𖡼.𖤣𖥧𖡼.𖤣𖥧

chapter eleven. ☄︎. *. ⋆

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WE ARRIVED AT 'WAT R A D' just as the sun began to sink behind the mountains. The sign, obviously once labeled WATERLAND, had had a few minor alterations (probably due to the fact that this place looked as old as the gods), like the small detail that the E, L, and N had been knocked off and probably stolen.

"If Ares brings his girlfriend here for a date," Percy said, peering through the metal fence to see inside, "I'd hate to see what she looks like."

"Percy," Annabeth warned. "Be more respectful."

"What? I thought you hates Ares."

"He's still a god," she reasoned. "And his girlfriend is very temperamental."

"You really don't want to insult her looks." I nodded vigorously. Once, I had made an offhand comment about how the goddess of love was obsessed with her looks, or something stupid like that. Within an hour, my crush rejected me, I grew a huge pimple that took two weeks to go away, and my hair had zero volume until I apologized to Aphrodite. It was possibly the worst two weeks of my life.

"Who is she?" Percy asked. "Echidna?"

"Aphrodite," said Grover, a little dreamily. "Goddess of looooove."

      "I thought she was married to Hephaestus," said Percy.

     "What's your point?" Annabeth asked, as I nudged Grover with my elbow to snap him out of his daze.

     "Nevermind," Percy said flatly. "So, how do we get in?"

     "Maia!" Grover's shoes sprouted wings. He flew over the fence, though overshot it by a tad and ended up doing a somersault in the air before landing harshly on the ground. He dusted himself off, then stood like he had planned the whole thing. "You guys coming?"

     Percy and Annabeth began scaling the fence, cramming their feet into the small octogonal holes that were clearly not made for people to climb. When they got to the top, they held down the barbed wire for each other to crawl over, then hopped down on the other side. The three of them looked to me expectantly.

     I raised my eyebrows. "Yeah, no way in Tartarus," I said, then walked over to the gate. I picked up a decently big rock (praying, of course, that it was not the home of a snake) and swung it at the padlock on the gate. The lock broke easily.

     "Or you could do it that way," Annabeth said, shrugging.

     We explored the amusement park for a few minutes, on edge and alert for any monsters that may have been placed as a trap from Ares, but nothing came to get us. It was eerily quiet. Eventually, we found an old souvenir shop that had been left open. Merchandise was still out; bobbleheads, sunglasses, snow globes, and most importantly—

     "Clothes," Annabeth said. "Fresh clothes."

Percy furrowed his brow. "Yeah, but you can't just—"

"Watch me." She gathered an entire rack's worth of branded clothing items and ducked into a changing room. A few minutes later, she came out in Waterland flower-printed shorts, an oversized red Waterland t-shirt, and a pair of Waterland surf shoes. Slung over her shoulder was a Waterland backpack, obviously stuffed with more goodies.

"What the hell," I said, shrugging. Soon, the four of us looked like walking billboards for Waterland. Hey, whatever we were, we did the job of advertising for the amusement park much better than the WAT R A D sign.

We continued to search for the Tunnel of Love. As I had been informed by Annabeth on our way here, Ares had sought Percy out to retrieve his shield from a date gone wrong. I don't know why Ares chose Percy for this little side quest, and I don't know what interrupted Aphrodite and Ares's date, but I did know not to ask questions when it came to the gods. They usually had their reasons.

     A few minutes of exploring later, we stumbled across an empty pool-like thing. It was at least fifty yards across. Around the rim, a dozen bronze statues of Cupid stood guard with wings spread and bows ready to fire. On the opposite side of us, a tunnel opened up, probably where the water flowed from when the pool was running.

"Looks like a Tunnel of Love to me," Percy said.

     At the sight of the many miniature Cupids and their bows, I felt uneasy. Cupid had it out for my father in Greek times. Apollo had bragged that his bow was bigger and much more cool than Cupid's, as the god of archery does, and angered Cupid with such insults. Cupid cursed Apollo to be in love with a nymph named Daphne who could never love him back.

