The Eye of Gods

by: dnrl

Chapter One: Come Rain or Come Shine

The day my dad died, it was sunny.

Usually, in the movies and the books and whatever else there is, it always rains when somebody dies. Like the whole sky is mourning for the loss of that one life. But when my dad died, there wasn't a cloud in the whole blue sky. I guess it makes sense; I mean, statistically, about three hundred thousand people die every day around the world. If it rained whenever someone died, there would be no more land. But it seemed odd to me, to climb out of the twisted steel of our wrecked car and to see my dad's dead body illuminated by the summer noontime sun.

It gave the whole event a sense of…unreality. Nothing seemed real, nothing really set in. The whole day is a vague, blurry memory – helping hands pulling me aside and gentle nurses looking me over in the back of an ambulance; a policeman asking me if my dad had been drinking; horrified and sympathetic faces of random people on the sidewalk who had stopped around the crash scene. My aunt drove across the state to come and get me. She picked me up in her purple and blue Beetle, and brought me to her hotel room. It turned out later that my dad had had a major seizure and lost control of the car. He hadn't had any control, hadn't really been conscious when he died. But none of that mattered to me, because my head was still stuck on the picture of my dad's too-pale, washed-out-looking corpse in the sun on the sidewalk on a Saturday afternoon in August.

My aunt flew me back to New York with her, after we packed up the apartment my dad and I had shared. We lived in an okay part of town, still living off of his severance package from his old job at the accounting firm downtown. He had gotten laid off five months ago, and then been diagnosed with skin cancer. Then, the landlord kicked us out of our old apartment. We managed to get this one, somehow, but things hadn't been looking good. No one was hiring, and the money was going fast. My dad, though, never let anything get him down. I couldn't really remember him without a smile. Sometimes it would sad, but when he saw me looking it would brighten. He would ruffle my hair and give me a one-armed dad hug, and somehow that made everything okay.

Packing up the apartment was almost more surreal than the day of the accident. I had moved before, and recently, so the boxes and stuff weren't new to me. Instead, it was the fact that instead of folding my dad's shirts and putting them into boxes with mine, we were almost reverently putting them into big black trash bags and putting them in the hall outside the apartment. My aunt broke down a couple of times and had to leave for a while, but I didn't. I couldn't, because even though it had been three days, it hadn't really hit me that he wasn't coming back.

All in all, my stuff took up two tagged suitcases, a duffel bag, and a small carry-on. We spent two days in the apartment, deciding what to keep and what to sell. My dad and my aunt didn't have any other family, both of their parents dead when I was four. I didn't know who my mom was, or if I had any family on that side, and whenever I brought her up, my aunt got this tight look around her eyes. So I didn't mention it, because she was the only real family I had left.

My dad always talked about my mom, whenever I mentioned her, and sometimes when I didn't. At night, when I was younger, he'd tell me stories about a summer house in California, on the beach, where they would have coffee and do the crossword and talk about kids like me. He told me that she loved me with all her heart, but that she had to leave, that she didn't have any choice. The way he said it made it sound like she was dead, sort of, but at the same time not. He had really, really loved her, and he still did – well. Not anymore. He used to tell me, at random times, how much I looked like her, or that I smiled like she did, or that I had her eyes or her ears or whatever. But he never told me her name, and so sometimes when my ADHD acted up because school was boring, I would make up names for her; exotic names, beautiful names, sometimes plain names, it didn't matter. None of them fit, somehow.

My aunt had been visiting in a city a couple of miles away from Seattle, where my dad and I lived. But she lived in New York City – and so away she and I went, leaving behind my dad in his casket in the ground, and my apartment, clean and sterile and empty, and a part of my childhood that I would never get back. I was fourteen years old.

"Pros – Prospero? Am I saying that right?"

I looked up at the plump, kindly-looking secretary who was peering down at me over her glasses, frowning. "Yes, m'am," I said, smiling "But I go by Prop." The expression felt odd, and empty, stretching muscles in my face that I hadn't used since my dad had – well.

"So you are Prospero Bianchi?" she asked, surveying the form on the clipboard in front of her. "Transferring in from Seattle, am I right?"

"Yes, m'am," I confirmed. I shifted in my seat, my ADHD acting up in response to my nervousness. Nerves and attention disorders were never good combinations. Add in my dyslexia, and any time I caught sight of a written word my head demanded that I try to puzzle it out, look away from it, and find something else to do all at the same time.

She made a vague noise, read some more, and then smiled at me. "Principal Edwards will be able to see you in a few minutes. Would you like a glass of water, dear? You look nervous, and a good cool drink will always calm the nerves."

