Will could reveal that – ta-da! – he had brought Kit Kat bars. The candy did wonders to help Nico recuperate after shadow-travel, so Will had made sure to stow some in his knapsack, carefully sealed in an airtight bag labelledIN CASE OF EMERGENCY, EAT CHOCOLATE.

He clung to that idea: he could help Nico. He could contribute to this quest. He was more than just a powerless child of sunlight in a death pit of eternal gloom.

Because otherwise he wasn’t sure he could handle what was happening to them.

They were actuallyinTartarus. In every direction, the desolate landscape stretched as far as Will could see – the terrain drenched in the colour of blood from the thick, gelatinous clouds that hung overhead. Did itrainhere?

He did not want to know the answer. Having fallen throughthose clouds, he did not want to experience their version of a thunderstorm.

The plains were pockmarked with craters, as if Tartarus got a lot of meteor strikes. A hundred metres from the banks of the Acheron, a craggy red hill was covered in sickly orange bubbles, almost like …

Almost like zits.

These were the regeneration blisters Nico had told him about – the pus-filled pods from which monsters were reborn.

Goosebumps rippled up Will’s arms.

This place waswrong.

When he breathed, the air feltsticky. Not like humidity – more like melted ice cream running down his hand in the summer. And the smell … It made him think of rotten eggs left out in the sun, then blended with dog poop, then putbackout into the sun.