"Prepare to fall asleep," Andrew coined in, pretend yawning. Connor held up a silencing hand.

"You may want to listen too, for it includes one of your own," He sighed theatrically, looking out into the distance. "I remember it like it was yesterday, the first prank Dennis ever pulled; it was within one of the first few weeks he had been here and he had taken a strange liking to the blonde but wise Annabeth—"

"He had a crush on her?" Eirene could see how Annabeth was desirable; smart, pretty, the air of someone you could trust; but Eirene couldn't see how she'd put up with someone like Dennis liking her— he seemed like another Stoll brother; mischievous and tricky.

"No," Connor said without a pause. He brushed away the thought like it was ridiculous. "While it was tempting to challenge Percy, he wasn't an idiot, and he mainly just liked messing with her; thought her irritation was funny. So one night he woke up Travis and me and told us he'd thought up the ultimate prank to pull. We may have been on probation from an earlier misdemeanor, but we didn't care so we went along with it."

Andrew was shaking his head with disbelief. "You're going to commit a felony one day."

"Who says I haven't? Anyways, so Dennis showed us this jar he had full of…things. Hey, don't look at me like that. They were bugs; spiders okay? A jar full of spiders that he wanted to let loose on her bed. We didn't know she was scared of spiders; it was just a lucky guess. So we snuck out of bed and waltz over to the Athena cabin, and let the spiders squeeze in through the floorboards. We were laughing the entire time, but we quieted down to hear the sweet sound of Annabeth screaming. Well, we didn't stop hearing screaming. Soon enough it sounded like everyone in that cabin was screaming, male and female."

"It was…it was you." Andrew stopped walking and mustered up a look of shock and loathing directed at Connor. "You're the one who set those bloody spiders loose on us. You're the reason we had to sleep in a different cabin for 2 weeks."

"Well, duh. Who'd you think it was, Arachne?"

Andrew looked like he wanted to throw make a witty comeback, maybe even a threat, but he held his tongue and let the breath out through his nose. "It's just that…you underestimated how scared Athena kids are of spiders."

"Why are Athena kids afraid of spiders?" Eirene questioned.

"Arachne is why. Ever since she lost the spinning web competition she's set her spider children upon all Athena's children. We all have Arachnophobia."

"Hmm," Connor pondered considering Andrew. "Interesting; definitely noted; but anyways, back to the story." He gave Andrew a fleeting apologetic look and a shrug of his shoulders. "Dennis got in a heap load of trouble, he was forced to clean out the Athena cabin and even then they were too scared to sleep in it for two weeks." He paused to giggle but was silenced by the look Andrew gave him. "And then he was forced to clean the stables for a month. We made him shower three times a day to get that smell off of him, but even after all of that he still said he didn't regret it."

"You guys didn't get caught?" She asked.

"Oh no, we dipped out of there as soon as we heard the fifth scream. Hid back in our cabins, pretended to be asleep. We thought Dennis followed us but it was like he wanted to get caught. After that day, everyone knew who he was."

Eirene thought about that story a bit. She knew Connor didn't think much of it and had just told it for comedy, but she thought that story told a lot about the type of person Dennis was. He liked attention, craved it by the looks of it. He knew about the Athena children's fear and specifically chose a spider so he would get caught, and so he could be 'famous' among the campers. She wondered if he even enjoyed pranking others like the Stoll brothers did, or if he just did it for attention.

"Did some of the pranks Dennis pulled ever seem…mean instead of funny?"

"Huh, well now that you mention it he did seem to pick on a couple of people. There was one prank towards this girl named Maria; really shy and skinny, rarely speaks; where he replaced her watering jug with pesticide. It killed almost all of her flowers, and she cried for such a long time." Connor started looking wary. "And then the Hephaestus girl Ashley, She's really girly and almost has conceited as an Aphrodite kid. He broke all her mirrors and replaced her lipstick with red crayons." Now his eyebrows were knitted together. "Speaking of Aphrodite, there's this one kid named Daniel who had a guitar autographed by his favorite artist and Dennis took that and demolished it. And then there was Sam—"

"Dennis did something to Sam?" No one messed with her young peppy friend. Sam was the first one who had been nice to her and she had a special place in Eirene's heart. If he did do something to hurt her, it was no longer just a quest for the camp. It had gotten personal.

"Yeah, she used to keep her hair really long because she overheard Matthew liked girl's hair long. But once in sword fighting class he sliced it off with his sword. He claimed it was an accident but said she should be happy because she looks like Mulan." He laughed. "She punched him in the face."

"That's my girl!" Eirene silently told herself to high-five Samantha when she got back.

"It doesn't seem like Dennis was much of a prankster, after those stories you just told he sounds more like a sadist." Andrew was reading all the street signs to make sure they were going the right way, though he bumped into a lot of people.

Eirene had to agree with him, the way the Hermes cabin had talked about him she'd thought he was as lovable as Percy, and even when she had met him he seemed nice. But now…she wondered how he'd react when he saw her again. She twisted the ring on her finger nervously at the thought. Suddenly there was a troubling sound of civilians screaming and then an explosion that knocked the trio forwards twenty feet. Debris and ash was flown everywhere, as were the screams of the people all around them. Eirene struggled to her feet and tried to squint through the smoky air to see what monsters had cursed them with their presence this time. But instead, she heard unfamiliar female voices yelling in the distance.

"What the hell did you do?!"

"I tried to blow it up! It didn't work, how come it didn't work?"

"It's a vampire, you can't blow up vampires! Forget that, give me my crossbow!"

"I don't have it!"

"You're sitting on it, you four-eyed fool!"

They were two girls bickering loudly on the road, one who had vibrant red-velvet hair and another who had brown hair. By the sound of it, they were the likely cause of the explosion. And what did they mean by vampires?

"Eirene, over here!" Connor brought her attention back to the trouble at hand, and pointed at what looked like a monster melting. It was a female, with skin so incredibly pale and jet black hair that did nothing to help its complexion. It had cat like-green eyes and a mouth open to reveal its sharp, vampire-like teeth; bat wings stretched out behind it. But it was its hair that made it look like it was melting; it had that strange texture to it where every time the monster moved its hair drooped along their face. It definitely had vampire-like qualities, but Eirene knew this was a Greek monster of higher calling.

It brought its sharp-talon like nails to its lips and licked it seductively, locking eyes with Eirene and charged at her. She was yanked out of danger by Andrew who was muttering curses about terrible luck.

"That's a Lamia. Actually, that's the Lamia,"

Eirene knew who Lamia was; a vampiric demon who feeds on small children. At the orphanage she'd lived in the caretakers had told all the children that story as a way of scaring them into behaving. She'd had a sneaking suspicion Lamia wasn't just an urban legend, and now it was confirmed.

"Best to kill it quick before it can cause anymore damage." He looked at Connor who nodded in agreement, and they both charged at the demon.

"Move aside boys, the she-beast is mine!" The redhead shoved her way past the boys and positioned her black crossbow. Eirene thought she might be a hunter of Artemis but she was dressed in such skimpy gothic clothing that it made her reconsider. The Lamia rose from the ground and cracked its neck, letting its eyes rest upon the girl for only a second before it launched itself unto the redhead and pinned her by her arms and legs against a nearby building in a sort of cicada block. Her hands and feet sank into the building before hardening and breaking off, leaving the girl screaming and pinned by her arms and legs.