We tore through the night along dark back roads, the car pounded by wind and rain so intense I wasn't sure how mom saw anything, but she kept her foot on the gas, driving us an undeniably unsafe speeds.

Every time lighting flashed, Percy and I both look over at the newly illuminated backseat, at the goat legs that were definitely attached to our friend's body.

"So…" Percy started after a long moment, almost sounding like it was the only thing he could manage to say. "You and our mom… know each other?"

Grover's eyes flitted nervously behind us, almost like he was looking for something despite there being no cars on the road other than the Camaro. "Not exactly," he said quietly. "We've never actually met in person but she knew I was watching the two of you."

"Watching us?" I asked, trying to keep down the rising betrayal I felt from everyone around me from sounding too clearly.

"Keeping tabs on you." Grover corrected. "Making sure you were okay. But I am your friend." He added quickly. "I wasn't faking that."

"Um…" Percy hesitated again. "What are you, exactly?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter?" Percy repeated in shock. "My best friend is a donkey from the waist down!"

A sharp, throaty, "Blaa-ha-ha!" sounded from Grover.

I jerked in surprise at the noise Percy and I had heard him make dozens of times before. We both had assumed it was a nervous laugh, but now I knew it was more of an irritated goat's bleating.

"Goat!" He protested.

"You did just say it didn't matter." I pointed out.

"Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you underfoot for such an insult!"

"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs?!" Percy asked in shock.

"Like Mr. Brunner's myths?" I asked, feeling my head tilt ever so slightly to the side.

"Where those old ladies a myth?" Grover countered. "Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"

"There was a Mrs. Dodds!" Percy exclaimed so loudly I jumped a little.

Grover rolled his eyes. "Of course there was. We didn't tell you because if the two of you knew, the more monsters you would attract. But you started to realize who you were anyway."

My head was spinning, a dull aching beginning at the base of my skull, and the bellowing roar echoing louder and louder behind us wasn't helping. Whatever was chasing us was getting closer, and Grover was making less and less sense.

"Jayme, Percy," our mom called quietly to catch our attention. "There's just not enough time and too much to explain. You need to be safe."

"Safe from what?" Percy asked as I closed my eyes against the rising pressure in my head. "What's after us?"

"Nothing too bad." Grover said with more sarcasm than I thought him capable of. "Just the Lord of the Underworld and a few of his minions."

"Grover!" My mother snapped, making the satyr blush and apologize before requesting her to drive faster.

I looked at Percy the next time lightning split the sky and saw the same realization, this was all too crazy to be made up. Especially by us.

My head nearly slammed into the window as my mom swung a hard left and we swerved into a narrow road, past fields of strawberries and Pick Your Own Strawberries signs nailed to white picket fences.

"Where are we going?" I asked quietly, looking out of the same window I had nearly busted my head against moments before.

"The summer camp I told you about." Mom's voice was tight, clearly trying for our sakes not to sound scared.

"You mean the one you didn't want us to go to." Percy corrected and mom took a deep breath.

"Percy, it's complicated."

"Complicated?" I asked. "What's so complicated about this? You said you didn't want us to go, and now that's where you're going to force us to go?"

"I need to keep you safe." Our mother insisted.

"Safe?" I asked. "Safe? If you've been telling the truth, we've never been safe."

"This isn't easy." She said softly. "But you're in danger."

"Because of some old ladies?" Percy asked in shock.

"Those weren't old ladies." Grover said with an air of panic in his voice. "They were the Fates. And when they cut their string in front of someone…"

"It means they're going to die." I guessed softly, looking at my twin.

Everyone in the car turned to me and I shrugged unapologetically. I knew that was the truth. Someone we knew—or even us—was about to die.

"No one's going to die." My mom called simply before swerving hard to the right to avoid a darkly fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm. "Almost there." She said with tensed relief. "Only a mile more. Please. Please. Please."

I didn't know who she was begging to, but it obviously didn't work.

Somewhere from the darkness I had pulled the memories of Mr. Brunner had thrown the pencils at me, the pen growing in Percy's hand. All of it way too weird, but all my thoughts of that were thrown out the window as Percy crushed me.

Something had hit us, something big, and the Camaro was going straight up, and then right back down again. I slammed against the driver's side door, my head thudding sharply against the glass a second before Percy fell right on top of me.

"Ugh, get off." I grunted.

"Percy! Jayme!" Our mother called in a near panic, trying to turn around and see us.

"We're okay." Percy promised. "Did we get hit by lighting?" That had to have been the only explanation I thought of too. We had swerved into a ditch and the roof had been split open, letting in the freezing rain and wind.

I groaned quietly, holding a hand to the ribs I was almost positive Percy had broken. My vision was swimming and my headache had only gotten worse, something hot and sticky was running down the side of my face.

"Kids, you need to…" she trailed off and another flash of lightning illuminated a lumbering figure headed straight towards us. And he had horns.

"Get out of the car." Our mother ordered with deadly seriousness. "Get out of the car and run for that big tree on the hill. That's the property line." She said as she started to crawl for the passenger side door when we realized the driver's side was sinking slowly into mud.

Percy pushed a unconscious Grover out of the car before I listened to the rest of what our mother was saying, "—see a farmhouse, yell for help and don't stop until you're at the door."

