The Heroes of Olympus: The Demigod Diaries Page 15

  “So you have no help,” Claymore said. “And this monster Lamia is after you…why?”

  “I wish I knew.” Alabaster put down his empty cup. “Since the moment I was exiled, I’ve fought and killed a lot of monsters that came after me. They instinctively sense demigods. As a lone half-blood, I’m a tempting target. But Lamia is different. She’s a child of Hecate from the ancient days. She seems to have a personal vendetta against me. No matter how many times I kill her, she just won’t stay dead. She’s been wearing me down, forcing me to move from town to town. My protective incantations have been pushed to their breaking point. Now I can’t even sleep without her trying to break through my barriers.”

  Claymore studied the boy more closely and noticed dark circles under his eyes. Alabaster probably hadn’t slept in days.

  “How long ago have you been on your own?” Claymore asked. “When was your banishment?”

  Alabaster shrugged like even he’d forgotten. “Seven or eight months ago, but it seems longer. Time is different for us half-bloods. We don’t have the same cushy lives that mortals do. Most half-bloods don’t even live past twenty.”

  Claymore didn’t reply. Even for him, this was a lot to absorb. This child was an actual demigod, the son of a human and the goddess Hecate.

  He had no idea how that sort of procreation worked, but obviously it did, because the boy was here, and clearly he was no regular mortal. Claymore wondered if Alabaster shared Lamia’s ability of regeneration. He doubted it. Siblings or not, Alabaster constantly referred to Lamia as a monster. That wasn’t the kind of term you’d use for your own kind.

  The boy was truly alone. The gods had exiled him. Monsters wanted to kill him, including one who was his own sister. His only companion was a Mistborn man who sprang from a three-by-five note card. And yet somehow, the child had survived. Claymore couldn’t help being impressed.

  Alabaster started to pour himself another cup of tea, then froze. One of the symbols scribbled onto his right sleeve was glowing bright green.

  “Lamia’s here,” he muttered. “I have enough power to keep her out for a while, but—”

  There was a brittle sound like a lightbulb popping, and the symbol on his sleeve splintered like glass, spraying shards of green light.

  Alabaster dropped his cup. “That’s impossible! There’s no way she could have broken my barrier with her magic unless she…” He stared at Claymore. “My gods. Claymore, she’s using you!”

  Claymore tensed. “Using me? What are you talking about?”

  Before Alabaster could answer, another rune on his shirt exploded. “Get up! We need to go now! She just breached the secondary barrier.”

  Claymore got to his feet. “Wait! Tell me! How is she using me?”

  “You didn’t escape her; she let you go!” Alabaster glared at him. “You have an incantation on you that disrupted my spell insignias! Gods, how could I have been so stupid!”

  Claymore clenched his fists. He’d been outplayed.

  He’d been so busy trying to comprehend the rules of this world and form a strategy that he hadn’t expected Lamia to use a strategy of her own. Now his mistakes had led her right to her target.

  Alabaster touched Claymore lightly on the chest. “Incantare: Aufero Sarcina!”

  There was another explosion. This time green shards of light flew from Claymore’s shirt and he staggered backward. “What did you—?”

  “Removing Lamia’s incantation,” Alabaster explained. “And now…”

  Alabaster tapped a few more runes on his outfit and they all shattered. As if in response, a symbol on his pants leg started to glow bright green.

  “I’ve strengthened the inner walls, but there’s no way they’ll hold her long. I know you want to understand, I know you want to ask more questions, but don’t. I’m not going to let you die. Just follow me, and hurry!”

  So far today, he’d been confused, alarmed, afraid, and aggravated beyond belief. But now he experienced an emotion he hadn’t felt in years. The great, confident Dr. Claymore started to panic.

  All of it was a trap. Lamia wasn’t defeated so easily. It was a trick so that she could get through Alabaster’s defenses. And all of it was his fault.

  Alabaster ran outside, and Claymore followed, muttering every curse he knew—and there were quite a few.

