Percy&Marisol Jackson & The Olympians: SoM
Chapter Three
We Hail the Taxi of Eternal Torment
Annabeth was waiting for us in an alley down Church Street. She pulled Tyson, my sister, and me off the sidewalk just as a fire truck screamed past, heading for Meriwether Prep.
"Where'd you find him?" she demanded, pointing at Tyson. Mari looked at him, then glared at me.
"I'd like to know the same thing," she growled.
Now, under different circumstances, I would've been really happy to see them. Both of them, since my sister was usually off doing demigod things in her spare time. Annabeth and I had made our peace last summer, despite the fact that her mom was Athena and didn't get along with my dad. I'd missed Annabeth probably more than I wanted to admit.
*She's missable like that when she doesn't get on your nerves,* Mari agreed.
But I'd just been attacked by cannibal giants, Tyson had saved my life three or four times, and all Annabeth and Marisol could do was glare at him like he was the problem.
*Well he's a problem,* Mari growled quietly.
"He's my friend," I told them, shooting my sister a look.
"Is he homeless?" Annabeth asked.
"What does that have to do with anything? He can hear you, you know. Why don't you ask him?"
"Of course he is," Mari said casually. "Nobody in their right mind would take one in even if they didn't know."
Annabeth looked surprised. "He can talk?"
"I talk," Tyson admitted. "You are pretty."
"Ah! Gross!" Annabeth stepped away from him. Mari crinkled her nose, taking a step behind me.
I couldn't believe these two were being so rude. I examined Tyson's hands, which I was sure must've been badly scorched by the flaming dodge balls, but they looked fine—grimy and scarred, with dirty fingernails the size of potato chips—but they always looked like that. "Tyson," I said in disbelief. "Your hands aren't even burned."
"Of course not," Annabeth muttered. "I'm surprised the Laistrygonians had the guts to attack you with him around." Tyson seemed fascinated by Annabeth's blond hair. He tried to touch it, but she smacked his hand away. Mari rolled her eyes with a small huff.
"Sadly I didn't have a monster body guard around at my school. Or a Percy. I mean, if I did those stupid Empousi wouldn't have nearly sucked my best friends and I dry," Mari growled angrily as she picked at her nails. Annabeth and I turned to her and she waved a hand easily. "Story for later."
"Annabeth," I said as I turned to her, "what are you talking about? Laistry-what?"
"Laistrygonians. The monsters in the gym. They're a race of giant cannibals who live in the far north. Odysseus ran into them once, but I've never seen them as far south as New York before."
"Laistry—I can't even say that. What would you call them in English?"
Marisol began to laugh. "We call 'em Canadians," she snickered. "Now come on, we have to get out of here."
"The police'll be after me." I argued. Marisol rolled her eyes.
I swear my brother is so dense. First, I'm attacked by the she-demons. Next, well sorta during, he's attacked by the Canadians, and finally we're going to have to go to camp. Is he seriously worried about mortals?
*You were worried about your mortal friends,* he argued. I gave him a mental hit to the shoulder.
*Yeah but those are actually important mortals. Cops are nothing,* I shrugged. Excuse my attitude, but I wasn't in the mood to be attacked then see another monster hanging out with my brother like they were friends. Not this kind of monster. Bad memories there. Bad … bad, bad, bad memories.
"That's the least of our problems," Annie said. "Have you been having the dreams?"
"The dreams ... about Grover?" Percy asked. I paled. I forgot to warn Annie.
Her face turned pale. That makes two of us. "Grover? No, what about Grover?"
I told her my dream. "Why? What were you dreaming about?"
Her eyes looked stormy, like her mind was racing a million miles an hour.
"Camp," she said at last. "Big trouble at camp."
"My mom was saying the same thing! But what kind of trouble?"
"I don't know exactly. Something's wrong. We have to get there right away. Monsters have been chasing me all the way from Virginia, trying to stop me. Have you had a lot of attacks?"
I shook my head. "None all year ... until today."
"None? But how ..."
