Chapter Thirty-Six
Disclaimer: I do not own the PJO or HoO series by Rick Riodan.
James' POV
I had kept a close eye on Fletcher for the rest of the day, I was a bit wary of him after he had been making eyes at Adrienne. He had been looking at her a couple of times after, but then he saw me staring daggers at him and he quickly looked away.
"Man, why are you starin' at me? You're freakin' me out." he says.
We had been heading back to our cabins and I had stopped by one of the fountains in the courtyard. He kept glancing at the Hades cabin.
"Dude, I swear if you don't stop looking at my sister, I will tear your intestines out and strangle you with them." I say.
He makes a disgusted face and sighs. "Man, too visual."
"I'm serious." I say, my voice dry.
"I know, I know you are." he says, rolling his eyes.
"Do you really?" I ask.
"Yea." he nods.
I look at him for a couple of seconds before saying anything. "Fine."
"Good. Hey, I'm gonna go back to my cabin and freshen up before dinner and the campfire. I'll see you then, man." he says, patting me on the back.
"Yea, sure. See you then." I say.
I watch him head back to the cabins and then look up at the sky. The sun was sinking lower in the sky, but it wasn't quite setting yet.
There was something off about Fletcher. Not only was he persistent at staring at Addie, but he just wasn't acting like the Fletcher I knew. He seemed more guarded than usual. The look in his eyes whenever someone called his name was that of a caged animal. Scared, abused, and ready to attack anything that made it feel threatened.
"Jamie!"
I shake my head and turn around, seeing Adrienne and Jade coming up to me. She had a wide grin plastered on her face and there was a smug little smirk upon Jade's lips.
"Hey, what's going on?" I ask.
"Jay just told me she's coming along with us to—you know." she says.
"Oh yea? She said that?" I ask, smirking and looking at Jade.
"James!" Adrienne says, smacking my arm.
"Okay, okay. Yes, I did. And I told Tristan about it to, so he might possibly come." I say.
"Have you heard any from Walker yet?" she asks.
I shake my head. "No, he hasn't contacted me. I'm sure he will soon though." To be honest, I was worried that he hadn't contacted us yet. It'd been two weeks and we hadn't heard a peep out of him.
"So we should be ready to leave at any moment?" Jade asks.
"Yea. Because really, he could just pop up out of nowhere and tell us it's time to go." I say.
"Kinda like now?" a voice speaks up from behind us.
I spin around to see Walker standing there. I hadn't even seen his glow. Adrienne and Jade seemed just as surprised to see him standing there as I was.
"You mean we're ready?" I ask.
He nods. His eyes were a darker purple than I remembered them being. It was strange, but it wasn't the first time I had met someone who's eye color changed by their mood.
"Well, uh, I guess we'll get our stuff together and we can leave." I say.
"I'll be around."
The three of us start walking to our cabins, but I stop and turn back around. "Walker? Can you maybe go tell Chiron what's going on? I don't really want to be banned from Camp for leaving without permission."
"I was actually about to do that. Now go on, pack up."
"Good. We'll meet you at the Big House in a few minutes then." I say.
I turn back around and quickly make my way to the Apollo cabin. This was it. We were actually going to save them.
"James, are you three ready?" Walker asks.
I had just gotten to the Big House, my backpack slung onto my shoulder. I had packed it as lightly as possible, but also with things I knew I'd probably need. Nectar, ambrosia, a clean pair of clothes, an empty water bottle, and a couple of daggers.
My folding bow that dad had gotten me for my birthday last year was slung behind me as well, along with my quiver full of mixed arrows.
"Four, actually. Tristan is coming with us. And I saw Jade going to get Adrienne when I was heading up here." I say.
He nods. "Okay then. I spoke with Chiron. He's a tad angry that you hadn't told him of the situation sooner, but he has given you permission to leave Camp."
I sigh. "Good. Now where is—" Before I can continue, Jade barges up onto the deck, looking frantic.
"I can't find her. I knocked on her door and when she didn't answer, I went in. Her things were all over the floor, her stars were in the wall by the door, like she'd tried to fend someone off." she says, the words coming out in rapid-fire.
I run my hands through my hair, trying to keep my cool and think about where she might be.
"The woods. Before we even left the house a few weeks ago, our mom had been lecturing her about not going into the woods alone. Then she kept asking about it on our way here, wouldn't shut up about it. Walker, do you think someone..?" I turn to him, eyebrows raised.
"Do the Richards kids come to Camp?" he asks.
"Yea, Sabrina and Mark. What do they have to do with this?" I ask.
"Great gods of Olympus," He exhales and gives me a somber look, "Their father, Daemon, did something to your mother in there when she was fifteen. It was the same year she had been meeting Hypnos in the circle. Follow me, I think I know where she is."
