Chapter 20: On the road again
The four of them left for Port Jefferson before dawn. Luke figured this was the fastest route to Salem. Take the boat to Bridgeport and then follow highway 95 until they got to Boston. Salem wasn't far from there. They would be in Boston before nightfall if everything went according to plan. Luke figured that they would have a couple of days to find Angel and Jaeden in Salem, which would obviously take more time than getting there. They were looking for two people which could be anywhere in Salem which wasn't the small town it used to be. Luke knew it was going to be hard to find them which is why he hoped that he had time. He had to find Angel before he would make the biggest mistake of his life. It was all he could think about on the way to Port Jefferson. He had to stop his friend from making the mistake he was about to make. He would stop Angel any means necessary, he couldn't let this happen even if it meant killing Angel, but that didn't mean he didn't want to look out for him. He had been having problems with Angel, and he knew they were both to blame for that.
Everyone had different views on what they were going to do. Maria was there for Luke more than anything else. She cared about camp and realized this was important but when it came down to it she'd rather have Luke than anyone else at camp. She knew it was a bad state of mind for a demigod, putting one person above dozens wasn't really a heroic thing but she wasn't going to deny that was the truth. Luke meant the world to her. He was there whenever she needed him and no one else could ever give her the feeling Luke gave her. Luke meant the world to her and she wasn't going to lose him even if it was to a greater cause.
Max was going for one reason, to beat the enemy that was threatening camp. Last time that he left camp with Luke and Angel he had different intentions, this time his intention was clear and he wasn't going to lie about it. Jaeden was a threat, and Angel was helping him. To Maximus that made Angel an enemy and he was going to kill him if he had to whether they were allies before or not. Max had been raised to think like that. Anyone that helped him, anyone that he fought side by side with could become an enemy within a second and he had to be willing to kill them whoever they were. Of course when Maximus was nothing more than a slave these 'enemies' were usually people that Phthonos got annoyed with rather than people that were threatening him. But this time his home was in danger and that made Jaeden and Angel real enemies.
Sophie was walking in front of everyone. She walked faster because to her there wasn't a second to lose. They had a while before the boat left so in truth her fast stepping made no difference at all but she didn't think of that. She could only think about Angel and asking him why he was doing this. There were dozens of possible answers going through he mind, some more idiotic than possible but imagination could do that to a person. She knew that his reason was a good one, or at least she hoped so. Honestly Max and Luke discouraged her belief. They knew him better than she did and they seemed to think of him as an enemy while Sophie figured he was victim as much as he was the bad guy. Part of her thought it was stupid that Luke and Max discouraged that belief. They were his friends and they seemed to have lost complete faith in him. Even though she had lived with him a year and barely got to know him until a few weeks back she was sure that he wasn't intentionally planning on destroying camp.
The trip to Port Jefferson was smooth. No Dracanae or any other monster along the way which made all four of them quite happy. Other monsters...none of them had seen anything other than Dracanae in a while. If they weren't attacking camp pretty much every day everyone would be happy fighting Dracanae. They weren't much trouble compared to some of the more vicious monsters. But with the constant attacks in big groups they were possibly even more dangerous than the monsters that were pictured in the 21st century Hollywood movies. If nothing was done about them they would eventually flood over camp. Even demigods could be beaten when the enemy had enough numbers. It was one of the reasons why Luke hated that this Jaeden trouble came with it. He would rather focus on the Dracanae than on the sorcerer. Of course there was still the chance that Jaeden was behind the Dracanae's organized attacks but he still doubted that one sorcerer could twist such an army to his will so for now it was easier to keep them separate unless he was sure that they were the same problem.
They had to wait an hour before the boat left from Port Jefferson to Bridgeport. Sophie and Maria took this time to take a nap on a public bench. Luke thought it was funny that two daughters of Aphrodite were catching up on lost sleep on a public bench which was probably used by the homeless for the same purpose. They were so different from their sisters who were probably putting on layers of make-up right about now. Luke never understood that to be honest. He was engaged to a daughter of Aphrodite and he of all people could know that they were more beautiful without stuff like that littered over their faces. Of course there were more exceptions like Maria and Sophie but most of them would never accept something like this. Of course they had been shaped to adjust to things like this. Sophie nor Maria had had easy lives so they knew what it was like to live like this. Of course every demigod had his or her baggage to carry around but he was pretty sure that Sophie and Maria had seen some very dark days in their past. Luke wasn't a stranger to those either.
"So where do you think this will end?" Max asked. Luke knew that this wasn't the real question Max wanted to ask. Luke just needed to know what the real question was, the one Max didn't want to ask directly.
"It doesn't matter where it will end. You just want to know if I'm ready in case it ends like you think it will." Luke figured out. Max wasn't a person with much faith in humanity so he knew that he thought Angel was the enemy.