"Let's think. Who had the monster?" Mari snapped. Annabeth's eyes drifted to Tyson.
"Oh."
"What do you mean, 'oh'?" I asked.
Tyson raised his hand like he was still in class. "Canadians in the gym called Percy something ... Son of the Sea God?"
Annabeth and I exchanged looks. Marisol examined her dagger.
"This one's all you bro," she said dismissively. "It's your friend."
I didn't know how I could explain, but I figured Tyson deserved the truth after almost getting killed.
"Big guy," I said, "you ever hear those old stories about the Greek gods? Like Zeus, Poseidon, Athena—"
"Yes," Tyson said.
"Well ... those gods are still alive. They kind of follow Western Civilization around, living in the strongest countries, so like now they're in the U.S. And sometimes they have kids with mortals. Kids called half-bloods."
"Yes," Tyson said, like he was still waiting for me to get to the point.
"Uh, well, Annabeth, my sister, and I are half-bloods," I said. "We're like ... heroes-in-training. And whenever monsters pick up our scent, they attack us. That's what those giants were in the gym. Monsters."
"Yes."
I stared at him. He didn't seem surprised or confused by what I was telling him, which surprised and confused me.
"So ... you believe me?"
Tyson nodded. "But you are ... Son of the Sea God?"
"Yeah," I admitted. "My dad …" I motioned to Mari, "our dad is Poseidon."
Tyson frowned. Now he looked confused. "But then …"
Mari nodded, smirking. "So if you cross me I'll turn you to dust." Annabeth looked panicked.
"Mari you don't know what it'll―"
"Relax," she said easily. "It likes Percy and even its smart enough not to hurt his "best friend's" sister." A siren wailed. A police car raced past our alley.
"We don't have time for this," Annabeth said. "We'll talk in the taxi."
"A taxi all the way to camp?" I said. "You know how much money—"
Marisol put her hand up, motioning me to stop. When did she get so snippy? "Trust her."
I hesitated. "What about Tyson?"
I imagined escorting my giant friend into Camp Half-Blood. If he freaked out on a regular playground with regular bullies, how would he act at a training camp for demigods? On the other hand, the cops would be looking for us.
"We can't just leave him," I decided. "He'll be in trouble, too."
"Yeah." Annabeth looked grim. "We definitely need to take him. Now come on."
I didn't like the way she said that, as if Tyson were a big disease we needed to get to the hospital, but I followed her and my sister down the alley. Together the four of us sneaked through the side streets of downtown while a huge column of smoke billowed up behind us from my school gymnasium.
"Here." Annabeth stopped us on the corner of Thomas and Trimble. She fished around in her backpack. "I hope I have one left."
"I think I have some," Mari mumbled as she fidgeted within her pockets. She growled in annoyance, hitting her leg. "Empty."
They looked even worse than I'd realized at first.
Annabeth's chin was cut. Twigs and grass were tangled in her ponytail, as if she'd slept several nights in the open. The slashes on the hems of her jeans looked suspiciously like claw marks.
Mari had small red slashed on her cheeks and throat. Her skirt was shredded so much that if I'd had a sweater I'd have wrapped it around her waist. Her hair was in tangled, glittering with sulfuric monster dust.
*Like you look any better,* she snipped.
"What are you looking for?" I asked them.
All around us, sirens wailed. I figured it wouldn't be long before more cops cruised by, looking for juvenile delinquent gym-bombers. No doubt Matt Sloan had given them a statement by now. He'd probably twisted the story around so that Tyson and I were the bloodthirsty cannibals.
"Found one. Thank the gods." Annabeth pulled out a gold coin that I recognized as a drachma, the currency of Mount Olympus. It had Zeus's likeness stamped on one side and the Empire State Building on the other.
"Annabeth," I said, "New York taxi drivers won't take that."
"Stêthi," she shouted in Ancient Greek. "Ô hárma diabolês!"
As usual, the moment she spoke in the language of Olympus, I somehow understood it. She'd said: Stop, Chariot of Damnation!
That didn't exactly make me feel real excited about whatever her plan was.
