Chapter 2

When I woke up most of the kids from camp were gathered around. I wasn't sure who long I'd been asleep, but everyone looked happy I was awake. Then I remembered Annabeth being captured. When I looked around the room, she was no where to be found. "Where's Annabeth?" I demanded looking at Chiron.

His smile faded. "Percy, I'm sorry. When we got to you guys, they were already taking Annabeth. We couldn't get her." Chiron said.

"And Grover?" I gulped.

"He was injuired like you, but they didn't take him." Chiron pointed to a bed next to me.

Sure enough, Grover was sound asleep. But my thoughts weren't about him. My mind was on Annabeth. Where was she? Who took her and why? "Percy, we need to talk." Chiron touched my shoulder.

The campers cleared out of the room. "Any idea who those guys were?" I asked.

"Yes," Chiron nodded grimly. "By the time we found out who they were, you three had already left. We sent campers out to look for you, when we found you, it was too late."

"Who were they?" I growled.

"They are part of a group of humans that call themselves The Demigod Hunters. It's a group of mortals that has dedicated their lives to the killing of demigods. We don't know who started the group but we believe it has been around for at least six years." Chiron explained.

"That doesn't make any sense! Chiron, if they have been killing half-bloods for that long, there's no way we wouldn't have known about them!" I protested.

"The Demigods Hunters have been killing demigods while they were on quests. That could be the only way that we wouldn't have noticed. We would just assume a monster killed them." he shrugged.

"They took Annabeth. They didn't kill her." I grumbled.

"Percy, you're not going to want to hear this but...You have to consitter the fact that Annabeth could be dead." Chiron told me.

"She's not dead! I would know if she was!" I yelled.

I wouldn't believe Annabeth was dead. I couldn't even think about her being dead! "What about those spears they were using?" I snapped.

"The spears were made ONLY for mortals. Which is why you lost all of your energy as soon as you touched it. It was made so that if a half-blood that mortal was fighting did pick the spear up, they would be drained of their energy. Therefore making them easier to kill." Chiron said.

"Great. So a weapon we can't touch. What about the lightning?"

"The lightning same thing. It won't harm humans but it will do deadly damage to demigods. Percy, you know I see no need for weapons that hurt mortals, like Backbiter. However, in this case we may need to make weapons that hurt both monsters and mortals."

Luke had owned Backbiter. I hated thinking about how Kronos had taken over Luke's body. "So what do you want to do, Chiron?" I asked bitterly. "You want us to start making swords like Backbiter?"

"It's seems to be our only choice to fight these Demigod Hunters."

I didn't want to hurt mortals, but they weren't defenceless. "Are we just going to have the Hephaestus cabin make them?" I asked.

Stupid question. My thoughts wondered to Beckendorf. I missed hanging out with him, but Silena was probably with him. "Yes," Chiron started. "Or you can make them yourselves, I don't really care."

I swung my feet off the bed, "Chiron, I'm going to see if I can find any information on the Demigod Hunters."

I usually wasn't the kind of I-love-to-do-research kind of guy, but Annabeth was my girlfriend. She wasn't just some normal camper to me. I knocked on the Athena cabin's door. One of Annabeth's siblings answered the door. "Oh, hey Percy..." the girl said grimly.

"Uh..hi. Can I use Annabeth's laptop?" I asked stupidly.

"What for?" she looked at me like I was going to steal it.

"I need to find some information on the people that took Annabeth." It wasn't two seconds the girl shoved the Annabeth's laptop into my chest.

"If it's to help find Annabeth then keep it as long as you need it. Just find her, OK Percy?" the girl looked at me with sad stormy eyes.

"OK." I promised.

She shut the door. I wouldn't break another promise this time. Sighing, I turned and started walking to my cabin. When I got there, nothing looked different. I shut the door behind me and laid on my bunk. The laptop made a click noise as I opened the lid. Crap. There was a password. What would Annabeth put as a password? The idea came to me. I typed in S~E~A~W~E~E~D~B~R~A~I~N. Sure enough, that was the password. That was just like Annabeth. I double clicked on the Internet. Google popped up, I typed in the Demigod Hunters. Thousands of links popped up. Some of them were Demigod Hunters (wiki), Demigod , and Buy Demigod Hunters at ebay. Why does it always say you can buy crap on ebay, when you can't? I clicked on the Demigod .

The top of the screen had a picture of mortals killing demigods. Lovely. Maybe, it would say who formed the group. There was an opinion on the side that said "Members". When I clicked it, hundreds of names popped up. One name sounded familiar, Cain. His picture appeared on the screen. Brown hair, blue eyes and a scar on his chin. It was the same guy that attacked me. Unable to look at his picture anymore, I clicked on the "Main Page" button. After scrolling down a little, I found the creator of the site. John Martin. He had blond hair and dark brown eyes. The look in his eyes reminded me of Luke's. Hateful. John had a nasty scar from his template to his chin. Cain had a scar on his chin too, I wondered where they got was a small paragraph about him.

John Martin (see picture left) is the creator of this website.

He was born in 1982. Martin decided to creat this group after the

death of both his paretns, in 1992.