"Will you be?" Max asked. Luke had to think about it. He wished he was, he had been trying to convince himself that he would be, but he knew the truth was different. He always wanted to go to every length to save camp half-blood, and that would include killing Angel if he had to. He also promised Angel that he would kill Colt if it was needed, but he wasn't even sure if he could do that.
"No, I won't be. I can't kill him. Maybe you can Max, but no matter what he's done, killing a friend...I just don't have that in me." Luke said. He had been trying to get over that for the greater good but what did the greater good matter when it was against the morals he had believed in his entire life?
"I guess I'll have to do it then." Max said. He was more than willing to take down Angel if he had to. It wouldn't be easy to defeat him but he would succeed. He didn't doubt that for a second.
"I'll stop him Max, if you're dead set on killing him I'll stop him before you can even get close to him. No matter what he's doing, I won't let you kill him, and I sure as hell won't kill him myself." Luke was happy that he had gotten beyond doubt. He knew for sure that he wouldn't let any harm come to camp, and he was sure that he wasn't going to let any harm come to his friend. There was going to be a way that he could protect them both, and if it existed he was going to find it.
"Then you better kiss camp, Angel and your pretty fiancé goodbye because if you aren't willing to go all the way they're all going to die." Max said seriously. He wanted to get Luke to his way of thinking. Of course differences in morals was a hard thing to debate. Everyone thought differently and morals was probably the strongest opinion that a person had. Changing that wasn't an easy feat. "Compared to her he seems a small sacrifice doesn't he?" Max tried to hit Luke where it hurt, and it was working.
"You can't make me change my mind Max." Luke said. "I've made my choice, nothing is changing it." Luke said. He was never taken off a choice. Even with the hardest choices in his life once he made a choice he never went back on it, even if he made the wrong choice. Of course, he had his doubts sometimes, especially when he had another hard choice to make but those doubts were only in his own mind. No one ever realized he had those.
"Just so you know...it's the wrong one." Max wasn't offended nor did he feel the need to try and convince Luke. He knew the answer to his question and that was useful information. Now all he needed to wait for was a moment when that knowledge was going to help him.
The boat trip was quiet for the four demigods travelling towards Boston. They spent the trip separately and to the few other travellers they probably seemed like complete strangers. They were all deep inside their own thoughts, all trying to figure out what was going to happen. All wished for a certain outcome but all doubted that their wish would be so far from the outcome of these events that some chose a realistic view over their wishes. Max knew that his realistic view was going to be as close to the truth as he could get it so that was what he was aiming for, whether he liked it or not.
"Do you really think Angel is the enemy?" Maria asked Luke. She couldn't imagine her boyfriend seeing a friend as the enemy. She could hardly imagine Luke seeing as an enemy. When she met him years ago he was such a carefree, nice guy with not a trace of bad in him. Of course the more she got to know about his past the more she realized that he was hiding a sad past behind his smile and over the years the smile that was hiding the darkness of his life started to fade. The last time she saw that pure smile was when she agreed to marry him. She hoped that would be the start of the smile returning to his face more often, but it hadn't closed the open wounds like she hoped it would, and now Angel had ripped a new one open that erased Luke's smile completely.
"I don't know. I'm not even sure if Jaeden is. It looks that way but we've been misled before." Luke said. If there was one thing that his quest with Angel taught him it was that nothing was what it seemed. Unless he knew for sure how things were all he had were assumptions. The only reason why he was part of this manhunt at all was because Nox sent him this way and he knew she wasn't the most trustworthy demigod around. She could be lying for all he knew but he used the tiny bit of information and took it as the truth. "But I have to be ready for the worst case scenario no matter how strange it is."
"There's probably some reason why he's doing this. I don't think Angel would just turn on us." Maria said. She wasn't really defending Angel, honestly she didn't know Angel well enough to know if he would. What she did know was that it was hard to see Angel as the enemy after what they had been through together last year. She wanted him to stay optimistic about the possibility that there was a perfectly good reason for all this, no matter how small that chance is.
"I don't know Maria, I really don't."
The rest of the boat trip they didn't talk. As soon as they got off the boat Luke rented a car at a car rental place near the harbour. The guy that rented him the car was a overweight middle-aged man with glasses, a ponytail and an odour that made a hell hound's stench pleasant. Luke figured the last time that this guy had taken a bath was when ponytails were cool. The man was reluctant to rent a nineteen year old and his friends who were all younger. He said he usually didn't rent to people under age twenty. The only reason why he did in the end was because Luke paid everything in cash. Small businesses like this usually muffled away cash money so that they didn't have to pay taxes. It was tax evasion but that was easily done when costumers paid in cash. If he only knew that the cash and the name Luke gave him were fake. Luke remembered last year, and history told him that cars didn't survive long in his possession. So he figured it was best that he couldn't be traced by this guy when he realized he wasn't getting his car back.
