A/N: Happy Holidays everyone!It's been too long since I've published something and I love stories where Paul finds out about demigods and monsters—anything with mortals finding out really—but these types of stories often follow a formula. So I decided to change up that pattern. Slight AU. Enjoy :D
Illusion Shattered
Paul turned his Prius sedately into Goode's parking lot, the stench of new asphalt in his nose, the hyper-active chatter of a new student in the passenger-side, an old homeless woman in front of his Prius.
Tires screamed as his foot jammed the breaks; hands wrenched the steering wheel right. The car slid sideways to a stop too late, knocking the poor woman over. Paul ripped his seat-belt off and threw open the door. "Ma'am are you okay?"
"Uh…sir?" Leo asked hesitantly. Paul looked up.
They were surrounded by students and school staff. Were some of them cos-playing? The elderly woman picked herself up easily and joined the group, blocking off any escape. A cheerleader stepped forward, nudging Paul with a gun.
"This is school property," Paul blurted.
"Get back in and drive."
"Leo," Paul motioned to the passenger door, "Get out."
"He stays," the inappropriately armed teen ordered.
Paul remembered the cheerleader last-year. Fire-bomber. He slid back into his car and drove in a chilled sweat.
Sally fumbled briefly with the doorknob, plastic handles digging in her palms. Her son's raised voice echoed from inside. "Luke's forces have been spotted in half-a-dozen different places all over the city.
"It looks random," A husky female voice pointed out.
"It's not," Annabeth declared.
"The underground," a younger voice.
Sally twisted the doorknob and shoved. Steely glares pinned her the second she set foot in the apartment. The mother sadly laid her groceries down.
Percy and his fellow campers could have been gaming to normal eyes but Sally's stare pierced the comforting illusion. She saw the scars on flesh and armor from claws and swords alike. Blood. A scattering of open wounds. Nothing too serious. Unsheathed weapons gleaming as though gore had been freshly wiped off. The laundry must smell like a butcher's shop. In their hands, sheathed at their hips or leaning against their shoulders were blades tarnished by war. Percy still wore his helmet and blood oozed from a cut on his jaw.
Sally's heart wrenched like a squeezed lemon. She knew demigods' childhood died a swift death but even her worst nightmares hadn't considered this. War had hardened and sharpened her baby boy. He stood, a general surrounded by his lieutenants.
"Need help?" He glanced toward the bags.
Sally managed a shaky smile, "Thank you, but I've got it."
"Where's Paul." Percy stated the question because leaders couldn't just ask.
"At orientation. He probably won't be back for a couple more hours," Sally reported. "You know, you could meet more openly…if he knew. You wouldn't need to hide. Things would be easier."
Percy nodded, "Later."
Sally gave him an I'm-still-your-mother look. He turned his attention away from the map. "When Paul's back we can…see how he would handle this."
"Percy," Nico said her son's name like a title. "My sources report more possible demigods. Two confirmed. Piper McClean, age fourteen, primary residence west coast."
"Probably why we haven't found her." Clarissa leaned on her spear.
"We need all we can." Annabeth turned to Grover. "Can you bring her back? The daughter of a movie star shouldn't be too difficult to locate."
Grover nodded. Nico continued, "A possible demigod on the streets. Manipulates garbage." Everyone stared. "According to the ghosts."
"Wonder who her parent is?" Charles asked.
"Another confirmed demigod is a foster-home kid. Fourteen. Leo Valdez, probable son of Hephaestus."
Sally's fingers froze over her keyboard, mid-word. The jumble of words plucked a chord of intuitive dread in her heart.
Annabeth caught the sudden pause "What is it?"
"Paul?" She breathed. This had something to do with her fiancé. "He…he's been talking about this new student Goode is accepting. A foster child between homes. ADHD and dyslexic." Sally had considered the possibility of a demigod, though millions of children had ADHD and dyslexia without a drop of divine ichor flowing through their veins. He was fourteen too, which was a little old for a demigod to remain unclaimed or uneaten. Another thought occurred to her. "And Paul mentioned he had been a suspect in," her words dried up, mouth turned into a desert. She took a sip of water. "Several fires."
Which screamed demigod.
"I'll have to grill Paul about Valdez when he gets back," Percy said.
"If Leo is still free," Annabeth pointed out. At Percy's look she added, "The Titan forces have been snatching demigods as quickly as we have. Sometimes faster. If we know of Leo, likely they do as well."
Sally's fingers flew, dialing Paul's cellphone on a hunch. She hoped she was wrong. She hoped her worries were just silly over-reactions.
But the phone rang. And rang. And rang.
An alarm forced Paul back to consciousness. That wasn't his clock. Someone was calling. Phew! Someone had also badly messed up breakfast, even his old roommate couldn't cook up such a stench. He stretched an arm out to fumble for the new cellphone. Or tried to. Something clenched tightly around his limbs and wouldn't let him move. The teacher tugged but only pressed the ropes painfully into his skin. Cold concrete leached warmth from his back. The noxious stench was no badly-cooked breakfast but the unmistakable reek of rotting meat. Paul's heart picked up. That cheerleader at Goode, those homeless people and cosplayers surrounding his car.
