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FIC: The Golden Fleece, chpt 13
Title: The Golden Fleece (Daughter of Wisdom 2)
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Tyson, Luke Castellan, Clarisse La Rue, Chiron, Thalia Grace, various others, Gen
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Summary: Annabeth Chase returns to Camp Half-Blood to find the safety of her home shattered: Thalia's tree has been poisoned, destroying the magic barriers protecting the camp, and Chiron is blamed. Only one thing can save the camp, and it's up to Annabeth and her best friend Percy to find it. The problem is, they set off with a monster in tow. Once again, the quest and the surprises it has in store is about to change everything she thinks she knows. An alternate PoV retelling of Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: Tyson Buys Some Dangerous Doughnuts
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Tyson
Word Count: 3,895
Chapter Summary: Annabeth takes Percy and Tyson to an old hideout, where they run into a nest.
A/N: While writing this chapter, it occurred to me how many plot holes there could be in canon. Such as how Polyphemus caught Grover on a boulevard in Florida when he supposedly lives on his island and doesn't appear to leave it. While I haven't actually figured that one out (fortunately it doesn't affect my plot too much), I hope I've managed to make sense of others … like where Annabeth gets half her info and the mystery of Luke's motivations. Let me know what you think!
And of course, many lines of dialogue in this chapter were taken from Sea of Monsters.
Back to Fic Content Page
As soon as the cruise ship was well out of sight, Percy turned down the cap of the flask a little so that we were still speeding along, but at a pace less likely to give us whiplash. The winds were noisy and we had to yell to hear each other over them, but we did our best to compare notes on what we'd heard on board the Princess Andromeda.
'Luke knows where to find the Fleece, too,' Percy said. 'We're probably going to be racing him to it, now. And he's got a better ship.'
'How would he know, though?'
'Didn't you hear him? He had a spy at camp!'
It was the part of their conversation I'd missed, and I cursed myself for letting Luke get to me.
'Spy is bad,' Tyson said. 'Must warn camp.'
I didn't like to agree with him, but he was right. Who would we warn, though? I couldn't see us telling Tantalus-like he'd even care-and Mr D was probably just as bad. We had no solid camp leader. I might have considered Clarisse, but of course she would have left for her quest by now.
'Maybe Beckendorf …' I suggested, but I didn't know if I trusted him enough. We had no idea who Luke's spy was. Even though I didn't think it was Beckendorf, I really couldn't know. Anyone we contacted could end up being the spy. The list of people I trusted implicitly in this world was depressingly short: Chiron, Percy …
Luke, whispered a voice in my head. I shut it up. Last year, he would have been the first person on my list, but he had just betrayed us and tried to kill us again.
'Let's try and contact Chiron anyway,' I said. 'Even if he's not at camp, maybe he'll have some ideas.'
The good thing about being on water was that there was plenty of spray for a rainbow. All we needed to do was throw in one of the drachmas Hermes had given us and make our prayer to Iris.
Chiron appeared in the sea spray, his face illuminated at intervals by revolving neon lights that changed colour every few seconds. I guessed he had to be hanging out with his crazy relatives. I'd only met them once, when they hijacked camp four years ago to hold a dance.
Chiron had to shout our names over the heavy bass beat in the background. 'Where are you-not at camp?' Between the noisy music on his end and the roaring wind on ours, it was hard for either of us to make ourselves heard.
'We left,' Percy shouted over the noise. 'Hermes gave us a quest and we snuck out. We just found Luke-he did poison Thalia's tree, and he's growing Kronos in a golden casket. We only just got away.'
'And he's got a spy at camp,' I interjected with the most important point. 'We don't know how to warn them, though.'
'I feared as much! And I'm afraid I can't-' The sound of his next few words was drowned out by hoots from his fellow centaurs. 'Where are you now?'
'Somewhere off the Jersey coast, I think,' Percy said. 'We're trying to get to the Sea of Monsters. That's where Grove is, and the Golden Fleece!'
'Percy, you have to watch out for-' The centaurs in the background whooped again. 'Curse my relatives!' Something went flying over Chiron's head. 'Annabeth, you shouldn't have let Percy leave camp! But if you do get the Fleece-' He was interrupted again by centaur cheers and a dramatic increase in the volume of the music. I could tell he was yelling at the top of the voice now, but all we could hear from him were individual words: 'Miami,' 'watch,' 'message,' and then the image burst apart.
'Pony, don't go!' Tyson said dejectedly, reaching out to where Chiron's face had been. The sea spray hit his hand and showered over us. I wiped my face and glared at him.
'Miami,' I said to Percy. 'That's in Florida. Do you think he means that's where the Fleece is?'
'Well, we already know where it is,' Percy reminded me. 'Thirty-two, thirty, seventy-five, twelve. What do you think he meant, when he said to watch out for … something?'
'It could be anything. There's so many things we'll have to face-Polyphemus, for starters. But just getting to the Sea of Monsters will be difficult. There are only two known entrances: it's either SCylla and Charybdis or-'
'What's that? Or should that be who?'
