The Daughter of Darkness - Redeemable

by Nic-n'-Nyx

The Titan War was bad enough. Bad enough that Bree doesn't mind doing the sideline work with her family while the world rests on the brink of chaos. Yet as time wears on, it seems clear that they don't have a choice. Someone has more ominous plans for them. But facing your past, your future, and standing for your beliefs all at once is quite hard with a traitor in your midst...

35. Scourge

DISCLAIMER: Rick Riordan still owns PJatO and HoO. Of course.

*READ*

I rewrote all but the first half a page, so START FROM THE BEGINNING, please, else it may not make sense. Thank you.

oOo

Jason. Jason Grace.

The elusive shapes had ducked behind a snow bank and were concealed behind Khione's white crystal, but I'd seen. I'd seen plenty.

"Jason!" I called again, curving around the pile of frost. I had to squint through the wind and snow. "How-"

"Get down!" someone yelled, and before I knew it my breath was gone, driven out of me by a harsh meeting with the icy ground. A heavy body landed on top of me.

Moments later, there was a deafening CRUNCH! Shrapnel sang gaily as it shot past us and left the snow peppered and sizzling.

The helicopter. It'd disappeared beneath a giant snowball, crimpled blades sticking out like the legs of a slain spider.

The boy who'd knocked me 'out of the way' pushed himself up on his hands and gave me the sort of grin you wish you could trust. "Hey, there."

"Get off!" I huffed, every instinct screaming at me for allowing myself to be pinned. He rolled aside with that same mischievous grin and the four of us got to our feet. Or, as close as we dared in the immortal winter squall. My breath caught.

Yep. Definitely Jason. He was jumping from foot to foot anxiously and his eyes were wide, too wide for Jason. He wore nothing of the sort you should be wearing in a storm like this. Which might've explained a few things, but the whole sight set chills up my skin.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

I blew my hair out of my face, shoving my hand forward like the lies about to be thrust his way. "Bree. From LA."

Apparently, I'd been too blunt, or Reyna had lied when she said I made an impression. He stared at me blankly.

"He had his memory wiped," the curly-haired by summarized, circling his finger around his ear in a sign I'd caught several times behind my back at school. "All his film's gone up in here."

Oh? Does… Does that mean these two could be Greek, and you wouldn't know how utterly you've damned us?

"Leo!" yelped a girl with caramel skin. Her eyes, jaded of one color, were shifting from blue to green to Moon's yellow.

Leo shrugged. "Hey, someone had to explain, Beauty Queen."

"Oh, and great job you did!"

"LEO! PIPES!" Jason yelled, and they fell silent. His confused – Jason, confused? – locked on mine. "You. Are you on our side?"

"I guess so…"

"And you know what's inside the Wolf House?"

"That'd be what we came to find out," a familiar voice drawled. Jason and the strangers flinched and looked up – above us, looming ominously with Anonymous drawn and lustrous eyes equally as sharp, was Hunter.

Brook and Nico jogged up behind me, covered in a dust of the same hue. "You alright?" he hissed as he halted at my side.

"Fine," I said. "Jason lost his memory."

He raised an eyebrow at the implications but didn't comment.

Jason sighed. "Alright. Alright. Look, y'all can stick with us. We're going to need the help anyway. Thalia should be back soon – she'll have scoped the place out. Once she gives us the okay, we go for the courtyard. She'll probably explain everything when she gets here, and anything she misses I can-"

Yep. Greek. Look at what you've done, Praetor.

"YAY-SON SHALL DIE!"

We turned, nerves electrified, weapons drawn. It was an ogre, screaming brazenly and at a full sprint through the snow like a ship through waves, three heavy boulders shared between six hands. Two of his earthen brethren followed.

"Fire!" Hunter barked, her scythe raised. Shadows took one down and a golden whiplash a second and, faster than both of us, a silver arrow the third.

Brook yelled in shock. That hadn't been her.

"Jason!" a distantly familiar voice strained above the invigorated winds. Sure enough, out of the white oblivions marched Thalia Grace; her silver Hunters of Artemis outfit wrinkled, black-and-bright-blue hair a mess, and eyes that could fry your soul with a peripheral glance. "We're out of time! The sun sets in ten minutes! … Did that thing call you 'yay-son'?"

Then those deadly eyes landed on Brook.

"You!" she spat. Then her eyes on me, and lastly to Hunter, where they lingered on the hovering scythe. "You three!"

"Us three," Hunter agreed calmly.

