WE HAVE THE WORLDS WORST FAMILY REUNION EVER
Annabeth volunteered to go alone since she had the cap of invisibility, but Percy convinced her it was too dangerous. Either we all went together, or nobody went.
"Nobody!" Tyson voted. "Please?"
I gave him an encouraging smile. "Come on, Buddy, we all need to stick together. You don't want to stay here all alone and have some monsters run into you, do ya?"
He shook his head no.
"Good, then come on." I held out my hand for him to take. "Let's get rolling."
He took it, but still chewed on his other hands huge fingernails. We stopped at our cabin long enough to grab our stuff. We figured whatever happened, we should not be staying another nigh aboard the zombie cruise ship, even if they did have million-dollar bingo. Percy patted his pocket to make sure riptide was in there, and checked the duffle bag for the vitamins and thermos from Hermes. Tyson insisted on carrying all four of our bags, despite how much I groaned and complained to him about how we are all fully capable of carrying our own. He said it was easy enough for him, and that I could carry a backpack if I really wanted (although he made it clear he could carry that too.).
"I'm a big boy, I can carry it all," he told me with a wide smile.
I smiled back when he reached to take my hand again. Percy gave me an amused look. I just shrugged, taking it.
We sneaked through the corridors, following the ship's YOU ARE HERE signs toward the admiralty suite. Annabeth scouted ahead invisibly. We hid whenever someone passed by, the most of the people we saw were just glassy-eyed zombie passengers.
As we came up the stairs to deck thirteen, where the admiralty suite was supposed to be, Annabeth hissed, "Hide!" and shoved us into a supply closet.
I heard a couple of guys coming down the hall.
"You see that Aethipian drakon in the cargo hold?" one of them said.
The other laughed. "Yeah, it's awesome."
Annabeth was still invisible, but she squeezed my arm hard. I got a feeling I should know that second guys' voice.
"I hear they got two more coming," the familiar voice said. "They keep arriving at this rate, oh, man—no contest!"
The voices faded down the corridor.
"That was Chris Rodriguez!" Annabeth took of her cap and turned visible. "You remember—from Cabin Eleven."
I did, actually. He was one of those undetermined campers who got stuck in the Hermes cabin because his Olympian dad or mom never claimed him. Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn't seen Chris at camp this summer.
"What's another half-blood doing here?" Percy asked.
Annabeth shook her head, clearly troubled. "I don't know."
"It's obvious, isn't it?" I asked. They both just stared at me. "He's working with Luke. Come on, don't give me that look. Do you honestly think Luke is the only half-blood in the world that hates the gods?"
Annabeth's frown increased, though Percy stared at me with worried eyes.
We kept going down the corridor. I didn't need maps anymore to know I was getting close to Luke. I sensed something cold and unpleasant—the presence of evil.
"Percy." Annabeth stopped suddenly. "Look."
She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistory canyon that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade—a mall full of shops—but that's not what had caught Annabeth's attention.
A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen giants, two hellhounds, and a few even stranger creatures—humanoid females with twin serpent tails instead of legs.
"Scythian Dracaenae," Annabeth whispered. "Dragon women."
"And those," Percy said, pointing at the giants. "Those are Laistrygonian giants like the ones who'd attacked me at school."
The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armor who was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in my throat when I realized the dummy was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As we watched, the guy in armor stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upward. Straw flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled.
Annabeth stepped away from the window. Her face was ashen.
"Come on," Percy told her, trying to sound brave. "The sooner we find Luke the better."
He grabbed my other hand, giving it a squeeze, as though to comfort me, though I knew it was more for himself.
At the end of the hallway were double oak doors that looked like they must lead somewhere important. When we were thirty feet away, Tyson stopped. "Voices inside."
"You can hear that far?" I asked.
Tyson closed his eye like he was concentrating hard. Then his voice changed, becoming a husky approximation of Luke's. "—the prophecy ourselves. The fools won't know which way to turn."