My throat tensing up, I nodded. I hated meeting new people, especially authority figures. It's not that I don't have a healthy respect for them or for the rules, but they look at my record sheet and then at the trail of bad luck that follows me like a black cloud and they make the judgment that I'm another kid who has authority issues. My shyness didn't help to disperse the issue, either, considering that I found it hard to talk to people when they were angry at me. My last principal considered my silence a form of back talk, and it took my dad explaining that I was painfully shy to get him to lighten my two-week ISS.

The secretary came bustling around the desk with a paper cup full of chilly water. "Here you go, sweetheart. Drink up. It'll do you some good."

I managed to swallow a few tiny sips. "Thank you," I choked out. I saw her make a sympathetic face, and she put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

"Mr. Edwards is a very nice man, Prospero - Prop," she told me gently with a smile. "I'm sure that you'll be right at ease after a few minutes. He doesn't bite."

I nodded and took a larger gulp of water.

"Prospero? Prospero Bianchi?" A man stepped out of an office in the back of the room and looked around. His gaze fixed on me and he smiled.

I didn't like him much. His eyes were close-set in a bloated face, and his smile left me feeling…greasy. This was a guy like the dad in Matilda, a book my dad used to read to me when I was younger. The thought of my dad filled me with courage – he wasn't here to tell everyone about my shyness. I had to speak for myself.

It didn't make it any easier.

"I'm Prospero," I said, my voice raspy. I stood up and the secretary took the cup from me. She led me around the desk, and I shook hands with the principal. "Nice to meet you, sir."

"And a pleasure to meet you, young man," he replied, shaking my hand vigorously. He was trying to be hearty and manly, and really overdoing it. "Come on into my office, and we'll have a go-over about your schedule and such, okay?"

I nodded and followed him into his office, wiping my clammy palms on my jeans. I took a seat in one of the hard, uncomfortable, orange visitor chairs and waited while he situated himself behind his desk, shuffling papers in an attempt to look important. I reigned in my initial dislike and forced it away. Who was I to judge people? My dad always said that there was good in everyone, if you looked hard enough. I had to look, because I hadn't really done so yet.

"Prospero Bianchi," he finally said, reading off of a sheet of paper. "Well, Prospero, it says here that you've been expelled from four of your previous schools." He looked at me with cool, appraising eyes. "What have you got to say for yourself?"

"Well, sir," I managed, "I try as best as I can to improve on – on what I've done wrong before, and to – to make it so that I avoid mis – mistakes, sir."

He nodded and made little noises in the back of his throat. "So I see. You're also recorded as having had a number of in-school suspensions, along with a large mountain of demerits. Anything to say about those?"

"If – if you'll look, sir, a lot of those are minor infractions," I said, fighting to keep my nerves under control. I hated being analyzed by my record. I had my explanations, but whenever I voiced them they always sounded like excuses. "Tardies, and checking into school without my ID, and gum, and – "

"So," he broke in, "things that you just forgot about."

I nodded.

"Well, we need to work on improving your memory, Mr. Bianchi. Now, you seem to be an alright student, given your ADHD and dyslexia. We have, of course, special classes and tutoring labs for children with disabilities such as yourself, but we've placed you in regular pre-algebra, since you show an aptitude for numbers. Is that all right with you?" he asked. He was speaking down to me, I could tell, but I forced my judgment away again.

"Yes, sir," I replied, swallowing nervously.

He looked back down at the paper and frowned. "According to this, your aunt is your legal guardian. Are your mother and father divorced, or…?"

"My father d-died recently," I said, my throat suddenly constricting on the word "died." I swallowed hard once or twice, my eyes on the carpet, before I continued. "My mother is…well, sir, I never knew her. I think that she's dead as well."

I heard a brief exhalation, and a sharp crinkling of plastic. "Here, son." I looked up to find a cheap cherry-red lollipop a few inches before my nose. I took it and stuck it in my mouth just to have something to do. Edwards was clearly conflicted, not knowing whether to treat me the same as he had before or to show sympathy for the probable orphan boy. In the end, he awkwardly rose and gestured me up and out of the office.

"I wish you the best of luck here at Rosewood, Mr. Bianchi," he said, clapping me on the shoulder. "You're a bright young boy, and I hope that I won't see you in my office in the immediate future."

"No shur," I slurred around the sucked. "Thank you."

"You're quite welcome. Mrs. Bridget has your schedule," here he gestured to the kindly secretary, who waved a sheet of paper, "and school commences on Wednesday. We'll see you then, I suppose?"

"Yesh, shur," I said, nodding. He smiled again, less greasy than before, trying his hardest to be friendly.

"Have a good day," he said as he vanished into his office, closing the door behind himself.

"See?" chirped Mrs. Bridget, as I took my schedule. "Not so bad at all!"

I smiled as best I could. "No, m'am." I tore the sucker head away from the stick, crunched it, and swallowed. "Do you have a trash can?"

"Right here, I'll take it." She tossed it into a little white can beneath her desk, knocking over a picture frame. "Oh!"

