The Grand Azathoth Hotel - Chapter 33

Chapter 33

Percy sat in the backseat of the car, which was technically the Sun, and tried not to think too hard about it.

Apollo had the wheel—or whatever passed for a wheel in a flaming chariot that somehow functioned as a convertible—and for once, he wasn’t talking. No off-key haikus, no dramatic soliloquies about his own greatness, no attempts at flirting with anyone in the vehicle. Just silence.

Which was really weird.

Annabeth hadn’t asked questions yet, which was also really weird. Normally, by this point, she would’ve interrogated Apollo about how the whole “driving-the-sun” thing worked, demanded a dozen clarifications, and probably corrected him on at least five points of Greek history. But she just sat there, brow furrowed, looking deep in thought.

Zoe was tense too, sitting stiffly beside Apollo, her expression unreadable. Something was up. Even Thalia had her arms crossed, looking unusually serious.

Percy hated it.

Finally, Annabeth broke the silence. “Lord Apollo, Zoe… you mentioned a hotel. And I have a memory. From when I was younger.” She hesitated, then frowned. “Is the Hotel Manager called James?”

The car screeched.

Which was impressive, considering it was literally the sun. Percy had no idea how a flaming ball of nuclear energy could make tires-on-asphalt noises, but Apollo managed it.

Zoe whipped her head around so fast Percy was half-afraid she’d snap her own neck. She stared at Annabeth like she’d just claimed she was actually Zeus in disguise.

“Explain,” Zoe demanded.

Before Annabeth could answer, Thalia did. Her voice was quiet, almost reluctant. “When we were younger… on the run. Annabeth, Luke, and me.”

Percy’s stomach twisted. He knew she didn’t like talking about Luke. None of them did.

“We were being chased,” Thalia continued, gripping her arms tighter. “A pack of monsters on our tail. We were tired, hurt. We had nowhere to go, so we did what anyone would do. We ran into the first place that looked safe. It was an old hotel. Seemed normal enough. And, well…” She exhaled sharply. “I still get nightmares about it.”

Apollo, who had been listening with an unusual amount of patience, finally spoke. “What happened?”

Annabeth ran a hand through her hair. “It was managed by a guy. Seemed nice. Totally human. We took him for a mortal, not clear-sighted—because the monsters chased us inside. Empousai and a couple of Cyclopes.”

Apollo winced. Then, to Percy’s absolute confusion, he let out a sharp bark of laughter.

“Empousai?” He grinned—not his usual, arrogant, I’m-a-god grin, but something closer to wild amusement. “Empousai in the Hotel?”

Annabeth nodded, looking uneasy. “Yeah. And then… one of the Cyclopes.” She gritted her teeth, and Percy knew exactly how much she hated talking about those things. “He—well, he threatened James. Said he was going to eat him. Right after James asked if the ‘gentlemen were guests.’”

Apollo lost it.

Full-on cackling, nearly doubling over, gasping for breath like this was the funniest thing he’d heard in centuries. He laughed so hard the car veered dangerously to the left, and Zoe had to grab the wheel—again, of the Sun—to keep them from crashing into Mars or something. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and he wiped at them half-heartedly, a few stray chuckles escaping despite his efforts to calm down.

But then, slowly, the laughter faded.

The grin lingered on his face for a moment longer before something more serious settled in its place. Not quite fear, but respect. Like a guy who had just remembered he was laughing in a graveyard.

“So,” he said, still a little breathless. “Continue. What happened next?”

Annabeth shivered. It was barely noticeable, just a slight tremor in her shoulders, but Percy caught it. Before she could answer, Thalia did instead.

“The…” She hesitated, staring straight ahead, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to say it out loud. “The couches.”

There was a beat of silence.

Percy, Bianca, and Grover all turned to look at her like she had just claimed she fought Ares with a pool noodle.

“…The what now?” Percy asked.

Thalia exhaled sharply, shaking her head. “The furniture,” she said, her voice low. “It—it moved.”

Grover frowned. “You mean, like, possessed? Cursed? Classic haunted house stuff?”

Thalia clenched her fists. “No. They were alive. And they… they ate the monsters.”

Bianca made a distressed noise. Percy wasn’t sure if it was because of the ‘alive furniture’ part or the ‘ate the monsters’ part, but honestly? Valid reaction either way.

Percy swallowed. “Hold on—ate?”

Thalia nodded grimly. “I don’t know how else to describe it. The monsters went after James, and the furniture just—moved. Fast. Like they were waiting for an excuse. One second, the Cyclopes were standing there, the next—gone.”

