So, here's chapter 8! I struggled through writer's block this whole chapter, which is why it took so long. But I'm back in the game now, so the next ones should come pretty soon! I'm thinking up shockingly, amazingly evil things to do to Annabeth so I can wreak havoc on the Percabeth! Hahahahaha! Probabaly not the next chapter, a couple more. Anyway, if you like, review please. I haven't gotten a review in ages! Even if you've already reviewed my previous chapters, let me know you're still following! Disclaimer: Don't own PJO. Just like to be evil to them.

Ch. 8

If I was a polite person, I would say that I was not happy with Zane for grouping me with the people he did. But I am not a polite person.

So I can say that Zane was a total asshole for dooming me to the next two weeks trying not to get killed by my psycho underdog companions, all of whom were either antisocial or officially dubbed obsessed. And by the time Zane showed us the portal that we would be guarding, I was still too busy wondering what I had done to deserve this to be furious.

"This," Zane says, motioning to a bare brick wall across from Pier 81, hidden in a grungy alleyway, "is your portal."

"And how's that supposed to work?" I ask harshly before anyone else can reply, putting my hands on my hips. Zane glances at me, then kneels down and pries a loose pebble of concrete from the sidewalk. He tosses it at the wall. Instead of bouncing off the brick, as I expect, the bit of concrete vanishes into the wall with a soft hiss, and a plunk as it hits the ground on the other side of the portal, in Camp Half-Blood.

"Like that," Zane says calmly, turning to look at us. "Now, the next demigod is due in about twenty minutes up from the financial district, by taxicab, thanks to a minor setback. Your job for the next two weeks, considering you are not wounded and forced to pull out of action, is to make sure that no demigods get through this portal. Where you camp is entirely up to you, as is providing necessities such as food and shelter. Every other day, I'll send out messengers to you to relay information and keep updated with your accomplishments. Any questions?"

"Yes." I step forward. "You know my question."

Zane regards me for several seconds as I stare accusingly at him. "You know, Christine, I've learned from experience that sometimes success comes in the most unusual forms. Give it a chance, and I think you might be surprised."

Well, that cleared things up.

"Good luck," Zane says to us, stepping around me. "You'll need it." With that, he jogs out of the alleyway and disappears into thin air, leaving me with four weirdoes, a bare brick wall, and a desire for him to come back so I can kill him.

After several long seconds of silence, while we all stand around and try not to meet each other's gaze, I sigh. "Alright, people, let's get this show on the road. I say we need to intercept that cab. The longer they've been running, the less of a fight they'll put up when we catch them."

Xelta the dracaenae gives me a pitiful look. "There are hundreds of taxicabs in this area. We'll never be able to single out one of them, let alone the right one," she says commandingly. "I say we let them come to us. If we ambush them right here, they'll never get away."

See, this is why dracaenae are never put in charge of an operation. I bare my teeth at Xelta. "If we let that cab pull right up here, the satyr guide will smell us. You have to be close to attempt an ambush, and if we're anywhere within a hundred feet of this portal, that satyr will know we're here. Also, if we camp out right here, on the portal, the demigods will know we've found it, and might stop trying to get people through. If we get them on the run from a distance, they'll get worn out faster and nobody will know we've located the portal." I glare at my companions. "Even if we do miss a few because we rat them out from a ways away, that's better than having them realize that this portal is guarded. Got it?"

Xelta glares at me, and I half expect her to attack. But then she sees the reason in my idea, and backs down.

"That's what I thought," I say. "Now, we need a plan. I think we need at least two people to stay on the street corner, in case they do manage to get this far after we've gotten them out of the cab. The other three can find the cab and get them on the run."

"Yes, but how do you intend to find this cab?" Xelta asks scathingly, still reluctant to let me win the argument.

"Well, since you're so clever, why don't you figure it out?" I counter.

Kodiak Trenton, who had been shifting his weight from foot to foot the whole time, speaks up. "I could find it," he says quietly, not meeting our eyes.

We all turn to stare at him, with the exception of Fiona Alexander, who is studying the sky, her head tilted back and mouth hanging wide open. She apparently has no idea what is going on.

