Chapter 7: We Get A Bad Sunburn

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Sirens screamed past as I waited in a side alley for Percy to join me. This whole journey north had certainly turned into a three-ring circus and I could only hope this last act was the grand finale. I'd simply meant to swing by and pick Percy up, and instead we'd ended up running from giants and acquiring a Cyclops. Trust Percy to find himself a monster friend somehow.

I still couldn't quite believe Tyson had taken on the Laistrygonians instead of joining them to devour Percy. It went again everything I knew about Cyclopes. It was as though Tyson was some sort of bodyguard.

Could someone, a god, maybe, have sent him to protect Percy? But why a Cyclops, of all things? And which god would go to so much trouble?

My stomach churned. It was possible that Tyson was only biding his time, gaining Percy's trust for now. And there was one deity who was twisted enough to send Percy a duplicitous companion.

Percy came running out onto the street with Tyson in tow. I darted out and pulled him into the alley. Tyson fixed his eye unnervingly on me. His mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. He didn't seem to know how to speak. I realised he was probably a very young Cyclops—maybe he hadn't learned yet.

How he managed to pass for a student without being able to speak was a mystery, but the Mist had disguised stranger things.

'Where'd you find him?' I asked Percy.

Percy's voice was defensive. 'He's my friend.'

I narrowed my eyes. 'Is he homeless?' It wasn't proof, but if he lived on the streets like most normal Cyclopes, he might just be a random find of Percy's.

'What does that have to do with anything?' Percy shot back. 'He can hear you, you know. Why don't you ask him?'

'He can talk?'

Tyson finally spoke in a deep, rumbling voice. 'I talk. You are pretty.'

He leaned forward and offered me a smile, flashing rows of stained, crooked teeth. I couldn't help backing away in revulsion.

'Gross!' I muttered.

Percy glared at me. He grabbed Tyson's hands, turning him away from me, and gasped. 'Tyson, your hands aren't even burned!'

Tyson shrugged, but didn't say anything. Though he could obviously speak, his vocabulary seemed pretty limited.

'Of course not,' I said, shaking my head. He was immune to fire, which put him in a perfect position to fend off the Laistrygonians' flaming attacks. 'I'm surprised the Laistrygonians had the guts to attack you with him around,' I continued, as I ran through the earlier battle in my head. It was unlikely that the giants would have randomly wandered this far south of their homelands; but whoever had sent them obviously hadn't reckoned on a fireproof bodyguard being present.

Tyson seemed to take my words as an invitation. He reached a grimy hand towards my head. One finger curled around a lock of my hair. I jumped and slapped his hand.

'Annabeth, what are you talking about?' Percy said. 'Laistry—what?'

'Laistrygonians,' I repeated impatiently. 'The monsters in the gym.' I explained their origins, how they were banished beyond the reach of the gods. 'I've never seen them as far south as—' I was about to say the godly lands, but that was kind of abstract. 'New York,' I amended.

'Laistry—I can't even say that,' Percy complained. 'What would you call them in English?'

I rolled my eyes. I thought of the time my dad and I had run into them in Ottawa, and settled on, 'Canadians,' even though that was probably like calling Cyclopes Americans.

Percy raised his eyebrows, as if to say, you're kidding—I thought Canadians were supposed to be nice.

'Come on,' I said, trying to get back on track. It was late afternoon and we'd wasted enough time. 'We have to get out of here.'

'The police'll be after me,' Percy said.

'That's the least of our problems.' I wondered how much he knew about what was going on at camp. I knew he had dreams like mine from time to time. 'Have you been having the dreams?'

'The dreams … about Grover?'

This threw me for a loop. Our friend Grover, the satyr who had brought both me and Percy to camp (at different times) and gone with us on our quest last year, was currently off on his life's mission to find the great satyr god Pan. 'Grover? No, what about Grover?'

'He's in Florida,' Percy said. 'He ran into a monster there. I dreamt about it last night—the monster was chasing him, and it caught him in a bridal boutique. I didn't see what happened, though. I woke up just as the monster caught up to him.'

I frowned. Here was one more disturbing event to add to the list. So many things seemed to be happening at once—Thalia's tree, the attacks on camp, Laistrygonians coming south, Percy finding Tyson, and now Grover, too. Either it was a lot of coincidences, or there was some plot brewing.

'I don't like it,' I said.

'Why? What were you dreaming about?'