She looked down at her hands, flexing them like she could still feel the phantom weight of that night. “I still remember their eyes. And their tongues.” She swallowed. “Oh, gods. The tongues.”

Bianca looked like she was about to be physically ill. Grover whimpered. Percy tried to picture it, and—nope. His brain noped out immediately.

Meanwhile, Apollo had finished laughing. His face had settled into something calm, knowing, like a teacher who had seen this exact thing happen one too many times.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “That happens sometimes.”

Thalia whipped around to glare at him. “That—that happens?!”

Apollo shrugged. “The Hotel doesn’t like intruders. James doesn’t like intruders. It’s nothing personal.”

Annabeth inhaled sharply. “One of the Cyclopes even put mud inside.”

Apollo stiffened. Like, visibly stiffened. The color drained slightly from his face, his fingers tightening around the reins—which was concerning, considering he was literally driving the Sun.

“Oh, dear Lords,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Glad our world is still intact.”

Bianca, who had been trying to follow along with all this mythology nonsense, stared at him, wide-eyed. “What do you mean, Lord Apollo?”

Apollo exhaled. Then he turned to look at her, serious in a way that made Percy’s stomach twist.

“I mean,” he said, “that Cyclops is lucky the Hotel didn’t wipe our reality from existence.”

Percy had seen Apollo in a lot of moods—annoying, smug, full of himself, dramatic. But this?

This was different.

Apollo’s hands were tense on the reins—which was not comforting considering he was literally driving the sun. His usual easy arrogance was gone, replaced by something serious, something unnerving. Even Zoe looked unsettled, and she usually acted like nothing short of a Titan’s return could shake her.

Annabeth was the first to break the silence. “So… what is this Hotel?”

Zoe nodded, her brow furrowed. “Yes, please explain, Lord Apollo. Lady Artemis spoke of it rarely. I only ever had fragments of the story—things she told me when she thought I was not listening.” She hesitated, glancing between them before continuing. “She said it was the greatest place in existence. That her Uncle James taught her many things. That her mother, Leto, found refuge there when Hera’s wrath was upon her. That it was…” She exhaled, almost wistful. “The happiest time of her life.”

That part didn’t sound too bad. But then Zoe’s expression darkened.

“But she also said it was terrifying. That she had not realized it when she was there, but looking back, she could feel it.”

Percy didn’t like that. At all. He knew what it was like to look back on a place and realize it had been worse than it seemed. The Lotus Hotel had been like that—too perfect while you were inside, but the second you stepped out, it felt like your own memories had betrayed you.

Apollo let out a slow breath and nodded. “Yeah. We didn’t notice at the time. Our… ancestor residing there protected us. But the Hotel made us stronger. At first, we only remembered the good things. Then, little by little, we started recalling the oddities.”

Annabeth’s grip tightened on her knee. “Oddities?”

Apollo hesitated. “Things that shouldn’t have been. Rules that didn’t make sense. Doors that led to places that didn’t exist. Time working differently when you weren’t paying attention.”

Percy really, really didn’t like that.

Apollo sighed. “Listen. James? James is a chill guy. Best uncle. Raised me and Artemis a bit, was cool, treated Mom right. But for nothing in the world would I want the Hotel to be connected to our world.”

Percy swallowed. If Apollo, the guy who had no problem leaving prophecies vague just to mess with people, was this serious, then something was really wrong.

“For everybody’s sake,” Apollo continued, “the Hotel should remain separate. I spent centuries looking for it after it vanished, trying to confirm it was inaccessible.” He let out a humorless laugh. “Looks like I was wrong. It’s already connected.”

Annabeth tensed. “Our adventure with Luke.”

Apollo nodded. “Yep. The prophecy, your fight with Luke, your escape into the Hotel. That was the first sign.”

Percy exchanged a look with Thalia. He didn’t like thinking about Luke, not now, not after everything. But if their run-in with the Hotel had woken it up… that wasn’t good.

“So,” Percy said, trying to focus. “What does this have to do with Lady Artemis?”

Apollo shrugged. “No idea.”

Percy blinked. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Apollo stretched his arms, trying to appear casual, but there was still tension in his shoulders. “But Uncle James? He’ll know.”

Then, Annabeth let out a strangled noise, like a piece of the puzzle had just clicked in her head.

“Wait,” she said, her voice somewhere between shock and complete disbelief. “The Hotel Manager, the moral, James—he’s… your uncle?!”

