It was past nightfall by the time Heather finally came to, and at that point it was too dark to go any further. We finally stopped at a small wooded area north of Washington DC, and Heather managed to transport a few things from camp to set up our sleeping quarters.

If you've never met a child of Hermes, then you're missing out. Because of Heather's inherited ability over messages and mail, she was able to make objects fly themselves places at the speed of light. If you every go camping with her or her siblings, you don't even have to pack.

She brought all of the essentials, a tent, sleeping bags, clothes, water bottles, snacks and even golden drachmas from the camp store. She told me that mortals didn't accept drachmas normally, but when you're a child of the god of thieves . . .

"We can leave the coins behind. That way, they get pure gold and we get the goods without a second glance."

Once it turned dark, we were only able to see thanks to Jordan's pyrotechnical abilities. He could summon a ball of fire and hold it in his hands without ease. He could even pass the fireball to one of us, and along with a special prayer to his father, the flames wouldn't hurt us. We managed to collect enough firewood for the night, and once we had set up a suitable pit, Jordan dropped the ball on the sticks and a roaring fire was born.

Heather and Jordan told me about how the Apollo cabin would lead a singalong around the fireplace on Wednesdays. They also told me that the singalong used to be every night, until Dionysus had threatened to drive every last singer insane. Following that change, the campers had tried to change more things about the camp. In the end, cabin inspection, which had originally been five days a week, had been reduced to three.

The campfire never showed any sign of weakening, but a while later, my body clock announced that it was past 10 o'clock, and Jordan put it out for the night. Beforehand, we had put together the tent, and I had to say, it was pretty awesome. Normally I'm not one for camping out in the wilderness, but the tent had been magically enlarged, so that at only three-by-five feet on the outside, it managed to hold three separate zippered sleeping bag rooms, a center room and a bath. I crawled into my little pocket of a room in the back and zipped up the entrance. I noticed that the tent magically blocked out sounds, because in a few minutes I fell asleep in silence.

Remember how I said Morpheus had to have some kind of soft spot for me? Well, I take that back. That night, I had a dream worse than any of my other dreams combined.

It started with the son of Zeus, Kyle, running through a large city. It was dark, and none of the building lights were on, which I thought was weird. Kyle was panting, and running hard, his knife in hand. As I ran ahead of him, I noticed he was dripping with sweat, and his face had a look of mortal terror. He looked like he'd been fighting a pack of wild dogs. Then I remembered Cerberus, and realized he had been fighting a single wild dog, though it did have three heads.

A loud, deep growl echoed across the buildings, and suddenly, a ghostly gray Rottweiler appeared at the end of the street.

Cerberus was almost completely see-through, but his eyes were a pure blood red. His teeth were impossibly long and sharp, and the color of cheddar with ketchup splashed on. The three heads were connected directly to the body, and the two outer heads kept barking at other things in the area, probably other members of the quest.

Suddenly, Cerberus started following Kyle. Kyle screamed and ran around a corner, and down that street I saw another Half-Blood take a left. Kyle started running, but Cerberus was way too fast. The hellhound lunged after Kyle, and in a few seconds he was only a few meters away.

Kyle let loose a scream, and I turned away as Cerberus pounced. Then I woke up.

You know the saying, "That's gonna hurt in the morning?" You don't know the half of it. My burns had gotten feeling back, and lying down on the ground all night doesn't help. I had to hold my breath to keep myself from screaming, and even then, I had to go outside.

The cool September air was enormously comfortable on my injuries. For a few minutes I had to sit still to let my burns hurt less, then I went back inside to wake up the others. My body clock told me it was almost eight, but Heather and Jordan both seemed to think it was the middle of the night. It took a few minutes and some Ancient Greek cursing, but I finally managed to get them both out of bed. We quickly started another fire and treated ourselves to a family size bag of Doritos. After breakfast, Heather figured out exactly where we were.

"Thirty-eight degrees, fifty-seven minutes north. Seventy-seven degrees, three minutes west."

I stared at her for a while, then said, "How do you know that?" but I thought I already knew. If she could find the general area of five far away demigods, she'd be able to know our coordinates.

Sure enough, "Hermes knows where everything is. I'm one of his kids who has the same perfect understanding of coordinates."

Jordan, however, was less talkative. He reminded me of how he'd looked the first time I'd met him, all shaken up. I remembered how he had come to our aid and knocked out Evelyn and Xavier. We went off to find more firewood for our next campsite, so I had time to ask him something that'd been bothering me.

"Jordan?" I said, and he looked up at me. "How long were you brothers with Xavier?"

He looked down and sighed. "Three years."

It was weird to think about, because Jordan looked only twelve. He'd come to Camp Half-Blood before he was even nine?

