SEQUAL TO EVERYWHERE EVERYTHING
BOOK TWO OF THREE !!!
Mitchell didn't expect to wake up from a nightmare, only to find himself in a real one. When he finds Percy's bed empty in the middle of the night, he freaks out.
Mitchell will do whatever it tak...
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THEY'D ONLY TRAVELLED A FEW HUNDRED yards when Mitchell heard voices. He plodded along, half in a stupor, trying to form a plan. It was hard to strategise with his stomach growling and his throat baking.
The fiery water of the Phlegethon may have healed him and given him strength, but it hadn't done anything for his hunger or thirst. The river wasn't about making you feel good, Mitchell guessed. It just kept you going so you could experience more excruciating pain. His head started to droop with exhaustion. Then he heard them — female voices having some sort of argument — and he was instantly alert.
He whispered, "Percy, down!"
He pulled Percy behind the nearest boulder, wedging himself so close against the riverbank that his shoes almost touched the river's fire. On the other side, on the narrow path between the river and the cliffs, voices snarled, getting louder as they approached from upstream. Mitchell tried to steady his breathing.
The voices sounded vaguely human, but that meant nothing. He assumed anything in Tartarus was their enemy. He didn't know how the monsters could have failed to spot them already. Besides, monsters could smell demigods — especially powerful ones like Percy, son of Poseidon. Mitchell doubted that hiding behind a boulder would do any good when the monsters caught their scent.
Still, as the monsters got nearer, their voices didn't change in tone. Their uneven footsteps — scrap, clump, scrap, clump — didn't get any faster.
"Soon?" one of them asked in a raspy voice, as if she'd been gargling in the Phlegethon.
"Oh my gods!" said another voice. This one sounded much younger and much more human, like a teenaged mortal girl getting exasperated with her friends at the mall. For some reason, she sounded familiar to Mitchell. "You guys are totally annoying! I told you, it's like three days from here."
Percy gripped Mitchell's wrist. He looked at him with alarm, as if he recognised the mall girl's voice too. There was a chorus of growling and grumbling. The creatures — maybe half a dozen, Mitchell guessed — had paused just on the other side of the boulder, but still they gave no indication that they'd caught the demigods' scent. Mitchell wondered if demigods didn't smell the same in Tartarus, or if the other scents here were so powerful they masked a demigod's aura.
"I wonder," said a third voice, gravelly and ancient like the first, "if perhaps you do not know the way, young one."
"Oh, shut your fang hole, Serephone," said the mall girl. "When's the last time you escaped to the mortal world? I was there a couple of years ago. I know the way! Besides, I understand what we're facing up there. You don't have a clue!"
