REWRITTEN: All corection were made by NerdySkeleton.
[A/N] Here is the next chapter. Usual disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson or anything associated with it.
Just a reminder there's character that speaks with 3 different voices. Remember : The adult is normal, the child is in italics, the old lady is in bold.
Secret's Of The Moon
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next morning when Dante awoke in the cabin, he was ready to deal with whatever the day would bring. Most of the hunters were still asleep, but Thalia was awake.
"Light sleeper?" he asked her.
"Always. When you are Lady's Artemis lieutenant, you gotta make a habit of waking up earlier in the mornings... How are you feeling today?"
"I'm feeling fine," Dante said with a nod. "Thanks for asking."
She grinned. "No big deal. Now, ready to tell me what was your dream about?"
"Told you I don't remember." Dante got his bag from under the bed and search for a new set of clothes. "It was just a stupid dream. It's of no importance."
"It might be," she started off, "for demigods sometimes dreams are not just dreams. They could be having a vision from the past or from things that are happening in that moment."
She stopped for a second then the female hunter continued. "I can tell from the way you were yelling that whatever the dream was about, it wasn't good. Am I wrong? You need to tell me, what was it about? Just in case it was actually a vision, that way we can prepare for it. But if you don't tell us anything, how do you expect us to protect you?"
Dante gave her a sharp look. "Protect me? I don't need protection from anything. I'm very capable of looking after myself thank you very much. Anyway, what's with the sudden change of attitude? Yesterday you and your friends wanted to kill me, and now you are concerned for me. What gives? Just because I'm related to your goddess you think we are friends or something. Well we are not, OK. So there's no need for you act concerned."
For a moment, the spiky haired girl looked injured. "Lady Artemis ordered me to make sure nothing happens to you and I have never failed her in assignment she has given me. And this will not be the first so until the solstice you will be under our protection whether you like it or not. Are we clear?"
He looked at her and she at him. Both got caught in a staring contest that neither wanted to lose. It was the sound of the other hunters waking up that put an end to their game. Dante skipped over to the bathroom; he changed quickly, then he stepped back into the room. By then, all of the hunter had already woken up and were going about their business. Dante made his way toward the cabin door and was about to take a step outside when he heard Thalia calling to him.
"Wait for us outside OK? We all going together to the mess hall for breakfast. We'll be out in a few. So don't go anywhere by yourself," she told him.
Dante bit back any response he had and just walked out from the cabin, shutting the door behind him. A few moments later the hunters emerged from the cabin and joined Dante outside. Thalia laid out her orders to her sisters, then with Cassidy accompanying her, she walked up to the front of the group and said, "OK. We are ready to go."
Thalia led the group through the cabin area and went straight for the mess hall. Half a dozen hunters had formed a perimeter around Dante. It reminded him of the way the secret service would secure the president whenever he was out in public.
Nonetheless, Dante could see the anger and frustration in their eyes; it was obvious that they were not enjoying their new assignment anymore than he was. Another fact that didn't escape Dante was that all around him campers heading for the hall would stop and look at him. Unmasked curiosity in their eyes and he knew that a few were fighting the impulse of walking up to him and ask what was going on. But by the way the hunters glared back at them they would rethink that idea and kept their distance.
Unable to take it anymore Dante snapped at Thalia. "You know you're exaggerating, right?" Without looking back at him, Thalia simply answered, "We are just following the orders Lady Artemis gave us. We are doing this to protect you."
"NO. You are doing this to annoy me just because of what happened earlier," Dante pointed out. Thalia ignored Dante altogether and just kept walking forward.
Moments later Dante was following the hunters lieutenant into the mess hall and then to the Artemis table that was their final destination. At the moment, other than some anxious looking nymphs and a few campers, the hall seemed vacant. Unfortunately, for Dante that did not stay that way for long, little by little, the campers began filling the hall.
Dante could feel every eye on him and he could hear whispering all around him. He was beginning to get that paranoid sense that people feel when they think everyone is talking about them. In Dante's case, however, he was sure that everyone indeed was talking about him.