"Xavier's been at camp for eight years, since he was fifteen. On his twenty-first birthday, he was supposed to go and live his life, but he refused. Ever since, he's used me as a punching bag to assure his authority and right to stay."

"Neither of those things show authority or right to stay," I said truthfully, and Jordan shrugged.

"Yeah, but . . . there wasn't anything to do about it. He's my brother, whether I like it or not. It's took bad you're not a son of Hades, though."

For the first time, I felt a little bad about not belonging in Cabin Twenty. Jordan needed a friend.

"Well, no one else knows I'm not a Hades camper besides you and Heather. Maybe I can . . . pretend to be one, for a while.

Jordan smiled, and we went back to finding firewood.

Heather had been taking down the tent, packing up the food and completely hiding any sign that we were here when Jordan and I returned. She'd packed everything up except for a change of clothes for each of us, the water bottles and some granola bars. She was reading a new book now, called The Science of Magic and Vice Versa. It sounded torturously dull to me, but I knew Heather liked all kinds of science and things like that. We came up to her right as she turned around.

"Put the firewood on this rock." She stood up and pointed at the chunk of stone she'd been sitting on. Jordan and I put the sticks down, and Heather spoke a prayer under her breath. In a flash, the branches disappeared into thin air.

"Cool," I said, but then remembered what I had been waiting to say. We all changed far away from each other in the woods, but when we all got back together, I told them about my dream. By the time I was done, we had reached the outskirts of Washington DC.

"That is not good, Alex. If Cerberus has already gotten Kyle . . ."

I knew what she was about so say, and I was glad she didn't.

"I'm worried about him too."

It was a while before either of us spoke again.

By midday, we had gotten as far as the Lincoln Memorial. We would've easily gotten farther if Heather hadn't dragged Jordan and I to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum, where she took more than an hour to look at all of the travel equipment, airplanes, spaceships and all kinds of stuff. We bought Hot Dogs from a street vender and had lunch outside the memorial, in the shade of the Washington Monument. At one point, and owl flew from the giant marble obelisk and landed only a few feet from us. Jordan fed the bird some of his bun, and afterwards it started following us around, waiting for more food.

After five minutes, the bird let out a horrible wailing noise, Rwa! Raw!

"What is that?" I yelled, and the bird jumped into the air. It started circling above our heads like a vulture, still wailing.

"Why is it doing that?" Heather shouted, and the bird stopped yelling.

"Thank gods," said Jordan, but the next second . . .

"He's got my spear!"

The bird had somehow managed to dive down to my neck and grab my necklace in less than a second. It started flying ahead, higher and higher up, until it perched in one of the window sockets on top of the Washington Monument.

"Oh come on!" I yelled, and started running towards the building.

"Alex, wait up," Jordan and Heather both yelled at the same time, but neither managed to catch up to me. I kept running, and before long I was at the monument. Only one problem: Heather and Jordan were nowhere in sight.

"Heather! Jordan!" I yelled, but neither appeared. "Where are you?"

Then an old security guard appeared and put his hand on my shoulder. When I saw his face, I thought it was the old man from Six Flags. But instead, he had chalk-white hair and he looked, no he felt stronger. He seemed to give a sense of power, like he was some kind of superhero in disguise.

"Son, where are your parents?" He smiled.

For a second I was about to say, they're dead, but I held my tongue long enough to make a good story.

"They're already up at the top. I'm supposed to wait for my friends, Heather and Jordan, before we go up. They went to buy Hot Dogs for us."

The guard pulled a piece of wax paper from my pocket, and I gulped when I saw what it was. It was my Hot Dog wrapper from before, with grease and bread crumbs still on it.

"A second helping, eh? Maybe we should go up and clarify your story, with your parents."

I gulped.

"I . . . I can't, I have to wait for my friends."

"Oh, well if that's the problem . . ." He grinned and waved his hand through the air. Like when the Oracle had spoken, I saw a vision. However, this time I saw Heather and Jordan, chained together to a brick wall. They saw me, but they seemed to be gagged by some invisible force.

"Let's go meet them, shall we?" he said, and waved his hand through the image.

The security guard made sure that we had a full elevator, so there would be witnesses all around. He made some some of invisible gag out of air and jam it into my mouth. It was excruciatingly cold on my tongue, but I couldn't scream. The man didn't seem to realize I had no weapon, because he kept daring me to attack with his eyes. Finally we reached the top, and he dragged me from the lift.

The top room of the monument was large, a square with the center filled with sandy white bricks around the elevator. The walls looked how they should from the outside, stretching out diagonally the lower they went. The windows, however, were completely vertical. It looked like it could hold a ton of people at once, but because the school year had started, only a dozen people roamed through the building. I even looked on the ledges outside of the windows for the owl with my necklace, but there weren't any birds at all.

