Chapter 3 Bianca Silver Bay, Minnesota
Bianca pushed herself to run as fast as she could, the wind rushing through her hair as she raced forward, the trees of green flicking by her. She could hear the crunching of feet behind her as it dashed to try and catch up with her.
Suddenly the footsteps quieted. She kept running when someone tackled her from the side. The two went rolling to the ground, and when they stopped Bianca was pinned under the person, his forearm pressed against the back of her neck, smushing her cheek to the ground.
"You have to keep you enemy guessing," stated the man, standing up and offering Bianca a hand up. Bianca flopped over looking at the man's hand that was stuck out towards her and sighed heavily, taking it as he tugged her up into a standing position.
"I was! What did you think I was going to do next?" she snapped tucking a loose piece of her curly black hair behind her ear. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for an answer to come from the man's mouth.
His brown eyes gleamed with mischief and he let out a soft chuckle, "I know you, Bianca. Remember, I'm the one who raised you."
Bianca nodded with a grin, "And you never stop reminding me of that."
"Well, I have to young lady. I am your father after all," he grinned and ruffled her hair.
"Papá! Don't do that!" Bianca yelped ducking away from her father's hand. Bianca knew that she use to have another father so not to confuse them she called him papá, meaning father in Italian. At first, she had wanted to call him Pater, because it sounded better, but her papá refused, saying that he was greek and Italian not roman, so her other father took on the name Pater. She only, later on, learned the difference between roman and Italian.
"What? Am I embarrassing you? There's no one here but the dryads," Her dad smirked. His shaggy black hair was slicked back in ordered to let him fight easier. "Anyways let's go back to the house."
"No! You promised me we'd go to town! Come on! I need more Mythomagic cards! You have so many! I need to build my own collection!" Bianca stated, her voice filled with frustration.
"Alright, let's drop our stuff at the house and we can go into town," He replied, starting to walk down a hidden path to their right. The path wasn't that well marked but the father and daughter knew the way back without difficulty. It wound through the trees... her father refused to cut down any trees when they had moved out here around 10 years ago, leaving them to tread a path around the thick trunks of bark covered in pine needles and sap.
Her dad seemed happy... happier than he had been so many years ago when she'd lost her Pater. Her Pater had apparently been the son of the sun or something, at least, that's how Papá described him. She did have memories of Pater, they were just a few in number and value. She knew Papá tried to make up for that, trying to be the best single father he could, but he also knew that without Will... raising Bianca by himself didn't feel right.
It took 5 minutes before the two made it back to the wooden house her papá had built so many years ago. He'd still been getting over her pater's death, which had happened two years before, she'd been 4 at the time when he started building it. The two lived the year it took Papá to build the house in both a motel and a tent.
The first half of the year had been spent in a crappy motel that had been 30 miles away. Everyday they'd wake up before dawn, drive the black pickup truck the 30 miles out into the forest before getting to the house that sat next to the shore of the lake. They stayed there for around 12 hours before driving back, Bianca always fell asleep to the moving of the car on the ride back.
The second half had been in the tent they'd pitched in the middle of the half-built house. They couldn't stay in the motel anymore, and it wasn't because of money issues. Bianca had been frightened of the bugs. One had crawled into her mouth when she was asleep one night. After that, she couldn't stay there in the fear that it happen again. So they made their way out to the house, pitching a freshly bought tent in the middle of the wood outline, pinning it between two walls that would later on become a corner of their living room.
"Alright go change. Then we'll go to the store alright?" her Papá asked as they walked into the 3 story house.
Bianca nodded eagerly and ran upstairs leaping the steps as she bounded up, her arms helping with her momentum. She ran to her room and swing the door to it open. It was neatly organized, her dirty clothes all thrown into a hamper in the corner of her bathroom, her desk was the only thing messy, due to the papers and textbooks scattered across the wooden table. She had her own version of finals a few days ago and had yet to clear the clutter.