'Scylla and Charybdis,' I repeated, rolling my eyes. 'They're-well, you know that saying, "between a rock and a hard place?" That's literally what they are. Charybdis is a whirlpool that sucks everything in and eats it, and Scylla is this monster on a rock cliff that snatches sailors out of boats and eats them.'
'Great,' Percy said. 'So our options are "how do we want to get eaten?" How did anyone ever get to the Sea of Monsters with them guarding the entrance?'
'There's another way, the one Jason took. Through the clashing rocks.'
'Rocks are smashing?' Tyson asked.
'It clashes at regular intervals.' I told them the story of how Jason and the Argonauts had tested the rocks with a dove, timing its flight through so that they knew how quickly they would have to row their way across. 'As long as we time it right, we can get past. We have the flask-we should be able to power through, I think.'
'Okay, let's do that,' Percy nodded. 'That doesn't sound too bad.'
'Once we're in,' I warned, 'it's still full of dangers. I don't know about everything, but there's the island of the Sirens, and the Cretan Labyrinth-you know, the home of the Minotaur-should be somewhere in there, too.'
Percy made a face. 'Can we just not land there? I already fought the Minotaur once.'
'It's probably still in Tartarus,' I agreed, 'but the Labyrinth is deadly enough without it. A lot of heroes were driven crazy just trying to find their way out. I don't know if it stayed in the Sea of Monsters or if it migrated elsewhere, though. Anyway, we can avoid that, but we'll have to be careful with the Sirens, because they can draw you in with their singing.'
I recounted as many of the dangerous spots that I could recall, but I knew I had to be missing a lot. There were scores of tales from the Sea of Monsters-Jason, and also Odysseus, and Aeneas … like I'd told Percy before, all the ancient Greek heroes had sailed through it. There were too many stories to remember them all. We might meet with any one of them.
Land started to come into sight after I'd exhausted all the stories I knew. I watched the coastline speed past for a while before I realised I recognised the shoreline. It was dotted with hotels and resorts and I'd actually spent some time there at spring break with my dad and stepfamily. It looked different from the sea, but there was the unmistakeable lighthouse off Fort Story.
'That's Virginia Beach!' I said, amazed. It had taken me days to get up to New York when I left Richmond, but overnight, I'd already gone past my home. It was a little surreal. 'How did the Princess Andromeda travel so far overnight? That's like-'
'Five hundred and thirty nautical miles,' Percy supplied.
'How did you know that?'
Percy looked bemused, as though he had no idea where he'd pulled the numbers from. 'I-I'm not sure.'
An idea started to grow in my head. 'Percy, what's our position?'
He replied as though on autopilot, 'Thirty-six degrees, forty-four minutes north, seventy-six degrees, two minutes west.' His eyes grew wide. 'Whoa. How did I know that?'
Perfect nautical positioning. It had to be a power from Poseidon. 'Because of your dad,' I told him, already thinking of how useful this would be. 'When you're at sea, you have perfect bearings. That is so cool.' If we could just get our hands on a map, we'd know our position instantly. We'd be able to navigate easily to wherever we needed to go!
Tyson tapped Percy's shoulder to get his attention. 'Other boat is coming.'
We both turned to see a coastguard speedboat charging up to us, flashing its light like a cop car giving chase.
Percy groaned. 'We can't let them catch us. They'll ask too many questions.'
We were right at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. If we turned in and hugged the coast, it should take us right up the James River. Where Luke and Thalia had brought me, the night after I'd met them.
'I know a place we can hide,' I said.
Percy adjusted the flask so that we put on a bit more speed, enough to outpace the coastguard vessel. I directed him into Chesapeake Bay and left into the James River. I hoped I could still find the place-it had been six years, after all-but I had the faint memory from my dream several nights ago to help as well. Once we got further upriver, the foliage began to look familiar. It was in a swampy, overgrown marsh, the kind of natural preserve that doesn't change much over the years. We beached the lifeboat and camouflaged it with branches.
'Not a good place,' Tyson complained, but I ignored him. What did he know, anyway?
I led them through the brush, the memory of traversing this ground with Thalia and Luke becoming clearer. It had been my second day travelling with them; the night before they had found me hiding out in an ironworks compound. Luke had given me his dagger-the same one that weighed heavily in my pocket now. They'd told me about their life as we walked, about moving from hideout to hideout because it wasn't wise to stay in one place too long-monsters tended to find them easier that way because their scent built up. They'd created a network that they moved around.
Fortunately, the hideout was exactly where we'd left it all those years ago. It was so well hidden that no one had found it in all this time. Our supplies were still stacked up against one of the walls: sleeping bags, blankets, kerosene lamps and a stash of bronze. It was all gear that Luke and Thalia had stolen during their years on the run.
I explained to Percy about the safe houses. Talking about it made me sad. It was reminding me of what I'd felt on the Princess Andromeda-the despair at how everything had gone wrong, with Thalia gone and Luke betraying us. I remembered Luke promising he'd be my family, and now the three of us were all broken up.
Did Luke ever think about our time together? Probably not. He had all the riches and rewards he could dream of, and a life of luxury on his cruise ship. No need to fear monsters either, when they were following his direction.
