The Dark Side of the Moon Series: Taken (Book 1)

Part 1: Lieutenant of the Shattered

Chapter 4: Thank You For The Venom

Somewhere in the forests of Pennsylvania, Hunters of Artemis campsite

October 7th, 8:23 p.m.

Thalia Grace, Daughter of Zeus, Lieutenant of Artemis

My new mission was not to figure out what had happened, but rather to wring Percy's neck the next time I saw him. Couldn't he be a little bit more understanding? And yes, I'm being legitimate. Who even started that whole "legit" thing anyway? I'll wring their neck too, because that's just plain annoying. Frankly, anyone or anything that pissed me off right now was pissing me off at the wrong time, because I was feeling downright murderous.

Let's review.

Justina and Maggie.

Damn creepy Hestia.

Artemis and Apollo.

No Artemis.

No godsdamn light.

Percy and Annabeth.

Stupid Percy.

No Percy and Annabeth.

No freaking idea what the Hades was going on.

Yeah, I think that sums up my night. Cheery, no? Yes, yes, I'm aware that I am the queen of sarcasm. But sarcasm is a very useful demigod tool. It can be used as a defense, a put-down, a "I don't give a shit," et cetera. I love sarcasm. This one kid from Athena Cabin once told me that sarcasm was the defense mechanism of the weak, so I punched him to demonstrate just how strong I was.

Anyway, my thoughts were kind of scattered right now.

I'm not sure how long it was, me standing there, fuming, shocked, and a mixture of other things, but it was long enough for Riley to stroll in, calm as nothing you've ever seen before. However, she threw the tent flap aside as quick as an Aphrodite girl would a toss an old, dirty sock. But from the way she did it, I'd guess it was as if she were trying to startle who or what was on the other side.

Riley was one of my better friends in the Hunt. She was blonde, tall, and athletic with unnerving and intelligent gray eyes: the markers for a child of Athena. But she wasn't. With her upturned eyebrows, sharp cheekbones, and sly smile, she was a daughter of Hermes. This was one of the reasons I liked her: she was my ally during the prank wars that tended to occur within the Hunt. Phoebe was another ally of mine, and Justina when she wasn't drinking (smuggled in courtesy of Riley) or running from a pissed off Maggie. Riley was also witty, cunning, and had uncanny accuracy when predicting something.

So, anyway, a bow had already appeared in her hand, an arrow notched in place, before her eyes locked onto mine, and she lowered it slowly, realizing it was only me here. However, I noticed that she didn't put it away. Her chin came up slightly. "What happened?"

I was done with that question. What happened? Why'd you let it happen? How are you going to prevent that from happening again? How do you feel about what happened? What do you think about what happened? Blah, blah, blah. Why did everyone expect me to know, huh? Why's it always my fault, my problem, my responsibility?

I swear I must have had steam coming out of my ears. "I don't know."

She raised an eyebrow and gave me a once-over. "Gods, who pissed in your water bottle?"

That did it. I launched myself across the narrow gap between us and brought her to the ground with the sheer force of my anger, a knee on her chest, a hand pulling her hair, and a dagger held by my other hand under her throat.

She merely rolled her eyes. "Okay, okay, wrong thing to say. Just get the hell off me." But instead of waiting for me to get up, she pushed me hard so I fell backwards onto the dirt of the ground, and hulled herself up to attention, looking down at me for a second before offering me a hand up. I ignored it and stood on my own.

Luckily for her, I didn't feel like attacking again. Or else she'd already have at least a minor injury. I sheathed my knife, placed my hands on my hips, and glared at her. "What do you want?"