"You could find it, Trenton?" Xelta asks incredulously. "I highly doubt that."

"Yes I could," Kodiak insists. "I have vision about twenty times better than the average human. If I could find a place where I could see every cab that went by, I know I could find them." He ruffles his bat wings absent mindedly, still not meeting anyone's gaze.

I study him. "Are you sure?" Xelta makes an outraged noise deep in her throat.

He glances briefly up at me before looking down at the ground again. "Yeah. I'm sure."

I look at Katrina, who nods. "Alright then, troops, lets move out. Kodiak and Katrina, you two come with me. We'll find their cab from the rooftops. Xelta and. . ." I look at Fiona Alexander. She's still fascinated with the clouds, which, I notice, are threatening to rain on us soon.

"Fiona Alexander!" I bark loudly, trying to see if she can understand me. She doesn't respond. I frown and try again, thinking that maybe she'll respond to a direct order. "Fiona Alexander! Would you please go post yourself on the 11th Avenue street corner, that way?" I point in the direction I want her to go. To my pleasure she jumps, like I've given her an electrical shock, and stares at me with one eye while the other one rolls back in her head.

I continue to give her orders, hoping she can process all of this information. "Once you are on your corner, will you please keep a watch out for the demigod and satyr we are supposed to be chasing? If they go by you, attack them. Do you understand?"

Fiona stares at me for several seconds, then breaks out into a huge Cheshire cat grin, filed teeth and all. Her eyes cross. She skips erratically by me (I jump back several feet), out of the alley, and off towards the end of the street, humming to herself and staggering around, but still maintaining a relatively straight line. I quietly hope that the cops don't try to pick her up for way underage drug use.

"Well, alright," I say, regaining my composure. "You," I tell Xelta, "can keep watch opposite Fiona, on the other corner. That way, either way they come around from, somebody will catch them. Right?"

Xelta splutters furiously. "You actually think that mentally disturbed little creature will do anything useful? And who gave you the authority to order me around? If anyone should be giving orders, it should--"

"It should be who? You? Who gave you the authority to order me around, just to ask? It certainly isn't my fault you got stuck in this godsforsaken alley. If you have a problem with the rest of us, you can certainly leave. We'll be better off one person less than with a complainer on out backs the whole time." I've morphed into wolf form by now, and am staring down Xelta, my nose mere inches from hers.

She holds my gaze for several seconds, but finally steps away. Without a word, but absolutely vibrating with rage, she slithers around me and down the street to assume her guard position.

"Glad we all agree on that," I call after her, shaking my head. She slithers away faster.

"Let's go," I tell Kodiak and Katrina, who had been watching with their eyebrows raised. Standing on a large dumpster for extra height, I am able to leap up onto the roof of the nearest building, and Katrina follows in the same way. Kodiak, however, merely spreads his huge bat wings (he has a wingspan of about fifteen feet) and flaps gracefully up to us. Leaping swiftly from rooftop to rooftop in a way I am very familiar with from my days on the streets, we are able to travel quickly to a spot near Horatio St. where we can see every car that approaches from the financial district. Katrina and I skid to a halt several feet from the edge of the roof, scattering pigeons, panting with exertion.

Kodiak soars down silently from the sky, dark with the coming rain, and lands on the very brink of the rooftop, balancing easily. He kneels down and grips the roof's slight overhang, unfurling his wings just a bit, possibly for balance against the slight breeze. He leans forward so that he is practically hanging off the roof, kept in place only by his feet, braced on the roof's edge, and his grip on the overhang. Then he freezes on the spot, nothing moving except his eyes, which roam the cars below him.

I frown at him, wondering what the excuse for this odd position is when he could easily see just as well standing up, and then I realize: disguise. Under the protection of the Mist, he must appear to be a decorative gargoyle. They're often carved hunched over the edge of the roof they're placed on, wings slightly unfurled.