He was so different.
And maybe I didn't want the current Luke to think about us. Because I couldn't think how he could possibly remember what we'd been and still do everything he was doing now.
'Um, Tyson?' Percy said quietly. He murmured something to him, attempting to send him off quietly. I only noticed because Tyson was loud about leaving.
'I will look for powdered doughnuts in the wilderness,' he announced. It was a declaration so absurd that I didn't even try to understand what he was getting at.
'Hey,' Percy said, taking a seat on an ice chest opposite me. 'I'm sorry about, you know, seeing Luke.'
I pulled out my dagger and looked into it, feeling the same conflict about it as I'd had at the start of summer. My trusty weapon was tainted.
I sighed. 'It's not your fault.'
'He let us go too easily.'
I rubbed at the blade with a rag from Thalia's collection-as though betrayal was a stain I could erase-and forced myself to think strategically. I couldn't race Luke to the Fleece while lost in sad memories about what we'd been to each other. Percy was right; the fight to escape the cruise ship had gone a bit too smoothly.
I tried to put together the various pieces in my head, like sorting a jigsaw of information. My last glimpse of Luke with his brow furrowed, thinking hard. What I'd heard him say about gambling on another way to help the Titan lord reform. The stuff we'd overheard in the corridor, about bait. I'd thought it meant enticing us onto the ship, but what if there was more to it? If he'd let us go because he needed something else from us? Something that would help Kronos?
I shared all this with Percy.
'The Fleece is the bait?' Percy suggested. 'Or Grover?'
My knife glowed. I'd polished it so hard I could see my own wavering image reflecting back at me. 'I don't know, Percy. Maybe … he wants the Fleece for himself. Maybe he's hoping we'll do the hard work and then he can steal it from us.' It was unthinkable that Luke could have captured Grover and held him at the mercy of a Cyclops after what we'd all been through together, but then he'd already admitted to even more unspeakable things. 'I just can't believe he would poison the tree.'
Percy studied me carefully. He said, slowly, 'What did he mean that Thalia would've been on his side?'
'He's wrong,' I said automatically, although doubt flickered momentarily across my mind.
'You don't sound sure.'
In my head, I pictured the two of them standing side by side, a solid team. Would Thalia have stuck with Luke?
No. I pulled up more memories of Thalia: the way she'd used to deflect Luke's bitter asides about the gods with jokes-very much like Percy, actually. I think that was partly why his irreverence towards the gods annoyed me sometimes. It made me miss Thalia more.
'Percy, you know who you remind me of most?' I said. 'Thalia.' A more recent memory popped into my head, of the night Percy had shown up at Camp Half-Blood, wet and exhausted but somehow still crackling with energy. He'd put me in mind of Thalia then, and he still reminded me of her now: his dry sense of humour, his reckless courage, and most of all, his loyalty to his friends. 'You guys are so much alike, it's scary. I mean, either you would've been best friends or you would've strangled each other.'
'Er, let's go with "best friends."'
I fixed him with a searching look. 'Thalia got angry with her dad sometimes. So do you. Would you turn against Olympus because of that?'
Percy hesitated, then said firmly, 'No.'
'Okay, then,' I said, though I felt like I was trying to convince myself, too. 'Neither would she. Luke's wrong.' I hoped so, anyway. I couldn't help wondering-Thalia was incredibly loyal, but if her friends were on two different sides, who would she be loyal to: me or Luke?
'So what did Luke mean about Cyclopes? He said you of all people-'
'I know what he said,' I said before Percy could repeat the hurtful words. 'He …' I took a deep breath. 'He was talking about the real reason Thalia died.'
I was about to tell him the story of the Cyclops in Brooklyn when Tyson burst in with a box of doughnuts held triumphantly in his hands.
'Where did you get that?' I demanded, immediately suspicious. 'We're in the middle of the wilderness. There's nothing around for-'
Tyson shook his head and said, 'Fifty feet. Monster Doughnut shop-just over the hill!'
My blood ran cold. I thought of Tyler Ichiro and his Sushi Monster franchise in the middle of the woods on the banks of the Delaware.
'Seriously?' Percy stuck his head out of the hideout door. 'Oh my gods, Annabeth, look!'
We ventured out to check. It was indeed a brand new doughnut shop, standing out in sharp contrast to the dank wetness of the surrounding swamp.
'This is bad. There shouldn't be anything out here.' And it definitely had not been here when we'd arrived. The shop had someone sitting inside at the cash register, but I got the sense that he wasn't the proprietor. Was it another demigod like Ichiro? Something told me that was wrong, though. The back of my neck prickled like I had gotten goosebumps.
Percy shrugged it off. 'It's a doughnut shop. And why are we whispering? Tyson went in and bought a dozen. Nothing happened to him.' He pointed to Tyson, whose mouth was ringed with powdered sugar.
That was it, I thought. Monsters. Ichiro had mentioned that the demigods who had used real Hydras to expand their franchises had ended up with the monsters taking over and nesting in new areas.
