On the bright side, Ezra had left his Christian screamo CDs on the bus.
Leo huddled against his backpack. He'd spent his entire day being hustled around by cops and dealing with the six-hour drive to Warwick. The bus was always a crowded swelter of children, but now he was alone. The temperature had fallen.
Teresa was driving. He thought of her sour face, and the bus's paint job—a deceptively cheery, rainbow-colored scene with cartoon doves, a rainbow, and the words "PLANT THE SEED OF GOD AND IT WILL BECOME A FLOWER"—and chuckled nervously.
Leo sat furthest from the front, bundled in his army jacket and looking at Haste the Day album art. Asking Teresa to play these CDs would be ill-advised. But it was a distraction.
He ran his nail along the ridged edge of the CD case. Rrrrrt. Rrrrrt. Rrrrrt.
His fingers started melting the plastic. He stopped.
He looked out the window. There was complete darkness. No one was around to help.
Leo rested his head on the top of the backpack. He wasn't gonna cry.
Back at the police station, he told an officer he was feeling sick and they let him go to the bathroom. He was lying. He just dry-sobbed in there for an hour before he managed to shamble back into the waiting room.
The bus made another scraping noise that Leo felt in his teeth.
It was a good thing he didn't throw up for real. He hadn't had anything to eat today except when they stopped at Arby's to use the bathroom. Teresa bought a burger to be polite, tried to usher Leo away quickly, but failed to do so before the cashier asked what he wanted. Teresa grudgingly let him get a small box of curly fries. It could be a while before he could eat again.
Leo wondered how his friends were holding up. He wished Piper were with him when he was pulled out of bed. She could've charmspeaked (charmspoken? Charmspake?) the police right out of camp. Jason wouldn't be much help, since the legal system wasn't something he could punch, but at least he'd be good moral support. How long did it take them to realize he was gone?
Well, Nico noticed near-instantly, but that was an accident.
Leo looked out the window again. There, the brief flash of a small town! Boom! Well, now it's gone.
Thinking about the last two days, Leo's chest tightened in embarrassment. He didn't feel completely comfortable near Nico—he was intimidating. Y'know. Despite the top of his head coming up to Leo's nose.
But Nico went out of his way to pop in and make sure he was okay, and whether that was a product of loneliness or not didn't matter as much he thought it would.
He just—
Leo didn't want to help Abraham by whipping himself. But after Nico protected him, he felt like an asshole.
One day, Leo snapped his leg while working on a grabber arm in the bunker and Jason sent Nico to check on him when he didn't show up for his training session. And the day after that, Will sent Nico to drag him to the infirmary for a follow-up. And the day after that… well, no was sent him, but Nico wanted to see how the grabber was going.
And Leo let him, not because he liked him all that much, but because he was afraid to tell him to get out.
Oh god. Oh god.
Leo looked out the window again and inhaled so deeply it hurt.
He'd seen "camps" before. Camp Half-Blood was a day camp, despite the combat lessons. Camp Jupiter was a camp in the sense that a military installation was a camp. He wasn't quite sure what to call this.
This here was a concrete-and-plaster monolith looming on the horizon. The compound was flanked by high walls and lamp-posts that washed those walls in a ghostly, long-shadowed light. The entrance gate was not visible yet, but the tower behind it was, watching through inscrutably narrow windows.
He couldn't see the cross for the trees, but he knew that was still there, too, bone-white arms outstretched. Waiting.
They turned into the driveway and went down the winding road to the gate.
"Welcome to Camp Gilead," Teresa muttered. "Or rather, welcome back."
A mile of complete darkness later, they approached the gate.
The trees hugged the wall so closely in this spot that there didn't appear to be a wall, except where it intersected the road. There, a tall arch opened, choked off by a metal gate. There was an entry booth where somebody was supposed to check your papers, but nobody was there at this hour.
Teresa leaned out the bus window and punched in the entry code. The gate rattled painfully as it pulled back.
They got off the bus in the parking lot, and Teresa dragged him by the hand. It was somehow even foggier and windier than it had been this morning, to the point where Camp Gilead seemed to be nothing more than a gray haze.
The reception building was outfitted with fake wood paneling. Leo knew it was fake just putting his hand on it. The fake wood was half an inch thick and the remaining six inches of wall was solid concrete.
The interior was outfitted with racks of kitschy souvenirs and camping supplies for the kids that forgot theirs. A t-shirt reading "SMILE! GOD LOVES YOU" hung inches away from Leo's frowning face as he stood at the desk.
Teresa rang the call bell. This, too, was broken. It made a sad little clink, the sound of a penny dropped in a bucket.
