I crouched in the corner. Any second now, they would see me. I would be dead. My makeshift weapon had been dropped a long time ago. At this point, I just resorted to throwing random objects at whoever was chasing me. This time, I was screwed. I had chosen a bad alleyway to run through, and I didn't have anything other than a trashcan to hide behind. And just my luck, the trashcan was empty. The best I could hope for was that only one came down looking for me.

"This way brothers! She came this way!"

I knew that was too much to hope for.

There was a minute of silence. Then some quiet footsteps.

"Hey! Sam! Come on, they're gone! Let's go, before they come back!"

I felt like screaming in frustration. It sounded so much like my older brother; I wanted nothing more than to run forward and hug him. But I knew it wasn't true.

The first time, they had caught me off guard and used my mother. How I knew it was fake? They made her words articulate. My mother was such an alcoholic half the time you couldn't understand what she was saying at all.

The second time, because I was stupid, they used my father. It must have been a blind guess, but they were right about how he acted. He was scrawny, and weak, but you couldn't find a louder person anywhere. He always yelled, and was incredibly rude.

So, me being stupid, I decided I would walk out, and he would take me home, lock me in my bedroom and I wouldn't see the light of day ever again. Better then running from those things all the time. But, their reaction time was too slow, and I managed to run away. Did I mention how there were three of them? Yeah.

"Sam, we don't have much time! They could come back any second!"

The voice got slightly higher pitched, and I could hear some shuffling around.

"Sam? Sam?" The footsteps came closer and closer. "Sa-"

A thud echoed throughout the alley. There was a cry of outrage followed by two more thuds.

"Okay, whoever's hiding in there you have two options. Come out and we'll take you to a safe place, or stay there and likely die when the next few monsters find you." A confident females voice echoed through the air.

"Geez Anna, you'll scare them off before she gets to camp." A kinder male voice replied. "Come on demigod, we need you to come with us."

I risked a peak around the trashcan. A teenaged blonde with her hair tied in a blue bandanna was glaring at me angrily. She was dressed in bronze armour and held a spear in her hand.

The brown haired boy beside her was dressed similarly except he had a bow with a quiver strapped to his back.

Finally, behind them, an older looking boy with a red beanie on his orange curly hair was hopping from one foot to the next anxiously. He held no weapon and had a t-shirt that read SAVE THE WILD. The Cyclopes lay behind them, knocked out cold.

When she saw me, the girl quickly stabbed each of the Cyclopses in the head and they disintegrated into a pile of golden dust, which was scattered by the anxious boy.

"Needed to make sure you weren't a crazy person. If you were we would have left the Cyclopes for you as a gift."

That didn't make any sense to me but I nodded and cautiously walked towards them.

The scared kid sniffed the air and shivered. "Come on we need to go! More are coming, I can smell them!"

"Smell them?" I echoed.

The three ignored me.

"Let's get back to the chariot. If we hurry we can make it to the camp before morning."

"Sounds good. Charlie, are there any threats?"

The nervous boy angled his head and sniffed the air. His eyes widened. "A group of hellhounds are closing in. We need to move. Now!"

Anna nodded and looked over at me, scowling. "Stay out of the way rookie, and don't pass out."

Don't pass out? I was about to ask what she meant when the group broke into a run and I jolted into action, following them.

After about ten minutes of running past houses, apartments and a homeless guy who was lying on the corner sleeping we reached a bright yellow chariot that was parked in an alleyway. Harnessed at the front were two white Pegasus.

Now that I was almost dead from the amount of running I understood the comment about not passing out a lot more. But I turned out she wasn't talking about that.

The bow and arrow guy jumped in the front of the chariot, Anna sat facing the opposite direction and Charlie and I sat in the middle.

The bow and arrow guy cried out and the horses leapt into the sky. I was thrown backwards in my seat and nearly impaled my self by narrowly missing Anna's spear.

I tried to sit upright but was forced backwards by the speed of the wind howling past us as the chariot kept climbing up and up.

I heard Anna yelling against the wind. "Dan! Don't go any higher! Zeus will kill us!"

Apparently the wind was too loud though, because Dan showed no sign of hearing. The chariot kept soaring through the skies and showed no signs of slowing down. The air pressure made me feel woozy, and in the corner of my eye I saw Charlie's head loll to the side as he fell unconscious.

This time I tried, kicking Dans seat. "Slow down! We're going to die!"

He still seemed oblivious to his companion's terror and kept urging the Pegasus on. Finally, Anna had had enough and bonked him on the head with the end of her spear. The impact seemed to make him realise what he was doing and he pulled on the reins sharply, angling the horses downwards.

But it was too late, and as I screamed, a flash of light blinded me and I heard a high-pitched whine, before everything went black.