I wasn't entirely sure how to explain. I knew the camp had come under attack and it had something to do with Thalia's tree, but I didn't know how exactly it was connected, nor did I know if anything else had happened in the last three days. I hated trying to explain things without all the facts. Finally, I said, 'Camp. Big trouble at camp.'

To my surprise, Percy picked the ball right up. 'My mom was saying the same thing! But what kind of trouble?'

I stared at him, surprised that his mother would know anything about it. 'I don't know exactly,' I admitted. 'Something's wrong. We have to get there right away.' I told him briefly about my journey up from Virginia, with the multiple monsters who kept trying to stop me. 'Have you had a lot of attacks?'

'None all year,' Percy said, shaking his head. 'Er, until today.'

'None?' I repeated, amazed. I'd assumed there'd have been some incidents, however minor. Even without everything we'd done last year to get on Kronos's bad side, his scent, as the son of Poseidon, must have attracted some monsters. 'But how …' I started to ask, and then the answer came to me. 'Oh.'

Duh. He'd found himself a bodyguard.

As if answering my question, Tyson raised his hand. But he was looking at Percy with his eyebrow knit and a confused look in his single eye.

'Canadians in the gym called Percy something … Son of the Sea God?'

Percy's eyes met mine briefly. I frowned. I had assumed Tyson knew exactly who Percy was, especially if he'd been sent to protect, or trick, or trap him or whatever. But the way he looked now, like he couldn't work out what had happened in the gym, as though he were a mortal struggling to see through the Mist … I wondered if Tyson even knew what he was. I'd never known the Mist to be powerful enough to shroud a monster from itself.

Percy turned to Tyson and started explaining. It was a long, painful process—Tyson took in everything Percy said about the gods very calmly, but acted as though he was listening politely to a story that wasn't answering his real question. At the end of it all, he asked again, 'But you are … Son of the Sea God?'

I ground my teeth. This could take all day. 'We don't have time for this,' I told the boys. 'We'll talk in the taxi.'

'A taxi all the way to camp?' Percy said incredulously. 'You know how much money—'

'Trust me.' I'd only done this twice, but both times, the magical taxi had gotten me to camp really quickly, if not entirely comfortably.

'What about Tyson? We can't just leave him. He'll be in trouble, too.'

'Yeah, we definitely need to take him,' I agreed. I still wanted to get to the bottom of that mystery. Besides, Chiron would know what we should do with him. 'Now come on.'

I led them down the street, a few blocks away from the school. I stopped on a quiet corner and looked into my backpack. I needed a drachma to summon the taxi. As long as I hadn't scattered the lot in Central Park during the roc attack …

'What are you looking for?' Percy said.

'Found one!' I said triumphantly, showing him the golden drachma. 'Thank the gods!'

'Annabeth, New York taxi drivers won't take that.'

I ignored him and tossed the drachma into the street. 'Anakoche, harma epitribeios!' I announced.

The first time I'd caught the Grey Sisters Taxi, Luke had summoned it on our way back from the Empire State Building on a field trip. Last year, Grover and I had taken it again when we hurried back from La Guardia airport while Percy delivered Zeus's lightning bolt to Mount Olympus. Just as it had on those previous occasions, the insubstantial-looking taxi popped right out of the ground and a head with a mop of stringy grey hair stuck out of the passenger window: Anger, one of the three sisters who manned the cab.

'Three to Camp Half-Blood,' I told her when she asked me for passage. The back door popped open and I indicated to Percy and Tyson to get in.

'Ach!' Anger shook her head violently. 'We don't take his kind!'

I gritted my teeth. 'Extra pay,' I offered, though I had no idea if I had enough to even cover the out-of-metro bonus our passage to Long Island would incur. I'd probably have to get Chiron to spot me when we arrived. 'Three more drachmas on arrival,' I promised Anger.

'Done!'

We got into the taxi. Tyson ended up between Percy and me, which made me feel like I'd eaten a rotten apple. No matter how friendly Tyson might seem, the thought of being in close proximity to a Cyclops still made my stomach churn. It wasn't a great start to the ride, which was somewhat of a roller-coaster to begin with. The Grey Sisters—Anger, Tempest, and Wasp—were three wise women who had but a single tooth and a single eye amongst them. I think they'd made some deal to get wisdom or knowledge or something like that, I wasn't sure. They had normal facial structures, but they had a time-share going on with the actual appendages. I didn't know when they'd ended up with their taxi gig, but if you could put up with the erratic driving, they could get you anywhere you wanted in the Greater New York region.