"Got it legally this time huh?" Max asked. He rarely made a joke which was the only reason why Luke didn't punch him on his arm for calling him a thief. Of course last time his car boosting skills proved pretty useful. He was happy that he didn't have to steal this time around though. He still didn't feel very proud about stealing and then crashing that car in Pittsburgh.
"You can walk if you want to Max." Luke joked. No punching in the arm but he wasn't going to let it slide completely. Luke rarely needed to use his sharp tongue in the last few weeks so now he took this chance to.
"No I'm good inside the car." Max said. He lost his serious tone for a second which was also a rarity. Max had been nothing but serious since last year, and that had mostly been an act to gain Angel's and Luke's trust. He honesty didn't know how to be a normal teenager like Angel and Luke tried to be. That plus the personal quest to find out about his past made it impossible for him not to be serious. Now he had to put a pause to the search for the truth though. He knew he wasn't who he thought he was, he wasn't Maximus Meridius, but that left the question who he was open once again. "I have a request though, one that might be useful to all of us."
"What do you mean?" Luke asked.
"There's this guy I know in New Haven, he collects old Greek inscriptions and stuff and lets me translate them. He's probably the farthest in the research of the Ancient Greek language and symbols popping up throughout history." Max started. Honestly Luke didn't like anyone researching that. Demigods saw the signs all around them but the longer it took for mortals to start seeing them too the better. "Not many people believe him but he keeps going none the less. He works as a librarian at Yale, maybe you heard of it."
"Yale? You mean one of the oldest and biggest universities in the country? I've heard of that yeah." He didn't understand how someone that did that kind of unorthodox research could end up working at a famous university like Yale but he didn't judge. He figured a university of that magnitude needed a lot of staff and didn't know about the personal lives of all of its employees. "But why would we want to meet this guy?"
"Well, he contacted me a while ago saying he found another text. Apparently he got it from some auction which had some stuff from a historian who looking into early American history. Obviously finding a text written in Greek is rather strange when it comes from that era. He wants me to translate the text. Obviously I didn't see much urgency in the matter before but now it might be useful to know what the demigods in that time wrote down."
"Why? Even they don't know exactly where the staff is and it's not like they can tell us what to do." Luke said. He didn't want to make a stop at Yale for possibly useless information. He wanted to find Angel and Jaeden as soon as possible. One stop was a stop too many.
"Come on Luke, you know this is all related, the Salem witch hunt, the Dracanae, Jaeden needing Angel. It has to be connected. If demigods from that time, those who got the Hecate Priests executed left something behind, maybe we could figure out how to stop Jaeden before anything bad happens." Max's plea was a strong one. Luke couldn't deny that he was right. The question for him was, learn more, or keep moving with minimum knowledge. He knew what he wanted to do, he also realized that wasn't what he had to do.
The beauty of the almost ancient Yale university was undeniable. Luke didn't really know what kind of feeling the university gave him. It kind of made him sad that he was never going to be a student at one of these places. He knew that if he wasn't a demigod he'd be smart enough to end up here, although if he had a choice he'd probably choose Oxford over Yale. But that wasn't why he was there. But he wasn't truly amazed by Yale university as a centre of learning until he saw the classics library. The huge library that held more than 32000 volumes of Greek and Latin texts left him in complete awe. The library had five floors with nothing but books. Luke could spend hours, if not days there and he was pretty sure that any child of Athena would be more than willing to spend the rest of their lives there.
Luke, Maria and Sophie followed Max to the third floor of ancient books and texts where he said his 'friend' was. Luke doubted that this guy was anything close to a friend of Max's. Angel was the closest thing Max had to a friend and he was willing to kill him. So this guy was probably closer to an enemy than to a friend. Luke didn't know for sure of course, maybe Max was more sociable outside of camp. When Luke saw the man that they were looking for he was pretty sure he wasn't a friend of Max's. The man was heavily overweight and barely fitted in the chair that he was sitting in. He had big round glasses and was bent over a book which was an English version of the Iliad by the world renowned poet Homer. Luke had read it of course, but unlike most of the people that read it, he knew that it wasn't just a myth.
"Max! Finally!" The man said as soon as he saw the four teenagers approaching him. The man had to move his chair back quite a bit before he could stand up. He walked up to him and reached his hand towards Maximus. "And you've brought friends I see."
"I have Peter. Now show me this text." Maximus ignored the implication of a handshake and didn't bother introducing the other three that were there. He wanted this over with. Peter didn't seem very surprised, obviously he had gotten used to Maximus acting like this.
