Okay, so I know that this chapter is not only long, but there isn't even much action. Not my usual style I know, but it was necessary. In this chapter, we tie up some loose ends, get the troops under control, and start gearing up for The End. Hey, and about that conversation between Christine and Io, I know it's a bit of a stretch, but gust go with me, alrighty? So, please review (I got like, one review last chapter, and then a couple haters) and tell me what you think! Enjoy.
Ch. 18
The portal guards. Duh. Why hadn't I thought of that? Here I was, panicking about lack of soldiers and wondering how in Hades or Heaven we were going to ever find a way to match up against the demigods, and Ziral reminds me of the portal guards.
Granted there weren't as many people on portal guard as there had been; Portals 1 and 2 we no longer being used by the demigods so they didn't need to be watched, and Portal 5 was strategically placed so that we couldn't guard it without catching the attention of the mortals. However, Portals 3, 4, and 6 all had guards on them, five apiece, and that meant that we had fifteen extra people that hadn't been caught in the Rebel camp, and probably didn't even know that something was wrong.
I hadn't thought much about the portal guards since I had been one myself. That wasn't my objective any more, and nothing exciting had happened to any of them since my capture and the battle on the rooftop over Portal 2. They had gone on just as Zane had planned, changing their members every two weeks, battling the new incoming demigods and their satyrs, occasionally losing someone to the fights or the mortal police. You would hear a portal guard tale around a camp fire once in a while, but other than that, they were rarely mentioned back at camp, and so I never thought much about them. And now here I was, depending on them to help us survive.
"Where's Portal 6, Christine?" Ziral asks me curiously, bouncing along at my side as we make our way across Manhattan.
"It's in a suburb area," I tell him. "Like, with houses and stuff instead of just stores and company buildings."
"Do mortals live there?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
"Don't the mortal police know that they're there, then?" the telekhine asks me.
I don't answer for a moment as we skitter across a highway. When we're safely on the other side, I answer him. "They have their suspicions, I'd guess. But nobody's been arrested yet, so they must not know for sure."
"What about the other two portals? 3 and 4?"
"Portal 3 is down by Broadway, in the basement of some old theater or something that they don't use anymore, and Portal 4 is up in the Bronx. I've never seen it."
We cut through an alley and emerge onto a pretty little street, full of identical white houses flanked with perfectly manicured grass and tall white fences. Children's toys are scattered here and there on the unnaturally green grass, but at the moment, they are abandoned. It's an early Monday afternoon, the day after picking up Io and the telekhines, so it'll be a few hours before the mortal kids get out of school and their parents get off work.
I pick my way around a small pink tricycle on the sidewalk, uncomfortable and self-conscious walking around in broad daylight here in this clean, bright, open suburb, so unlike the darkly forbidding streets on which I was raised. Luckily there's nobody around to see Ziral and me other than a small terrier tied up on his front porch, who peeks curiously out from between the railing to stare at us.
Ziral cocks an eyebrow as he sniffs the pink tricycle, unimpressed. "So where's this portal?" he asks me, waddling to catch up.
"I don't know," I admit. "But it shouldn't be too hard to find. There's only so many places here that an entire patrol of Rebels could hide out. We're bound to find it before too long."
"Is it on this street?"
"Either this one or the next one," I say. "Now shut up and keep your eyes open before someone notices us."
"But there's nobody here!"
I sigh. "You never know," I growl. "Besides, under the Mist we look like dogs. What would some mortal think if they walked around the corner and found a couple of stray street dogs having a conversation?"
"Would we have to kill them?" Ziral asks eagerly.
"Probably. Now shut up."
We continue down the street, slightly intimidated by the normality of it all. It's so peaceful that I keep expecting something to leap out from behind a garage and try to slit my throat. Still, there's no sign of any out-of-the-ordinary activity, and my paranoia grows. I wonder if Io, who I had sent to find the portal down in Broadway, is having any more luck than us.
