I am evil. :) There will be one more chap. after this, so hang in there with me.
Ch. 19
Now, when I tell you that Percy Jackson was incredibly mad, that is a understatement of momentous proportions. He was beyond mad, or even furious. I probably would have figured this out even if he hadn't pinned me to a wall and just about chopped my head off.
Luckily for me, Io was on guard. She lunges forward and intercepts the blow, holding Jackson off long enough for me to rip out the stiletto knife that had me secured to the wall by the shoulder.
"Retreat!" Flint howls, stabbing a tree nymph in the chest and karate-chopping a Hunter as he whirls around. "Retreat! Go to the Rebel camp!"
"What?" I exclaim, slipping past Io and Jackson's duel and kicking the hooves out from beneath a satyr, sending him toppling awkwardly. "That's suicide! We'll be sandwiched between this lot and the ones guarding the camp."
Flint takes off down the middle of the street, pausing near me to mutter, rather unhelpfully, "No worse than anything else we've pulled off lately."
Seeing as he had a point, our little group of Rebels follow in his wake for all we're worth, ignoring the chaos that our appearance is causing on the mortal world. Io breaks away from Jackson and pounds off down the street, her sword still in one hand and her teeth gritted as she outstrips the demigods and the slower Rebels. I morph back into wolf form (I had temporarily abandoned it when the demigods had forced us from the rooftops), using my natural running ability to easily keep up with Io and the faster Rebels. Phamilia, who had been stabbed in the leg, and the new Rebels from Portal 4, the boy and the two telekhines, soon begin to fall behind.
The godlings pursue us, Jackson and his pet hellhound in the lead, Tyson the cyclops and the Hunters not far behind. Vines grow from cracks in the sidewalks and wrap around our ankles as the nymphs and satyrs attempt to slow us down. We are able to break free of the leafage most of the time, but the vines prove too strong for the hellhound from Phamilia's crew, Strife, who had run all the way from the Bronx. He stumbles on the plants and hits the pavement with a soft grunt. Phamilia slices through the vines on several of his paws as she runs by, but he is weak and unable to drag himself into standing position, and the Hunters of Artemis soon pick him off with their arrows.
Flint and his crew of vicious mutants are still in good shape, but everyone else isn't holding up well. Io's short burst of adrenalin that had put distance between herself and the demigods has worn off, and she is lagging behind with the slowest of our Rebels. Phamilia isn't doing much better, and her crew and the survivors from Portal 4 are falling further and further behind myself and Flint's crew.
"Flint!" I yell, running up beside him, "What are you doing? They're never gonna make it all the way to the camp." I jerk my head back over my shoulder, motioning to our companions. "What do you plan on doing when we get to the Rebel camp and there's only six of us? Some rescue that is," I pant.
Flint glances back just in time to see one of the telekhines from Portal 4 get caught and crushed by Tyson the cyclops. "We don't need much," he says, refocusing on running. "All we need to do is weaken a spot in the demigods' defenses around the camp; Zane and the rest will be able to attack from the inside also. Between the attack from both sides, their defense will weaken in that spot enough for the Rebels to escape, or at least some of them."
"And once that happens?"
Flint's eyes narrow. "If it was me, I'd head for Camp Half-Blood. It has no border, and there's no reinforcements there for the demigods. Zane should be smart enough to direct the army that way—this war needs to end."
I nod, but am distracted by a shrill scream from behind me. Ginger Glass the empousa hits the pavement dead, an arrow sprouting from her back.
Jackson is closing in on Io. She's making one last unsuccessful attempt to fend him off, whirling around every few seconds to lash out at him with her sword, but he treats the attacks like bee stings, advancing steadily on her as they dodge their way up the street past cars and screaming mortal pedestrians.
I skid to a halt. "I'm going back!" I call to Flint, who's only reply is to look at me over his shoulder like I'm insane, and keep running.
