Recap…

"I'll let you go, Annabeth," I abruptly swipe my hand through the mist and it dissipates. I turn my head to face what I'd sensed approaching behind me, my hand reaching for my golden hilted dagger, αιώνια αγάπη, or eternal love.

The chalky face becomes visible quickly, blood dripping from it's fangs.

"Hello, leech," I address it, adopting Paul's pet name for the species. It's ebony hair is short and business like. I don't fall for it's empousa charm.

"Alexandra." It gives a sick, bloody-toothed grin that makes me want to call the asylum again for the tenth or eleventh time today. Rubber rooms, please work your magic on these people. I try not to curse Dionysus.

To hell with it, I decide as the chalk-faced male model lunges for my neck, which I can only assume would be tastier because of the rich golden ichor.

Fuck you, Mr. D.

I plunge my knife into his diaphragm and, in the process, am swatted against the jagged rocks like a life-size rag doll. My side hits a sharp point and my Black Veil Brides grey logo top tears, splitting through the middle. My black lace bra peeks through the rip in the soft, grey cotton. The rocks slit at my skin and make a laceration.

"Hades!" I curse, spinning around with a kick, the back side of my foot connecting with his cheek. It doesn't even faze him because of the scent of my blood starts coming from my stomach. My black and white chevron infinity scarf limp falls to the sand.

His red eyes widen considerably.

I hear an abundance of howls begin to take over the forest. Wolves, I think. They are werewolves/shapeshifters/whatever.

He hisses at me again. "You shouldn't have done that, sweetie." What's with monsters and calling demigods by pet names? I've heard that the Furies seem to enjoy addressing their meals by "honey" and Medusa has a fetish about that too.

His cold hand hitches onto my thin wrist. I try to bring my knife to him again, but he knocks it away with his Medusa-victim skin. Which is to say, stone. It clatters on the razor-edged rocks behind me, but finds it's natural resting place on the sand.

"Let the Hades go of me!" I screamed, but his other hand cupped my neck and he brought his fangs to the dip between my collarbone and voice box. Two sharp teeth insert themselves and I feel the worst pain I've felt since the war. I try to calm myself down enough to use my Aphrodite daughter powers. Since I can't knock him off me, and he's leeching the life out of me, I attempt something I've never tried before.

I'm going to make a monster fall for me.

I emit a eruption/tsunami wave of love and desire with me as the target. Anyone in twenty foot radius should have felt it and feel a magnetic pull for me. The vampire immediately retracts his fangs, and pulls his wintry mouth from my neck.

My heart pounds wildly in my behind my breast and my eyes burn black. I scramble away the best I can, but the leech wraps his hands around my waist.

"Don't hurt yourself, love," he chuckles. I purse my lips in disgust as he reaches with one snow white chalk hand to play with a soft lock of my dark hair from behind my knitted burgundy beanie. "You are a beauty."

"Thanks," I choke out. I bring my dagger to his gut again, but the hand that was resting at my hair smacks the knife away at inhuman speed.

"Nuh-uh, darling," he laughs, and I growl, kicking his shins relentlessly. The vampire doesn't let go of me, even when a pack of wolves the size of trucks stampede the beach.

All the families formerly on the beach run for their lives.

The man currently gripping my waist turns me so he's holding me bridal style and carries me while sprinting inhumanly quickly to the treeline. My vision morphs into a blur of color. I hide my face with my hands, as a precaution in case the vampire goes SPLAT! against a tree, and me with him. Plastic surgery isn't so cheap these days, I hear (but my half-sister Claire does have some connections…so).

While I'm mentally debating the coast of plastic surgery, my assailant ballerina-gracefully goes like a bat out of hell through the thick woods. A silvery-grey wolf chases the vamp like he holds the wolf's world in his arms. Well, if Annabeth is correct about this soul mate thing werewolves have…

Besides, I've heard when dogs see someone attacking, they try to protect the person who seems to be losing.

Yeah, I think I'm just hoping I don't die, or at the very least, if these wolves plan to kill me, my celestial bronze knife will have returned to my pack pocket. And hopefully, I will have at least a chance to turn them into golden glitter sand by stabbing them, because it works, unlike with vampy-poo.

About ten other wolves work together to herd grabby-lovestruck-vampire-dude somewhere, and the silvery wolf gets a bite in on his leg. I feel him stumble, but he recovers and bolts faster and my silver locket bounces on my chest. I move my hands from my blackened eyes and hit his jaw with my elbow hard enough to give any half-blood blunt force trauma throughout their head. It fazes him enough for me to wrap my leg through the inside of his thigh and use it as a step to shoot myself to the side.

I cover my head with my arms quick enough and roll. Rocks and thicket scrape my arms like hell, but I don't even turn my head before hot-footing it to the hills. Figuratively, of course, because with my vision shaking I can't seem to get my bearings.

I trip on everything in my way, about twenty yards away, I fall face first into a creek, but I hightail it like the demigod I am. I lose my burgundy wine hued designer faux sneaker-shoes somewhere along the way. My rose-colored heart-shaped hipster complimentary Aphrodite girl glasses tumble out of my back pocket as my dagger appears.

Thank you gods!

Of course, what happens is I do what I was dead afraid the chalk white undead guy was going to do: I run full speed into the trunk of a redwood tree.

As my vision turns to black, the last thing I see is the wolf's grey snout over my face, looking at me with concern in it's familiar eyes.

My dream starts off with a literal bang! My father holds a gun over my face, covering me from the monsters, but the metal bullets have no effect. It stuns them at best.

