Page 43 of The Court of the Dead (The Nico di Angelo Adventures #2)

W hen the spear touched Hazel, she thought, What if I’m wrong?

The cavern shook with the fury she’d unleashed—a deadly rain of rubies and emeralds. She felt flames traveling up her chest, but there was no pain—just a wave of numbness, as if her entire body were falling asleep.

Darkness enveloped her. The guard’s skeletal fingers loosened around her throat. She fell—down, down, down, twisting and turning, but she never hit the floor. She tried to scream, to grab hold of something, but there was nothing. Just cold emptiness.

Then she landed on her side, hard .

Her breath was knocked out of her. Fireworks exploded in her eyes. She clawed her fingers into warm earth. Grass. Sunlight blinded her. She smelled mulch and pine. Definitely not the Underworld…

Where had they sent her?

She pushed herself up on one elbow, wincing from the pain in her ribs. Her windpipe felt bruised and swollen. As her eyes adjusted, a massive beastly face loomed over her, blocking her field of vision.

She tried to scoot back on her hands and feet. She kicked wildly, desperate to get away.

“Hazel, it is me,” said a deep, gentle voice.

She forced down her panic. She knew those wide-set brown eyes, those fuzzy ears, the glistening snout with the gold septum ring set between the nostrils.

“Asterion,” she sobbed.

She threw herself into the bull-man’s arms. He didn’t say anything—just held her close and rubbed an enormous hand up and down her back.

“You’re alive!” She pulled away to look at him. “You’re alive .”

“So far,” he agreed, giving her a melancholy smile. “Since you are here, I assume the court sentenced you as well. I am so sorry, my friend.”

Hazel shuddered. “I just hope Will and Nico are okay.”

She told Asterion what had happened in the courtroom after he was condemned—the judges’ screed against people who tried to change their nature, Hazel’s growing suspicion that maybe Asterion had been transported somewhere rather than killed, her attempt with Nico and Will to break free from the court, and her final cryptic message to Nico, the only words she’d been able to force out as the guard choked her: Don’t believe it.

Asterion patted her knee. “You did what you could. And you were right about the nature of our punishment. Come, the others will want to see you.”

“The others…?”

Hazel’s voice died as she looked around her. She’d been so focused on Asterion she hadn’t really taken in her surroundings.

They were in some sort of park, and they weren’t alone.

Rows of stunted knobby cypress trees stretched in either direction, like the ones in Civic Center Plaza.

This space was much bigger, though—a shallow oval basin about a quarter mile wide and twice as long.

The shape reminded Hazel of the Circus Maximus back in New Rome, an image reinforced by the half-dozen centaurs presently galloping around the perimeter, apparently looking for a way out.

Park benches lined the walkways, and most of the seats were taken by mythic beings.

Two satyrs were having an argument, fighting over a lunch bag.

A dog-headed man—a cynocephalus—was passed out asleep, his hands and feet twitching like he was chasing rabbits in his dreams. In the pool of a nearby fountain, a pack of telkhines lounged like wayward sea lions, unconcerned by the bronze Colchis bull drinking nearby, its fiery breath making the water boil.

At the near end of the park rose a sandstone band shell flanked by classical columns. Standing on the steps was a woman holding a toddler…except as Hazel studied them more closely, she realized the toddler had leafy green wings, and the woman’s hair was on fire.

“Arielle?” Hazel muttered in disbelief. “Arielle! Quinoa!”

She ran toward them, stumbling as she tried to regain the use of her body. Asterion followed in her wake.

Arielle and Quinoa spotted her and came running.

“Hazel Levesque!” Quinoa launched himself from Arielle’s arms straight into Hazel’s. “You actually found us!”

Arielle grinned, which was a little unnerving given the fangs, but she looked delighted.

“I never thought I’d be so happy to see a demigod,” said the empousa. “But how are you here? You’re not a mythic— Oof!”

That last sound came when Hazel wrapped her in a hug, squeezing Quinoa between them. Hazel didn’t even care that the empousa’s flaming head was probably singeing her own hair, or that Arielle’s donkey hoof was now on her toes. She was so glad to see the mythics alive.

Finally, Quinoa mumbled, “Can’t…breathe.”

Hazel stepped back, blinking away happy tears. “Thank the gods you’re alive! But what is going on here?”

“We’d like to know that too,” said Arielle. “Short answer: we’re trapped.”

