Perseus Jackson Son of the Sea: The Stolen Bolt

Chapter 20

As they got closer to the gates. The howling was so loud now it shook the ground at my feet, but he still couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

Then, about fifty feet in front of them, the green mist shimmered. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.

Percy hadn't seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked solid. And it was staring straight at him.

His jaw hung open. All he could think to say was, "He's a Rottweiler."

Percy always imagined Cerberus as a big black mastiff. But he was obviously a purebred Rottweiler, except of course that he was twice the size of a woolly mammoth, mostly invisible, and had three heads.

The dead walked right up to him—no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even crouching.

"I'm starting to see him better," Clarisse muttered. "Why is that?"

"I think ..." Annabeth moistened her lips. "I'm afraid it's because we're getting closer to being dead."

The dog's middle head craned toward them. It sniffed the air and growled.

"It can smell the living," I said. The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled.

"Hey, Big Fella," Percy called up as he grabbed a stick from the ground. "I bet they don't play with you much."

"GROWWWLLLL!"

"Good boy," Percy said he threw the stick as far as he could. "Fetch, boy."

The stick sailed and landed in the River Styx. Cerberus glared at him, unimpressed. His eyes were baleful and cold. Cerberus was now making a new kind of growl, deeper down in his three throats.

"Wait!" Annabeth said. She started rifling through her pack. Annabeth produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. It was labeled WATERLAND, DENVER, CO. Before he could stop her, she raised the ball and marched straight up to Cerberus.

She shouted, "See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!"

Cerberus looked as stunned as they were.

All three of his heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated.

"Sit!" Annabeth called again.

I was sure that any moment she would become the world's largest Milk bone dog biscuit.

But instead, Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who'd been passing underneath him in the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissipated, like the air let out of tires.

Annabeth said, "Good boy!"

She threw Cerberus the ball. He caught it in his middle mouth. It was barely big enough for him to chew, and the other heads started snapping at the middle, trying to get the new toy.

"Drop it.'" Annabeth ordered. Cerberus's heads stopped fighting and looked at her. The ball was wedged between two of his teeth like a tiny piece of gum. He made a loud, scary whimper, then dropped the ball, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at Annabeth's feet.

"Good boy." She picked up the ball, ignoring the monster spit all over it.

She turned toward them. "Go now. EZ DEATH line—it's faster."