Underworlds #2: When Monsters Escape Read Free

they were. Nobody in his right mind would be in a boat on a night like this.
    “Now … we take to the high seas,” said Jon. We followed him to the end of the pier, where he waved his arm at the tiniest boat I’d ever seen. “Ta-da!”
    “You expect us to fit into that?” Sydney said.
    “Not that one,” said Jon. “This one.” He pointed to one even smaller.
    A sudden flash of red light glowed from the distant power plant.
    “The Cyclopes have already started,” Dana said. “Let’s move it.”
    The minute we climbed into the boat and rowed out beyond the rocks, the sea really let loose. Waves slapped both sides of the tiny hull at once, spraying and soaking us even more. Jon was a good sailor and knew just how to turn the boat into and against the waves, but the farther from shore we rowed, the wilder the sea became.
    Sydney touched my arm. “Owen, maybe you should use the lyre to calm the sea?”
    I still had no idea what power the lyre really held. Or what my dizziness meant. But we needed to get to the power plant, which sort of meant not drowning. I slipped the lyre out of its holster and hunched over it to protect it from the rain, while everyone else put in their earplugs.
    As we headed into the waves, my fingers moved instinctively to the second and fifth strings. My brain seemed to swim with the sound as time rolled more slowly. I wondered how long the uncomfortable feeling would go on, but I kept playing because it was working. The waves calmed around us, and the rowboat neared the island.
    The plant towering against the sky was a coal-burning facility that had shut down when a new hydroelectric power station was built a few towns over. This old place was perched on the very summit of the island. From there, a narrow flight of stairs wound down through the rocks to a short pier jutting into the sea.
    “Head for that pier!” Jon yelled out. “Everyone. One. Two. Come on!”
    While I played the lyre, my friends kept up the rhythm Jon set with his oar. Together we brought the boat in between the waves. Jon tucked it in under the pier and tied it to a rail.
    “Jon, you’re a regular Jason,” I said, referring to the Greek hero who commanded a famous ship.
    “Arrh!” he said, doing his best impression of Charon, the Underworld ferryman we’d met a few days before. “That’ll cost you one blue penny!”
    I instinctively checked my pocket. I had borrowed several pennies from Mags that morning, just in case we needed a ride from Charon later. The pennies were still there.
    “Let’s go,” said Sydney.
    Staring up the ladder, I dreaded what we’d find at the top. Fear iced my veins. But there was no time to waste. I hitched the lyre’s holster on my shoulder and, one by one, we climbed the stairway up through the rocks.

B Y THE TIME WE REACHED THE TOP OF THE STAIRS and saw the power plant up close, it was raining icy bullets. Twin smokestacks of black brick leaned over a hulk of broken windows and sunken walls. The whole place looked ghostly and dead.
    Until the black windows flared with red light.
    “They’re definitely busy with something,” Sydney said.
    We took shelter under an angled coal chute andheard sirens wailing in the distance. The town was still dark. The school was probably filling with people.
    I pushed that thought out of my head. “First things first,” I said. “We get inside.”
    “Okay,” Jon said slowly. “But how did they get inside?”
    “Right,” said Dana. “How are they vanishing and reappearing? There’s nothing in the myths about any magical abilities.”
    “Just your standard, violent one-eyed giants,” said Jon. “Somehow, that doesn’t cheer me up.”
    I suddenly remembered seeing the necklace on the hairy giant. “The giant who fell next to me had a weird stone hanging around his neck. It had marks carved all over it.”
    “Greek letters?” asked Sydney. “Like alpha and omega?”
    I shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know Greek.”
    “Or was it a