"Where were you the night we played Capture The Flag?" Nico demanded.
The twelve-year-old girl shrunk away from him, looking scared. "I was in the woods."
"You weren't supposed to be in the woods." Nico growled. "So why were you there?"
"I…wanted to get a close-up view of the game."
"I know you're lying," Nico warned. "I'm not in the mood for games."
"Fine." The girl turned slightly pink. "I was meeting Martin."
Nico stared at her for a second, incredulous, then groaned and turned away.
"Why do you care anyway?" The girl looked cross.
"I don't," Nico muttered. "See you around."
The second girl at the beach was splashing around with her friends, laughing and shouting.
"No way am I setting foot in the water," Nico grunted.
"Can't swim?" Thalia asked.
"Poseidon won't like it." he explained.
"I've swam before." Thalia said.
"You're the lieutenant of Artemis." Nico stared at the girl as she disappeared briefly beneath the waves before reappearing again. "And you're a girl."
"So?"
Nico gave her a glance. "Never mind."
Thalia frowned, then turned her attention back to the girl. "I'll get her."
"Why were you in the woods?" Thalia demanded.
The girl eyed Thalia warily, seawater dripping down her chin. The silence stretched.
"Answer me." Thalia reached out to grab her by the throat. Nico blocked her.
"Don't."
"Touch her and you're dead." The girl's friends had gathered behind her, backed up by several other campers who'd been drawn in by the sight of the hunter dragging the struggling girl up the beach. Thalia bristled, but while she was sure she could handle them, as Artemis's lieutenant she was under pressure to set the example by sticking to the rules. Tensions remained high between campers and hunters and in the distance she could see a few of her hunters starting to take notice of the confrontation. If she started a fight now the whole beach would pile in, resulting in another brawl that could easily turn bloody, judging by the campers' hands creeping towards their pockets.
"Are you gonna stare at me all day?" The girl, emboldened by the campers' support, bristled back.
Nico stepped between them, signalling Thalia to step back with a light tug on her shoulder.
"I'll give you once chance to drop your attitude, or I'll drop it for you." he told her.
The girl suddenly looked unsure. Thalia, she knew, was bound by the rules, but Nico di Angelo was a completely different picture. Every camper had heard of how he'd almost single-handedly captured the hunters' flag on Friday's game, taking down almost a quarter of the hunters in the process. Unlike Thalia he didn't have a reputation for following rules and the girl was scared.
"Hey!" The girl's boyfriend appeared, pushing his way through the crowd. He barged into Nico, shoving him to the ground. "What do you think you're-" He trailed off as he caught sight of the skull ring on Nico's finger, suddenly realising who he was. He backed up quickly, swallowing hard. "I didn't mean to…"
Nico picked himself up, livid. "You wanna mess with me?"
The boy shook with fear. He didn't dare respond.
Nico turned back to the girl. "Well?"
The girl shifted her weight. She looked like she was about to respond, then glanced at Thalia and remained silent.
"What…were…you…doing…in…the…woods?" Nico took a step forward, putting them nose-to-nose.
"All right, stop." An older guy stepped forward, pulling the girl away from him. Nico recognised him as one of the Hermes campers. "We wanted to sabotage the hunters' game. That's the big secret."
Thalia eyed him warily. "That so?"
"You wanna hook me to a polygraph?" The guy stared back, unflinching. "Just let her off. She's thirteen, for Olympus's sake. It's just a prank."
Thalia swore in disbelief, raising her eyes to the sky. Nico threw his hands up. "You're all bloody wasting my time."
He drew his sword and everybody backed away, eyes wide. Nico slashed his sword through the air and disappeared in a swirl of black.
Thalia sighed as she trudged back to the hunters' setup, ignoring the campers' stares at her back. Two full weeks since the attack and they weren't any closer to solving the mystery.
One of her white wolves came running up to her, dodging campers' attempts to pet it as it raced across the beach. It skidded to a stop in front of her, yipping in a frenzy.
"Not now, Snowy," Thalia sighed.
A hawk screech reached her ears. Thalia's head snapped up. Above her, the bird circled twice before landing on her shoulder.
Artemis's hawks only called when they sensed trouble. Snowy yipped again and this time Thalia understood.
"Oh, no."
More wolves came rushing down the beach toward the hunters' blanket in a cacophony of howls, followed by a few screaming hawks. Thalia's blood ran cold as she saw the hunters drop what they were doing. Some of them had a look of horror on their faces. Others started to run inland.
"Thalia!" Piper splashed through the water towards her. "What's going on?"