"Go! Alexandra, you have to go!"

Tears are streaming down my pretty face, and I'm screaming enough attract all the monsters in the world.

"No! You go away! All of you- leave my and my dad alone!" You can tell they want to- there isn't much a pretty face can't buy you, but they don't. The weirdest thing happens then. The place starts reeking of perfume, and I grab a butter knife and it morphs into a golden hilted dagger. I slash all of the monsters away, but one of them throws the table at my dad.

I let loose a blood-curling scream. "No! Dad!"

I stab it in between a chink in it's grimy chartreuse scales and it erupts into a pile of yellow glitter on the blue and white checkerboard kitchen floor. The scene changes, washing away with my eleven-year-old tears.

Now I'm in a Roman temple. The marble floor was etched with fancy mosaics and Latin inscriptions. Sixty feet above, the domed ceiling sparkled gold. The whole temple was open to the wind.

In the center, stood a marble altar, where a kid in a toga was doing some sort of ritual in front of a massive golden stature of the big dude himself: Jupiter the sky god, dressed in a silk XXXL purple toga, holding a lightning bolt.

What? No, it's Zeus, not Jupiter. Jupiter is, like, a planet.

Percy enters the room. "It doesn't look like that," Percy muttered, eyes transfixed on the lightning bolt. He would know, I decide.

"What?" The girl beside him asks. She has dark hair and semi-mocha skin with a translucent hue, like she spent some time in a place with little light. I somehow know her name is Hazel.

"The master bolt," Percy said.

"What are you talking about?"

"I-" Percy frowned. For a second, he'd thought he'd remembered something, I guessed. Now it was gone. He must have amnesia like Jason. There was no other explanation about why he hadn't contacted camp, otherwise. "Nothing, I guess."

No, Percy, this is definitely something! I wanted to shout.

The kid at the altar raised his hands. More red lightning flashed in the sky, shaking the temple. Then he put his hands down and the rumbling stopped. The clouds turned from grey to white and broke apart.

A pretty impressive trick, considering the kid didn't look like much. He was tall and skinny, with straw-colored hair, oversized jeans (the horror!), a baggy T-shirt, and a drooping toga. He looked like a scarecrow wearing a bedsheet. (Octavian, I love your style, said no one ever).

Percy seemed to have the same thought as me. "What's he doing?" Percy murmured.

The guy in the toga turned. He had a crooked smile and a slightly crazed look in his eyes, like he'd just been playing an intense video game. In one hand he held a knife. In the other hand was something like a dead animal. That didn't make him look any less crazy.

"Percy," Hazel said, "this is Octavian."

"The greacus!" Octavian proclaimed, "How interesting." I understood it as Latin, meaning 'Greek'.

"Uh, hi," Percy said. "Are you killing small animals?"

Octavian looked at the fuzzy form in his hand and laughed, "No, no. Once upon a time, yes. We used to read the will of the gods by examining animal guts- chickens, goats, that sort of thing. Nowadays, we use these."

I want to hurl.

He tossed the fuzzy thing to Percy. It was a disemboweled teddy bear. Then Percy noticed that there was a whole pile of mutilated stuffed animals at the foot of Zeus-Jupiter's statue.

"Seriously?" Percy asked.

Octavian stepped off the dais. He was probably about eighteen, but so skinny and sickly pale, he could've passed for younger. At first he looked harmless, but as he got closer, Percy didn't look so sure. Octavian's eyes glittered with harsh curiosity, like he might gut Percy just as easily as a teddy bear if he thought he could learn something from it.

I don't think Annabeth would be so happy about the kind of people her missing boyfriend is associating with.

Octavian narrowed his eyes at Percy. "You seem nervous."

"You remind me of someone," Percy said, "I can't remember who."

"Possibly my namesake, Octavian-Augustus Caesar. Everyone says I bear a remarkable resemblance."

Percy didn't think it was it-obviously, but he couldn't pin down the memory. It's so obvious, I thought sadly. "Why did you call me the Greek?"

"I saw it in the auguries." Octavian waved his knife dangerously toward the pile of stuffing on the altar. "The message said: The Greek has arrived. Or possibly: The goose has cried. I'm think the first interpretation is correct. You seek to join the legion?"

Legion? I thought.

Hazel spoke for him. She told Octavian a long speech- something about gorgons, a fight at a river (Little Timber? What kind of a river is that?), the appearance of June (whoever that was), their conversation with someone named Reyna.

Octavian looked surprised at the mention of this June person. "Juno," he mused, "We call her Juno Moneta. Juno the Warner. She appears in times of crisis, to counsel Rome about great threats."

He glanced at Percy as if to say, like you.

"I hear the Feast of Fortuna is this week," Percy says, and I blanch at the thought of fish. Ew. "The gorgons warned there'd be an invasion on that day. Did you see that in your stuffing?" They have a feast for tuna? I understand why the son of the sea god would like this place.

"Sadly, no." Octavian sighed. "The will of the gods is hard to discern. And these days, my vision is even darker."

With those words, my vision darkens, and I wake, abruptly.

The first thing I see is the concerned face of Paul and my first thought is how remarkably similar the eyes of the wolf, and Paul's eyes are.

Holy Zeus. Help me.

hey guys i just wrote this... i know it isn't as long as usual... but i write better and longer at two am, apparently

i spent about three hours staring at the computer screen while thinking over which words I should use. And then, I typed a longer chapter than this... but it didn't save and I almost cried because of that... anywhoo

love y'all luv luv