Woes of the Unclaimed

Disclaimer: Anyone who is not Rick Riordan does not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I am not Rick Riordan. Therefore, I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Same goes with Heroes of Olympus.

ONE

I Interrupt Cheerleader Lunchtime

If you were to ask anyone, anyone at all, if they'd like to have powers similar to the Greek gods of myth, what would they say?

Most, I imagine, would say they'd leap at it. "Sign me up!" they'd say.

The smart ones count the cost. "What else comes with it?" they ask.

Take it from me. I have powers like those. And yes, they can be cool, but the thing is, with great power comes other great powers trying to kill you.

Or your friends.

Or your family.

Or civilization as we know it.

That's not even factoring in the source of the powers and the woes those bring.

I'm a half-blood. The daughter of a Greek god and a human. And the god didn't stick around and help raise me.

It's bad enough when that happens with a normal human dad.

When it's a god, believe me, it's worse.

Don't get me wrong, though, my life isn't death, destruction, and doom all the time. There are perks to this whole demigod thing. I already mentioned the cool powers, and believe me, a near-death experience with someone practically guarantees a fruitful friendship thereafter.

That's the life of a half-blood. The good, the bad, the ugly.

That's my story.

My name is Angela Zelle.

And I have to say, I was the luckiest child in San Antonio, Texas.

People just couldn't make up their minds whether the luck was good or bad.

For example, when I was two, I somehow managed to climb out an open window. Fell two stories into the backyard, but my fall was broken by a large pile of leaves. I survived, with practically no injuries.

Then, when I was five, I wandered into a rattlesnake den. Wandered right back out again once I was done admiring them. Wasn't bitten once.

It went on like that. When the school caught fire, I was in there, but escaped unharmed. Nearly got caught by a tornado when we were in Kansas visiting relatives. It veered off at the last instant. When the vice principal went psycho and tried to kill me with a power drill, a fortunate set of circumstances involving two hamsters, a bent paper clip, and a piece of used chewing gum spared me from harm.

Personally, I like to think that I had good luck. Few people would survive even one of those incidents, let alone a bazillion and three.

There were two things in my life that good luck never touched, though.

The first was my parents.

I never assumed he was dead. Mom always told me that they had had a fight that eventually escalated into divorce. She won custody and he ran off somewhere. Didn't even bother to see the daughter that he had brought into the world.

So Mom told me, before she died.

I wasn't there when it happened. I had no clue what happened. Neither did the police. The house burned down, destroying all evidence of whatever happened there.

It made life much harder.

Of course, my mom had died, and I was sad and all that. No need to go into that, I think. You're not interested in hearing me angst over that.

It also made life in general hard. No one could take me in. Those relatives in Kansas? Died of a suspiciously random outbreak of malaria. Other relatives either were also dead or had mental problems.

And of course, they could never find my dad.

So of course foster care was the only option.

It wasn't ideal.

Thus the second thing in my life involving no good luck.

It's not as if my foster parents were psychos or murderers or psycho murderers or whatever. I was just hard to deal with.

Dyslexic, ADHD, and just generally mischievous.

See, I had decided that Mom would not have wanted me to mope around forever.

And one thing Mom was known for was mischievousness.

She acted like every day was April Fools Day, and somehow that made her popular. She could always be counted on to liven things up. The sort of person who you get mad at when she first does something, and then laugh about that same incident twenty-four hours later.

I figured there was no better way to remember my mom than to take up her example.

Only it didn't work so well for me.

No one seemed to get it. My mom had something. Charm, charisma, call it what you will, nobody could stay mad at her.

Everyone stayed mad at me. Or simply avoided me.

Schoolmates looked over their shoulders in case I had placed a water balloon on it. Foster siblings avoided their own house like the plague. Foster parents would always, inevitably, send me back.

In truth, after a while, that was the way I liked it. Most won't admit it, but humans get obscure pleasure from inconveniencing other humans.

I simply let that side of me out to play, and found out later that that side was now me, rather than just a part of me.

And I loved it.

My pranks grew more and more elaborate. Foster parents sent me back faster and faster.

And schools expelled me sooner and sooner.

The one I was in, however, was more resilient than most. My first high school. I had been there three months and hadn't managed to be expelled yet.

It was the very day that I resolved to do better to get myself expelled that I stumbled across what I was never meant to see.

It was lunch hour, and I was taking the opportunity to pilfer some bleach from the janitorial closet. (Believe me, there is so much you can do with bleach. The intended purpose, making things white, only scratches the surface.)

It was against school rules to be out of the cafeteria during lunch, but what did I care?

Of course, three months with me had made people cautious. The contents of the janitorial closet were moved every few days, without relabeling. That usually took me about a day to find. I had figured out the new location yesterday, and I made my way there quickly.

Once there, I had to unlock the door. About thirteen seconds for a skilled lockpick like myself.

The janitorial cart was also padlocked, assuming it was even in there. Odd, I know, but the janitor had custom-designed his own cart, making it possible to have a padlock on it. Honestly, it looked like a mini ice cream truck. Padlocks were a bit harder to get through. Twenty-six seconds on a bad day.

