"D" for Demigod
Disclaimer: I do not own The Kane Chronicles or The Heroes of Olympus
Chapter II: A Sphinx Murders Our Car
"Ah, so D stands for demigod, then?"
"What did you think it stood for?" Drew asked, waving a hand. "My name?"
"Your grade average, actually," Sadie mused.
"What?!" Drew's head snapped towards Sadie.
"Car! Car!" Lacy screamed, pointing.
Drew slammed on the brakes, just barely before hitting into the bumper of a truck in front. The traffic lights turned from green to red.
Traffic, Sadie thought, the bane of all heroes.
Lacy sighed and leaned back into her seat. "So, Sadie—I mean, wow, I didn't even know. You're not from Camp Half-Blood, that's for sure. Who's your godly parent? Hecate? With all the magic things, it has to be Hecate."
"Um...who? I mean, no—I mean, I'm not a demigod. Like, at all. Both my parents were perfectly mortal, uh...for the most part." Sadie groaned. She wasn't doing a good job at this at all. She was getting the same headache she'd got when Annebeth had spring all this on her the first time. "I'm a magician, actually. An Egyptian magician."
"A magician," Drew repeated. "An Egyptian magician? What does that even mean? Do you pull rabbits out of your hat in a circus?"
"No, it means I blow things up and occasionally save the bloody world." Sadie harrumphed and crossed her arms. "What about you? If you're really a demigod, then who's your godly folk?"
Drew adjusted the rear-view mirror. She drove 'their' car forward. "Aphrodite," she said, curt.
Sadie blinked. "Who?" Perhaps she should have listened to her history teachers babble on and on about Greece after all. Carter would know, Annabeth would definitely know. The name did sound familiar...Aphrodite...Aphrodite...
"Goddess of Love," Lacy supplied, sinking into her seat until she was practically in it. "She's, um...She's my mom too."
"Oh. Goddess of Love, I see. So she's both... your...mums…" Sadie blinked again. "Wait—you're sisters?!"
Sadie'd never met any two people quite as different as Drew and Lacy. Drew was...well, Drew was kind of an ass. The seventeen year old had consistently been at the top of Sadie's turn into a worm at first opportunity list. She was obnoxious, egotistical, and obsessed with power. Lacy was one of Sadie's best mates, always cheerful, upbeat, kind, caring, and...you get the point. Finding out they were related, sisters even, was quite the shocker.
(Sadie instantly regretted her reaction. She knew a thing or two about people assuming things about the family, the nasty shock on their faces when they found out she and Carter were siblings.)
"I mean, um, wow. So, the Goddess of Love?"
"We've had a hero...or two," Drew said, defensive.
"So now you'll talk about them in a good light," Lucy grumbled.
"What's it like, having a god for a mum?" Sadie wondered.
Both Drew and Lacy fell silent.
"Whatever," Drew finally drawled. "Sadie, darling, didn't you say your 'gut-instinct' or something stupid like that had a guess on what Jaiden thinks he's doing?"
"Mmm? Oh, yes. He wants to unite the Greek and Egyptian world, doesn't he? He'd need to be at a place between both worlds for that." Which meant he had to be going there, a place Sadie hadn't fancied going back to anytime soon.
"Where? Alexandria? Cyprus? Turkey?" Lacy guessed.
"What, no. Governor's Island," Sadie said, "Obviously."
Two pairs of eyes stared at her.
"Well, I mean, it's between Manhattan and Boston, isn't it? And from what I've heard, Manhattan is Greek central."
"I mean, Mt. Olympus is above the Empire State Building…" Lacy said.
"I still don't understand how that works," Sadie announced flatly.
"Lacy, be a dear and pull up Google Maps for me." Drew tossed Lacy her phone. "We don't want the world to end because of a navigational error, do we?"
"Hey, don't go pinning it all on Lacy," Sadie said. "Why don't you take a little bit of responsibility? You're the one driving."
"Exactly. I'm the chauffeur. You're the hero. And Lacy, I guess."
Lacy made an uncomfortable noise in the back of her throat. "It's fine, Sadie. Really." She handed Drew back her phone.
Sadie huffed. She glared at Drew, hoping her eyes sent the message: I'm watching you.
Drew either doesn't care or doesn't notice.
"So who is this Jaiden guy?" Sadie asked, just to fill in the silence (Sadie hated silence—even when she was sitting with the enemy). "You two seem to know him."
"Just a former camper. No one important," Drew said airily, which—knowing the type of person Drew was—probably meant the Jaiden bloke was someone important.
"Former?" Sadie asked, because that sounded like a good place to start. "What does that mean? What did he do?"
"We thought he died during the Battle of Manhattan," Lacy said quietly. "We buried him and everything."
"Hardly. There was no body to bury," Drew remarked. "There almost never is."
"Dark, but I must admit—I can relate," Sadie said, trying to get the burning memories of entire nomes wiped out during the rise of Apophis. She doesn't ask about this 'Battle of Manhattan', having gotten the feeling it was a subject she'd smartly avoid (Sadie had too much 'Battle of…'s saddling her mind already, she didn't need to add to the list). Instead, she changed topics. "So if he's a demigod, what are his powers? Can he shoot lasers out of his eyes, jump over buildings with a single leap?"
