Things to look forward to in this chapter: Man hunts, dreams about our pal Alice, and maybe... an explosion or two? Nadira, Andromeda, Percy, and Tony have still got imaginary bounties over their heads, set by none other than Joan DeWitt and Peter Montgomery. Jared de la Rue and his siblings are hot on the trail, and they won't stop until they catch our four young heroes.
Excited yet?
7/
When I woke up, my nose was still hurting, and my back was too. I got up, groaning. Tony rolled out from under the truck. Annabeth sat up from her spot in the truck bed.
"Is everybody okay?" Tony said sleepily from the floor. "The duck didn't show up with a pie and kill anybody, right?"
We ignored him. "Morning," Annabeth said, rubbing her eyes. She cracked her back. "Ugh. My back hurts like a bitch."
"I hear you," I said, stretching. "Whoever thought the ground could do that much damage?"
Tony sighed. "I'm gonna miss all those cupcakes."
Annabeth sighed. She kicked Tony in the shin. "Come on, Tony, get up!"
He got to his feet. "Ow! What was that for?"
"For being an idiot."
Tony opened his mouth, but Annabeth cut him off. "We have to keep moving. Joan DeWitt will send someone after us. And they won't be alone."
"Great," I sighed.
"I know who has Alice," she said suddenly.
"What?" Tony sat up so fast he got dizzy. I leaned forward. She explained about her dream, seeing the same thing as Tony. Hecate had Alice.
"Who in the hell is Hecate?" Tony said, stretching out on the floor.
"Goddess of magic, dumbass," Annabeth said. "Haven't you been listening?"
"No," he answered.
She rolled her eyes. "Hecate lives in the Underworld, deeper than even Melinoe's cave."
"Oh, shit," Tony said. "That's gonna be hard."
"Duh," Andromeda said.
A crack from somewhere behind us. We turned to see three drakons, around twenty feet away. The riders? Jared de la Rue, Ophelia Warring, and that third boy I didn't know. They were all staring at us with hate.
"Get in!" Tony yelled. We all piled in the car. Tony hit the gas and started driving like a maniac.
"Follow them!" Ophelia shouted from behind us.
Annabeth, who was sitting in the back, started climbing over to the front. She pulled a knife and slashed open the center of the steering wheel.
"Whoa!" Tony yelled. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Shut up! I'm trying to think!" she yelled back. She sawed out a huge chunk of the wheel, then did something that was either really stupid or really brave.
She opened the passenger side door and started climbing to the truck bed. She left a trail of wires from the thing she was holding to the gaping wheel.
"Annabeth!" I shouted. "What are you doing!"
She didn't hear me. Sitting safely in the truck bed, she started doing something with the wires. Glancing forward, I realized she'd cut the airbag clean out of the wheel. Something was sparking where she was using her knife.
"Tony!" she yelled. "Honk the horn as long as possible!"
"What?" Tony shouted, swerving to avoid a few dumb drivers.
"HONK!" Andromeda screamed.
I lunged forward and smashed my hand onto what was left of the horn, just as Andromeda threw the chunk of dashboard at the drakon chasing us.
To my shock, it exploded on impact. The drakon, Lazar, screeched in pain and fell back, writhing as he burned. The others, Gale and Elizia, glared at us with eyes the size of spotlights and lunged.
"How in the hell did you do that?" Tony yelled.
"Basic engineering!" Annabeth yelled back. "Splice the wires and create static electricity to—"
"Whoops, don't care!" he shouted over the wind.
"Tony!" I said. "Step on it!"
In response he yanked the gearshift into the second gear and punched the gas. He swerved left, causing cars to annihilate each other in a mass car jam. [Is that even a word? Car jam?] Andromeda pulled something from her pocket. It was a small silver ball, but in three seconds it glowed and transformed into a grenade the size of my fist.
"Whoa!" I yelled, but she ignored me, pulled the pin with her teeth, and threw it with a deadly aim—right onto Elizia's head.
The drakons roared in fury as they were forced to stop. "I'll get you four!" Jared Bennet called after us. "If my sister wants you guys I'll bring you back!"
I still didn't understand why Joan DeWitt wanted us, but that didn't matter now. All I cared about was living, at the moment. Adrenaline was coursing through me. Why? Because Annabeth Chase was trying to kill me.