He'd been kidnapped.
Well, at least he wasn't fire-bombed. Paul opened his eyes. A few cheerleaders hovered a short distance away like guards. He and Leo—who's hair looked a little scorched—were tied to a pillar. Leo's bonds clanked as he tugged at them.
"Dunno if this is a nightmare or a daydream," Leo teased.
The closest young woman smiled at Paul. Perfectly white, shiny, normal smile. A full-body freeze rattled his nerves.
Nightmare.
Campfire light splayed across concrete flooring; the inhabitants gathered around the flame for warmth. Vagrants. Harmless old ladies. Sales clerks and cheerleaders. Hundreds of people dressed in rags and robes alike. It was the oddest mix of people Paul had ever seen. A shanty-town would have explained the homeless but not the sales-people. Definitely not the cheerleaders. Hundreds of eyes stared back at him, reflected in the flames' light. Beyond the fires darkness shrouded everything and Paul could see neither walls nor ceiling of this place. Cold air chilled his sweat; an unpleasant clacking sound echoed, like the timed marching of a dozen high heeled shoes at once. The stink of rotted meat pervaded.
Irrationally his heart sped up.
"Welcome, sorry we couldn't offer better hospitality." The cheerleader trio approached Leo, hips swaying, lips parting in smiles, high heels clacking. But something about their footsteps was a little off. The rhythm sounded more like a clang-thump than an even click-click. And the cosplayers…no, those weren't cosplayers. How could he have ever mistaken that armor for fake? Those weapons for sports equipment or plastic swords? He looked around the so-called 'shanty town' with new eyes. Those weren't cheerleaders. The kindly smiles on the clerks were an illusion. Paul knew why they had been brought here, Leo especially. He knew the terrible danger now.
"Don't listen," he warned.
The cheerleaders, the kindly sales clerks, they had a more insidious purpose, using harmless disguises to seek out youth and prey upon them.
A brunette cheerleader leaned in, soft, dark lips almost touching the shell of the teen's ear. "So, whadya think baby? Wanna join?" She breathed.
"No you don't Leo, this is a gang!" Leo was going to be forced into the gang, twisted from a bright young man with a promising future to a short-lived thug. And Paul…he didn't want to think about why they would need him in one of these initiations. He yanked again at the ropes but they were strong and well-tied.
Barbed wire wrapped around a baseball bat touched his nose. Paul's gaze crept up the makeshift weapon to its wielders callused, scarred hands, up well-muscled arms capable of batting skulls off shoulders to a face old enough for college, maybe even graduate school. One blue eye was bisected with an ugly scar ripping down his face. From head to toe he was clad in a hodge-podge of intimidating armor.
"Gang leader," Paul muttered to himself.
"Not exactly." The blond focused his attention to Leo. "Going to join us Leo Valdez? You belong here. You're already one of us."
"No you aren't Leo, you're a good young man."
Leo didn't appear to be listening to anyone. Even the cheerleaders were ignored as the young man's eyes fixated on the leader's baseball bat. Paul frowned. It wasn't that intimidating or shocking, surely?
"Holy shit man! Is that a real sword?"
"A sword? Leo that's a baseball bat." Paul squinted at the bat. Tilted his head sideways. It remained stubbornly baseball bat-shaped. How had the teen mistaken it for a sword?
The leader shook his head. "So blind. You can't even see the obvious." He kicked Paul's foot out of the way and stepped closer to Leo.
Brown eyes jerked away from gangster and finally focused on Paul. "Dude? You really see a bat?"
"Yes." Had Leo been drugged?
The kid's Adam's apple bobbed. He screwed his eyes shut and turned to the cheerleaders. Brown eyes snapped open. Paul watched the blood drain so fast it looked like his throat slit. His face turned waxen. "And the crowd?" he asked shakily, "What do they look like to you?"
"Have you drugged him?" Paul glared at the leader.
"Hard as it is to believe, these are our allies now," the blond told Leo gently, completely ignoring Paul. "And when we win, I swear they shall never again be our enemies."
Leo didn't look drugged. His bug-eyed gaze snapped back to the cheerleaders, as if seeing the seduction attempt for the insidious ensnarement it really was. Blood drained skin turned faintly green. Poor kid was probably realizing just how close his life had come to ending in jail. "And these," he swallowed again, "Ladies."
"Cheerleaders. But they aren't." The trio stiffened. "They're gang members too, seducing new initiates." He softened his glare when he turned to the young women. "There are places where you can get help. You don't have to live the rest of your lives selling your bodies like this."
One laughed, a disagreeably shrill sound, "Oh he is completely clueless. And obviously in-demand." She glanced down at the phone, then to him. "Who is calling you so insistently?"