Ziral and I work our way to the end of the street and then turn on to the next one, watching intensely for the slightest hint of supernatural activity. Halfway down this second street, Ziral nudges me silently with his flipper and points with his nose to one of the houses. I peer at it for a second, immediately picking up on it's difference from the rest of this pleasant suburb street. The space between this house and the one on it's right is much narrower than that of the other houses, only about four feet, creating a dark, narrow alley that goes about fifteen feet before hitting a dead end at a tall white fence. Unattractive brown weeds grow from the hard dirt in this crevasse between the houses, and no sunlight hits the ground.
"There's our portal," I murmur to the telekhine pup, veering off the sidewalk and across one of the manicured lawns to the miniature alley with Ziral in my wake. Standing at the mouth of the alley, I morph painfully into human form and place a hand wearily on the corner of the house. The smell of Rebels and blood of all types lingers in the air: monster, human, demigod, satyr, mutant. Much of the dirt on the ground appears to have been disturbed, and some of the weeds are dug up.
I pad silently into the alley, taking one slow step after another. Ziral hesitates at the entrance, his lips drawn back to reveal sharp little telekhine teeth. For several seconds there is silence, broken only when the rapid thump of footsteps from someone running on the roof of one of the houses comes to our attention.
Before I can react, a dark shape falls from the roof of the house on the left and lands behind me, sending Ziral reeling back with a surprised yelp. The sharp prickle of a spear point on my back makes me freeze.
"Who are you?" The voice is high-pitched and female.
"We're from the Rebel camp," I tell the empousa behind me. "We have information."
"So Zane sent you?" the empousa demands. I still can't see her, and I don't dare to turn my head to try to look at her properly. Empousa, when they feel they are under a threat, are incredibly unpredictable and jumpy, and she'd most likely run me through on the spot.
"Not exactly. . ."
The spear point jabs viciously into my back, dangerously close to drawing blood. "Then why are you here?"
"The Rebel camp is under siege," I say, trying to glance behind me without freaking out the empousa. "We need your help to get it back."
There are several long seconds of silence. The spear bites into my skin, and I feel a trickle of blood run down my back. Above me the other four members of the Portal 6 guard, two hellhounds, a dracaenae, and another empousa, stare silently down over the edge of the two houses.
Finally the spear point is removed from my back, and I turn around. The empousa that stares fiercely back at me is slightly older than some of the other empousa I've seen. She appears more of a woman, whereas most of the other empousa look like teenage girls. I get the feeling that she's considerably more powerful than her younger sisters. In addition, she has a glistening mane of auburn curls that cascade down her back to her waist, and brilliant blue eyes. Her face is thin and pale but still quite beautiful despite the thin pink scar that runs horizontally from her right temple, across her eyes and the bridge of her nose, and disappears beneath the curls on the other side of her head.
"What do you mean, the camp is under siege?" she spits at me, stabbing the dirt with her spear as Ziral creeps wearily around her to stand beside me. "And who are you?"
I hastily introduce myself and Ziral as the remainder of the portal guard drops from the rooftops and gathers around to listen to me talk, keeping their distance. The lead empousa listens expressionlessly as I explain the attack on the Rebel camp and the situation we now find ourselves in. She continues to stare at me long after I've finished, and Ziral fidgets uncomfortably under her hard gaze.
"So what about the demigods' camp?" she barks several seconds later. "Have they simply left it unguarded?"
I shrug. "We don't know yet," I tell her. "The battle was only a little over a day ago, and we're still trying to figure out exactly how many Rebels are left. After we contact Portals 3 and 4 and see how many people we have to work with, then we'll get a bearing on everything else."
"And when, exactly, do you plan on contacting Portals 3 and 4?"
"I sent someone out to find Portal 3 to try to contact the Rebels there this morning, and we're going to get a hold of Portal 4 the moment we have some people to spare."
The empousa cocks an eyebrow. "You don't have enough people to distribute to only three places?"