To Dante's relief Chiron stood up and everyone's attention fell to him. Gazing out into the crowd of campers, Chiron said, "Attention please I have a few announcements this morning. As you all were informed last night our very own Dante Crescent was claimed yesterday by his Olympian parent. The goddess of the moon and hunt, Artemis has claimed Dante as hers and that's the reason why now he is sitting at her table. That's the place, where he belongs." At the end of his little speech, Chiron gave Dante a reassuring smile that made Dante feel somewhat better.
For a moment, the campers stayed riveted on Chiron's every word. Then from somewhere in the hall a voice shouted, "How can that be? Isn't Artemis supposed to remain a maiden forever?"
Voices erupted throughout the hall, echoing off the marble walls.
"Did Artemis break her oath?"
"Was he born like the Athena kids?"
"Yeah Dante were you born the normal way or our are you special?"
All of the campers were looking at Dante as if they expected him to stand up and answer their questions, something which Dante had no intention of doing so. First because he considered the issue of his birth a private matter, and second because he didn't know all of the answers himself either.
Chiron held up his hands for silence, and reluctantly the crowd quieted down a bit. Now he had to shout to be heard over the rumbling of the campers. "Enough with the questions. The birth of Dante is a personal business that only matters to him and Artemis. No one else has the right to inquire about it."
The campers grumbling subsided then finally the hall went silent.
"Now moving on to the next announcement," Chiron said. "I'm happy to inform that our Oracle of Delphi has finally returned to us for the summer. Everyone give a warm welcome to Ms. Rachel Elizabeth Dare." Chiron pointed to a red haired girl sitting in the main table right besides Mr. D. The girl gave a small wave of her hand by way of a greeting.
"Welcome back Rachel?"
Many voices shouted and for a few minutes the hall was filled with cheers and whistles for the girl. Embarrassed by the overwhelming welcome, the girl just gave them a quick smile then she lowered her gaze to her plate which she seemed to find very interesting.
"Now let us all enjoy our breakfast, then we can get started with today activities," Chiron said.
After breakfast Dante spent half of the morning trying to get through the activities as usual, and the other half trying to shake off the permanent guard that had been placed around him. Even though the hunters seemed to dislike the idea of having to follow Dante everywhere, they all were remarkably determined not to let him out of their sight not even for a second.
And that was something that was beginning to annoy Dante.
After lunch, Dante was heading down to the range for archery class, his personal guard not far behind. On his way, he spotted Abby and called out to her. She looked at him once then without a word she turned and walked in the opposite direction. That was weird, Dante thought. Was she mad at him or something?
Normally Dante enjoyed being in the range shooting arrows at the targets, but today he was not really up to it. Everything that had happened had him feeling down and that was affecting his concentration so much, that for the first time, he was actually missing the targets. Something that did not go unnoticed by Chiron.
"What's wrong Dante?" Chiron asked him. "Is not like you to miss at all."
Dante simply remained silent.
Chiron sighed, "Don't let all this get to you. It's expected for everyone to be curious about you; I mean you are unique. Dante there has never been a demigod like you before. But don't worry it will pass and everything will return to normal. You'll see."
Dante was thankful to the centaur for trying to cheer him up. He looked at him and had a thought. "You knew who my mother was didn't you?"
"Yes, I figured out when you told me that it was Galetri, the woman that had been raising you until now. I could only think of one goddess who would entrust Galetri with her child. But just in case I was wrong I thought it was best to keep that theory to myself. You were much safer that way."
"I see," Dante said then he had another thought. Dante needed to talk to his mother, Galetri. She would know what he should do in his current situation, plus talking to her would make him feel a lot better and less lonely. But first he would have to get rid off his guard; he didn't want to talk to his mother with the hunters around.
Luckily the opportunity presented itself at that moment. An argument broke out between the hunters and some other girls. Apparently one the hunters had made a remark about one of the girls outfit, which did not sit right with said girl, igniting a spark.
"What would someone like you know about fashion? I mean look at the way you're dressed," the camper girl yelled.
"At least I know enough to not to dress like a slut," the hunter snapped back at her.
"How dare you call me that?"