"A pint of blood it's the wife. It's always the wife," said the brunette cheerleader with a sage nod.
Paul tried to kick the phone away. Sally. It had to be Sally. The last thing he wanted was to drag his fiancé into this.
The cheerleader picked up the phone with idle curiosity. Every muscle in her face froze, her expression a rictus of surprise. Her eyes focused with eagle intensity on the phone's screen. Paul fought against his bonds, heedless of how fibers dug into flesh. "Nobody. It's nobody."
A dark chuckle came from one of the nearer homeless people, a rather large man in few rags. "Nobody," he drew the word out in baritone. "I've heard that name before."
The blond leader shook his head. "Just turn it off. We'll take care of him later."
"Lord Castellan," the cheerleader interrupted with sheer disbelief. "The caller." She lifted the phone with a trembling hand, "is Sally Jackson."
Castellan snatched the phone and gaped at the name above the number. "Sally Jackson," he repeated incredulously. Suddenly a blinding smile appeared on his face. Genuine. And even more twisted for it. "Tyche is truly on our side."
Paul's icy heart cracked. How did they know her? How could Sally be involved? They were gangsters and she was the sweetest, kindest person Paul had ever met. And when did gangsters reference obscure classical myth?
Hawk-sharp eyes turned against Paul. "You know Sally Jackson?" Castellan asked.
Paul wasn't listening, his mind turned back to something Sally had said in their early days. I was married once but he's gone now. She had looked relieved, saying that. At first Paul had feared her previous husband was abusive…but what if it was more than that? What if her husband had been involved in gangs?
Castellan leaned closer, eyes fanatically bright. "Do you know…Percy Jackson?"
Percy? Paul's first reaction was utter bafflement. Wasn't Gabe the one they wanted to know about?
Then, when the question truly registered—they were looking for Percy, his stepson was in danger!—Paul was thankful for his confusion and fought to keep his face bewildered. A flicker of knowledge could doom his soon-to-be son.
The teacher could feel their stares. Hundreds of them. Every single gangster, every vagrant, every homeless person, every…thing was looking at him. The weight of their attention bored into his skull, pressing his body into the cold concrete; making ice-age instincts blare. He fought for an ignorant expression but didn't trust himself to speak.
Castellan's eyes narrowed. Paul feared the lead gangster could read his thoughts.
"Perceus." A cheerleader hissed like the waters of the mythical river Phlegethon. She was probably the real fire bomber.
Castellan's smile widened. "Well, well mortal. You may have use yet."
Callused fingers crushed the phone.
"Location?" Percy demanded.
Charles shook his head and laid the dead-screened phone down. "Been disconnected from the other end. I got a general area before my tracker eighty-sixed it." He took a pen to the map and circled several blocks of New York. "Somewhere around here."
"Paul?" Sally whispered.
"Lots of old subway tunnels, probably the sewer system too," Annabeth said. "He could be anywhere down there."
"We should form a search party," Grover suggested. "The animals down there might know where he is."
"You're all so certain Blowfish is in enemy hands?" Clarissa looked skeptical. "I'm all for battle but this guy's a teacher. He probably just lost his phone."
"Call stopped. And not because of this," Charles tapped the phone's now-working screen. "Had to have been the other phone that died and lost phones usually don't go kaput."
"So somebody stepped on it or ran the stupid thing over. Happens all the time," Clarissa waved Charles away. "The Titans don't need Paul so let's stop with the tinkering and get on with the war."
A mirage-like rainbow shimmered in the empty air before Percy. Annabeth snatched the map off the table and grabbed Nico's arm. "Hide me," she ordered. Shadows cloaked the pair just as the Isis message condensed into a familiar form. Charles and Clarissa glared, Grover grimaced and Percy struggled for calm in front of the one he'd once looked up to—a real-life hero.
"Luke," Percy croaked. All these years and it still hurt.
"Perceus." Luke spoke evenly, befitting leadership, "And company." He smirked at Clarissa and Charles. The expression dropped at Grover. "Goat."
"Traitor," Grover shot back.
"Pleasantries aside," Luke stepped back, "I called for a reason." A sweeping hand gestured to a middle-aged man, salt and pepper hair a wild mess, suit stained with dark streaks, twitching from cold or fear. Did he realize the true danger he was in? Surrounded by all those monsters. Probably not. To Paul's mortal eyes they must have looked like gangsters at the worst. A blessing. Percy scrutinized the man who would hopefully become his stepfather. The stains were too dark to be blood; no wounds, no limbs held stiffly; Percy had become adept at recognizing hidden injuries and Paul seemed unwounded.
Percy took a calming breath, forcing himself to remember Chiron's warnings about fatal flaws. It was physically painful but he wrenched his eyes away from the man he knew to look around Luke's camp. Metal chains wrapped around a teenage prisoner. Demigod? Behind the pair lurked darkness, the area lit only by a single campfire but Percy's experienced gaze could pick out the shapes of monsters skulking beyond the light's reach. Monsters Luke had allied himself with.
