One dragon can ruin your whole day.
I woke up with a pain in my neck and a concerned, russet-skinned Aphrodite/Ares hybrid looming over me. I consider that a fitting nickname for their species.
My eyes flit completely open and I get a thought the Stoll brothers would be proud of. Prouder than Hera wasn't when she first saw Hephaestus's face.
"You okay, Alex?" Paul questions. His chocolate brown eyes search for any signs of pain or discomfort. I smirk.
"I'm fine actually. I could just go for a long walk right now," I add "subtle" emphasis on 'long'.
He smiles, "Good. What do you remember about before you, you know, passed out?" He seems genuinely glad.
You should know. You were there, doggy. Let's refresh your memory a bit. First you played fetch and then kill the carrier. Woof-woof. Well, I was at the beach, iris-messaging Annabeth about her M.I.A boyfriend and what the Hades y'all are. The vampire came by and decided to suck the life out of my neck. But don't worry, I'm a daughter of the love goddess so I made him fall in love with me, so he didn't kill me. But then y'all showed up and he ran off with me in his arms 'cause I layed it on a bit thick and he didn't want to live eternity without me. Then I escapee and ran straight into a redwood tree trunk. Whence I passed out.
"Yeah," I search his face for clues on how it made him feel. His nose twitches; he obviously isn't so fond of his memory of last night."I was IMing my friend and this really white guy stalks up," I basically translate to mist-seer terms. "He started kissing my neck for some reason-"
Paul growls and I hide my smirk. So the wolves are territorial.
I continue, "I'm pretty sure he was drunk, but now that I think about it, I didn't smell any alcohol, so he was probably a druggie. I mean, that explains the whole chalky white thing and the really cold hands."
Paul snorts. I mentally snort. I can't believe this guy is buying my bull. I might as well market it as Le Shit de Bull. I would've expected it from some pathetic mortal with no clear vision... Damn, mortals need glasses or something. Wolf brain, I guess, would be Paul's excuse.
I take in the setting I'm in and try to ignore hold close Paul is to me and how seriously he looks. The curtains are a warm, deep red, and the match the bed spread and wall art in design and color scheme. The walls are a sharp snow white. There's a red chair in the corner of the room and a mirror across from me with a faux gold frame.
Red eyes, white skin, I think. Red curtains, white walls. I try to banish the thought from my mind by continuing my falsetto story, "So, um, then these wolves came and chased the guy, who for some reason picked me up, into the forest," I ignore the way his ears perk like a dog's when I mention the wolves and try to keep my dignity intact by omitting certain parts of the story, like running into a tree, "I got away stumbling and I must've fallen or fainted or something."
Or something. Try to keep that open-ended.
Paul seems miffed I didn't elaborate on the heroics of the wolves. "Were you scared? We've had wolf sightings before and those people were usually frightened because of their size."
I smirk, "No. But you know what I think about those wolves?"
His ears perk and I compare and contrast his features to my old pet poodle, Jilly's, using a mental Venn diagram.
"What?" His chocolate eyes meet my the-gods-know-I-don't-know-what-color eyes.
I crush his obvious hopes for me to say they were badass or something, "I thought they were really adorable. But you should probably alert Animal Control. I think they escaped the Hunger Games or something. They're huge- they look like they were made for killing- and they have these insanely human eyes. Like in said Hunger Games, at the finale, the dogs had the eyes of fallen tribuites, which is borderline disturbing."
His aforementioned chocolate-brown eyes look annoyed and he starts to shake sometime in the middle of my speech.
"Are you a bit cold? You look like you're shaking," I sarcastically look concerned. I pull up the other side of the red duvet and ignore the fantasies popping in my head about what we could do if he got in with me. Paul shakes harder but when my expression turns sincere, his intense shaking ceases.
Hmm. Shakes when angry, I mentally jot down.
"You're really offering? I thought it would take more than that to get into bed with you," he gloats. He hasn't made a move yet. Gods, I'm a Cain Ten's go-to for the lecture on 'How to be a Slutty Harlot'. At least I know words like harlot, I sympathize. So he doesn't want to get in bed with me? I mock being miffed, turning my nose upward slightly and quirking my lips LIKE A BOSS.
I smirk again (I seem to do a lot of that), "You aren't getting any action though. I could have a concussion, so all I want is a snuggle buddy." I don't have a concussion. I know what that feels like. I'm just using him for a heater.
"I'm open for anything," Paul says. He grabs the red tip of the duvet and climbs in smoothly. I scooch over to the edge to make room for his huge werewolf ass, but Paul traps me into his hard chest with his fit arms. We fit nicely together. The heat of his body soaks into my back. His abs...
It's nothing like the vampire hugged me because of the comforting heat and it wasn't faux love generated by yours truly radiating Paul.
Is he open for doing it doggy style?
"Seems like you weren't so cold after all, " I tease.
He makes an unintelligible gutteral moan against the back of my head. I like it like this. It seems, somehow, that thiss is perfect. My life is supposed to be like this. Sleeping lazily in bed with his hot muscled arms around my torso.