She snorted. "I'd have thought you'd use your brain every once in a while. I came looking for Artemis, naturally, after the lights went out. But I see that she's gone and so is the moon, well, at least, I mean, well, the majority of the light is out, I'm sure you've noticed. Or have you? The gods know you don't think, just react. Most of the Hunt is asleep, or otherwise trying to fall asleep and so have their eyes closed, and do not yet know of what's happened. I think I heard Skylar talking to herself in the tent next to mine, so she might know. Whatever there is to know that is, as you seem unable to tell me. Have you thought of a plan yet? Ha! That's a good one. No, no, I'll think of something, sure, I'll come up with something. Of course. I'm sure you know that's annoying. You'd swear I was a daughter of Athena, the way everyone here always expects me to be the problem solver. I'm sure you know that, what I mean, because I'm sure being lieutenant and all, you'd know all about people expecting so much from you."

I could barely make sense of what she was saying. Riley tended to rant and/or speed-talk when she was trying to hide how nervous she was. Me? I was the opposite. And she had only paused now to take a breath.

"And really, I've been with the Hunt not much shorter than you. You remember when you guys found me, don't you? Pathetic thing I must have been." For a moment, something flashed in her eyes, but it disappeared just as quickly. She continued, "Fucking foster parents; they really screwed me up, didn't they? Yeah, I'm sure that's what you all thought at some point in knowing me. Or rather, not knowing me. But anyway, we were talking about the problem at hand, not my problem. So...? What's about it, hmm? Seriously, I can't help you figure this out if you don't tell me what's up."

I stared at her for a little bit longer than necessary, still caught up on her slip about her old life (Riley never told anyone what happened before we found her), trying to decipher who this girl really was. I think she's a lot like me, in the way that we both have an exterior that we show the world, and then there's the person we actually are behind and beneath all that. She was no better than I, or anyone else who joined the Hunt. Because as much as we all liked to think otherwise, we joined the Hunt because we were running from something. And in that instance we are all the same. Everything in the Hunt had always seemed to be the same, but this, what had happened? This was new. New and unexplained things tended to frighten people or make them react violently. So that left me one course of action.

"We can't let the rest of the Hunt know the full truth. Phoebe, maybe. Not Justina, she's never sober enough to fully understand things or remember what she's supposed to be keeping to herself. I know I can tell you though. Should we tell Skylar? I don't want to but..." Skylar was a daughter of Nyx, the goddess of darkness. There were a lot of conflicting stories about Nyx, some saying that she was actually a Titan, others that she was the goddess of night not darkness. But one thing was certain: if anyone would know anything about a blackout worldwide, it'd be Skylar... wait a minute... what about Nico? I'd contact him later; I haven't talked to that kid in months anyway.

Riley tilted her head from side to side, the way she does when she's debating something. "Yes and no. Possibly? Why don't you tell me first and then we decide? Because seriously -"

I raised my hand to indicate she should shut up now before she got carried away and she did, surprisingly. I picked up on how she said "we decide" instead of "I'll decide," as she usually would have done. But she'd accomplished her mission: to get me to spill. That's really the only reason she tries to downgrade my intelligence: to force me to think. It helps, it's a good offense, I don't like it, and I always fall for it, so I have mixed emotions about that technique.

I told her everything that had happened earlier tonight, excluding certain parts of my conversation with Hestia, because I somehow felt that that really wasn't anyone else's business but mine. She didn't interrupt me once; she never was one to interrupt a story. Instead, what she did was count off on her fingers at some points during my talking, the points she wanted to discuss or had a thought about that she simply had to say. As soon as it was clear I was finished, she started.

"Of course Justina and Maggie would be at it again. When are they not bickering? But come on, what's that have to do with anything? And, hold up, how did Hestia even know about this if the rest of the gods didn't? And that's really all you picked up from Apollo and Artemis? I mean, that's certainly enough to work with, but what could drain Artemis's power so much as to actually be able to dim the moon? I didn't even know that was possible. Maybe we should tell Skylar; she might know more than anyone on something like this. Might. But that's a risk we can't afford not to take, even if she is a bitch. And we should probably get that di Angelo kid on an I.M. Maybe we could get it firsthand from the son of Hades, who might know something about this stuff too, you know?" Riley wasn't prejudiced against boys like most of the others. "Wait, did you say that Artemis said something about telling the council? That she and Apollo waited too long?"