"Come on," said the old man, and steered me by my shoulder with surprising strength. He led me to a stone stairway with a steel mesh grate in the archway. It took me a minute to read because of my dyslexia, but I figured it said something like this:

DO NOT ENTER

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

The weirdest part was below the large English text, though. Underneath the Spanish and French translations, there were Ancient Greek letters.

The security guard pulled a keychain from his pocket and inserted a gold key into the lock. It clicked, and he pushed the door open.

"Down you go," he said, then gave me a shove. I tripped down the first step and fell onto the landing with bloody hands and knees. The man followed, locking the door behind him. He picked me up and dragged me down several flights of stairs until the stones started to grow darker and darker, even though the brightness of the lights never changed. It took a while, but finally we reached another door, but one made of pure gold.

When the man opened the door, I found Heather and Jordan, still gagged and chained to the dark brick wall. Their eyes lit up like they did before, but they still couldn't speak. Heather was shaking her head to say, Run!

"Look who came to join the party!" the old man yelled, and it echoed loudly through the air. He laughed, and two other men on either side of the doorway, who I had just noticed, did too. The old man let go of me, and I ran over to Heather and Jordan.

"Oh, did you miss your friends? Well don't worry, you'll never be parted again," the security guard said, then snapped his fingers. Black chains like Heather and Jordan's appeared on my hands and bound me to both of them and the wall.

Then the old man started to change. His chalk white hair started to grow longer, and became less defined, like mist. It shimmered in the air and quickly stretched to the floor. His black security guard uniform became a substance like smoke, and rearranged into a Greek chiton, which looked like a toga only more proper. He grew a long cape from his shoulders and a small golden crown appeared on his misty hair. He looked to me like some kind of evil version of father time.

"Now, I think it is time you spoke," said the man, and instantly the cold air in my mouth dissipated.

"Aether!" yelled out Heather, and I thought the person, who was apparently named Aether, would get angry. To my surprise, he smiled.

"Yes, yes. I am Aether, god of the upper air."

"You mean like the atmosphere?" I said, but I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Aether gave me an evil look, and I was worried that he'd turn me into, I don't know, some kind of ant.

"The atmosphere? Your mortal scientific cover of the world?" He laughed, and his cronies did too. "I am the primordial god of the air the immortals breath. Not merely the air high in the sky, fool!"

"What do you mean,'Primordial?'" I said, and got angry at myself for not holding my tongue again. Unfortunately, with my ADHD, I couldn't be quiet if I wanted too.

"Do you know nothing? How do you think this world began, son? Where did it come from?"

I managed to keep myself from saying, The big bang, but I still replied.

"I don't know, I—"

"You don't know. Let me teach you a thing or two about the origin of your world.

"Before your gods, before the titans, before even I, there was nothing. A world without a world, to say it poetically. From this void, the first immortal, Chaos, mother of the universe, was born. Chaos then birthed four children of her own, Tartarus, Gaea, Erebus and Nyx.

"Gaea created the earth, and birthed Ouranos, the sky. Together, they birthed the titans, who would go on to replace Ouranos as ruler of the world.

"Tartarus created a bottomless pit deep below the earth, where the evil would suffer for all of eternity.

"Finally, Erebus, father of darkness, and Nyx, mother of the night, birthed two other children. One was Hemera, goddess of the day. The other, I invite you to guess."

"You," I shouted. I was getting annoyed by Aether's long explanation of the earth's origin.

"Correct," he said with a crooked grin. "I, Aether, was born. I was a servant to Ouranos, and held the immortal air of the gods within my sphere. It is us, the children of Chaos and the children of those children, who are the primordial beings."

"So you'd better watch who you argue with, hero," said one of Aether's henchmen, and he stepped forward. For the first time, I got a good look at him. He had a pale devil's face, minus the horns, and a muscular body. He was also wearing a chiton, but his was dark scarlet. I looked at the other man and saw that he looked almost exactly the same. The only differences were his eyes, which were wiser and sharper than his brother's, and his clothes. He wasn't wearing a chiton like the two others, but instead he was sporting full-body Greek battle armor.

"Now, girl. If you are so smart, guess who my minions are," said Aether, still smiling wickedly.

"The algea."

For a second, I thought that Heather had gone completely insane, talking about algae. But then, Aether nodded.

"My children, or at least my faithful children. Akhos." The man in red bowed. "Spirit of pain and distress, and Ania." The armored servant bowed as well. "Spirit of grief and sorrow."

Aether lifted an old-fashioned locket clock out of his pocket. Before he could even look, I said, "It's 2:18."

Heather and Jordan both stared at me, and I realized I'd never told them about my ability. I mouth, Tell you later, and looked back at Aether.

