Last night, I must have been too exhausted to dream, which is a good thing. Half-bloods don't seem to actually get nice dreams. The one I had on the train to San Francisco was trying to make up for lost time for sure.

It started with a beautiful woman sitting on a throne. Every part of her was composed, regal and obviously full of royalty and power. Her caramel colored skin seemed to glow with power and her black eyes were confident, but kind. She wore cut and carved jewels plaited into her hair, strung on thin wires of gold and silver... and her dress was both made of rich, colorful silks from foreign lands and dyed, painstakingly wrought soft antelope skin, holding the gauzy bolts of silk in place like ribbons wrapped around her. Each strip seemed to honor a different god or goddess, scenes of myth tooled carefully into the leather.

In front of her, Zeus- Somehow I knew it was Zeus, as he looked more like an Egyptian king than he did anything I pictured. But I guess gods can look like anything they please. Anyways, he kisses her hand gently, but she smiles and rebuffs his advances. Which was good, because there are some things I don't want to watch. My grandfather getting it on is one of them.

Instead, she rises from her throne and bids him to follow her, and takes her two children.. their two children... from the attendants. I watch the king of gods brush the hair of a newborn with obvious pride and love and just wanted to look away, but I couldn't. All I could do was kind of stew in my own annoyance at watching this. Yeah. Great, so Zeus cared about SOME of his kids way back when. Trust me, he's nothing but a divine deadbeat now.

The dream changes, and the queen of Libya is sitting on her throne again, a golden spear across her lap as she listens to the bickering of two merchants. Suddenly, the whole room goes quiet and everyone turns to the double doors at the end of the audience chambers. Standing there is another queen. Dressed in the finery and simple whites and golds of Greek heritage ... Hera had made no attempt to pretend she was from the region.

Her regal aura and anger flooded the room, and she walked slowly up to the queen, peasants and nobles alike scrambling out of her way. Still, the queen upon her throne didn't balk. However, she did set aside her spear, tip lowered as not to point at the goddess. She rose and then sank to one knee on the thick pile of lion and antelope pelts, paying her proper homage.

Hera wasn't pacified. "You have stolen from me, Queen of Libya, Daughter of Hecate."

"I have taken nothing that was not freely offered at my feet," her eyes were lowered, but her tone was measured, prideful.

It wasn't the right answer.

"Rise." Hera's voice was full of rage and venom and the queen stood up stiffly, maybe a little awkwardly, like her movements were not her own. Together they walked to the same room I'd seen moments before. Hera striding with pride and grace, the queen staggering from foot to foot.

The attendants beyond the threshold seemed to know immediately that something was wrong with their queen, but what could they do? When Hera snapped her fingers, an elderly woman carrying a bundle of swaddling cloth came forward and offered it to the goddesses arms.

Not realizing the danger it was in, the baby cooed and gurgled cheerfully, and I could see a small hand grasping up towards the patron goddess of families. Hera smiled, and gave the child to the queen.

"I cannot see what you have taken returned to me, but I can see the fruits of it consumed. You will have no family, no kingdom, and no rest." Hera snapped her fingers again, and the queen convulsed. Her hands trembled, and she lifted her own child... claws sprouting under her fingernails and scales erupting from her skin.

"No! No please! I beg of you!" the queen wailed, but couldn't seem to help herself. Her mouth opened wide, impossibly so, jaw unhinging, and she swallowed her own child in one gulp.

Horrified, the attendants screamed, scrambling away from the goddess and the monster that was shrieking and crying in grief. They tried to spirit away the elder child, a two year old, but the new monster was faster, slithering forward. She snapped up her firstborn child, lifting the crying child above her head.

It took more than one bite for this one. I'm not going to describe it. I didn't even want to watch it.

Broken, sobbing, the monster surged forward, screaming curses in languages I didn't know and trying to rend the goddess with her own claws and teeth, but Hera simply vanished, a cruel, satisfied smile on her lips.

Lost, the queen staggered around the room, moaning. The empty, distant look in her eyes kind of reminded me of my own mom's on her good days. "My children! Where are my children?!"

I awoke with a start, scrambling across the floor of the boxcar I'd taken shelter in, heart racing. I didn't know who that was, but it was clear why I dreamed it. A warning and a threat.. Hera was not being subtle. I pushed open the boxcar doors, climbing over the piles of timber to get out and back into the early morning sun. I needed some air, and something to cool my head.

Normally, travel calmed me down. I didn't realize how much simply being on the move did for me until I couldn't do it anymore. The stagnation of living in camp itched under my skin a lot... I mean I could go exploring or run the trails but it wasn't the same as having a direction and a lot of ground to cover. It felt good to be on top of the car, listening to the train thrum over the tracks, swaying, eating up miles. It refreshed me in a way sleep didn't and calmed my thudding heart.