I nodded, wondering what she was getting at.

Riley licked her lips. She looked jittery, as if she were on the verge of a breakthrough. Her voice held barely contained excitement when she continued on. "Well, how did they know? They found out beforehand somehow, right? They must have been making observations that could potentially provide us with an explanation of some sort. So. So what if Artemis had written it all down?"

My eyes widened. "Her notes! My gods, you're a genius!" I snapped my fingers in the "that's it" sort of way before I darted around towards Artemis' desk, Riley in pursuit. There were several papers on top, so I grabbed a handful, my eyes raking up and down the pages again and again. Riley was opening the desk to pull out a few notebooks, which she was flipping through, looking over the headlines for an entry that might have helped. When I was frustrated with the papers on top of the surface, I snatched the remaining papers from inside of the desk. Riley eventually gave up on the notebooks and headed over to the bookcase, running her fingers over the spines for any book that might have explained any portion of this.

"Aha!" She shouted in victory, which caused me to rush to her side. She was holding an old, thickly bound, skinny book. It was titled The History of the Moon.

I sighed. "How is this supposed to help? We're looking for something that Artemis wrote not... not..." I squinted. "Who's signature is that?"

Riley squinted too. Suddenly, she gasped and dropped the book in alarm, as if it were cursed. I looked at her strangely while she stared at it cautiously, before slowly bending over to pick the book up gently off the floor, brushing off the dust.

"Well?" I prodded. "Who is it by?" The anticipation was all but ripping me apart.

Her hard gray eyes met mine. "Zoe Nightshade."

I froze. I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't talk, couldn't think. Was I having a stroke or something? Going into a shock-induced coma, maybe? I couldn't take so many scares in one night. This was too intense. I felt like I was in some mystery novel. Another twist and turn every five seconds. This was insane. I was going insane.

I gently pried the book from her fingers and examined the cover. Old, worn. It looked like it might fall apart. I gingerly handed it back. "Don't open it."

Her eyes narrowed instead of bugged like I would have expected anyone else's to do. "And why's that?"

I ran a hand through my hair and gestured wildly at the book as if that was enough of an answer. "Because... Because, well... Because it was written by Zoe! That's why! I know what she was like, and she could have hexed it or something so no one could read it and... and it looks like it's about to fall apart anyway! We could damage it! And what if it's not even by Zoe? What if someone just slapped her name on it or forced her to sign her name on the cover, huh?"

Riley sighed. "No, no. We both know you don't honestly..." She rolled her eyes, but stopped halfway, her gaze caught by something over near or on the desk behind me, her words fading into silence.

I turned around to look too. "What?"

But she had better eye sight then I could ever hope to have, better than 20/20 vision. She crept over to the desk and narrowed her eyes at the bottom inside corner closest to her. "What is..." She ran her fingers over a tiny set of reels with numbers on them that I could just barely make out. She jerked up abruptly, but just as sudden, lowered herself back down and crawled under the desk looking up at the bottom of it. She ran her palm over the surface, and knocked on it once. She brought one of her hands out from under the desk and felt around the inside of the bottom blindly, knocking, until her hands rested on top of each other if not for the wood keeping them apart. "Here." Riley crawled back out from underneath and straightened up, keeping her one palm over the inside of the bottom of the desk. "Did I ever tell you about my old best friend?" she questioned distractedly. "He was a son of Hephaestus?"

That startled me, but I still crossed my arms over my chest, waiting, inwardly surprised that she'd volunteer personal information like that, and suspicious as to why. I picked up The History of the Moon, which she had set on the ground, and tucked it inside my jacket for safe keeping. "No. Why?"

"Well," she said sarcastically, but the rest of it was extremely serious. "I assume you know Hephaestus is a craftsman god?"

I nodded at her to proceed.