An army.
"What do you want?" Now his voice came out smooth and commanding despite the pattering of his heart.
"A fair trade Perceus; and what price could a dear mother's lover command?" Luke drew closer to Paul, leaning Backbiter against a pale throat. Percy froze, eyes locked onto the frantically jumping pulse pressing against the blade with each beat. "I have no need of him. Not as a soldier or healer or slave." The edge of the blade brushed Paul's beard. A few hairs fell away. He froze like a rabbit scenting a wolf. "Though," Luke glanced back at the monsters, "He has one use."
The apartment's piping boiled and Percy tasted blood on his tongue. "What do you want?" Percy growled through gritted teeth.
"Temper, temper." The blade edged away. "Just a little talk. Face to face. I'll send the coordinates. Come alone, otherwise mommy's boy-toy dies."
"No! Percy don't give into him!" Paul yelled.
Percy made to say something, reassure Paul they would rescue him.
The message died.
Paul shook his head as the NCIS-style communication screen seemed to melt back into the shadowy concrete wall. Maybe it was being drawn into the secret compartment from whence it came…but what was that kind of technology doing in the hands of thugs in an abandoned subway station? It wasn't believable, but Paul could think of no better explanation.
And why contact Percy? He was just a fifteen-year-old, fantasy-loving kid. Lately all Paul ever did was interrupt Percy and his friends neck deep in role-playing campaigns. Surely Gabe was the one with gang-ties. A horrible thought skulked into his mind: unless the heartless man had dragged his stepson into it!
No wonder Percy had been so wary around him at first.
"What is going on?" Paul finally asked. "Percy Isn't involved in this."
"Isn't he?" Luke cocked an eyebrow, giving Paul a knowing look.
Paul didn't understand what the gang leader was hinting at but Percy's hypothetical role didn't matter. Finally, he'd loosened the right ropes to use his legs. They were still tied together, useless for escaping, but he flipped on his back and lashed out. The kick had no martial grace or military power behind it, but caught the nearest fiendish cheerleader right on the mouth.
"Fuck!" She spat out blood.
Leo slammed his forehead against the next girl. "Okay, such a thing as too hot!" The trio pounced and all three of them were at least as large and heavy as Leo who was still chained down. Paul frantically twisted in his ropes, trying to get just one loop over his shoulders, just one loop off his wrists but the gang was closing in too fast. Leo jerked his arms uselessly.
His chains parted, splattering molten metal on concrete. Leo's hands blazed. Paul blinked, no, he was holding a lighter. Two lighters. But how had their soft flame melted through steel?
The young man slammed one lighter into the nearest face, scalding her flesh like a branding iron. Her shriek grabbed everyone's attention.
Instantly Leo was pinned by a dozen weapons. "Okay," he said lightly through a cage of guns, "You guys really don't want me moving."
"Brave and powerful," Castellan praised. "You would make a wonderful addition to our army, rise high in its ranks."
"Not a chance," Leo snapped.
Paul felt the cold barrel of a gun at his throat, pricking like a knife. A drop of blood welled. "Join or the old man…"
"No," Luke stated. The sword lowered as if beneath the weight of his gaze. "Not yet. He is Percy Jackson's stepfather after all." Blue-gold eyes gleamed; a mischievous look, had he been younger. Now the trouble-maker's expression looked wrong, like the too-wide smile of a slasher.
"And if I know Perceus, he would have already been rid of you if he didn't care." The slasher smile eased into a smirk, "You should have heard about Gabe, awful thing."
"Awful thing is right." A high voice interrupted. "And he used my sister's head to do it. My sister's head."
"Leave Percy alone." Paul spoke automatically, feeling like a kid treading too close to the deep end of the pool. Sister's head? He dearly hoped that was a metaphor.
Concrete groaned. Silence fell as every gang member and homeless person looked nervously upward. An earthquake's growl cracked the ceiling, making the whole company tense. Some backed away, others drew their weapons, looking unsure.
"He's here!" Luke bellowed.
Percy? The thought was ridiculous, but it was the first one to spring into Paul's mind.
With an earth-rendering crack, concrete broke.
Niagara Falls fell on the heads of dozens of monsters, crushing them to the floor as water flooded the room in a leviathan surge. Nothing could stand against so many tons of rushing liquid. Shields crumpled, armored forms were smashed aside or run over like road-kill. Flames blazed, gangsters shouted, guns fired, though Paul could hear no sharp crack from them. Useless. Water quenched fire and flowed around weapons and drowned words. The army was swept aside by the tide. A few deserters scrambled toward the ceiling on climbing ropes but the water rose higher and higher toward them.
Burnt ropes fell away and Paul didn't waste time massaging his limbs, the water was already up to his waist. "Let's go, now." He ripped off his shoes.
"Shit man, I can't swim in this."