Before any one of us could react, Tyson's voice changed again, becoming deeper and gruffer, like the other guy we'd heard talking to Luke outside the cafeteria. "You really think the old horseman is gone for good?"
Tyson laughed Luke's laugh. "They can't trust him. not with the skeletons in his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw."
Annabeth shivered. "Stop that, Tyson! How do you do that? It's creepy."
Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. "Just listening."
I shot Annabeth a look. "Go on, Tyson," I said, rubbing his arm. "Just keep listening."
He hissed in the gruff man's voice: "Quiet!" Then Luke's voice, whispering: "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Tyson said in the gruff voice. "Right outside."
"Oh sh—"
Too late, me and Percy both realized what was happening.
"Run!" Percy said, just in time for the stateroom doors to burst open. Out came Luke, flanked by two hairy giants armed with javelins, their bronze tips aimed right at our chests.
"Well," Luke said with a crooked smile. "If it isn't my three favorite cousins. Come right in."
The stateroom was beautiful, yet it was horrible.
The beautiful part: huge windows curved along the back wall, looking out over the stern of the ship. Green sea and blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon. A Persian rug covered the floor. Two plush sofas occupied the middle of the room, with a canopied bed in the one corner and a mahogany dining table in the other. The table was loaded with food—pizza boxes, bottles of soda, and a stack of roast beef sandwiches on a silver platter.
The horrible part: On a velvet dais at the back of the room lay a ten-foot-long golden casket. A sarcophagus, engraved with Ancient Greek scenes of cities in flames and heroes dying grisly deaths. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, the casket made the whole room feel cold.
"Well," Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. "A little nicer then Cabin Eleven, huh?"
He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped shorts. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
He still had the car under his eye—a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbitter, glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.
"Sit," he told us. He waved his hand and three dining chairs scooted themselves into the center of the room.
None of us sat.
Luke's large friends were still pointing their javelins at us. They looked like twins, but they weren't human. They stood about eight feet tall, for one thing, and wore only blue jeans, probably because their enormous chest were already shag-carpeted with thick brown fur. They had claws for fingernails, feet like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed canines.
"Nice friends you have," I muttered.
"Aren't they?" Luke smiled smoothly. "Where are my manners? These are my assistants, Agrius and Oreius. Perhaps you've heard of them."
"Haven't the pleasure," I said sarcastically, sneering at them and their javelins. They growled, raising them higher.
I turned away to look at Percy, but his eyes hadn't left Luke. I wondered what he was thinking, so I wiggled my way through his thoughts, and took a peak. He was thinking to himself, which was so much different to actually talking to him one on one with our minds. When he thought to himself, it was like a mix of pictures and words, all mashed together, all strung out to make one slightly chaotic, yet coherent thought.
I've imagined meeting Luke again so many times since he'd tried to kill me and Cammie last summer, Percy said with words and flashbacks of the memory. I shivered at that. I'd stand up, boldly, against him, Cammie right beside me, and we'd challenge him to a duel. I saw what he imagined, and had to agree, that was an exact replica of my own imagination. Me and Percy standing together all heroic like, not afraid of Luke—not afraid of anything. It gave me courage seeing it from my brother's mind. Maybe it was possible.
But now I can barely stop shaking.
I really looked at him now, glancing down at his hands. They were shaking, so I took one in my own, both to comfort him, and to keep Luke for noticing.
"You don't know Agrius and Oreius's story?" Luke gasped. "And here I thought Cammie had read most of the stories. Anyway, their mother…well, it's really sad. Aphrodite ordered the young woman to fall in love. She refused and ran to Artemis for help. Artemis let her become one of her maiden huntresses, but Aphrodite got her revenge. She bewitched the young woman into falling in love with a bear. When Artemis found out, she abandoned the girl in disgust. Typical of the gods, wouldn't you say? They fight with one another and the poor humans get caught in the middle. The girl's twin sons here, Agrius and Oreius, have no love for Olympus. They like half-bloods well enough, though…"
"For lunch," Agrius growled. His gruff voice was the one I'd heard talking to Luke earlier.
