Chapter 9

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

We had been walking along the shore of the Styx for about thirty minutes when we came to a wooden barge. Nico stops walking and jumps aboard the boat, causing it to rock back and forth a bit. He sets his pack down then takes my bags and puts them next to his.

He offers me a hand and I start to take it when I hear an ear-shattering howl. I clamp my hands over my ears, trying to block out the horrible sound. I glance up and see Nico's face had paled. He was looking behind me with an expression of mixed horror and fury.

I bring my hands away from my ears and turn around slowly. Standing a little less than twenty feet away was a beast so horrible and disgustingly wrong, I had trouble keeping my breakfast down.

The thing was a humanoid. A man from the waist up and had a spider's body from the waist down. Eight black spiky legs, looking as if they could easily stab through someone if they so much as nudged them. That wasn't the freaky part though. The freaky part was that it had three heads. Three.

Just as I reach up to touch the pendant around my neck, it rushes forward. It was five feet away from me just as my bow materialized in my hands.

It was ten times more ugly up close as it was far away. It had what I'd classify as tusks protruding from each of it's mouths. There was a white foamy substance dripping out the corners of the three mouths as well. It's eyes were pitch black, it had no hair, and it was around eight feet tall.

I had never heard about a creature of this sort in my Greek mythology class in school or from the stories told at camp. Well, unless you count Arachne but she didn't have three heads.

"Well, what do we have here?" the thing asks, looking at me hungrily.

"What are you doing here, Cacus?" Nico questions, his Stygian Iron sword drawn.

"I'm hungry. What do you expect of me when living bodies cross onto my territory?" Cacus asks.

"This is not your territory. You are supposed to be overseeing the fires in Punishment." Nico says, a dangerous edge to his voice.

"What can I say, I'm a sucker for fresh meat." Cacus says, grinning to reveal his ugly teeth.

I draw back my string, ready to release my arrow. I had no idea what kind of arrow it was but I didn't care. As long as it got this thing away from me.

Just as it sweeps forward, I release the arrow and it goes flying into Cacus' chest. He screeches and stumbles back, jerking the arrow out with a sickening sucking sound. He throws it aside and grins up at me.

"Did you really think I would be that easy to kill?" he asks.

Nico steps in front of me and I can't help but roll my eyes. He knows good and well that I am more than capable of defending myself. I step out from behind him and aim another arrow.

"You can back away now." I say, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

I hated regular sized spiders. This was pushing it.

Cacus throws his three bald heads back and laughs. I glance over at Nico and I see him nod his head ever so slightly. I take my que and rush forward, dropping my bow and yanking my dagger out of it's sheathe around my thigh.

I run behind Cacus and tackle him. He stumbles forward a little, obviously surprised. I try to ignore the prickling hairs of the spider legs as I wrap my arms around his three necks.

It probably looked like I was bull-riding a spider humanoid. If not, it sure as hell felt like it. Cacus was jerking around crazily, trying to knock me off. He underestimated just how strong my grip was.

Every once and a while I'd see a bright black stream erupt from Cacus' mouths. The streams singed the hair off my arms. Great. Not only was he a giant spider, he could also breath fire. Just great.

Nico was doing his best dodging Cacus' legs and the fire. At one point I'd see him in one spot and in two seconds he'd be in a completely different place.

After about fifteen minutes of hanging on for dear life, I manage to stab my dagger into Cacus' back. I rip down and black blood sprays from his back. The blood splatters all over me and it feels like it's burning it's way through my skin.

I scream and loose my grip on Cacus' back and tumble eight feet to the ground. I land sharply on my back. I hear one last ear-splitting roar and then there's complete silence.

I sit up and look down at my body and see that I'm covered in black blood. My shirt and jeans have holes burned in them and my arms look severely burned. The acidic blood had opened up the cuts on my arms again and warm scarlet drops of blood were dripping onto my legs. My face felt like it had been attacked by a million bees. I touch the burns on my arms tentatively and jerk back, screaming.

"Hang on Kyra. Let me get some nectar. " I hear Nico say.

He comes over within seconds with two bottles. One had nectar the other is full of water. He takes my arms and begins to pour the water over them. I wrench my arms away from the water. It stung like crazy.

"Kyra." he says, his voice gentle.

I reluctantly hold out my arms and he starts again. I bite my lip so hard I taste the metallic tang of blood. It hurt so bad to have the water running over the burns and open cuts. I was regretting putting them there more and more.

Eventually, he stops pouring the water over my arms and he sets the bottle down. He rips a strip of his shirt off and dampens it with the water. He reaches forward and dabs at my face.

Now that hurt even worse than my arms. My face must have taken most of the blood that had poured out of Cacus' back. I force down the urge to throw-up from the pain and dig my fingers into black sand beneath me.

He finally stops then hands me the nectar bottle. I take it, gratefully, and pop the cap off. I drink it as fast as I can without causing myself to burst into flames.

I close the bottle when I feel my cheeks start to burn. I hand the bottle back to Nico and he takes it. He stands up and offers me a hand.

We stagger over to the boat and step on. Nico goes and tugs on a small rope connected to a bell. The bell makes a slight ringing sound then stops. I had no idea what that was supposed to do and I was about to ask when a man materialized in front of us. I was so startled I nearly fell into the Styx.

He was wearing a long, hooded, black robe. It almost looked as if it were made out of black mist and it was clinging to him. Emerging from the sleeves of the robe were two bony hands.

"Sir Nico. I presume you would like to leave?" says the man in a gravelly British accent.

"Yes, Charon." Nico says.

"You know it's going to cost you." Charon says, holding out one of his bony hands.

Nico sighs impatiently and digs into his pocket. He pulls out five golden drachma and drops them into Charon's open palm. He closes his fingers around the coins and then turns toward the front of the boat.

He starts paddling us down the Styx. Soon enough, the swaying of the boat stops and I realize we're in an elevator. Charon's robe had been replaced with a cream colored Italian suit and he was wearing tortoise shell glasses. There's a ding and the doors open. Out we go.

A/N:

I didn't collapse from exhaustion! Whoo-hoo! I'm pretty close to it though. A house is being built right across the street from me and they started working on it again at like 7 this morning. I had stayed up till about 1:30 last night. I was not happy. For some reason, my best writing ideas only come to me at like 10 at night on Fridays and I'm usually up really late working on them. Ugg.

What did you guys think of that little battle scene with Cacus? The website I use for finding monsters says that he's the grand-daughter (go figure) of Medusa and that he can breathe fire so I thought, 'Why not make it that the fire he breathes is actually coughed up blood ignited? That would be so cool! And gross..'. So, basically, the blood is already really acidic and igniting it just makes it ten times worse to that's why it burned Kyra when it splashed all over her. It also says that he lived on the Avetine plain. Apparently that's where corpses were burned. And Hercules' tenth task was to strangle him. He did it because, well, he's Hercules and Hercules does everything.

Reviews are nice, as usual.

XOXO,

Mrs-diAngelo25