First of all... happy 2011! you know, i started wondering how they'd make the glasses for this year because in the past years, they had two zeroes. This year, they actually carved a hole in the first one to make the whole thing work... yeah, i was bored.

So, don't own cash cab or gossip girl or vampire diaries (aww) or twilight (thankfully) and definitely am not rick riordan.

Fear Cab

So now we were riding in a cab with the gods of scaring. Didn't 'phobia' come from Phobos? It didn't help when they whooped and confirmed that we were correct.

The cab stopped abruptly at the red light. He honked impatiently as a group of kindergarteners crossed. "Stupid schools," he muttered and rolled down the window. "Come on! Hurry up!" he hollered. Then something must've scared the little kids because they shrieked and hurried to the opposite end of the street, and didn't stop there. I looked out my side and noticed a giant dragon breathing tongues of fire. "Relax, demigods," he said cheerfully. "Just an illusion. Now here's the deal. I'll ask you questions. You answer them correctly, you won't get scared. You answer them incorrectly, we'll show what you fear the most. The fear will probably drive you insane or something. If somehow you're still alive and sane or you haven't dropped dead from fear by the end of this cab ride, consider this ride on us!"

Now I was really wishing I'd walked.

"Isn't this like a rip off from Cash Cab?" Nico pointed out.

The driver's partner turned to look at us and took off his sunglasses. "Have a problem with that, boy?" he grinned. Nico turned so pale I expected him to faint.

"No." He glared at the back of the seat once Phobos had turned around.

"Okay, first question. Name of Edward and Bella's child in Stephenie Meyer's fourth book of the popular Twilight saga –"

"What the hell?" Jess demanded. "How are we supposed to know this?"

"By reading, duh."

"But we demigods have dyslexia!" Jess yelled.

"Exactly." They high-fived, Deimos only steering with one hand, which caused the cab to jerk from side to side on the road.

"A question for you. Did you even get your driver's licence?"

He snorted. "Do I need one? I learned. It's easy, see?" Just then, he ran a red light, narrowly swerving a car and ending up on the opposite lane. A truck about to run us done honked. He twisted the steering wheel to the right, missing the truck, and slamming the cab against a fire hydrant. "So," he said calmly as if we were taking a slow cruise along the beach.

"You're crazy."

"Jackson's sister, I wouldn't cross me. Are you sure you're his sister? You don't look like a girl."

It took everything in me not to punch him. "I cut my hair."

"Wonderful," he yawned. "Do you have your answer?"

"Think," Cailey muttered. "Does anyone know?"

"I wouldn't touch any book longer than a hundred pages without a ten foot pole. Animal Farm was painful enough," I said.

"You managed to read Animal Farm?" They all looked at me with widened eyes.

"Not like I got the message…"

"Tick tock!" Phobos sang. He turned on the radio, and Ke$ha's TiK ToK came on. To make it worse, he began singing along. "Wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy…"

"He's insane."

"He's a god."

"I'm going to be sick…" I groaned. Phobos just laughed.

Jess sneezed. "Can't you turn on the air conditioning?"

"Ruhnezmay!" This was from Diana.

"I thought it was 'Bless you'," Nico said.

"Ruhnezmay," Diana repeated. "That's the answer. I had a friend who was obsessed with Twilight. She gave me all the details of the book."

We looked at her with horror.

"Not everything," she corrected. "Just… the censored version."

"That is correct," Phobos said sadly. "The Ruhnezmay part. Now spell it. That's your second question."

We all looked at Diana. She shrugged. "Sorry, she just said the name. Don't know how to spell it."

Nico began trying to spell it. "R… u…"

"Incorrect!"

He scowled and tried again. "R… a…"

"Try again, death boy. One more wrong answer and we get to scare you."

I looked outside and noticed we were about to cross a bridge. It was high up, over the Hudson river. "Wait, this is the wrong way –"

"R, E, N, E…" He looked to Phobos for confirmation. We listened with bated breath. "Z?"

Phobos laughed. The car rammed into the side of the bridge and kept going. We were in air now, falling, and the Hudson River was growing under us, ready to swallow us whole. My stomach disappeared. We were screaming, everyone, at ear splitting volumes. I started thinking about how I could try cushioning everyone's fall, and then my mind went blank. We were falling. Through the air. It was so up high and –

I blinked. We were driving through the streets of Manhattan. Ke$ha did her creepy giggle. The song changed to Grenade by Bruno Mars. "Wait, I thought we were falling to our deaths," Cailey said. Her eyes were wide.