"You can't burn it, put those lighters away and hold onto me," Paul commanded. He looped an arm around Leo and paddled as best as he could. One of the climbing ropes wasn't too far. They could make it before the water reached the ceiling and drowned everyone.
A liquid coil wrapped around them. Paul could feel it soaking his throat and took a quick, deep breath as his hearing drowned. Water climbed up his temples, to his nose and eyes and finally to the top of his head. Paul kicked harder but the water level rose so fast. The current suddenly grew whirlpool-strong. Broken bodies flew through the haze of water and adrenaline lent him urgent strength.
It wasn't enough. He and Leo sank. Concrete bumped their knees. Paul tried to fight it but his lungs burned from the lack of air; his strength gone.
Then the water paused, all current stopping as though frozen but he could feel the wetness of liquid water soaking him down to his bones. That too vanished, leaving freezing air scraping his skin. Paul gasped desperately for oxygen, Leo took heaving breaths and water slid off them, out of their clothes and toward the liquid walls surrounding them.
This wasn't possible.
Water drained away, leaving behind limp and broken bodies, a sludge of debris, completely dry clothes Paul had to feel to believe and a battle in progress.
The sound of music struck Paul first, though to call it music would do justice neither to humanity's creations, nor this wild tune. In the chronicles of Narnia, Aslan had sung a whole wild world to life and the description of that sound came back to the English teacher, something too wild to be made by human throats and human instruments.
This song was what C.S. Lewis had been trying to describe.
It made Paul leap to his feet, his soul plucked like a guitar string as his body flooded again with adrenaline. It called to the wild in him, the ancient, primordial instinct to protect his tribe, especially children.
Leo.
Percy.
Another gangster rose from the water, black hair plastered to his skull but alive. He raised his hands, a weapon clutched tight. The music swelled louder within Paul's soul and he charged like a bear.
At the last second the young man spun around and Paul saw the trigger pull.
He never heard the shot.
They collided. Paul was the larger of the two but this young man threw him off as though he were a textbook. The fall should have broken something but Paul felt no pain with the wild music pulsing in his veins. A flash of light. His eyes burned, scorched and he couldn't see a weapon through the haze, could barely see the teen and his glowing armor. Didn't matter. He charged, lost in the throbbing beat of 'not Percy, not Percy, not Percy.'
Then he was flung away again and hit the water, debris raking his back. Paul could barely feel the sting but adrenaline couldn't mask the feel of his eyeballs being gouged out of his sockets and ground with shards of glass. What had happened? What had that gangster done?
Suddenly the pain was gone like it had never been. Paul sagged from its absence, rubbed his eyes carefully but didn't feel a twinge of discomfort. He opened his eyes again.
The gangster was still there. Same water-slicked black hair, same half-drowned look. But the young man was now dressed in glowing Greek-style armor, a sword in one hand and the other wreathed with an eerie light. The teen flung his hand forward. Light flashed. A rat fell between them bathed in strange green fire and more creatures attacked the young warrior. The music grew stronger.
At first glance, Paul's rescuer looked human. Then Paul picked out the horns rising from a head of curly hair, the legs slimming down into hooves because this man wasn't a man. The English teacher blinked. The Satyr disarmed the…whatever he was.
"Thanks," Paul whispered, but his gratitude was swallowed up by the clang of metal against metal, the sharp crack of claw, not feet, hitting the concrete; roars no human throat could possibly make. The battle swallowed his human attacker and inhuman ally both.
Monsters. Chimera, Hydra, dragons and giants and twisted anagrams of humans and beasts and who knew what else shoved together. Fangs and coils and great, jagged wings and claws too large for any creature living or real. They poured out of the tunnels, bestial fangs bared and cruelly curved beaks tearing into the armor and ranks of warriors out of legend. Magic flared and dimmed like a pulse, voices yelled in a language he couldn't understand but he caught one name repeated over and over.
Kronos.
Paul was painfully aware of his smallness, his aloneness. The Satyr was gone along with his music. The teacher scooped up a fallen sword. Greek-style leaf-blade, not too different from the swords he had practiced with in college theatre club. Paul rose again to see a monster charging him. One second it was twenty feet away. The next, in his face. He swung the weapon in a half-remembered, all-desperate strike as fangs closed in.
A piercing shriek rent the air and his eardrums. His glowing sword splattered with blood. A flash of white, Paul slashed again but this time the monster dodged nimbly. He backed away, point held in front of him like a shield.
The monster was a boar.
When he'd taught mythology in his classes, Paul had always been amused at the Greek idea of a monster pig. Herakles was needed to bring down pig-zilla, whole groups of heroes united against demonic swine. He simply couldn't picture the cheerful pink caricature of bacon and bar-b-que as something heroes and demigods were needed to take down.
This monster had hairs like bristling arrowheads, hooves with knife-edges, skin thick as armor and tusks like curved swords. It was, in short, the death pig. Between massive ivory fangs, on a nose better suited to sniffing out corpses than truffles, was a sluggishly bleeding scratch.
