The Eye of Gods

by: dnrl

Chapter Four: Oil and Water

The bus ride to Manhattan was a silent one.

Argus had turned out to be a man covered with eyes. Everywhere. I shivered a bit, sinking lower on the hard, uncomfortably cushioned bus seat. I didn't like being watched normally, but being watched constantly by five or six eyes, depending, wasn't good at all. I was sitting in the seat at the back – I had been the first to get on the bus, and had made a beeline for the last seat. I had two windows and I could sink out of the line of sight. It was a good scenario.

Lucas and Natalia were sitting together near the front, with Kellie awkwardly stationed near the middle, as though she wasn't sure who she wanted to sit with. She was really trying to be nice to me, and she'd already apologized once for the way that Lucas had talked about me. "I don't know what his problem is," she told me, her mouth twisted with chagrin. "He's usually not such a big jerk."

"Kellie," Natalia called from the front of the bus. "Come sit with us, we need to talk game plan."

"Leave your newest toy," Lucas added. "We'll fill him in once we get everything set."

She shot me a look. "I think that he should be part of the planning too, Lucas. He'll never learn anything if you exclude him from everything!"

"He'll learn what he needs to learn when he needs to learn it," Lucas scoffed. "Now get up here."

With a sigh, she rose and stopped to get used to the rolling gait of the bus as it sped down the bumpy dirt road towards the highway. After finding her footing, she stumbled forward and threw herself into the seat in front of Lucas and Natalia. They put their heads together and lowered their voices so that I couldn't even hear their mumblings over the rumble of the bus.

That was fine by me.

…

Only it wasn't. Kellie was right – I was new, and afraid, and I should at least be able to understand what we were up against. All I knew right now was that we had to fly to Greece, and since Natalia was a daughter of Poseidon, she had to get permission from Zeus to board a plane. I didn't actually think that Zeus would kill his son and the rest of the innocent passengers to spite his brother's child, but I guess that gods didn't have the same code of morals that normal humans did. Apparently it was only Natalia who needed permission, because Zeus didn't have a problem with Nike or with Demeter. Anyway, once we got that, we'd be getting onto a plane that would fly us into London, about a ten hour trip. From there, we'd have a short hop over to the airport in Athens. And then…we'd stop the Titan Lord. Or something.

Like I said – I didn't know much.

I sighed, laid down on the seat, closed my eyes, and tried to sleep.

I woke up on the bus floor, Kellie standing over me. She smiled and offered her hand, pulling me up and into my abandoned seat. I wiped a glimmer of drool from the corner of my mouth, blushing. "So, um. Where are we?" I asked, looking at her. She had changed into jeans and a sweater, with her wheat-blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen outside of the movies, and it was all I could do not to stare.

"We're stopped outside the Empire State Building. Lucas and Kellie went up, but the doorman turned you and me down. He said that only Lucas and Kellie were authorized to go up today." She laughed. "I guess we're not good enough for Olympus."

"You're good enough for anywhere," I blurted, my mouth acting before my mind could catch up. My cheeks burned and I stared resolutely at the floor, my lips pressed together.

She laughed again. "You're sweet. Do you have a jacket or anything?"

I looked up at her when I found the courage and shook my head. "No. I didn't think I'd need one."

She tsk'd. "It's chilly and damp in England at this time of year. C'mon, we have about half an hour, let's go shopping for a jacket so you don't freeze to death."

"So I won't be cold when the monsters eat me?" I joked, standing and following her out of the bus. We nodded to a half-asleep Argus, and a few of his awake eyes winked at us.

"That's the general idea, yeah," she laughed. We stepped onto the sidewalk and she spun in a circle, her arms swinging out like a pinwheel. She stopped after a few seconds, giggling breathlessly. She had really cute dimples. "Have you ever done that before?"

I shook my head, a small smile growing on my face. "My dad used to swing me around like that when I was little, but I haven't done it in a while."

"Well, that's no fun!" she chided. "C'mon! Let your inner kid out!"

Bemused, I spun once or twice. She rolled her eyes, smiled, and grabbed my hand. She spun us out together, my unheld arm flailing about wildly. We almost hit a couple of flabbergasted business people, decked out in suits and briefcases, but I couldn't bring myself to care if they were staring. Kellie was right; this was fun. We broke into fits of giggles, stopping spinning because it hurt to breathe.

