Free Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Demigod Files by Rick Riordan Page B

my sword. Note to self: If you vaporize monsters, they can’t answer your questions.
    Nico was also cutting an arc through the Keres. His black sword absorbed their essence like a vacuum cleaner, and the more he destroyed, the colder the air became around him. Thalia flipped a daimon on its back, stabbed it, and impaled another one with her second knife without even turning around.
    “Die in pain, mortal!” Before I could raise my sword for defense, another daimon ’s claws raked my shoulder. If I’d been wearing armor, no problem, but I was still in my school uniform. The thing’s talons sliced open my shirt and tore into my skin. My whole left side seemed to explode in pain.
    Nico kicked the monster away and stabbed it. All I could do was collapse and curl into a ball, trying to endure the horrible burning.
    The sound of battle died. Thalia and Nico rushed to my side.
    “Hold still, Percy,”Thalia said. “You’ll be fine.” But the quiver in her voice told me the wound was bad. Nico touched it and I yelled in pain.
    “Nectar,” he said. “I’m pouring nectar on it.”
    He uncorked a bottle of the godly drink and trickled it across my shoulder. This was dangerous—just a sip of the stuff is all most demigods could stand—but immediately the pain eased. Together, Nico and Thalia dressed the wound, and I passed out only a few times.
    I couldn’t judge how much time went by, but the next thing I remember I was propped up with my back against a rock. My shoulder was bandaged. Thalia was feeding me tiny squares of chocolate-flavored ambrosia.
    “The Keres?” I muttered.
    “Gone for now,” she said. “You had me worried for a second, Percy, but I think you’ll make it.”
    Nico crouched next to us. He was holding the potted carnation. Only five petals still clung to the flower.
    “The Keres will be back,” he warned. He looked at my shoulder with concern. “That wound . . . the Keres are spirits of disease and pestilence as well as violence. We can slow down the infection, but eventually you’ll need serious healing. I mean a god’s power. Otherwise . . .”
    He didn’t finish the thought.
    “I’ll be fine.” I tried to sit up and immediately felt nauseous.
    “Slow,” Thalia said. “You need rest before you can move.”
    “There’s no time.” I looked at the carnation. “One of the daimones mentioned Iapetus. Am I remembering right? That’s a Titan?”
    Thalia nodded uneasily. “The brother of Kronos, father of Atlas. He was known as the Titan of the west. His name means ‘the Piercer’ because that’s what he likes to do to his enemies. He was cast into Tartarus along with his brothers. He’s supposed to still be down there.”
    “But if the sword of Hades can unlock death?” I asked.
    “Then maybe,” Nico said, “it can also summon the damned out of Tartarus. We can’t let them try.”
    “We still don’t know who them is,” Thalia said.
    “The half-blood working for Kronos,” I said. “Probably Ethan Nakamura. And he’s starting to recruit some of Hades’s minions to his side—like the Keres. The daimones think that if Kronos wins the war, they’ll get more chaos and evil out of the deal.”
    “They’re probably right,” Nico said. “My father tries to keep a balance. He reins in the more violent spirits. If Kronos appoints one of his brothers to be the lord of the Underworld—”
    “Like this Iapetus dude,” I said.
    “—then the Underworld will get a lot worse,” Nico said. “The Keres would like that. So would Melinoe.”
    “You still haven’t told us who Melinoe is.”
    Nico chewed his lip. “She’s the goddess of ghosts— one of my father’s servants. She oversees the restless dead that walk the earth. Every night she rises from the Underworld to terrify mortals.”
    “She has her own path into the upper world?”
    Nico nodded. “I doubt it would be blocked. Normally, no one would even think about trespassing in her cave. But if this demigod