A bellow like a tyrannosaurus tore out the creature's lungs and Paul was so numb he couldn't think but knelt and stabbed up at the throat suddenly in his face. Thrusting through thick, tough monster hide and into thicker, tougher monster muscle was harder than those demigod heroes made it look.
He could use a demigod right about now.
The boar shook itself once, a sharp snap of its neck and Paul let go before he could be flung into the nearest concrete wall. He stared up into the death boar's blood-red eyes and thought Ares couldn't have chosen a more appropriate symbol.
What a silly last thought.
Red eyes suddenly clouded over. A stream of blood poured down one side of its face and Paul dared look a little higher. A second sword had been thrust up to the hilt into the skull. The fingers clenched around the hilt and with a quick tug, pulled three feet of glowing bronze out through flesh and bone as easily as pulling a paring knife out of an apple. Paul looked higher.
Despite the water everywhere, this man was completely dry. Protecting his head and chest and limbs was scratched and dented glowing bronze armor of the Greek style; it distorted his scarred features. But no stubble or beard or mustache marred his grim-set jaw. The man—boy?—was only a little taller than him when they both stood up.
And despite the serious face and grim mouth, Paul knew these features. Up close, no helmet could disguise it enough. Past conversations came back to him.
"My little hero."
"Very much like that, yes."
"Isn't he?"
Paul dropped to his knees.
"You okay?" asked the familiar voice. Paul had no idea how he moved his head but the young man must have been satisfied and headed for the battle, sword ready. Unbelievable. The young man didn't look fifteen years old, didn't fight like a learning-challenged student struggling through a page of Shakespeare. He stood strong and powerful and sounded commanding as he took control of the battlefield, side by side with a familiar blond.
A hero of old, brought to life.
And it was Percy. The teen he was considering a son. The kid who apparently had the worst case of upset stomach any of the teachers had heard of. The child who wore really weird orange shirts and would eat escargot if it was dyed blue.
A shock-wave shook the ancient subway station, rattling Paul's teeth. Thirty feet away Percy and Castellan clashed again. Sword against shield, locked in combat. Only for a second. Then they sprang away, movements so blindingly fast Paul could only see blurs of bronze and hear the clash of metal against metal like machine-gun bullets.
They paused with Percy's shield edge pressing against Luke's throat, the younger looming over the older to press more of his weight into that vulnerable flesh. Castellan ignored it. Gold flashed. Water rushed back into the room like a dam had broken, heading straight for the two warriors. Luke moved. Blood sprayed. Percy's bronze sword flew from him in a slow-moving arc.
Paul ran for the fleeing weapon because his step-son was battling for life now. With only his shield he took Castellan's strikes but each battering took a toll on Percy's strength. Luke's sword slashed. Percy barely managed to catch it with the edge of his shield; where his movements had been blindingly fast, now Paul could see them clearly. Luke withdrew. Without the strange mixed-metal sword pressing into his shield, Sally's son stumbled and Paul knew exactly what Castellan was going to do next. Percy knew it too, his body responding automatically but the elder was still a blur and the teen was moving too slowly. Luke parried the shield. Paul snatched Percy's sword, his fingers curling around the hilt like they were moving through molasses. Even his heart slowed down, each thump like the footsteps of a stalking monster.
"Percy!" The word drew out of his mouth like slow -motion dialogue and he flung the sword, which moved through the air like water. The sight before him struck his limbs and clogged his throat with his frozen heart. Paul would have gladly taken the sight of a horde of monsters over this one: Percy on one knee, wavering, held up only by the sword Castellan had run right through his torso and out his back. Luke withdrew the sword, blade sheathed in blood. Percy collapsed on one hand. A swipe knocked Percy's sword away.
"Join us!" Castellan offered, sword raised over Percy's head, waiting.
The teen looked up and though Paul couldn't anything but a mess of shaggy hair, he could hear defiance in his stepson's tone. "No."
The sword fell.
Water enveloped them. Tons of water clouded with gold dust and blood and sewage swirled around them both and parted them. Luke fought. Percy met his strikes. Liquid exploded like a bomb. Paul shielded his face and when he could see again, Luke's blade struck. Percy parried. Another strike scraped against the shield. Percy slashed at an arm. Hit. Castellan ignored the blow, his third strike sank into Percy's other side. Blood flowed. The elder suddenly tripped and stumbled. Percy smoothly slid out of reach. Water curled protectively around him like a second set of armor, sliding into the wound. Paul couldn't imagine how unhygienic that was.
Castellan's hesitation passed. Percy barely blocked the next strike. It sent him sliding back. A thrust of water nearly took the elder off his feet. Luke dodged. Water twisted in mid-air, defying the laws of physics and science, and charged again. Missed again. Percy slashed at the unprotected head. Not a hair fell off. Luke's feet landed in the water and he stumbled. A flash of bronze. A flash of gold. Castellan was free. The water only seized him again and each time he slowed a little more. Not slow enough. Liquid rippled behind his flank, as though someone was sneaking toward Castellan but Paul couldn't see anyone there. Percy side-stepped, circling his opponent and again the water seized his legs for a second.