"Well, we had to leave someone to hold down the fort, you know. We have a couple of Rebels who. . . can't fight for themselves at the moment," I say hurriedly, reluctant to admit that, at the moment, our party consists of myself, Io, Silvamord, and a bunch of baby telekhines.
"I see," the empousa says, sounding skeptical. There are several more seconds of uneasy silence as the empousa and her portal guard study us. Quite suddenly, the empousa says, "You have no idea what you're doing, do you?"
I frown and stick my nose up. "You could say it like that I guess," I grumble. "I prefer to think of it as 'on an adventure'."
The empousa gives an unexpected hiss of laughter. "Alright girl, you got some spunk, I'll give you that," she says in her silky voice, twirling a lock of curly auburn hair around her finger and leaning on her spear. "What do you want us to do?"
I blink, caught slightly off guard. I hadn't expected the portal guard to simply believe me; when I had come here, I had been prepared to argue a bit more than this. "Well," I say, regaining my composure, "for now we just need to figure out where we stand in terms of numbers. The best thing to do right now is go find everyone else, and hunker down until we know exactly what we can do."
The empousa nods agreeably. "Sounds about right to me," she says. Then she thrusts out her hand. "I'm Phamilia Glass," she says as we shake. "This is my crew; Leif and Strife the hellhound brothers, Trissicar the dracaenae, and Ginger, my little sister."
I exchange a nod with the rest of the portal guard.
"So where's the rest of your group camped out?" asks Ginger Glass. She looks a lot like Phamilia, with the same eyes and nose, the same body shape. However, she lacks Phamilia's impressive auburn curls and instead has short, spiked black hair that gives her a slight punk-rocker look. She carries a sword at her waist, and a long, thin black blade hangs around her neck on a piece of braided hemp. I notice other odd glimmers of light here and there on her body as the many small knives and who knows what else she has concealed amid her clothing catch the dull sunlight.
"We're set up on the rooftops," I tell them, "about ten blocks from the Rebel camp."
Phamilia gives a brisk nod. "We'll follow you," she says. "When we get there, I want to know exactly how this happened. How in Hades were the demigods able to get us under siege?"
I bite me lip as I lead the way from the dark alleyway between the houses. "I'm not really sure," I admit. "Technically, it was impossible. There should be way too many Rebels for the demigods to hole up like that. But they do have all the power, I guess, with Artemis and the kids of the Big Three."
Phamilia and her crew nod again silently as we creep around the corner as quickly as possible, eager to escape this suburb paradise. If anyone drives by now, they'll see a couple of homeless people with swords and their dogs walking down the middle of a street filled with pleasant little white houses and childrens' toys, which will certainly earn a frantic call to the police.
All talk is put on hold as Ziral and I lead the way through the city, keeping to the shadows as much as possible as we strive to stay inconspicuous. It takes a bit longer than I would have liked, but we eventually make it back into familiar territory. Io and the Portal 3 guard are already gathered with Silvamord and the pups by the time we arrive, and they all jump about a foot into the air as I leap suddenly onto the roof beside them, hauling Ziral up after me.
"Holy Hera's—Christine!" Silvamord exclaims. "Did you find the portal guard? Would they come?"
Phamilia hauls herself up onto the roof then, saving me from having to answer, and Silvamord and the telekhine pups assist the rest of the Portal 6 guard over the edge of the roof.
Io grabs my shoulder. She looks tired and hungry, but relatively pleased with herself. "Christine," she says, "this is Flint, son of Hephaestus . He's been in charge of Portal 3 since it was first discovered."
I raise my eyebrows. "How does that work?" I ask the traitor demigod.
Flint's a tall and slender man with dark, colorless eyes and graying brown hair. He's no longer young, but he's by far the tallest person in our group. He radiates a subtle power, and carries many dark scars on his calloused hands from years of working with hot metal.
He gives me a sinister half-smile, which looks oddly out of place on an elderly man. "Zane seemed to think me the most fitting person to watch over Portal 3," he tells me in his deep voice.