"Hehe! Hehe!" His brother Oreius laughed, licking his fur-lined lips. He kept laughing like he was having an asthmatic fit until Luke and Agrius both stared at him.
"Are you sure that guy's dad isn't a hyena?" I asked.
Agrius growled at me, then turned to his brother. "Shut up, you idiot! Go punish yourself!"
Oreius whimpered. He trudged over to the corner of the room, slumped onto a stool, and banged his forehead against the dining table, making the silver plates rattle.
Luke acted like this was perfectly normal behavior. He made himself comfortable on the sofa and propped his feet up on the coffee table. "Well, Jacksons, we let you survive another year. I hope you appreciated it. How's your mom? How's school? How about you, Cammie? I heard you left home, ran off to some boarding school on your own. How was that?"
It didn't seem as though Luke knew what my school really was, and I was pretty grateful for that. For now, my secret and my friends seemed safe. Though he looked on at me with expectant eyes, and I realized that wasn't a rhetorical question, and that maybe that last part wasn't quite true.
"You poisoned Thalia's tree."
It was Annabeth who had said it. And she said it with such a calm and collected voice, I made me shiver.
Luke sighed. "Right to the point, eh? Okay, sure I poisoned the tree. So what?"
"How could you?" Finally some emotion. Annabeth sounded so angry I thought she'd explode. "Thalia saved your life! Our lives! How could you dishonor her—"
"I didn't dishonor her!" Luke snapped. "The gods dishonored her, Annabeth! If Thalia were alive, she'd be on my side."
"Liar!"
"If you knew what was coming, you'd understand—"
"I understand you want to destroy the camp!" she yelled. "You're a monster!"
Luke shook his head. "The gods have blinded you. Can't you imagine a world without them, Annabeth? What good is that ancient history you study? Three thousand years of baggage! The West is rotten to the core. It has to be destroyed. Join me! We can start the world anew. We could use your intelligence, Annabeth."
"Because you have none of your own!"
His eyes narrowed. "I know you, Annabeth. You deserve better than tagging along on some hopeless quest to save the camp. Half-Blood Hill will be overrun by monster within the month. The heroes who survive will have no choice but to join us or be hunted to extinction. You really want to be on a losing team…with company like this?" Luke pointed at Tyson.
"Hey!" me and Percy yelled in our scary unison sort of way.
"Traveling with a Cyclops," Luke chided. "Talk about dishonoring Thalia's memory! I'm surprised at you, Annabeth. You of all people—"
"Stop it!" she shouted.
I didn't know what Luke was talking about, but Annabeth buried her head in her hands like she was about to cry. I didn't like the idea of Luke getting to her. I didn't like the idea of him making her cry.
"You're the one sailing around on a boat full of monsters," I scoffed, eyeing up the other twins in the room. "Are you really one to talk?"
"You don't even know what you're talking about, Cameron," Luke sneered, spitting at me. "You know nothing."
"I know that's nasty, and that you need a lesson with Madam Dabney in manors," I said, wiping the spit away. "Honestly, that's rule number one in the handbook of manors. Do not spit at your enemies."
That was a lie. That's number three. Number one was don't swear, but for the sake of being a smart-alec, I might as well roll with it.
"Just leave her alone," Percy said. "And you leave Tyson out of this."
Luke laughed. "Oh, yeah, I heard. Your guys' father claimed him."
We must have looked surprised, because Luke smiled. "Yes, Jacksons, I know all about that. And about your plan to find the Fleece. What were those coordinates, again…30, 31, 75, 12? You see, I still have friends at camp who keep me posted." He laughed a bit. "Well, the coordinates we had to pull from three old ladies driving a taxi, but, hey, that's beside the point."
"You have spies at camp?" I said breathlessly.
He shrugged. "How many insults from your father can you stand, Cammie? You know what I'm talking about. You've admitted it! Your father is not grateful to you. He doesn't care for you any more than he does for this monster."
Tyson clenched his fists and made a rumbling sound down in his throat.
