The Grand Azathoth Hotel - Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Ah, fresh air.

James stepped out of the Hotel, stretching with a satisfied sigh. It had been way too long since he last got out. The air was crisp, carrying a faint citrusy scent, mixed with the usual earthy aroma of a well-kept park. He rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck as he took in his surroundings.

And paused.

Huh.

A garden.

That was new.

He didn’t remember the Hotel being in a garden. Had someone done renovations? Maybe Robin had been feeling ambitious and decided to spice things up. He’d have to check with her later.

He took another look around. It wasn’t bad, exactly. It was neat, symmetrical, pleasant in the way all high-end gardens were supposed to be. Manicured hedges, perfectly trimmed shrubs, artfully arranged flower beds in just the right balance of colors to make it look effortless. Stone pathways curved between the trees in smooth, elegant patterns, like the kind you’d see in those overpriced palace gardens where rich people strolled around pretending to be deep in thought.

Nice.

Boring.

Beside him, one of the kids—Zoe, he thought—had gone very, very still. Her expression was one of pure reverence, her wide eyes taking in the landscape like she had just stepped into a holy site. Her lips parted slightly, as if even speaking aloud here would be sacrilege. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, she breathed,

“The Garden of the Hesperides…”

James blinked. He turned his head, following her gaze. He expected something incredible. A garden beyond mortal comprehension, something so stunning it would knock him off his feet.

What he saw instead was—

An orchard.

James squinted.

He looked again.

Yep.

Still just an orchard.

He had expected something spectacular—floating trees, maybe? Plants that bloomed in colors the human brain couldn’t comprehend? Some kind of mystical ambiance that would justify the look of pure awe on Zoe’s face?

Instead, it was just a bunch of fruit trees.

Okay, fine. Maybe they were a little fancier than usual.

The trunks were thicker than average, their bark a smooth golden color that caught the light a little too well. Some of the trees looked downright gnarled, their branches twisting into ugly shapes, as if someone had tried to prune them centuries ago and failed spectacularly. Their leaves had a faint unnatural sheen, flickering between green and gold in the breeze, but at the end of the day, they were still just trees.

And the apples?

Sure, they looked nice.

Big, plump, ridiculously perfect, like they had been grown in some five-star Michelin orchard where people hand-massaged the branches and whispered affirmations to the fruit every morning. But aside from their suspiciously flawless appearance, they were still just apples.

James frowned, glancing back at Zoe.

She still looked like she was standing on sacred ground.

Huh.

Then, something caught his eye.

Near the center of the garden, at the base of the largest tree, something big and dark was coiled around its trunk.

James took a step closer, rubbing his chin.

A dog.

A big dog.

A really, really big dog.

His eyes trailed over its massive, muscular frame, curled like a living chain around the base of the tree. Its dark scales glistened slightly under the sun, almost like reptilian armor, and its claws dug deep into the earth. With each slow, rumbling breath, its chest expanded and fell, the soil beneath it shifting slightly.

James hummed, unimpressed.

He had been hoping for something a little more exotic.

This was just a weird guard dog.

Sure, it was big, but the Hotel had way bigger things slithering around the lower floors. Hell, the janitor closet had more threatening presences lurking inside it. And the scales? He’d seen carpets in the Hotel that had a weirder texture. The dog looked less threatening than a poodle. 

Honestly, he’d expected more. James took another deep breath, exhaling through his nose. This place reminded him of the Hotel’s own unfinished garden. Well. The not-yet-awakened garden. The one he kept meaning to fix up, but he just never got around to it. It was on his to-do list, somewhere between figure out which was Death's favorite color (probably Black, but it never hurt to ask) and stop Number 7 from leaving funny post-it notes on his desk.

Yeah, the garden. Maybe he should grab a few flowers, a sapling or two—just to start filling it out. And some apple. They weren’t exactly up to the Hotel’s usual standards, but they were a decent start. James nodded to himself, already mentally planning where he’d plant them back at the Hotel.

Nudists, Arguments, and Apples

Yeah, the garden.

Maybe he should grab a few flowers, a sapling or two—just to start filling out the Hotel’s garden. It wasn’t much, but you had to start somewhere. These trees weren’t exactly up to the Hotel’s standards, but hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

James nodded to himself, already mentally arranging where he’d plant them. Maybe near the bar? Or the courtyard, if the Hotel decided to have one that day.