Drew snorted. "He's a son of Athena. They're not worth much except their brains."
"We can't talk," Lacy muttered.
"No, you can't talk," Drew corrected.
"But—" Sadie frowned. "So, Jaiden's Annabeth's—"
She was interrupted by loud, ear-piercing screeches and then sharp claws tearing into the hood of the car.
Drew screamed and swerved the car off the road.
"The Dunkin Donuts! Smash it into the Dunkin Donuts!" Sadie yelled, pointing at the store. "Shake it off!"
A head suddenly appeared in the windscreen, blocking Drew's view. "What the fu—!" Drew screamed.
"Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" It was a woman's face, horribly beautiful in a disturbingly perfect way. Her voice was gravelly, rasping. "Please, don't answer that riddle, everyone knows the answer!"
"Man," Lucy muttered.
"I said, don't answer that riddle!" The creature grew agitated, angry even. It made a furious squawking noise and digged its claws in even further.
"I thought sphinxes were supposed to be protectors!" Sadie yelled, "Not—Not some mad woman!"
"Silly girl, I am—"
Drew slammed on the pedal, jerking the car forward and smashing through the Dunkin Donuts with the Sphinx taking the brunt of the damage.
Drew drew in a shaky breath. She gasped
and clutched her heart.
"Did we…?" Lacy asked tentatively.
The Sphinx suddenly yowled and lifted off. It shook shards of glass from its bloodied wings. "Pay! Pay! Pay! I ask of you, who was the sixteenth president of the United States?!"
Sadie summoned her staff and wand. She kicked open the car door and lobbed a fireball at the Sphinx (courtesy of her brother's girlfriend aka. Zia). "I don't bloody know! I'm British!"
Okay, so maybe that wasn't technically true—she was born in Los Angeles. Did that make her a U.S citizen? Sadie drew a blank.
"Bloody," Drew snorted in between gasps of breath.
"Get out!" Sadie ordered, banging on the window. "Unless you want to become bird food!"
"I am not a bird!" the Sphinx squawked. It peeled itself off the wall.
Lacy was more than happy to leave the car. "I-It's, well, it looks like a mix of Egyptian and Greek features—"
"It does the riddle thing," Sadie said agreeably, for the sixteenth president of the United States sounded like a riddle to her.
"—and it has the Egyptian headdress—"
"I don't care what it is!" Drew shrieked. She crawled out of the driver's seat and yelled. "Just kill it!"
"So helpful," Sadie muttered, rolling her eyes. She casted N'dah (protect!) just as the Sphinx lunged forward. The monster hit an invisible wall.
Sirens blared from somewhere in the city.
"We need to get out of here!" Lacy said, ever the reasonable one.
The Sphinx shrieked angrily, clawing at Sadie's protection spell. She was starting to make progress. Then the screeching started, "Sadie—Sadie Kane! What can you do? What can you do?"
"Shut up! Okay—" Sadie gritted her teeth. "—Let's abandon boat. Drew, what direction is the port?"
"Me?"
"You're the one holding the phone, aren't you?!"
"Tanaka, Tanaka—What do you have? You? Worthless! Worthless!" Sadie's protection spell broke.
Drew's face screwed up. She suddenly looked—hollow.
"Drew!" Sadie snapped, turning.
"T-That way!" Drew began running down the street, pushing pass confused pedestrians.
"Lacy! Leg it, will you?!" Sadie caught Lacy by her collar and dragged her along. She felt phantom claws down her back—the Sphinx barely missing her.
"Lacy, Lacy," hissed the Sphinx. "Ungrateful child! How long—"
"Ha-wi!" Sadie yelled. She landed a magic strike on the Sphinx. The Sphinx barreled down the street.
"What—" Lacy breathed, eyes wide.
"It's trying to get in your head! A bloody load of monsters do that particular dirty trick. My advice? Ignore it!"
Sadie felt Lacy began to lag. She was slowing down herself—she'd spent way too much magical energy (she'd never been too good at managing that—she had a tendency to nearly kill herself much more than she'd like).
The Sphinx was getting back up again. That thing just wasn't bloody dying.
"Can't you kill it correctly?!" Drew screamed.
"Oh, like I haven't been trying to do exactly that for the past ten minutes!" Sadie retorted angrily.
Lacy tugged at Sadie's grip. "G-Guys! The Sphinx is leaving!"
Say what now? Sadie thought dully. She turned mid-run just in time to watch giant wings beat and lift off the ground. It doesn't chase after them. It soared pass Sadie and Drew—towards the port.
"Yay," Drew said flatly—thoroughly unhelpful.
"Not yay," Sadie snapped, "Monsters don't run—not unless they have somewhere to be."
"W-Where's it going?" Lacy asked.
Sadie grimaced, eyes trained on the skyline where the monster had just disappeared.
"Back to its master."
Next Chapter: We Get Buried By Our Own Stupidity