Nevertheless, Ezra heard and answered.
Now that Leo was looking at him up close, Ezra seemed healthier than he'd last seen him. His skin had gained a little color and his face had lost baby fat. Someone must have wrangled him, because his hair was short. But he hadn't lost that wide-eyed childishness to his demeanor.
He wore a pale green shirt. On the shirt: "CAMP GILEAD COUNSELOR 2012."
"Leo!" Ezra said. "Glad to have you back!"
"...Glad to be back," Leo said. You know, like a liar.
Ezra reached under the desk and handed Leo a blank form and a pen. "To think I didn't want to take the night watch tonight! I would've missed you completely."
Surprisingly, Ezra had no hard feelings.
Teresa took the form and pen from Leo's hands, untrusting of his handwriting. Good. The last thing Leo wanted to do right now was fill out paperwork.
They looked at each other for a moment, Ezra in his green Gilead shirt and slacks, Leo in his orange Half-Blood shirt and army jacket.
"So, what have you been up to?" Ezra asked.
"Nothing." Teresa finished the paperwork and scurried out the door without a word.
Ezra dropped all pretenses of professionalism. "Oh, come on. We haven't seen each other since we were eleven. You can't do 'nothing' in that timespan."
Uh, I found out I'm the son of a pagan god, got possessed for real, and then died a little bit. "I'll talk about it in the morning. Right now I'd just like some sleep."
A brief flash of annoyance crossed Ezra's face. The moment passed. "Of course. I'll see what I can do."
Ezra flipped through a binder of spreadsheets looking for an empty bed. Leo looked at the Bible-themed postcard rack.
"Quite a bit happened while you were gone," Ezra rambled. "Our popularity went up a lot, so it's not just our father and siblings babysitting a handful of kids. I've gotten a lot better at public speaking so now I'm preaching my own sermons. Good thing, too, because we have people coming in from as far as New Jersey. I'm just amazed how—"
The door jingled open. A tall, tired man Leo did not recognize marched in the door.
He gazed ahead, a jumble of sticks in his arms. The man had a dark, scruffy beard, and his shaggy hair was half bleached where it rested on his dirty green sweatshirt. If Jesus got frosted tips and became a hobo, maybe he'd look like this.
The man set the sticks on a tarp on the floor. Ezra whistled at him, which startled the man so much he sneezed. Leo had met dogs that did that. "Hey, Chicken Man! Do you know where the empty beds are?"
Leo raised an eyebrow. "You call your coworker 'chicken man?'"
Ezra shrugged. "He's never told me his name. He's never told me anything. The kids call him Chicken Man because he hangs out in the chicken coop when he's not working."
Indeed, Chicken Man had some feathers in his beard as he walked behind the desk and peered at the binder. Leo realized that Abraham must have picked Chicken Man up off the street. Leo had met a lot of mute homeless people over the years, and most of them weren't dangerous. Some were even good company. Personally, he felt bad for Chicken Man. Nobody deserved to put up with Abraham.
Chicken Man pointed at something, grunting.
"Cabin 6?"
He gave Ezra a thumbs up.
"Alright, thanks."
Chicken Man quickly glanced at Leo before doing a double take and giving Ezra a confused expression.
"Oh, yeah. New camper," Ezra said, scanning the paperwork mindlessly.
Chicken Man leaned over the counter and looked at Leo closely. He seemed to search for something.
He tapped the form Ezra held with a dirt-caked finger. Ezra looked up. "You want to read it?"
Chicken Man nodded.
Ezra handed him the form. Chicken Man ran his hand down the page, trying to find something, until he stopped. "Are you done?"
Ezra said, sounding amused.
Chicken Man growled softly.
Ezra backed up. "Excuse me?" he demanded, as if his coworker could answer.
Chicken Man snarled and bared his teeth at Leo like a dog about to lunge. There was a borderline murderous look in his eye. Any moment, he would foam at the mouth.
But he did none of those things.
Instead, he glanced at the ceiling, frustrated. Then he threw the form in Leo's face and stormed out into the fog.
Ezra sighed. "I'm sorry, he hasn't acted like that in months! I don't know what's gotten into him…"
Leo chuckled nervously. "Who knows. I'm a ladykiller. Maybe he was worried I'd make a move on his hens."
He had a bad feeling about that look. That wasn't the glare of a madman. Sure, Chicken Man appeared mad walking in the room—glassy-eyed and unfocused, staring through Ezra instead of at him. But the moment his eyes went to Leo, he seemed to wake up. There was clarity—and there was anger.
He wasn't sure what had triggered that anger, but it was something on that form. Leo had no idea what it could be. If he'd met Chicken Man before, he was sure he would've remembered.