Meanwhile, Zoe was talking about something.

“—the sacred trees of the goddesses, untouched by time, each bearing the golden fruit of—”

James absently nodded.

“—protected by the General himself, Atlas, my father, who once stood—”

He hummed in vague acknowledgment.

“—and the Hesperides, my sisters, entrusted with the most sacred—”

Uh-huh.

He was mostly thinking about Arty. Or Temis? Wait—no. That was the wrong way around. Artemis. Arty. There we go.

He frowned, looking around the garden.

Nothing particularly interesting. Just the big dog, the golden trees, the perfectly normal orchard, and a few naked women walking toward them.

Wait.

What?

James blinked.

Yep.

Naked women.

They were graceful, statuesque, with golden sun-kissed skin, their hair flowing like liquid gold down their backs. They moved with an effortless, inhuman elegance, their expressions somewhere between bored and disdainful. And, most notably, they were not wearing a damn thing.

Huh.

That was unexpected.

Zoe, on the other hand, had gone stiff as a board.

The tallest of the women stepped forward, tilting her chin up, looking Zoe over like she was a particularly offensive stain on their perfect garden. When she spoke, her voice was smooth, but her words were… off. Like someone speaking a strange, formal version of English, perfectly correct but somehow wrong.

“Well. The lost one returns.”

James blinked. That was a weird way to greet someone.

Another of the women, standing just behind the first, folded her arms and let out a delicate, dramatic sigh.

“And here we thought we were rid of you.”

Zoe flinched, but her expression remained stony. “I did not come for you.”

“Of course not.” The first woman smiled, but there was nothing kind about it. She gestured toward the others. “Why would our lost little sister seek us out? She is no daughter of the evening anymore. No, she follows—what is it now? A man? Or a goddess, playing at war?”

Another of the women snickered. James scratched the back of his head. So… he had walked into a nudist camp. Great. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, ladies. Didn’t mean to intrude.”

He gestured vaguely to his fully clothed self.

“Didn’t realize the dress code was optional. Hope I’m not making anyone uncomfortable.”

There was a stunned silence.

Then—outrage.The Hesperides spluttered in rage, their dignified composure shattering all at once. One of them looked personally offended, another gasped like he’d just slapped her across the face, and a third hissed something in a language he didn’t recognize, probably an insult of divine proportions.

Apollo, meanwhile, was cackling.

James turned around, missing all of it.

Well, since he had time to kill… James plucked a yellow apple from the branch—only for the massive, scaled dog to snap at him. Without missing a beat, he tapped its snout, muttered a calm, “No.” and patted its head. The beast hesitated, clearly confused, but James just kept scratching behind its ears, completely unfazed, while taking a bite of the apple. “Who is a cutie ? See? Much better.” The dog let out a deep, bewildered huff.

— — — 

Zoe didn’t know what to think.

Her sisters stood before her, exuding their usual smugness, the sacred Garden of the Hesperides stretched around them in all its golden glory, and—if Lord Apollo was to be believed—this bizarre man, James, had led them here, which could only mean one thing. Lady Artemis was nearby.

This should have been a moment of reverence, of focus, of divine importance. Instead, she was watching this utter fool insult the sacred guardians of the Garden of the Gods by insinuating they were… nudists.

Her sisters recoiled in offense, expressions of pure outrage, their divine dignity absolutely shredded by a single offhand comment. Behind her, Apollo and Percy outright snickered. Zoe clenched her fists. She was going to kill them. 

Then James moved. And everybody turned to watch as he casually strolled toward the Queen of Olympus’s sacred golden apple tree.

This time, it was her sisters who chuckled.

“Thy companion will die, sister of us,” one of them sneered, her voice dripping with satisfaction.

Zoe’s stomach dropped. The air changed. The temperature plummeted, the very atmosphere thickening with something primordial, suffocating, as the massive coiled form of Ladon stirred. The Garden’s ultimate guardian, the serpent-dragon of the gods, was waking. At first, it was just a shift, an almost lazy stretch—the great black-scaled form unfurling, shifting in the dappled golden light. A long, slow inhale echoed through the garden, like the trees themselves were bending toward him, drawn into the dark, endless abyss of his lungs.

