A/N Io non aquisto.
Book of the Update: WutheringHeights by Emily Bronte
Chapter 11
The first thing I became aware of was someone tapping on my shoulder. I instinctively reached a hand up to hit whatever it was, but something grabbed my hand and gently brought it back down.
"Rey. Come on, Rey, wakey wakey," a teasing voice said and I cracked my eyes open, blinking to adjust them to the bright light. As the blurriness cleared, I saw a woman standing there with an amused look on her face, looking down at me. And Leo as well, I realized when I tried to sit up straight only to be caught under Leo's arm.
Sure my face was bright red, I untangled myself with a muttered sorry and looked back at the woman who was biting her lip, obviously trying not to laugh. "Uh, we're gonna close in about ten minutes, just thought I'd let you guys know."
Leo smiled coolly, though he was pointedly avoiding my eyes and I could see the tips of his ears turning a bright red. "Thanks. We were just leaving anyway."
Liar, I thought, but decided against saying anything and just followed him out the door instead.
I didn't really want to ask Leo what had happened – whatever it was, we had ended up pressed very close together and it was a very awkward situation. I must've let my guard down and fallen asleep….stupid, I chided myself, anything could have happened. We could've been attacked by the pirates or some stupid mortal or by monsters. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen any monsters since the pirates had been freed. The ones on the island had fled, but there had to be some here, right? Weird…it seems like they would've smelled a demigod and come after me by now. Maybe mother was protecting me, after all.
The last thought made me smile, and I guess Leo had finally built up the courage to stop ignoring me, because he smiled when I did – wait, was he watching me? – and asked what I was thinking. Something about a….pony for my thoughts? Mortals have the strangest expressions…
"Helloooooo, Rey? You even listening? Yoo-hoo!" he waved his hand in front of my eyes and I snapped back to reality and glared at him.
"Don't call me Rey."
He pulled his hand back, sobering up immediately. "Right. Sorry, Your Majesty," he added the last part with a grin. Gah! What is it with him and these stupid nicknames?
"So what now?"
He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Well, I guess we should probably find somewhere to stay for the night and uh…Aunt Bev's place is out, so…"
"Why?" I wondered in complete bewilderment.
He waved his hand away. "It's kind of a long story, but we can stay with my friend John…..if you want to, that it," he hastened to add as I began to look confused.
"Yeah, sure, but what….what happened to Auntie Bev? And Jimmy?"
He took a breath. "Okay, so I'm sort of….running away, I guess. I only went back because I had to but not again. If I go back again, I don't….I won't be able to….ah, never mind. Good thing I've already called Johnny-boy, eh? Told him I was back on the streets and might be over sometime, maybe with a friend – that's you – and he said it was fine. Might wanna warn you, though, he's kind of….out there," he cracked a smile as he said the last few words and I wondered what exactly out there meant.
"Umm….okay? Where is he, then?"
"Oh, not too far from here…"
We walked the rest of the way in silence until we came to a kinda shabby looking building and walked up a set of decrepit concrete stairs and knocked on a grey-ish door with the number 8 painted onto it.
"JOHN! DOOR!" A muffled voice bellowed from inside.
"BUSY!" Someone yelled back.
An annoyed grunt could be heard, followed by some crashing and a few curses and then the sound of a lock being undone. I stepped back behind Leo as the door swung open and peered around his arm – I only came up to about his chin, it's not like I could see over him – to see a guy wearing a stained grey shirt and blue striped boxers with green socks on and something wrapped around his neck. It looked like two little round Hephaestus-speakers on a wire; maybe it was a communication device or something.
The guy looked disgruntled when he saw Leo. "Oh. It's you." He turned around and yelled for John again before he opened the door wider and let us in.
When he saw me, his eyebrows raised. "And who is this lovely lady?"
Leo pulled a face somewhere between anger and disgust. "Gary, this is Reyna."
Gary took my hand and bent down, placing a kiss on the back of it while I watched, half amused, half creeped out. I pulled my hand back and discreetly wiped it on my shirt.
Gary was unashamedly staring at me and it was beginning to get uncomfortable when someone walked into the room from a hallway that I hadn't noticed before.
Leo seemed relieved as well, and swung his arm over my shoulders and steered me over to the boy who had just walked out. "John! Mah man! Haven't seen you in forever, bro," he said as they did some sort of weird handshake-thing. I looked between the two of them and then back to Gary who had retreated back to his coach and was now yelling at the box – I later learned it was called a TV – with the holograms on it. The speakers were over his ears and he was holding another little box that his thumbs were wildly flipping across.
I felt Leo begin to walk again and followed him, though I did pull out from underneath his arm, giving him a glare. He held up his hands with an innocent expression on his face and I just rolled my eyes.
We walked into a room with lots of keep-out signs plastered onto the door, which closed behind us. I turned around to face the room and my jaw dropped. Every inch of wall had something stuck to it, whether it be some sort of technology or papers, and there were several tables with the same appearance. A bunk-bed was shoved haphazardly in the corner, though it looked like it didn't get much use.
John had sat down immediately once the door was shut and he began rapidly pressing buttons on a box with a different letter of the alphabet on each button, looking intently at the screen above it.
"So, Leo, you gonna introduce me to your friend?"
"Oh yeah, sorry," he said the last part to me. "John, this is Reyna. Reyna, this is John."
John nodded his head at me without looking away from the screen. "Pleased to meet you."
I grunted in response, gingerly sitting on the edge of the bottom bunk-bed, hoping it was alright. Apparently, it was, because John didn't even glance my way and Leo soon followed my lead, sprawling out with his back against the wall next to me.
"So, Johnny-boy, you got any news?"
John didn't look up, but the picture on the screen changed and he began rifling through the papers nearest to him. "There's been more activity here in the last month than there's been in almost a year, but there've been loads up in New York. I'm talking like even those idiots on the news noticed something about the unusual storms and something about Mount St. Helen, but here. Take a look at what I dug up."
He turned the screen a bit so we could see and there was a blurry image there of some sort of creature – it looked human, but it was breaking out of the mountain. Like literally, it was just coming up out of the mountain.
Leo whistled softly and John talking again, but I kept looking at the picture. There were little specks flying around the monster – that's defiantly what it was, straight from the depths of Tartarus – and to anyone else, they might just look like birds, but I could tell. The energy surrounding them….they were gods.
This wasn't even possible! Technically speaking, mortals shouldn't even be able to see anything at all, maybe just a bad storm or something, but I heard John say something about a humanoid form and Leo pointed the specks out on the picture.
Something was wrong. Something was desperately wrong. Why were the gods even up there? What were they fighting? If the gods were fighting something and the mortals were noticing, that meant that it had to be bad news indeed.
A/N So how was it? This is set during The Battle of the Labyrinth, by the way. Oh, and I found a beta! Juliana54321 is now my beta reader person :) Okey dokey, so….55 reviews maybe? 60 please? Reviews make me write faster and that means faster updates!
