A/N: Certain ancient Greek names matches words use of foul language but no foul language was intentionally used.


I Have the Worst Family Reunion Ever

Annabeth volunteered to go alone since she had the cap of invisibility, but I convinced her it was too dangerous. Either we all went together, or nobody went.

"Nobody!" Tyson voted. "Please?"

But in the end he came along, nervously chewing on his fingernails. We stopped at our cabin long enough to gather our stuff. We figured whatever happened, we would not be staying another night aboard the zombie cruise ship, even if they did have million-dollar bingo. I made sure Riptide was in my pocket, my thermos clipped to my belt and the Hercules-Themes Thermos and vitamins were at the top of my bag. I didn't want Tyson to carry everything, but he insisted, and Annabeth told me not to worry about it. Tyson could carry all three duffel bags over his shoulder as easily as I could carry a backpack.

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, but most of the people we saw were just glassy-eyed zombie passengers.

As she 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 Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?" one of them said.

The others laughed. "Yeah, it's awesome."

I realized I recognized some of the voices as the unclaimed demigods of Hermes Cabin that I worked with to help get claimed. The second voice especially sounded familiar.

"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 off her cap and turned visible.

My eyes widened. No wonder he sound familiar. Last summer I worked with him to get recognition from Hermes to be claimed. The guy had all the traits of one of Hermes' kids, but for some reason the god of travelers haven't claimed him yet.

"Why are there other half-bloods here?" I asked.

Annabeth shook her head, clearly troubled.

We kept going down the corridor. I didn't need maps anymore to know I was getting close to Luke. I sense 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 map 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 Laistrygonian giants like the ones who'd attacked me with dodge balls, two hellhounds, and a few humanoid females with twin serpent tails instead of legs known as Scythian Dracaenae: Dragon Women.

The monsters made a semicircle around a young boy in Greek armor who was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump form 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 ashen.

"Come on," I told her, trying to sound braver than I felt. "The sooner we find Luke the better."

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 eyes like he was concentrating hard. I quickly realize what he was about to do.

"Wait, Tyson—"

But it was already too late. His voice changed, becoming a husky approximation of Luke's. "—the prophecy ourselves. The fools won't know which way to turn."

Tyson's voice changed again, become 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! It's creepy."

Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. "Just listening."

"We'll need to suck it up… this could be our only time to find out Luke's plan," I responded.

Tyson closed his eye again.

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."

Too late, I realized what was happening.

I just had time to say, "Run!" when the doors of the stateroom burst open and there was 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 two favorite cousins. Come right in."

The state room was beautiful, and 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 plus sofas occupied the middle of the room, with a canopied bed in 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 than Cabin Eleven, huh?"

He 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 short. 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 scar under his eye—a jagged white line from his battle with Ladon the hundred headed dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.

"Sit," he told us. He waved his hands 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 humans. 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 hair. They had claws for fingernails, feel like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed canines.

"Where are my manners?" Luke said smoothly. "These are my assistants Agrius and Oreius. Perhaps you've heard of them. Their mother… well, it's sad, really. 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 with Luke earlier.

"Hehe! Hehe!" His brother Oreius laughed, licking his fur-lined lips. He kept laughing like he was having astmatic fit until Luke and Agrius both stared at him.

"Shut up, you idiot!" Agrius growled. "Go punish yourself!"

Oreius whimpered. He trudged over to the corner of the room, slumped onto a stool, and bang his head against the dinning 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 on the coffee table. "Well, Percy, you survived the pit scorpion venom. I had hopes you would. How's your mom? How's school?"

"Did you poison Thalia's tree?" I asked.

Luke sighed. "Right to the point, eh? Okay, sure I poisoned the tree. So what?"

"How could you?" Annabeth demanded, "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!" Annabeth yelled. "You're a monster."

Luke shook his head. "The gods have blinded you—both of you. Can't you two imagine the world without them, Annabeth and Percy? What god is that ancient history you two 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 your intelligence, Annabeth, and your power Percy."

"Only because you have none of your own!"

His eyes narrowed to the both of us. "I know you two, Annabeth and Percy. You both deserve better than tagging along on some hopeless quest to save the camp. Half-Blood Hill will be overrun by monsters 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.

"Leave Tyson out of this!" I responded.

"Traveling with a Cyclops," Luke chided. "Talk about dishonoring Thalia's memory!"

"Tyson had nothing to do with the Brooklyn Cyclopes!" I responded, "He was only a year old at the time!"

Luke laughed. "Oh, that's right! I forgot your father entrusted this thing to you and your mother. Even claimed him."

I must have looked surprise, because Luke smiled. "Yes, Percy, I know all about that. And about your plan to find the Fleece. What were those coordinates again? 30 degrees, 31 minutes to the north, 75 degrees, 12 minutes to the west? You see, I still have friends at camp who keep me posted."

"Spies, you mean."

He shrugged. "How many insults from your father can you stand, Percy? You think he's grateful to you? You think Poseidon really cares for you any more than he cares for this monster?"

Tyson clenched his fists and made a rumbling sound down in his throat.

Luke just chuckled. "The gods are so using you, Percy. Do you have any idea what's in store for you if you reach your sixteenth birthday? Has Chiron even told you the prophecy?"

I didn't know about the sixteenth birthday thing, but I have a good feeling what prophecy he was talking about.

"You're a fool Percy," Luke said, "You should have gone up to the attic with Annabeth back then. If you have, your eyes would be open to the truth. Why your father claimed you six years ago."

Tyson smashed the nearest dining chair to splinters. "Percy is not a fool!"

"Tyson, calm down!" I ordered.

Tyson reluctantly did as he was told.

"Luke, listen to me. Your father sent us."

His face turned the color of pepperoni. "Don't—even—mention him.

He told us to take the boat, to find you," I responded, "Luke, listen, you got your father wrong. You don't know the whole story about your mother."

"I got my father wrong? I don't know the whole story?" Luke roared. "He stolen my mother's sanity, Percy! You met her yourself. And then he abandoned me! I want Olympus destroyed! Every throne crushed to rubble! You can tell Hermes it's going to happen, too. Each time a half-blood join us, the Olympians grow weaker and we grow stronger. He grows stronger." Luke pointed to the gold sarcophagus.

The box creeped me out since we came in here, and now that I think about it, I realize why. "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 piece appears—"

"That's disgusting!" Annabeth said.

Luke sneered at her. "Your mother was born from Zeus' split skull, Annabeth. I wouldn't talk. Soon there will be enough of the titan lord so that we can make him whole again. We will piece together a new body for him, a work worthy of the forges of Hephaestus."

"You're insane," Annabeth said.

"Join us and both of you will be rewarded. We have powerful friends, sponsors rich enough to buy this cruise ship and much more. Percy, your mother will never have to work again. You can buy her a mansion. You can have the power and fame Hal said you will have. 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 discus."

"But—"

"Oreius, don't fail me. Stay in the hold and 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.

We exited the corridor amidships and walked across an open deck lined with lifeboats. I looked at Annabeth who nodded. I looked at Tyson and mouthed, "Now."

Thank the gods he understood. He turned and smacked Oreius thirty feet backward into the swimming pool, right into the middle of the zombie tourist famly.

"Ah!" the kids yelled in unison. "We are not having a blast in the pool!"

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 but I dove and tripped him before he could reach it.

"Quick, in the lifeboats!" I yelled.

We ran for the nearest one and got in. I quickly used my power over ship to lower the life boat into the water.