The next few days were torture, just like Tantalus wanted.

First there was Tyson moving into the Poseidon cabin, giggling to himself every fifteen seconds and saying, "Percy is my brother?" like he'd just won the lottery.

"Aw, Tyson," Percy would say. "It's not that simple."

But there was no explaining it to him. He was in heaven. And Percy . . . he seemed embarrassed, not that I blamed him.

His father, the all-powerful Poseidon, had gotten moony-eyed for some nature spirit, and Tyson had been the result. I'd read the myths about Cyclopes, and I knew that they were often Poseidon's children. But I don't think Percy really processed that this made them his . . . family until he had Tyson living with him in the next bunk.

And then there were the comments from the other campers. Suddenly, he wasn't Percy Jackson, the cool guy who'd retrieved Zeus's lightning bolt last summer. Now he was Percy Jackson, the poor schmuch with the ugly monster for a brother.

"He's not my real brother!" he protested whenever Tyson wasn't around. "He's more like a half-brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like . . . a half-brother twice removed, or something."

Nobody bought it.

I tried to make him feel better by suggesting we team up for the chariot race to take our minds off our problems. Don't get me wrong – we both hated Tantalus and we were worried sick about camp – but we didn't know what to do about it. Until we could come up with some brilliant plan to save Thalia's tree, we figured we might as well go along with the races. After all, my mom, Athena, had invented the chariot, and Percy's dad had created horses. Together we would own that track.

One morning Percy and I were sitting by the canoe lake sketching chariot designs when some jokers from Aphrodite's cabin walked by and asked if Percy needed to borrow some eyeliner for his eye … "Oh, sorry, eyes."

As they walked away laughing, I grumbled, "Just ignore them, Percy. It isn't your fault you have a monster for a brother."

"He's not my brother!" Percy snapped. "And he's not a monster, either!"

I raised my eyebrows. "Hey, don't get mad at me! And technically, he is a monster."

"Well, you gave him permission to enter the camp."

"Because it was the only way to save your life! I mean … I'm sorry, Percy, I didn't expect Poseidon to claim him. Cyclopes are the most deceitful, treacherous –"

"He is not! What have you got against Cyclopes, anyway?"

I felt my ears burn a little. "Just forget it," I said, changing the subject. "Now, the axle for this chariot –"

"You're treating him like he's this horrible thing," Percy said. "He saved my life."

I threw down my pencil and stood. If Percy wanted to be a hypocritical piece of kelp, then fine. "Then maybe you should design a chariot with him."

"Maybe I should."

"Fine!"

"Fine!" I stormed off, feeling even worse than before.

In the next couple of days, I helped in different activities and made myself take the harder jobs to keep my mind off my problems. It didn't really work. After lunch, I kept up the work on the chariot for my cabin with the help of one of my siblings, Aaron. He was filipino and a few years older than me, though he was friends with Beckendorf so he picked up a couple of things. Even if we didn't have Percy's help, we didn't need him to win. And in the evenings, I did border patrol. Even though Tantalus had insisted we forget trying to protect the camp, some of the campers had quietly kept it up, working out a schedule during our free times.

I sat near the edges of the woods and watched the dryads come and go, singing to the dying pine tree. Satyrs brought their reed pipes and played nature magic songs, and for a while the pine needles seemed to get fuller. The flowers on the hill smelled a little sweeter and the grass looked greener. But as soon as the music stopped, the sickness crept back into the air. The whole hill seemed to be infected, dying from the poison that had sunk into the tree's roots. The longer I sat there, the angrier I got.

Luke had done this. I remembered his sly smile, the dragon-claw scar across his face. He'd pretended to be my friend, and the whole time he'd been Kronos's number-one servant. I twirled my dagger in my hand, Luke had given me this. I had contemplated throwing it away before, but I didn't really use any other weapons, and besides, maybe there was a deeper meaning why Luke had done this all.

The morning of the race was hot and humid. Fog lay low on the ground like sauna steam. Millions of birds were roosting in the trees – fat grey-and-white pigeons, except they didn't coo like regular pigeons. They made this annoying metallic screeching sound that reminded me of submarine radar.

The racetrack had been built in a grassy field between the archery range and the woods. Hephaestus's cabin had used the bronze bulls, which were completely tame since they'd had their heads smashed in, to plough an oval track in a matter of minutes. There were rows of stone steps for the spectators – Tantalus, the satyrs, a few dryads and all of the campers who weren't participating. Mr D didn't show. He never got up before ten o'clock.

