The Sea of Monsters Read Free Page A

been okay with just Tyson—he was worth half a team all by himself—but the visitors on Sloan’s team were almost as tall and strong-looking as Tyson, and there were six of them.
    Matt Sloan spilled a cage full of balls in the middle of the gym.
    “Scared,” Tyson mumbled. “Smell funny.”
    I looked at him. “What smells funny?” Because I didn’t figure he was talking about himself.
    “Them.” Tyson pointed at Sloan’s new friends. “Smell funny.”
    The visitors were cracking their knuckles, eyeing us like it was slaughter time. I couldn’t help wondering where they were from. Someplace where they fed kids raw meat and beat them with sticks.
    Sloan blew the coach’s whistle and the game began. Sloan’s team ran for the center line. On my side, Raj Mandali yelled something in Urdu, probably “I have to go potty!” and ran for the exit. Corey Bailer tried to crawl behind the wall mat and hide. The rest of my team did their best to cower in fear and not look like targets.
    “Tyson,” I said. “Let’s g—”
    A ball slammed into my gut. I sat down hard in the middle of the gym floor. The other team exploded in laughter.
    My eyesight was fuzzy. I felt like I’d just gotten the Heimlich maneuver from a gorilla. I couldn’t believe anybody could throw that hard.
    Tyson yelled, “Percy, duck!”
    I rolled as another dodgeball whistled past my ear at the speed of sound.
    Whooom!
    It hit the wall mat, and Corey Bailer yelped.
    “Hey!” I yelled at Sloan’s team. “You could kill somebody!”
    The visitor named Joe Bob grinned at me evilly. Somehow, he looked a lot bigger now . . . even taller than Tyson. His biceps bulged beneath his T-shirt. “I hope so, Perseus Jackson! I hope so!”
    The way he said my name sent a chill down my back. Nobody called me Perseus except those who knew my true identity. Friends . . . and enemies.
    What had Tyson said? They smell funny .
    Monsters.
    All around Matt Sloan, the visitors were growing in size. They were no longer kids. They were eight-foot-tall giants with wild eyes, pointy teeth, and hairy arms tattooed with snakes and hula women and Valentine hearts.
    Matt Sloan dropped his ball. “Whoa! You’re not from Detroit! Who . . .”
    The other kids on his team started screaming and backing toward the exit, but the giant named Marrow Sucker threw a ball with deadly accuracy. It streaked past Raj Mandali just as he was about to leave and hit the door, slamming it shut like magic. Raj and some of the other kids banged on it desperately but it wouldn’t budge.
    “Let them go!” I yelled at the giants.
    The one called Joe Bob growled at me. He had a tattoo on his biceps that said: JB luvs Babycakes . “And lose our tasty morsels? No, Son of the Sea God. We Laistrygonians aren’t just playing for your death. We want lunch!”
    He waved his hand and a new batch of dodgeballs appeared on the center line—but these balls weren’t made of red rubber. They were bronze, the size of cannon balls, perforated like wiffle balls with fire bubbling out the holes. They must’ve been searing hot, but the giants picked them up with their bare hands.
    “Coach!” I yelled.
    Nunley looked up sleepily, but if he saw anything abnormal about the dodgeball game, he didn’t let on. That’s the problem with mortals. A magical force called the Mist obscures the true appearance of monsters and gods from their vision, so mortals tend to see only what they can understand. Maybe the coach saw a few eighth graders pounding the younger kids like usual. Maybe the other kids saw Matt Sloan’s thugs getting ready to toss Molotov cocktails around. (It wouldn’t have been the first time.) At any rate, I was pretty sure nobody else realized we were dealing with genuine man-eating bloodthirsty monsters.
    “Yeah. Mm-hmm,” Coach muttered. “Play nice.”
    And he went back to his magazine.
    The giant named Skull Eater threw his ball. I dove aside as the fiery bronze comet sailed past my