This is my first story. I await your reviews, positive and negative. Please tell me the parts that were good and the parts that have scope for improvement. Your praise will drive me to write more chapters, and your criticism will drive me to improve them

GREY

"Hurry up, Grey! We don't have time!" Mom cried as Mr. Walter got into the driver's seat. The cool wind gently brushed past his jet black hair. In front of him, the pathway was covered with a carpet of fallen leaves. In a distance, Mr. Bramble's bulldog barked.

Grey looked at his house for one last time. It was a two-storeyed house, with white walls and a red brick roof. He looked at his tiny lawn, where he used play with Marco, his golden retriever, until Marco died last summer. A flock of birds sat on the roof, eyeing him.

The prospect of leaving would not have hurt him so much had it not been so sudden. One day he was firing away at terrorists alongside his best friend Dan on his Playstation 3 and the next, Mom simply walked into his room, wearing a green T-Shirt and jeans, and told him to pack a bag with food, water and whatever was necessary to him, and get in the car.

"We're leaving, Grey."

What was more, their creepy neighbor Mr. Ted Walter was coming along too. He had just moved in a month ago, and had been suspiciously close to Mom since Day 1. Grey despised him for this. Mom and Walter had been spending too much time together. He didn't want this tiny, bespectacled nerd with a goatee to take his Dad's place.

Well, he might have been a tiny, bespectacled man with a goatee too, for all I know. Dad had died before he was born, 15 years ago, in a car accident. There wasn't even a photo to give him an idea of what he looked like.

"Jump in, Grey!" Walter snapped him back to reality. "We'll get all your belongings later."

Reluctantly, he got into the car, and pretty soon, the house was just a dot in the horizon.

I didn't even get to say goodbye to Dan and Harold and all the others. Mom had no idea what was going through him. She didn't even clearly tell him why they were leaving. All she said was that they were going "someplace safer." At first he thought she was joking, but her eyes showed fear, fear not only for herself, but Grey himself.

Grey wondered what place could be safer than Alex Street, or how Alex Street could be dangerous in the first place.

"How far?" Mom asked Walter frantically.

"Just a couple more hours, Kate." Walter's voice suggested he had been to Someplace Safer many times. Grey wondered if Walter lived there. Which got him a tad bit disturbed.

Seriously, Mom?! You're going to marry this nerd? Grey wondered if his protest could stop this folly.

"Mom, where the hell are we going?" He finally asked, his voice demanding.

"I told you, Grey, we are going someplace safer. All will be clear to you once we get there." Her brow glistened with sweat. Grey had never seen Mom so scared.

Who do we got behind our backs? Ninjas or robots or robot ninjas or something?

Now they were surrounded by trees and rocks as they went down the snaking hill road. Grey only remembered going this way one time, when Mom had taken him on a picnic down the hill. The road was eerily silent today, with just the occasional car and bicycle. It were still the early hours of morning. The birds chirped, the trees rustled, and as he sat in the backseat, he couldn't help feeling drowsy.

He had almost drifted off when he heard a loud thud, as if a car had fallen from the heavens into the middle of the road, blocking their path to Someplace Safer.

"Oh, shit…" Walter whispered, his voice sounding as if he had just seen the monster from his nightmares.

Grey peered out the window, and what he saw convinced him that he himself must be in a nightmare. His jaw dropped open and his eyes widened as he saw a man, easily ten feet tall, with bulging biceps and broad shoulders, ice white hair in contrast to his sickly yellow skin, in the middle of the road. The man wore a simple white shirt and black trousers, but all the assumptions of him being just a normal man shattered when he opened his mouth.

The man had long, pointed teeth, like daggers jutting out of his mouth. He roared at the car, a cry half human-half animal.

"Wh… What the fuck is that thing?!" Grey shrieked, all vows to never curse in front of his Mom long forgotten.

Mom put a hand on his shoulder, but her sweat drenched face and clothes only got him more worried.

"Calm down, Grey. We will be out of this in a minute." Her voice implied she knew this was coming, disturbing him further.

"What now, Ted? Do something!" She shook his shoulder with her free hand.