— — — — 

Taylor wasn’t happy, exactly. But she wasn’t as sad as she used to be.

She had a place now. A small pocket of safety carved out of her day, a place she could escape to when the world pressed down too hard. The café wasn’t much, but it was warm, and James—James was good. He let her stay even when she didn’t buy anything, never made her feel like a burden. Sometimes, he even gave her cocoa, always insisting it was “nothing special, just normal milk,” as if that meant anything to her. It still tasted amazing.

So today, when lunch came around, she took extra detours—careful, always careful—to make sure her bullies wouldn’t follow. Then she slipped through the door, ready to mumble a greeting to Uncle James and—

Huh?

The person behind the counter wasn’t James.

It was a woman—and Taylor immediately felt like she had stepped into the wrong universe.

She was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that didn’t feel real, the kind Taylor had only ever seen on magazine covers or in the background of perfume ads. Tall, elegant, with glossy black hair that cascaded over her shoulders, framing a face that looked too perfect to belong in a place like this. And her figure—Taylor immediately regretted noticing her figure.

Her arms crossed tightly over her own chest before she could stop herself, a familiar wave of self-consciousness crashing over her. She wanted to shrink, to disappear.

The woman—Robin—looked up from behind the counter, meeting Taylor’s eyes with a warm, knowing expression.

“Yes?” she asked gently. “Can I help you?”

Taylor’s mouth opened, but nothing came out at first. Stammering was the worst, because once she started, it was hard to stop.

“I—I was just—” She swallowed hard, already stepping back toward the door. “Oh, uh. James isn’t here. No worries, I—I’ll just—”

“Oh.” Robin’s expression softened. “You must be Taylor.”

Taylor froze.

Robin smiled—not in a fake, polite way, but in a way that made it feel like she actually meant it. “James mentioned you. I’m Robin, the Assistant Manager. Well, the barista when James isn’t around.”

Taylor blinked. She hadn’t expected that.

“Oh,” she said dumbly.

Robin chuckled, then turned smoothly toward the counter and reached for a mug. “I’ll make you a hot cocoa.”

Taylor flinched, panic tightening in her chest. “Oh—I don’t have—” She hesitated, lowering her voice in shame. “I don’t have money.”

Robin didn’t even pause. Instead, she winked.

“On the house.”

— — — 

Magnus the Red stood at the heart of his flagship, the Planet of the Sorcerers, surrounded by his Corvidae psykers and Heretek Mechanicum adepts, their minds bound to his will. The bridge pulsed with warp-born energy, the very fabric of reality bending under his presence. Great braziers of sorcerous fire burned at the edges of the chamber, casting impossible shadows that flickered in unnatural directions. The air thrummed with the whispered canticles of the damned, the mutterings of daemons scratching at the edge of perception.

A Tech-Priest of the Dark Mechanicum, his form a grotesque fusion of metal, flesh, and warp corruption, stepped forward. Mechadendrites coiled like serpents, inscribing blasphemous runes in the air. His voice, a discordant blend of vox-synth and human remains, grated through the chamber.

“We have received the signal, Daemon Primarch. The anomaly has been confirmed. The coordinates are locked.”

Magnus’ single remaining eye glowed, the irises shifting like molten brass.

“Perfect,” he mused, his voice layered with both curiosity and something darker. He turned his towering form toward his Exalted Sorcerers, each clad in baroque, warp-etched Terminator plate, their helms adorned with ever-shifting sigils of the Architect of Fate.

“Prepare the warp drives. Engage the Gellar Fields. Summon the thralls—we depart at once.”

Across the bridge, sorcerers and Rubricae warriors moved to obey, their chanting rising in volume. The vessel shuddered as its daemon-forged systems awakened, the barriers between realspace and the Immaterium thinning. The air grew thick with the scent of ozone, incense, and the copper tang of blood sacrifice.

Magnus turned inward, his mind a maelstrom of thought and foresight.

A being that had flayed Tzeentch? That was… unexpected. He had known creatures that could wound gods, even those who could defy them for a time, but to strip the Architect of Fate Himself? That was something else entirely.

For all his might, Magnus was still shackled to his master’s endless schemes, always a piece in a game he had once thought himself above. But if this James—this so-called Hotel Manager—had undone Tzeentch in some way, then perhaps…

Perhaps Magnus could finally tear himself free.

And if James proved to be just another trick?

Well. Magnus had burned one empire before. He could do it again.