And with that all of the hunters and camper girls were death locked in a heated argument. The angry cries of the girls were starting to come faster and louder now, so Chiron thought that was about time he stepped in.
He let out a long breath. "I better put an end to that before it gets uglier."
"Yeah, you should," Dante told him.
Chiron walked toward the group of girls and shouted above their voices, "That's enough ladies. Come on break it up."
With everyone's attention on the girls, Dante managed to get to the exit without being noticed by anyone. Finally, he was free again, at least for the moment, he knew Thalia was going to be pissed about it, but he would deal with her later. Now he had to use this time to contact his mother in Italy.
After giving enough thought to the idea of talking to his mother, Dante was faced with a new problem: he had no idea on how to reach her. He hadn't seen a phone in the camp, but he knew that some of the campers kept in touch with their mortal parents somehow. He thought about going to ask Abby, but then he remembered that she wasn't speaking to him for some strange reason. He would have to deal with that later, as well.
Dante walked aimlessly for a while around camp, allowing himself some quiet time. As he passed a few groups of campers, some of them would look at him expectantly. He smiled and tried to exude a confidence he didn't really feel. Most of them allowed him some space, but as the fourth group, he passed, one of the campers separated himself and approached him.
The boy had brown hair a thin faced with a set of wide brown eyes, a straight nose and full lips. As he fell into step besides him, a smile creased his face.
"How ya doing?" he asked.
Returning the smile, Dante said, "Good. You?"
Still smiling the boy said, " Kind of... curious about you actually."
Here we go, Dante was expecting something like that. "Curious. About what?"
"Well some of the girls wanted me to ask you something. They want to know if you're like your mother?"
"What do you mean like my mother?"
"You know," the boy said. "They want to know if you think that love is a complete waste of time like your mother does."
Dante stopped and so did the other boy. "I'm sorry, what's your name again?"
"Giovanni," the boy introduced himself.
"Well Giovanni, what are you getting at exactly?" Dante said.
Giovanni frowned in thought. "Don't get me wrong or anything OK. Some of the girls here in camp like you a lot, and they just want to know how you feel about love before they try anything with you. So...what should I tell them?"
"Well you can tell them that I don't really know how am I going to feel about love in the long term, but as for right now I'm not interested in it. That should be good enough for them."
Giovanni's smile disappeared. "I see...OK then I'll let them know. Oh, by the way, here, one of the girls sent you a present." Giovanni handed Dante a candy apple wrap in plastic.
Dante looked at the gift then at Giovanni. "Candy Apple?"
"Yeah, one of the girls in my cabin made it for you, but she was too shy to come personally to offer it to you, so she asked me to do so in her behalf. Now don't break heart OK she worked hard to get the caramel just right for you, so just take it and eat it... Well see ya."
Dante accepted the gift only because he didn't want the girls effort to go to waste. Before Giovanni could leave Dante stopped him. "Hey can I ask you question? How do talk to someone who is outside the camp?"
Giovanni turned to him. "You mean how to send an Iris message?"
"Yeah that. Can you tell me how to do it? How to send a message?"
Giovanni gave Dante quick explanation on how to used the IM. By the time he was done Dante had a basic idea on how to do so. Giovanni even gave him a few drachmas to use as an offering. "Thanks for that," Dante told Giovanni.
"No problem, anytime. Now don't forget to eat the apple OK," Giovanni said as he was leaving Dante alone.
After he left, Dante hurried up to look for the things he needed to form a rainbow and send a message to his mother. He also knew that by now the hunters would be looking for him, so he would have to be quick. He found an empty bottle near a trash can, dropping what was left of the apple he went to the lake. Luckily Dante was adept at science so knew one or two things about how the light works. He filled half the bottle with water then he exposed the end of the bottle against the sunlight, the water in the bottle fragmented light shining through and voila a dim rainbow was born.
Dante said the prayer Giovanni had told him. Then he said the name of his mother and the placed where she was at, which was Rome, after that he toss the drachma into rainbow and waited.
After a few seconds, he heard a voice coming from the rainbow; it sounded very much like a phone operator:
"For international message please offer another drachma."
