SUDDENLY, THE ROAD, TACO RESTAURANT AND THE whole town of Gila Claw was gone. The six of them were standing in the middle of the junkyard, mountains of scrap metal stretched out in every direction.

"What did she want with you?" Bianca asked, once Percy told them about Aphrodite.

"Oh, uh, not sure," He looked over at Selena and she stared back in confusion until he looked away, "She said to be careful in her husband's junkyard. She said not to pick anything up."

Zoe narrowed her eyes. "The Goddess of love would not make a special trip to tell thee that. Be careful, Percy. Aphrodite has led many heroes astray."

"For once I agree with Zoe," Thalia said. "You can't trust Aphrodite."

Grover was looking at Percy funny. Being empathic and all, he could usually read his emotions, and Selena had the feeling he knew exactly what Aphrodite had talked to him about.

"So," Percy said, anxious to change the subject, "how do we get out of here?"

"That way," Zoe answered. "That is west."

"How can you tell?"

Zoe rolled her eyes, "Ursa Major is in the north," she said, "which means that must be west." She pointed west, then at the northern constellation, which was hard to make out because there were so many other stars.

"Oh, yeah," Percy commented, "The bear thing."

Zoe looked offended. "Show some respect. It was a fine bear. A worthy opponent."

"You act like it was real."

"Guys," Grover broke in. "Look!"

They'd reached the crest of a junk mountain. Piles of metal objects glinted in the moonlight: broken heads of bronze horses, metal legs from human statues, smashed chariots, tons of shields and swords and other weapons, along with more modern stuff, like cars that gleamed gold and silver, refrigerators, washing machines, and computer monitors.

"Whoa," Bianca gasped, "That stuff... some of it looks like real gold."

"It is," Thalia said grimly. "Like Percy said, don't touch anything. This is the junkyard of the Gods."

"Junk?" Grover picked up a beautiful crown made of gold, silver, and jewels. It was broken on one side, as if it had been split by an axe. "You call this junk?"

He bit off a point and began to chew. "It's delicious!"

Thalia swatted the crown out of his hands. "I'm serious!"

Selena leaned down and picked up a locket. One the inside was a picture of a little brunette girl and a woman who looked just like her, just years older. It was a mother and daughter.

"Look!" Bianca said. She raced down the hill, tripping over bronze coils and golden plates. She picked up a bow that glowed silver in moonlight. "A Hunter's bow!" She yelped in surprise as the bow began to shrink, and became a hair clip shaped like a crescent moon. "It's just like Percys sword!"

Zoe's face was grim. "Leave it, Bianca."

"But—"

"It is here for a reason. Anything thrown away in this junkyard must stay in this yard. It is defective. Or cursed."

Selena sighed and chucked the locket. She was curious as to where those women were now.

Bianca reluctantly set the hair clip down.

"I don't like this place," Thalia said. She gripped the shaft of her spear.

"You think we're going to get attacked by killer refrigerators?" Percy asked.

She gave him a hard look. "Zoe is right, Percy. Things get thrown away here for a reason. Now come on, let's get across the yard."

"That's the second time you've agreed with Zoe," Percy muttered, but Thalia ignored him.

They started picking their way through the hills and valleys of junk. The stuff seemed to go on forever, and if it hadn't been for Ursa Major, the six of them would've gotten lost. All the hills pretty much looked the same.

Selena would like to say we left the stuff alone, but there was too much cool junk not to check out some of it. Percy found an electric guitar shaped like Apollo's lyre. Grover found a broken tree made out of metal. It had been chopped to pieces, but some of the branches still had golden birds in them, and they whirred around when Grover picked them up, trying to flap their wings.

Finally, they saw the edge of the junkyard about half a mile ahead of them, the lights of a highway stretching through the desert. But between them and the road...

"What is that?" Bianca gasped.

Ahead of them was a hill much bigger and longer than the others. It was like a metal mesa, the length of a football field and as tall as goalposts. At one end of the mesa was a row of ten thick metal columns, wedged tightly together.

Bianca frowned. "They look like—"

"Toes," Grover said.

Bianca nodded. "Really, really large toes."

Zoe and Thalia exchanged nervous looks.

"Let's go around," Thalia said. "Far around."

"But the road is right over there," Percy protested. "Quicker to climb over."

PING.

Thalia hefted her spear and Zoe drew her bow, but then they realized it was only Grover. He had thrown a piece of scrap metal at the toes and hit one, making a deep echo, as if the column were hollow.

"Why did you do that?" Zoe demanded.

Grover cringed. "I don't know. I, uh, don't like fake feet?"

"Dude... not cool." Selena sighed,

"Come on." Thalia looked at me. "Around."

Selena didn't argue. The toes were starting to freak her out, too. I mean, who sculpts ten-foot-tall metal toes and sticks them in a junkyard?

After several minutes of walking, they finally stepped onto the highway, an abandoned but well-lit stretch of black asphalt.

"We made it out," Zoe said. "Thank the Gods."

But apparently, the Gods didn't want to be thanked. At that moment, Selena heard a sound like a thousand trash compactors crushing metal.

Selena whirled around. Behind them, the scrap mountain was boiling, rising up. The ten toes tilted over, and Selena realized why they looked like toes. They were toes. The thing that rose up from the metal was a bronze giant in full Greek battle armor. He was impossibly tall—a skyscraper with legs and arms. He gleamed wickedly in the moonlight. He looked down at them, and his face was deformed. The left side was partially melted off. His joints creaked with rust, and across his armored chest, written in thick dust by some giant finger, were the words WASH ME.

"Talos!" Zoe gasped.

"Who—who's Talos?" Percy stuttered.

"One of Hephaestus's creations," Thalia informed them. "But that can't be the original. It's too small. A prototype, maybe. A defective model.

The metal giant didn't like the word defective.

He moved one hand to his sword belt and drew his weapon. The sound of it coming out of its sheath was horrible, metal screeching against metal. The blade was a hundred feet long, easy. It looked rusty and dull, but Selena figured that it didn't matter. Getting hit with that thing would be like getting hit with a battleship.

"Someone took something," Zoe said. "Who took something?" She stared accusingly at Percy.

Percy shook his head. "I'm a lot of things, but I'm not a thief."

Bianca didn't say anything. Selena could swear she looked guilty, but she didn't have much time to think about it, because the giant defective Talos took one step toward them, closing half the distance and making the ground shake.

"Run!" Grover yelped.

Great advice, except that it was hopeless. At a leisurely stroll, this thing could outdistance them easily.

They split up, the way they'd done with the Nemean Lion. Thalia drew her shield and held it up as she ran down the highway. The giant swung his sword and took out a row of power lines, which exploded in sparks and scattered across Thalia's path.

Zoe's arrows whistled toward the creature's face but shattered harmlessly against the metal. Grover brayed like a baby goat and went climbing up a mountain of metal.

Selena ran up one of the hill of scraps, knowing her dagger wasn't going to do anything against the metal giant.

The giant kept coming after Grover. It stabbed its sword into a junk hill, missing Grover by a few feet, but scrap metal made an avalanche over him, and then I couldn't see him anymore.

"No!" Thalia yelled. She pointed her spear, and a blue arc of lightning shot out, hitting the monster in his rusty knee, which buckled. The giant collapsed but immediately started to rise again. It was hard to tell if it could feel anything. There weren't any emotions in its half-melted face, but Selena got the sense that it was about as ticked off as a twenty-story-tall metal warrior could be.

"Oh boy." Selena sighed,