Turning on my heel and running back to the rest of the remaining Rebels, I make my way towards Io. Phamilia and the boy from Portal 4 flash by me, going the opposite direction. Jackson focuses on me when I approach, recognition flaring in his eyes, which I get a brief glance of before I bound past Io and ram into him head-on.
Due to Jackson's Achilles Curse, this does not get me quite the effect I had been hoping for; In fact, I probably hurt myself more than him. He staggers back a few steps, but other than that shows no sign of having been wounded. I on the other hand, get the breath knocked out of me as if I had rammed myself against a brick wall.
Jackson readies his sword as I pick myself up off the pavement, my teeth drawn back to reveal my yellowed fangs. Hunters of Artemis and nature spirits stream by us in pursuit of the rest of the Rebels, but Jackson stays stationary, standing in the middle of the street and watching me with cold loathing as I brace myself and square up against him. Despite the fact that he is human and I'm in wolf form, I stand almost as tall as him. But even though I have the weight, the size, and the speed on my side, he has invincibility. Which, when it all boils down, really puts everything else to shame.
Jackson lunges at me, his sword flashing as screaming mortals scramble away from us. I don't know exactly what they see under the Mist, but it probably involves a teenage boy with some kind of baseball bat or lacrosse stick getting ready to beat the living daylights out of a large dog, a scene which, no matter how you watch it, can't end well at all.
I spring back from his sword, landing lightly on my paws for an instant before launching myself swiftly forward to take a snap at his neck, and then whirling off to one side and back out of sword range. I try to distract him, morphing constantly to wolf to girl and back again, occasionally pausing the transformation somewhere in between the two forms so that he gets a glimpse of the grotesque creature that I briefly become during the morph. This works to a limited degree, since Jackson constantly has to change his fighting style to fit the species of adversary, and is often several moves behind me.
At one point I am in human form, dancing backwards as he pushes me up the street in the direction of my retreating companions, when he makes an unexpected leap forward and gets me within sword range. He takes a swing at my head and I have almost no time to react, so I let my feet drop out from under me, falling straight down. I manage to save myself by only inches: Jackson misses my head completely, but he takes off over a foot of hair, leaving me with a badly-cut bob that hangs down to about my jawline. I spring to my feet as strands of my own red hair float down around me and deliver a swift kick to Jackson in unmentionable areas.
Okay, so actually it was more of a classic kick in the balls, but hey, it worked, even if it wasn't as pretty as professional karate or anything like that. I've had years of practice on Hawkeye and Damian, and they learned the hard way what an accomplished kicker I am when I'm provoked. Anyway, it turned out that Mr. Invincible wasn't quite as indestructible as they say, because I bought myself several seconds to turn tail and run like Hades.
By now, we aren't all that far from the Rebel camp. We're about six blocks from the rooftop on which Silvamord, Io, the pups, and I had originally set up camp on after we had been evicted from the Rebel camp. Io, Phamilia and her crew, and the two survivors from Portal 4 are about four blocks ahead of me, with the demigods, nymphs, and Hunters hard on their heels. Flint and his mutants are about a half of a block ahead of them and within sight of the Rebel camp. Silvamord and the pups are still somewhere behind us, hiding out on a rooftop.
I can see the Rebel camp clearly now, and the demigod forces that surround it (They had seen us coming of course. By now we had pretty much trashed the highway, and were attracting every cop car on this side of the city, so what would you expect?). Jackson is several yards behind me, his sword in hand, and I can feel his electric green eyes burning into the back of my head.
Ahead of me, the sound of battle escalates as Flint and his mutants clash with the demigods. I can see the warfare well from the distance, and it's not pretty: Flint's crew are demons, slashing and spinning, ripping off heads and spattering the pavement with blood, sending nymphs exploding into wisps of green mist and showers of withering flower petals. Part of the demigod guard breaks away from them to meet Io and the others as they throw themselves into the fray, weak but enthusiastic.