"C'mon, newbie, let's get you a jacket," she said at last. She skipped down the street a few paces before looking back at me and beckoning me forward with a smile and a wave of her hand. "Well? Come on!"

I ran after her, unable to keep a smile off my face. Her cheerfulness was infectious, and as we browsed through the racks at a nearby store, she surprised me when she told me that most of her siblings thought her happiness annoying.

"Why?" I asked, confounded.

"Well, mostly because most of them are sticks in the mud who believe that being responsible is this big deal, and it's important to follow the rules. Not that it's not, most of the time, because they're there for a reason, but there are times when you just need to – dance, or sing in the middle of the street, or run around like a maniac in the rain. Have you ever done that?"

"No," I answered, grinning. "I can't say that I have."

"We'll fix that," she assured me. "Here, try on this fleece."

A few jackets later, and we had picked out a dark tan hoodie with the words "Live out loud" scrawled across the front in some kind of loopy script. She flipped the hood over my head and beamed. "It's almost the same color as your eyes!" she announced, tugging it down over my forehead. "A little bit darker, and they'd be the same shade. Here, take it off so we can pay for it."

We paid using the money my aunt had given me to spend if the camp had a store, since I got the feeling that I wouldn't be using the store much for a while. I tugged it on as we left, only to have a clerk stop and demand to see our receipt. We fumbled around in our pockets, backtracking where we'd been, and eventually had to persuade the desk clerk to come over and tell the other guy that we'd actually bought the jacket. He gave me a suspicious look, and when the burglary alarm went off a few seconds later as I walked through the door, he yanked me back in.

"What kind of funny stuff are you trying to pull, kid?" he demanded angrily. The desk clerk spoke up.

"Darren, man, chill out. He paid for it, okay? The scanner wouldn't work, I had to do a manual ring up. It must not've cleared the system. Let him go, he paid."

Darren released my shirt, spun me around, and pushed me out the door. Kellie stared hard at the front window for a moment, frowning. "I was sure I had the receipt," she muttered, checking her pockets again. "I know that I put it in here…"

"It's okay," I assured her. "This kind of stuff is sort of normal for me."

She shot me a sympathetic look. "That sucks."

"Tell me about it. At least I got to keep what I bought this time," I offered, smiling.

She shook her head. "You're a positive kind of kid, aren't you?"

"My dad always said that the only way to be was to be an optimist," I replied as we turned back to the bus. "He was always one. I don't think he ever thought about something in a negative way. Even after he lost his job and we had to move." It took me a minute to realize that Kellie probably didn't want to hear about my past, and here I was, blabbering away. I blushed again and shut my mouth tightly.

We were silent the rest of the way to the bus, where we found Lucas and Natalia waiting for us. Lucas looked at his watch, shot a look to Kellie, and a glare to me. "Where were you? We were going to leave you."

For some reason, this made Kellie's mouth tighten up in a frown. "Thanks, Lucas. Did you get permission, Nat?"

"Natalia, and yes, I did," replied the curly-haired girl. She sat with long legs crossed and arms folded together underneath her – well. I looked away, biting my lip and trying not to blush any more. "We also were given a blessing from Athena to help our weapons make it through airport security. She also offered a salve to make the blades unbreakable. We already took care of yours," she said, twirling a curl around a finger carelessly.

"Awesome," offered Kellie. She took her previous seat by them, and I resumed my lonely vigil at the back of the bus as we rattled along the street towards JFK.

I really didn't like long flights.

The plane ride from Washington to New York hadn't really registered, because I was still out of it, but being on a plane over an ocean for ten hours with only one person who tolerated me was almost unbearable. Kellie had fallen asleep halfway through, with Natalia joining her about an hour later, but I was too hyped up to sleep, and whatever was keeping Lucas from closing his eyes was something he wasn't sharing. Not that he would have, anyway. He listened to his iPod the entire time, staring out the window at the clouds rushing by in the darkening sky.