He quickly walks down the steps and starts heading in the direction of the cabins. I glance at Jade and then we follow him, running to catch up.
When we had passed the Apollo cabin earlier, Tristan was just coming out. He was packed up and ready to go. When he saw us running towards the woods, he had the most confused look on his face. I had quickly waved him along and he had caught up with us.
"What's going on? Where's Adrienne?" he asks.
"We think one of the Richards kids took her." I say.
"Into the woods? Why the hell would they do that?"
"Because of something that happened to our mom a long time ago. She's never told us what happened, but it somehow involved their dad."
"And you think one of them is following in daddy dearests footsteps?"
"Yea. Now come on, we're losing Jade and Walker."
We finally caught up to them. How Jade kept up with Walker, I don't know. He wasn't necessarily running, just sorta speed walking, which I'd consider running in his case since he's so tall. I was 5'7" and Tristan was about 6'2" and we were both having trouble keeping up.
I started to hear the staticky sound of the singing trees, singing the tune of "Dust In the Wind." We were close to the circle, that was for sure.
Over the static, I hear a couple of grunts and a scream, then a scratching noise.
"This way." Walker says.
I run in front of him and burst out from behind some bushes. Adrienne was on the ground. She had a small gash on her forehead and her knees were scraped and bleeding. She was backing away from someone, but I couldn't quite make them out under the shadows of the trees.
I quickly go over to her and help her up. I make her get behind me and I take out my bow and notch an arrow.
"Come out of the shadows, you gamiméno kommáti ton skoupidión " I spit.
"James!" Adrienne gasps, probably because of what I had said.
I ignore her and watch as the person tentatively creeps out so I could see him. I had to hold myself back from gasping because of who it was.
"Fletcher?" I ask.
"Come on out, he's already seen me, and I'm not going down for all of this." he calls behind him.
I hear a rustling in the bushes behind him and peer past. Another figure appears, a shorter one. They come around and stand next to Fletcher.
"Lydia?" Tristan speaks up, coming to stand beside me.
"Oh don't you look at me like that, Tristan." she says, rolling her eyes.
"But why..?"
"Why? Because she's of Hades decent. He even claimed her for gods' sakes. There shouldn't be such filth polluting Camp."
I start forward, but Tristan holds me back. "You're the one who shot her on capture the flag night, aren't you?" he asks.
"Took you long enough to figure out. And Fletcher here shot James with the poison dart." she grins, patting Fletcher on the back.
I felt so ultimately betrayed. I couldn't believe my best friend and a member of my family would do something like this.
My grip tightens on my bow and I raise it again. Before anyone can stop me, I let one of the arrows fly. It hits Fletcher in the shoulder and he cries out. I quickly notch another arrow and send it on its way to Lydia's right thigh. She drops to the ground, screaming and gripping her leg.
I stiffly turn around, placing a hand on Adrienne's shoulder, and walking back the way we had come.
Now that that was taken care of, we could get on our way.
A/N:
Huh, some "best friend" and "relative." Do you think it was right of James to shoot them with arrows?
Oh, and the thing that James said in Greek translates to "fucking piece of trash." It's actually written "γαμημένο κομμάτι των σκουπιδιών" in Greek, but who the hell can even begin to pronounce that just my looking at it? So the piece I used is how it's phonetically pronounced. Gotta love Google Translate for giving you both the phonetic spelling and the actual spelling ^.^
I apologize for not updating on Saturday. My mom was actually off work for the first time in about two weeks, so I wanted to spend some time with her. I also needed to finish the last chapter, and I finally did last night. I swear, that is the longest fucking chapter I have ever written for any story. In my writing program, it comes up to 13 pages and 1/4 of a page.
Oh, last Wednesday, I worked up at the studio again. I got there at about 9:00 and helped my teacher deep clean the studio till about 1:00. That was fun (sorta), and she let me plug my iPod into the stereo for most of that day, so that was a plus.
So I'll probably be doing that either once a week or once every two weeks, because it's required by the health department that she cleans the studio every week. So yesterday I got some steel-toed work boots that are slip resistant, and also some boot-cut jeans, because wearing those work boots with skinny jeans just looks hideous, and all I own are skinny jeans. The reason being is because we hose down the floor and scrub it, then use the shop-vac to vacuum all the water up, and we also have heavy things in the studio that have to be moved while cleaning and sometimes those things are dropped while moving them.
So yea, that's pretty much been my week.
M/A:
"'I'm down by the fire
At the oceanside
Just waiting for that underwater world to say goodnight
Don't you hear that sound
From the tide and sand
They'll tell us to keep rolling and rolling if we can
So I've learned to keep my head in this lazy wonderland'"
Lazy Wonderland by Broken Bells.
XOXO,
Mrs-diAngelo25