"Very well, then." He put the clock back into his chiton. "I think it is time that I left. Many other demigods to capture, ones more important than you." He winked at us, and I knew he was talking about the remaining quest members.

Then he looked at his two sons and said, "Anything." I didn't know exactly what he meant, but it didn't sound good. They both grinned like their father and Aether shut the gold door. When he did, the wall became pure brick, and Ania and Akhos advanced.

"We're gonna have some fun," said Akhos.

"After all, Lord Aether did say we could do anything." They both laughed, and a smoky black flail appeared in Akhos's hand, and a flail appeared in Ania's.

I looked at Heather and saw her terrified face looking back. Jordan was staring down at his feet, and for the first time, I realized how quiet he'd been during the entire conversation with Aether. His lips were moving, and looking back, I know he was praying to his father.

That was when all Hades broke loose.

An owl swooped down from darkness above and knocked the whip out of Ania's hand. Akhos took a second to get out of his shock, and swung his flail. Fortunately, the owl had managed to get far out of reach. Ania dove for his whip, but the owl bit his eye and he curled up into the fetal position. Akhos jumped and threw his flail at the bird, but the owl dodged with ease. It flew around its attacker and spat something out of its mouth at my feet.

"My spear!" I yelled, and reached down for it. Luckily, Jordan and Heather also bent down so the chain stretched far enough. Once the spearhead transformed into my spear, I started to cut through my bindings.

Meanwhile, Akhos was attempting to catch the owl, who had picked up both the flail and the whip in its beak, with his bare hands. Ania was starting to rise, but the golden blood from his eye was blinding him.

Finally, I sawed through the chain. With my right hand free, I made a swift cut on the chain trapping me to the wall. Once I was free, I broke Jordan and Heather's chains. They both drew their weapons, and we charged.

I ran at Akhos, who was too shocked to move. I made a large gash across his face, and he doubled over like his brother. Jordan released a burst of fire from his pitchfork, and Ania was blown back against the wall, bleeding and unconscious. Heather was trying to find a way to escape, but hadn't found anything yet.

"You shall pay for this, Son of—"

I really wish Jordan hadn't chosen that moment to blast Akhos back like his brother. He had been about to say who my mother or father was. For a second I was angry, but then Heather screamed.

Jordan and I both raised our weapons, but instead of an attacker, we found a terrified young man in a white feather jacket. His black hair was wild and unruly and his eyes were stormy gray. I couldn't see much of his body because of the jacket, but I noticed he had large, wrinkly feet that were a disgusting egg-yolk color. His hands were shriveled and covered in hair.

When he spoke, his voice was dry and rough, like his throat was made of stone.

"Run, children! Run from this place, and never return! Do not go into the air, for he shall find you!"

I know it was rude, but I replied by saying, "Were you the owl?"

He stared at me, perplexed, but then nodded. "I was, child. I was transformed by the cruel Lady Demeter, after telling of how Persephone ate six seeds of a pomegranate."

"Oh yeah, I remember that story," I said, and I was proud of myself. I'd been trying to learn lots of stuff about Greek Mythology, and I knew the story of Persephone.

"Hades kidnapped Persephone and made her his queen. She ate six seeds from an Underworld fruit, I guess a pomegranate, and she had to stay with Hades six months each year, one month for each seed. Then Persephone's mother, Demeter, got angry because you told people about the pomegranate. Then she turned you into a screech owl."

I said it so fast that I bit my tongue. Jordan and Heather looked at me confused, but the owl-man seemed to understand.

"Yes, that was I, Askalaphos. However, the kind Lady Athena took pity on me, and gave me the power to become mortal if I so chose. Unfortunately, her gift only works in certain areas that are sacred to her."

"Washington DC is sacred to Athena?"

"No, the Washington Monument. George Washington was a demigod child of Athena. This monument was built in his honor, and by extension, Athena's honor."

"Okay," I said, but I was still kind of confused. How could a goddess of wisdom turn an owl mortal? How could a goddess of agriculture turn a mortal into an owl?

Askalaphos seemed to understand what I was thinking, because he explained. "Owls are symbols of Athena and Hades, and because I was in the Underworld at the time, she used that power to transform me."

"Look," Heather said. "It's important to know about Greek Mythology. It really is. But Aether could be back at any second, so we need to get moving. Askalaphos, are you coming with us?"

Askalaphos seemed to have already made up his mind about this. "I'm afraid I am not. I must stay and keep watch over Aether. However." He pulled a silver feather from his coat. "Should you ever need me, release this into the wind." He handed me the feather, and I slipped it into my pocket.

"Good luck, children."

With that, he brushed his hand against the wall and it began to glow, until the bricks were replaced with solid gold. He pulled back the door, gave a final nod, and turned into an owl. He opened his wings and flew through the doorway.

"Let's go," I said, and we followed.