"Right!" Tantalus announced as the teams began to assemble. A naiad had brought him a big platter of pastries, and as Tantalus spoke his right hand chased a chocolate eclair across the judge's table. "You all know the rules. A quarter-mile track. Twice around to win. Two horses per chariot. Each team will consist of a driver and a fighter. Weapons are allowed. Dirty tricks are expected. But try not to kill anybody!"

Tantalus smiled at us like we were all naughty children. "Any killing will result in harsh punishment. No s'mores at the campfire for a week! Now ready your chariots!"

Beckendorf led the Hephaestus team onto the track. They had a sweet ride made of bronze and iron – even the horses, which were magical automatons like the Colchis bulls. I had no doubt that their chariot had all kinds of mechanical traps and more fancy options than a fully loaded Maserati.

The Ares chariot was blood-red, and pulled by two grisly horse skeletons. Clarisse climbed aboard with a batch of javelins, spiked balls, caltrops and a bunch of other nasty toys. Apollo's chariot was trim and graceful and completely gold, pulled by two beautiful palominos. Their fighter was armed with a bow, though he had promised not to shoot regular pointed arrows at the opposing drivers.

Hermes's chariot was green and kind of old-looking, as if it hadn't been out of the garage in years. It didn't look like anything special, but it was manned by the Stoll brothers, and I shuddered to think what dirty tricks they'd schemed up.

That left two chariots: one driven by Percy, and the other by me. Before the race began, he tried to approach me and tell me about his dream. I perked up when Percy mentioned Grover, but when he told me what he'd said, I started to get suspicious.

"You're trying to distract me," I decided. "What? No, I'm not!"

"Oh, right! Like Grover would just happen to stumble across the one thing that could save the camp."

"What do you mean?"

I rolled my eyes. "Go back to your chariot, Percy."

"I'm not making this up. He's in trouble, Annabeth."

I hesitated. Percy wouldn't normally try to distract me, that was too elaborate plan for him. but despite our occasional fights, we'd been through a lot together. And I didn't want anything bad to happen to Grover.

"Percy, an empathy link is so hard to do. I mean, it's more likely you really were dreaming."

"The Oracle," Percy said. "We could consult the Oracle."

I frowned but before I could answer, the conch horn sounded.

"Charioteers!" Tantalus called. "To your mark!"

"We'll talk later," I told Percy, "after I win."

As I was walking back to my chariot, I noticed how many more pigeons were in the trees now – screeching like crazy, making the whole forest rustle. Nobody else seemed to be paying them much attention, but they made me nervous. Their beaks glinted strangely. Their eyes seemed shinier than regular birds.

Now, if you've never seen a Greek chariot, it's built for speed, not safety or comfort. It's basically a wooden basket, open at the back, mounted on an axle between two wheels. The driver stands up the whole time, and you can feel every bump in the road. The carriage is made of such light wood that if you wipe out making the hairpin turns at either end of the track, you'll probably tip over and crush both the chariot and yourself.

I took the reins and maneuvered the chariot to the starting line. Aaron jumped into the chariot and gave me a wild grin. "We're gonna to win."

I sometimes like to argue that Aaron was one of the more crazier campers, but most campers that weren't children of Athena disagreed with me.

As the chariots lined up, more shiny-eyed pigeons gathered in the woods. They were screeching so loudly the campers in the stands were starting to take notice, glancing nervously at the trees, which shivered under the weight of the birds. Tantalus didn't look concerned, but he did have to speak up to be heard over the noise.

"Charioteers!" he shouted. "Attend your mark!" He waved his hand and the starting signal dropped.

The chariots roared to life. Hooves thundered against the dirt. The crowd cheered. Almost immediately there was a loud nasty crack! I looked back in time to see the Apollo chariot flip over. The Hermes chariot had rammed into it – maybe by mistake, maybe not. The riders were thrown free, but their panicked horses dragged the golden chariot diagonally across the track.

The Hermes team, Travis and Connor Stoll, were laughing at their good luck, but not for long. The Apollo horses crashed into theirs, and the Hermes chariot flipped too, leaving a pile of broken wood and four rearing horses in the dust. Two chariots down in the first six meters. I loved this sport.

We were way ahead of Ares and Percy's chariots. I was already making my turn around the first post, Aaron grinned and waving at Percy and Tyson, shouting, "See ya!"

I turned my attention back to the front. The background noises slowly turned muffled and it was just me and my chariot, driving our way to victory.

"Birds!" Aaron cried suddenly, making me lose concentration for a second. "What?" We were whipping along so fast it was hard to hear or see anything, but Aaron pointed towards the woods and I saw what he was worried about. The pigeons had risen from the trees. They were spiralling like a huge tornado, heading towards the track.

No big deal, I told myself. They're just pigeons. I turned my concentration to the race again.