She was going so fast I was scared we would burst into flames or get our faces sucked off by the g-forces. My heart wanted to beat right out of my chest.
"I keep forgetting, why are they chasing us again?" Tony yelled. His face was pale and he was clutching the sides of his seat in a death grip.
"No one knows!" I shouted back.
TWO HOURS LATER
"Annie, can we please stop now?" Tony asked. He'd been lying in the back of the truck for hours, not bothering to complain until about five minutes ago, driving us crazy.
"I don't want to get caught," she answered, her grip on the wheel tightening. Her knuckles turned white.
"Neither do I, but it's so boring," Tony complained. "And I almost fell asleep. Can we stop at a motel and just hang there?"
"Yeah, Annabeth," I said. "Let's go to one with a TV."
"Fine," she agreed. She pulled off the freeway.
"That one!" Tony sat up, jabbing a finger at the window.
"No!" Annabeth said. "I've never been outside camp, but if I know anything, it's that places that look good in the mortal world spell demons for us."
We drove for ten more minutes, then she said, "What about that?" She gestured to a run-down building labeled MOTEL.
"That one looks non-good," I said. "Good enough for you?"
She nodded. "Yeah…"
"Let's go then!" Tony rapped his hands on the dashboard. "I hope they have video games!"
"Or at least a TV," I muttered.
We pulled up in the parking lot and wandered to the front desk; the clerk took one look at the four of us and gave us two adjoining rooms, each with one bed and a bathroom.
Annabeth wrinkled her nose. "Ew. How much did this cost us?"
"Fifty bucks each room," I said. "I guess the manager thought we were orphans or "
"Close enough," I said. The girls went into the next room and locked the door. Tony and me stared at the one bed.
"Uh…you can have it," I said. "I'll take the bathtub." Tony looked grateful. I went into the bathroom and plopped into the cold tub. Thank the gods it was dry and somewhat cleaner than the rest of the room.
I don't remember falling asleep, but the next thing I knew I wasn't lying in a slightly gross bathtub in a should-be-closed-down-motel, I was standing in a cave, underground.
The walls were lit with torches. I was facing two thrones. One was really red. Like I had to look away 'cause my eyes were hurting kind of red. The other was pitch black, but before I could study it more I heard something behind me and turned to look.
A girl, hanging from the ceiling by chains. Her brown hair covered her face, but I knew who she was. Alice.
She spoke, scaring the crap outta me. "Dominic," she said. "You have to rescue Dominic first, then come get me. Do it, Percy. You have to."
"Whom are you speaking to, girl?" I turned around to see a dark figure seated on the throne. I couldn't see a face, but I knew that person was watching my sister in amusement.
"I am speaking to no one," Alice said, lifting her head to expose her intimidating green eyes. "Staying in this…headquarters of yours is quite maddening, though I do not intend to release hold on my mind."
I could almost hear the smirking. "A shame. It would have been much easier for us if you had."
"I know," Alice said.
"I sense him." A voice came out of nowhere. The air shimmered by Alice's left foot and a woman appeared next to her. The woman was dressed in a Greek chiton…and she had three heads.
The human face was pretty, I guess, but the other ones were too shocking for her to be beautiful. The left one was a vicious dog, growling and snapping and foaming at the mouth. Its eyes glowed crimson. The one on the right was a horse, which sounds stupid, but was terrifying all the same. Its eyes were red too.
"The boy is here," the woman, obviously a goddess, said. "Get out of my throne."
The person on the throne obeyed. "What? How? Did you do this?" they demanded of Alice.
"No," the goddess I didn't know said, taking her place on her throne. "The boy has brought himself hither."
Hither? I thought. Is that even a word?
"Leave him be," Alice said. "He has done nothing against you."
The goddess sneered. "His mere existence is an offense to us."
"Your betrayal is disgusting," my sister snapped. She spat at the goddess. Immediately Alice started shaking like she was having a seizure. I backed away.
The goddess turn her human eyes to me. "See, boy? Your puny sister can do nothing against us and neither. Can. You. I will rule America! You cannot make us falter in our rise! Give up!"
