Sapphire XXIII

Asher was a son of Ares. Violence, brutality and war were in his blood. Battle strategy was not. When he'd grabbed Sapphire he'd twisted her arm painfully behind her back, causing her to drop her sword and making it so that even without his sword at her throat she wouldn't have been able to escape without causing herself serious damage. His hand was around her wrist and her hand was pressed against his chest. Two of her fingers brushed the base of his throat.

'Know your enemy' was one of the first lessons they learned at Camp Half-Blood. That's what monster assault techniques and mythology classes were all about. It seemed that Asher had forgotten.

Sapphire wasn't wearing gloves.

The temperature behind Sapphire's head dropped as she sent icy flames to engulf Asher's neck. He yelled and pushed her away. She collided with Percy and they quickly had to navigate catching their balance without either of them getting stabbed. That didn't stop the nearly black fire.

Asher dropped his sword and clutched at his throat with both hands. Sapphire had never used her purple fire of death on a human before. She watched with morbid fascination as he beat at the flames with hands that turned black where he touched them. Not burned, necrotic. Asher wasn't dying all at once like a smaller animal or a monster would. Sapphire's fire was literally killing him by inches.

The flames spread across Asher's collarbone before he managed to smother all of them. They left behind skin and muscle that was as dead as the skin on his hands. His breathing was laboured and wheezing. That didn't stop him from glaring at Sapphire and stepping towards her as if to launch another attack.

Mist of the kind that lingered around Melione's cave rose from the ground, carrying with it the chill of the Underworld. It curled around Asher's feet and he dissolved. It took less than a second for him to disappear.

"I didn't know I could do that," Sapphire croaked.

Percy turned to her and his eyes widened. "Schist, Sapphire, your neck."

Sapphire touched her fingers to her throat and they came away wet with blood. Huh. She hadn't noticed Asher's sword slicing open her skin as he tried to get away. That must have been a good blade.

One of the Women in White floated towards them. "Excuse me, have you seen my son?"

"Uh, no. Sorry," Percy said. "Will, are you busy?"

"Little bit," Will shouted back. "Nico, why did it grow another head?!"

"Because multi-headed monsters are the worst!" Nico said.

He wasn't wrong.

"You were probably searching before you came here," Piper said to the Women in White. "Go back to doing that."

To Sapphire's surprise, all of the remaining ghosts left the warehouse. Either Piper's charmspeak was a lot stronger than the daughter of Aphrodite thought it was or Melinoe's control over the ghosts had weakened. Sapphire was betting on the charmspeak option. Piper had talked her out of a panic attack (okay, multiple panic attacks) while she was disassociating, so controlling spirits who were nearly fully present must have been easy. Then again, Sapphire didn't really know how charmspeak worked. That felt like an oversight.

"Sapphire, I'm going to stop the bleeding," Percy said. "It'll probably feel weird but all you have to do is breathe, okay?"

Sapphire didn't make a sound. She felt a very faint prickling sensation in her neck but it wasn't anything she'd call weird.

Oh, she was disassociating now, wasn't she?

Percy said to breathe. Breathing was good. She could do breathing.

There was a crash and then a loud whining of strained metal. A shadow carried Sapphire's dropped sword back to her hand as she, Piper and Percy turned towards the noise. The four-armed, two-headed shadow ghost monster that Nico, Leo and Will were fighting scrambled insect-like across the floor. It didn't move fast enough to avoid being crushed by the falling crane.

Nico walked over to the shadow splatter and poked it with his sword. "It's dead, finally. Gods-damned fear eaters."

Fear eaters were not on the standard list of monsters. Sapphire definitely needed a ghost identification handbook.

Predictably, the first thing Will did after Nico confirmed that all the ghosts were gone was scold Sapphire for getting her throat slit. Sapphire made sounds of agreement in all the right places and swallowed the nectar he gave her with only a little difficulty. While Will was getting it through her head that she'd come a hair's breadth from dying, the others took a cursory look around the warehouse for anything Asher might have left behind.

"Well, there's a lot of blood," Piper said.

"We should probably get Olivia in here," Percy said. "None of us have the training for this."

