We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn't know how Percy's mom could see anything, what with the storm and all, but she kept her foot on the gas.

Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to Percy in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane, or if he was wearing some kind of shag-carpet pants. But, no, the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo— lanolin, like from wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal. After I would look at Grover, I'd look at Percy to make sure that he was still there, to make sure he'd still protect me. I can't believe how much I'd been depending on him when I was supposed to be the fearless one.

The I heard Percy say haltingly, "So, you and my mom... know each other?"

Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind us. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."

"Watching me?"

"Keeping tabs on you two. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I am your friend."

"Urn ... what are you, exactly?"

"That doesn't matter right now."

"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"

Grover let out a sharp, throaty "Blaa-ha-ha!"

I'd heard him make that sound before, but I'd always assumed it was a nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat. I looked at him, too shocked to speak.

"Goat!" he cried.

"What?"

"I'm a goat from the waist down."

"You just said it didn't matter."

"Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"

"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like ... Mr. Brunner's myths?"

"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"

"So you admit there was a Mrs. Dodds!"

"Of course."

"Then why—"

"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are." He leaned around Percy to look at me. "Both of you did."

"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?" Percy asked, ignoring the last part that Grover had said. I was still too stunned to speak.

The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.

"Percy, Jess," his mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."

"Safety from what? Who's after us?" Percy asked nervously.

"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."

"Grover!"

"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"

I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had some imagination, but not much. Percy had zero imagination. I couldn't come up with something like this, and neither could he, so what the hell was happening here? I had no clue.

Percy's mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.

"Where are we going?" I heard Percy ask.

"The summer camp I told you about." Percy's mother's voice was tight; she was trying for his (maybe ours, I'm still not sure) sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."

"The place you didn't want me to go."

I felt like I was in the middle of a private family conversation once again.

"Please, dear," his mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."

"Because some old ladies cut yarn."

"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said.

"But you just said—" Percy started, but Grover cut him off.

"Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you two? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."

"Whoa. You said 'you.'"

"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"

"You meant 'you.' As in me. Or Jess."

"I meant you, like 'someone.' Not you, you."

"Boys!" Percy's mom said.

She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.

"What was that?" I asked, more than a little frightened.

"We're almost there," Percy's mother said, ignoring my question. "Another mile. Please. Please. Please."

I didn't know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive, and I saw Percy doing the same.

Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs. Dodds and the moment when she'd changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn't been human. She'd meant to kill Percy and me.

Then I thought about Mr. Brunner ... and the sword he had thrown Percy. Before either me or Percy could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded.

I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time.

I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver's seat and said, "Ow." I looked over at Percy and helped him sit back up, thanking whatever God, or gods, or whomever was up there, that he hadn't hit his head too hard.

"Percy!" his mom shouted. "Jess!"

"I'm okay..."

"Me, too," I said slowly and shakily.

I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn't dead. The car hadn't really exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's-side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.

Lightning. That was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. Next to Percy in the backseat was a big motionless lump.

"Grover!" Percy said, trying to wake up his friend.

He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. Percy shook his furry hip while I was thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you're my best friend and I don't want you to die! Then he groaned "Food," and I knew there was hope.

"Percy," his mother said, "we have to..." Her voice faltered.

I looked back along with Percy. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. The sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.

Percy swallowed hard. "Who is—"

"Percy, Jess," his mother said, deadly serious. "Get out of the car."

His mother threw herself against the driver's-side door. It was jammed shut in the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof. It might've been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.

"Climb out the passenger's side!" Percy's mother told us. "Percy, Jess—you have to run. Do you see that big tree?"

"What?"

Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas tree-sized pine at the crest of the nearest hill.

"That's the property line," Percy's mom said. "Get over that hill and you'll see a big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don't look back. Yell for help. Don't stop until you reach the door."

"Mom, you're coming too."

Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.

"No!" Percy shouted. "You are coming with us. Help me carry Grover."

"Food!" Grover moaned, a little louder.

The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us, making his grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn't be holding a blanket over his head, because his hands—huge meaty hands—were swinging at his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big to be his head ... was his head. And the points that looked like horns...

"He doesn't want me or Grover," Percy's mother told us. "He wants you two. Besides, I can't cross the property line."

"But..."

"We don't have time, Percy. Go. Please."

Percy was getting mad, then, I could tell—mad at his mother, at Grover the goat, at the thing with horns that was lumbering toward us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull, and probably mad at me for not being able to do anything. I could see it written all over his face. He was going to do something extreme and stupid.

He climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. "We're going together. Come on, Mom." He held a hand out to me and helped me climb out.

"I told you—"

"Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover."