I woke up all of a sudden, Alice's scream echoing in my ears. Someone was knocking on the door, and suddenly it opened. It was Tony.
"Dude, how long can it take to open a damn door?" he complained. He stopped in his tracks. "Percy? What's wrong? You okay?"
"Uh…" I got out of the bathtub, shaking. "Y—yeah, I…I'm fine."
Tony looked at me funny. He was holding a toothbrush in one hand. "Right," he said. "Well, you'll never guess who showed up at two a.m. last night."
I really didn't need anymore surprises, but I said, "Who?"
"Jason Ashby."
I blinked. "How? Annabeth was driving at, like, a hundred miles an hour!"
"Hundred and fifty-seven, to be exact," Annabeth's voice called from the other room.
Tony shrugged. "I don't know. He said he hung under the truck for hours. He's outside right now."
Someone screamed. Tony and me all looked at each other, then drew our separate weapons and ran to the other room. Annabeth was standing on a dresser, screaming her head off.
"Annabeth!" I yelled. "What's wrong?"
"Spider!" she shrieked.
We all lowered our weapons. Jason held out his arm. "This one?" A black spider was sitting on his forearm. He crushed it under his foot.
Annabeth relaxed. "I hate spiders." She shuddered.
Another yell. I closed my eyes and sighed. "Please tell me we don't know who screamed."
"That was Jason," Tony realized. Annabeth's expression went from embarrassed to warlike as she pulled out her Celestial bronze knife and ran out the door. The rest of us guys shrugged at each other, then ran after her.
We found Jason in the parking lot, fighting a…monster. Of course we had to deal with that right now. It was the weirdest thing I'd ever seen. It had a lion's body, a serpent's tail, and a goat's head sprouting from the middle of its back.
"What is that?" I said in horror.
Annabeth was pale when she answered, "The Chimera."
"Say what now?" Tony asked, but Annabeth was gone, running with her knife to help Jason.
I fingered Riptide in worry, glanced at Tony, then followed her. The snake-tail lashed around, hissing, trying to bite our feet off. I saw my chance. While the snake was occupied with trying to eat Tony, I chopped its head off with a single swipe of my sword.
The lion's head screamed in pain and turned to face me. I threw my sword in its face like a javelin, which wasn't the smartest thing to do. The blade went right into the lion's left eye. It went crazy trying to get it out, barely noticing Annabeth on its back.
Once she got to the neck she raised her knife above her head. Time seemed to slow for an eerie second, the blade flashing in the sun. She brought it down in one stab, but earned way more blood than I would've liked. The Chimera disappeared into yellow dust. Annabeth fell to the ground.
Jason was lying in a heap, unconscious. Tony ran over. I crouched by Annabeth.
"Annabeth, are you okay?" I said.
She sat up. "Fine. Where's Jason?"
"She'll be fine," I said. "What about—"
A roar interrupted me. I turned and saw three drakons we knew all too well. Even when they were a mile away, I could make out the Ares kids' faces, and they weren't pretty.
"RUN!" I yelled. We did. Jason headed for the nearest car, which was a crappy van. We followed him. In two minutes he had hot-wired the car. We zoomed down the street so fast I was expecting the wind to suck off my face.
"Annabeth, do that thingy with the dashboard again!" Tony yelled.
"Don't need to!" she yelled back. She pulled something from her pocket—another silver ball. It turned into a grenade in a second.
"What the f***?" Jason shouted.
"Got this off of Clio Smith!" she explained in a shout. "Demigod grenades!" She yanked the pin, stood up, and threw it back.
I watched as Jared Bennet caught it, stared at it, then everything exploded. Jason gunned it; the car went faster than I'd thought possible. I glanced at him, and, judging from his expression, we'd be spending more than a couple hours in this car.
Go Annabeth! You know, I'm pretty sure that you CAN actually do that with an airbag and a car horn, except it wouldn't explode as in fire, it would just maybe break your ribs. Oh well, this is the demigod world we're talking here; anything's possible.
Now, the upcoming chapter 8 is way more interesting than chapter 7, I think. I'll explain more when I actually post it, since the material I put in there might be confusing, so all of you just have to be patient. I know I'll try to be.
Luv ya!
Kisses! -Alice