My gaze hardened. "While I agree with you that our father is an ungrateful jerk, I will not tolerate you calling my brother a monster."
Luke just chuckled. "So even the gods got you under their little spell. And here I thought you were at least slightly brilliant. But it seems you're just a spaz."
I gasped, insulted. "You did not just call me a spaz!" I screeched, quaking with anger as I attempted to mow him down, only to be held back by Annabeth, Percy, and Tyson.
"The gods are using you. Do you even have any idea what's in store for you if you reach your sixteenth birthday? Has Chiron even told you the prophecy?"
I wanted to strangle him right then and there, but as usual, he knew just how to throw me off balance.
Our sixteenth birthday?
I mean, we knew Chiron had received a prophecy from the Oracle many years ago. We knew part of it was about us. But, if we reached our sixteenth birthday? I didn't like the sound of that.
"We know what we need to know," Percy said, recovering first. "Like who our enemies are."
"Then you're fools."
Tyson smashed the nearest dining chair to splinters. "They are no fools!"
Before I could stop him, he charged Luke. His fists came down toward Luke's head—a double overhead blow that, based on the experiment Liz had conducted after Christmas break, would've knocked a hold in titanium—but the bear twins intercepted. They each caught one of Tyson's arms and stopped him cold. They pushed him back and Tyson stumbled. He fell to the carpet so hard the deck shook. I dropped down on my knees next to him. "Tyson, are you okay?"
Luke laughed at us, and I could feel Percy's anger. Knowing backtalk was pointless, he simply distracted him. "Luke," Percy cut in. "Listen to me. Your father sent us."
His face turned the color of pepperoni. "Don't—even—mention him."
"He told us to take this boat. I thought it was just for a ride, but he sent us here to find you. he told us he won't give up on you, no matter how angry you are."
Telling this to Luke was pointless. It would only make him angry. It dawned on me that Percy did it for that reason exactly. To make Luke angry, to hurt him in a way. That theory being proven by what Luke said next.
"Angry?" Luke roared. "Give up on me? He abandoned me, Percy! I want Olympus destroyed! Every throne crushed to rubble! You tell Hermes it's going to happen, too. Each time a half-blood joins us, the Olympians grow weaker and we grow stronger. He grows stronger." Luke pointed to the gold sarcophagus.
The box creeped me out, but I was determined not to show it. "So?" I demanded, rubbing the back of Tyson's head to check for bumps. "What's so special…"
Then it hit me, what might be inside the sarcophagus. The temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. "Whoa, you don't mean—"
"He is re-forming," Luke said. "Little by little, we're calling his life force out of the pit. With every recruit who pledges our cause, another small piece appears—"
"That's disgusting!" Annabeth said.
Luke sneered at her. "Your mother was born from Zeus's split skull, Annabeth. I wouldn't talk. Soon there will be enough of the titan lord so that we can make his whole again. We will piece together a new body for him, a word worthy of the forges of Hephaestus."
"You're insane," Annabeth said.
"Join us and you'll be rewarded. We have powerful friends, sponsors rich enough to buy this cruise ship and much more. Percy, Cammie, your mother will never have to work again. You can buy her a mansion. You can have power, fame—whatever you want. Annabeth, you can realize your dream of being an architect. You can build a monument to last a thousand years. a temple to the lords of the next age!"
"Go to Tartarus," she said.
Luke sighed. "A shame."
He picked up something that looked like a TV remote and pressed a red button. Within seconds the door of the stateroom opened and two uniformed crew members came in, armed with nightsticks. They had the same glassy-eyed look as the other mortals I'd seen, but I had a feeling this wouldn't make them any less dangerous in a fight.
"Ah, good, security," Luke said, "I'm afraid we have some stowaways."
"Yes, sir," they said dreamily.
Luke turned to Oreius. "It's time to feed the Aethiopian drakon. Take these fools below and show them how it's done."
Oreius grinned stupidly. "Hehe! Hehe!"