She threw her coin into the street, but instead of clattering on the asphalt, the drachma sank right through and disappeared.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, just where the coin had fallen, the asphalt darkened. It melted into a rectangular pool about the size of a parking space—bubbling red liquid like blood. Then a car erupted from the ooze.
It was a taxi, all right, but unlike every other taxi in New York, it wasn't yellow. It was smoky gray. I mean it looked like it was woven out of smoke, like you could walk right through it. There were words printed on the door—some thing like GYAR SSIRES—but my dyslexia made it hard for me to decipher what it said. Sadly, I knew what it was. I really wished I didn't. Remembering one of my first adventures, I flinched. Stupid cab almost turned me into demigod dust!
The passenger window rolled down, and an old woman stuck her head out. She had a mop of grizzled hair covering her eyes, and she spoke in a weird mumbling way, like she'd just had a shot of Novocain.
"Passage? Passage?"
"Four to Camp Half-Blood," Annabeth said. She opened the cab's back door and waved at me to get in, like this was all completely normal.
"Ach!" the old woman screeched. "We don't take his kind!" She pointed a bony finger at Tyson.
What was it? Pick-on-Big-and-Ugly-Kids Day?
"Extra pay," Annabeth promised. "Four more drachma on arrival."
"Done!" the woman screamed. Mari crawled in, curling herself up at the other door. Reluctantly I got in the cab. Tyson squeezed in the middle. Annabeth crawled in last.
The interior was also smoky gray, but it felt solid enough. The seat was cracked and lumpy—no different than most taxis. There was no Plexiglas screen separating us from the old lady driving ... Wait a minute. There wasn't just one old lady. There were three, all crammed in the front seat, each with stringy hair covering her eyes, bony hands, and a charcoal-colored sackcloth dress.
The one driving said, "Long Island! Out-of-metro fare bonus! Ha!"
She floored the accelerator, and my head slammed against the backrest. A prerecorded voice came on over the speaker: Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I'm out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!
I looked down and found a large black chain instead of a seat belt. I decided I wasn't that desperate ... yet.
"Pfft, Ganymede isn't the cup-bearer in that sense. He serves the ambrosia," Mari scoffed. I looked at her.
"What's up with you?" Percy asked me. I looked at him. His green eyes bore into mine. I could tell he was trying to get in my head, mentally pounding on the metal door that kept him out.
"Nothing," I muttered, breaking eye-contact. Being unsatisfied, he made me look at him. Like, he actually took control of my senses and such, making me reconnect our eye contact.
"It's not nothing if it makes you look away," he said as he released his hold on my senses.
"I'm not of fan of his kind alright?" I huffed. He looked angry. Of course, leave it to him to care about monsters. Our mother made him really fluffy in her time raising him. I'll needa speak with her about that later.
"And what do you mean by that?" he snapped. I rolled my eyes.
"Bro, only you wouldn't notice when you make friends with a monster," I sighed. He glared at me. The kind-hearted Perseus Jackson glared at his little sister, ladies and gentlemen.
"Explain."
"I had a run in with his … brother while on the run. Almost got killed. Hence the not being fond of his kind. Especially when it comes to you," I said, remembering the unpleasant run in. I shivered. If it really had been Percy … but it wasn't. It was one of our stupid mo-bros.
The cab sped around the corner of West Broadway as I mulled over what Mari said, and the gray lady sitting in the middle screeched, "Look out! Go left!"
"Well, if you'd give me the eye, Tempest, I could see that!" the driver complained.
Wait a minute. Give her the eye?
I didn't have time to ask questions because the driver swerved to avoid an oncoming delivery truck, ran over the curb with a jaw-rattling thump, and flew into the next block.
"Wasp!" the third lady said to the driver. "Give me the girl's coin! I want to bite it."
"You bit it last time, Anger!" said the driver, whose name must've been Wasp. "It's my turn!"
"Is not!" yelled the one called Anger.
The middle one, Tempest, screamed, "Red light!"
"Brake!" yelled Anger.