Wow. That was so much information! It made me a little sad, to know his parents were killed, when he was like thirdteen. Deciding to look up John Martin, I went back to google. I found a police report on the death of his parents.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin's bodies were found at their home. John,

the Martins' son, witnessed the murder. He said three teen-

agers killed them. When he was asked to give their names,

John told us they went to his school. After we pulled up the

school's record, we found no students by those names. Teachers

claim they never had students by those names, either. John was

suspected as the murderer, but we found nothing to link him to

their murder.

The two parents were killed by, what John says, swords. There were

no swords or draggers found at the scene.

The swords John was talking about were probably made of tempered steal. Has I read on about John MArtin and the death of his parents, I began to fall asleep. I was standing in a laboratory. Test tubes were laying all over the tables, broken glass was scattered on the floor. When I turned around, footsteps were coming closer to the door. "Move it, girl!" a man's voice scoulded.

A voice that sounded all too familiar, Cain. Annabeth fell through the doorway. Anger filled my body. She still looked pretty weak from the spear. Annabeth tried to reach for her dagger, but the man next to Cain kicked her in the stomach. Blood trickled down a side of her mouth. I wanted to kill Cain and his men. I wanted Annabeth back, safe. "Better take that dagger from her, before she ends up stabbing somebody." Cain growled.

A man from behind him knelt down and took the dagger. "What do you want us to do with it?" he asked.

"Lock it up in the armory." Cain snapped. The man what he was told.

"Alright, lets find out what this brat knows about Percy Jackson." Cain laughed bitterly.

Two men grabbed Annabeth by the arms and threw her into a chair. "Who are...you guys?" Annabeth asked weakly.

"You'll find out shortly. By the way, I'm Cain. That's my brother, Nick," Cain pointed to a blond haired guy in the corner. "And that's Mark and Jason." Cain nodded to the guys that threw Annabeth in the chair. "The man that took your knife was Michael."

"Bring that other demigod in here, Mark." Nick said.

Mark nodded and walked into one of the lab's many doors. "OK, kid, what do you know about Percy Jackson?" Cain grinned and looked at Annabeth.

"Nothing." Annabeth lied.

"Look, you were with him in the attack, you have to know something about him." Cain said.

"Yeah, I go to a camp with him, I don't know him that well." Annabeth lied again...for me.

Cain got in Annabeth's face, "Kid, you know more than you're telling. If you tell me about Jackson, I wouldn't kill you."

"No." she spat.

"Let me go!" a voice yelled.

It was that kid we were following. "Mark, what kind of demigod is he?" Cain turned his attention away from Annabeth.

"A son of Hermes." Mark tightened his grip on the boy.

"Well, he might know something about Jackson." Cain sighed. Mark forced the boy to sit on a chair.

Nick came foreward. "I'm going to ask one more time nicely, kid. What do you know about Percy Jackson?" Cain glared at Annabeth again.

"OK, for one, STOP CALLING ME KID. My name is Annabeth." she snapped.

"Fine, Annabeth, what do you know?" Cain was getting annoyed.

"If I knew something, why would I tell you?" Annabeth growled.

"Alright, what if I told you, that I would kill Percy Jackson?" Cain smiled.

Annabeth's eyes widened. Cain touched Annabeth's shoulder. His eyes were closed and he looked different, like he was taking in information all at once. Then Cain's eyes shot open, with a pleased look in them.

"Lock her up. There is no more need for questions. We won't need to find Percy Jackson. He'll come looking for us." Cain told his men.

"Percy!" a voice said.

I openned my eyes to see Grover. "Grover? What are you doing here? How long have I been asleep?" I rubbed my eyes and sat up.

"You've been alseep for a whole day. The Hephaetus cabin is done making tempered steal weapons." Grover said.

"Their done aready?!" I stamered.

"Yeah, they said they knew Beckendorf was good friends with you and I guess they thought they owned you or something." he shrugged.

"So are we leaving now?" I asked.

"In an hour, I think."

"Is it just you and me going on the quest?"

"No-Whoa! Who said I was going?!"

"Grover, you're Annabeth's friend too!"

"But-"

"No buts! You're coming if you like it or not."

"Ugh. Fine. Clarisse, Chris, the Stroll brothers, Katie Garner, Jake Mason and Pollux."

"Wow. Good to know we'll go un-noticed." I mumbled.

"Yeah. Anyway, Chiron wanted to see you, Percy." Grover told me.

I met Chiron at the big house. "You wanted to see me?" I came in the door.

"Percy, yes." Chiron smiled.

"So uh, what's up?" I shoved my hands in my pockets.

Something was lying on a table next to him. "Percy, after the defeat of Kronos, while we were cleaning up the mess, we found something." he said.

"What?"

Chiron picked up the thing laying on the table and held it to me. I took it and unwarped the paper around it. "Luke's sword, Backbiter." Chiron sighed as the last of the paper fell of the sword.

"Chiron, why are you giving this to me?" I asked bitterly.

"Luke was your friend in the end, Percy. You can't forget that. I want you to use it on your quest to find Annabeth and Nico." Chiron said.

My hands trembled as I held Luke's old sword. "Fine. I'll take Backbiter." I decided.

Chiron smiled warmly. "So Chiron...does Backbiter uh...transform into a pen?" I asked.

He threw me a pen cap. Backbiter turned into a half bronze and silver pen. I slipped it into my pocket.

I met my friends my the entrace to Camp Half-Blood. Everyone had new weapons, ones that could kill both mortals and monsters. As the sun set, we headed out of camp.