The Last Olympian Read Free

going to win me any points with Mr. Crabby.
    “FFFFfffffff,” it hissed, sea foam dripping from its mouth. The smell coming off it was like a garbage can full of fish sticks that had been sitting in the sun all week.
    Alarms blared. Soon I was going to have lots of company and I had to keep moving.
    “Hey, crabby.” I inched around the edge of the courtyard. “I’m just gonna scoot around you so—”
    The crab moved with amazing speed. It scuttled out of the fountain and came straight at me, pincers snapping. I dove into a gift shop, plowing through a rack of T-shirts. A crab pincer smashed the glass walls to pieces and raked across the room. I dashed back outside, breathing heavily, but Mr. Crabby turned and followed.
    “There!” a voice said from a balcony above me. “Intruder!”
    If I’d wanted to create a distraction, I’d succeeded, but this was not where I wanted to fight. If I got pinned down in the center of the ship, I was crab chow.
    The demonic crustacean lunged at me. I sliced with Riptide, taking off the tip of its claw. It hissed and foamed, but didn’t seem very hurt.
    I tried to remember anything from the old stories that might help with this thing. Annabeth had told me about a monster crab—something about Hercules crushing it under his foot? That wasn’t going to work here. This crab was slightly bigger than my Reeboks.
    Then a weird thought came to me. Last Christmas, my mom and I had brought Paul Blofis to our old cabin at Montauk, where we’d been going forever. Paul had taken me crabbing, and when he’d brought up a net full of the things, he’d shown me how crabs have a chink in their armor, right in the middle of their ugly bellies.
    The only problem was getting to the ugly belly.
    I glanced at the fountain, then at the marble floor, already slick from scuttling crab tracks. I held out my hand, concentrating on the water, and the fountain exploded. Water sprayed everywhere, three stories high, dousing the balconies and the elevators and the windows of the shops. The crab didn’t care. He loved water. He came at me sideways, snapping and hissing, and I ran straight at him, screaming, “AHHHHHHH!”
    Just before we collided, I hit the ground baseball-style and slid on the wet marble floor straight under him. It was like sliding under a seven-ton armored vehicle. All the crab had to do was sit and squash me, but before he realized what was going on, I jabbed Riptide into the chink in his armor, let go of the hilt, and pushed myself out the backside.
    The monster shuddered and hissed. His eyes dissolved. His shell turned bright red as his insides evaporated. The empty shell clattered to the floor in a massive heap.
    I didn’t have time to admire my handiwork. I ran for the nearest stairs while all around me monsters and demigods shouted orders and strapped on their weapons. I was empty-handed. Riptide, being magic, would appear in my pocket sooner or later, but for now it was stuck somewhere under the wreckage of the crab, and I had no time to retrieve it.
    In the elevator foyer on deck eight, a couple of dracaenae slithered across my path. From the waist up, they were women with green scaly skin, yellow eyes, and forked tongues. From the waist down, they had double snake trunks instead of legs. They held spears and weighted nets, and I knew from experience they could use them.
    “What isss thisss?” one said. “A prize for Kronosss!”
    I wasn’t in the mood to play break-the-snake, but in front of me was a stand with a model of the ship, like a YOU ARE HERE display. I ripped the model off the pedestal and hurled it at the first dracaena . The boat smacked her in her face and she went down with the ship. I jumped over her, grabbed her friend’s spear, and swung her around. She slammed into the elevator, and I kept running toward the front of the ship.
    “Get him!” she screamed.
    Hellhounds bayed. An arrow from somewhere whizzed past my face and impaled itself in the