"They're with me, Thals," Nico said.

"Death Boy… You know where they've been since Olympus? How they'll be in battle?"

I wasn't sure if the shame or the anger was stronger. Rage veered from the snow and the wind and Gaea and even Jason towards someone who wasn't even a ghost no more, to a smile that I still couldn't touch. To golden eyes stronger than Hunter's.

"Yeah, actually, I do," Nico declared. "Been with them at least once a week since."

Thank the gods, Hunter kept that sharp tongue sheathed.

She glared him down before sighing. "Fine. Fine. I won't judge 'till I've seen it."

"Wise," my cousin contributed, "seeing as it's your girls, Lieutenant of Artemis, out there dying while we bicker."

Thalia grit her teeth and pointed into the storm. "A hundred paces east, ten south. The gates to the courtyard. To the left will be a fountain basin; on the nearer end there's a pillar of rock that's rising, and I don't like the looks of it. On the other, I assume, is where Hera is."

"Juno?" I asked. "What's she doing here?"

"She's about to get rescued by the best demigod fighting force ever," Leo suggested.

Thalia ignored us. "But you can't just charge in there. There's a goddess and a guard of monsters waiting in the open. I think she's the one causing all this."

"Khione," Leo spat. Beside me, Nico's silence dropped eighty degrees.

"Yeah," Thalia muttered. "Her."

"We can split," Jason decided quickly. "Two for Hera, three for Khione, and three for the monsters."

She looked at him doubtfully. "Jason, I can't come with you. We've got plenty to work with out here."

"I have wolves," Brook said simply, waving in another direction. "They're out there fighting now, but they'll come when I call. Six in total. They can do a lot of damage wherever we need it."

The Daughter of Zeus gave her brother a stern glare. "It'll have to work. You got this?"

"Psh. Piece of cake," he laughed nervously.

"Come back," she warned, and vanished into the storm.

oOo

It was an uphill battle just to reach the threshold.

A group of six – two of each typical demon these days, all under Gaea's service – charged us head-on before we even turned south. Moon gave a warning howl and then they were barreling out of the whiteness, nothing but the larger snowflakes of the immortal winter squall.

Well. The earthborn were more like hail.

"LEFT!" Hunter barked above the wind, and left I went with my siblings.

Nico shot ahead to swing around from behind, me not far between him and Brook. On the other side, Jason caught on quickly and led 'Pipes' – Piper, I later learned – and Leo to squeeze the monsters in from the right.

Between us, a whirlwind of claws and lightning.

Întuneric was weighted by flesh rather quickly. From my left, Nico's slim sword was in and out before I could blink.

Then there was fire.

Great, blinding, honest-to-gods fire. It flashed before us like a bomb had gone off. The heat seared on my eyes, ripping moisture from them and beating my lips into cracking. Air was siphoned straight from my lungs.

And then it was gone with a wave of Leo's hand. The tongues of flames licked at his palm for a moment more before vanishing.

The wind slammed into us again, and quite suddenly I was wishing he'd do that again.

"C'mon! This way!" Jason yelled. "I remember this place!"

We turned and rushed to catch up, hunched over in the wind. Snow was liquefying on my eyes. I'd had the sense to put on a long sleeve shirt today, but without my jacket… That Natalie had…

At last we caught up, merging oddly to the left side of their group, (which felt very, very odd to me; my skin prickled and shadows raised at the idea of having my side exposed to strangers) save for Hunter, who drifted to the right as we ran. "What's Hera doing here?" she called.

He looked back at her. "You know how Olympus has been closed?"

"Yeah! Charon said Zeus ordered it!"

Jason nodded. "Because Gaea kidnapped Juno!"

"Knew he was a coward," Nico muttered. Jason shot him a tentative look.

"Teams," Hunter said before it escalated. Two slain edifices of decomposing bricks barely rose above the snow, signifying the courtyard's beginning, just at the edge of our view. I prayed it was real and not a shadow in the white.

"Teams," Jason agreed. "Piper and I can get Juno, and I imagine Leo wants Khione."

Leo beamed and slapped my shoulder as we came to a halt. "I'll take this one with me. She keeps checking me out."

Shock and an almighty fury worthy of the stars shot through me like Hunter had dumped her ice bucket on me again. My palm slashed across his cheek before I knew it was moving. "I AM NOT! You're standing on my right!"