Then, a growl. Low. Bone-deep. The kind of sound that didn’t just travel through the air—it resonated inside you. It curdled the blood. It tapped into something ancient, something that whispered to every living creature, you are prey.

Ladon lifted his head.

His many eyes gleamed, stretching along his enormous, serpentine body, blinking out of sync, each one holding an unnatural golden glow, like they had been forged from stolen starlight. His jaws cracked open, revealing rows upon rows of needle-like fangs, each one dripping with divine venom that hissed and sizzled as it hit the ground.

Then—

He roared.

It was not a normal sound. It was a cosmic detonation, a thunderous rip in reality, a scream so ancient and powerful that the very fabric of the world trembled. The sky rippled. The trees bent away. The earth itself shuddered under the sheer force of it. A beast forged for only one purpose had awakened. To kill.

“Holy shit.”

Percy’s voice was small.

“Language.” Annabeth’s voice was automatic.

“Holy. Fucking. Shit.” Thalia corrected, her voice very much not automatic.

Ladon lunged.

Fangs bared, jaws wide enough to swallow a horse whole, his titanic form exploded forward, a black blur of scales and death, each muscle coiling, contracting, launching—And James? Did not react. There was no flinch, no panic, no acknowledgment that the most terrifying entity any of them had ever seen was about to reduce him to a smear on the ground. The unstoppable force of Ladon’s attack met—

A single poke.

James, without even looking up, casually lifted a hand and tapped the dragon’s snout.

Ladon’s head exploded. Not figuratively. In a shower of divine gore, the front half of his skull simply ceased to exist. Zoe felt her soul leave her body. Her sisters gasped. The Garden of the Hesperides had never witnessed such blasphemy.

“WHAT THE FUCK.”

The dragon reeled back, head regenerating rapidly—of course, the apples had made him immortal—but before he could strike again, James simply wrapped an arm around his enormous, still-reforming neck…

And put him in a chokehold. A chokehold. Like the twenty-headed, divine dragon of Olympus was just a rowdy puppy that needed calming down. James cooed.

“Who’s a cutie? You are! You are!”

Ladon, apex predator, killer of heroes, looked like he was about to either pass out from lack of air or simply expire from sheer existential terror.

Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed. Then, before their disbelieving eyes, James reached up, plucked a golden apple from the tree, and took a bite. A tense silence fell over the garden. The most sacred, delicious, immortal, divine fruit of Olympus, forbidden to all but the gods themselves, passed his lips.

Then—

“Pft—”

James made a face and spat it out.

“Puah.” He wiped his mouth. “These are totally shitty.”

Zoe couldn’t breathe.

Her sisters looked on the verge of fainting. Apollo was wheezing. Percy’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Thalia looked like she was reassessing her entire life. Then, as if nothing had happened, James dropped the passed-out colossal, divine, sacred guardian of Olympus onto the ground like he was done playing with a particularly boring dog, turned back to them, and clapped his hands together.

“Well! Arty is in this area, isn’t she?” He grinned. “Let’s go look for her!”

And with that, he walked off.

Like nothing had just happened.

— — — 

Grover played the strange flute. It was made of a material he did not know—light as wood, but cold like metal, with a faint give beneath his fingertips, like skin stretched too thin. But he played it. The blonde, handsome man had told him to, had looked at him with eyes too steady and too blue, and said, “If you want to survive, play.” And Grover very much wanted to survive, so he obeyed. He played and played and played, even when his mouth went dry, even when his fingers cramped, even when every part of him screamed to stop—but he could not.

They were in a garden. The air was warm, thick with the scent of crushed grass and something sweeter beneath it, like ripe fruit gone soft. James sat cross-legged in front of the dragon. The dragon didn’t move much now. It blinked. Sometimes it shuddered. But James didn’t notice. He was too far inside himself. Too quiet. Too calm.

And it was strange: nobody remarked or asked why Grover was playing. Not James, not the dragon, not the birds above them who had gone still in the trees. The music floated through the garden like a mist, and everything it touched seemed to dull, to soften. Grover wanted to scream, to smash the flute against the stones and shake James awake—but the music wouldn’t let him. The handsome man’s promise echoed in his skull like a curse: Play, if you want to survive. And so he did.