The giant walked closer to the car and Grey got a sudden urge to jump out the car and run away, but somehow logic got the better of him and he remembered that the only way to go would be up the road, and the giant would catch him in seconds.

"Sit tight." Walter warned, as he stomped on the accelerator, rushing the car forward, into the giant.

"Are you crazy?!" Grey managed to utter as the car collided with the giant. The giant was not knocked away, instead, he stayed slammed into the front of the car as they fell out of the road, down the hill.

The car bumped several times with rocks and trees as it crashed down, the giant in front unable to do anything as he collided into trees himself, only uttering inhuman cries as he fell.

Grey's head hit the roof of the car hard and blood began to trickle down his forehead. Mom wrapped both her hands around him as he screamed, and Grey saw that she herself was bleeding.

THUD.

The car had finally hit the road, miraculously in balance. The monster fell at a few metre's distance on the road. Cars and bicycles stopped as people began to inch closer to the wrecked up car to see what was going on.

"What was that?!" Grey demanded clutching his head. It was wet with both blood and sweat. His heart thumped fast and his stomach ached. He hadn't expected himself to survive.

"I think we should tell him, Ted." Mom said, black steely eyes set on him.

"You know we can't, Kate. Not now. When we get there, we will have plenty of time to explain it to him." Walter pleaded.

Grey realized, to his confusion, that several people had got around the car, inspecting it, asking "Are you okay?", "How did this happen?" among several other things, some even began to call an ambulance, but no one crowded the unconscious giant.

In fact, no one even gave it a glance, as if the giant was invisible.

"Run!" Grey uttered weakly at the people outside, though he was pretty certain they didn't hear him "Run, idiots, or that thing will get all of you!"

"It's no use, Grey." Walter whispered sadly. "Some demons we have to fight alone."

"Ted… that-that thing…" They both turned their attention to Mom. She was pointing outside, at the road.

"No… This can't be…" Grey muttered. The giant had woken up, and it was limping towards the car. His body was covered in red, and as he growled, Grey saw that even his teeth had been drenched in blood.

"This thing is strong, even for a Laistrygonian…" Walter said, wiping sweat off his forehead.

"Ted, now what? It's in the way again, and I doubt the car will work after all this…"

"I-I don't know, Kate… I've never seen one so strong… Grey's got to be a special one…"

Special one? This whole day seemed to be out of some horror novel to Grey. He desperately wished it was all a dream, and that he would wake up in his bed in an instant, Mom telling him he was getting late for school.

Mom turned her head to him. She looked into his eyes, her steely black exactly like his. Tears slowly began to trickle down her face, mixed with blood and sweat, making it look like she was crying tears of blood. He realized she was trying not to sob.

She wiped blood from his face, gently, as Walter kept his gaze on her with dread. And then, she drew a dagger from her purse. Grey was beyond shocked. His mother had always been a carefree person. He never imagined she'd keep a gun, or knife, or a weapon of any sort.

The dagger was long and slightly curved. It was not made of steel. Grey could not make out which metal it was made of. It glowed bluish white. There was an odd inscription on it, in a foreign language. The hilt was golden, with a picture of a bird with soaring wings carved into it.

"Kate, no… You are risking your life. Do you realize that you can't-"

"Ted, I had told myself long ago that if it came to either me or my son, I'd know exactly what to do."

Mom stepped out the car. It was then that he got over his initial shock and it struck to him what Mom was doing.

"No… Mom, no!" He shouted frantically. "Somebody do something!" He screamed at the people staring at his mom, looking at her as if she was crazy, doing absolutely nothing. A woman in the crowd began to take a video of Mom running towards the monster with the dagger, several people clicking away photos of the wrecked car.

"Face me, coward!" Mom screamed at the giant, who cried shrilly in reply, now limping towards Mom, avoiding the car.

"Shit… You stay here, Grey…" Walter said in his low voice as he got out the car and ran towards Mom.

The giant swiped with his muscular arms at Mom. The blow connected and she flew and knocked into a tree. She clutched her head as she got up and rushed towards the monster once again with all her strength. Walter leapt into the monster and grabbed his head, but the monster simply grabbed him with his hands and threw him away, into the forest, leaving Grey and Mom alone against the abomination.

