Chapter 27

"Xander? Xander, look at me. Are you alright?"

"I'm…fine…"

"Are you hurt?"

"I'm…fine…"

"Xander, you're not blinking."

"What…I…but," The message took a minute to process in his mind. Blink. Blink. Close your eyes and blink. When he did so, he regretted it. The blood, the fire, the death- all of the horror and guilt was engraved into his eyelids. With a shudder, his eyes flew open again, only to have the images follow him to the conscious world. They had a right to. The pain and suffering wrought upon Camp Half-Blood was his fault. People were dead because of him. He could still hear their terrible screams, the last sounds that would ever escape them. They were dying. All of them. Henry- sweet, adorable, young Henry- was dying. And it was his fault. His fault. Kill me now. Please. Please kill me now. I can't take it. Please. Please.

"Xander! He's hyperventilating!"

It was sick. So sick. He was retching, trying to find some way to expel the horrific images from his head. He wanted them out. Somebody needed to take the feeling away. He was a murderer. All their blood was on his hands. So red…

"XANDER!"

That snapped him out. He wasn't at camp. Not anymore. Had he even been there before? What was he looking at now? It wasn't death, it wasn't suffering. No. It was beauty. He knew her. Dani. How long would it be until his actions killed her too? "Dani?" he breathed, not even sure if she could hear him. He was so cold. So cold. It felt like someone had reached inside him and pulled out his heart. Now it was ice. He couldn't stop shaking.

She pulled her eyes away from him and shot them up towards her father. "How dare you!" she yelled.

"How dare I?" the god repeated disbelievingly. "I am your father! You will show me respect, Danaë! You will not cavort about with an imbecilic son of Athena! Your affections are wasted on him!"

Her face reddened, though whether it was because of embarrassment or fury was unclear. For a few seconds, the sheer rage emitting from the fifteen-year-old girl rivaled her father's, and she used that anger to explode. "You're kidding me, right? That earthquake was you, wasn't it? Is this all some sick 'protect your daughter' thing to you? People are DYING! Xander was right. You don't deserve an ounce of my respect."

"You would do well to learn when to hold your tongue!" The lord of the dead thundered. His threat echoed around the room.

"Or what?" she laughed back, grabbing the other's arms and turning away. "Gonna strike down your own daughter? That works real well for you Greek gods, doesn't it?"

As the group exited, the shouts from Hades grew louder, but Dani hardly seemed to notice. She simply lead the other three out the door, whispering apologies the entire way.

Willard, who was for once completely silent, supported Xander as he stumbled along. Rose stared straight ahead, eyes glazed over. "Legendary wrath is upon us." She blinked and shook her head frantically. "Dani, we have to go to Olympus. Only a god has this much power."

Dani shrugged, a hollow laugh like her father's escaping her. "Honestly, Rose, what is the point? We don't know who we're fighting anymore, and camp is already being destroyed. By the time we get back to Manhattan, it'll all be over." She sunk down onto one of the boulders overlooking Asphodel and hung her head. "I don't know what we do now."

Rose knelt next to Dani. "You are more than that, Danaë," she murmured gently.

"Indeed you are." The silky voice emanated from the shadows, which slowly morphed into the god of the Underworld. Dani turned her back to him and glowered straight ahead as he spoke. "Your valiance has made me… reconsider. I will tell you what suspicions I have in regards to this war."

The god walked out of the shadows and surveyed the Underworld before him. "Several months ago, my wretch of a brother got into an argument about his many affairs with mortals. Hera threatened to leave him for it. He claimed that demigods have caused him nothing but trouble over the past centuries, and had plans to do something about it. The constant feud between us explains why he would peg me as a suspect in his heinous crimes. You understand what I am saying, of course." Hades said, glancing toward the half-bloods.

Rose nodded and bowed her head slightly. "Thank you."

Dani snorted. "That accusation won't mean a thing if we aren't at Mount Olympus in the next five seconds."

Hades stroked his chin, looking at his daughter as if he had never seen someone so difficult to understand. "Then I suppose you'd better go." With a wave of his hand he cast a dark shadow upon each of the half-bloods. To Xander, it felt like being splashed with cold water- just the wakeup he needed. The world spun rapidly before the darkness faded and was replaced by the shining bright white lights of Olympus.

"Nicest thing he's ever done for me," Dani grumbled.

Willard sat up and blinked. "Dani."

The black-clad girl looked his way. "Yeah?"

"Your dad sucks."

"As if I didn't know- hang on, did you just make sense?"

"I'm sober. Hades sobered me." With that shocking, venomous announcement, Willard began to curse colorfully. He only paused to say, "What in Tartarus am I wearing?" before he continued swearing.

"Willard!" Xander cut in, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. "This isn't the time. Hades did a lot of…questionable things," he shuddered at the few images that managed to escape repression and float to the surface of his mind, "but we have bigger problems now. People are dyin' and we need a plan to bring down the king of gods."

Rose smoothed her eyebrow, that tell-tale sign of vexation. "There is something about this that bothers me."

Dani muttered bitterly, "What, the mass murder bit or the part where we have to take down King Lightning?"

The Huntress shook her head. "The trail. Zeus knew it would lead to Hades- he planned that. He had to know that Hades would blame him and that we would come here…It was too easy."

A gear in the back of Xander's head began to turn. "You're right. This whole thing has been too easy."

Dani scoffed as she looked concernedly at Xander. "Look, I'm not sure exactly what my dad did to you, but multiple scrapes with death is not and has never been a definition of 'easy,' Cowboy."

