THERE WAS NO MORNING IN THE MAZE, but once everyone woke up and had a fabulous breakfast of granola bars and juice boxes, they kept travelling.

The old stone tunnels changed to dirt with cedar beams, like a gold mine or something. Annabeth started getting agitated.

"This isn't right," she said. "It should still be stone."

They came to a cave where stalactites hung low from the ceiling. In the center of the dirt floor was a rectangular pit, like a grave.

Grover shivered. "It smells like the Underworld in here."

Then Selena saw something glinting at the edge of the pit—a foil wrapper. Percy shined his flashlight into the hole and they saw a half-chewed cheeseburger floating in brown carbonated muck.

"Nico," Percy stated, "He was summoning the dead again."

Tyson whimpered. "Ghosts were here. I don't like ghosts."

"We've got to find him." Percy said before he started to run,

"Percy!" Selena yelled before they followed after him.

He ducked into a tunnel and saw light up ahead. By the time Annabeth, Selena, Tyson, and Grover caught up with him, Percy was staring at daylight streaming through a set of bars above his head. They were under a steel grate made out of metal pipes. They could see trees and blue sky.

"Where are we?" Percy wondered.

Then a shadow fell across the grate and a cow stared down at them. It looked like a normal cow except with was a weird color—bright red, like a cherry. Selena didn't know cows came in that color.

"Do you think it make strawberry milk?" Selena asked and Annabeth elbowed her.

The cow mooed, put one hoof tentatively on the bars, then backed away.

"It's a cattle guard," Grover said.

"A what?" IPercyasked.

"They put them at the gates of ranches so cows can't get out. They can't walk on them."

"How do you know that?"

Grover huffed indignantly. "Believe me, if you had hooves, you'd know about cattle guards. They're annoying!"

Percy turned to Annabeth. "Didn't Hera say something about a ranch? We need to check it out. Nico might be there."

She hesitated. "All right. But how do we get out?"

Tyson solved that problem by hitting the cattle guard with both hands. It popped off and went flying out of sight. They heard a CLANG! and a startled Moo! Tyson blushed.

"Sorry, cow!" he called.

Then he gave them a boost out of the tunnel.

They were on a ranch, all right. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon, dotted with oak trees and cactuses and boulders. A barbed wire fence ran from the gate in either direction. Cherry-colored cows roamed around, grazing on clumps of grass.

"Red cattle," Annabeth said. "The cattle of the sun."

"What?" Percy asked.

"They're sacred to Apollo."

"Holy cows?"

"Exactly. But what are they doing—"

"Wait," Grover said. "Listen."

At first everything seemed quiet...but then Selena heard it: the distant baying of dogs. The sound got louder. Then the underbrush rustled, and two dogs broke through. Except it wasn't two dogs. It was one dog with two heads. It looked like a greyhound, long and snaky and sleek brown, but its neck V'd into two heads, both of them snapping and snarling and generally not very glad to see them.

"Bad Janus dog!" Tyson cried.

"Arf!" Grover told it, and raised a hand in greeting.

The two-headed dog bared its teeth. Selena guessed it wasn't impressed that Grover could speak animal. Then its master lumbered out of the woods, and Selena realized the dog was the least of their problems.

He was a huge guy with stark white hair, a straw cowboy hat, and a braided white beard— kind of like Father Time, if Father Time went redneck and got totally jacked. He was wearing jeans, a DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS T-shirt, and a denim jacket with the sleeves ripped off so you could see his muscles. On his right bicep was a crossed-swords tattoo. He held a wooden club about the size of a nuclear warhead, with six-inch spikes bristling at the business end.

"Heel, Orthus," he told the dog.

The dog growled at them once more, just to make his feelings clear, just to make his feelings clear, then circled back to his master's feet. The man looked them up and down, keeping his club ready.

"What've we got here?" he asked. "Cattle rustlers?"

"Just travelers," Annabeth answered, "We're on a quest."

The man's eye twitched. "Half-bloods, eh?"

Percy started to say, "How did you know—"

Annabeth put her hand on Percy's arm to shut him up, "I'm Annabeth, daughter of Athena. This is Percy, son of Poseidon. Selena, um, unclaimed. Grover the satyr. Tyson the—"

"Cyclops," the man finished. "Yes, I can see that." He glowered at Percy. "And I know half-bloods because I am one, sonny. I'm Eurytion, the cowherd for this here ranch. Son of Ares. You came through the Labyrinth like the other one, I reckon."

"The other one?" Percy asked. "You mean Nico di Angelo?"

"We get a load of visitors from the Labyrinth," Eurytion said darkly. "Not many ever leave."

"Wow," Selena said nervously."I feel welcome."

The cowherd glanced bend him like someone was watching. Then he lowered his voice. "I'm only going to say this once, demigods. Get back in the maze now. Before it's too late."

"We're not leaving," Annabeth insisted. "Not until we see this other demigod. Please."

Eurytion grunted. "Then you leave me no choice, missy. I've got to take you to the boss."

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