TERRIFIED . . . annabeth chase

fifty six.

VAL WASN'T DEAD yet, but she was already tired of being a corpse.

Was this what the Underworld was like as a dead person? She wouldn't like it then the next couple weeks? Days? Until she'd be down there. Whatever. Time in Tartarus was weird.

As they trudged toward the heart of Tartarus, Val kept glancing down at her body, wondering how it could belong to him. Her arms looked like bleached leather pulled over sticks. Her skeletal legs seemed to dissolve into smoke with every step. She'd learned to move normally within the Death Mist, more or less, but the magical shroud still made her feel like she was wrapped in a coat of helium.

She worried that the Death Mist might cling to her forever, even if they somehow managed to survive Tartarus. She didn't want to spend the rest of her life looking like an extra from The Walking Dead. Despite that she'd probably look akin to this soon. Maybe.

Val tried to focus on something else, but there was no safe direction to look.

Under her feet, the ground glistened a nauseating purple, pulsing with webs of veins. In the dim red light of the blood clouds, Death Mist Percy and Annabeth looked like freshly risen zombies.

Ahead of them was the most depressing view of all.

Spread to the horizon was an army of monsters — flocks of winged arai, tribes of lumbering Cyclopes, clusters of floating evil spirits. Thousands of baddies, maybe tens of thousands, all milling restlessly, pressing against one another, growling and fighting for space — like the locker area of an overcrowded school between classes, if all the students were 'roid-raging mutants who smelled really bad.

Bob led them toward the edge of the army. He made no effort to hide, not that it would have done any good. Being ten feet tall and glowing silver, Bob didn't do stealth very well.

About thirty yards from the nearest monsters, Bob turned to face Val.

"Stay quiet and stay behind me," he advised. "They will not notice you."

"We hope," Percy muttered.

On the Titan's shoulder, Small Bob woke up from a nap. He purred seismically and arched his back, turning skeletal then back to calico. At least he didn't seem nervous.

Annabeth examined her own zombie hands. "Bob, if we're invisible . . . how can you see us? I mean, you're technically, you know..."

"Yes," Bob said. "But we are friends."

"Nyx and her children could see us," Val said.

Bob shrugged. "That was in Nyx's realm. That is different."

"Uh . . . right." Annabeth didn't sound reassured, but they were here now. They didn't have any choice but to try.

Percy stared at the swarm of vicious monsters ahead of them. "Well, at least we won't have to worry about bumping into any other friends in this crowd."

Bob grinned. "Yes, that is good news! Now, let's go. Death is close."

"The Doors of Death are close," Annabeth corrected. "Let's watch the phrasing."

"The Doors of me," Val twirled. "I could go on about that monologue about that — don't look at me like that!" She frowned at Annabeth. "I'm my father's daughter, after all. Come on. I can feel the power."

They plunged into the crowd. Despite her words earlier, Val trembled so badly, she was afraid the Death Mist would shiver right off her. She'd seen large groups of monsters before. She'd fought an army of them during the Battle of Manhattan. But this was different.