Chapter Thirteen

Disclaimer: I do not own the PJO or HoO series by Rick Riodan.

Kyra's POV

I really don't know how long this thing has been carrying Nico and I. We had cut through the woods around the safe house, I assumed so the mortals wouldn't freak out when they saw—well, whatever the Mist would cloak the creature as.

If I had to guess though, I'd say the thing had been carrying us for about three hours now. The sun had just come up about thirty minutes ago, lighting the sky in pastels.

I really just wanted to stab the thing in it's fucking hand and then get Nico and find Mike. But of course, I couldn't do that. Partly because I had left my dagger in the driveway at the safe house, and also because if I did do that, it would either crush me or drop me to my death fifty feet below.

When we reach our destination, however much longer that'll be, I had to figure out a way to contact someone, preferably by Iris Message because monsters couldn't track us that way, but I'd take what I could get.

"Ky!" I hear Nico shout.

I look over at him in the clutches of the monster's other hand. He looked as miserable as I felt, if not more. It's no wonder why either. He's wounded severely and being slung around and soaked with goo.

"What?" I shout back.

"How much longer do you suppose we'll be in this thing's hands?" he asks.

"I dunno. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of being up here though." I say.

He nods and we both look down at the black car beneath us. It was still riding along the bumpy path, with the mysterious guy and Mike inside. Mike was, without a doubt, still screaming his head off. That child could scream and protest longer than any other kid I knew.

After a while, Nico talks again. "You think Mike's okay?" he asks.

"I hope so. He's a tough little kid, he should be alright." I say, trying to reassure the both of us. Though it didn't work quite well. Or at least, it didn't reassure me, I don't know about Nico.

About two hours later, we had reached a building. It was odd, because it almost looked like a skyscraper from New York and it was in the middle of the woods, the farthest thing from the city. The trees surrounding us must be pretty old because they're taller than the building itself.

The car rolls to a stop and the guy gets out from the passenger side, there must be someone else driving. He looks up at the monster and yells, "Drop 'em in the department!"

The thing starts walking around the giant building and towards the back of it. I try kicking and getting free, but fail. The more I struggled, it seemed, the more the goo on the monster's hands attached itself to my body, getting me more stuck than I already was.

The building stretched back for a bit. It was like one giant square instead of a really tall rectangle, and the farther back you went, the shorter the building got. Eventually, the monster stops at a part of a building that was a few feet shorter than it.

I look and see a really big hole in the roof of it. The monster raises its hands and then drops Nico and I into the hole. I scream all the way down and then thud against something soft and mushy, like a pillow.

I open my eyes and see that we had landed on one of those air sacks that are used for stunts in movies. I make my way over to Nico and we slide off of it.

I look up and see the hole in the ceiling closing up, the early morning sky and the trees disappearing from sight.

We seemed to be in a sort of torture chamber. From what light there was, I could see that there were dark stains on the stone walls and some on the floor as well. Over on the other side of the room there were chains bolted to the walls and floor, and also some hanging from the ceiling. That's where most of the dark stains were. It was obvious that the only light sources were the dim lights hanging from the ceiling, since there weren't any windows.

"Nico." I whisper.

"Yea, Ky?" he asks, leaning heavily against me.

"Do you think we're alone in here?" I ask.

"I dunno, Ky." he says.

Suddenly, all his weight is on me and I topple to the hard, stone ground, Nico on top of me. He had passed out, probably from all the blood he had lost.

I gently move him off of me and onto his back. I pull up his shirt to inspect the wound. I gasp when I see it. Even in the dim lighting, I could tell that it was pretty bad.

It had probably been bad to begin with, but adding the monster goo and being slung around for about five hours to it didn't help at all. It was tinted a nasty shade of green around the edges of it, and inside the wound, the flesh looked almost black.

"Shit." I say.

I look around me, trying to find water to wash it out with or something to bind it with. I see a water pump over by a vault-like door. I get up and bolt over to it. There was a bucket under it and I start to pump the lever.

After a few minutes of pumping, clear water starts to spew out of the nozzle and into the bucket. When I get it half-full, I swish the water around in the bucket and then pour it out. I then fill it up all the way and carry it over to Nico.

Thankfully, he was still breathing. I could tell it was becoming difficult for him though. I quickly touch my sun pendant and use an arrow tip to rip some more of my shirt off, a part that wasn't covered in goo. I was surprised that the pendant had transformed at all. The guy who had taken us obviously meant business, it was surprising that he hadn't put up spells in the dungeon to prevent the use of magical weapons.

I dip the ragged piece of cloth into the bucket of water and gently wash the blood off around the wound and also some of the goo. I wash the piece of fabric out and then tilt Nico onto his side, keeping him propped up.

I squeeze clean water from the cloth into the gash and he seizes up a little at the chill of the cool water. I soak the cloth again and squeeze more into the cut. I do this five more times before I'm satisfied with the cleanliness of the gash.

It still looked bad, but that was about as good as I was going to get it until I got my hands on some ambrosia or nectar. Until then, he was just going to have to endure it.

I had fallen asleep on the hard concrete floor after about an hour of waiting for Nico to wake up. He still hadn't, but his breathing had become less labored.

A loud squeaking sound wakes me up though. I look over and see Nico was still asleep. I sit up and look to the vault-like door and see that it had opened. There were two figures silhouetted in the bright light behind them. One small and the other taller, about the same size as me.

I get to my feet and sprint over to the door, to find who I had expected to be there. Mike was standing in the doorway, rope binding his small wrists together. He was half-asleep and just barely able to stand up.

I scoop him towards me and hug him close. I look up at the other person and see a young woman. She looked to be about 18 or 19 years old, though she had dark circles under her eyes and wrinkles on her forehead and under her eyes, making her look older. Her long, wavy hair was dark brown, almost black, and her eyes were a sparkling blue, as clear as a crystal.