We still have about fifteen minutes until the estimated arrival of the demigod, so Katrina sighs heavily and lays down beside Kodiak, her head dangling off the edge of the roof, looking bored. I sit beside her, wrapping my tail feline-style around my paws, waiting for Kodiak to signal an enemy spotting. A crack of thunder echoes from above us after ten minutes or so, and it begins to sprinkle, but promises to pour before too long. The sky darkens ominously, giving the city a shadowy, otherworldly look.

Kodiak doesn't acknowledge the rain or the lightning, when it crackles brightly overhead, but stays completely still, never so much as the slightest twitch. Katrina was in the midst of a huge yawn when he straightens up suddenly. "That one," he says quietly, barely audible over a clap of thunder, pointing to a cab right in the middle of the crowded highway.

Katrina and I spring up, peering anxiously through the rain. I can't see well enough to tell who is in the back of the cab, but it certainly appears to be two people. Now the problem was getting them out of the cab and onto the street.

As if reading my thoughts, Kodiak looks sideways at me. "I got this one?" he asks.

"Go right ahead," I tell him. "Where to you want us?"

He shrugs. "I don't know which way they'll run. Up to you."

"Gotchya. Katrina, you get this side of the road, I'll get the other."

An abnormally loud crash of thunder sounds, and the sky opens up on us. Ignoring the torrential downpour as much as possible, Katrina and I jump from the rooftop and land heavily on the cement. I throw myself recklessly into the road, weaving amid the traffic to the opposite sidewalk, while Katrina poises herself beneath Kodiak.

When we're ready, Kodiak leaps into the air, spreading his wings and soaring high up into the sky, until he is little more than an speck in the drenching rain. I tilt my head back, blinking water out of my eyes as I try to follow his progress. I glance at Katrina, and she and I exchange an anxious look. The cab Kodiak had pointed out is almost upon us. For what seems like forever, as the cab approaches, Kodiak is nowhere to be seen.

And then, when the cab is directly between Katrina and I, Kodiak dive-bombs it, a black streak whistling down through the rain, faster than thought. Instead of pulling up at the last minute, he crashes head-on into the hood of the cab. The entire front half of the car collapses as if someone had dropped another car on it from sixty feet high, sending glass and bits of metal flying everywhere across the wet highway. The cars around the destroyed taxicab screech to a halt, or swerve off in different directions, and I have to leap out of the way to avoid getting hit by a station wagon even though I'm on the sidewalk.

I begin to wonder if Kodiak is still alright after that collision, but am distracted by the back door of the cab bursting open and a satyr half falling, half jumping out. He has curly blond hair that is quickly slicked back by the downpour and his fake legs are on, and he's got a panicked look on his face. He sticks his head back into the crushed cab and grabs the hand of a very pretty little girl with bright red hair and freckles, ten, maybe eleven years old. Even when she's terrified, she has a permanently mischievous look about her, with quick green eyes and "trouble" all but written across her forehead. I immediately suspect her to be a daughter of Hermes.

Even though both are bruised and bleeding from Kodiak's attack, the satyr hauls the girl away from the cab and to the sidewalk opposite me. They both begin to run for all they're worth in the direction of Pier 81. Katrina, seemingly a large, howling shadow on the wall, takes off after them.

Keeping on my side of the road, I run opposite them until they take an unexpected detour down another street, and I am forced to bound across the highway to stay in pursuit. I come up beside Katrina and the two of us run side by side, dodging vehicles and pedestrians with umbrellas, trash cans and mailboxes as we push through the ever-swelling rivers of water that run down to the rain gutters. The demigod and satyr are barely visible, black splotches against the sheeting rain that pounds down onto our backs with painful force. A flash of lightning crackles above us, very close, and I get the feeling Zeus is sticking his nose in other peoples' business again.

We've reached 9th Avenue now and are splashing down the street, closing in on our victims. The little girl stumbles, her red hair plastered to her face, and hits the sidewalk on her knees with a sharp cry. The noise of the city bustle and the pounding rain are flooding my ears, making me almost the equivalent of deaf, but I still hear the satyr yell her name as he stumbles to a halt, lunging back for her outstretched hand: "Alice!"

