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‘From your stepmother’s garden,’ Nemesis explained.

‘I know what they are.’ Nico could feel their power radiating along the lines of his palm.

He knew that, as a child of Hades, he could use each one to puthimself into a daylong death trance, a sort of hibernation, if necessary. But … why? Why was she giving him these?

There was a loudTHUDbehind him. The front door shuddered on its hinges. Outside, he could hear the wolves snarling, preparing for another assault.

‘We are almost out of time,’ Nemesis said. ‘Follow the River of Fire, Nico. Follow it downstream, through the mist and the forest. There you will find the Doors of Death.’

Nico jumped as the door began to splinter. Through one of the cracks flashed the baleful yellow eye of a wolf.

‘I will get you away from here, Nico,’ said Nemesis. ‘But one day you will need to deal with the imbalance in your heart.’

Nico closed his fingers around the pomegranate seeds, then tucked them away with the others he kept. There was much more he wanted to ask, but he also wanted to be far, far away from this place as soon as possible.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I appreciate the help.’

Nemesis raised her hands, and the darkness began to swirl around them. ‘One last thing … Beware of my mother. She only comes out during the daytime and … let’s just say she is not as sympathetic to demigods as some of her children are.’

‘Daytime?’ Nico asked. The concept made no sense to him down here, in the darkest depths of Underworld.

But the house disappeared, and Nemesis with it. Nico found himself standing on a ridge, the spongy red ground once again under his feet. There were no wolves or other monsters in sight, but spread across the hills in every direction were the strange black oval outcrops he’d seen from a distance. He edged closer to the nearest one and peered down at its surface …

‘Ugh,gross,’ he said.

It was as if the land itself had a pimple. The substance wasn’trock, exactly – more like a dark translucent membrane covering an area the size of a bathtub. And, underneath, some sort of sickening yellow-green fluid waspulsingaround a shadowy figure suspended within.

‘What the –?’ Nico made a terrible mistake, but he couldn’t resist. With the tip of his sword, he poked the Tartarus zit.

Predictably, the membrane burst, unleashing a geyser of goo that splattered him from head to toe.

‘You’ve got to bekiddingme!’ Nico stumbled backwards, landing hard on his tailbone. He watched in horror as something very much alive crawled out of the goo pit.

It shook its sticky wet hair, which began to smoulder and then caught fire. Its form was human, but with mismatched back legs: one shaggy and hooved like a donkey’s, the other constructed of bronze.

Anempousa.

Nico’s grip tightened on his sword. He’d been kidnapped by one of these vampiric spirits after foolishly following Minos into the Labyrinth, and he was in no mood to be charmspoken to death.

Taking advantage of the creature’s disorientation, he scrambled forward and drove his blade through its chest.

The creature wailed. ‘Ijustregenerated!’ she screamed. ‘Comeon!’

Then she crumbled into clumps of dust that broke apart in the goo. Immediately, the fluid began to ooze back into the pit, and the membrane began weaving itself together.

Wonderful, said Nico to himself.Monsters regenerate evenfasterin Tartarus.

He scanned his surroundings with a mounting sense of dread.

The landscape wascoveredwith these regeneration zit pits. He had to keep moving.

The only thing that gave him alittlebit of hope was the sight of a glowing red ribbon of flames in the distance, threading across the plains. At least Nemesis had deposited Nico within sight of the river he was supposed to follow: the fiery Phlegethon.

Nico pulled his leather jacket tighter and started walking.

Nico had no idea where he was relative to the staging area he’d stumbled on before, but he figured Nemesis must have dropped him someplace far, far away.

Because this part of Tartarus wasempty.