Once I was done with that, though, whatever I needed was at my fingertips.

On this particular occasion, though, I got to the closet and found it unlocked.

Now, of course that screamed "trap" in glowing red neon, but my curiosity got the better of me.

After all, the only thing I thought I had to worry about was a janitor waiting to catch me red-handed.

Instead, I opened the door…

…and found a cheerleader whose name I didn't know kissing some guy's neck.

She turned away from him and glared. "Do you mind?"

"I mind very much," I assured her. What was her name? Sharon, I think. "Did not need to barge in on you."

"Get lost, freshman!" she snarled.

Odd. The guy wasn't helping to tell me off, or even looking vaguely embarrassed in the background. He was just lying there, supported only by the cheerleader…

I looked up and managed to catch a hint of red around the cheerleader's mouth.

Not lipstick red.

Blood red, though how I was so sure, I didn't know.

Startled, I stumbled back, mumbling something really intelligent along the lines of "V-v-vampire!"

Sharon folded her arms, looking insufferably superior. "It's about time, half-blood. I've been here precisely nine weeks and it's taken you this long to even reach the obvious wrong conclusion. Oh, well done."

Now, vampire or not, I do not take kindly to being mocked. "Better than being related to a lawyer. That is to say, a bloodsucker. And what do you mean, half-blood? Are vampires Death Eaters or something?"

Unamused, she sneered. "Your pathetic attempts at jokes are not improved by fear of imminent death, I see."

"What imminent death?" I shot back. "All I have to do is throw garlic at you and you'll be begging for mercy."

This time, she was amused. "Do you really think that that will work? I love humans. They're so blind. Garlic? What lunacy produced that?"

Heh. Apparently, even vampires-that-are-not-vampires talk more than is wise when they have the upper hand. Time to use that to my advantage.

"I'll lure you outside, then!" I declared with false bravado. "Sunlight should do it."

Eyes narrowing, she replied, "This becomes less amusing. Get this through your thick half-blood skull: nothing that would work on a vampire works on me. I am not a vampire. I am an empousa! The legends of vampires were twisted from our reality. We are the servants of Hecate! Dark magic gives me life, and that will be more than enough to destroy you!"

Dark magic, huh? The beginnings of a plan began to form in my brain.

First problem: getting past Sharon to the janitorial cart.

That would be made easier by the fact that she was advancing towards me.

"Poor little half-blood," she sneered. "No plan of attack. No pranks to pull. Not even a lame joke near the end. How pathetic."

I ignored her, trying to gauge when the best time to make my move was.

Her hands burst into green flames as she continued to approach. "Die, half-blood!" she snarled.

She lunged…

…and I moved.

Ducking down, I moved forward, tripping her as I went. Oddly, the leg felt furry, but whatever, she tripped just fine.

She toppled into the wall, burning it with green flames as she tried to break her fall.

I dashed to the cart, tried to open it.

Locked.

Stupid padlock! I didn't have twenty-six seconds!

I looked back just in time to duck behind the cart and let it take the green blast of flames meant for me. Oddly, they had no effect on the metal. Perhaps they only affected living things. But no, the wall had burned. Odd.

I heard Sharon growl. "Enough of these games, half-blood!"

"Learn my name already, willya?" I shouted back. "Whatever you mean by half-blood, I'm tired of being called that!"

"You name is unimportant," she hissed. "You will soon no longer be here to care."

"What is going on here?"

Let me tell you, I have never been so glad to hear the principal's voice.

This gave me needed time. I began to pick the padlock as I heard Sharon try to explain why she was out of the cafeteria at lunchtime. I cracked it just as I heard the principal begin one of his notorious tirades. (School legend stated that he once lectured a misbehaving student so long that by the time he was finished, it was time to start school the next day.)

I opened it. Now, where was that bleach?

I found it quickly enough, but my eyes caught a yellowish glow near the back as I was about to make a break for it.

Quietly investigating, I found two knives. Not like butterknives, more like war daggers, made out of some yellowish metal. Not gold, something else. Why would the janitor have these?

I slipped them into my pockets. If Plan A failed, two knives were better than nothing. As backup, I grabbed another container of bleach.

Now, I needed some flame. Not to be found in the janitorial cart. But I knew a student who, against school regulations, always had a cigarette lighter on him somewhere. Normally, I'd say that was bad, but it might just save my life.

Heck, might even save his, sometime down the road.

Had to find him, though. Which meant the cafeteria.

I bolted, ignoring Sharon's hisses and the principal's surprised cry. As I ran, I poured one of the bleach containers on the floor.

Sharon's outraged cry a few seconds later assured me that the bleach had done its work making her slip. A thump told me that Sharon and the wall were becoming rather intimate.

A second thump and a cry from both the principal and Sharon made me guess that the principal had also slipped and fallen on Sharon.

Lucky break.

I took advantage of it and raced towards the cafeteria.