Chapter 2 of Reincarnation is officially up! Enjoy! :)
~CampHB
By the time I woke up, the sky outside was pitch-black. Mike was still driving. The headlights didn't show very far ahead of us and he looked nervous.
"Where are we?" I yawned.
"Near the middle of New Jersey," he replied, never taking his eyes off the road.
I realized that everything was quiet and Mike wasn't driving on the highway, but he was driving fast. The speed-o-meter read 82 miles per hour.
"Jeez," I said, "slow down. We're going to hit somebody."
"Can't."
"It's not that bad…is it?"
He laughed without humor. "I wish."
Suddenly, there was a loud pop! and the car lurched forward.
"Argh!" Mike yelled and sank his head into his hands. "Flat tire! And I ate the spare one too!"
"Wait, you ate the spare tire?" I asked, confused.
"Never mind. Pretend you didn't hear that last sentence."
"Right…"
We got out of the car and stepped in the middle of the road. Mike grimaced and mumbled, "I hope it works?"
"What works?" I realized that I really didn't know anything.
Mike took out a CD from the trunk and turned on one of the car lights. When the bright light shone on it, the back of the CD glimmered with small rainbows. Mike pulled out a gold coin and held it above the rainbow.
"Oh goddess," he murmured, "please accept my offering."
I figured out he must be crazy.
When he dropped it, I thought that the coin would just bounce off the CD, but to my surprise, it sank into one of the rainbows and the multicolored band swallowed it up.
"Whoa. So cool. You gotta show me that trick sometime, man," I said, awestruck.
"Shh!" Mike gave me a look. Then he turned back to the CD. "Camp Half-Blood, please."
The rainbow expanded and became a full-view screen. A man's face appeared in the picture.
"Chiron!"
"Ah, Mr. Walker," the man said. "Nice to see you."
The man –or Chiron as Mike had called him- had a neatly trimmed brown beard and twinkling brown eyes. He looked like he knew a lot, which, I would find out later, he did know a lot.
"How is it going?"
"Flat tire," Mike said dully.
"What about the spare?"
"I ate it." Mike's expression sagged.
"I see." Chiron looked as if he knew it would happen.
Suddenly, a piercing cry filled the air.
"Oh no." Mike turned pale and started chewing on his lower lip. I hadn't seen him this scared since the day some girls had tried to sneak into the boys' locker room and watch the boys change. I shuddered at the memory.
Girls. Seriously, they're so desperate.
Something swooped down from above and I felt a feathery wing brush my neck. Mike slashed through the message and we stood back to back. I impulsively began fingering my necklace. Besides the clay beads, there was a dog tag on it. Engraved in the silver were two initials: L.C.
The thing came down again, this time screeching loudly. Mike and I ducked in time. I realized that we weren't the only ones on the road. Shadows started to move in closer. Mike whipped out an object. I had hoped that it was a gun or something, but instead, it was a wooden pipe.
The headlights of the car glinted on a shiny object and I yanked the tag off my necklace. I clenched it in my hand, slowly squeezing in it my hand and letting it relax.
"Handsome aren't you, little hero," a voice suddenly cooed. "More than handsome."
I breathed hard. A girl stepped out of the darkness. She had dark hair with bright green eyes. She was wearing a white classic Greek dress that draped to her ankles with a V-neck that was cut so low that it made me blush. Thin golden armbands wound around her upper arms. An intricate necklace of gold, mother-of-pearl, and jade encircled her throat and was wound into her hair.
She circled Mike and me, eyeing me slowly. Mike gave me a look that said 'She's hot!' I had to admit that was true.
The girl reached out and touched my cheek. Her fingers were delicate and gentle. She stared into my eyes and spoke softly.
"Would you be my hero?" she asked seductively. "Of course you would. I'm so hard to resist, aren't I? You are to. You're so hard to resist…to eat!"