"We need to get to the woods." Even as Thalia spoke her heart sank. "Right now."
Thalia crashed through the woods in a blur of black, sacrificing stealth for breakneck speed. Sweat poured under her hooded jacket. Her breath came in ragged gasps, yet for all her effort she knew it was too late.
She cursed herself for being so stupid. An assassin was at large, and they'd left all the wounded hunters alone, without weapons, in the middle of the forest. They had played right into the assassin's hands.
Branches bent out of her way as the nature spirits sensed her distress. Trees and bushes seemed to shift, forming a clear path into the centre of the woods. An eerie wailing noise reached her ears; the forest sending out a distress call. Thalia poured on the speed.
A scream rang out from ahead of her. The sound seemed to linger in the air.
"No!" Thalia gasped. Her lungs burning, she forced herself on.
Lanesra burst out of the undergrowth ahead of her, her swimsuit torn and shredded from running through the forest. "Thalia!" she screamed. "Three o' clock!"
Thalia threw herself to the ground, crashing into a large bush. A moment later an explosion rocked the ground, tossing her into the air. Thalia's body went on autopilot, twisting catlike through the air to land on her feet, and in her mind she was desperately hoping that the assassin was not skilled enough to shoot her in midair.
The assassin was skilled enough. An arrow flicked out of the trees toward her, but it's path was slightly off because Lanesra had stood and flung a rock towards the assassin's position. Pain exploded across Thalia's scalp as the arrow sliced across her head. Part of her ponytail unravelled as blood ran down her hair. The assassin batted the rock out of the air and fired again. Lanesra went down with a pained cry, two arrows buried in her gut.
Thalia howled with rage as she surged to her feet, shield up. Another explosive arrow struck her shield, engulfing her in a cloud of flames, but Thalia remained standing, anger dulling the pain as heat seared her skin. As the fire and smoke cleared, she straightened and threw her spear with all her strength. Before it could hit the target she had drawn one of her knives and sent it after the spear.
The assassin deflected both attacks easily, but the distraction had allowed Thalia to close with her remaining knife. The assassin fired again, but Thalia had built momentum and gritted her teeth, forcing herself forward against the force of the explosion. Thalia emerged from the flames like an avenging angel of death, the gorgon image of Medusa gleaming in the centre of her shield.
A weighted net crashed into her, knocking her to the ground. An arrow deflected off her shield as she curled up Spartan style behind it. Another pierced her leg before she could tuck it in. Thalia screamed as she was hit by another explosive arrow, the impact hammering her against the ground. Dazed and deafened by the massive blow, she waited, expecting death.
Instead she heard a slightly out-of-breath yell as Percy Jackson came puffing and panting onto the scene in his swimming trunks and flip flops, covered in sand from the beach. The assassin fired a net at him and he cut it in half with Riptide. He thrust his sword at the assassin and the ground shook, a powerful jet of water erupting right below the branch the assassin was perched in and throwing her into the air. The assassin crashed through the trees, hitting the ground with a big thump. She staggered to her feet, slightly dazed.
Percy threw his sword. The assassin deflected it easily, then looked surprised as Percy pulled his pen once more from his pocket. A short distance behind him Piper and Annabeth crashed through the forest towards them, while from behind her came the unmistakable sound of galloping hooves; Chiron the centaur, almost certainly armed. The assassin pulled a smoke bomb from her belt and threw it at her feet. Black smoke exploded out, engulfing the forest in darkness. By the time Percy, Chiron and Annabeth converged at its centre, the assassin was gone.
If any of the campers had been intending for a peaceful afternoon, their hopes were dashed when the first of Chiron's wind spirit messengers arrived with orders.
Teams of campers marched into the woods in full armour, searching for the assassin and the remainder of the scattered hunters. Their armour shone in the afternoon sun as they combed the forest with grim faces under their helmets. Every one of them had heard of what had happened earlier that day, and they held no illusions about the threat the assassin posed. They walked through the forest with drawn bows and unsheathed swords, ready to defend themselves at the first sign of the black-clad killer.
Ten hunters had been in the camp in the woods, unable to join the beach party due to assorted injuries. All of them were found dead with black arrows shot through their necks. The bodies of five others who had run back from the beach were found a short distance away. The assassin had killed them as they came running in.
Five of the hunters were still missing by the time evening fell. The whole of Camp Half-Blood spent the rest of the night searching for them, until, at dawn, three of the hunters together with Annabeth, Jason and Piper headed to the hunters' tomb.
Where the shrine had been, they found a smoking crater, littered with debris and strewn with the scorched bodies of the missing hunters. The entire shrine had been destroyed.