Percy and Tyson looked pretty much the way I had the first time I'd gotten in the Grey Sisters Taxi—a mixture of incredulity and nausea. Tyson moaned and clutched his stomach while Percy looked at me with disbelief when I explained about the eye situation. His expression clearly said, Are you completely out of your mind?

'Hey, Grey Sisters Taxi is the fastest way to camp,' I said.

'Then why didn't you take it from Virginia?' he shot back.

I rolled my eyes. I knew Percy was actually pretty smart, but a lot of the time he acted like he couldn't be bothered to use his brains for simple logic. 'That's outside their service area. They only serve Greater New York and surrounding communities.'

The ride was wilder than usual, I had to admit. The sisters were having an intense argument as we trundled downtown. We swerved all over the bridge that connected Manhattan to Long Island. I had to grab tightly to the handhold in the door to keep from being flung over Tyson's lap.

'Uh, if anybody's interested, we're going to die!' Percy said.

I told him not to worry, although I probably didn't sound terribly convincing, given that we looked like we were going to launch off the bridge straight into the East River. 'The Grey Sisters know what they're doing. They're really very wise.'

'Yes, wise!' Anger cut in. 'We know things!'

Wasp backed her up. 'Every street in Manhattan! The capital of Nepal!'

Kathmandu, I thought automatically, and grinned to myself. The temples there were said to be a sight worth seeing.

'The location you seek!' Tempest said, out of the blue.

'Be quiet!' Anger and Wasp screeched in unison. 'Be quiet! He didn't even ask yet!'

Percy latched on to this with surprisingly tenacity. When they refused to tell him what Tempest had meant, he became fixated on it, even holding their eye hostage when they dropped it by his feet, until they told him what location they were talking about. I really didn't understand him sometimes. He'd gone from being terrified of their daredevil driving to practically ensuring that they'd kill us in a crash.

'I'll open the window and throw the eye into oncoming traffic,' he threatened, the idiot.

'No! Too dangerous!' cried all three sisters, most ironically.

'I'm rolling down the window.'

'Wait! Thirty, thirty-one, seventy-five, twelve!'

Percy looked at me, mystified. 'What do you mean?' he demanded. 'That makes no sense!'

Anger repeated the meaningless string of numbers. Best guess, it was a phone number to call, or a post code. I'd heard that in some countries, they used more numbers and no letters. I didn't really care either way. I couldn't understand why it was so important to Percy. It wasn't as though he'd set out to ask them for a location in the first place.

'Percy, give them the eye now!' I yelled at him.

Finally, Percy tossed the eye to Wasp. She popped it into her eye socket and immediately slammed the brake. My face hit the head rest so hard, I thought I might have broken my nose. Next to me, Tyson released a loud, foul-smelling burp. We were at the base of Half-Blood Hill. At the crest, under Thalia's tree, a group of campers formed a defensive ring. Bounding up the hill towards them were a pair of blindingly bright bronze bulls.

Percy leaned between the drivers' seats, still demanding information from the Grey Sisters. I punched his shoulder. 'No time! We have to get out now!'

He looked up and the colour drained from his face when he saw what I did: flames erupting from the mouths of the bulls as they charged across the hill.

'Ahhhh!' Wasp screamed.

'What is it? What is it?' Anger and Tempest yelled. 'Give me the eye!'

Percy, Tyson, and I spilled out of the taxi. Wasp floored the accelerator before we'd even closed the door behind us, clearly anxious to get away from the fire-breathing bulls. The campers on the hill had scattered in the face of the fire and the bulls were running easily behind Thalia's pine, as though the magical borders that were supposed to keep monster out didn't even exist. They were mammoth-sized, looking terrifyingly huge even from this distance, and they made loud clinking, grinding noises like their joints were made of metal.

Colchis bulls, I thought in dismay. Crafted by Hephaestus himself for King Aeetes in the days of Jason and the Argonauts. 'Oh man.' In my head I heard Ethel saying, boy, those things can burn if you're not careful.

'Border patrol, to me!' shouted a girl on the hill. She raised her spear high in the air. A few of the campers ran to her, but most of them were getting chased down by the bulls.

'It's Clarisse—come on, we have to help her.'

Percy uncapped his pen and it elongated into his sword, Riptide. He turned to Tyson. 'Stay here,' he told him. 'I don't want you taking any more chances.'

I gave him an incredulous look. We were facing fire-breathing bulls and he wanted the one fire-immune guy we had to stay back? 'No! We need him.'