Tyson was a monster. He'd have no problem walking into a monster-run business.
Percy protested when I pointed this out. 'Monster Doughnuts doesn't mean monsters! It's a chain. We've got them in New York.'
'A chain.' Even if he didn't know about the monster-powered franchise business, I couldn't believe he didn't see anything weird about a chain store appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the woods. 'Listen,' I said, and I explained what I'd learned from Ichiro about monster life forces powering the expansion of chain stores across the States since the fifties. I was about to tell him about the Hydras that had taken over businesses when I spotted it.
It was creeping through the trees behind Percy, ten times the size of Kaiju the bonsai Hydra.
'No sudden moves,' I hissed at Percy. 'Very slowly, turn around.'
He did, and I saw his jaw drop at the sight of the full Hydra: a large round belly on stubby legs, with about seven heads sprouting from writhing snaky necks. That's plenty of Monster Doughnut outlets, I thought.
A flash of bright yellow caught my eye. The monster had one of our duffel bags. I felt a sharp pang as I realised it must have found our camp. Our hideout, which had stood preserved for so long, had been invaded, just like that.
Snap. The crack of the twig was like a gunshot. The Hydra's heads swivelled round sharply.
It was Tyson who had stumbled, and I felt a surge of annoyance at him. First he'd gone and found the monster-probably leading it straight to our hideout-and now he'd attracted its attention. If I hadn't known how clumsy and stupid he was, I'd have sworn he'd been planning it all, like some complicated strategy to lead us to our deaths. The look of frozen terror on his face told a different story, though.
The Hydra's middle head reared back. It made a gurgling noise, like it was working up phlegm in its throat.
'Scatter!' I said, anticipating what was about to happen. Percy and I darted out of the way of a jet of steaming acid. It was a full spray, unlike Kaiju's tiny shots. This was a fully-grown Hydra with industrial strength acid. It hit a tree, which sizzled and collapsed.
'Tyson!' Percy yelled. Tyson hadn't moved; he was still staring at the Hydra with abject terror in his eye.
The thought crossed my mind that if the Hydra focused on Tyson, Percy and I could escape. I was immediately ashamed of it. Annoyed as I was with Tyson, the idea of sacrificing a team member in cold blood, Cyclops or not, was abhorrent. Maybe I'd wanted to ditch him, but not like this.
Percy leapt into action, pushing Tyson out of the way of the falling tree and the lunging Hydra heads. My heart nearly stopped when I saw him draw his sword, grabbing the attention of all seven heads. He swung it up before I could shout out a warning. The nearest Hydra head was sliced neatly off by the celestial bronze. Percy's eyes flared with triumph that died instantly when the decapitated neck split into two and regenerated. There wasn't even a grace period-just schloop, two new heads. No wonder Ichiro said that the original Hydras could get the franchises growing much quicker.
'Di immortales, Percy, ' I groaned. I imagined another Monster Doughnut shop sprouting up somewhere, drawing in more innocent half-bloods.
'I'm about to die and you're worried about that?' Percy said. 'How do we kill it?'
'Fire,' I told him, remembering how Kaiju had run from the ketea's flaming breath. That was how Heracles had battled the first ancient Hydra, too, burning the stumps before they could grow back. 'We have to have fire!'
The kerosene lamps, I thought. In the hideout. But we had to get past the Hydra to get to them.
We split up again, trying to distract the heads. One came at me with its gleaming teeth bared. I just managed to block it with my knife. Another neck slammed into my back and I flew five feet into the wet marsh. I rolled and got to my feet as quickly as I could, but suddenly there was Tyson standing in front of me. He'd gotten between me and the Hydra, and to my amazement, he smacked the Hydra's head with his bare fists.
'No hitting my friends!' he shouted, as he slammed them like a pro boxer. I thought the monster actually looked a little stunned to find itself being used as a Cyclops's punching bag.
He was pretty effective, too, keeping at least four heads occupied so that Percy and I only had to worry about the remaining four spitting acid and trying to eat us.
I was wondering how long we'd be able to keep this up when a rhythmic pounding noise rose above the hissing and spitting of the Hydra.
'What's that noise?' I yelled.
'Steam engine,' Tyson said, though how he could work that out while pounding Hydra heads as beyond me.
Then I heard a girl's voice that I knew well: 'There! Prepare the thirty-two pounder!'
I barely had time to wonder how she had made it so far south so quickly, or what she was doing here, of all places. The next thing she said was, 'Damn the heroes-full steam ahead!' and I knew we had to duck.
'Hit the dirt!' I yelled.
True to form, a sonic boom deafened us, accompanied by a light almost as blinding as a god's true form. The Hydra exploded, blown into disgusting neon-green guts that vaporised (though not before landing all over us), leaving the single severed head Percy had cut off earlier lying in the swamp.
My mind wondered, off task, if this meant the Monster Doughnut franchise would collapse.
I didn't dwell on it. The smoke from the blast was clearing and behind it, a steam ship that could have sailed straight out of my dad's military history books was chugging upriver towards us. On the deck, right up next to a smoking cannon, with her hands on her hips, was Clarisse.