I wished I'd had any sort of music. I loved sounds, music especially, all kinds. It didn't really matter if it was Mozart, Muzak, or Eminem, I was pretty much content with what I was listening to as long as it was interesting. It was a trait I'd inherited from my dad, either through genetics or through absorption. He always had music on somewhere – either on the speakers in our house, from a CD player in the bathroom, an mP3 or Walkman, wherever he was there was music. Any kind of music, he didn't really have a preference. Neither did I, apparently.

Beside me, Kellie stirred, her eyes fluttering open. She looked over at me and smiled sleepily, stretching. "Why aren't you napping?" she asked.

"Too awake," I replied, smiling. Lucas looked over at us, rolled his eyes, and went back to staring out the window.

"You want my iPod?" she yawned.

"No, really, I couldn't – " I objected. She ignored me, rummaging in her duffel under her seat and pulling out a little purple Nano.

"It's mostly old stuff, so if you don't like it just stick it back in." She yawned again. "Going back to sleep now."

"Okay. Thank you," I said, smiling as I turned it on and pushed the buds into my ears. Frank Sinatra crooned into my auditory canal, and then Percy Faith, followed by Dean Martin. Slowly, slowly, I was sung to sleep.

When I woke up, Natalia and Lucas were sharing his headphones and Kellie's head was in my lap. Blinking rapidly and fighting the blood away from my cheeks, I checked my watch, then realized I hadn't reset it, so it would be useless. As though sensing my predicament, the overhead speaker crackled into static-y life. "This is your c-crsshhhhs speaking, and I'm crhshssss we'll be landing in London in about ten minutes. Please shhhhhrsh, place all seats in upright position, and fasten your seatbelts."

Gently, I tapped Kellie's shoulder. "Kellie, you have to sit up," I said softly. "Kellie, we're landing, you have to sit up."

With an exaggerated groan, she picked herself up and flopped against her seat. "Why?" she whined theatrically. "I'm sleepy."

"You can sleep on the flight to Greece," Lucas said curtly, rolling his earphones around his iPod and stuffing it into his duffel. I did the same with Kellie's.

We descended through the sky towards London, the first leg of our journey almost over.

I relaxed. This might not be so bad.

"Oh gods, I'm going to be sick."

I was helping Kellie support a severely green Natalia, whose knees had apparently gone rubbery. We guided her to a bench and she collapsed onto it, her hands pressed against her mouth. She groaned and Lucas cursed in Ancient Greek under his breath.

"Natalia, why didn't you say something?" he asked.

"What, you think I knew that I was sick?" she snapped. She was breaking out in a cold sweat, and had started to shiver. I pulled off my new hoodie and wrapped it around her. Kellie pulled it off and handed it to me, an odd look on her face.

"It's new," she said, forcing a smile. "Wouldn't want Natalia puke on it. She can use my spare." She rummaged in her bag and tugged out a black jacket, which she draped over her sick friend like a blanket. "What are we going to do, Lucas?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't know, I don't know. Chiron just IM'd and said that the plane tickets were suddenly rejected and the payment denied, and he doesn't know why, so we need to use the emergency cash to buy tickets for the next plane instead. Only half of the emergency cash is suddenly missing, so I don't know what we're supposed to do."

"I'm going to hurl," Natalia warned, forcing herself to her feet. She almost fell, but Kellie and Lucas caught her.

"Take her to the bathroom," Lucas ordered.

Kellie caught up both of their duffle bags. "In case she doesn't make it," she explained. The two girls shuffled off quickly towards the women's restroom. Lucas ran a hand through his already disheveled black hair.

"You. I'm going to the ticket counter to buy tickets. Wait here for those two to get back, and then find the next flight to Greece on the board over there, okay? I'll be at that gate."

I nodded and he scooped up his bags and took off briskly for the other side of the airport, leaving me alone and waiting.

I waited for half an hour.

Then another half hour.

I had fixed my watch, and I couldn't understand it. Lucas should've come back for me when he realized that either we hadn't found the flight or that the girls were still in the bathroom. I felt horrible for Natalia; I'd been sick like that once before, and it had been hell. Overhead, announcements boomed from the loudspeaker, echoing so that I couldn't understand them.

Another fifteen minutes passed, and I finally got up and went over to the Information desk.

"Um, excuse me, m'am."