"You called?" Olivia asked.

Five war veterans and one daughter of Hades screamed. Olivia smirked.

"Gods of Olympus," Percy said. "Only Underworld kids have a right to be that scary."

"Seconded," Sapphire said. "Where's Amber?"

"On her way," Olivia said. She reached into her bag and was suddenly crouching next to Piper to pry samples of dried blood off the floor.

If Olivia was humming while she collected forensic evidence, none of them mentioned it.

Amber arrived a few seconds after Olivia. She collided with Sapphire as she changed from bird to human. It took a while for Sapphire to convince her that she was fine. The blood drying on her skin probably wasn't helping her case.

"I called Jordan," Olivia said. "The girl's fine and he's on his way back here with a team, so it's time for you to scram."

Percy shot her a grin. "Got it, scramming. Let's go, guys."

Dad and Uncle Nelson had spent the afternoon stress baking. There were more than enough baked goods to satisfy demigod post-battle bottomless stomachs but there definitely wasn't enough room for sixteen people and a wolfdog in the kitchen. Sapphire escaped to the third floor with a plate of cookies and volume one of a Red Hood comic series that she'd stolen from Shelton's room. It wasn't long before Leo joined her. He sat down next to her on the air-filled mattress she'd pushed against the wall.

"How are you doing?" Leo asked.

Sapphire shrugged. "Been better. Been worse."

Leo made a sound of understanding and stole a cookie. Sapphire leaned closer to him. She didn't mind running Underworld cold, but after the week they'd had the warmth radiating from Leo was more than welcome.

"Asher isn't dead," Sapphire said. "I almost killed him but he's not dead."

"Should I be the biggest cliché and ask how that makes you feel?" Leo asked.

"It's only a cliché if you're a psychiatrist." Sapphire sighed. "I don't want him to hurt anyone else. If I stop him, does it matter how I feel about it?"

Leo was probably the wrong person to ask. He'd never killed another demigod. (Percy had. So had Nico. Plenty of campers who'd fought in the Second Titan War had blood on their hands, but that was during a war.)

"It doesn't have to be you," Leo said.

Sapphire shrugged again. That was true in theory but in practice? Gods, she didn't know.

Leo broke the cookie he'd taken and offered half to her. She took it.

"So, Tory's eyes totally glow sometimes, right?" Leo said. "Like, bright blue."

"You saw that too?" Sapphire asked. "I thought I was imagining it. It's not magic and she reads as human."

Leo nodded. "Did you notice that when her eyes are glowing she and Shelton and their friends will make facial expressions that don't make sense unless they're having a totally different conversation?"

Now that he mentioned it.

"Coop is really expressive," Sapphire said. She'd say he was more similar to Akio, the wolf who hung around the woods at Camp Half-Blood, than a normal canine, and nearly everyone at camp was convinced Akio was Apollo's kid (long story).

"Your father said to follow the wolves to find a killer," Leo said. "We listened to Tory and Shelton and we found a killer."

They looked at each other.

"You know," Sapphire said. "Maybe we should double-check if someone's written a book about them."

They could also confront them, but that seemed kind of rude. They had tracked down a serial killer together.

They finished the last two cookies. Despite the sugar, it wasn't long before Sapphire started to yawn.

"Will's totally going to ground me if I keep reading instead of going to sleep, isn't he?" Sapphire said. It wasn't really a question.

"Only if he finds out," Leo said.

The odds of Will not finding out were slim to none. Sapphire had been on the receiving end of his lack of sleep will kill you speech more times than she could count. On the other hand, if she tried to take a nap now there was a fairly good chance she'd crash and sleep through the night. If that happened Will wouldn't have a good reason to use his disappointed doctor voice.

Also, her eyes were already closing.

"Guess I'll sleep then," Sapphire said.

Leo gave her a one-armed hug. "I'll be here."

"Night." Sapphire rested her head on Leo's shoulder and fell into a dreamless sleep.

FINIS

A/n: The next (and probably final) story in this series will start being posted in January 2021.

Yours in demigodishness,

Cynder2013