Chapter 14
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Tyson, Luke Castellan, Clarisse La Rue, Chiron, Thalia Grace, various others, Gen
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Summary: Annabeth Chase returns to Camp Half-Blood to find the safety of her home shattered: Thalia's tree has been poisoned, destroying the magic barriers protecting the camp, and Chiron is blamed. Only one thing can save the camp, and it's up to Annabeth and her best friend Percy to find it. The problem is, they set off with a monster in tow. Once again, the quest and the surprises it has in store is about to change everything she thinks she knows. An alternate PoV retelling of Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: Tyson Buys Some Dangerous Doughnuts
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Tyson
Word Count: 3,895
Chapter Summary: Annabeth takes Percy and Tyson to an old hideout, where they run into a nest.
A/N: While writing this chapter, it occurred to me how many plot holes there could be in canon. Such as how Polyphemus caught Grover on a boulevard in Florida when he supposedly lives on his island and doesn't appear to leave it. While I haven't actually figured that one out (fortunately it doesn't affect my plot too much), I hope I've managed to make sense of others … like where Annabeth gets half her info and the mystery of Luke's motivations. Let me know what you think!
And of course, many lines of dialogue in this chapter were taken from Sea of Monsters.
Back to Fic Content Page
As soon as the cruise ship was well out of sight, Percy turned down the cap of the flask a little so that we were still speeding along, but at a pace less likely to give us whiplash. The winds were noisy and we had to yell to hear each other over them, but we did our best to compare notes on what we'd heard on board the Princess Andromeda.
'Luke knows where to find the Fleece, too,' Percy said. 'We're probably going to be racing him to it, now. And he's got a better ship.'
'How would he know, though?'
'Didn't you hear him? He had a spy at camp!'
It was the part of their conversation I'd missed, and I cursed myself for letting Luke get to me.
'Spy is bad,' Tyson said. 'Must warn camp.'
I didn't like to agree with him, but he was right. Who would we warn, though? I couldn't see us telling Tantalus-like he'd even care-and Mr D was probably just as bad. We had no solid camp leader. I might have considered Clarisse, but of course she would have left for her quest by now.
'Maybe Beckendorf …' I suggested, but I didn't know if I trusted him enough. We had no idea who Luke's spy was. Even though I didn't think it was Beckendorf, I really couldn't know. Anyone we contacted could end up being the spy. The list of people I trusted implicitly in this world was depressingly short: Chiron, Percy …
Luke, whispered a voice in my head. I shut it up. Last year, he would have been the first person on my list, but he had just betrayed us and tried to kill us again.
'Let's try and contact Chiron anyway,' I said. 'Even if he's not at camp, maybe he'll have some ideas.'
The good thing about being on water was that there was plenty of spray for a rainbow. All we needed to do was throw in one of the drachmas Hermes had given us and make our prayer to Iris.
Chiron appeared in the sea spray, his face illuminated at intervals by revolving neon lights that changed colour every few seconds. I guessed he had to be hanging out with his crazy relatives. I'd only met them once, when they hijacked camp four years ago to hold a dance.
Chiron had to shout our names over the heavy bass beat in the background. 'Where are you-not at camp?' Between the noisy music on his end and the roaring wind on ours, it was hard for either of us to make ourselves heard.
'We left,' Percy shouted over the noise. 'Hermes gave us a quest and we snuck out. We just found Luke-he did poison Thalia's tree, and he's growing Kronos in a golden casket. We only just got away.'
'And he's got a spy at camp,' I interjected with the most important point. 'We don't know how to warn them, though.'
'I feared as much! And I'm afraid I can't-' The sound of his next few words was drowned out by hoots from his fellow centaurs. 'Where are you now?'
'Somewhere off the Jersey coast, I think,' Percy said. 'We're trying to get to the Sea of Monsters. That's where Grove is, and the Golden Fleece!'
'Percy, you have to watch out for-' The centaurs in the background whooped again. 'Curse my relatives!' Something went flying over Chiron's head. 'Annabeth, you shouldn't have let Percy leave camp! But if you do get the Fleece-' He was interrupted again by centaur cheers and a dramatic increase in the volume of the music. I could tell he was yelling at the top of the voice now, but all we could hear from him were individual words: 'Miami,' 'watch,' 'message,' and then the image burst apart.
'Pony, don't go!' Tyson said dejectedly, reaching out to where Chiron's face had been. The sea spray hit his hand and showered over us. I wiped my face and glared at him.
'Miami,' I said to Percy. 'That's in Florida. Do you think he means that's where the Fleece is?'
'Well, we already know where it is,' Percy reminded me. 'Thirty-two, thirty, seventy-five, twelve. What do you think he meant, when he said to watch out for … something?'
'It could be anything. There's so many things we'll have to face-Polyphemus, for starters. But just getting to the Sea of Monsters will be difficult. There are only two known entrances: it's either SCylla and Charybdis or-'
'What's that? Or should that be who?'