I leap forward, still fifteen feet away from where Alice is scrambling back through the puddles, struggling to regain balance. She shrieks as I pounce on her back, body-slamming her petite frame into the drenched sidewalk. Katrina flashes by me and football tackles the satyr against a store window before he can do much more than raise his reed pipes to his lips.

Unfortunately, that's more than enough. He plays only several short notes seemingly at random, not even a riff. Katrina knocks the pipes from his hands, but it's too late. I bring my fangs down to Alice's neck as she twitches around beneath me, sobbing, when something thin and strong wraps around my neck, instantly cutting off all my air. The rough brown vine loops itself around my neck again, like a noose, and begins to drag me off the demigod. I fight it, twisting and straining against the thing like a chocker collar (and I've had some not-so-fun experience with those), but the vine only tightens. It slides across my chest, wrapping around my legs and hips, crushing me.

The demigod leaps to her feet, bloody and scared, and stands in the middle of the street, not knowing where to go. Katrina sees me fighting for breath, being dragged up against the brick wall that the vines are growing from, and loosens her hold on the satyr. He falls from her grasp and grabs Alice's hand, and the two of them disappear into an alleyway.

I make a strangles hissing noise at Katrina, all I can manage, and she whines. She steps forward to help me combat the vines, but I swipe the only paw that isn't being tied to the wall at her, fending her off. It she tries to help me, the demigod will get away. I choke at her again and wave my claws in the direction the demigod girl took. Katrina backs off several feet, reluctant to leave me. I hiss at her again, viciously, with my eyes no doubt popping and droplets of blood spraying from my mouth, and she gets the message.

She turns and bounds off into the rain after the demigod. As she goes, the vine tightens around my chest and there is a loud SNAP! as the first of my ribs crack under the pressure, and I grunt. Katrina flinches at the sound, but doesn't look back. I watch her until she disappears around a corner and is lost from sight, leaving me to my fate.

The vines have covered almost every inch of my body, and are now winding up my neck towards my face as they bundle my up against the brick wall. I can't breathe, can't move, can't think as they slide across my slack jaw, wet with the severe rain. My vision fuzzes out and I feel--but don't process--that the ends of the vines are creeping into my mouth, heading down my throat and pricking the corners of my eyes. Pain explodes in my tight chest as another rib threatens to break, but I'm too far gone to process it.

I'm too far gone to notice when a large figure with giant black bat wings, slick with raindrops, swoops gracefully down to land beside me.

_____________________________________________________________

"You don't like plants much, do you?"

I open my eyes, but nothing comes into focus. "Wha' in Hades. . .?"

"Never mind. You're not dead, though, before you ask."

"No duh," I say, hauling myself painfully to my paws and blinking vigorously, although secretly I'm relieved. "How long was I out?"

Kodiak, looking wet but healthy despite his crash with a taxicab, shrugs. "I dunno. No more than maybe forty seconds. You've apparently built up a resistance to getting knocked out."

"Yeah, well, that's a good thing," I say, trying to focus on him. "Did Katrina catch Alice?"

"Who?"

"The demigod."

"Oh. I don't know that either, I just escaped a militia of police officers. They're convinced that this rain knocked a gargoyle off the roof of a nearby building and squashed an empty cab car. You owe me big time for that, by the way." He puts his hands in his pockets. "But I heard some commotion up on 24th street. We're on 17th right now."

"You can hear from that far away, in this weather?" I ask. I'm beginning to see again, and I notice that Kodiak has thoughtfully put my rib back in place.

"Well, yeah. Even Zeus can't stop that. He's almost got me with those lightning bolts a couple times though. You ready to go?"

I stand up and shake. It hurts, but clears my mind. "Yeah. If they're already up by 24th street though, we'll never get there in time."

"Use the rooftops," Kodiak suggests. "You can move faster up there that you can on the ground, I've noticed. It's a bit more dangerous, since Zeus is up there somewhere too, but we should be fine."

I nod and wordlessly make a start for the nearest dumpster. Kodiak leaps into the air and spreads his wings, flapping strongly upward to the roof of the nearest building, where he waits for me to catch up.