I caught it before it hit the floor and righted it on her desk. Three beaming children's face smiled up at me, a little boy and two older girls, a bit older than I was. "Are those your children?"

"My grandbabies," she said proudly, glowing. "Alexis, Maddie, and Nathan. My oldest daughter's children."

"They're…nice," I offered, unsure of how to compliment them. She seemed happy enough.

"Yes, they are. They go here as well, I'll see if Alex or Maddie can show you the ropes. They love helping out new students."

"Thank you very much," I replied, taken aback by the kind offer. "That'd be…that'd be great."

"Yes, well – oh, here's one of your teachers now!" she broke off, beaming at someone behind me. I turned around and was met by a thin, bony teacher with a hawkish nose and icy cold blue eyes. She was staring at me with a freakish intensity. "Prospero, this is Ms. Waldron. Anita, this is Prospero Bianchi, a new student here this year. He'll be in your History class, I believe."

"Quite," agreed Ms. Waldron. Something about her voice sounded…off. I had to suppress a shiver. "Laura, there seems to be something wrong with the coffee machine in the teacher's lounge. I don't suppose you would know how to fix it?"

Mrs. Bridget made a fussing sound and bustled away. "It's always acting up. I'll be right back, Prospero, and I'll get you a map," she called back to me with a smile. I smiled in return, trying not to show the unease I felt in Ms. Waldron's presence. She hadn't stopped staring at me, even when she was speaking to Mrs. Bridget.

"Um, hi," I offered, shifting nervously. Something about this woman wasn't right. She licked her lips suddenly, and I noticed in the back of my mind that they were larger than they had been a second ago. That couldn't be right. But there it was again – they were growing. And maybe there was something wrong with the lights, because her skin was yellowing, aging, and she was shrinking into herself, her back curving over.

"Half-blood," she hissed, and it sounded like fingernails on paper. "Oh, it has been so long. Even with your youth, you will be feast. I am so hungry, half-blood."

I choked out a nervous laugh, backing away, hands raised. "No, you must have me confused with someone else. Or is this like an orientation? Ha, ha, I get it. Cool joke."

She made an odd hacking noise, and it took me a moment to realize that she was laughing. "A joke? Oh, indeed, a sweet and cruel joke on you, half-blood."

"Half-blood?" I asked, my back hitting a stack of boxes full of paper. I swallowed hard. "No, I'm whole-blood. Not anemic or anything, even," I rasped, my voice reaching a pitch near hysteria. What was this? Where was Mrs. Bridget, or Mr. Edwards? Someone?

As if I had voiced my thoughts out loud, Ms. Waldron let loose another hacking laugh. "That fool human in his office will hear nothing, and by the time the old woman totters back in here it will be as though you never existed. She won't even remember you. No one will. And won't that be wonderful?" She licked her too-large lips excitedly, her tongue distinctly pointed, her eyes too big for her face, her body a skeletal frame from which her clothes hung. "I will eat you, half-blood, and your memories and the memories of you from all you have ever known, and it will be delicious." Her eyes hardened. "I tire of these games, boy. Are you ready to die?"

And I knew, suddenly, that no, I wasn't ready to die, and if I had to, it wouldn't be because someone ate me. Without thinking, I grabbed the first hard thing my hand came into contact with and hurled it straight and the teacher's – the monster's – face. I expected her to duck, or lunge away, but she just opened her mouth wide, wider than anyone's should be able to open, and swallowed the large bronze paper weight. She smacked her lips. "Tasty, but not satisfying. Not filling as you will be."

She stalked closer and closer, her eyes gleaming and the shadows in her cheeks dark in the fluorescent lights from overhead. This was it. I was going to die. I was going to be eaten by my history teacher in the corner of a school office, and no one would even remember that I had existed. I wouldn't even get a funeral like my dad's. My dad. My dad…maybe I would see him again. Maybe he would remember me. Could this thing eat the dead's memories too?

A sudden crash broke into the room, and the monster whirled around to focus on the terrified Mrs. Bridget, who stood in the doorway in front of a shattered cup of coffee on the floor. She was pale and slumping against the door, staring aghast at Ms. Waldron's creature form.

"Anita," she gasped, "Anita, what are you doing with that gun? Put the gun down, Anita!"

I blinked at her, confused. What gun? There wasn't a gun.

"Foolish human wench," hissed the Waldron monster. She lunged out with an inhuman speed, straight towards Mrs. Bridget, who stood paralyzed in the doorway. Her jaws expanded again and snapped around Mrs. Bridget's head, then shoulders, and then downward, until she was gone. It happened faster than I could blink.

The picture of the three beaming kids fell to the floor, the glass shattering.

"Idiot mortal," tsked the creature, turning serpentine eyes back towards me. "She very nearly spoiled my appetite. But never fear, half-blood – there is still room for you."