"Let me go, too," Agrius grumbled. "My brother is worthless. That Cyclops—"
"Is no threat," Luke said. He glanced back at the golden casket, as if something were troubling him. "Agrius, stay here. We have important matters to discuss."
"But—"
"Oreius, don't fail me. Stay in the hold to make sure the drakon is properly fed."
Oreius prodded us with his javelin and herded us out of the stateroom, followed by the two human security guards.
As we walked down the corridor with Orieus's javelin alternating between poking us all in the back, me and Percy conversed within our heads.
We need a plan, I said.
Hopefully one that doesn't get us skewered, he suggested as we entered the open deck by the pool.
That's a great plan, let's build on that.
Well, we're a great team, we'll think of something.
We both physically turned to look at each other then.
What had Luke said before? I asked. The bear twins together were a match for Tyson's strength.
But maybe separately…
I didn't wait to think anything through, I turned to Tyson and yelled, "Now!"
He understood, thank the gods. He turned and smacked Oreius thirty feet backward into the swimming pool, right into the middle of the zombie tourist family.
"Ah!" the kids yelled in unison. "We are not having a blast in the pool!"
"That's too bad kids," I told them harshly while grabbing a long pool skimmer from the wall. "Stuff happens."
As Oreius stood, slightly disoriented, I swung down with the skimmer, knocking him on the head. And then I repeated that move. Several times actually.
"I am not a spaz!" I screamed. "How dare he call me a spaz? I'm not a spaz!"
I swung it sideways, hitting him right in the jaw, knocking him out.
I threw the pool skimmer across the deck. "I'm not a spaz."
"Yes you are," Percy said, walking up behind me. "Thank goodness to, or he might have come back out of there."
I punch him in the arm with a very angry frown. "I'm not a spaz!"
"You beat that guy yelling about how you're not a spaz, when he wasn't even the one who called you a spaz. You're a spaz!"
"No, I just have sever anger issues that happen to build up and come out at convenient times."
"Guys!" Annabeth warned.
One of the security guards drew his nightstick, but Annabeth knocked the wind out of him with a well-placed kick. The other guard ran for the nearest alarm box.
"Stop him!" Annabeth yelled, but it was too late.
Just before Percy banged him on the head with a deck chair, he hit the alarm.
Red lights flashed. Sirens wailed.
"Whoa, déjà vu," I muttered. "This must've happened a time or two before."
"Lifeboat!" Percy yelled, grabbing my hand.
We ran for the nearest one.
By the time we got the cover off, monsters and more security men were swarming the deck, pushing aside tourist and waiters with trays of tropical drinks. A guy in Greek armor drew his sword and charged, but slipped in a puddle of piña colada. Laistrygonian archers assembled on the deck above us, notching arrows in their enormous bows.
"How do you launch this thing?" screamed Annabeth.
A hellhound leaped at us, but Tyson slammed it aside with a fire extinguisher.
"Get in and hold them off!" I yelled, pulling out my lip gloss.
Percy uncapped Riptide and slashed the first volley of arrows out of the air. "I know you became kind of girly at that school of yours, but do you really need that right now?"
"Pay attention, Percy," I groaned, opening the little capsule up, and rubbing some of its glossy content on the ropes. "I told you Bex gave me a makeup kit of stuff any seasoned spy would have. This is material burning acidic gel. Liz's own recipe." There was the sound of burning, then snapping.
"I would now hold on to something."
A shower of arrows whistled over our heads as we freefell toward the ocean.
Hey, so that's the chapter. Another busy couple of weeks. I've barely had time to do much of anything, and sadly, that might be the case for a while. But I'm still working hard at it.
I couldn't remember if I had said Percy told Cammie what had happened in the taxi with the three old ladies, but I kind of implied that he did. So if you didn't see Percy telling Cammie in the other chapters, she does know about it.
Thank you all for being patient with me. I know it's kind of insanity, but I greatly appreciate anyone who's still with this story.
Have a wonderful night/morning/time-of-day my Nerdletts.