Luckily Giovanni had given him a more than one drachma, so he tossed a second one into the rainbow. Seconds later the image of a hotel room came into view. A familiar woman was sitting in a small table in the room. A laptop in front of her and a bunch of paper in her hands Dante had no problem recognizing his mother.
"Huh...mom can you hear me?" he asked.
His mother quickly put her papers on the table and looked around she quickly saw Dante and rushed to him. "Dante is everything OK? You're not hurt, right? I've been so worried about you. How come you haven't sent me a message earlier?"
She continued to asked question about his health for a couple of minutes, at the same time she was trying to tell him how she had missed him and how worried she had been. Happy to just hear her voice, Dante allowed her to get it all out her system. Then he finally started to tell her everything that had happened to him after the last time they saw each other. After Dante had reassured Galetri that he was fine, she had chosen to listen silently to his tale.
When Dante finish she nodded her head, "I see so that's what happening over there. I'm sorry about the trouble my knife caused you. I should have know the hunters would assume you stole it from them, but in my defense, I did not know the hunters would be there already."
Finally, Dante got to ask the question that had been in his mind since the knife incident. "You were one of them, right? You were a hunter?"
Dante could see the sadness in her eyes. "Yes I used to be one the hunters of Lady Artemis."
"What happened?" he asked.
"I broke my oath. I fall in love with a man. A demigod from the camp actually," she began telling him."Lady Artemis left us in the camp for a few weeks while she did some hunting on her own. That's when I met him and... I don't know I guess he swept me off my feet completely. For him, I betrayed Lady Artemis and all my beliefs."
Dante respectfully tried to keep his questions to himself and allowed his mother to continue. " When Lady Artemis came back she was furious to find out what I had done. I thought she was going to kill me, but instead she decided to let me live. As an example for everyone else to see what happens when someone foolishly trusts a man. Specially a man that cared nothing about me or the child I was carrying."
Dante's eyes open wide. "Mikayla's dad was a demigod?"
His mother simply nodded at him.
"So you were already pregnant with Mika by then?" he asked her.
"Yes, Lady Artemis told me that she could already feel the life force forming inside of me. Believe me, finding out I was pregnant that way was quite the shock."
Dante asked another question. "What did Artemis do afterward?"
This was the part that seemed to hurt his mother the most. "She took away the power she had given me and exile me from her side and the hunt. My sisters also turned their backs on me for my betrayal."
Dante felt his anger boiling against Artemis. She had abandoned his mother just because she had done a single mistake, but he guessed he couldn't be surprise after all she had abandoned him too for being a mistake, as well. But all that led him to more questions. "I don't get it mom. If Artemis did all those things to you why did you to take care of me? Don't you hate her for that? Don't you hate me as well?"
"Of course not," his mother told him. "I could never hate Lady Artemis or you, Dante. Lady Artemis spared my life and Mika's. Then she gave me you, because of that I will always be grateful to her."
Dante felt a wave of affection for the woman in front of him. He knew she meant that with everything she had. "What about Mika's father? Did you tell him?"
His mother seemed to give some thought to that question. "Yes, but Lady Artemis was right about him. He did not care one way or the other about me or Mika. Because I was not born a demigod but a mortal, I had to leave camp right away, and I never saw him again after that. Thankfully Chiron took pity on me and decided to help me out. He was the one that introduced me to Lilian, you know."
Dante smiled. "Nana Lili," he said, remembering the 70 something old lady that always visited them on Thanksgiving's Day. Lilian Craftin was actually Joan's grandmother, but she loved both Mika and Dante as if they both were hers, as well, she was the closest thing to a gramma he had.
"Yeah, she help me a lot during those days. It was thanks to her support I got through those hard times. I'm really grateful to her and Chiron for all of their help. I don't know what would had happened to me without them."
Dante remained silent for a moment taking everything in, then he heard a beeping sound coming from the rainbow, he looked at his mother. "What's that?" he asked her.
His mother looked at him. "That sound means the message is coming to end. Do you have more drachmas you can offer?"
Dante shook his head.