"She didn't even do anything," I protested, my knees shaking. "She had kids, grandkids."

"Yes," replied the thing. "And now she doesn't. Because she is no more."

"She's dead! You killed her!" My fury was rising above my fear now, a red haze over my vision.

"Fool," laughed the monster. "She isn't dead. She's gone. I ate her. She is no more." Slowly, the creature grew and grew, towering until in filled the room. "But I still want food. I still want you. I am starving, half-blood. I am hungry. I am Hunger. Come to me, then, child!"

She lunged for me, and…well, time didn't slow down, exactly. It was more like I was speeding up, like I was as fast as the monster. I dodged left, and then right, her teeth snapping where my head had been seconds ago. My mind was racing, like my ADHD was on steroids, half-formed plans running through me head. I stood still, straight up, and as she lunged I dropped down. Her head was buried in the cardboard boxes. I seized my momentary advantage, shoved her aside, and ran for the door.

I heard her shriek behind me, and a few boxes hit the walls. Still, I ran, not looking back as I heard her slam into the lockers as we streaked down the halls. I swung down the stairwell, skipping three stairs in between. I tried to ignore the burning in my lungs and the throbbing in my chest. I felt like I was just a blur of motion. Not pausing, I hit the landing swung around a doorframe and slammed the door shut behind me. It was solid wood, tough. I was sure that she could make it through in about three seconds.

I locked it anyway. Just on principle.

I glanced around. I was in the girl's bathroom in the basement of the school building. A wall of sinks was to my left, a set of five cubicles to my right. Above sink were mirrors, and above the mirrors – a long, thin window. Freedom.

I clambered onto the porcelain sink, which trembled under my weight. Praying under my breath, my fingers fumbled along the sill for the latch. Which was, of course, rusted and unused for what was probably the fifty years since it was installed. Cursing, I yanked at it with both hands, willing it to give.

I heard a thunk against the door, and then the scraping of teeth against wood. I pulled harder, more frantically, pure panic driving my actions, adrenaline singing through my system. The door splintered and caved inward at the exact moment that the latch came undone – and at the same time that the sink under my feet decided that it had had enough of this, thank you. Porcelain and rusted pipe creaked, groaned, and shattered, leaving my sprawled across the bathroom tile. Fresh air brushed my face, the window open, and I knew that there was no way I could get through without the monster getting to me first. She knew it too, and she was laughing. She didn't even look human anymore; her clothes were gone, and she was a dry, shriveled husk with eyes and a mouth too big for her face.

She threw her head back in a harsh, rasping laugh, and I seized my chance. I snatched up a piece of pipe with porcelain attached to the end and swung it hard at her exposed neck. Some part of me was yelling that I shouldn't do it, I couldn't take a life, but a bigger part – the right part – was showing me Mrs. Bridget over and over and over, and she didn't deserve to die. Her killer did.

The monster let loose a wail as the jagged glass cut into its neck. There was no blood that came from the jagged hole, but rather a fine trickle of dust. I didn't lose any time, didn't let myself think – I swung again and again, for Mrs. Bridget and for myself and for my dad, because I knew that even if dying meant I'd see him again, he wouldn't want me to die so soon. Under my hands, slowly, the monster writhed and turned to dust, leaving behind a large pointed tooth and nothing else.

I sat there for a long time, panting and sweaty in the girl's bathroom. Slowly, slowly, I got up and clambered out of the window, because I wasn't going back into that school building ever again. I found my aunt's car; she wasn't in it, but I wasn't surprised. She was probably in the school, looking for me. Let her look. I wasn't going in to find her.

She came back about ten minutes later and shook my frantically. "Prospero Vittorio Bianchi! Where were you?! Do you have any idea how scared I was?!"

I bit my lip. "Aunt Bella," I murmured, looking her dead in the eye. "What's a half-blood?"

She froze where she was, her breath catching in her chest for a minute. She closed her eyes and slumped against the car with me, letting out a long, tired sigh. "Let me tell you about your mom," she said at last.

Nothing would ever be the same.

A/N

Okay, okay, I jumped on the bandwagon. But it's my mind's fault, damn it! ;-;

Yes, I know that the plot is overused. Yes, I know the writing could use some serious improvement. Yes, I know it's sort of predictable, or Prop is a Gary Stu, or whatever. :( But the thing is, I'm having so much fun writing this. Not even funny. This is probably the first fic on here that I'm really, really enjoying myself in writing. Yes, okay, I have fun with my other fics, and it's great to write them. But this is different, and I love it. I'm excited to be able to incorporate Greek and Egyptian mythology together, and to see how my new babies (characters, guys) interact with one another and with the story. So, yes, it's another OC PJO story - but it's mine, and it makes me smile. :)

Next chapter should be up soon. Like, within the week, I think. Seriously, guys. Whoa.