'He's mortal!' Percy said, as though I were the crazy one. 'He got lucky with the dodgeballs but he can't—'

It was hard to believe how much Percy had been duped by the Mist. I decided to focus on the main problem. 'Percy, do you know what those are up there? The Colchis bulls, made by Hephaestus himself. We can't fight them without Medea's Sunscreen SPF 50,000. We'll get burned to a crisp!'

Although I knew I didn't have it, I couldn't help double-checking my backpack, in the vain hope that I'd somehow ended up tossing it in without realising it. Of course it wasn't there—I could see myself in my room the morning I'd left, glancing at the jar on my nightstand and figuring I wouldn't need it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 'Why didn't I bring it?'

Now we were facing bulls like blazing sun, which would give you third degree burns on contact, first and second degree depending on how close you got to it, and at best a severe sunburn if you approached it without sunscreen.

'I'm not going to let Tyson get fried,' Percy insisted. Deaf to my protests, he told Tyson to stay back again. 'I'm going in.' He charged up the hill towards Clarisse.

'Phalanx formation!' Clarisse was screaming, trying to get her patrol to lock shields and form a wall against the raging bulls. It might have worked if her full team had been operational. As it was, four of the campers were distracted by the fact that their helmets had been set on fire. Percy sprinted towards where Clarisse and her five campers were holding the line against one bull. I headed for the other, which was closing in on the four campers with flaming heads.

'Hey!' I yelled at it. 'You stupid cow, you're just full of hot air!'

The bull turned and pawed at the ground with one bronze hoof. Smoke billowed from his nostrils. I'd succeeded at diverting its attention from the other campers, but now it was focused on me. Its silver horn flashed in the sunlight as it charged towards me, ruby eyes glinting with malice. I put on my cap and vanished as I ran, careful to keep what I thought was an appropriate distance. I wasn't sure if I would suffer the burns if I were invisible, but I preferred not to find out the hard way. I could feel the scorching heat emanating from the monster as it stampeded past me, confused. It whirled around and spewed out a frustrated ring of fire, torching the grass within a five-foot radius.

I ran for the other side of the hill and pulled off my cap. 'Right here, stupid!'

The bull didn't care to play this time. It had found easier prey. Quick as lightning, it turned and headed for Clarisse's unguarded side—a flank she wouldn't have needed to guard ordinarily since it was behind the magical barrier. The bull only slowed briefly, though, and carried on right through. While the first bull smashed up against the phalanx formation, sending a wall of fire at Clarisse and her patrol, the second one came up behind and would have gored her with its silver horn and fried her with its breath if Percy hadn't managed to jump in and yank her out of the way by her armour straps.

Clarisse screamed at him.

'Distract them!' I yelled to the other campers, although there were only about three or four who were still on their feet. Half the patrol had fallen, clutching their burnt arms or rolling around to put out their flaming armour. 'Spread out, keep them from congregating!'

Tyson, against Percy's orders, came lumbering up the hill. 'Help Percy!' I yelled at him. Beyond the barrier, Percy was facing down one bull on his own. I thought he'd managed to injure it with his sword, but it was still on its feet. The other bull was rampaging lower down the hill. I cried out and flailed my arms, trying to get its attention, but it focused on Percy, too.

Percy was down. He'd fallen on his face near Thalia's tree. Clarisse leapt over him and engaged the first bull, but he wasn't going to get up in time to meet the second one.

I was too far away; I had no chance of racing the bull to Percy. The remaining campers were spread out as well. There was only Tyson, making his way up the hill towards Percy.

'Tyson, help him!' I cried.

Tyson came up against the barrier and stopped. 'Can't—get—through!'

It seemed unthinkable that the barrier would fail under the onslaught of the bulls yet hold against a helpful monster. There was no time to wonder about it, though. I'd never summoned a monster through the barrier before, but I knew it could be done.

'I, Annabeth Chase, give you permission to enter camp!' I yelled.

The entire hill shook as a giant fist had grabbed it. Tyson leapt through the barrier and lunged in front of Percy.

And then the bull charging towards them let loose.

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A/N: It's always when I dovetail back into canon that I remember how hard it is to reconcile the dialogue! Writing canon scenes is ironically harder than the missing moments.

Thank you Jessica'BlueBell'Potter-PBBX, VCRx, strawberrygirl2000, and OverLordRevan for your reviews last chapter! I especially loved the coffee discussions ... ;)