Suddenly, she sprang at me and raked her nails in my right arm. The silky blond hair became literally fire. Her eyes glowed green and she changed. She was a monster.
The weird bird that had tried to attack us from above flew down. They had the head of a griffin and the body of a lion: gryphons.
My right arm felt like it was exploding in pain. I flipped the tag and it changed into a double-edged sword.
The girl/monster suddenly gasped.
"You…you…" she stuttered.
By instinct, I swiped at her with my sword. She growled and kicked me in the chest, throwing me to the floor. Mike raised his pipes and played a horrible tune. I guess it was supposed to knock them out, but instead, it knocked him out.
"Mike!"
A gryphon snatched me up and I swatted at it with my sword. It passed cleanly through and dissipated. I started to fall to the ground and hit it in an uncomfortable position on my right elbow, adding to the pain. Black spots began to dance before my eyes, performing an odd ritual.
The monster dug her nails into my leg and I yelped. She knocked my sword out and grinned evilly.
"I thought you were him but he wouldn't fight like you. Prepare to die, half-blood."
Surprisingly, she kissed me first, softly. Then she made her way from my mouth to my neck and then she bit me. She drew her lips away, blood staining her teeth.
"Mmm…tasty."
I started to black out. I was going to be killed.
"Die –"
Her back suddenly went rigid and she disappeared. A girl stood over her, her two swords raised.
"Come on," she said. "Get up. Help's here."
The last thing I remember was her carrying Mike and me into a kind of transportation before taking off into the air.
..."The sooner we leave, the better," I was saying. "I want this over with."
"Aww," the girl sympathized, running a finger down my arm. She was beautiful, wearing a blue dress tonight. "You find it unpleasant to destroy your own camp?"
'Your own camp…' Those words rang in my head.
'Yes, destroy it,' a voice inside me convinced. 'They have done nothing for you. They don't care. You've suffered enough. You need to fight back.'
"I need to fight back," I murmured. "Destroy the camp. Leave no one alive. No mercy. The camp will be destroyed forever."
'Yes…yes…this is your duty, Luke: Destroy the camp.'
"Destroy the camp…"…
…"Destroy the camp," I muttered, snapping awake. "Whoa."
I was lying down in a bed in a room. There was a girl sitting in one corner, looking bored. Somehow, this room seemed familiar and it didn't, though, at the same time.
When the girl saw that I was awake, she got up and strolled over to me.
"Good, you're up," she said. "Took you long enough."
"What?" I reached up to touch my head, which was throbbing.
"It doesn't matter. Anyway, my name's Tyler. You can call me Ti if you want. What's your name?"
My first reaction was, "You're a boy?"
"No, you idiot," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'm a girl. Why do people always ask that? Anyway, what's your name?"
"Oh…me? Alex."
Tyler had chocolate brown hair that was chopped so that it hung to her shoulders. Her eyes were black with a rim of gold around them. She was tan and tall –maybe just a little shorter than me. I had a feeling we wouldn't get along a lot.
"Anyway, since you're up, Chiron wants to see you now."
"Who?"
"Chiron. He's downstairs."
"Uh-huh."
"Boys," I heard her mutter. "Honestly."
I had made it into the ping-pong room without too much trouble from my leg. Tyler had been waiting impatiently at the doorway, tapping her foot.
There was a horse's behind facing me. There were other kids in the room, too. There was tension in the air as if an argument had just been finished.
"C-Chiron?" I stammered nervously.
When he turned around, I recognized him immediately from my dream. His bow and quiver full of arrows; his 'Centaurs Rule' t-shirt; the white stallion body; the stern but kind face. They all hit me in a single blow. A boy and a girl turned around too and I knew them also.
The girl had honey-blond hair and stormy gray eyes. The boy had dark hair and sea-green eyes. Percy and Annabeth. The names came to me.
Chiron started to smile but then frowned instantly. He looked me straight in the eye, turned pale, and said five words that sent a chill down my back: "You're supposed to be dead."