'Scylla and Charybdis,' I repeated, rolling my eyes. 'They're-well, you know that saying, "between a rock and a hard place?" That's literally what they are. Charybdis is a whirlpool that sucks everything in and eats it, and Scylla is this monster on a rock cliff that snatches sailors out of boats and eats them.'
'Great,' Percy said. 'So our options are "how do we want to get eaten?" How did anyone ever get to the Sea of Monsters with them guarding the entrance?'
'There's another way, the one Jason took. Through the clashing rocks.'
'Rocks are smashing?' Tyson asked.
'It clashes at regular intervals.' I told them the story of how Jason and the Argonauts had tested the rocks with a dove, timing its flight through so that they knew how quickly they would have to row their way across. 'As long as we time it right, we can get past. We have the flask-we should be able to power through, I think.'
'Okay, let's do that,' Percy nodded. 'That doesn't sound too bad.'
'Once we're in,' I warned, 'it's still full of dangers. I don't know about everything, but there's the island of the Sirens, and the Cretan Labyrinth-you know, the home of the Minotaur-should be somewhere in there, too.'
Percy made a face. 'Can we just not land there? I already fought the Minotaur once.'
'It's probably still in Tartarus,' I agreed, 'but the Labyrinth is deadly enough without it. A lot of heroes were driven crazy just trying to find their way out. I don't know if it stayed in the Sea of Monsters or if it migrated elsewhere, though. Anyway, we can avoid that, but we'll have to be careful with the Sirens, because they can draw you in with their singing.'
I recounted as many of the dangerous spots that I could recall, but I knew I had to be missing a lot. There were scores of tales from the Sea of Monsters-Jason, and also Odysseus, and Aeneas … like I'd told Percy before, all the ancient Greek heroes had sailed through it. There were too many stories to remember them all. We might meet with any one of them.
Land started to come into sight after I'd exhausted all the stories I knew. I watched the coastline speed past for a while before I realised I recognised the shoreline. It was dotted with hotels and resorts and I'd actually spent some time there at spring break with my dad and stepfamily. It looked different from the sea, but there was the unmistakeable lighthouse off Fort Story.
'That's Virginia Beach!' I said, amazed. It had taken me days to get up to New York when I left Richmond, but overnight, I'd already gone past my home. It was a little surreal. 'How did the Princess Andromeda travel so far overnight? That's like-'
'Five hundred and thirty nautical miles,' Percy supplied.
'How did you know that?'
Percy looked bemused, as though he had no idea where he'd pulled the numbers from. 'I-I'm not sure.'
An idea started to grow in my head. 'Percy, what's our position?'
He replied as though on autopilot, 'Thirty-six degrees, forty-four minutes north, seventy-six degrees, two minutes west.' His eyes grew wide. 'Whoa. How did I know that?'
Perfect nautical positioning. It had to be a power from Poseidon. 'Because of your dad,' I told him, already thinking of how useful this would be. 'When you're at sea, you have perfect bearings. That is so cool.' If we could just get our hands on a map, we'd know our position instantly. We'd be able to navigate easily to wherever we needed to go!
Tyson tapped Percy's shoulder to get his attention. 'Other boat is coming.'
We both turned to see a coastguard speedboat charging up to us, flashing its light like a cop car giving chase.
Percy groaned. 'We can't let them catch us. They'll ask too many questions.'
We were right at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay. If we turned in and hugged the coast, it should take us right up the James River. Where Luke and Thalia had brought me, the night after I'd met them.
'I know a place we can hide,' I said.
Percy adjusted the flask so that we put on a bit more speed, enough to outpace the coastguard vessel. I directed him into Chesapeake Bay and left into the James River. I hoped I could still find the place-it had been six years, after all-but I had the faint memory from my dream several nights ago to help as well. Once we got further upriver, the foliage began to look familiar. It was in a swampy, overgrown marsh, the kind of natural preserve that doesn't change much over the years. We beached the lifeboat and camouflaged it with branches.
'Not a good place,' Tyson complained, but I ignored him. What did he know, anyway?
I led them through the brush, the memory of traversing this ground with Thalia and Luke becoming clearer. It had been my second day travelling with them; the night before they had found me hiding out in an ironworks compound. Luke had given me his dagger-the same one that weighed heavily in my pocket now. They'd told me about their life as we walked, about moving from hideout to hideout because it wasn't wise to stay in one place too long-monsters tended to find them easier that way because their scent built up. They'd created a network that they moved around.
Fortunately, the hideout was exactly where we'd left it all those years ago. It was so well hidden that no one had found it in all this time. Our supplies were still stacked up against one of the walls: sleeping bags, blankets, kerosene lamps and a stash of bronze. It was all gear that Luke and Thalia had stolen during their years on the run.
I explained to Percy about the safe houses. Talking about it made me sad. It was reminding me of what I'd felt on the Princess Andromeda-the despair at how everything had gone wrong, with Thalia gone and Luke betraying us. I remembered Luke promising he'd be my family, and now the three of us were all broken up.
Did Luke ever think about our time together? Probably not. He had all the riches and rewards he could dream of, and a life of luxury on his cruise ship. No need to fear monsters either, when they were following his direction.