That train of thought wouldn't end until Ezra led him to the showers and the water came on. "Oh gods, that's cold!" Leo yelped.
He froze even more when Ezra replied through the door, "What was that?"
"…I said, 'oh God, that's cold,'" Leo said slowly.
Ezra paused.
"I'll let that slide because we're alone here, but I better not hear you taking God's name in vain in front of the campers!" Ezra said with good humor.
Leo let his breath go.
There must have been a timer on the hot water heater in the compound. The shower felt like he was getting pelted with ice cubes.
When he finished, he found that the clothes he'd removed were mysteriously missing, replaced by a green Camp Gilead shirt and clean jeans. Leo called out. "Ezra?"
"Yes?"
"What happened to my clothes?"
"They're covered in grease. You can have them back when they're washed."
Ezra was right—Leo had been wearing those clothes for two days, and he'd spent the whole first day working. But as he dressed he had a sinking feeling that he wouldn't be getting those clothes back anytime soon.
Leo walked out of the shower where Ezra was waiting, holding the greasy clothes. Chicken Man was back by his side. He scowled deeply, but made no move to attack, which seemed good enough for Ezra.
Leo looked at himself in the mirror. The poisonous green shirt drooped unnaturally over his shoulders.
Ezra took him down the hallway. The cabins were in across the path from the showers. Beyond the reception building, there was no concrete. The cabins were just wood.
Ezra smiled at Leo every now and then, but that expression faltered at times. Like a man shifting a heavy burden in his arms.
Chicken Man was more open in his scorn, which Leo appreciated. He seemed calmer. Leo still felt pale eyes at the back of his neck.
"Here it is," Ezra said, saccharinely cheerful. "Cabin 6."
Cabin 6's door creaked when Ezra opened it. A few occupants blinked at the fluorescent, perpetually active streetlamp light before lying back down.
"Surprise camper!" Ezra whisper-shouted to them. To Leo, he said "If you need anything, holler" before breezing around the corner.
Leo stood in the door for a moment.
Chicken Man rounded the corner slower than Ezra. When he finally disappeared, Leo heard Ezra say quietly, "I'll flip you for the jacket—heads, I get it…"
Dorm 6 had seven campers sleeping in the dark room and one empty bed that Leo slipped into.
He stared at the ceiling for a very long time.
Nico had done a lot of weird things, but breaking into a library was a first.
It wasn't hard. Breaking into anything was made substantially easier by shadow travel. He stumbled out of the darkness, still riding inertia from the jump, and he caught a bookshelf on the way down, knocking a book to the floor with a muffled thump.
His hand flew to his sword.
Twenty seconds later, he slowly peeled his hand away.
Nico was a lone demigod walking around an abandoned building at night. He was practically asking to be eaten.
Nico climbed over the circulation counter and booted up a computer. The fan strained, and the blue light of the screen pierced the darkness.
He closed out of the catalogue that popped up automatically.
Arguably, he could've asked Annabeth if he needed a computer. But she had her hands full with spreadsheets listing all the campers teetering on the brink of homelessness.
Besides, if he asked Annabeth, she would've told him that this was a bad idea.
Nico tapped his fingers on the hilt of his sword. Slowly (for Nico rarely handled keyboards), he typed: "FATHER ABRAHAM NEW YORK."
Google yielded almost nothing for that. Except two words.
"GILEAD CHURCH."
This gave him a more promising result. Gilead Church was evidently in Manhattan. He would like Abraham's home address, but this was a start.
The mousewheel clicked softly as he went through the images. There were many, many pictures of kids in green shirts.
Nico stopped on a picture with Leo in it.
It was a group picture. He'd almost scrolled by it, but he noticed the familiar hair and smile at the last second. He zoomed in.
Leo was maybe eleven in the picture. His curly hair stuck out in all directions and his green shirt didn't fit. He smiled crookedly.
A little too crookedly. Someone had clearly airbrushed out a bruise on his face.
Nico zoomed in on the shirt.
He searched "CAMP GILEAD."
Leo staggered to Sunday service.
It was summer. Most of the kids here now were not the same kids who were here when he was eleven. However, there was the occasional "long-term camper," a polite term for the children Abraham had personally adopted. Those kids were not happy to see the boy who escaped without them.
"Gods, I'm late," Leo mumbled to himself. Walking off a punch in the gut wasn't the best feeling in the world, especially when one was in a hurry. Spotting the open gym in the distance and hearing the swarm of children confirmed it. The glass doors of the only obviously concrete building were ajar; Chicken Man stood by these doors to silently judge the latecomers.