Long story short, I may or may not have an irrational fear of the god of love. I'm always scared he's gonna come curse me like he did my father.

But these were statues, and they were small enough that I could drop-kick them away if they tried to attack.

"Guys, look!" Grover pointed to a pink two-seater boat at the bottom of the empty pool. It looked like Aphrodite had thrown up onto it; pink hearts draped around the edges, a canopy hung over the top. Inside, glinting in the fading light, was Ares's shield.

"Too easy," Percy said, and I (for once) agreed. "So we just walk down there and get it?"

Annabeth ran her fingers along the base of the nearest Cupid statue and said, "There's a Greek letter carved here. Eta. I wonder.."

"Grover, smell any monsters?" I asked.

He sniffed the air. "Nothing."

"Nothing—like, in-the-arch-and-you-didn't-smell-Echidna-nothing, or really nothing?" Percy asked.

I slapped Percy's shoulder as Grover frowned. "I told you, that was underground."

"Okay, I'm sorry," Percy said, rubbing where I had hit him. He took a deep breath. "I'm going down."

"Wait." I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around so his backpack was facing me. "You have my bow."

"Big pocket, probably buried beneath the souvenir clothes from the gift shop," he told me, and, following his directions and digging beneath the pile of patterned shorts, I pulled from his pack my bow. He had a few arrows buried in there, too.

I slung the quiver over my shoulder. Man, it already felt good to not have to rely on my dagger so much.

     Grover offered to head down with him, but Percy shook his head. "I want you to stay up top with the flying shoes. You're the Red Baron, a flying ace, remember? I'll be counting on you for backup, in case something goes wrong."

     Grover puffed his chest up a little. "Sure. But what could go wrong?"

     "I don't know, man. Just a feeling. Are either of you coming with m—?"

     I had already begun sliding down into the pool. Percy faltered, then sighed and followed me. We hit the bottom and approached the boat very cautiously; Percy had his sword drawn and I had an arrow nocked already. Sitting on the seat in the boat was Ares's shield, a circle of polished bronze, and beside it sat a simple silk scarf.

     Percy reached for the scarf. I could smell its perfumed scent without even leaning in. Percy looked a little dreamy, and he almost rubbed it against his cheek, but I slapped his hand and said, "Are you stupid? It's Aphrodite's. Totally laced with, like, love-magic. Just get the shield."

     As he reached for it, I kept my eyes on the Cupid statues. Now that we were below them, their eyes were all on us, like they had been fixed to only stare at whomever was in the Tunnel of Love—which, right then, happened to be me and Percy. Gross, I know.

     Percy cursed. I spun back to see what he had done; his reaching for the shield had tripped a wire.

     "Wait," I said.

     "Too late," he told me.

     "There's another Greek symbol on the boat. Eta." I looked up to Annabeth, calling her name. "Isn't Eta N?"

     Before she could reply, noise erupted all around me and Percy. Grover yelled something, but I was a little focused on the Cupid statues nocking their arrows and firing them towards each other. Attached to each arrow was some kind of stringy cable, like something Spiderman would produce, that arced over the pool and anchored where they landed.

     "It's a net," said Percy, stupidly.

     "Obviously, Kelpy!" I said, reaching for the shield. Percy and I ran as fast as we could to the edge of the pool, but it was much harder trying to get up the slope than down. I handed Percy the shield and drew back an arrow, firing at the base of where one arrow had landed, hoping it would weaken the net and create a hole; my arrow ricocheted off the net limply and fell to the ground with a clatter.

     "Look!" Percy pointed at one of the Cupids, and I glanced around at all of the statues to see if they had all done the same. Their heads popped open, and in their places came multiple video cameras, filming us from all angles. Spotlights rose up around the pool, blinding us with illumination, and a loudspeaker voice boomed: "Live to Olympus in one minute.... fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight—"

I peered through the net to see Annabeth waving her hands for my attention. "ETA IS H!" she shouted, and I could barely hear her over the voice and the machinery of the trap.