Instead, Wasp floored the accelerator and rode up on the curb, screeching around another corner, and knocking over a newspaper box. She left my stomach somewhere back on Broome Street.
"Excuse me," I said. "But ... can you see?"
"No!" screamed Wasp from behind the wheel.
"No!" screamed Tempest from the middle.
"Of course!" screamed Anger by the shotgun window.
I looked at Annabeth. "They're blind?"
"Not completely," Annabeth said.
"They have an eye," Mari muttered, looking through the window.
"One eye?"
"Yeah." Annabeth nodded.
"Each?"
"Nope," Mari popped the 'p'. "One eye, three sisters."
Next to me, Tyson groaned and grabbed the seat. "Not feeling so good."
"Oh, man," I said, because I'd seen Tyson get carsick on school field trips and it was not something you wanted to be within fifty feet of. "Hang in there, big guy. Anybody got a garbage bag or something?"
The three gray ladies were too busy squabbling to pay me any attention. I looked over at Annabeth, who was hanging on for dear life, and I gave her a why-did-you-do-this-to-me look.
"Hey," she said, "Gray Sisters Taxi is the fastest way to camp."
"Then why didn't you take it from Virginia?"
"That's outside their service area," she said, like that should be obvious. "They only serve Greater New York and surrounding communities."
"We've had famous people in this cab!" Anger exclaimed. "Jason! You remember him?"
"Don't remind me!" Wasp wailed. "And we didn't have a cab back then, you old bat. That was three thousand years ago!"
"Give me the tooth!" Anger tried to grab at Wasp's mouth, but Wasp swatted her hand away.
"Only if Tempest gives me the eye!"
"No!" Tempest screeched. "You had it yesterday!"
"But I'm driving, you old hag!"
"Excuses! Turn! That was your turn!"
Wasp swerved hard onto Delancey Street, squishing me between Tyson and the door. She punched the gas and we shot up the Williamsburg Bridge at seventy miles an hour.
The three sisters were fighting for real now, slapping each other as Anger tried to grab at Wasp's face and Wasp tried to grab at Tempest's. With their hair flying and their mouths open, screaming at each other, I realized that none of the sisters had any teeth except for Wasp, who had one mossy yellow incisor. Instead of eyes, they just had closed, sunken eyelids, except for Anger, who had one bloodshot green eye that stared at everything hungrily, as if it couldn't get enough of anything it saw.
"I think I'm gonna be sick," Mari muttered as she rested her head on my shoulder and covered her eyes. "They're maddening!"
Finally Anger, who had the advantage of sight, managed to yank the tooth out of her sister Wasp's mouth. This made Wasp so mad she swerved toward the edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, yelling, "'Ivit back! 'Ivit back!"
Tyson groaned and clutched his stomach.
"Uh, if anybody's interested," I said, "We're going to die!"
"Don't worry," Annabeth told me, sounding pretty worried. "The Gray Sisters know what they're doing. They're really very wise."
This was coming from the daughter of Athena, but I wasn't exactly reassured. We were skimming along the edge of a bridge a hundred and thirty feet above the East River.
"Yes, wise!" Anger grinned in the rearview mirror, showing off her newly acquired tooth. "We know things!"
"Every street in Manhattan!" Wasp bragged, still hitting her sister. "The capital of Nepal!"
"The location you seek!" Tempest added. Mari shot up like she'd been electrocuted. We Poseidon kids didn't do well with electrocution so you can tell she was pretty stunned there.
Immediately her sisters pummeled her from either side, screaming, "Be quiet! Be quiet! He didn't even ask yet!"
"What?" I said. "What location? I'm not seeking any—"
"Nothing!" Tempest said. "You're right, boy. It's nothing!"
"Tell me."
"No!" they all screamed.
"The last time we told, it was horrible!" Tempest said.
"Eye tossed in a lake!" Anger agreed.
"Years to find it again!" Wasp moaned. "And speaking of that—give it back!"
"No!" yelled Anger.
"Eye!" Wasp yelled. "Gimme!"