Bianca had been homeschooled all her life, allowing her the ability to both train with her papá and to get an education. She already had around 4 AP credits and she would have been only in 10th grade if she were in regular high school. She was right now preparing to take the test for AP American History. Apparently the civil war had been caused by demigods, once again. See was planning to do AP Bio next, knowing that she had some of her Pater's healing abilities in her and that it would greatly help.
She quickly changed out of her training clothes throwing them in the hamper, noticing that it was almost full. She would wash them later that day when they got back from town. She pulled on a pair of black leggings and tugged a red hoodie up over her head. The hoodie had a black silhouette of the Beatles crossing abbey road, her papá had gotten in when he was in Vegas a few years ago and since then she had outgrown three of them, buying a larger from online every time she grew out of them.
She ran back downstairs where her papá was waiting, sipping a cup of coffee, the newspaper in his hand as he read it.
"Papá! I'm ready!" she beamed smiling happily walking over to him.
"Alright. Let's go then," Papá responded, standing up, leaving the newspaper open on the marble counter and the two made their way towards the black ram truck that was parked in the driveway. Her father hadn't thought to build a garage when they had first started building and they hadn't really thought to add one since then.
The two drove the 30-minute drive to town listening to 40's dance music. For some reason, that was her papá's favorite type of music. She had yet to get the actual story of why he liked this type of music out of him yet, but she didn't complain. It was one of the small things that still made her papá happy.
They parked in front of the grocery store, it's parking lot mostly empty due to the low number of people that actually lived in Silver Bay Minnesota. Silver bay was a small town that sat on the edge of one of the great lakes, Lake Superior to be exact. It had a small population of 200, allowing nature to actually be enjoyed.
Bianca climbed out of the car and walked into the store, her papá following behind her. She quickly noticed that a lot of the customers were huddled around the tv that sat into top right corner, beaming down the latest news.
"What happened?" her papá asked automatically, his voice flat and stern.
"Oh, Mr. Di Angelo. I didn't expect you to come into town today," the store owner remarked avoiding the question Papá had possessed.
"Bianca wanted some new Mythomagic cards, now tell me. What happened?" he asked once again, his voice stern.
"Some crazy kid named Lukas Jackson blew up his school, then disappeared with his mother and sister. When they went to his house they found it trashed. There was this girl that left the school with him minutes before it exploded, they're still trying to figure out who she is still, though," the owner explained.
Bianca quickly noticed how her father's face went blank and into shock when the name Lukas Jackson was mentioned. Her papá quickly regained it and nodded before speaking.
"Bianca lets go," he ordered turning towards the doors.
"But Papá! What about my cards?" she questioned running to catch up with him.
"No time Bianca. We have to go to the camp," he dictated. Bianca fell silent at the mention of the camp, her father barely ever talked about the camp. It had been years since camp half-blood burned down, not only killing her Pater but also the war hero Percy Jackson. Her father blamed the gods for that. A week before the attack the gods had gotten a death threat sent in the form of a dead demigod body, in their own selfishness they took the golden fleece from the camp, leaving it defenseless. Then the monsters attacked, killing half the demigod population at both camps, half-blood, and Camp Jupiter.
She knew that later on her papá discovered that there was a new single camp that was made up of both unified greek and roman demigods, but he refused to have anything to do with it, he wanted no part of the gods and demigod life anymore.
"Papá... but we hate the camp," she stated, knowing that if it was any other time he would have let out a dad kind of chuckle and smile proudly at her, but, this time, was different.
"No Bianca that's not true. We hate the gods. They're the ones who took your pater away, the camp did nothing. That boy, Lukas Jackson, is your Uncle Percy's son. he's family and family means that..." he reported just for her to cut him off.
"No one gets left behind. I know Papá. We've watched Lilo and Stitch like 20 times," she joked trying to make her father happy again. She hated when he was cold and emotionless, all she could do was wish that her Pater was there to help her. "So what are we gonna do?" she questioned as they climbed into the car.
Her papá turned the ignition on before driving out of the parking lot.
"I need to get in contact with Thalia, see where we should meet up with her," Papá explained.
"And how are we going to do that?"
"Iris message. Then we're going to shadow travel. A lot."
Next Chapter Roman Jackson Grace