"You're coming with us, right?" I asked as we stepped fully into the pouring rain.

"Mom?" Percy asked with a small, fearful voice he would never admit to using, but I was just as scared as he was.

"I can't." She said with the same sadness she got when she looked at the ocean. "He doesn't want us." She said with a fearful look at the horned man barreling towards us. "It wants you two. And I can't cross the property line anyway." She said, nearly shouting over the sound of the storm all around us now.

"You're coming with us." Percy and I said at the same time.

"We're not going without you." I said as Percy managed to convince her to help him with Grover up the hill as the minotaur drew closer and closer to us.

We were all but running up the hill as our mom warned us against saying his name, that names had power.

I slipped on the incline, nearly sliding back down the hill as my sneakers slipped, my knee hitting pavement hard before I could recover. Thankfully, the sound of the car being lifted and then thrown covered up any sound of pain I could have made.

The monster had picked the Camaro up like it weighed nothing, looked underneath it like he was smelling for us. And when he found nothing he tossed it aside, the car skidding with a harsh scream of metal and a spray of sparks nearly half a mile down the road before the gas tank exploded.

"Not a scratch, Percy, Jayme." I whispered in my best impersonation of Smelly Gabe.

"Oops." Percy snorted, trying to sound funny, but the end of the word wavered slightly with his fear as the monster turned towards the hill we were currently climbing.

"Jayme, Percy." Our mother whispered frantically. "When he sees us he'll charge. He can't change directions, so when he gets close jump directly sideways."

"How do you know all this?" Percy whispered in confusion.

"I've been planning for this for a long time." Our mother said softly. "I was so selfish, I should have expected this, known what keeping you close would have meant."

I felt some of the rain fall down my nose in new rivulets as I scowled. "Kept us close to you? Why couldn't you have—" I shut up very quickly as a deep bellow shook the slippery hill underneath my feet.

The minotaur had smelled us. And he was charging up the hill for us.

"Separate!" Our mother shouted, taking Grover from Percy as she pulled to the right, Percy and I shooting to the left as the monster stared down at us with horrible black eyes and a reek of rotten meat that not even the rain could wash away.

I felt every fiber of my being demanding me to move, to run, to do anything. But I held my ground like our mother had asked, my breath shaky and the lights from the farmhouse in the valley below a bright signal of false hope half a mile away.

The bull-man charged, and I managed to stand still until he was almost on top of me, leaping to the right as Percy sidestepped left and he streamed by us like an out of control train and a bellow of pure anger.

Gabe's twin slowly turned around like he was going to charge again, but he didn't turn on us, he look at my mother as she settled Grover in the soaked grass.

She looked up and bravely stood her ground, preparing to jump like Percy and I had done. But the monster learned his lesson, just as she jumped he stuck his left arm out and wrapped it around our mothers neck.

"Mom!" I screamed, vaguely hearing Percy shout the same thing over the wind and the pounding in my head.

"Go!" She choked out, looking at each of us to try and get us to move.

She didn't get the change to yell again. With one motion the monster tightened his hand and my mother crumbled to shimmering golden dust before my eyes. And then, she was just… gone.

"No!"

I saw red, the last glimpse of my mother's face, and the ground below me shook with the thunder I couldn't hear as Percy screamed at the monster with his red rain jacket held up in front of him.

"Percy!" I shouted, knowing what he had planned. I ran for him just as the monster did, arms outstretched to catch him whichever way he would run. I couldn't lose my brother and my mom on the same day. Hamburger wanna be or not.

I didn't know what happened, one minute I was angry and running, the next I must have fallen fist first into a pothole, the pavement cracked and concave around my hand, one long fissure speeding towards the monster's feet.

A weak spot in the road, I told myself as the crack opened up and took one of the beast's feet inside. It wasn't much, but it gave Percy enough time to jump straight into the air and over the beast.

And like an idiot, he hung on. The monster running headfirst into the huge pine as Percy held on for dear life… and I ran straight at it.

My twin flung himself to the side and with a snap and a roar the great horn of the beast broke off in Percy's hand. He made a surprised laugh of victory on his way down before he slipped on the grass as the rain continued to fall in sheets around us, his feet going almost straight in the air and his head hitting a bullseye on the rock below him. He was out cold, the horn held loosely in his limp hand, and the Minotaur charging right for him.

I didn't think, I ran as fast as I could through the rain to snatch the black and white thing from my brother's hand and thrust it straight up into the creatures side.

He swatted me away like I was a pesky bee, but as I rolled partially down the hill I saw him hit a knee. Suddenly Percy sprang to his feet again, pulling the horn from the monster's side and pushing it into his chest instead.

He disappeared in the same way our mother had. Golden dust.

I don't remember the walk down to the farmhouse in the valley, all I remember is trying to help Percy lift Grover as I finally cried out for my mother like a little baby might. After that is was all a blur of tears and rain and Grover's continued groaning of food.

By the time Percy and I collapsed on the large porch, a blurred, but familiar face looking down at us and a blonde haired girl standing beside him, I was so exhausted I couldn't hear a thing. Only felt Percy's arm heavy across my own before everything went black.