I will say that the trip to San Francisco gave me two things. One of which was a sunburn. The other was a lot of time to think. I'll admit, I spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about my conversation with Hera and the dream. Why the heck did I kneel? She was very clearly no any better than any of the rest, though I consoled myself with the fact I didn't know that right away. And stop the quest? I should have just told her and all of Olympus that if they wanted me to stop, Hermes himself should appear and tell me himself.

Now THAT idea I liked enough to try out. I stood up. I shouted those exact words into the rushing wind. If he wanted me to stop, he could just say it. Send me a sign. Anything. ... Of course, nothing happened. No wind changing direction. No random letter. Certainly not him in person. Because it's Hermes. I'm the only one he doesn't have a message for, apparently. Especially not one where there's a whole terrifying thing going on and I could use a couple good words of advice. Why break tradition, right?

So that left me... what? Was this the choice Halcyon warned me about? I wished, not for the first time, that he'd written about what I was up against in this journal. I liked this less and less. It's not that I had a lot to lose. I had no kingdom but I definitely had a family. I don't know what she could do worse to Thalia at this point, but Annabeth... The idea of turning into a monster and hurting her made me sick to my stomach. Was that the betrayal? He said my choices would affect the world... was that making the gods fight each other?

I was getting a headache thinking about it.

So, I set it aside for now. The train wasn't going to turn around, and wasn't going to be walking home. I decided I'd at least get to the garden, see it, and decide then. If it was just that my father could get into trouble? More the reason to finish it. Spite could drive me pretty far. There must be something important going on that I don't get yet and there was only one way to find out.

I jumped off the train the moment it started to slow outside of San Francisco. I activated my magic shoes long enough to get a nice gentle landing, and made my way through the suburbs. Once I was in the city, I didn't have any problems at all. This? This was a landscape I knew. The skyline was different, but the beat of it didn't change from town to town.

I didn't have any money left, but that wasn't going to stop me either. I slipped on a bus, sliding in the shadow of a larger, beefier guy in a suit. An old lady in the front seat scowled at me, but didn't seem to think telling on me to the driver was worth the effort, because she huffed something about children these days and turned to glare out the window.

San Fran's got style though. The wide streets are carved with trolley tracks and colorful townhouses erupt from steep hills like giant teeth. Even deep into the city, green trees line the streets, roots battling concrete for the right to exist, and a sea of people, bicyclists, businessmen and tourist swarmed the roads.

I was across the city, between dodging onto buses and the occasional ride, clinging to the handrails of a trolley, in almost no time at all. In fact, it was barely two in the afternoon when I was in the depths of the city by the bay. The skyscrapers that shaped the skyline were now giants that towered around me, and I could hear the roar of a nearby stadium, a crowd cheering on an early afternoon game.

I had time to kill before sunset. No money and I hadn't eaten in well over two days. Just a bowl of mints I'd scavenged from the Hotel Nowhere's front lobby. There hadn't been anything in the register. I checked. So, I let my stomach guide my feet, planning on seeing what someone wouldn't mind go missing. Okay, not the most heroic thing in the world, I admit, but any longer I'd start getting dizzy if I tried to fight or run. I knew that from experience. Pride would get me killed and that was not a situation I was keen on taking on an ancient, terrifying dragon with.

I was weighing my odds of the front display of a convenience store on one side of the road guarded by a jowly middle aged guy in a tank top reading a newspaper, versus the chance of a successful eat and run at an outdoor cafe on the other, when I heard something even better. The tinny, loud tune of an ice cream truck slowly creeping through a neighborhood nearby.

So I grew up in the burbs and I knew exactly what ice cream trucks actually were. They were a Tantalus-level torture system for little kids. Yeah, that guy who got cursed by the gods to stand in water and be unable to drink, under a tree filled with fruit and be unable to eat. That guy. Ice cream trucks were just like that. They were either too far by the time you heard them, or didn't have money at the time.

But I had magical flying shoes and... okay well I didn't have any money, but I do have a winning smile and some really good hard luck stories. I decided to give it a shot for all of the times little me was too good of kid to try sneaking into the back of that ice cream filled paradise.

All that lead up is really just to explain why I was so suspicious that I caught the blasted thing almost immediately. I didn't even need super speed or a magical road block. Forget the Herculean Labor in front of me, I just beat one even the legendary demigod would have blanched at. Which is why I knew it was a trap long before I caught the whiff of reptiles and fudgsicles.

The ice cream truck was parked between two towering apartment buildings, canopy pulled down and Pop Goes the Weasel playing on loop. A woman in a white coat sat in a lawn chair outside of the truck, seeming to be waiting for ANY customers. The fact that there were none made me worry even more. The woman just would have looked frail and a bit frazzled at the edges if it wasn't for her olive colored skin. I don't mean that the way you usually hear olive skin. I mean, her skin tone had the same color as an olive. The same kind you get in the supermarket with those weird red things stuck in the middle.