"Not bad for a first scare, eh? No, killing you immediately would take away all the fun. Remember, answer correctly, and you won't have to scream shrills like little girls," Deimos reminded as if we'd forgotten.

"What's the next question?" Nico asked.

"Name Stephenie Meyer's discontinued manuscript about Edward's point of view in the events in Twilight."

"Why so many Twilight questions?" Nico yelled. "Do you have an obsession with it?"

By the silence that was growing, the answer was yes. "She's a genius," Phobos defended.

"Shut up," Deimos said sharply.

Diana chewed at her nails. "I don't know this," she fretted. "No, I do! Midnight…" she began speaking under her breath. "Midnight Moon… Midnight Stars… I should've listened to Tina more closely… Midnight… Cloud? Midday Moon?"

"Are those all guesses?"

"No!" Diana stopped thinking out loud, chewing her nails with more ferocity. I felt so dumb and useless. I couldn't even answer a stupid question to save our sanities. "Midnight Sun," she announced.

"Damn it," Deimos swore. "Okay, no more Twilight questions because we won't get to scare you enough."

We cheered.

"We're halfway there. Name the two brothers who have fallen in love with Elena Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries."

"More vampires?" Nico moaned.

"L.J Smith is awesome," Phobos said.

"Okay, I thought you fear gods would be more into horror books, not romantic novels!" Jess exclaimed.

"But vampires are scary."

"You two are the most pathetic fear gods I've ever met."

"We are the only fear gods you've ever met," Phobos pointed out. "So, suckers, have an answer?"

We shook our heads, one after the other. "Bob and Larry?" Nico asked sourly. "Throw us off a bridge again. We don't know."

Phobos turned to us again. He took off his sunglasses. I stared at his eyes. Making eye contact would mean that you're not afraid. But apparently, trying to act like you're brave was the wrong thing to do here. As soon as he looked back at me, I was somewhere else. Not in the cab.

"What in Hades?" I looked around. I was looking at an amusement park, birds eye view. There were tiny concession stands underneath, and all sorts of rides like bumper cars and helicopter land. The Ferris wheel was slowly rotating, but there was not a single person on it. No one was here. It was deserted.

Save me, sitting in a rollercoaster car at the summit of what had to be the largest drop to ever exist. It was so high I could see the land around me for miles around. Upon this realization, I began to panic.

The car just remained at the top. It didn't speed down. Yet. I felt the handle under my fingers. It was covered with rust.

Oh great, I was stuck on a rickety old rollercoaster, about to get thrown down into hell.

That was when I became hysterical.

Usually, I didn't mind heights. Unless it was really high up. Back when I visited Mount Olympus last summer, I had to march up steps suspended in midair. I guess it's not really heights, but the fear of dying from heights. Being on this rollercoaster car meant that it could probably fall apart any moment. Which meant gravity doing its work – sending me plunging to the ground until I was splattered flat.

"Very funny!" I yelled into the still air. "I know this isn't real, it's just one of your tricks." Actually, I had to say that aloud to convince myself I wasn't actually going to die. "Phobos –"

The car shook in the sudden breeze. And then it started carrying me down. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed myself hoarse. I couldn't look at the ground. Otherwise it was going to send me into louder hysterics. The car wasn't slowing down. It was going faster and seemed to have no intention of stopping. My hands gripping the handlebar as tightly as they could because it was the only thing keeping me in. I could feel the wind rushing through my hair.

Then the tracks ended. The car did a somersault in the air, leaving me out of the car and holding on to only the handlebar. My fingers, slippery with cold sweat, let go.

I was falling. By myself. Unless someone had a giant trampoline at the bottom, the next time I'd see Nico would be when he's visiting his dad.

I kept telling myself that Phobos was going to end this before I hit the ground. But the ground kept coming. The concession stands grew larger. My eyes were watering. I closed my eyes tried to keep whatever was in my stomach in. The next time I opened my eyes, the ground was right in front of me.

I screamed and was still screaming when the cab made another turn.

I wasn't the only one screaming though. Jess was just as loud. Nico stopped mid-swear. The other two were just silent and pale. We stopped abruptly and glued our lips together in a thin line.

"That was fun, don't you think?" Phobos asked cheerfully. He was still looking at us. I avoided his eyes, staring up at the bland colour of the ceiling of the car. "I particularly enjoyed listened to your cusses," he pointed to Nico.