Jackson and I are the only two who have yet to join the battle, but I can tell that the son of the sea god doesn't want me to live long enough to assist my fellow Rebels. When we're half a block from the edges of the chaos, he lunges wildly forward kicks me down onto the cement. I yelp in surprise and morph into canine as I fall, rolling sideways to avoid the point of Jackson's sword, which crashes down into the ground where my head had been seconds before.
Before I can leap to my feet, he's on me again, kicking me in the ribs before I can get up and stabbing with his sword. I manage to save myself once more, but he immediately draws back his arm for another strike, and this time I can't get out of the way fast enough. I only just manage to avoid a fatal strike, but his blade impales me through the side. It misses any of my major organs or arteries—probably by pure luck—but blood immediately begins to gush from the wound, pooling beneath me on the pavement.
I gasp loudly, sucking in a painful breath. Before Jackson can strike again, I scramble ungracefully to my paws and scuttle towards the battle at the Rebel camp as fast as I am capable of going, hunched over as I try to staunch the flow of blood flooding from my side. Jackson had obviously not been expecting me to get up again, and he hesitates several seconds. This gives me just enough time to reach the edge of the fray, where I try to camouflage myself amid the fighting throng. Jackson keeps his eyes glued to me until one of Flint's mutants, the ape-shaped boy with the unintelligent face, drops out of nowhere. He rams into Jackson from behind like a juggernaut, and both hit the ground and disappear into the warfare.
The Rebels that had been holed up inside camp have now joined the battle. Our distraction has given them a chance to leave the Rebel camp without being shot at by Hunters of Artemis or jumped by demigods, and they are making the most of it. As our numbers swell, the battle spills out of the parking lot that the camp is set in and out across the street. The demigod archers that had been watching from the rooftops have abandoned their posts and leaped into the battle, and I can hear mortal police sirens approaching from every direction.
A girl demigod steps in front of me with her spear raised above her head to strike me down. However, before she can do so the spear is plucked gracefully from her grasp by someone behind her. She makes to whirl around and confront the sneak attack, but the tip of her own weapon grows from her chest. She stares dumbly at it before toppling sideways, her eyes rolling back in her head.
"Amazing how they never see that coming," Damian says, giving the body a scornful glance as he shoulders his bow and sheath of arrows. "Christine, you look awful."
I allow a wide grin to split my face. "I get that a lot," I tell him as I lunge sideways and sink my fangs into the ankle of a passing satyr. "Is that all the thanks I get for busting you lot out of siege?"
"It's not over yet," Damian growls, but I notice a smile on his lips before he turns away from me, his bow loaded and stretched taunt.
I see Hawkeye in the distance, back-to-back with Zane as they fight off a trio of Hunters. Fiona is wrapped around a satyr, her teeth sunk deep into his neck. Predak and a small group of telekhines, the survivors of his gang, are backing Tyson the cyclops up against a wall. A shadow falls over me briefly, and I glance up to see Kodiak flash by overhead, unceremoniously shoving the remainder of the demigod archers off the roofs to hit the pavement below with juicy splats.
To my right, Zane's deep bass voice rings out above the noise of the fighting: "Get out of the camp!" he urges the remaining Rebels. "Head west! Get to Camp Half-Blood!"
I remember what Flint had said to me earlier: "If it was me, I'd head for Camp Half-Blood. It has no border, and there's no reinforcements there for the demigods." I know that this is exactly what Zane has in mind. It's a good plan too, or , at least, the best plan that we can think up while running down the middle of New York City, attracting police and media and news crews to us as they gather to get coverage of the action.
The Rebels immediately catch on to Zane's plan, and before too long the number of fighters has decreased drastically as Rebels take off for the Long Island Sound, and demigods race off in their wake to protect their precious camp. I find myself surprised at how fast everything is suddenly going—wasn't it just this morning I was walking down a suburb street with Predak, searching for Phamilia and her Portal 3 crew?
"Yo Savage, you coming or not?"