"Uh-huh. Sure." He gave me another smile and cocked his head, heavy tool belt highlighting the mocking angle to his hips. "You can say what you want, but-"

He cut off as shadows began to creep over the frost from behind me, tugging at his boots. His expression melted to one of utter horror. "Your right!" he squeaked. "I'm standing on your right!"

I turned, but whatever Nico had been doing, he stopped.

Rather, he was staring ahead, into the frost. Beyond the ruined threshold was still hidden. "Hothead and I can take Khione," he said. "Sis, you go with Hunter and Brook. Try to keep them off us so we can focus."

I nodded and moved to Brook's side. "Right."

And at that, Jason dived into the storm ahead. Piper, Leo and I ran after him as if we'd done it a thousand times before. The others quickly found places on our heels.

The snow vanished.

We skidded to a startled halt. In a flash, the Wolf House came into view – more bricks, bricks, bricks, drowning in the frost still on the ground. A vast space of an old courtyard the size of multiple football fields. To the left, as Thalia had said, a massive fountain base abandoned with a giant spire of rock jutting out of one end. But all the ice, all the snow that'd been dog-fighting in the air… It was gone.

Not too far from us in the clearing stood Khione. Behind her were demons in armor – wolves bound in leather, giants plated in Celestial bronze, Venti all in matching sets of gold that gleamed in the scarlet sunlight. To either side of the yard, even the trees seemed to have donned the sunset as a form of royal attire.

Between Khione and us…

"Thalia!" Jason cried, lunging forward. Piper held him back.

Khione smiled and ran a finger along Thalia's frozen jaw. No, not frozen – I realized with a feeling of rocks in my stomach – but ice. Transformed wholly into ice. The goddess beamed at us. "She turned out good, yes?"

"Thalia!" Jason screamed.

"Stop!" Piper yelled. "Don't touch her!"

"Sis!"

"Well get her back," Nico said dryly.

At his voice, Khione's smile slid down about two degrees. Blue eyes locked on him. "Ghost King."

He had no answer for her.

At that, she smirked again and drew her inky hair behind her ear. "I should've known you'd fall for my whispers to come here."

"Whispers," Leo muttered. "It was you. Messing with the wind god's head. And freezing Festus."

"I'll admit to those," Khione said. "And to my plans of freezing you. And tricking Hera here."

"And convincing Zeus to close Olympus," Hunter realized.

"And that." Around us, the wind began to stir again, its currents like little hissing serpents. Venomous ones. "And meddling with your precious spirits, Ghost King. Orpheus, Eurydice, Medea, Midas, Mithridates, yes. And trying to capture Seattle. And to kidnapping Bree and trying to get her to come here. We all know this. In fact, if you surrender and hand her over now, I'd be happy to let you live." A smile aimed at Leo. "Some of you more than others."

Nico stepped between us. "Try it."

Khione shrugged. "In that case I'll need two. One Greek and one Roman, which then must be Jason, and that the Greek would then have to be female. You can pick. Or we could use the frozen girl. Feel free to take your time; The Patron is fine with waiting another day in slumber."

"We're out of time," Brook hissed. "Thalia said by sunset, guys."

I glanced that way. We had about three minutes.

"Oh, I'm content to talk. Time is on my side," Khione purred.

Hunter laughed. "Oh? You want to say that to my face?"

Khione sneered again, and my fingers tightened on Întuneric. Why were we talking?

Then, behind her, I saw them – three wolves not of flesh but of bone, skulls grinning with fangs the size of my hand. Standing among the others as if they were meant to be there.

Khione waited for our next comment.

"Leo," Nico said. "Keep the ground around her melted when we attack. Doesn't have to be grass, but it needs to be thin, and no ice."

"Why?" he asked, a slow grin sliding across his face. "Wouldn't ice be harder for something to fall on?"

"Nothing's falling on it. Things are coming up."

At that, the three skeletal wolves lunged.

"NOW!" Jason yelled, and he and Piper shot off like bullets. Hunter broke from us and ran for the rising spire of rock.

Brook fell between Nico and I as, with Leo, we went for the demons. Khione yelled angrily as claws tore at her back.

I knew in an instant that there were way too many demons, even with the pack, but that didn't stop the anger. I'd been captured, tormented, teased, wounded, forced to doubt my brother – her doing, too? – and waited too long for my dance to return in earnest.

Moon bolted ahead of us, a small silver streak in the snow.

And then the noise broke loose.

There was the howling of the wind and the haunting call of wolves and werewolves alike, the throaty clash of weapons and claws, the sharp accent of a Ventus's strike. It could've been Manhattan right then – we could be charging down the streets, Kronos calling orders from not far off, the Empire State Building drawing carelessly ever closer.