The woman didn't respond, entirely absorbed with her magazine. "Um, m'am, hello?"

She looked up, popped a pink bubble, and gave me a look. "What?"

"Um, my friend came over here to book four tickets on a flight to Greece. Can you tell me which gate the next flight leaves from? It's not on the board."

Her eyebrows furrowed. "The last plane to Greece left about an hour ago, love. Are you sure that was where you friend was going?"

I felt a cold weight settle in my stomach. An hour ago.

I was so stupid.

"Yes, m'am," I heard myself saying. "Thank you for your help."

I dragged myself back to the bench and dropped down. My hoodie was sitting where Kellie had left it, and the odd look on her face when Lucas had mentioned leaving us and her reluctance to let Natalia use my hoodie suddenly made sense. She didn't want to leave me, I thought. She felt guilty. She had made sure that I could keep the hoodie, that I wouldn't lose it.

"It's new," she said, forcing a smile. "Wouldn't want Natalia puke on it."

"I'm such an idiot," I muttered to myself, burying my face in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut. "Idiot, idiot, idiot. Perchè sono così stupido?"

I shook myself out of it. I still had Chiron's number, on a piece of paper in my duffel bag.

Which was gone.

I replayed Lucas's walking away in my head, groaning when I realized that he had had two bags when before he had only had one. "He took my bag. Dio, perchè me?" I bit my cheek again. Lapsing into Italian was a bad habit. I needed to cut it out. I spoke English. English.

"Are you alright, young man?"

I looked up to see an elderly gentleman wearing an old-style traveler's cloak peering down at me through rounded glasses with oddly intelligent hazel eyes. "Yes. No. I'm not sure, sir," I finished miserably.

"A little American boy. Here was me, thinking you were Italian," he chuckled. He sat down on the bench beside me, hand on the small of his back, groaning. "O-o-h, I can hear my knees creaking. Old age is never good to you, boy. So what seems to be the problem?"

"The people I was travelling with left me. They caught the last flight out to where we were going, and I have no money and no contact number."

"What a ghastly accident!"

I choked on a laugh, too miserable to be nervous. "It wasn't an accident. They planned it. They knew what they were going to do before we even got on the plane in New York."

He made a small disapproving noise in the back of his throat. "You need to get yourself to the U.S. Embassy, boy. I'm sure that they could take care of you there, perhaps even get you on a flight back home tonight."

"But I need to be with my friends in Greece."

"The people who abandoned you? They don't sound like friends to me." Moaning, he pushed himself off the bench. He was leaning on a dark, wooden cane that I was almost positive he hadn't been holding a few minutes ago, but I brushed it away. I wasn't the most observant person, especially now.

"Where's the embassy? How do I get there?" I asked, biting my lip. It sounded like my only hope; no one had told me how to do the rainbow message thing, and I didn't have anyone I could call. My aunt's phone was disconnected, and her cell phone always off. I had nobody else.

"I tell you what. It's just along my way back home, I can drop you off there if you'd like."

I pressed my lips together. All the lessons from my childhood were pressing against my head: never go with a stranger, never trust strange people, never take candy from a guy in a car. And the half-blood stuff wasn't making things much easier; what if he was another Ms. Waldron? What if he was a monster in disguise, waiting until we were alone to turn around and eat me, bite by bite? But my instincts weren't screaming; they were telling me that he was a nice old man, nothing more. Like the grandfather I'd never had.

I huffed a sigh and looked up at him. "Okay," I said. "Thank you, sir."

"Thank me when we get there, dear boy," he chuckled, laugh lines appearing in his face. "Come along, then." We took off together through the airport, and he chatted to me the whole time. He told me about his nieces and nephews, and his family and their crazy antics. He made it sound like a Spanish soap opera, and I couldn't help from laughing a few times. He drove a low-slung, polished black expensive-looking car with leather seats that still smelled new even though he assured me he'd had it for years.

"This car is probably older than you," he told me with a grin. "Onward, to the Embassy! Tally-ho! Charge!"

"Here you are, my boy," he said, pulling up to a nondescript tan building, squat and ugly. "Right through that set of glass doors there and onwards until you get to the reception desk. I'm sure that they'll be very understanding."