“Trapped?” Hazel scanned the area. “But…”

From where they stood, Hazel could see numerous sets of steps leading out of the basin.

There were no walls, no barricades, just flower beds lining the embankments.

Cars and tour buses moved freely along the road that circled the park.

Beyond that, buildings peeked over the treetops.

The nearest was a long angular wedge of dark stone—maybe an art museum?

“How are we trapped?” she asked.

Then she spotted the centaurs again, galloping around the perimeter. Every so often they would stop to throw themselves at the steps or try to leap over the hedges, only to bounce back in frustration. Some were repelled so forcefully they tumbled head over hooves.

Asterion extended a hand. “Come, we’ll show you.”

Hazel followed the empousa and Asterion while Quinoa nestled in the crook of her arm.

His claws dug into Hazel’s chest. His leafy wings were scratchy against her skin, but she didn’t mind.

She never thought she’d feel motherly toward an herbaceous plant, but she would’ve fought off a drakon to protect the karpos.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to. They passed one small drakon—a baby no more than twenty feet long, curled around a metal lamppost—but it didn’t seem interested in fighting. It was too busy scanning the horizon like a lookout from a crow’s nest.

A giant boar eyed her suspiciously and then went back to rubbing its tusks against a tree trunk.

A harpy roosting in the branches above screeched down at it, “Could you not?” A few feet away, something that looked like a massive badger burrowed into the sandy soil like it was trying to dig an escape tunnel.

Arielle led them to a nearby stairway that led up to the road. She stopped just short of the bottom step and then turned to Hazel.

“Open your hand so it is flat,” said the empousa. “Press gently. Otherwise, you may get hurt.”

Hazel didn’t like the sound of that, but she did as Arielle told her to, pushing her palm outward. She felt silly, like a mime in an imaginary box, until she touched something solid —a cold, hard, invisible wall.

She pulled her hand away. “What is that?”

“Like I said,” replied Arielle. “We’re trapped.”

Outside the invisible wall, mortal life continued as usual. A taxi drove past. A man jogged by pushing a stroller, a pit bull running alongside on a leash.

“Hey!” Hazel shouted at the jogger. “Can you hear me?”

The man just kept running. Even the dog didn’t look in her direction.

“They cannot see or hear us,” Arielle said.

“We’re not sure why. Every so often, a mortal tries to enter the park and then gets confused and simply turns away.

This entire area is sealed off, only mythics within…

and now you, Praetor. The centaurs keep looking for weak spots, because they are not very bright, but the more force you apply to the barrier, the harder it will repel you. ”

“Trust me on that,” Asterion grumbled. “I have only been here a little longer than you, Hazel, but the first thing I did was try to charge through this magic boundary. I nearly broke my horns off.”

She turned and gazed across the park. On the opposite side of the plaza stood another museum-type building—a long facade of white stone and glass, its roof a grassy landscape of artificial hills.

“That’s the California Academy of Sciences,” Hazel realized. “We’re in Golden Gate Park!”

Asterion scratched the side of his snout. “I am not familiar with human geographical locations. Are we still in San Francisco?”

Hazel nodded. Trapped or not, she felt a sense of relief. At least they weren’t someplace beyond the reach of all help—like in Tartarus or Alaska. “This is maybe five miles from the courthouse downtown. Which raises the question of how those guards transported us here.”

“Yeah,” Quinoa said, his face scrunched up in his characteristic scowl. “We wondered if it was that shadow-travel thing you and Nico are always talking about, but—”

“Shadow-travel!” Hazel hastily set down the karpos. “Let me try something.”

She stepped toward a nearby cypress, whose trunk cast a nice dark shadow across the crushed stone. She imagined her bed in Camp Jupiter, with the extra-cushy pillow she loved so much. She put one foot in the shadow, willing herself to travel through it…but nothing happened.

“It’s not working,” she said mournfully. “I should be able to shadow-travel anywhere .”

Asterion crossed his arms. “None of this makes sense. The abductions. The trials. Sentencing us to death, but instead, sending us to some sort of…holding area. What does this Court of the Dead want, and how did they get the power to create something like this prison?”

“Too many questions,” Arielle muttered. “We’ve been here for days now, and new mythics just keep arriving, but…” She froze. “Wait. What about the others? Are Orcus and Johan and Semele all right?”

She sounded so worried Hazel was tempted to give her another hug.

“They were fine when I left camp.” She gave the mythics a quick recap of what had been happening since they’d been abducted, including their standoff with Laverna in the principia.