Seriously Dude?
my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.
She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, "Get to the car. Both of you. Go!"
Grover ran for the Camaro—but he wasn't running, exactly. He was trotting, shaking his shaggy hindquarters.
We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.
All I could think to say was, "So…considering you told me this has something to do with my father and the camp he wanted to send me to after demon math teacher, I guess we are going too that camp? Is my father a wacko who experiments with genetics or something?"
Graver's eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, his lips twitched at demon math teachers despite his tension. "Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But he is really powerful Percy. You father is, kind of, well, a god"
" a god? And I am what? Heracles part-deux?"
" well, I doubt you are a son of Zeus" he offered weakly "I've been keeping tabs on you, making sure nothing happens. But I wasn't pretending being your friend, I am your friend"
"Urn ... what are you, exactly?"
"That doesn't matter right now."
"It doesn't matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey—"
Grover let out a sharp, throaty "Blaa-ha-ha!"
"Goat!" he cried.
"What?"
"I'm a goat from the waist down."
"You just said it didn't matter."
"Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you underhoof for such an insult!"
"Whoa. Wait. Satyrs are real too?
"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs. Dodds a myth?"
"So you admit there was a Mrs. Dodds!"
"Of course."
"Then why—"
"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract," Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the humans' eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."
"Who I—wait a minute, what do you mean?"
The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.
"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."
"Safety from what? Who's after me?"
"Oh, nobody much," Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey comment. "Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions."
"Grover!"
"Sorry, Mrs. Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"
I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn't do it. I knew this wasn't a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up something this weird.
My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences. We were nearly at camp.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"The summer camp I told you about." My mother's voice was tight; she was trying for my sake not to be scared. "The place your father wanted to send you."
"The place you didn't want me to go."
"Please, dear," my mother begged. "This is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."
"Because some old ladies cut yarn."
"Those weren't old ladies," Grover said. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means—the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to ... when someone's about to die."
"Whoa. You said 'you.'"
"No I didn't. I said 'someone.'"
"You meant 'you.' As in me."
"I meant you, like 'someone.' Not you, you."
"Boys!" my mom said.
She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she'd swerved to avoid—a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.
"What was that?" I asked. This thing was honing my acting skills.
"We're almost there," my mother said, ignoring my question. "Another mile. Please. Please. Please."
I didn't know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car, anticipating, wanting us to arrive.
Outside, nothing but rain and darkness—the kind of empty countryside you get way out on the tip of Long Island
Then I thought about riptide.
Before I could ask Grover about that, I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck. Too late I remembered the lightning bolt sent by Zeus. I couldn't let that happen again.
Almost instinctively I raised my hands, there was a tug in my stomach and I saw the water on the ground rise following my movement, I crossed my arms over my head and the water covered the car in an x formation just in time for it to absorb the impact from the ightning and transfer it to the ground.
I lowered my arms. Grover was staring at me like I stole his Enchiladas. Not knowing how to respond to his look, I pretend to be oblivious to what I did.
It was a weak attempt at most, but Grover seemed to believe me because he turned to my mom and told her to speed up.
We were almost at the camp border. 10 meters…..5 meters…screech. We came to a hard stop.
"out, out, out" my mom shouted. We scrambled outside.
"Get to camp, I will distract him"
"NO" I shouted, " I am not leaving you with that thing" the minotaur was closing in on us. Grover was tugging at my arm.
My mother seemed to be on the verge of crying " percy, please,just go."
"Not without you" I grabbed her and tried to take her towards the tree but she resisted.
The minotaur was here, it was too late. I let go of mom. And looked at Grover. "take her and go right " I told him.
As the monster reached I dove left, grover and my mother went right. The monster seemed confused for a moment before going right.
I cursed and used the first idea that came to mind.
I stripped off my red rain jacket.
"Hey!" I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster. "Hey, stupid! Ground beef!"
"Raaaarrrrr!" The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.
I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man.
The bull-man charged fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried to dodge.
Time slowed down.
My legs tensed. I couldn't jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off from the creature's head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on his neck.
A millisecond later, the monster's head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.
The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.
I got both hands around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then—snap!
The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.
The monster charged.
Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage.
The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind.
The monster was gone. I looked towards my mom, Grover had her pinned down. Both were looking at me with shock.
"come" I gestured towards the camp.
Mom forced a smile " why don't you two go on ahead, I'll be walking behind you"
Pretending to be too tired to notice her lie, I tug at Grover's arm and lead him past the border, subtly looking behind me and confirming what I already knew- my mom wasn't coming. I walked to the big house as exsustion wore over me , I saw Annabeth and Chiron on the front porc, still exausted I pointed at Annabeth said "pretty" and promptly fainted in Grover's arms.