"Hephaestus!" I exclaimed. "He made this to catch Ares and Aphrodite on their date! Now we're going to be on a big screen in Olympus and look like absolute fools!"

We had almost clawed our way to the rim when the perimeter of the pool opened like one big hatch, and thousands of metallic wire-looking things spilled out. It didn't take me long to recognize what they were.

     "Snakes!" I shrieked, losing my grip on the wall and sliding back down. I almost got overwhelmed by the serpents, but Percy pulled me back up to the boat.

     I knew they were metallic, and therefore fake, but my phobia of snakes is absolutely paralyzing. All Apollo kids have it. I would divulge you with the riveting story of why all of us have such a horrible fear, but that's for another time. Right then, I was absolutely frozen in fear. I could hear Percy telling me to help keep the snakes away, but I just couldn't.

     They started hissing, opening their mouths and spitting out strings of metal, trying to tie us down. The strands were easy enough to break at first, but there was too many snakes and they were spitting new strings by the second.

     "Grover!" Percy yelled. I looked up: Grover was hovering above the net. "Get to the booth! Find the 'On' switch!"

     Grover took no moment of hesitation. He began slamming away at buttons, but none of them were working.

     A snake slithered onto my arm and curled itself around my wrist. I screamed, flinging it off as hard as I could. I'm pretty sure I blacked out.

     Just as the counting voice hit zero, a rushing wave of water poured out of the tunnel. Percy threw me into the seat next to his and fastened my seatbelt. Even though we were now above water and the snakes were not, I couldn't bring myself to move, afraid a serpent would somehow appear on our boat.

     Percy was unbelievable. Not only could control the waves, but he was guiding the boat itself. We both held on tight as it threw us into the tunnel, rocketing us through darkness. It was like the world's scariest log-ride; the boat hugged corners and shot curls and took plunges past photos of Romeo and Juliet and other romantic stuff at a hundred miles an hour.

     Then we were out of the tunnel, Denver air biting sharply at our skin as we whipped down the ramp towards the end of the ride. If the Tunnel of Love was in working condition, we would have landed safely in the exit pool, but we had a problem: the ride was very much not in working condition. We were speeding towards a chained metal gate.

     "Unbuckle your seatbelt," Percy told me.

     I gaped at him. "Are you crazy?"

     "Unless you want to get smashed to death." He strapped Ares's shield to his forearm. "We have to jump. On my mark!"

     I could see his vision, but I knew there was no way in Hades's name he would have been able to execute it correctly. I gripped his arm and shook my head quickly, saying, "No, on mine!"

     "What?"

     "Physics!" I yelled. "Don't make me explain it right now!"

     "Fine. On your mark."

    I waited until the boat was closer to the gate, right at the dip before impact, and shouted, "Now!"

We shot into the air just as our boat crashed into the gate, shooting debris and shards of pink wood everywhere. We had gained a little too much momentum in the collision, though, and Percy and I found ourselves hurdling toward the solid asphalt beneath us. I was still holding his hand.

     Something grabbed me by the hair. I shouted in pain, but I had stopped falling.

     "Grover!" Percy exclaimed, and I had to take his word for it, because I couldn't turn my head due to the satyr hand clamped onto it.

     "You're too heavy!" Grover shouted. "We're going down!"

     We almost landed directly on Annabeth, but she ducked to the side at the last second. Grover smashed into a little photo display, the ones where people put their heads into holes and pretend to be characters—in this case, Grover was Noo-Noo the Friendly Whale. Percy and I tumbled to the ground. I rolled at least four feet from our landing spot.

     We helped Grover unstick his head from the photo board and thanked him for saving our lives. I checked my bow for casualties, but it looked like I was more banged up than it. Percy still had Ares's shield. He was glaring at it. He strapped it back to his arm and said, "I think we need to have a little talk with Ares."