So why did I get any closer? I had a bad feeling. Yeah I know, most of the time, when I get a bad feeling it means GO THE OTHER WAY, FOOL. But this time, I got the feeling it walking away would be worse now that she'd obviously seen me. She lifted her chin, sniffing the air, and she smiled at me, a little too widely for a real face.

"Child... Come closer." She hisses her sses. I'm not writing it out because it feels dumb to write out, but just imagine it. It was as creepy as it sounds. "Would you like a Bomb Pop? A Sunday Crunch?"

I slipped one of the straps of my pack off so I could get to my sword quickly. I gave her the only civilized answer I could think of: "Do you have those ice cream sandwiches?"

She smiled, a forked tongue flickering between sharp teeth. "Oh, I have one in the back. Come with me, my child."

So after my last encounter, I was in no way going to give the benefit of the doubt to a monster. I waited until she got up from the lawn chair and turned her back to me, and grabbed for my sword- and that's as far as I got.

She said something I didn't understand at all, a phrase in some other language and I froze, as soundly as if I had been turned to stone. I struggled against the magic, but I could hardly wiggle my fingers much less swing my sword. It just felt heavy and useless in my hand. The woman strode up to me and moved me like a doll, marching me helplessly towards the back of the truck.

"Shh. Be a good child. Be good." She stroked a clawed hand down my face, and I couldn't even flinch. Or bite her. I doubt she even broke a sweat when she lifted me off of my feet and threw me in. Before she closed the door, she dropped her disguise... and I could see her clearly. Scales twisted a snake-like face, misty red eyes stared sort of over and around me. Her smile was serrated and far, far too wide. I knew that face. I dreamed it.

The doors to the truck slammed shut and the ice cream truck's music started again. I'm not sure if she felt I wasn't worth dealing with right now, or just wanted to save a snack for later.

I struggled, but couldn't seem to get any control of my limbs back. Whatever magic held me, it was more secure than a rope could ever be. I was pretty sure I could loosen any knot that bound me, and if I couldn't... it's not like she had disarmed me. But this? I had no idea what to do with this. This was well beyond the curses I'd seen thrown around at Camp.

The back of the truck was dark, but I could make out what looked like a small kitchenette, a spice rack with a few glowing jars and vials on it, and of course, large freezers. There wasn't anything conveniently marked: Hey! Knock this off of the shelf for magical cure to your everyday curses. I could move a bit, but my hands and feet were stuck to each other as securely as if I was bound.

So I formed the best plan I could. 1. Wiggle close to the doors. 2. When she opens them, kick her in the face. 3. Improvise. 4. Don't die. Not the finest, I admit, but you work with what you've got.

I would have had some serious problems with number 4 on that list had the freezer doors not opened themselves.

When a kid's head popped up from a pile of blow pops, I was pretty sure I was hallucinating. He held a finger to his lips, giving a faint hissing SHH! before climbing out. I wouldn't have believed my own eyes, had he not crawled over and put his hand on mine and whispered a few words urgently... the same strange language the snake woman had hissed at me. But his small hands were solid and very, very cold. I couldn't tell you how long he'd been hiding in there, but his lips were blue and he couldn't hide the shivering. Probably as long as the monster had been lounging on her deck chair, scared she'd come back in.

The kid had green, somewhat manic eyes, brown hair and a serious faces for what couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 years old in a terrifying situation. I didn't have to ask if he was a half-blood any more than he needed to ask me. The moment my hands were free, I pulled my sword out of my pack letting the glow of celestial bronze fill the cramped quarters. He looked at it with open wonder. I frowned for a moment and then pulled out this journal and carefully, carefully, pulled a page silently from the binding.

In Ancient Greek, I wrote out: You can use magic?

It it hadn't been a life or death situation, the look on the kid's face would have been hilarious. I guess it's like that for all of us the first time. The dyslexia that makes letters flip themselves and swim all over the page move into something useful when it's Greek... a translation that finally makes sense. The kid grabs the pen from me and... frowns... frustrated. I got it though. We could all read it... but learning to write it wasn't something most kids got until Camp. I was a special case. My mom taught me it before the English alphabet.

He ended up nodding instead of attempting to write and handed the pen back over to me.

Does she know you're here? I expected a yes or no answer from that. His face pinched and he gave me a so-so gesture. I gave him the pen.

Haltingly, in English, he writes: forgot in large, unsteady lettering of someone still learning to write and not sure of the shapes.

He passed it back to me and we both froze, holding our breath as the truck stopped, engine still humming in idle. We both let it out as it moved into a turn, rather than cut the engine and a door opening. The boy wraps his arms around himself, shivering either out of cold or fear. Probably both.