His mother sighed, "Then we still have a few minutes before the connection ends. Is there anything else you want to know?"
Dante gave it thought, there were a few things he had not asked yet. He gave his mother a big smile, then asked, "How is Rome? Have you bought me a present yet?"
Galetri grinned. "I haven't gotten the time to enjoy the city yet, I been busy trying to close this deal with the new clients. And about your present? You would have to ask Mika about it. Joan and her have been going shopping every day since we got here. Knowing Mika my credit card must be maxed out by now."
"Joan's there too?" he asked.
"Yes we convinced her to come along with us. She joined us in D.C. when I went to pick up Mika from her school. They have been asking about you they can't understand why you choose to go to a summer camp instead of coming to Rome with us."
"Yeah I been wondering the same thing," he told her. "Have you told Mika about me?"
Galetri shook her head. "No. I thought it was best if we tell her together." Than adopting a more serious voice his mother asked him, "Dante how do you feel about Lady Artemis being your mother?"
Dante looked at her but did not answer. So Galetri did it for him: "You're mad at her because you think she abandoned you, right? But that's not true. The night she handed you over to me I could see the pain in her eyes. In the 300 years of service, I provided to Lady Artemis, I never saw her so sad as I did that night. Giving you up was probably the hardest thing she has ever done. So don't be so hard on her and just give her a chance."
Dante still could not say anything. Hearing his mother say that to him felt like if someone had slapped him across the face. Galetri was about to tell him something else when her image disappeared. The message had ended.
Dante stood looking at the lake for a few minutes going over his mothers words in his mind. Perhaps he was been too hard on Artemis. He had rejected her before he had even given her the opportunity to properly explain her side of the story. He wondered if that had been the reason that she had bothered to come all the way to camp to talk to him in the first place, but he had been too angry to listen to her. He let out a long breath; he had decided to let Artemis talk next time he saw her, but for now, he would have to go back to the cabin and face Thalia's anger. Man she was going to let him have it this time.
He took one step in the camps direction, but a sharp pain brought him down to his knees. It felt like if his stomach was on fire. Something was burning him from the inside. What was happening to him? He tried to get up, but his legs went numb and he fell flat on his face.
"Someone help," Dante let out in a small whisper. The pain didn't let him yell any louder than that. The darkness was starting to cover the world around him. Was he dying? It definitely felt that way. But even before darkness consumed him, Dante had one more dream.
(/)
The veiled women that he had seen in his other dream was now sitting in a black leather chair her Doberman right next to her. "Are you done already? Well that was quick."
"It was easy," said a man from behind her. It was the same man that she had set free from the cage. "The moment I laid down the deal they agreed to join us. There's one problem though. They tell me that the borders can not be breached, that the camp is protected by gods they say."
"Do not worry about that. We already have someone in the inside helping us with that issue. You just make sure you to bring the half blood to us," the woman said, sounding like an old lady now.
"In that case, we are ready to go... Shall we?" the man said with a cruel smile on his face.
"Go!Let the game begin," she said in her childish voice. The giant man gave her a nod then he proceeded to leave the room, as he was leaving he said, " I can not wait to lay my hands on the son of Artemis. I'll make him pay for what his mother did to us. I swear, brother, I will avenge you."
As the man left the room, the woman put a hand on the Doberman's head and began padding it affectionately. "Do not worry Sage we won't let anything bad happen to our vessel. We've been waiting for this moment for years now, haven't we?"
She took the dog's head in her arms and brought it to her breast. The woman leaned her head in and whispered in its ear, "Come to think about it, what a good fortune was that, in the end, the vessel turned out to look a lot like you." The Doberman let out a soft growl. "We know, sweety, we can hardly wait either, but we must be patient; the vessel will come. He is too much like his mother to not to do so. We just have to sit here and wait for it."
She kissed the top of the dog's head then she looked up.
"Everything begins now."
To be continued...
[A/N] There you have it what do you guys think. This was longest chapter I have written so far. I thought about cutting it half but then I thought it was best to get all this out all at once. I know my story is going a bit slow by I promise I'll pick up the pace in the next chapter. Well until then Seeya.