I glance up. Zane is staring down his nose at me, looking pretty scary, puffed up to his full height with his sword drawn and his eyes narrowed.
"I just ran ten blocks and got skewered by Jackson, simply so that I could bail you out of captivity. Isn't that enough for one hour?" I complain, but I'm already making my way to the nearest truck. I leap up onto the hood so that I can get up onto the rooftops.
"You gonna be okay?" Damian asks me. Most of the others are already blocks away, racing for Camp Half-Blood, but he has stayed behind. He eyes my side wound as he talks, obviously worried.
"I'll be fine," I snap, hiding my surprise at his compassion. "I'll meet you there."
I turn away and leap up onto the nearest roof without looking back, pushing off the hood of the truck and leaving eight deep gashes in the metal from my back claws.
Moving fast on the rooftops as I leap deftly from building to building, it takes surprisingly little effort to follow the crowd towards Camp Half-Blood. The battle has left chaos in it's wake; broken store windows and destroyed cars with smoke boiling from beneath the hoods, an abundance of vines and weeds growing from the cracks in the pavement, and the occasional carcass or two. Every once and a while I see a lone straggler running along the street, a demigod or Rebel who has fallen behind the crowd due to either a wound or a late start. Police cars tear up from adjacent streets, and news vans arrive not far behind them. Mortals who had witnessed the battle wander around looking lost or sit in their cars, too nervous or shocked to emerge. Not for the first time, I wonder what they see from beneath the Mist.
I reach the end of the block-shaped city buildings, hitting the suburb area and being forced from the now-slanted roofs and back onto the pavement. I reach the grassy stretch of land the surrounds Camp Half-Blood in record time, even though I am bent over double and gasping for breath by the time I get there.
I linger at a distance for several seconds, taking in the destruction. Night has begun to fall, and lights are appearing all around us, illuminating the fight. The battle is fierce and bloody—the fighters fueled by hatred for each other and desperation to prove their worth to their advisories. The pine tree that marks the edge of the now-nonexistent border is on fire, as are most of the cabins, judging by the amount of black smoke rising into the night sky. The silhouettes of the fighters can occasionally be glimpsed against the flames, and the smell of blood and smoke and sweat is heavy in the air, as is the tang of sea salt, which can only be from Jackson.
Deciding that I can't put it off any longer, I bound for Half-Blood Hill. I weave between an empousa and a tree nymph locked in a duel to the death and a demigod throwing Greek fire into the face of a hellhound as I race for the border. Leaping past the demigods' dragon, Ladon, as he rips apart a traitor godling, I bound past the smoldering pine tree and into the camp.
It doesn't take long for me to be spotted by the sons of Hermes, Connor and Travis Stoll, and I am soon engaged in battle against a pair of identical demigods, who think and move like one. Unfortunately for them, they fight as one too, and it's easy to predict what move they are going to make next. Even though they can't beat me, they're hard to shake off, and I only manage to extract myself from them when a Greek fire bomb explodes several yards to my left and blows everything within ten feet of it to bits, sending everything else flying back.
I'm thrown back at least twenty feet by the force of the bomb, and when I do come to a stop it's only because I've nailed a tree nymph in the back and flattened her beneath me. Slightly winded, it takes me a second or two to regain my footing and pounce on a demigod that had been about to stab one of our mutants. The mutant scrambles away and the demigod and I roll off, a withering whirl of fur and steel and drops of blood.
My fight with the demigod comes to an abrupt end when I manage to kick him in the stomach with my back paw, ripping him open and sending him rolling away from me, pumping blood from his gaping wound. I leap to my feet, soaked in blood and sweat, fighting exhaustion, and look around for my next competitor.
Then, off on one edge of the burning camp, a white light begins to glow. It's pale and weak at first, but after several seconds it suddenly explodes into a bright beacon against the fiery darkness around it, and everyone's eye is drawn. From the center of this halo of light steps the small figure of a little girl with silvery-blond hair, holding a long hunting knife in each hand. The glimmering form of Thalia Grace stands beside her with a large white timber wolf.