He was so different.
And maybe I didn't want the current Luke to think about us. Because I couldn't think how he could possibly remember what we'd been and still do everything he was doing now.
'Um, Tyson?' Percy said quietly. He murmured something to him, attempting to send him off quietly. I only noticed because Tyson was loud about leaving.
'I will look for powdered doughnuts in the wilderness,' he announced. It was a declaration so absurd that I didn't even try to understand what he was getting at.
'Hey,' Percy said, taking a seat on an ice chest opposite me. 'I'm sorry about, you know, seeing Luke.'
I pulled out my dagger and looked into it, feeling the same conflict about it as I'd had at the start of summer. My trusty weapon was tainted.
I sighed. 'It's not your fault.'
'He let us go too easily.'
I rubbed at the blade with a rag from Thalia's collection-as though betrayal was a stain I could erase-and forced myself to think strategically. I couldn't race Luke to the Fleece while lost in sad memories about what we'd been to each other. Percy was right; the fight to escape the cruise ship had gone a bit too smoothly.
I tried to put together the various pieces in my head, like sorting a jigsaw of information. My last glimpse of Luke with his brow furrowed, thinking hard. What I'd heard him say about gambling on another way to help the Titan lord reform. The stuff we'd overheard in the corridor, about bait. I'd thought it meant enticing us onto the ship, but what if there was more to it? If he'd let us go because he needed something else from us? Something that would help Kronos?
I shared all this with Percy.
'The Fleece is the bait?' Percy suggested. 'Or Grover?'
My knife glowed. I'd polished it so hard I could see my own wavering image reflecting back at me. 'I don't know, Percy. Maybe … he wants the Fleece for himself. Maybe he's hoping we'll do the hard work and then he can steal it from us.' It was unthinkable that Luke could have captured Grover and held him at the mercy of a Cyclops after what we'd all been through together, but then he'd already admitted to even more unspeakable things. 'I just can't believe he would poison the tree.'
Percy studied me carefully. He said, slowly, 'What did he mean that Thalia would've been on his side?'
'He's wrong,' I said automatically, although doubt flickered momentarily across my mind.
'You don't sound sure.'
In my head, I pictured the two of them standing side by side, a solid team. Would Thalia have stuck with Luke?
No. I pulled up more memories of Thalia: the way she'd used to deflect Luke's bitter asides about the gods with jokes-very much like Percy, actually. I think that was partly why his irreverence towards the gods annoyed me sometimes. It made me miss Thalia more.
'Percy, you know who you remind me of most?' I said. 'Thalia.' A more recent memory popped into my head, of the night Percy had shown up at Camp Half-Blood, wet and exhausted but somehow still crackling with energy. He'd put me in mind of Thalia then, and he still reminded me of her now: his dry sense of humour, his reckless courage, and most of all, his loyalty to his friends. 'You guys are so much alike, it's scary. I mean, either you would've been best friends or you would've strangled each other.'
'Er, let's go with "best friends."'
I fixed him with a searching look. 'Thalia got angry with her dad sometimes. So do you. Would you turn against Olympus because of that?'
Percy hesitated, then said firmly, 'No.'
'Okay, then,' I said, though I felt like I was trying to convince myself, too. 'Neither would she. Luke's wrong.' I hoped so, anyway. I couldn't help wondering-Thalia was incredibly loyal, but if her friends were on two different sides, who would she be loyal to: me or Luke?
'So what did Luke mean about Cyclopes? He said you of all people-'
'I know what he said,' I said before Percy could repeat the hurtful words. 'He …' I took a deep breath. 'He was talking about the real reason Thalia died.'
I was about to tell him the story of the Cyclops in Brooklyn when Tyson burst in with a box of doughnuts held triumphantly in his hands.
'Where did you get that?' I demanded, immediately suspicious. 'We're in the middle of the wilderness. There's nothing around for-'
Tyson shook his head and said, 'Fifty feet. Monster Doughnut shop-just over the hill!'
My blood ran cold. I thought of Tyler Ichiro and his Sushi Monster franchise in the middle of the woods on the banks of the Delaware.
'Seriously?' Percy stuck his head out of the hideout door. 'Oh my gods, Annabeth, look!'
We ventured out to check. It was indeed a brand new doughnut shop, standing out in sharp contrast to the dank wetness of the surrounding swamp.
'This is bad. There shouldn't be anything out here.' And it definitely had not been here when we'd arrived. The shop had someone sitting inside at the cash register, but I got the sense that he wasn't the proprietor. Was it another demigod like Ichiro? Something told me that was wrong, though. The back of my neck prickled like I had gotten goosebumps.
Percy shrugged it off. 'It's a doughnut shop. And why are we whispering? Tyson went in and bought a dozen. Nothing happened to him.' He pointed to Tyson, whose mouth was ringed with powdered sugar.
That was it, I thought. Monsters. Ichiro had mentioned that the demigods who had used real Hydras to expand their franchises had ended up with the monsters taking over and nesting in new areas.
Tyson was a monster. He'd have no problem walking into a monster-run business.