"You sadistic –"

"Watch it," Phobos warned Jess.

"We're getting out," I announced. "I'm not putting up with your sick jokes." I pulled at the handle when the lights turned red and Deimos was forced to brake. The door wouldn't budge. I pulled at the lock, but it wouldn't move either.

"Doors are magically locked until we reach the destination," Phobos said in a tone that suggested he'd said this many times before. "You've got two more questions."

"Two more," Nico repeated. "That isn't too bad, right?"

"I don't know what you saw, but if you're willing to go throw it two more times, it probably was a lot less scary than mine," Jess snapped.

"I don't see any other options!" Nico steamed.

"Next question!" Phobos said. "Who plays Chuck Bass in Gossip Girl?"

"You read Twilight… and you watch Gossip Girl…" Nico said. "You have way too much time on your hands."

"At least it's not vampires," Cailey said. "So any of you know?"

"I think I do!" I exclaimed elatedly. Everyone looked my way with everything from shock to surprise. In other words, shock and surprise. "What?" I asked.

"Lena Evans… You watch Gossip Girl?"

"It was either that or Animal Farm! My parents were out doing marriage counselling and my siblings weren't there either…" I rolled my eyes. "I thought you guys would be relieved that I happened upon the show one night. Ed Westwick is Chuck Bass."

"Shit she got it!" I heard Deimos swear.

"Just say your final question and let us out," Cailey said wearily.

"One of you guys here is going to die. Who will it be?" Phobos asked.

No one spoke. Lady Gaga stuttered about poker faces on the radio. Phobos reached out with one hand and turned it off. The music stopped. "Well?" he asked.

"Where did you hear that?" I asked tiredly. It was only the third day of our quest and I hadn't forgotten that part of the prophecy yet.

"We gods are all knowing," Phobos said solemnly. "We were visiting the camp, plotting to prank Clarisse… and you don't need to know more than that."

"None of us are going to die," Cailey said.

Phobos recited the prophecy again. "Take two others but four the sum – you, Lena –" With a start, I realized he knew my name, " – took two others but now you have four other quest members. Hide if you can the fear shall come obviously refers to us." Pride in his voice. Great. "Success will come from one's last breath – someone has to die for you to succeed, no duh, which is exactly what the last line predicts. The journey's end in internal death."

Hearing him recite the prophecy was pretty creepy. "The fact that you stalked us outside my cabin is freaky, not flattering," I said. "And who knows? The Oracle is whacked. Everything she says has double meanings."

Phobos ignored. "Which one of you is going to die?" he repeated.

"Nobody," Nico's voice rose higher with agitation. "Didn't you hear Cailey?"

"That's not an answer."

Nico wasn't done. "You like poking fun at us, don't you? Finding the one thing that bothers us? Finding the thing that drives between us as a group? Well I'd just like to say –"

"Don't insult us," Phobos turned in his seat. We all focused our eyes somewhere else. "Well, which one of you is it going to be?"

"Someone answer. He can't do anything us if we don't look at him," I said.

But either everyone was fearing Deimos or no one wanted to admit that they would die because of bad luck or whatever, no one spoke up. The car swayed side to side, crashing into poles and other parked cars. I was amazed at how the battered car somehow still managed to run.

"Deimos, get ready in five, four, three…"

"Me," Diana blurted out. "Now please let us out before I throw up on you."

Surprisingly, they did. No one wanted to be vomited on. The doors opened by themselves. I clambered out of the cab as fast as I could, tripping over my own feet to get to fresh air. Jess got out and then ran to the garbage can, sticking her head in to retch.

The cab drove off. Phobos stuck his head out the window and waved. "Have a nice quest!" he jeered.

Nico aimed a snowball at him and missed.

"Where are we?" Cailey asked. "We should be close."

I checked the number of the house and the street sign. "Actually, we're here." I took in the plain brick house. It was small and old. It wasn't looking like it was about to fall apart, but it wasn't in its best shape either.

"Do you think they let us out because of Diana's stomach?" Cailey said quietly enough no one else would hear.

"Don't think so… When I said I wasn't feeling so good Phobos didn't mind at all."

"So is it because we're here or that we answered the question correctly?"

"Probably because we're here," I answered quickly. "They can't know who's going to die. I bet Apollo doesn't know everything about the future either."

We looked at Diana, who was brushing snow from her hair.

"Are we going to go in or no?" Nico said impatiently. "I didn't get scared half to death just to gawk at the house."

I went up the steps and knocked on the door.

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