Artemis.
A bedraggled cheer emits from the demigods as the goddess of the hunt enters the battle, her bright halo dimming to a cold white throb of white glowing from her skin as she whirls on the nearest Rebel giant with her knives, faster than thought, and sends him crashing down.
The battle had been pretty even in my opinion, but with the arrival of the goddess, we began to weaken. Nico Di Angelo had resurrected a small militia of skeletons to assist in the fighting, and Jackson was in the center of camp flaunting his invincibility by being a total jerk and causing Rebels to suddenly combust into messy puddles of off-colored salt water. Thalia Grace quickly took the rest of our giants out of play by causing the odd bolt of white lightning to spear down from the clear night sky, momentarily illuminating the war zone as she grilled a monster.
The tide was turning against us. The high-pitched tunes of the satyrs' reed pipes were heard almost nonstop, and our hellhounds and mutants were often disappearing beneath a winding mass of vines or killer shrubs, mummified in vegetation. Our empousa were falling to the skeletons. Traitor demigods were felled by their cousins. Telekhines were melting into salt water when the stepped to near Percy Jackson. Rebels of all types would freeze on the spot and back away when Nico Di Angelo approached.
It's not too long before I find myself back-to-back with Hawkeye. "Where'd you come from?" he demands in his usual charming manner.
I morph into human form and press my shoulder blades against his, covering his back as he takes on a group of satyrs. Snatching a reed pipe from one satyr and using it to brain another, I give an audible snort. "You should talk," I say. "What kind of a question is that? Hey—watch that one sneaking up on your left," I warn him, kneeing one satyr in the gut while batting away a halfhearted punch from another.
This mid-crisis banter is not unusual for us—I do is with Damian too, and anyone else that I served with in our under cover group for Kronos. Granted when I argue with Hawkeye our insults can be a bit more heartfelt than when I'm making fun of Predak or Damian, due to the fact that we're never on good terms with each other.
This time however, Hawkeye has something to say that's worth listening to. We both flinch back as Nico Di Angelo lifts his hands and the ground erupts around him with an impressive crunch, sending telekhines and mutants and empousa to fall or stagger back away from their victims and into the arms of waiting skeletons.
"That is it," Hawkeye snarls, kicking a satyr viciously and impaling the unlucky creature on his sword. "One of those Big Three kids has got to go. We're never going to win at this rate."
"We might not win anyway," I point out. "They do have a goddess, after all."
He gives me a don't-burst-my-bubble kind of look over his shoulder, his silver eye glittering defiantly, and I shrug and sucker-punch a godling. "What's your master plan now?" I ask, recognizing that rebellious look that steals across his face. "Not another dud, is it?" I say wryly.
"Excuse me, but I have not had a dud of a plan to date, thanks for asking," he snarls. "But one of those Big Three kids has got to go. At least then we'll have a chance of winning."
I frown and grab a tree nymph's arm, twisting it violently over her shoulder and behind her back, making her squeal. "What's going on in that twisted head of yours? You have a plan—I can tell."
His eyes focus on Nico Di Angelo. "Wish me luck."
I raise my eyebrows. "Well, don't die," is all I say. He snorts and steps away from me, disappearing into the violent crowd. Only after he is long gone to I add under my breath, "Good luck."
I've occupied myself fist fighting a godling when Hawkeye reappears. I see him out of the corner of my eye, stepping unexpectedly from the darkness in front of Di Angelo, drawing his sword. Di Angelo freezes on the spot with his own Stygian black sword held at the ready as he and Hawkeye briefly size each other up. As I've mentioned before, they're pretty well matched—both are from Hades, and creatures with expertise in handling the dead. Hawkeye is just older, and fighting for a different side.
Di Angelo makes the first move, lunging forward and aiming to stab Hawkeye in the side. Hawkeye bats the blow away and launches an attack of his own; black and green sparks explode from where the two blades make contact.