  He hadn’t seen it before, but a flickering green dome covered the entire house and stretched down at least half of the block. The green glow seemed to be weakening, and so was the rune on Alabaster’s leg.

  Even though it had been bright and sunny just moments ago, storm clouds now hovered overhead, bombarding the barrier with lightning strikes.

  Lamia was out there, and this time she wasn’t playing games. She was here to kill them.

  Claymore muttered another curse.

  Alabaster stopped when he got to the street and looked up at the sky. “We can’t escape. She’s locked us in. This storm is a binding incantation. I can’t dispel it while the barrier’s up. Running isn’t an option; we have to fight.”

  Claymore stared at him in disbelief. “Black’s truck is right there. We can take the truck and—”

  “And then what?” Alabaster stared back, freezing Claymore in place. “It doesn’t matter how fast we drive. All we’re doing is giving her a bigger target to hit. Besides, that’s exactly what she’d expect a mortal like you to do. Just stay out of this—I’m trying to save your life!”

  Claymore glared at him, his blood boiling. He’d come here to help this boy, not stand around feeling useless. He was about to argue when the glowing rune on Alabaster’s leg burst into flame. The boy winced in pain, falling to his knees. Above them, the green dome shattered with a sound like a million windows breaking.

  “Brother!” Lamia cried over the roar of thunder. “I’m here!”

  Lightning struck all around them, taking out electrical poles and setting trees ablaze.

  The rest of the world didn’t even seem to notice. A few houses away, a man was watering his lawn. Across the street, a woman trotted out to her SUV, chatting on her cell phone, oblivious to the fact that her maple tree was on fire. The same kind of flames that had killed Burly…Apparently to half-bloods and monsters, the mortal world was just collateral damage.

  Alabaster forced himself up, pulling a flash card from his pocket. Instead of a man, this card had the inscription of a crudely drawn sword on it. When Alabaster tapped the drawing it started to glow, and suddenly the sword wasn’t so crude.

  A solid gold broadsword extended from the card, glistening into reality and forming in Alabaster’s hand. The sword was etched with glowing green runes, like the ones on Alabaster’s clothes. And even though the thing must have weighed a hundred pounds, Alabaster held it in one hand with ease.

  “Get behind me and don’t move,” he said, planting his feet firmly on the ground.

  For once in his life, Claymore didn’t even try to argue.

  “Lamia!” Alabaster shouted at the sky. “Former queen of the Libyan empire and daughter of Hecate! You are my target, and my blade finds you. Incantare: Persequor Vestigium!”

  The symbols on Alabaster’s sword blazed even more fiercely, and every single rune on his clothes shone like miniature spotlights. A collage of magical spells surrounded him, and his entire body seemed to radiate power.

  He turned to Claymore, who took a step back. Both of Alabaster’s eyes were flashing green, just like Lamia’s.

  The boy smiled. “We’ll be fine, Claymore. Heroes never die, right?”

  Claymore wanted to argue that, in fact, the heroes always seemed to die in Greek myths.

  But before he could find his voice, thunder roared, and the monster Lamia appeared at the edge of the lawn.

  Alabaster charged.

  As Alabaster raised his sword, he felt something he hadn’t felt since he’d invaded Manhattan with Kronos’s army—the willingness to give his life in the name of a cause. He’d dragged Claymore into this. He could not let
another mortal die because of this monster.

  His first swing was a hit, and Lamia’s right arm disintegrated into sand.

  To normal monsters, a wound like that from an Imperial gold sword would be a death sentence, but all Lamia did was laugh.

  “Brother, why do you persist? I only came here to talk.…”

  “Lies!” Alabaster spat, lopping off her left arm. “You’re a disgrace to our mother’s name! Why don’t you die?”

  Lamia gave him a smile of crocodile teeth. “I don’t die because my mistress sustains me.”

  “Your mistress?” Alabaster scowled. He had a feeling she wasn’t talking about Hecate.

  “Oh, yes.” Lamia dodged his strike. Her arms were already re-forming. “Kronos failed, but now my mistress has risen. She is greater than any Titan or god. She will destroy Olympus and lead the children of Hecate to their golden age. Unfortunately, my mistress doesn’t trust you. She doesn’t want you alive to interfere.”