"Who are you?" I ask, protectively moving Mike behind me.

"I'm not going to hurt you or your family." she says, holding up her hands.

"Oh, yea? Then care to explain the rope around my son's wrists?" I ask.

"I was forced to do that. My boss told me to do it or he'd kill me." she says, lowering her voice.

"Yea, sure." I say, snorting.

I start to back away, taking Mike with me, when she calls to me. "Wait! I have fresh clothes and shoes for you guys and nectar for your husband." she says, reaching behind her and producing a duffle bag.

I stop short and walk back over to her. She opens the bad and I look inside. There were clothes and shoes from the house, as well as a small water bottle full of nectar. My newest pair of classic Converse were with Nico's solid black ones and Mike's sneakers. They must have ransacked the house right after we had left.

I snatch the bag out of her hands and then turn away from her again. Just because she had gotten things we needed, didn't mean she wasn't still one of the bad guys.

"Just to give you a heads up, someone will be coming back here in about an hour to tie you and your husband up as well." she says.

I don't respond, but keep walking over to Nico and Mike. I hear her sigh and close the door. I quicken my pace, reaching Nico. I get to my knees and pop open the bottle. I pull up Nico's shirt and pour the godly drink into the gash.

Immediately, it starts to close up, the exposed flesh going back to dark pink. Within three minutes, it was as good as new.

I give a sigh of relief and close the bottle back up. Then I look at Mike and see he had curled up beside Nico, fast asleep. I glance at the neatly folded clothes and the shoes, then down at my destroyed pajamas.

I open the duffle bag and grab the tee shirt and pair of jeans the lady had brought me. I quickly change, throwing the disgusting pajamas in a heap on the floor.

I quickly pull on some socks and then my Converse. I decide that it would be best if I woke Nico up so he could change and get some shoes on. That way it wouldn't be a pain when, as the girl had claimed, someone came in and tied us up.

I shake him awake and he squints open his eyes.

"Ky? What happened?" he asks, sitting up and rubbing his head.

I quickly explain while he changes and puts on his shoes. When I finish, he looks down at Mike. He was curled up on the floor, sound asleep.

"What are we going to do?" he asks, sitting down and putting his head in his hands.

"I dunno. We'll get out of this though. We've gotten out of tougher situations, if you recall." I say, trying to undo the rope around Mike's wrists.

"Oh yea? Like what?" he asks.

"Well, there was that time right after Adrienne was born and those three Hydras attacked the old house and melted it to the ground. And then we had to kill those things while watching out for a four year old and a newborn." I say.

"Well, at least then we weren't locked up in a prison." he grumbles.

"Will you stop being so negative?" I ask, glaring at him.

"What else can I do, Kyra? We're stuck here and there's a guy that basically wants to kill us and we've no clue who the fuck he is." he spits.

I take a deep breath, trying to calm down a little before I replied. "Let's just get Mike changed, and we can talk about what to do after that, okay?" I ask.

"Fine." he says.

"And can you please try and undo this thing?" I ask, giving up on the rope. Whoever that girl had been, had done it well. It was nearly impossible to untie the knot. I doubt I could cut it either, it would be too difficult with the arrow tip.

Nico comes over and takes Mike's hands in his, starting to work on the bond. After about fifteen minutes of working on it, he finally gets it loose.

Even in the dim lighting, I could tell that Mike's wrists were chaffed and sore. In a few places it had actually started bleeding. I grab the bottle of nectar again and pour a little on the wounds and they immediately heal up.

Then I start changing him out of his clothes. He was so tired that he didn't wake up.

When I finish, Nico scoops him up and we go over to one of the walls and sit down, leaning against it. Nico had Mike practically cradled in his arms. It made me smile, because it reminded me of when he was a baby and Nico would sit down on the couch and sing rock music to him.

"Have you tried your necklace to see if it'll work?" he asks.

"I have, and it does. But I don't see what use it'll do us if we're locked up in here." I say.

"So, what are we going to do?" he asks.

I think for a couple of minutes, looking around trying to find an escape of some sort. My eyes scan every corner of the giant room and come up with nothing.

"Let's wait for the rest of the day, see if they take us out of this place to eat something. If they do, we can scan the place and see if there's any possible escape. I don't think it would be a good idea to attack anyone that comes in since I'm the only one who has a weapon." I say.

"Sounds like a good plan." he says, nodding.

"Uh-huh." I say, yawning.

"Go on and doze for a while. I'll wake you up if anything happens." he says, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me closer.

I think if he pulled me any closer, we'd end up crushing Mike in between us.

After a couple of minutes, I doze off, my mind on overdrive trying to think of how we were going to get out of this mess if my plan backfired.

A/N:

Hmm. Who do you think that girl was that brought Mike? You'll find out soon enough...

Well, today was disappointing. I was supposed to go up to the studio and finish a couple of things and then my teacher was going to help me price my things for the show on Saturday. Well, she called me and said she wasn't feeling well, so we'd have to do it tomorrow. Soo, my mom is going to drop me off before she goes in to work at 11 and then, when I'm finished with everything, my teacher will either drop me off at my mom's work or take me home. But besides that, I guess my day was alright.

Well, I started watching the anime series Soul Eater a few days ago and I'm almost done with it. Man, I forgot how draining it is, doing a marathon. Because you stay up til like 2 in the morning and you loose track of time and when you finally look at the clock, thinking that it's only 12 o'clock, you're shocked to see it's actually 2:30 and-yea. That sums up pretty much my whole weekend.

M/A:

Today's song...The Last Song by The All-American Rejects!

XOXO,

Mrs-diAngelo25