I am side tackled by a satyr and sent rolling, and I lose track of the battle as I struggle to throw him off. I get a glimpse of Damian, who has by now joined the fight, choking a Hunter of Artemis with his bow as Mokkan the hellhound covers his back. Zane and Jackson have created a two-man war of their own in the very center of camp, although both are rather distracted by Hawkeye and Di Angelo's fight.
When I look up again, Di Angelo is nailing Hawkeye in the side of the neck with the hilt of his sword and sending him to the ground. Before he can do much however, Hawkeye kicks Di Angelo's legs out from beneath him and leaps to his feet, trying to wrench the godling's sword away from him. Behind the two of them, a huge Greek bomb goes off, sending green fire forty feet into the air, and for a moment, only their silhouettes are visible. At that same moment I am attacked by one of the Hunters' timber wolves, and once more lose track of the battle.
The wolf distracts me for far longer than the satyr had, and I look up from the thing's carcass just in time to see the end of their battle. Their swords are gone, cast aside in favor of magic and physical strength. Hawkeye had the younger godling pinned securely to the ground, and then. . . what? I'm not entirely sure what happens next. Di Angelo, in a final desperate attempt to save himself, releases a huge burst of dark energy that vaguely resembles black light. The bang could probably be heard down in New Jersey somewhere—the onlookers are completely deafened, and Hawkeye. . . is simply gone.
He had somehow blocked Di Angelo's final attack, rebounding the boy's magic back onto him, and blasting him back fifty feet across camp, dead as a stone. And Hawkeye is simply gone. Weather he had been killed by the effort required to rebound the magic or had performed one of his perfectly-timed vanishing acts, I can't tell.
The silence that follows is eerie. Only the fighters at the edges of the battle continue to brawl, not having seen the exchange between Hawkeye and Di Angelo, and the death of one, if not both, of the fighters. I'm in shock. Hawkeye cannot simply be dead; I mean, he's Hawkeye. He's indestructible. He's my annoying, back-stabbing, smart ass partner in crime. If anyone was supposed to kill him, it was me.
Over in the center of the camp, Jackson lets out a bellow of rage. He's lost Chase, and clearly the loss of his little cousin is too much. He whirls on Zane, who raises his sword to defend himself. For several long seconds, there is a desperate, frantic battle between the two until Jackson's indestructibility pays off. His sword slips under Zane's guard and sinks deep into the his torso, between the ribs. There are several seconds where a glimmer from the point of the sword can be seen on the other side of his body, protruding from his back, and then he slides backwards off the slick blade and crashes to the ground, his own sword slipping from his dark hand.
Two leaders down in fifteen seconds flat. In my pain, my sudden helplessness, I turn around to look at the one person left: Damian. He looks at me, and I see my own pain reflected in his one remaining eye. I see my own question: What now?
Then he nods once, and his reassurance helps me find my voice. "RETREAT!" I howl into the stunned silence, my voice carrying loud and long on the silent nighttime air, hot with the heat of the battle. "Retreat! Now!"
Damian's voice adds to mine, and slowly the Rebels begin to react. Some of the demigods make to engage us in battle again, but Artemis holds up her hands. "Let them go," she says, her voice carrying easily through the entire camp. "They're no threat to us anymore."
I burn at those words. Anger wells up inside of me, but I fight it down. Our army is weak—probably nonexistent now. There is nothing we can do at the moment, without leaders to guide the masses. That's one of the things that I have never liked about monsters—they need to be told what to do, they can't think for themselves.
The remaining Rebels (there are very few; probably only a fourth of what we had half an hour earlier) make their way to the top of Half-Blood Hill, left alone by the demigods. Damian and I stand beneath the charred remains of the pine tree until the last of the Rebels has escaped.
Then, with the victorious cheering of the demigods ringing in our ears, we reluctantly turn our backs on Camp Half-Blood, and run like hell.