Kodiak was right when he said that traveling on the rooftops would be faster, but "dangerous" was a bit of an understatement. I think that "suicidal" is probably a better description, taking into consideration how many times I almost slipped in a puddle and fell off a roof, got fried by a bolt of lightning, drowned in rainwater, or got caught by a gust of wind mid-jump and almost missed the next roof. Kodiak had just as little luck as I did, often being caught by the same gusts that threw me off course, except they were even worse for him because of his wings. All said and done, by the time we caught up with Katrina and the demigod on 35th Street twenty minutes later, we had each almost died probably thirty, maybe forty times each.

Which is kind of tame for us, but, you know, it made things fun.

I screech to a halt overlooking Katrina, who is panting and soaked to the bone with rain and sweat, as she disappears around a corner and vanishes from sight once again. I notice, in the fleeting second I see her, that she has developed a limp, which is probably the only reason she hasn't caught up with Alice and the satyr yet. I wonder how far behind she is.

"Kodiak!" I yell over the pounding of the rain. He falls/plummets down beside me heavily, lacking his usual grace because of his drenched wings. "I'll follow on foot from here," I call over a clap of thunder, shaking water from my eyes, "and you go on ahead, maybe drop down in front of them if you can!"

He regains his balance, nods once, and leaps off the roof back into the air, if a little lopsidedly. I follow, falling down instead of up. I hit the cement outside a store display window and splash off after Katrina, ignoring the jarring of my broken rib.

I follow them down 37th Street and onto 11th Ave. We're getting close to the portal back to Camp Half-Blood, and I'm beginning to get nervous. What if Fiona's not on guard? Fiona being who she was, it wouldn't surprise me if she had abandoned that job half an hour ago and moved on to catching raindrops on her tongue or whatever. Hopefully Kodiak, at least, will be around to help if they make it that far.

I run up behind Katrina, drawing even with her. Alice and the satyr are about fifteen feet ahead of us, both bearing Katrina's scratches and claw marks, signifying many close calls. Katrina barks happily as I run beside her, and pokes me in the side with her nose, like, Oh my gods, you actually lived? I don't believe it!

I'm panting too hard to reply (and choking on inhaled raindrops), but she doesn't seem to notice. We're only one street corner from the portal now, and Kodiak hasn't shown up yet, making me anxious. I begin to push myself harder, trying to close in on our prey.

We round a corner, and Pier 81 comes into view. "Shit," I mutter under my breath. Where is Fiona? She was supposed to be--

Alice the demigod is knocked sideways so fast I can't even process it. One moment she's running for the portal, the next, she's lying spread-eagled in a puddle, being kicked in the ribs over and over again by a screeching little girl with chocolate skin and a bush of black hair. The satyr turns back to help her, but Kodiak falls heavily from the sky, spreading his wings wide and cutting the satyr off. Xelta plunks herself down in front of the portal. Her sword--which more resembles a sharpened metal rafter on a leather handle--is drawn.

Without stopping, I leap over Kodiak's outstretched wing, and land in front of the satyr. Before he can react, I lunge forward and sink my teeth into his neck, ripping him open with my back claws.

Warm blood pours from his carcass and mingles with the water, running down to the rain gutter.

Behind me, Kodiak shakes droplets of water off his bat wings and folds them against his back before helping Katrina pry Fiona off the body of the demigod, Alice. The little girl is wrapped possessively around the carcass, making small growling noises deep in her throat, both eyes rolling at double speed.

Xelta cocks an eyebrow. "Let that little beast have the body," she says roughly. "If we're lucky, there won't be enough left of it for the demigods to find."

"So she is a cannibal," I confirm, as Katrina yelps and reels back in disgust. "I wondered."

"Of sorts," Xelta says, turning her back on me.

I smile slightly at Kodiak. "Thanks for saving me from those gods dammed weeds. You're right--I really do hate plants."

He shrugs modestly and returns the smile. He's cute when he smiles, I decide, even if he does have demonic bat wings. "No problem. You know, we're not a total disaster when it comes to working together."

Katrina barks assent, and Xelta snorts. Fiona makes horrifying, undescribable crunching noises. I grin. Kodiak was right. We're not too bad. Not to bad at all.