"I know that," he answered dryly as he paced around the corridor. "I meant the trail. It's been simple from the beginnin'. The Metalliks at Cambridge practically told me Echidna's coordinates, and then Echidna led us to Hades without much of a fight. Zeus would never slip up that much."

"So what are you saying?" the dark haired girl asked sharply.

"I'm sayin' that…I think we're wrong…again."

"We don't have time to be wrong again," Dani responded flatly.

"Ya think I don't know that?" Xander replied anxiously. His hands fidgeted at his sides as he thought.

Willard quoted, bored, "'Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs.'"

Rose gasped and explained to the other two, "Gods are not so different from humans. Since the tracks lead to a dead end, we need to think…randomly."

"Randomly," Xander repeated blankly. But what was random and what was planned? How could they determine the head of such a detailed scheme from a few chance encounters?

Chance encounters.

How much chance was involved, really?

Monsters hunted the closest demigods, but…What if one in particular had been strategically placed to intercept them? What if Lamia had been following their movements? It was unlikely, but nothing could make sense if he wanted to solve this quandary.

"We should consider motivation," Rose softly suggested.

"Okay…Ares?" Dani offered up.

"It's possible, but he prefers war, not slaughter. He'd at least give us a chance."

"Apollo?"

"Not violent enough."

"Aphrodite?"

"Not exactly the bloodthirsty type." Xander paused. "We're not asking the right questions. We need to know who would want to frame Zeus."

Willard ran a hand through his hair. "'The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but also to hate his friends.'" At Xander's confused expression he elaborated slowly and distinctly as though talking to a child. "This riddle is defined by the line between love and hate. It isn't a winding trail. It's a contradiction. You are the man of knowledge, Xander. You have to think like a god. To do that, you have to stop caring about us."

Dani glared at Willard. "Why couldn't you have been useful earlier?"

The boy shrugged. "'When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.' I don't like to think, so instead I drink. It's an easier demon to handle." He paused. "That son-of-a-Titan ruined my sense of humor, too. Think, drink- why can't it be funny?" he sulked against a wall.

Xander hung his head and focused intently on the floor tiles as he wondered. Think like a god. Think like a madman. Think like a murderer. Think randomly. It's all random. That's how ya get ahead. Who's obscure enough to pull this off? Who could slip under the radar, create utter chaos, and let someone else take the fall for 'em so easily? Who would be hard to blame? They hafta be smart, angry…vengeful. Maybe they possess hidden strength beneath a calm, unassumin' demeanor. It's someone ya don't think of, not one of the usual power-mongers. It's gotta be someone who'll kill to get their way. Someone like…

"No way," he breathed when the answer popped into his head. He had to be wrong this time. It was too unbelievable. Yet, once the answer arrived, it stayed and rooted itself more deeply in his mind as more and more evidence came to light. He was right. He was right, and he could feel it. The warmth of the assurance pulsed though him. Xander took off through the halls of Zeus's palace and called back to his friends, "I've got it! I know who it is!"

Everyone followed closely behind Xander as he sprinted frantically down the corridors.

"Xander, what the heck is going on?"

When he stopped abruptly, the other three demigods nearly slammed into him.

"A mass murderer has to have some type of god complex, right?" his words came out hurriedly as he triple checked his guesses.

"Gee, Cowboy, I couldn't imagine a god with a god complex!" Dani scoffed. She crossed her arms over her chest and glowered at the son of Athena.

Xander ignored her comment and continued to speak. "Where does that kind of person go in the last stages of an apparently successful plan?" he asked, darting his eyes between his three friends.

Willard widened his eyes in realization. "'In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.' They might not be as brilliant as we had assumed."

Rose studied the drunkard curiously and smiled brightly when she understood. "The gods truly are like us- predictable. They would go somewhere on high ground to gloat!"

"We're already on Mount Olympus," Dani responded exasperatedly.

"But that's nothin' new to a god," Xander spoke in tone a teacher might use. "They would need a symbol of their victory, somethin' that exults 'em."

"The throne room!" Rose exclaimed.

"Exactly!" Xander clapped, staring at Rose excitedly. "Where is it?" he asked anxiously.

Rose blinked and pointed down a hallway. "This way feels right."

Xander grabbed the girls' wrists and rushed in the direction.

"Wait, Xander! You still haven't told us who it is!" Dani shouted.

He ignored her until they go to the double doors of the gods' council chamber. Then he turned to Willard. "Bring Zeus here, okay? We need him to end this."

Willard put both hands on Xander's shoulders and met his gaze. "'Be careful when you fight with monsters, lest you become one,'" he said grimly.

The Southerner nodded. "I've always been a fan of Nietzsche."

The drunkard turned to Dani. "Protect that idiot, alright?"

Dani grinned. "He'll get home safe, between us." She elbowed the redhead beside her, who blushed gratefully.

Rose's friend towered over her as he put a hand on her head. "'No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.'"

Her eyes welled with tears. "How did you…"

He took a step back, grinning wolfishly. "Go kick some godly ass!"

Xander beamed back at him. "Let's go!" Willard turned down a corridor with a wave and disappeared.

They threw open the doors.

~O~O~O~

Rose: I like Willard when he is sober.

Dani: I'm psychologically incapable of comprehending anyone's ability to like Willard in any form.

Willard: That's just because you don't like anyone, sweet cheeks.

Xander: Ain't that the truth.

Dani: I like you.

Xander: …Really?

Dani: Yeah. Sure. About as much as Monica and Rachel do.

Xander: Monica? Rachel? Do you two like me?

Monica: ...Uh…yeah…sure…Heh. Heheheh. .'

Rachel: Stabby.