"The Portal 3 guards have to be pretty reckless," Io explains. "Percy Jackson himself often showed up to protect the new demigods that were trying to get through the portal, so Zane often appointed some of the strongest soldiers he could spare to Portal 3. As you know, the more powerful the Rebels are, the more shifty and hard-headed they tend to be. So Zane needed someone who had enough power and authority to keep everything under control, and could still fight with the best of them. Flint was the only one who fit all those categories and would agree to stay full-time at Portal 3 without being paid."
"That's pretty charitable of you," I observe. "Not everybody would sit in an abandoned theater for two months without a decent paycheck."
Flint chuckles darkly. "Oh, it's not so bad. I get along quite well with the soldiers Zane sends me, actually."
I wonder if he's being sarcastic. The four Rebels that loom behind him, following the conversation with interest, look like nothing but trouble. Most of them appear to be horribly evolved mutants: a woman with maroon colored scales instead of skin and slitted green eyes that blink sideways, a hellhound that towers at about fifteen feet at the shoulder and has ivory spikes that run along his spine and jut up out of his skin, and a teenage boy with a round, unintelligent face who's built like an ape, his arms longer than his legs, his back hunched. The only one besides Flint who doesn't look like he's been munching on nuclear waste is a young African American man with light brown skin and black hair, dressed quite normally in jeans and a T-shirt. He seems just like your average demigod to me, but I get the feeling that he wouldn't have been appointed to guard Portal 3 unless he could do something fabulously nasty.
Flint's beasts stare back at me as if they too are examining me, gauging my power. It doesn't take me more than a glance to tell that I'm never going to get them to listen to me. The only person here they'll take orders from is Flint.
"Tell you what," I say to Flint, turning away from the mutants. "I'll make you a deal. That lot of yours won't give a rat's ass about what I want them to do, and we both know it. If you get them to follow my orders, I won't make this hard for you."
The old man's eyes glitter and he cocks an eyebrow. "So you could make this hard for me, could you?" he asks, his voice suggesting that he finds this somewhat difficult to believe.
I smirk, not flinching away from his sharp gaze. "Yes, I could. Hopefully you won't have to find this out first hand."
Flint studies me for several seconds, his arms crossed, his head tilted slightly to one side as he considers me. Then he sticks out his hand, similar to the way Phamilia had not long before. "Deal," he says. "I'll keep my crew under control, and you won't give me a hard time."
"Deal," I agree, and we shake on it. I wonder if that will come back to bite me in the long run.
"So, Christine." Phamilia comes up behind me, and I turn to the empousa, who has by now hauled all of her crew over the edge of the roof and had been watching my exchange with Flint. "You owe me an explanation. How exactly did all of this happen?"
"First of all," I say, "we need to send someone to make contact with Portal 4. Io just came back from Broadway and Silvamord isn't in good condition yet, so we need someone else." I raise my eyebrows significantly at Phamilia, and she gives an impatient sigh.
In the end we decide to send two of Phamilia's crew, Ginger Glass and Strife, out to the Bronx to find the Portal 4 guard. Several of Flint's goons might have been able to get there faster, but I didn't trust them yet by a long shot and doubted that they could convince the Portal 4 guard to come to our camp without proof of an emergency. Not that it would've really mattered; all they would have had to do was threaten the guard, and that would be more than enough to get cooperation.
After Ginger and Strife have left, Io, Silvamord, and I tell out new allies what we know about the siege. Unfortunately, that isn't much. However, both Phamilia and Flint are seasoned warriors who have fought the gods for probably more years than I've been alive. They sit beside us with their crews and the baby telekhines in the middle of the roof, which Silvamord and her pups have by now turned into a proper camp. See, while Silvamord may have been too wounded for any action, she was certainly not too weak to practice her favorite hobby and profession: stealing. While Io, Predak, and I had been out finding the portals, Silvamord had taken the pups out on a quick run, snitching us a couple days' worth of food from a gas station, about five hundred dollars from some old lady's purse, and some general supplies—including a weather-resistant tent and more than a few blankets—from the back of a suburban with Michigan license plates that had obviously been headed out on a family camping trip.