I sliced through the throat of the nearest monster and relied on a fraction of a moment's sight when swinging on the next. Chaos erupted in a way that, in the moment, I loved.

We moved to the beat of hammers.

Nico and Leo had reached Khione. The latter boy was engulfed in flames. I fell in behind my brother and sliced the earthborn charging at his back.

This wasn't merely a game, though. Quite suddenly it was painfully obvious that she hadn't been out to kill us the first few times. And now she was.

Ice projectiles rocketed from thin air and at the demigods several at a time, from all directions. Blasts of ice kept them dancing from side to side. And then, of course, were the knives moving like their own whirlwinds.

But Leo was on fire.

"This is what happens to snow in Texas!" he yelled, smashing his flaming hammers into her skull. "IT – FREAKING – MELTS!"

"That's why I love Oswego," she purred, aiming for his throat. Her hand began to steam and she yanked it back.

Venti cackled and swooped down on us. Shadows blasted up, making Întuneric vibrate happily. Nearby, I could feel the heavy swinging of a cougar's claws on an ogre's clay body.

I whirled a werewolf, my sword's edge glimmering silver. It whined but pounced.

Too late, Nico was already on Khione's other side. I shoved it down and ran through shadows to follow.

"I had another question for you, Ghost King!" Khione yelled. "Which spirit should I influence next?"

He was like an evanescent shadow around her, his sword still clean, his skin without a scratch. Hardly even a distraction.

He's up to something again.

Leo was struggling to keep up. Sure, the fire on him worked, but the ice shards flying at my brother were another matter.

"Watch out!" I called as, pressed hard between an ogre and Ventus, a wolf slipped past my guard. Fury lit in my throat as I saw it lunge for my brother and I could feel the path of shadows – so fast and sleek – as they killed all three.

I smiled and ran for the next. Around me, the magic was coming to life.

There was a glint of bloody crimson to my right. Întuneric flashed out and slammed into another Ventus. Or, slammed through – the demon just smiled and soared straight over me.

The ground shook.

I yelped and hardly managed to stay standing. Leo's beat faltered. The red sunlight began to give to a lighter glow.

Hunter.

The rock spire was no longer rising, encased in glimmering gold. I saw her standing on the edge of the fountain with arms extended, shaking, a spell flying from her lips.

No way she could hold that for long.

I ripped my gaze away and kept hacking at monsters. My air was being choked as they closed in, aiming for us, for the tight knot of goddess and demigods at our backs. Even the pack was pressed against us – snarling mouths and rippling silver fur.

Leo cried out as something hit his shoulder. Moon snarled as, whatever it was, she took care of it.

Then five monsters broke from the group, sprinting for Hunter.

"No!" I cried. "Look out!"

My feet carried me to follow, dodging a hundred gauntlets' worth of sinister things coming my way; some lurked, some stalked, some moved like a spider's web of goo, slowing me down. I nearly was in the shadows.

Then I heard Nico's battle cry. A wolf had gotten to him.

Dangit. No time to think. He was closer; I turned back and sliced the offender in half with a lash from Întuneric at four yards, shadows resonating out from the strike.

Khione smiled and lunged for him, but he was gone, ducking close to the ground and sliding effortlessly out of the way. "Come here, Ghost King. Scared?"

"No. Patient."

"You didn't strike me as such, not naturally," she chuckled. I turned away from them to take down an ogre, but I could still hear her snickering. "Or do I matter that much to you?"

Far off now, the runaway demons had nearly reached Hunter.

Brook roared as an ogre managed to catch her shoulder with one of his boulders. She went down and was buried in a rush of monsters.

Then Piper was there, a long, triangular dagger ripping through a Ventus. Brook wriggled free and came back around with claws unsheathed.

Behind me, Nico made his move.

Shadows blasted out from his low retreat, a dozen blades thinner than paper. Two hands of Mythomagic cards were drawn.

Before he released them, there was a cry, signaling that the monsters had reached Hunter.

oOo

Nyx: Finally. I was really into it, but the last page just seems… idk, dead.

Nic: *narrows eyes* what are you suggesting of my character?

Nyx: Hunter? *smiles* not saying. Have fun w/ the cliffhanger, guys! Because I'm behind schedule and have a lot to do this weekend, Monday's update may be late, as well! Enjoy that thought. Or hate us for it and rant in review. Your choice.