She whacked her sister Anger on the back. There was a sickening pop and something flew out of Anger's face. Anger fumbled for it, trying to catch it, but she only managed to bat it with the back of her hand. The slimy green orb sailed over her shoulder, into the backseat, and straight into my lap.
I jumped so hard, my head hit the ceiling and the eyeball rolled away.
"Ow," Mari groaned, rubbing her head and jaw. "You just shouldered my face!"
"I can't see!" all three sisters yelled.
"Give me the eye!" Wasp wailed.
"Give her the eye!" Annabeth screamed.
"I don't have it!" I said.
"There, by your foot," Annabeth said. "Don't step on it! Get it!"
"I'm not picking that up!"
The taxi slammed against the guardrail and skidded along with a horrible grinding noise. The whole car shuddered, billowing gray smoke as if it were about to dissolve from the strain.
"Going to be sick!" Tyson warned.
"Annabeth," I yelled, "let Tyson use your backpack!"
"Are you crazy? Get the eye!"
Wasp yanked the wheel, and the taxi swerved away from the rail. We hurtled down the bridge toward Brooklyn, going faster than any human taxi. The Gray Sisters screeched and pummeled each other and cried out for their eye.
"I'm so getting you for this!" my sister shrieked at me, quickly reaching down with a shaking hand and picking up the eyeball. She tossed it into my lap, rubbing/whacking my arm with her hand as she cried "ew, ew, ew!"
"Nice boy!" Anger cried, as if she somehow knew I had her missing peeper. "Give it back!"
"Not until you explain," I told her. "What were you talking about, the location I seek?"
"No time!" Tempest cried. "Accelerating!"
I looked out the window. Sure enough, trees and cars and whole neighborhoods were now zipping by in a gray blur. We were already out of Brooklyn, heading through the middle of Long Island.
"Percy," Annabeth warned, "they can't find our destination without the eye. We'll just keep accelerating until we break into a million pieces."
"First they have to tell me," I said. "Or I'll open the window and throw the eye into oncoming traffic."
"No!" the Gray Sisters wailed. "Too dangerous!"
"It'd be worth it," my sister cried. "The information they have is always needed!"
"Give us the eye!" the sisters wailed.
"I'm rolling down the window."
"Wait!" the Gray Sisters screamed. "30, 31, 75, 12!" They belted it out like a quarterback calling a play.
"What do you mean?" I said. "That makes no sense!"
"30, 31, 75, 12!" Anger wailed. "That's all we can tell you. Now give us the eye! Almost to camp!"
We were off the highway now, zipping through the countryside of northern Long Island. I could see Half-Blood Hill ahead of us, with its giant pine tree at the crest—Thalia's tree, which contained the life force or a fallen hero.
"Percy!" Annabeth said more urgently. "Give them the eye now!"
I decided not to argue. I threw the eye into Wasp's lap.
The old lady snatched it up, pushed it into her eye socket like somebody putting in a contact lens, and blinked. "Whoa!"
She slammed on the brakes. The taxi spun four or five times in a cloud of smoke and squealed to a halt in the middle of the farm road at the base of Half-Blood Hill.
Tyson let loose a huge belch. "Better now."
My stomach twisted as I was thrown forward and into the back of the front seat. Sliding to the floor of the cab, I felt something hot and acidic rolling up my throat. Swallowing it back down, I glared at my brother and rubbed my head.
"You just wait Jackson," I growled. "When I get my hands on you later you are so gonna get it."
"All right," I told the Gray Sisters (ignoring my own sister). "Now tell me what those numbers mean."
"No time!" Annabeth opened her door. "We have to get out now."
I was about to ask why, when I looked up at Half-Blood Hill and understood.
At the crest of the hill was a group of campers. And they were under attack.
So I'm back. Not sure if that's a good thing. I was kinda mad today so I kinda bitched out via Marisol. Sorry... Review?
I'm kinda in need of a boost so yeah the reviewing would be nice.
Till next time.
~Poseidon'sDaughter-Percy'sSis