In that second, someone struck.
Luke bucked like someone had hit his leg and whirled around but didn't raise his sword against his attacker. "Annabeth!"
A teenage girl materialized right before their eyes, the blond Percy had been fighting beside. His girlfriend. She was resplendent in armor as scarred and dented as Percy's and blood oozed from unprotected skin. In one hand she held a dagger, unbloodied. Horror the likes of which Caesar must have felt upon saying his famous last words bled out of his expression, revealing only cruel respect in golden eyes. "Smart girl aren't you. That was a close one but Luke was a little smarter than Achilles."
The blow bought Percy time. His next strike clashed against Castellan's sword and with a twist, he flung the mixed-metal weapon into the water. "Thanks. Someone get him out of here." Percy didn't dare let up, spraying water in Luke's eyes and into his mouth. A flash of gold and time stuttered like a broken record. When it played smoothly once more the animals and water were gone.
"What have you done?" Annabeth shouted, a hint of fear in her voice.
Metal-clad hands seized Paul, jerking him from his stupor. He tried twisting away, but he could barely twitch his shoulders beneath that steely grip. He froze.
"I'm not here to hurt you," the grip relaxed slightly. Paul could hardly believe his ears, the voice was lower and rough with exhaustion, but familiar.
"Grover?"
"Yeah, time to go."
"Why are you a Satyr?"
The supposedly mythical creature didn't pause, "You can see me properly?"
Every other time they'd met, Paul had gotten the impression of a teenager slightly older than Percy made young by his awkwardness. He stumbled and tripped over his own feet, hid his face behind hats and hunched in on himself. Now his transformation was even greater than Percy's.
"Nevermind, let's go," Grover hurried Paul along.
He glanced back. Percy and Luke were still fighting. Two bronze-colored blurs. His stepson struck with sword and tidal waves and freight trains of water. Not a drop of Luke's blood fell. Distantly, he could hear more fighting. "But Percy…all these kids…"
"Will be fine, especially with Annabeth, but you…no offense but fighting isn't your strong suit."
Paul slumped. Realistically he was a better swordsman than ninety nine percent of the human population but he hadn't been able to thrust his sword deep enough into the boar's throat to slay it. He wouldn't have been able to match the speed of heroes or villains. Paul quit resisting. Not that he was able to resist much, Satyrs were apparently supernaturally strong.
"Leo?" he asked. Somehow during the fight he'd been separated from the teen.
"Safe." Shadows darkened and parted, revealing Leo alive and safe and even chattering excitedly. The other? The Spartan version of batman. The young man was clad completely in black armor, his face protected and concealed by a skull-shaped helmet. In one hand he held a sword the color of a nightmare.
God…gods this was his life now. "Glad you're…okay." He glanced at batman…or bat-boy really. Paul felt a little sick. How old was this child?
"Dude am I gonna learn to teleport through darkness?" Leo asked happily. "That was so creepy but so cool! And when am I gonna get a sword? Come on, break out some Final Fantasy goodness—"
"Silence, you'll attract monsters." Batboy glared at Leo with a look that would have peeled steel.
"Yeesh, grumpy," Leo whispered.
A monster pounced.
As fast as Paul flinched, the others moved faster. Leo's hands burst into flame. Grover blocked a strike with a staff Paul hadn't even noticed and batboy struck, nightmare blade piercing easily into the monster's chest. It died quicker than it appeared.
Leo smiled uneasily at bat-boy's glare and remained silent. Paul knew that look from somewhere. Well if Percy was involved in this craziness, Annabeth right by his side and Grover was neck deep in it too…he considered other friends.
"Nico?" Paul exclaimed.
"Yes."
"Aren't you…eleven?"
Leo's eyes bugged out. "Seriously?"
A normal child would have indignantly stated their exact age. Nico smirked bitterly. "Or eighty, it's hard to keep track."
Paul let out the deep, weary breath of someone who's life was never going to get any simpler. Not long after meeting Sally, Paul finally found the motivation to get healthier like he'd always been meaning to do. The first day, brimming with enthusiasm, he'd worked himself to exhaustion. Hundreds of muscles he never knew he had, felt like hot coals. His whole body ached in one big throb and a thousand smaller, sharper ones all in concert. His tendons pulsed with pain while his muscles screamed from the strain he'd put them through for a week straight. Sally had thought he was sick.
His brain felt worse now. Like it had tried to lift mountains of knowledge; swallow an ocean of information. His head throbbed from the weight of another world's knowledge as he staggered into the sun's blinding rays. Enlightenment hurt. He looked around the normal world exactly as the Pevensie siblings must have felt when they'd staggered out of the wardrobe at the end.
"This isn't real," he whispered in a small voice.
"This is only the beginning," Grover said gently.
