“You okay, big guy?” Percy whispered.
Bob frowned. “I do not know. In all this”—he gestured around them—“what is the meaning of okay?”
Fair point, Percy thought.
Annabeth peered toward the Doors of Death, though the crowd of monsters blocked them from view. “Did I hear correctly? Two more Titans guarding our exit? That’s not good. ”
Percy looked at Bob. The Titan’s distant expression worried him.
“Do you remember Koios?” he asked gently. “All that stuff he was talking about?”
Bob gripped his broom. “When he told it, I remembered. He handed me my past like…like a spear. But I do not know if I should take it. Is it still mine, if I do not want it?”
“No,” Annabeth said firmly. “Bob, you’re different now. You’re better. ”
The kitten jumped off Bob’s head. He circled the Titan’s feet, bumping his head against the Titan’s pants cuffs. Bob didn’t seem to notice.
Percy wished he could be as certain as Annabeth. He wished he could tell Bob with absolute confidence that he should forget about his past.
But Percy understood Bob’s confusion. He remembered the day he’d opened his eyes at the Wolf House in California, his memory wiped clean by Hera. If somebody had been waiting for Percy when he first woke up, if they’d convinced Percy that his name was Bob, and he was a friend of the Titans and the giants…would Percy have believed it? Would he have felt betrayed once he found out his true identity?
This is different, he told himself. We’re the good guys.
But were they? Percy had left Bob in Hades’s palace, at the mercy of a new master who hated him. Percy didn’t feel like he had much right to tell Bob what to do now—even if their lives depended on it.
“I think you can choose, Bob,” Percy ventured. “Take the parts of Iapetus’s past that you want to keep. Leave the rest. Your future is what matters. ”
“Future…” Bob mused. “That is a mortal concept. I am not meant to change, Percy Friend. ” He gazed around him at the horde of monsters. “We are the same…forever. ”
“If you were the same,” Percy said, “Annabeth and I would be dead already. Maybe we weren’t meant to be friends, but we are. You’ve been the best friend we could ask for. ”
Bob’s silver eyes looked darker than usual. He held out his hand, and Small Bob the kitten jumped into it. The Titan rose to his full height. “Let us go, then, friends. Not much farther. ”
Stomping on Tartarus’s heart wasn’t nearly as much fun as it sounded.
The purplish ground was slippery and constantly pulsing. It looked flat from a distance, but up close it was made of folds and ridges that got harder to navigate the farther they walked. Gnarled lumps of red arteries and blue veins gave Percy some foothold
s when he had to climb, but the going was slow.
And of course, the monsters were everywhere. Packs of hellhounds prowled the plains, baying and snarling and attacking any monster that dropped its guard. Arai wheeled overhead on leathery wings, making ghastly dark silhouettes in the poison clouds.
Percy stumbled. His hand touched a red artery, and a tingling sensation went up his arm. “There’s water in here,” he said. “Actual water. ”
Bob grunted. “One of the five rivers. His blood. ”
“His blood?” Annabeth stepped away from the nearest clump of veins. “I knew the Underworld rivers all emptied into Tartarus, but—”
“Yes,” Bob agreed. “They all flow through his heart. ”
Percy traced his hand across a web of capillaries. Was the water of the Styx flowing beneath his fingers, or maybe the Lethe? If one of those veins popped when he stepped on it… Percy shuddered. He realized he was taking a stroll across the most dangerous circulatory system in the universe.
“We should hurry,” Annabeth said. “If we can’t…”
Her voice trailed off.
Ahead of them, jagged streaks of darkness tore through the air—like lightning, except pure black.
“The Doors,” Bob said. “Must be a large group going through. ”
Percy’s mouth tasted like gorgon’s blood. Even if his friends from the Argo II managed to find the other side of the Doors of Death, how could they possibly fight the waves of monsters that were coming through, especially if all the giants were already waiting for them?
“Do all the monsters go through the House of Hades?” he asked. “How big is that place?”
Bob shrugged. “Perhaps they are sent elsewhere when they step through. The House of Hades is in the earth, yes? That is Gaea’s realm. She could send her minions wherever she wishes. ”
Percy’s spirits sank. Monsters coming through the Doors of Death to threaten his friends at Epirus—that was bad enough. Now he imagined the ground on the mortal side as one big subway system, depositing giants and other nasties anywhere Gaea wanted them to go—Camp Half-Blood, Camp Jupiter, or in the path of the Argo II before it could even reach Epirus.
“If Gaea has that much power,” Annabeth asked, “couldn’t she control where we end up?”
Percy really hated that question. Sometimes he wished Annabeth weren’t so smart.
Bob scratched his chin. “You are not monsters. It may be different for you. ”
Great, Percy thought.
He didn’t relish the idea of Gaea waiting for them on the other side, ready to teleport them into the middle of a mountain; but at least the Doors were a chance to get out of Tartarus. It wasn’t like they had a better option.
Bob helped them over the top of another ridge. Suddenly the Doors of Death were in plain view—a freestanding rectangle of darkness at the top of the next heart-muscle hill, about a quarter mile away, surrounded by a horde of monsters so thick Percy could’ve walked on their heads all the way across.