I laugh. "Amen to that."
Paul and I spend the majority of the day like that- in the bed, me making tons of dog jokes he didn't get- until the clock read 2 PM and Emily walked in on us with a tray of brownies. So far, I have found out that the wolves did not catch the vampire.
"Peace offering?" Emily suggests, after she banishes Paul so we can have some "girl time".
I suppose it was worth it. "Guys aren't as reliable as brownies," I decide, moaning at the fudge-filled goodness in my mouth. I sit up, only to realize something as my eyes set on what I'm wearing.
I cut short Emily's beginning of a sentence- I wasn't listening anyway- with an inquiry. "Who changed my clothes? I remember I was wearing a Black Veil Brides shirt and denim shorts...?" My recollection curls into a question.
Emily's cheeks redden, "Well, Paul was the one who found you out in the forest, and he put his shirt on you and used your shredded clothes as a bandage for you."
Hades, I think, I loved that shirt.
Emily recommences Operation Explanation, "And I wasn't here when he brought you back here, so he grabbed some of my pajama bottoms from before I got pregnant."
Somehow, I didn't mind Paul seeing me in my ebony lace lingerie.
I nod, about to start on a new topic, "So... Oh shit!" I stare at my index fingernail in horror. The paint is chipped! "Oh my gods!"
Emily crawls on the bed with me to take a look. "What?" Concern manifests in her slightly dry tone.
"Look at my nail! It needs serious surgery or something!"
Emily snorts and I throw her a dirty look, mentally damning her to Tartarus in Greek.
"So you broke a nail?" She adds in, unimpressed.
"Call an ambulance!" I cry, increasing my panic attack. "Do you know any Emergency Room doctors?" Maybe they can help. "Surgeons?"
She blinks at my full-blown panic attack. Panic bubbles in my chest and my stomach lurchess, turning painfully at the thought of my poor, poor fingernails.
I mourn, "My nails will never match again. My index finger will have to be filed into a square and the rest will go oval because square-filing looks horrible!"
Emily laughs at my pain, "Only you, Alexandria, could have a breakdown about breaking our fingernail and be dead serious." As the vampire who kidnapped me, I itch to thread in.
"It's like losing one of your children," I wail. I'm in too sad a state to come up with a comeback to Emily's remark.
The door is almost knocked down. "Emily! Is she crying?" I hear Paul yell from outside the barrier.
"No! She broke a nail!" Emily calls downstairs.
A few laughs vibrate around the cottage, echoing.
She goes back to soothing me. "I can organize a funeral. It'll be okay. They say the pain goes away eventually," she says mock sympathetically, reaching our to rub my back. "How can you be so distraught over breaking a nail?" she tries to mutter under her breath, but, in fact, fails because I hear her and her face is right next to mine. We are breathing the same air.
Yeah, the pain goes away eventually because I get plastic surgery.
I give her a perfect evil 'ten and she cowers away, slapping her soothing arm back to her hip.
"Hmm... I thought you were the pregnant one. Why are you scared of me?"
It's safe to say the russet-skinned woman wasn't very sympathetic in the moments following. (I eventually found a nail file, however).
When I saw have the forest go up in flames, I was pretty sure it wasn't just reckless campers. The twenty-or-so-foot-long amethyst dragon circling several trees, as if stalking it's prey, was also a small clue.
I hear shouts sounding outside.
Emily had left me alone in this room to "rest" fifteen minutes ago, but I suspect she really abandoned me here because she got tired of my full-blown sobbing about my broken nail. But, hey, it's a big deal where I come from. I don't understand her; it's a tragedy! At camp, I could've counted at least five other girls mourning with the funeral procession Lacy would've organized. Maybe it's because Emily lives on a reservation? Is she really so deprived? And what of the poor, poor child who will never cry over a broken manicure?
My concern goes up in flames as the dragon nears the fortress- er, Emily and Sam's cottage.
I get to the window, unfortunately wearing a maroon college shirt much too large for my frame and a red and white flannel scrunchie pants. So much for a knight in shining armor. At least I'm good with the dashing good looks.
"Hope you'll settle for a chick in PJs who cries if a nail breaks." I mutter, hoisting my right leg through the window. My quadricep rests on the cool, white window pane for less than a second before I shift my weight and fall out, arms flailing. Luckily or unfortunately, I land in the branches of a small tree that happens to be a dryad, my legs bent in odd directions.
The dryad knocks me to the hard dirt. I can sense the bruises forming EVERYWHERE.
"Go! Stupid demigod," the tree morphs into a pretty-in-her-own-way brown-haired girl with skin a lime hue you just couldn't get from Crayola's crayons. "trees are dying!" she scoffs at me and flinches at the sight of flames in the distance.
"How do I defeat it?" I ask, standing and brushing myself off. I grab the hilt of my dagger.