I looked behind me again, and found that Percy was now only three meters behind us. Aaron wasn't smiling now. He pulled a javelin from his collection and took aim at them. He was about to throw when we heard the screaming. The pigeons were swarming – thousands of them dive-bombing the spectators in the stands, attacking the other chariots.

Beckendorf was mobbed. His fighter tried to bat the birds away but he couldn't see anything. The chariot veered off course and ploughed through the strawberry fields, the mechanical horses steaming.

In the Ares chariot, Clarisse barked an order to her fighter, who quickly threw a screen of camouflage netting over their basket. The birds swarmed around it, pecking and clawing at the fighter's hands as he tried to hold up the net, but Clarisse just gritted her teeth and kept driving. Her skeletal horses seemed immune to the distraction. The pigeons pecked uselessly at their empty eye sockets and flew through their rib cages, but the stallions kept right on running.

The spectators weren't so lucky. The birds were slashing at any bit of exposed flesh, driving everyone into a panic. Now that the birds were closer, it was clear they weren't normal pigeons. Their eyes were beady and evil-looking. Their beaks were made of bronze, and, judging from the yelps of the campers, they must've been razor sharp.

"Stymphalian birds!" I yelled and slowed down and pulled my chariot alongside Percy's. "They'll strip everyone to bones if we don't drive them away!"

"Tyson," Percy said, "we're turning around!"

"Going the wrong way?" he asked.

"Always," I grumbled, but I steered the chariot towards the stands. Percy rode right next to me.

I shouted, "Heroes, to arms!" But I wasn't sure anyone could hear me over the screeching of the birds and the general chaos.

I held my reins in one hand and managed to draw my dagger as a wave of birds dived at my face, their metal beaks snapping. I slashed them out of the air and they exploded into dust and feathers, but there were still millions of them left. One nailed me in the back end and I almost jumped straight out of the chariot.

Percy wasn't having much better luck. The closer we got to the stands, the thicker the cloud of birds became. Some of the spectators were trying to fight back. The Athena campers were calling for shields. The archers from Apollo's cabin brought out their bows and arrows, ready to slay the menace, but with so many campers mixed in with the birds, it wasn't safe to shoot.

"Too many!" Percy yelled to me, as if I didn't have eyes. "How do you get rid of them?"

I stabbed at a pigeon with my knife. "Heracles used noise! Brass bells! He scared them away with the most horrible sound he could –" My eyes got wide. "Percy … Chiron's collection!"

"You think it'll work?" I handed Aaron the reins and leaped from my chariot into Percy's. I smirked at his facial expression. "To the Big House! It's our only chance!"

Clarisse had just pulled across the finish line, completely unopposed, and seemed to notice for the first time how serious the bird problem was. When she saw us driving away, she yelled, "You're running? The fight is here, cowards!"

She drew her sword and charged for the stands. Percy urged his horses into a gallop. The chariot rumbled through the strawberry fields, across the volleyball pit, and lurched to a halt in front of the Big House. Percy and I ran inside, tearing down the hallway to Chiron's apartment. His boom box was still on his nightstand. So were his favorite CDs. Percy grabbed the most repulsive one he could find, I snatched the boom box, and together we ran back outside.

Down at the track, the chariots were in flames. Wounded campers ran in every direction, with birds shredding their clothes and pulling out their hair, while Tantalus chased breakfast pastries around the stands, every once in a while yelling, "Everything's under control! Not to worry!" We pulled up to the finish line.

I got the boom box ready and prayed the batteries weren't dead. I pressed PLAY and started up Chiron's favorite – the All-Time Greatest Hits of Dean Martin. Suddenly the air was filled with violins and a bunch of guys moaning in Italian. The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out. Then they abandoned the track altogether and flew skywards in a huge dark wave.

"Now!" I shouted. "Archers!"

With clear targets, Apollo's archers had flawless aim. Most of them could nock five or six arrows at once. Within minutes, the ground was littered with dead bronze-beaked pigeons, and the survivors were a distant trail of smoke on the horizon. The camp was saved, but the wreckage wasn't pretty. Most of the chariots had been completely destroyed. Almost everyone was wounded, bleeding from multiple bird pecks.

The kids from Aphrodite's cabin were screaming because their hairdos had been ruined and their clothes pooped on.

"Bravo!" Tantalus said, but he wasn't looking at me or Percy. "We have our first winner!" He walked to the finish line and awarded the golden laurels for the race to a stunned-looking Clarisse. Then he turned and smiled at me. "And now to punish the troublemakers who disrupted this race."

A/N: I hope y'all enjoyed this chapter! And again, I'm trying to add more POC characters when I can but it's a bit hard to.