He didn't wait for her answer. He scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the car. He wouldn't have been able to carry him very far without his mother's aid, and I was just standing there, shivering, like a scared little girl. I was angry at myself, but I couldn't seem to move very much. I wasn't as brave as Percy was, but I'd try to be.

Together, Percy and his mom draped Grover's arms over their shoulders and started stumbling uphill through wet waist-high grass with me following close behind.

Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine—bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear—I mean, bright white Fruit of the Looms—which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.

His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns—enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.

I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr. Brunner told us.

But he couldn't be real.

I blinked the rain out of my eyes. "That's—"

"Pasiphae's son," Percy's mother said. "I wish I'd known how badly they want to kill you."

"But he's the Min—"

"Don't say his name," she warned. "Names have power."

The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.

I glanced behind me again, not noticing that Percy was doing the same.

The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking, exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn't sure why he bothered, since we were only about fifty feet away.

"Food?" Grover moaned.

"Shhh," Percy told him. "Mom, what's he doing? Doesn't he see us?"

"His sight and hearing are terrible," she said. "He goes by smell. But he'll figure out where we are soon enough."

As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe's Camaro by the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.

Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying.

Oops.

"Percy, Jess," his mom said. "When he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way—directly sideways. He can't change directions very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"

"How do you know all this?" Percy asked.

"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this. I was selfish, keeping you near me. Both of you."

"Keeping us near you? But—"

Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.

He'd smelled us.

The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and slicker. Grover was weighing Percy and his mom down. I could maybe get over if I went around them, but I wasn't going to leave them there with that thing charging. The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he'd be on top of us.

Percy's mother must've been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. "Go, Percy! Jessicah! Separate! Remember what I said."

I didn't want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only chance. I sprinted to the right as Percy went to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on Percy. My heart felt like it was going to beat right out of my chest. His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.

He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at Percy's chest.

I wanted to run and scream in fear, to go get help, but I couldn't. I was mesmerized, watching Percy and the charging bull-man-thing. Percy held his ground, and at the last moment, he jumped to the side.

The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration and turned, but not toward me or Percy this time, toward Percy's mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.

We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley, just as his mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We'd never make it.

The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing Percy's mother, who was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.

"Run, Percy, Jessicah!" she told us. "I can't go any farther. Run!"

But I just stood there with Percy, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to sidestep, as she'd told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.

"Mom!"

She caught Percy's eyes, managed to choke out one last word: "Go!"

Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around Percy's mother's neck, and she dissolved before our eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply...gone.

"No!" Anger was the most prominent feature on Percy's face now.

It was almost enough to make me scared, but it calmed me instead. This guy was getting angry because the monster had taken his mother and he didn't want him to take anyone else that was dear to him, including me, even though I was practically helpless at this point.

The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The monster hunched over, snuffling our best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up and make him dissolve too.

Percy didn't look like he was about to allow that to happen.

He stripped off his red rain jacket.

"Hey!" he screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"

"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward him, shaking his meaty fists.

He put his back to the big pine tree and waved his red jacket in front of the bull-man. I think that he thought he was just going to jump when the bull-man came running. He didn't exactly think it through, obviously.

The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab Percy whichever way he tried to dodge.

In a split second, almost too fast for me to see, he leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.

How did he do that? I didn't have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree so hard it looked like he should've been crushed to death.

The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake Percy. He locked his arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes, but I watched, nonetheless.

The smell of rotten meat was strong even from where I was standing.

The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should have just backed up into the tree and smashed him flat, but I was starting to realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.

Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. "Food!" Grover moaned. I hardly paid any attention to him.

The bull-man wheeled toward Grover, however, pawed the ground again, and got ready to charge. Percy got both hands around one horn and pulled backward with all his might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—snap! The bull-man screamed and flung him through the air. Percy landed flat on his back in the grass.

His head looked like it smacked against a rock. When he sat up, he had a horn in his hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.

The monster charged.

Percy rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, he drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.

The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like Percy's mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.

The monster was gone.

The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I ran over to Percy, shivering as I hugged him. He smelled like livestock and his knees were shaking. I could tell he was scared and trembling with grief. He'd just seen his mother vanish. Grover was laying on the ground, needing help, and Percy somehow pushed me off of him, got up, and managed to haul Grover up (with a little of my help, though I'm not too strong, so not a whole lot) and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farmhouse. We were both crying, Percy calling for his mother, but we held on to Grover—we weren't going to let him go.

The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a princess's. I closed my eyes, exhausted and frightened from what had happened, holding onto to Percy's hand, as they both looked down at us, and the girl said, "He's the one. He must be."

She was talking about Percy?

"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious and so is she. Bring them inside."