I didn't ask to be a half-blood.
Or a hero, or a demigod. Whatever you want to call it, it's terrible. It's dangerous. It's scary. It's deadly. It gets the people close to you killed. All things normal people try to avoid. Unfortunately, I'm not normal. None of us are.

If you are a normal kid, reading this because you want a story, great. Read on. I hope my life is entertaining enough for you.

But if you aren't normal, if you've always had a sneaking suspicion, a small part of you that thinks you're different, stop reading. You might be one of us. And once you know, they'll come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name is Celeste Castellan.

I'm fourteen years old. Until the end of last summer, I was a normal kid. Or so I thought.
My story starts in New York. Now, technically my story starts in Connecticut, where I was born. But nothing interesting happened to me there except for… Nothing interesting happened there. So, the story starts in New York.

I woke up under some bridge I never bothered learning the name of and promptly rolled away. An old, smelly man had fallen asleep right next to me. Now, this is bound to happen if you sleep outside, but it still is a bit of a shock. I managed to detangle myself from my stolen (borrowed) sleeping bag, left a wad of cash next to the old man, and headed home to grab some breakfast.

Now, you may be wondering, why? Why, if I have money and a home, would I sleep outside? Allow me to explain. I don't have a 'home', I left my 'home' in Connecticut. I have a house. A foster house. It might as well be an orphanage. It's a mansion full of a rich couple's 'feel-good projects.' I'm one of those. Basically, a rich couple wanted to feel good about themselves, so they adopted around 10 kids. Why? I don't know. I'm not rich, and probably never will be, so I don't understand their thought process and probably never will. They're out of the house 90% of the time, the other 10% their sleeping, and they ignore us 100% of the time, so I don't exactly feel bad giving their money away. And I don't want to sleep in their house.

I made it to the front of the large brick mansion and pushed the old rusty key into the lock. I prayed no one would be downstairs to see me, but God (or gods. I have always been an open-minded person.) did not answer my prayers. Stephanie was downstairs.

No offense to anyone named Stephanie, but I will always hold a grudge against anyone with that name. She is terrible. Despite being an orphan herself, she has hated me since I walked through those doors the first time. Right now, she was cooking breakfast. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail that fell over her shoulder as she scrambled some eggs.

"Oh good! You're back." She said this loudly and with a smile for the benefit of the seven-year old's watching cartoons in the other room, then, quieter, in a much more malicious tone she said, "Rob any good banks while you were out?" I hated everything about her. Her sickeningly sweet smile, her perfect grades, the way she mothered everyone just because she was the oldest.
I grit my teeth. "No." My voice was calm. I hope. I blocked out the rest of her words as I grabbed a bagel from the counter and headed back for the door.
My mental walls failed when her cheerful voice broke through and said, "Don't forget Ms. Knoll is coming today to check on you!" Great. Ms. Knoll, the social worker, the woman who had somehow managed to follow me here from Connecticut, was coming to check on me. I slammed the door.

About the 'robbing banks' comment from Stephanie. Well, for one, you should never trust a word that comes from her mouth. But it did have some truth to it. I do have a bit of a criminal record. Not my fault (mostly) I just happen to often be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like today,

I was walking around, eating my bagel when I noticed a dog. Now, normally a dog is a very normal thing to see in New York, but this one was the size of a semi-truck. I froze. It turned to look at me. One look at its eyes and I was brought right back. It looked just like the thing that had killed my parents.

I was coming home from school and I opened the door to a wall of brown fur. A little out of the ordinary. The wall of fur shrunk beneath my eyes and became a brown-coated wolf. It charged inside, toward the kitchen. I ran after it. I turned the kitchen corner and found the beast with a bloody maw. It turned, and I saw my mother's body lying limp on the ground, completely lifeless. The monster turned and ran past me, right up the stairs. I followed it. I was met with the same sight of my father's corpse. The wolf snarled at me, then disappeared into the shadows. I ran for a phone, but the house erupted in flames.

I was snapped out of my flashback by a scream. The dog was drooling, towering over a woman with a stroller. Blood roared in my ears. I would not let this beast kill another innocent person. For some reason, my hand moved toward my neck, and I let it. I grasped the sword charm on the necklace from my father, and pulled, hard. I expected it to just snap off my neck, but it did something much weirder. There was a flash of light and I was holding something. The mutt was going in for the kill when I yelled "Hey!" Make yourself a target. Great idea. The hound reared around and bound toward me. I was about to become lunch when I swung the thing in my hand. The wolf disappeared, and yellow dust swirled around me.

Then the siren sounded. I was snapped out of my adrenaline rush by a voice. "Get her knife!" Knife? I looked down, and I was holding a sharp object, but it was not a knife. It was a sword. How could he not see that? Another cop ran over and grabbed my arms. The sword clattered out of my hands as he pushed me against the wall. My hands were cuffed behind my back, and I was shoved in the back of a cop car. The cruiser took off, and I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into.