"Thank you so much, sir. I really owe you. Is there anything I can do?"

"Nothing at all!" he assured me. "You're a good listener, and that's all old people ever really want. Best of luck in doing what you need to!"

I clambered out of the car and waved until he rounded the far corner. A smile still sort of on my face, I turned, walked up the path, and pushed in through the glass doors. I made my way down a long, narrow taupe hallway that wound up opening into a large, modern-looking room with a large semicircular half-desk. An Arabic woman was sitting behind a computer, Bluetooth headphone in, typing rapidly into the keyboard. She didn't look up as I approached the desk.

"Um, excuse me."

She looked over at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, um, I'm a citizen of the U.S., and I was abandoned in the airport. Is there any way that I can get home?"

She sighed, made a face, and rose, vanishing into a door behind the desk.

"Wait, m'am, come back!"

Her head reappeared, and she snapped something in a jibberish language. "ماذا؟?!" she spat.

I jumped. "No, I – I don't -Um, parlate italiano?"

She rolled her eyes, hissed, and stormed back through the door, clearly annoyed. My hands clenched on the desk. What was happening…?

"الذي يكون أنت?"

I whirled to face a door to my left. A boy about my age was standing there, thumbs hooked through the belt loops in his jeans, a white dress shirt messy and untucked. He, too, was Arabic, with dusky skin, black eyes, and blacker hair. He was raising an eyebrow at me, as though he expected an answer. I sighed, nearly going out of my mind.

"Parlate italiano?" I asked him, frustrated. No one spoke English, no one spoke Italian; what was I supposed to do? What kind of U.S. Embassy was this?

He looked confused, and I laughed softly, sinking to the ground, leaning against the desk. "Welcome to my world," I told him in English, certain he wouldn't understand.

"Oh, you're American!"

I jumped up as he addressed me in slightly accented English, excited that someone could finally understand. "You speak English! Oh, grazie Dio, thank God! I need to get home!"

He raised an eyebrow. "That seems like a personal problem."

I sighed. "No, I mean, I came to the embassy so that I could get home."

The confused look was back. "You live in Egypt?"

My face fell. "Egypt?" I echoed, disbelief coloring my voice.

"Egypt," he said slowly, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "This is the Egyptian embassy."

I moaned and just let myself collapse. I buried my face in my hands and tried not to cry. I suppose it was too much to hope that my luck would be good for once.

I heard the boy walk over and sit beside me. I peered through my fingers to find him sitting with his legs crossed, staring at me with interested black eyes. "Where were you supposed to end up?"

"Greece," I grunted, too frustrated to care about good impressions, shyness, or anything else right now.

"Greece," he stated flatly. "So you're an American kid in an Egyptian embassy who wants to get home to…Greece."

I let my head slam back against the counter. It didn't feel good, but some part of me felt better. "No," I said. "I'm an American kid who took a flight here and was supposed to catch a flight to Greece, but his friends left him and an old guy offered to take him to the U.S. Embassy but he brought him to the Egyptian one instead."

"Nice one," offered the boy. He extended his hand. "Sudi Massri. And you are…?"

"Prospero Bianchi. Prop," I said, taking his hand and shaking it. I curled my legs up to my chest, feeling the swords bound to my thighs pressing tight against the skin. I sighed. "Don't freak out, okay?"

"About wh – you're taking off your pants. Why are you taking off your pants?"

I fought down the blush that was fighting its way into my cheeks and ripped the swords off of my thighs before yanking my pants back up. I tightened the exterior thigh holsters, and then I laid the swords on the ground and curled back up into my fetal ball again. Sudi stared at me, then at the knives on the ground, then at me again. "It's a long story," I muttered.

He sighed cynically, picking up one of the knives. "It always is," he said, pulling it out of its sheath. A surprised look flashed across his face, followed closely by a suspicious one.

"Where did you get these?" he asked me.

"A friend," I replied. "From summer camp back home."

"How did you get them through airport security?" he asked, the suspicion still clear on his dark-skinned face.

"I'm freaking Harry Potter," I mumbled, burying my face in my knees.

"Yeah, okay, and I'm Aladdin. Bullcrap," he said, toying with the kukri. "Do you know what these are?"