Grey got out the car, but his body didn't let him go and help his mother. He was paralyzed in fear. He felt ashamed that he was so scared that he'd watch his mother get slaughtered by a giant man rather than lend whatever help he can to protect her.

The giant rose his right hand in the air to pound it against Mom, but to Grey's surprise, she was so agile that she jumped into the monster and sunk the dagger into his chest. The giant staggered back in pain, howling. Mom yanked the dagger off his chest.

The giant fell on his knees, vomiting blood and clutching his chest. Mom inched closer for the final stab.

That was when Grey saw it. The giant stood up and rose again, right when Mom was in front of him. The vulnerable look had been a feint. He let out another inhuman cry as he thrust his fist at Mom.

The hand went all the way through her stomach.

Grey saw the look of mixed shock and pain in Mom's face as she fell on the road. Her T-Shirt was a dark red and blood seeped down the hole in her stomach as she stared at the sky. What hurt Grey the most was that she was still blinking, bloody tears streaming down her face as the giant roared in victory in front of her.

That was when Grey got over his paralysis. He ran towards Mom, not caring a second about the giant in front.

"Mom…?" He managed to utter in his choked voice as he held her in his arms.

She slowly turned her gaze from the sky towards him. Her eyes showed worry, sadness, and hopelessness. She opened her mouth to say something, but only blood spurted out. She was trying to say something, but it was useless, and the effort was hurting her.

That was when the monster growled, turning his gaze to Grey. Grey stared at the abomination in fear.

"No… No… please… let us go, please…" He chanted like a mad man as tears streamed down his own cheek. He was sobbing, begging for their lives in between.

The giant regarded him with cold, bloodthirsty eyes. His face looked nothing like a human's now. He raised a hand in the air, to strike Grey. Grey simply held his mother's limp body and closed his eyes, burying his face in her, as he used to when he was a child.

And then, a dusty wind blew over his face. He kept his eyes closed, waiting for the blow, but nothing happened. Then he heard a voice.

"Grey…"

He carefully opened his eyes. To his surprise, the giant was nowhere in sight. Ted Walter towered over him, holding what looked like a sickle, made with the same metal Mom's dagger was made from. His whole face was drenched in blood.

"It's over, Grey… He's gone…"

Grey felt no relief. He sighed no sigh of comfort. All he did was stare blankly at his mother, who kept spurting blood, trying to tell him something, perhaps words of comfort, perhaps warnings about the future, perhaps encouraging him for something. She slowly tried to raise a hand. He understood what it was for.

He inched his face close to her hand and sobbed softly as she gently touched and caressed his cheek, slowly and delicately.

"Mom… I'm-" He uttered.

Before he could finish, her hand went limp, falling on the cold, hard road. Her eyes stared into his blankly and he stayed there, staring at them for minutes, until he decided to slowly put two fingers and shut them.

The crowd was still pointing and taking videos, as if it was some circus show. In the distance, he heard the ambulance siren, but it was already too late.

He held on to her limp body until Walter gently touched his shoulder.

"Grey… she was a brave woman. She died for a cause she was proud in," He tried. "Come on, now. We have to go. Or else more of those monsters will turn up."

Grey heard what he said, but didn't understand or process a word he said. He simply held his mother and remembered the times they had shared happily as a family. Until this morning.

"Grey… her sacrifice will be in vain if we don't move on. We have to get there by tonight. It will be safer there."

Slowly, he laid her on the road. He felt ashamed to not be able to provide her a better resting place. Delicately, he slipped the dagger from her hand to his, the blade mixed with his mother's as well as her killer's blood.

He looked at Walter, looking at him with pitying eyes, at a loss of words. Tentatively, he said, "You can talk to me. I can un-"

"No." Grey answered firmly.

And as the sun rose in the sky and the trees shed leaves, they walked on.

This ends the first chapter in the series. I aspire to make it bleaker, and as realistic as a fanfiction story on Percy Jackson And The Olympians can be. I would love to hear ideas which can make this tale better, as well as things I failed to do right with this tale. I would like to hear your reviews on this.

Until next time...