Leo cringed under his gaze as he approached. He waved, smiling sheepishly.
Chicken Man huffed impatiently. He held two fingers up, pointed them at his own eyes, and pointed at Leo.
Leo stared at his hand, encased in a dirty fingerless glove. Chicken Man's mouth twitched. One of his cheeks was red, like the sun had reached out and slapped him. Leo realized that this was the most complex communication Chicken Man had offered him. It was probably important that he respond.
"The feeling's mutual, Big Bird," he teased.
Chicken Man squawked in outrage as Leo scampered inside.
The doors Chicken Man was guarding were the side doors; they faced the same direction as the bleachers and were only slightly to the left of them. Leo knew this and took full advantage of it. He slipped in and dropped to the ground. Ezra was right. The camp had grown—so much so that kids were sitting on the floor in front of the bleachers. He huddled near the fringe of the crowd, near campers who wouldn't recognize him.
Abraham stood at the podium, too enraptured by his own gospel to notice. "…And the Lord spoke unto me in a voice so soft, and so terrible, yet inaudible to the unbeliever. And He said, 'cast off thy name, for from this day on and unto the hour of thy death thou shalt be called Abraham. And you shall go forth upon this tract of land and train the soldiers of God, who shall lay down their lives for their faith. And on judgement day, when all others are at the mercy of the angel of death, my children will escape the inferno.' Amen!"
"Amen!" the crowd roared back. Leo was a second delayed, making an echo of an "amen."
Then Ezra, scurrying in the back, rolled down the projector screen and began projecting the lyrics to the hymnal accompaniment. The crowd rose.
My God, my Father, while I stray
Far from my home on life's rough way
Oh, teach me from my heart to say,
"Thy will be done."
Eight stanzas later, the crowd sat back down. They were silent.
A smile and a laugh entered Abraham's voice. "Children! Today is not a day of weeping and gnashing of teeth! This is a joyful day!"
The campers cautiously murmured. Ezra looked excited, bouncing his leg in the folding chair behind Abraham. Even the cranky Chicken Man moved closer.
"A prodigal son," Abraham said, looking pointedly at Leo, "has returned to us. Leonidas Valdez, please come to the front."
Leo's heart went cold as he walked to the podium. He felt like the eidolon had reached into him and taken control again, unable to control his legs even as he knew he was walking into danger.
Abraham's hand was on his shoulder. "Through the grace of God, this lost lamb has been delivered back into our arms. We must welcome him back into the fold. If you all will follow me to the back…"
Behind the gym, there was a slab of blacktop, and behind that slab there was a river. Leo's knees trembled. He was standing at the edge, and he could feel the vapor coming off the water's surface.
Abraham took his hand and pulled him into the water. He tried to wrench away, but the preacher's grip threatened to crush his wrist.
"Today, Leo will be returned to Christ."
Leo's legs felt like cold, wet sticks. If Abraham was a man of God, he did not want to see what that God looked like.
"Please repeat after me the words of the Good Confession."
This was not a request.
"I believe."
"I believe," Leo said quietly.
"That Jesus is the Christ."
"That Jesus is the Christ." The campers stared down at him from the blacktop.
"The Son of the Living God."
"The Son of the Living God." He imagined the gods staring down at him from the blacktop.
"My Lord."
"My Lord." He imagined Jason and Piper staring down at him from the blacktop. Disgusted.
"And my savior."
"…And my savior," Leo said, thinking of the horror Nico had shown the night he saw his scars.
And then his head went under the water.
Cold entered his lungs. He was kept under for so long that he felt his chest would burst, and then he came up, taking a wheezy, painful gasp of air.
Abraham abandoned him as soon as the spectacle was over. He dragged himself onto the riverbank. Nobody helped him. Nobody stopped him.
Leo wobbled onto the blacktop and fell flat on his back, staring at the sky. The few stragglers who hadn't gone back into the gym with Abraham either glanced at him with lethargic sympathy or didn't look at him at all.
Leo looked imploringly at the sun and prayed for help.
Jason. Piper. Nico. Anyone.
He felt like he laid there for hours.
But eventually, Chicken Man scraped him off the pavement and dumped him in the infirmary.
Right before Nico could click the first result, something moved in the darkness.
He gripped his weapon tightly. Oh, what he wouldn't give for night vision at times like this. Something was stalking him, yes, something that was walking one foot at a time and fit in a New York village library, so perhaps it would be an easy fight.
Nico slid from the chair to the ground. He knelt behind the circulation counter and waited.
He moved to the edge to peek out into the lobby.
A hand touched his arm.
He swung blindly.