  “You and your mistress can go to Tartarus for all I care!” Alabaster roared, slicing Lamia’s head clean down the middle. “Are you in league with the gods now? Did Hera send you to kill me?”

  The two halves of Lamia’s mouth wailed. “Do not mention that name in my presence! That crone destroyed my family! Don’t you understand, brother? Haven’t you read my myths?”

  Alabaster sneered. “I don’t bother reading about worthless monsters like you!”

  “Monster?” she shrieked as her face mended. “Hera is the monster! She destroys all the women her husband falls in love with. She hunts down their offspring out of jealousy and spite! She killed my children! My children!”

  Lamia’s right arm re-formed, and she held it in front of her, trembling with rage. “I can still see their lifeless bodies in front of me.…Altheia wanted to be an artist. I remember the days when she apprenticed under my kingdom’s finest sculptors.…She was a child prodigy. Her skills rivaled even those of Athena. Demetrius was nine, five days from his tenth birthday. He was a wonderful and strong boy, always trying to make his mother proud. He was willing to do anything in order to prepare for the day he took his place as king of Libya. They both worked so hard, they both had amazing futures ahead of them. But then what did Hera do? She brutally murdered them simply to punish me for accepting Zeus’s courtship! She’s the one who deserves to rot in Tartarus!”

  Alabaster swung again. This time Lamia did the impossible—she stopped the blade, catching the Imperial gold edge with her reptilian claw.

  Alabaster tried to pull his sword free, but Lamia held it fast. She put her face close to his.

  “You know what happened next, brother?” she whispered. Her breath smelled like freshly spilled blood. “My life as queen may have been over, but my hatred was just beginning. Using Mother’s power I crafted a very special incantation, one that allowed all the monsters in the world to sense the taint of half-bloods…” She smiled. “Maybe after a few thousand more of you die, Hera, the goddess of family, will finally understand my pain!”

  Alabaster caught his breath. “What did you just say?”

  “Yes, you heard me! I was the one who made all of your lives a living nightmare! I gave monsters the ability to track demigods! I am Lamia, the butcher of the tainted! And once you are dead, our other siblings will follow me as their queen. They will join me or die! My mistress—Mother Earth herself—has promised she will return my children to me.” Lamia laughed with delight. “They will live again, and all I have to do is kill you!”

  Alabaster managed to tug his sword from her grip, but Lamia was too close. She thrust out her claws to tear out his heart. There was a sharp BANG! and Lamia staggered backward, a bullet hole in her scaly chest. Alabaster swung his blade, cutting her in half at the waist, and Lamia crumbled into a pile of black sand.

  Alabaster glanced back at Claymore, who was standing ten feet to his right, holding a gun. “What are you doing here? She could have killed you!”

  Claymore smiled. “I saw that you were doing just as pitiful a job as I, so I thought I’d lend a hand. I had to do something with my last bullet.”

  Alabaster stared at him in amazement. “Gods, you really are arrogant.”

  “I’ve heard that a lot lately. I’m going to start taking it as a compliment.” Claymore looked down at Lamia’s body, which was already re-forming. “A Swiffer would be helpful right now. She’ll be back any minute.”

  Alabaster tried to think, but he felt exhausted. Most of his incantations were gone. His defenses were destroyed. “We have to get out of here.”

  Claymore shook his head. “Running hasn’t helped you before. We need a way to deal with her. She said her life was sustained by her mistress…”

  “Mother Earth,” Alabaster said. “Gaea. She tried to overthrow the gods once before in the ancient times. But how does that help us?”

  Claymore picked up a handful of black sand and watched it writhing, trying to re-form. “Earth…” he mused. “If sending Lamia back to Tartarus doesn’t work, if she won’t stay dead, isn’t there a way to imprison her on this earth?”

  Alabaster frowned. Then a lightbulb went off in his head.

  He had expected this man, this genius, to have a more complicated answer. Alabaster expected that if he told Claymore about the Underworld and what caused death for monsters, the best mind of the century could tell him how to kill Lamia permanently.