"Sharp knives, is my guess."

"You're a genius. No, I mean what they're made of."

Why not. I had nothing else to lose. "Aiden told me they were made of celestial bronze, the metal of the gods."

The sword dropped from his hand with a clunk. I looked at him to see his face intense, his eyes bright with focus. I've seen those eyes before, I thought, but the memory was lost when Sudi spoke.

"You know about the gods." He smiled suddenly, brightly, grabbing onto my shoulders. "You know about the gods!"

"The Greek gods, yes, what is your deal?" I asked, pulling my shoulders away. I was tired, I was abandoned, I had no money, no food, no clothes besides the ones I wore, no way home, and a psychotic kid was shaking me. I'd had a long day.

His smile faltered. "The Greek gods? They're – they're real?"

"…yes," I said, confused. "Wait. Which – which gods are you talking about?"

"The Egyptian gods, of course," he said. Oh, of course.

"Wow," I breathed. "How – how do you know about the gods?"

He reached into the shirt and pulled out a leather cord. On the end of it, a little bird was dangling. It was small but intricately carved; the bird had a little head with a long, curved beak. I blinked. "That – that bird. What is it?"

"The symbol of Thoth," he said. "The ibis."

"You're a son of Thoth?" I asked him, eyes wide. He nodded, tucking the carving back into his shirt.

"Are you one too? A son of a god, I mean?"

"My mom is a goddess," I explained, somewhat hesitant. He was so proud of his parentage. "Nike."

"Like the shoes?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Nike means victory in Greek," I told him. He grinned, his black eyes sparkling.

"Wow, the goddess of victory. Can I put you on my basketball team?"

I groaned. "No."

"But – "

"No."

"Fine, then," he said, rolling his eyes. "So, Prop, son of Nike, why are you heading to Greece? Ancestral questions?"

"Quest," I said miserably. "But the people I was with ditched me because I'm bad luck. Yes, I know my mom's the goddess of victory, yes, I know that I should be good, I'm not. I'm just not. I don't know why."

He was quiet for a while after that. "What's going to happen in Greece? Are you stealing golden apples or something? A fleece? Something gold."

I sighed. "Not quite. More averting-the-apocalypse stuff, I think, than gold. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there's no gold involved."

He waved a hand dismissively. "There's always gold involved. What kind of apocalypse? Zombie? Nuclear kaboom?"

"From what little I do know," I grimaced, "I'm pretty sure it's more of a vortex of doom and despair and enslavement of all mankind."

"Oh. Well, that's no fun." He sighed, drawing patterns absently in the carpet. Suddenly, he brightened. "We can use the jet!"

"…beg pardon?"

He stood, attempting to drag me with him. "The jet, the embassy jet! Come on Prospero Son-of-Victory Bianca – "

"Bianchi – "

" – move!" he finished, finally pulling me to my feet. We stumbled backwards, righting ourselves before we fell, and he sighed. "That was spectacular. Anyway, my mom's the Egyptian ambassador to London, and the embassy has a jet! This qualifies as enough of an emergency to use it."

"Like they're going to let us use a jet!" I scoffed, digging in my heels as he attempted to pull me down the hallway. "I'm an optimist, but that's just verging on stupidity! 'Oh, hey, borrowing a pilot and jet to zoom over to Greece and save the world from a malicious ancient evil, be back for tea, ta-ta!' It's not going to go over well!"

He rolled his eyes. "So we lie, retard. Allah, but you're stupid."

"I resent that. Also, I thought that Islam was mono – ow, that hurts! Monotheistic. That means with one god, right?"

"Right. Move, damn you! And it is. Urk! You're heavier than you look."

"Please put me down."

"No. And I don't truly follow Islam, I'm just listed as a Muslim in the census."

"Well goody for you and your census. I like the ground, please return me to it."

"No. Do you not understand? From what I know, it's the same in English and Italian. Oof! Doors hurt." We were outside now, and from my vantage point I could see the doors closing behind us as Sudi continued walking, me thrown over his shoulder.

"I'm heavy. Doesn't this hurt?"

"Fireman's throw. Sort of painful, yeah, but you're not going any other way, and I'm not too fond of the apocalypse, so – monster."