Percy protested when I pointed this out. 'Monster Doughnuts doesn't mean monsters! It's a chain. We've got them in New York.'
'A chain.' Even if he didn't know about the monster-powered franchise business, I couldn't believe he didn't see anything weird about a chain store appearing out of nowhere in the middle of the woods. 'Listen,' I said, and I explained what I'd learned from Ichiro about monster life forces powering the expansion of chain stores across the States since the fifties. I was about to tell him about the Hydras that had taken over businesses when I spotted it.
It was creeping through the trees behind Percy, ten times the size of Kaiju the bonsai Hydra.
'No sudden moves,' I hissed at Percy. 'Very slowly, turn around.'
He did, and I saw his jaw drop at the sight of the full Hydra: a large round belly on stubby legs, with about seven heads sprouting from writhing snaky necks. That's plenty of Monster Doughnut outlets, I thought.
A flash of bright yellow caught my eye. The monster had one of our duffel bags. I felt a sharp pang as I realised it must have found our camp. Our hideout, which had stood preserved for so long, had been invaded, just like that.
Snap. The crack of the twig was like a gunshot. The Hydra's heads swivelled round sharply.
It was Tyson who had stumbled, and I felt a surge of annoyance at him. First he'd gone and found the monster-probably leading it straight to our hideout-and now he'd attracted its attention. If I hadn't known how clumsy and stupid he was, I'd have sworn he'd been planning it all, like some complicated strategy to lead us to our deaths. The look of frozen terror on his face told a different story, though.
The Hydra's middle head reared back. It made a gurgling noise, like it was working up phlegm in its throat.
'Scatter!' I said, anticipating what was about to happen. Percy and I darted out of the way of a jet of steaming acid. It was a full spray, unlike Kaiju's tiny shots. This was a fully-grown Hydra with industrial strength acid. It hit a tree, which sizzled and collapsed.
'Tyson!' Percy yelled. Tyson hadn't moved; he was still staring at the Hydra with abject terror in his eye.
The thought crossed my mind that if the Hydra focused on Tyson, Percy and I could escape. I was immediately ashamed of it. Annoyed as I was with Tyson, the idea of sacrificing a team member in cold blood, Cyclops or not, was abhorrent. Maybe I'd wanted to ditch him, but not like this.
Percy leapt into action, pushing Tyson out of the way of the falling tree and the lunging Hydra heads. My heart nearly stopped when I saw him draw his sword, grabbing the attention of all seven heads. He swung it up before I could shout out a warning. The nearest Hydra head was sliced neatly off by the celestial bronze. Percy's eyes flared with triumph that died instantly when the decapitated neck split into two and regenerated. There wasn't even a grace period-just schloop, two new heads. No wonder Ichiro said that the original Hydras could get the franchises growing much quicker.
'Di immortales, Percy, ' I groaned. I imagined another Monster Doughnut shop sprouting up somewhere, drawing in more innocent half-bloods.
'I'm about to die and you're worried about that?' Percy said. 'How do we kill it?'
'Fire,' I told him, remembering how Kaiju had run from the ketea's flaming breath. That was how Heracles had battled the first ancient Hydra, too, burning the stumps before they could grow back. 'We have to have fire!'
The kerosene lamps, I thought. In the hideout. But we had to get past the Hydra to get to them.
We split up again, trying to distract the heads. One came at me with its gleaming teeth bared. I just managed to block it with my knife. Another neck slammed into my back and I flew five feet into the wet marsh. I rolled and got to my feet as quickly as I could, but suddenly there was Tyson standing in front of me. He'd gotten between me and the Hydra, and to my amazement, he smacked the Hydra's head with his bare fists.
'No hitting my friends!' he shouted, as he slammed them like a pro boxer. I thought the monster actually looked a little stunned to find itself being used as a Cyclops's punching bag.
He was pretty effective, too, keeping at least four heads occupied so that Percy and I only had to worry about the remaining four spitting acid and trying to eat us.
I was wondering how long we'd be able to keep this up when a rhythmic pounding noise rose above the hissing and spitting of the Hydra.
'What's that noise?' I yelled.
'Steam engine,' Tyson said, though how he could work that out while pounding Hydra heads as beyond me.
Then I heard a girl's voice that I knew well: 'There! Prepare the thirty-two pounder!'
I barely had time to wonder how she had made it so far south so quickly, or what she was doing here, of all places. The next thing she said was, 'Damn the heroes-full steam ahead!' and I knew we had to duck.
'Hit the dirt!' I yelled.
True to form, a sonic boom deafened us, accompanied by a light almost as blinding as a god's true form. The Hydra exploded, blown into disgusting neon-green guts that vaporised (though not before landing all over us), leaving the single severed head Percy had cut off earlier lying in the swamp.
My mind wondered, off task, if this meant the Monster Doughnut franchise would collapse.
I didn't dwell on it. The smoke from the blast was clearing and behind it, a steam ship that could have sailed straight out of my dad's military history books was chugging upriver towards us. On the deck, right up next to a smoking cannon, with her hands on her hips, was Clarisse.
Chapter 14