Phamilia and Flint listen to us in silence as we retell our stories. Flint's mutants are somewhat distracting; they prowl around restlessly as we talk, always keeping just out of reach, often pacing back and forth on the very edge of the roof like tight walkers until Flint would call them back so that they didn't get spotted. Once we've finished telling them all that we know, Phamilia frowns and Flint stands up and begins to pace back and forth like his mutants, his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed.
"Raw power," Phamilia says. "You were right Christine. That's how they managed to bottle the Rebels up like that. Power and the element of surprise."
Flint nods, glowering at the roof beneath his feet as if it has done him great personal wrong. "It wasn't even that great of a plan, really," he mutters. "There were a million things that could have gone wrong. They could have been discovered, the Greek fire bombs could have been set off at the wrong time, our numbers could have crushed them before their Big Three brats got to the scene, we could have had more Rebels out of the camp, we could have caught their spy. . ."
"Yeah, well, they lucked out," Io snaps. She has her head between her knees and is massaging her temples, looking exhausted. "Our problem now is what we're going to do about it. Any ideas?"
Silvamord taps her flippers on the ground thoughtfully. "Well, we can't get into the camp—not yet, anyway. To do that, we either need more soldiers to break through their ranks or find the spot where the demigods' guard is the weakest. Is there any way we can get a message into the camp? You know, let Zane know that we're looking for a way in? That would be a start, anyway. He might have some information that we could use to out advantage."
"That might work," I say thoughtfully, "but we've hit the same barrier again: we can't find a way in. Hell, we can't even get close to the Rebel camp without them knowing about it. They have guards everywhere. Hunters and archers on the rooftops, satyrs on the streets, demigods on the edges of the camp, and their goddess. They'd find out if we tried to send a message."
Flint stops pacing. "What about their camp? Camp Half-Blood? There can't be anyone left, can there? The centaur Chiron maybe, and that man with all the eyes, Argus or something like that. Is there anyone else in there other than the nature spirits?"
Io shrugs. "That's another thing we don't know yet," she says. "There doesn't seem like there should be anyone there, yeah, but we don't know for sure. Besides, we probably couldn't even take on the nature spirits, in out present state anyway."
"Well that's one thing we might have in our favor," Flint says, starting to pace again. "The demigods don't know we're here, right? So if—"
"That's not true," Silvamord interrupts. "They know about our portal guards, or so you'd figure. Plus they're going to know that Christine isn't in the camp. They figured out her identity the last time she was captured, when we murdered Annabeth Chase. They'll know that they couldn't have possibly caught everyone."
"Yes," Flint plows on, "but they're not going to know if we're strong enough to oppose them or not."
"We don't know that either," Phamilia says. "Granted we do have some good power—we've got Christine and Io, and the Portal 3 guard—but there's so few of us. I really think that we need to see how many Rebels we get from Portal 4 before we go around planning any reckless, twenty to one surprise attacks."
That was probably the wisest thing I'd head all day, and we all knew it. As much as I hated to admit it, we still didn't know enough to have any real plan. The demigods had the upper hand, and when you counted up all of us, including the telekhine pups, we only had eighteen Rebels: ten from the portal guards, five pups, Io, Silvamord, and me. In other words, we were hopelessly outnumbered, outclassed, and outmaneuvered.
It was still only about four in the afternoon and Ginger and Strife had been gone less than an hour, so we had the rest of the day to kill. Flint and his crew volunteered to take the day guard shift, and Phamilia and Silvamord immediately crashed in the tent that the telekhines had stolen. Predak and his friends had found something to pass the time also, using the blankets to create makeshift tents of their own which the leaped upon and destroyed as quickly as they set up. The remaining three members of Phamilia's crew either joined Flint on his guard or played with the pups.