"Ah yes. I have to break it to you it's not exactly a text, more like a bunch of notes, none of them long and it seems to have a format of a letter." Peter said. He walked back towards the desk and turned to the last page of the book. Inside the book there were stacks of paper all in plastic to protect them. "I acquired these from an old historian who passed away. God rest his soul." Peter hesitated for a moment. "Or gods if my theory proves to be correct."
"Let's not count on it." Maximus said as he started reading the first paper.
"What is your theory exactly?" Sophie asked. She wanted to know how close this guy was to the truth. She doubted that he knew that he might be very close to being right.
"Well, it started when I found some texts written in the ancient Greek language which were written around the early nineteenth century. I found this weird as that language should have died out long before that." Peter said. Sophie knew that wasn't true. Even know there were people that could speak that language, she was one of them. "I got it translated and it turned out to be a family recipe for stew, not very important obviously. My translator, a teacher here at Yale, figured it was just some rich guy practising his ancient Greek or something like that. At first I agreed."
"What else could it be?" Sophie replied acting as if she didn't know a thing.
"Exactly, but in the last twenty-five years I've been finding more and more signs that the Greek culture is still around. Throughout history text in Greek are showing up and I started seeing signs and homages to Greek gods." Sophie didn't even hear what he said after she heard 'in the last twenty-five years.'
"You've been searching for that for twenty-five years?" She was amazed. This guy had been doing this for so long and he hadn't found anything conclusive yet? Nothing about them and all the signs they left behind? All he found was some neoclassicism which wasn't rare at all. She was actually quite relieved. If anyone would research this and could connect the dots the existence of demigods could be exposed. She didn't know what would happen but she doubted many mortals would like the thought of others that were more than just humans.
"Yes I have, and I'm getting closer every day. The gods are still being revered today, I will prove it." Sophie was even more relieved when that was the only thing he wanted to prove. Sophie could tell him a few groups that still revered the Greek gods right at that moment but she decided not to.
"And trying to prove that has made him the laughingstock of this university." Max said. "Which is why he's constantly asking me to translate for him because no one else will."
"I know you haven't translated anything worth while yet Max but I'm sure we'll find something soon." Peter said. Max didn't seem convinced. He didn't really care either. He got paid whenever he translated a text and some actually had a bit of importance which were usually things he kept out of the translation making them all seem completely useless.
"Luke can you help me out here for a second?" Max asked. Peter seemed surprised now.
"You can read ancient Greek too?" He asked Luke. Luke didn't know what to say. He didn't know how Max explained that he could translate these texts so he didn't know how he could explain that he could do the same thing.
"We're in the same class." Max said before Luke had to. Max's eyes stayed fixed on the papers. Luke sat next to Maximus and hoped that Peter wouldn't bother him with more questions. Sophie seemed to have decided that she was going to ask Peter a few more questions so that he would leave Max and Luke alone.
"So what are they looking at?" Sophie asked hoping that he was going to give her some kind of lengthy explanation.
"Well...I don't really know." Peter admitted. "I don't understand a thing that is said. I think it's a few centuries old though, actually I'm sure of that. I don't know from when exactly but I hope that the text itself will reveal that.
"And if it doesn't?" Maria asked, opening her mouth for the first time since they entered Yale university.
"Well then I guess it's just some more useless findings." Peter said with a sad tone in his voice. He seemed to hope that these papers were going to be his salvation. That people would finally believe him. He had lost faith in himself in the last year when every small text he found turned out to be useless and he hoped this one was different. If this wasn't the one he needed to prove what he had been saying for years that nothing was going to. Sophie and Maria weren't paying attention to that though. Luke and Maximus seemed finished and that was all that mattered.
"Look Peter, we're in a bit of a hurry. I'll take these, translate them on the road and I'll give them back to you on the way back with the translation." Max said. He needed to take these with him. He couldn't leave them with a fool like this.
"Are you sure you need to take them? Can't you come back later? They might be of unspeakable worth." Peter said.
"Look from what I've read it's just more junk but I figured you'd still want the full translation. It's this or nothing at all." Max said. He could see Peter think and all he could hope for was a good answer, else he was going to have to take these documents without permission. Peter was hesitant to let Maximus take his documents. He had paid a pretty high price for them and if they contained some good information they might be worth ten times that price. These were teenagers he was dealing with and if they destroyed or damaged the documents it would cost him, but they were the only ones willing to translate for him, and without a translation they were completely useless.
"All right...but be careful." Peter said. Maximus was planning on being careful. For once there was something in the documents Peter showed him that he didn't know. "And I want them back." Max wasn't sure if he was going to give them back. He hadn't read the full thing but if it really was something important than he wasn't going to return the documents. No mortal like this could find out about the existence of demigods and the gods.
"Let's go." Max said to the others. They all left the highly overweight librarian behind and didn't look back. They had what they came for and it might be more valuable then they could have ever guessed.