"What? Ow!" I landed on the concrete with a thud, and Sudi dropped the two kukri into my lap. I looked up to see a strange looking creature crouched not more than ten feet away on the sidewalk.

"Please tell me you can use those," Sudi hissed.

"Yeah, right," I spat back, slowly rising to my feet, eyes never leaving the monster. "You're the son of the god of wisdom, you figure something out!"

"Little short on tools to improvise with, genius!"

"Shut up and think, shut up and think!"

"Fine! Ugh!"

Gulping, I slid the kukri out of their sheaths and gripped them in my sweaty palms. I made sure that they were like Aiden had showed me, just in case.

"That is an Egyptian monster," Sudi said quietly. "Didn't think it was real, thought the historians were wrong. My bad."

"What is it?!"

"It's, um. A female leopard with the head and neck of an asp."

"An asp?"

"Poisonous snake. Deadly snake. Go on, Prop, go be a hero."

"You suck!" I hissed, my breath shaky. The thing had risen to its feet, and sure enough, the head of a snake unfurled and rose into the air. The claws on the body extended out of the paws, and I was fighting to breathe from terror. The tufted tail swung back and forth, and I'd seen enough mice killed and eaten by a cat to figure out what that meant.

Sure enough, it lunged, the snake's mouth open wide, fangs glistening with poison. If these are my last seconds here, I thought, let's make them good. I closed my eyes and swung out blindly, wildly, with the kukri, windmilling my arms in every direction. I felt a thud against the blade, followed by a soft whup and a gentle hiss. I stabbed and jabbed and spun frantically, positive that Sudi was dead, that it was coming for me.

"Calm down, you spaz!" snapped Sudi. I froze, my eyes flying open. There was a small pile of dust on the ground about a foot away, and a little bit further than that lay the severed head of a snake, mouth still open, fangs still bared. Sudi was rising from the ground, brushing dirt from his clothes and glaring. "You almost took my head off," he growled.

"Yeah, but it's dead," I said, unable to help myself as I slid into giggles with a distinctly hysterical edge. "I killed it! It's dead."

"Congratulations, have a cookie or something. What do we do with the head?" he asked, picking up a twig and poking at it dubiously.

"I have no idea, and I don't care!" I shouted gleefully, cackling. "That can be your problem, because I killed a monster!"

Sudi rolled his eyes, but I ignored him, laughing and spinning about happily.

"Will you please put those things away before you kill me, oh fearsome accidental-monster-slayer?" he deadpanned, glaring at me. I took a few steadying breaths and nodded, a goofy smile still on my face. I sheathed the kukri and slipped them into the uncomfortable thigh-holster that Chiron had assured me I'd need.

If this was what victory felt like, I wanted more of it. I reached down to pick up the head of the snake. "I guess it's a trophy," I said, turning it over in my hands.

"Careful," Sudi warned. "The fangs are still poisonous, I think."

I sat, pulled off my tennis shoe, and yanked off my sock. Toeing the shoe back on, I did the same to the other foot, and then wrapped the head in both of the socks. I stuck it in my pocket and stood. "Do you have any money?" I asked Sudi, my stomach growling. "I'm hungry."

"Ugh," Sudi moaned, sending me a small smile to let me know he was teasing. "Are all heroes this dependant?"

"Considering that I'm not a hero," I said, smiling, "I don't really know. Now come on. I feel like Chinese."

"No, we're getting Indian."

"Japanese?"

"French."

"Italian?"

"German."

"English?"

"English."

Together we walked down the sidewalk, talking about various food and its merits, and it occurred to me that maybe Sudi would really help me get to Greece. Maybe I could catch up to the others and prove that I wasn't such a useless jinx after all.

Ow! I winced as something sharp broke the skin through my shirt. I froze where I was, hoping against hope that it hadn't been what I thought it was. I looked down and sure enough, a shiny white fang was protruding through the pocket of my hoodie and into the skin at my hip.

"Hey, Sudi? Can we go to a hospital first?"

A/N

So...um...nother update. Say hi to Sudi, guys!

Um, rough translations: Arabic is, first, "What?" and then "Who are you?". Italian is mostly Prop saying that he's an idiot, and asking if people speak Italian. :D