I'm perched on the edge of the roof, staring out across the top of the city when Io limps up and plunks down beside me, putting her head in her hands and letting her feet dangle off the edge. I watch her worriedly. She looks terrible. Her clothes are tattered and torn, which is no surprise, but I can tell that she's lost weight. I can see her eyes between her fingers, surrounded in black and blue rings of exhaustion. The scars on her face appear to have darkened, and they stand out more than ever on her skin. Her lips are cracked and coated with dried blood, and her fingers shake slightly.
"You should get some rest," I tell her. "You look awful."
She nods. "I know. But Christine, I've been thinking. . ."
"That's dangerous stuff," I warn her. "I wouldn't do it too much if I were you."
"Tell me about it," she says. Her face stays the same, but I can hear a slight smile in her voice. "But really, Christine, I—I think. . . I think I know why this is happening."
I stare at her. "What?"
She starts to massage her temples again. "Well, not all of it, but you know how the demigods are so mad at us? I think I know why. One of the reasons, anyway."
"The demigods are always out to get us," I point out. "Why would they be after us even more than usual?"
"Well," Io begins, "I started to think about it quite a while ago actually, after the first sneak attack on Camp Half-Blood, when Zane and Hawkeye captured Chase. The demigods' oracle girl was there, remember? Rachel Elizabeth Dare. They said that Chiron had wanted her there to discuss the next great prophecy."
I nod. "I remember. I never saw her again though, not even when I was a captive. I didn't think much of it."
"Neither did I," Io admits. "But then, when we were were put on portal guard for Portal 1, and we got that demigod. The girl, the son of Hades. Nico Di Angelo had been watching her, and when we cornered her, he came and attacked. Now, we never saw her again either, did we?"
I shake my head. I can see something forming, another plan that had been unraveling just beneath out notice, but I still can't tell exactly where this conversation is going.
Io keeps going. "And then there was the demigod that you guys caught, at Portal 2. Zane said that he was a younger version of Jackson; a son of Poseidon. He was another demigod that appeared to be a forbidden child of one of the Big Three."
I nod again.
"Well, after I heard about your Jackson Jr. I started to wonder what was going on. I know that Jackson made a deal with the gods, that they would have to claim their kids, but it just seemed. . . I don't know, weird, I guess. And then we murdered Chase, and the gods got involved. The gods Christine. The gods never get involved in stuff like this, not unless they've been openly threatened by someone really powerful, like a Titan."
"So?" I ask. "The gods liked Chase. Artemis wanted her to join the Hunt, and Athena chose her to redesign Olympus. Daedalus left her his laptop, with all his unfinished projects in it. They're bound to get riled up by something like that, aren't they? And Artemis joining the fight doesn't surprise me. Out of all the gods, she's the most likely to get involved."
"I thought about that too," Io says. "But then I talked to Zane, and told him what I had been thinking about, and he agreed."
I started to interrupt, but she keeps going before I can do so. "Now, do you remember your first ever mission that Zane sent you on, when you joined the Rebels? He sent you to hunt down two new demigods that were coming into camp with Underwood the satyr. Sons of Demeter. And then not long after that, Dare showed up, and then really powerful kids of the Big Three. Well I think—and Zane agrees with me—that we stopped the demigods' prophecy from coming true."
We're both silent for a second, as she lets that sink in. "But. . ." I scowl. "How? How could we have thrown a wrench in their prophecy?"
Io stares down at the traffic moving below us. "Well, think about it. We don't know the prophecy exactly, but it calls for seven new demigods, right? So we'll start counting them off. First there was the Demeter boys that you killed. They're a good guess; Underwood has a thing for bringing in really powerful godlings. And then there was the daughter of Hades. Di Angelo went nuts trying to save her, and then she disappeared. I think that Di Angelo brought her to the Underworld, to protect her. Then there was your Jackson Jr. that you killed. So that's four of the seven accounted for, and three of them dead. Then there was Chase. She couldn't have been one of the seven, but, what if Percy Jackson had had heirs?"
I blink. "That's crazy."