  But the answer was much simpler than that. Claymore had just unwittingly solved the problem.

  They couldn’t kill Lamia for good. The earth goddess Gaea would simply let her back into the mortal world again and again. But what if they didn’t try to send her to Tartarus? What if this earth became Lamia’s prison instead?

  Alabaster looked him in the eyes. “We have to get back inside my house! I think I know a way to stop her.”

  “Are you sure?” Claymore asked. “How?”

  Alabaster shook his head. “No time! Just look for the book on my nightstand. If we get that, we can stop her. Now go!”

  Claymore nodded, and they ran toward the front door.

  Alabaster had had the power to stop her all along and he just hadn’t known it. But now he had the answer. And there wasn’t a monster in the world that could stop him.

  Claymore was tired of running.

  His young friend Alabaster looked like he could still go for miles despite the hundred-pound sword he was carrying. And Alabaster had been withstanding Lamia’s attacks for weeks.

  Claymore was a different story. After evading Lamia for only a few hours, he was about to collapse. Half-bloods must have been made of sterner stuff than humans.

  Alabaster tore through the living room. He glanced back, grinning ear to ear, and gestured at Claymore to hurry. “It was here all along! Gods, I wish I had known!”

  Thunder cracked outside, and Claymore frowned. “You can save that talk for after we win. Let’s hope your magic bullet actually works.”

  Alabaster nodded. “I’m sure of it! Every form of invincibility has a weak point. Tanks have a hatch, Achilles had a heel, and Lamia has this.”

  Looking at Alabaster’s expression, Claymore almost smiled. This was the happy-go-lucky boy that he was supposed to be—not a half-blood warrior who expected to die by the age of twenty.

  He seemed like a normal sixteen-year-old with a full life ahead of him.…

  Maybe after Lamia was dead, Alabaster could live that life. Maybe, if the gods would let him have it.…

  But what was Claymore going to do? His entire life had been devoted to finding an answer to death, but in the past day he’d discovered that everything he’d come to believe was a lie. Or rather, the lies he’d dismissed all his life were actually true.

  How was Claymore supposed to make a difference now? How could a middle-aged man with no special powers even start to affect a world of gods and monsters?

  His old life seemed meaningless—his deadlines, his book signings. That life had melted along with his laptop in Black’s C
offee. Would this new world even have a place for a mortal like him?

  Alabaster led him up the stairs and into a small bedroom. The walls were covered in the same green runes that were on Alabaster’s clothing. All of them glowed to life as he walked inside and picked up the notebook from his nightstand.

  “This is a shorthand incantation,” he explained. “I’m sure it will work. It has to!”

  The boy turned toward Claymore, who was waiting at the door. Alabaster’s smile melted. His expression changed to horror.

  A split second later Claymore realized why. Cold claws pricked against the back of his neck. Lamia’s voice crackled next to his ear.

  “If you speak one word of that incantation, I’ll kill him,” Lamia threatened. “Drop the book, and perhaps I’ll spare his life.”

  Claymore stared at the boy, expecting him to read the spell anyway, but like an idiot, he dropped the book.

  “What are you doing?” Claymore growled. “Read the spell!”

  Alabaster was frozen, like a thousand people were looking at him. “I—I can’t.…She’ll—”

  “Don’t think about me!” Claymore yelled, as Lamia dug her claws deeper into his neck.

  Then she whispered by his ear: “Incantare: Templum Incendere.”

  The book at Alabaster’s feet burst into flame.

  “What are you doing, you idiot?” Claymore roared at the boy. “You’re smarter than that, Alabaster! If you don’t read that spell, you will die too!”

  A tear traced its way down Alabaster’s cheek. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want anyone else to die because of me. I led my siblings to their deaths!”

  Claymore scowled. Could the boy not see the book burning?

  Lamia cackled as the notebook’s cover curled to ashes. The pages wouldn’t last much longer. There was no time to convince the thickheaded boy. Claymore would have to spur him into action.