"Well, we meet on the run back then, both leaving our latest foster parents; I knew about the Greek world being real, but he didn't, and I never told him. He knew about monsters though. We were looking for this secret passage in this old house full of monsters we were trying to escape from, and he taught me a neat little trick. Do you know what it was?"

"Uh, no," I said, mentally storing the information she was willingly giving in the files of my head.

"If you knock on wood, and a specific place makes a hollower sound than the rest of it, there's more than likely an empty space behind it. And if enough pressure is applied..." She pushed hard down on the inside of the desk's bottom. The wood snapped under her hand. "... it'll break." She smiled to herself.

When the dust cleared, there was a hole in the desk, but it had only broken through one layer of wood, so that you couldn't see through to the floor. Sitting in the hole on the next layer, the next level, a hidden level, were a few papers strung together with some kind of thin ribbon. The pages weren't yellowed, torn, or frayed like most of the others, but rather they were still in perfect condition. I could smell fresh ink.

We looked at each other, her grinning, me glaring, and she was about to reach over to pick up the stack of papers when I slapped her hand away quickly.

"What?" she asked, irratated.

"Damn. You had to break it? She's gonna kill you when this is over, you know."

"No, she won't," Riley scoffed. "I doubt she'll care. I mean, really, this information could help save her, so why does it matter the consequences?" She reached over for the papers again; I let her this time.

"You couldn't have used the combination?" I weakly protested, motioning towards to reels.

I was looking at the newly found stack of papers, but I could tell she was rolling her eyes at me. "Yeah, because there are only a million different things it could possibly be, and that wouldn't take forever."

"Right," I muttered, peering over her shoulder at the pages. "Those are recent. Three months ago up to... yesterday, it seems." Those papers... evil papers having the nerve to make me feel this anxious, nervous whatever. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what was written on them.

She nodded her agreement, silently mulling over the information, pausing every so often to squint at a word. She handed me the last few papers of the stack. "These are the latest. Read the most recent, that'll probably be quickest."

I swallowed down the thickness in my throat and began to read from Artemis' personal notes:

"October 6th,

This night is my last before they come, I'm sure of it. However, I'm not sure if resistance will even be possible in this case. I could take them each down individually without a problem, but my success would be unlikely with all of them together. She is the only one suited to or powerful enough to take over the responsibility of the moon, but since she's allied herself with them, I can guess they have a replacement for my brother as well.

Two days ago, one of my Hunt developed a suspicion, and I now have no doubt that she knows of what is to come. I've spoken with her about it, and we've agreed that when tomorrow comes, she will tell my lieutenant, and her alone. I don't need everyone in more of a panic.

I worry for the fate of the gods, because who is to say that this so called "Order" will stop at the moon and sun?"

Riley bobbed her head silently. "So, who's this "Order" anyway? I mean, obviously they're the ones that took Artemis, but who exactly are they? And one other person in the Hunt besides us knows... Is that good or bad?" She looked over to me.

Pursing my lips, I glanced up at her. "I don't know." My eyes slid back down to the paper. I made a snap decision and took the rest of the pages out of her hands, stuffing them into my coat, exchanging them for Zoe's book, which I handed to her in return. "Take that to Alexia or Nyla, daughters of Hecate; I'd suggest Alexia. Don't tell her what it is, just ask her if it's safe to read, to make sure there's no curses on it or whatever. Then I want you to read as much of it as you can, see if you can figure out why Zoe wrote it too... and try not to break the thing; it really does look like it's about to fall apart. I'll read the notes."

"We can't keep this a secret forever." It sounded as if she were going to stop there, but upon stealing a look at my face, she hastily added, "I'm not saying we should tell the Hunt, I'm just wondering how you think we're going to be able to keep this quiet; they're bound to notice the moon has dimmed, even if we tell them that Artemis went to Olympus on urgent business or something like that."

I took a deep breath and nodded gravely. "No, we can't. But we can try."