"It'd work, wouldn't it?" Io insists. "Annabeth Chase was the only person we know of that Jackson really loved. So say Jackson would've had kids. There's another one of the seven, possibly two, or even three. No matter how many, we've still taken out at least one more of the seven new demigods."
"But. . ." I stare at the ground, trying to process the possibility. "They'd be to different in age, wouldn't they? The Demeter kids were thirteen. The Hades girl was eight, and Jackson Jr. was probably eleven or twelve. Say Jackson had kids when he was, I dunno, say twenty-three. Already, the Demeter kids are nineteen. They'd be out of camp by the time Jackson's kids were even born. And by the time those kids are thirteen, the Demeter boys are in their thirties. The age range is too different."
Io shakes her head. "Think generations, Christine. The prophecy can't come true with Jackson's generation, right? We snuffed out the Demeter twins and Jackson Jr. And it can't come true for the next generation, because we killed Chase and destroyed the chance of Jackson having really powerful kids."
I think for a second. "No way," I say finally. "That's too general. There's thousands and thousands of demigods out there. We can't know for sure that we've killed any of the kids from the new prophecy. The chances are way too slim."
Io gives me a weary smile. "Story of our lives, isn't it Christine? The chances were way too slim for the demigods to win the war, but they did. The chances were way too slim for us to kidnap Chase, but we did. The number of close calls we've all had, the number of times we've almost gotten ourselves killed—way to slim a chance for us to walk away from it all alive. And here we are."
I don't answer. I don't like it, but I can see her point. When you're a part of Greek mythology, anything is possible. Io's idea that we've destroyed the chances of the next big prophecy coming true for at least another forty years is far-fetched, ridiculous, and not likely. But it's possible. And it would explain why the demigods are so desperate to get rid of us, and why the gods are suddenly meddling with the battles so much.
Io gets quietly up without another word and limps back off to the tent, leaving me alone at the edge of the roof.
It was nightfall.
The sun was just disappearing behind the distant skyscrapers when one of Flint's goons, the woman with the scales, alerts us to a disturbance approaching from the direction of the Bronx.
Phamilia, emerging from the tent, frowns. "What in Hades is that. . .?"
We gather silently on the side of the roof from which the action is approaching. I can't hear it very well yet, but it's definitely Rebel action, and it's big. The sound of car horns is especially prominent, leading me to suspect that whatever is happening, no one is making an effort to hide it from the mortals.
Silvamord quickly rounds up Predak and the other pups and ushers them back from the edge of the roof. "Should we clear out?" she asks me.
I exchange a glance with Flint and Io. "Probably," I growl. "Just to be safe. We can't risk losing anybody."
Silvamord nods wordlessly and begins to direct the pups to the opposite end of the roof. From there they leap to the next building, and then the next, and so on until they are lost from sight.
The action is closer now. I can hear it clearly—shouting and the occasional grunt or scream of pain, the honking of car horns, the soft hiss of arrows and the odd clash of metal on metal, just around the corner. I morph into wolf form and inhale deeply, scenting the air.
"It's Ginger and Strife," I announce. "I think they've got the Portal 4 guard with them, but I can't tell for sure. . . If they do, they've lost a couple members along the way."
"And who's chasing them?" Flint asks. He has his sword drawn, as does Io on his other side. Phamilia is rubbing her hands together, and where the friction is strongest, hot white sparks scatter from her skin.
I taste the air again, but before I can answer, the battle bursts around the corner and into our view. Ginger Glass and Strife are in the lead, running down the middle of the highway for all they're worth. There are two telekhines and a traitor demigod, a teenage boy, running just behind them. And off to the sides, on the streets, bounding across the rooftops, vaulting over mailboxes and dodging panicked pedestrians are the demigods and their allies. I immediately notice five or so Hunters, Tyson the cyclops, Mrs. O' Leary the hellhound, and some satyrs and tree nymphs.
What worries me the most though is the very pissed, very vengeful looking Percy Jackson, pounding down the middle of the street towards us, right on the Rebels' heels.