Stay near the front. I'll get us out. Which was a big promise, all considered, but I meant it. The boy nodded and scrambled towards the far side of the truck, away from the doors.

I had a lot more options now, but a major liability. I couldn't just be reckless about this one. I had to be smarter about it. I set my sword down on the floor carefully - I couldn't risk it falling off of the kitchenette counter - and grabbed some of the vials, bottles and tins from the spice rack at random. None of them were labelled and I certainly didn't know what they did, but I didn't need anything specific. I just wanted something messy and hopefully terrible.

I grabbed a mug from a hanging rack - Number 1 Mom printed on the side - and started pouring a bit of this, and a pinch of that. I'd like to say I had a moment of inspiration but I really didn't. I didn't know what I was doing so I just blindly went with my gut and hoped that my dad was watching out for me. Lets be real though, it was all luck when the churning contents of the mug started to smoke. I grinned and set it gingerly on the floor as well.

There was a bit of time, so I took the loose journal page and wrote I need you to distract her when the door opens. Shout. Throw things. But stay out of the way. When I tell you to, run and don't look back. Get a taxi. Go home. And gave it to the boy. He read it and his face pinched tight and he nodded. He grabbed a pot and started filling it with fudgsicles.

I took the paper back for a moment, I jotted the address of Camp Half-Blood down on it quickly, with a note: It's a safe place for people like us. They can train you to fight things like that.

He read it and gave a pointedly scathing look at me. So I hadn't exactly made the BEST first impression. Cheeky thing. I frowned back and waved him towards his ice cream arsenal. We all have off days.

We waited. It felt like forever until she finally stopped the truck. The engine turned off and the door of the front cab opened and slammed shut. I could hear her claws scraping the ground as she slowly stalked around to the back door. The doors opened outwardly, so there wasn't a whole lot to hide behind. I had to be fast, instead. One hand full of a steaming cup of awful, the other holding my sword, I crouched to the side of the double doors, concentrating on being inconspicuous, unseen. I couldn't quite vanish, but sometimes, if I was still and quiet, it was hard to spot me.

After that, everything happened at once. When the doors opened, the former queen stabbed a golden spear where I would have been laying with impressive, almost terrifying speed. The kid screamed and started pelting her with fudgsicles and rocket pops. Her surprise at seeing HIM and not me was enough for even her old confused eyes to wonder. She staggered back and opened her mouth to cast whatever magic she was going to.

I threw the whole mug in her maw. Her howl was unearthly, shuddering the truck around us, and smoke belched out of the sides of her snake-like mouth. I didn't hesitate, my sword slapped the speartip wide and I lunged at her, ramming her out of the way of the doors. "GO!"

The kid scrambled out past me as I struggled to keep the thrashing monster down and claws away from my neck. Once he was out, I activated my shoes, flying out and back, finally able to get my sword up.

She shrieked something that me that I couldn't quite make out. Her tongue was a meaty, smoking mess and her throat wasn't much better. "Chil... CHILDen... YOU!" I didn't think she was going to get any spells out. So things were firmly back to where I could handle them.

We fought. Whoever she was, she was well trained, a warrior queen. Or just a monster who had learned to use the heirloom of her reign with deadly force. She still wasn't as good as Thalia was, and we had sparred all the time. But a sword is at a disadvantage with the longer reach of the spear. When I got in close, her claws, long as knives, slashed at me, stealing my advantages in close. I flew around her, needling little strikes as I found holes in her guard, as her rage and watering eyes got in the way of her determination. She was fast and powerful, but I kept out of her range between strikes, frustrating her.

"Smell... HERA!" She croaked, sniffing through the air for me. "My children.. you... you killed."

That magical dry cleaning must have left a scent on me, even days after and I doubted it was a coincidence. I wasn't sure which one of us Hera was trying to kill. Then, I decided, she probably didn't care. Either of us would be fine. For a single, stupid second, I didn't actually WANT to be in the middle of THIS fight and my sympathy made me slow.

She lashed out, grabbing at one of my shoes and slammed me back towards the earth. Her fingers glowed red, and the light seemed to soak into the shoes. I didn't know what she was doing or why, but a sense of dread washed over me and I lashed out wildly, stabbing straight through her chest. Golden blood dripped around me and on me. She turned to dust with a soft, choking cry, dissolving.

"Finally... Finally..." Her voice sounded happy, and her eyes were clear, glittering red. "My children... I see my children..." Then she was gone, leaving me, an empty alleyway and an ice cream truck.

*A/N: I know Lamia was used. (What HASN'T Riordan used?) But a lamia driving an ice cream truck was something I couldn't resist as soon as I had the idea. This one I DID know about and worked it as closely together as I could with the Son of Magic. Again, eh.