“The point is,” Reyna continued, “I may be able to boost your strength. I think that might be why I’m here.”
I thought about the jolt of energy I’d felt when Reyna touched my arm. It hadn’t been physical attraction, or a warning buzz from Venus. I recalled something she had told Frank before we left camp. “Bellona’s power,” I said. “It has something to do with strength in numbers?”
Reyna nodded. “I can amplify other people’s abilities. The bigger the group, the better it works, but even with three people…it might be sufficient to enhance your power enough to rip open those doors.”
“Would that count?” Meg asked. “I mean, if Reyna doesn’t open the door herself, isn’t that cheating the prophecy?”
Reyna shrugged. “Prophecies never mean what you think, right? If Apollo is able to open the door thanks to my help, I’m still responsible, wouldn’t you say?”
“Besides…” I pointed to the horizon. Hours of daylight remained, but the full moon was rising, enormous and white, over the hills of Marin County. Soon enough, it would turn bloodred—and so, I feared, would a whole lot of our friends. “We’re running out of time. If we can cheat, let’s cheat.”
I realized those would make terrible final words. Nevertheless, Reyna and Meg followed me into the cold silence.
When we reached the doors, Reyna took Meg’s hand. She turned to me: Ready? Then she planted her other hand on my shoulder.
Strength surged through me. I laughed with soundless joy. I felt as potent as I had in the woods at Camp Half-Blood, when I’d tossed one of Nero’s barbarian bodyguards into low earth orbit. Reyna’s power was awesome! If I could just get her to follow me around the whole time I was mortal, her hand on my shoulder, a chain of twenty or thirty other demigods behind her, I bet there was nothing I couldn’t accomplish!
I grabbed the uppermost chains and tore them like crepe paper. Then the next set, and the next. The Imperial gold broke and crumpled noiselessly in my fists. The steel locking rods felt as soft as breadsticks as I pulled them out of their fittings.
That left only the door handles.
The power may have gone to my head. I glanced back at Reyna and Meg with a self-satisfied smirk, ready to accept their silent adulation.
Instead, they looked as if I’d bent them in half, too.
Meg swayed, her complexion lima-bean green. The skin around Reyna’s eyes was tight with pain. The veins on her temples stood out like lightning bolts. My energy surge was frying them.
Finish it, Reyna mouthed. Her eyes added a silent plea: Before we pass out.
Humbled and ashamed, I grabbed the door handles. My friends had gotten me this far. If Harpocrates was indeed waiting inside this shipping box, I would make sure the full force of his anger fell on me, not Reyna or Meg.
I yanked open the doors and stepped inside.
Ever heard the phrase
“The silence is deafening”?
Yeah, that’s a real thing
IMMEDIATELY, I CRUMPLED TO my hands and knees under the weight of the other god’s power.
Silence enfolded me like liquid titanium. The cloying smell of roses was overwhelming.
I’d forgotten how Harpocrates communicated—with blasts of mental images, oppressive and devoid of sound. Back when I was a god, I’d found this annoying. Now, as a human, I realized it could pulp my brain. At the moment, he was sending me one continuous message: YOU? HATE!
Behind me, Reyna was on her knees, cupping her ears and screaming mutely. Meg was curled on her side, kicking her legs as if trying to throw off the heaviest of blankets.
A moment before, I’d been tearing through metal like it was paper. Now, I could barely lift my head to meet Harpocrates’s gaze.
The god floated cross-legged at the far end of the room.
He was still the size of a ten-year-old child, still wearing his ridiculous toga and pharaonic bowling-pin crown combo, like so many confused Ptolemaic gods who couldn’t decide if they were Egyptian or Greco-Roman. His braided ponytail snaked down one side of his shaved head. And, of course, he still held one finger to his mouth like the most frustrated, burned-out librarian in the world: SSSHHH!
He could not do otherwise. I recalled that Harpocrates required all his willpower to lower his finger from his mouth. As soon as he stopped concentrating, his hand would pop right back into position. In the old days, I had found that hilarious. Now, not so much.