An hour later Paul was sitting on Sally's normal, discount-price blue sofa with an ocean-pattern blanket thrown around his shoulders. In his hands a cup of coffee. No frills or strange new flavors. Just a normal cup of caffeinated joy. Unchanged. If he closed his eyes, he could almost believe none of it happened.
"Stupid piece of—barely lasted against that Hydra. –My spear!" The speech was punctuated by what had to be considerably less polite ancient Greek.
Paul clutched the white mug like a life-preserver.
Percy had directed most of the wounded to camp but between new demigods, imprisoned enemy demigods, friendly demigods and friendly not-demigods their infirmary was overflowing. Nico had teleported a dozen others to the Jackson apartment before slumping against a plush chair, too tired to haul himself into it. Paul sipped his coffee. Both Percy's and Sally's beds had been converted to infirmary, along with the floor space in the living room, most of the kitchen, the tub in the bathroom and the lazy boy chair he liked to grade essays in. A pile of bloodied, dented armor buried their television set. Sally eyed it like a trash-bag Percy had forgotten to take out.
Ignoring the pink, barely-healed wounds on his torso, Percy pulled out a remarkably intact shield, rag in one hand and began explaining the new normal.
Paul gulped down his coffee.
"All the ancient Greek myths are true, the gods, the monsters. Us demigods."
The first time he had heard about Percy's delinquent behavior Paul had dreaded living with the type of teen who sneered at teachers, bullied other students, trashed property and cared nothing for their grades.
"Demigods and monsters have fought for centuries. It's this cycle of attack, fight, stab, they return to Tartarus, we die and the next generation gets to have fun." Percy's light tone died. "But now, Kronos is rising."
What was so horrible about delinquency again?
"He's waging war on the gods and everyone who doesn't side with him. Luke is his general."
"More than a general," Annabeth warned from Percy's other side.
What Paul wouldn't have given for a Percy Jackson who flunked classes for petty reasons. Whose worst problems were overcoming drug addiction or an infected piercing.
"We hoped to talk to you first," Sally said pleadingly. "To gently explain this whole other world most people have consigned to myth and legend."
"Yeah, nice, quiet talk about the war and impending apocalypse, but it's hard working that in a dinner conversation." More seriously Percy added, "You're taking this rather well?"
"I'm not," Paul admitted. Half the information didn't register. War. Titans. Gods. Demigods. Words slid into one ear, his over-stretched brain spat them out the other. His mind was as attentive as a Friday-afternoon student on school's last day. A childish part of him wanted to crawl beneath a bunch of blankets and scream, "You lied about the monsters! They are too real!"
Tears burned in his eyes. "I shouldn't be…" Paul wiped his face. "Your friends? Is everyone alright?" Kids. Kids in a war. Nico was twelve at most. Percy had been lethally wounded, healed only by his supernatural powers and he couldn't imagine how Sally had dealt with this for years. What right did he have to cry? "Did anyone…die?"
More weight settled on Percy's bowed shoulders. "Yes," he whispered.
"I'm sorry," Paul said. Never had the words felt so useless. Percy was a war-veteran. The lives of everyone in his camp (and, if this craziness was true, a good chunk of the world) depended on his decisions.
What could Paul say?
A clank startled the three of them. Paul had dropped the mug on the floor. Brown liquid sprayed everywhere only to freeze in mid-air and gather up into a blob. Sally nonchalantly took the fallen cup and carefully stepped over wounded demigods into the kitchen where she grabbed a fresh mug for Percy to put the floating coffee back in.
Paul gripped the new handle. Around him demigods lay injured or healed the injured. A sunny-haired boy was checking over Nico's arrow-wound while the son of Hades grumbled about a splinter. Sally sat on one side of him, holding his hand with a gentle smile; Percy, on the other side, set the shield down and cleaned a breast-plate.
"Will the spell wear off?" Paul finally asked.
Mother and son shrugged in unison. "I don't know much about magic," Percy said, "Spells can either be cured, go away in a few days or last forever." He grimaced, "We don't have many magic experts at camp either. Hecate sided with Kronos."
The magic goddess. At least he had taught sections on classical culture and mythology so he didn't have to play Watson with every little thing.
"But if you want to get the spell off I'm certain Annabeth could come up with something."
Paul fiddled with the white mug for a moment before resting it on the coffee table. "I think," he said slowly, "If there is a monster in the room, I'd like to see it."
Sally smirked and it looked a little like Percy's trouble-making smirk, "That's one way to put it."
Paul pushed the cup aside and clasped her hands, "And I don't want to be blind to who you really are. I don't want to leave your incredible family." Sally smiled brightly and pressed her lips against his cheek like a schoolgirl; Percy flushed like the teen he was. "So, this all started because you are a son of Poseidon?"
Percy chuckled, old and weary. "Yeah, because Poseidon. Sum of my life."
A/N: Thank you everyone for reading, hope you enjoyed Paul's revelation and have a wonderful holiday weekend :D