She glares at me and I curse my luck for ending up with such a violent nature spirit. "Not with that, obviously! You need to fight fire with water! What do they teach demigods these days?" She adds, disdainfully eyeing the flames lapping at the tips of the tall trees.
I almost turn the corner of the house, but then I hear voices.
"Sam, the forest is on fire!" I try to decipher the voice, and my best guess in Seth.
"I know, the rangers should come soon." Sam. Emily's fiancé.
Paul speaks next, and I recognize his husky voice immediately. "Look, with the fire, I doubt and vampires are going to bother us."
So fire kills the vamps? I file that in my head for later use, that is, if I do live through this.
"Yeah, we should just relocate like they say we should." Emily.
There's a pause. "Let's dig a trench around the house, and then you can go. We're protectors of the forest." Something about his voice feels like he's using charmspeak, because I suddenly want to dig a trench as well. But a bigger part of me needs to protect the forest.
Their voices fade, but I swear I can here the dryad huff indignantly from inside her tree. "Sure, protectors of the forest. All you seem to be protecting is your house."
I hold back laughter at the snarky dryad's antics.
I run toward the blazing forest like a lunatic. After crossing the tree line, I dodge falling timber and burning branches from the canopy. I assess the state of the forest as I run through the smokey haze. My eyes burn and tear. Not good, but would make a full recovery in a year or so if it's stopped soon. Luckily, the trees are tall so the fire hasn't made it the whole way down.
Frantic dryads run through the forest, screeching that their tree is on fire. They're disheveled, hair burning, flinching at the sight of flame. Through the thickly burning woods, I keep going like a bat out of hell, except, you know, I am running into the flames.
I wonder how the fire investigators will pin this on reckless campers' fires, because it's quite obviously burning down, not up. A sapling downs next to me and the red-hot flames scorch my upper arm. I scream in surprise.
Almost immediately, a howl breaks out.
I keep sprinting but now I have to cover my mouth and nose with my sleeve because my lungs burn. Gods, if I die from lung disease, I will throw my self a party for my inhumanly ironic mortal death. I wheeze, but I finally meet my destination. I stand in a clove where I can clearly see and hear the dragon flapping above me. Yes, I can tell you don't mind the flames, dragon-deary, but the rest of us don't exactly feel at home.
The ripples of his wings flapping almost knocks me back. I want to lay down and die at the effort I'm putting into moving closer. Water, I think, that is what the dryad said right? I could really use a drink...
"Hey dragon! Firebreath! Yo Smokey!" I scream up, over the sounds of falling trees and the sparks and pops of fire. "Over here!" I wave my arms in standard jumping jack motion.
Either the smoke is getting to my head or I'm just naturally this stupid, I realize as the dragon swings it's incredibly well muscled violet head towards me. We both pause for a second the way they do in movies when the hero is in the villain's reach, they stand there staring at each other for a second of shock,and the hero tries this incredibly cheeky little plan to get away. Capiche? No? It's in every movie. Where have you been all your life?
Then, I run.
Dodging Smokey the Dragon's firebreath is about as easy as winning a staring contest with a Medusa victim. You can't. After the third or fourth wave of fire, burns litter my arms and the only thing I've accomplished is thoroughly losing in tag with a provoked fire breathing dragon. My hair tinges against the back of my neck and I hiss at the burn on my arm.
Another figure comes into my vision, but I can't tell if it's a hallucination of Percy Jackson, or the real thing. A tan boy with familiar green eyes and messy bed head of hair runs into he clearing, sword in hand.
"Percy!" I yell with what's left of the oxygen in my lungs. Bad move. Oxygen is flammable. Very flammable. It looks like I'm breathing fire.
He swings his celestial bronze sword which gleams in the fire's light. He hits a chink in its scales. He runs for me as the dragon rears back in the air. He swung his hand over my scorched shoulders, helping me run. "Who are you? You know me?" he shouts.
I cough,"Yeah! We've been looking for you everywhere!" My ankle flies through a burning shrub. "Ow! Gods!"
"How do we defeat it?" Percy yells, pulling me into him behind a tree, fire shooting past us on either side. My arm hairs are scorched off., which I consider a bonus because I won't need another bikini waxing for a month after this. My arms turn a reddish golden brown hue you just can't get making s'mores, but I'm sure I look like I'm in hell. My ankle burns.
"Water! Use your water powers, Percy!"
He goes, "Powers?" but a creek comes into view just as the dragon lets loose another fiery breath. Percy instinctively tenses his face and the water from the creek springs up and forms a protective shield over us. The fire passes over it, and we're not harmed. I do get a good steam bath you really can't get from spas.
My pores love me now, I decide.
The dragon swoops back at the sight of water, but then comes back in with its talons. Somewhere in its dragon brain, the gears must be spinning, like: Fire breath no turn yummy demigods into crispy well done sausages. What about raw meat?
Percy's face is covered in ash and grime -cinder mixed with sweat- and my eyes burn. My face isn't very different from Percy's, albeit terrified. I mentally right my will, hiding my face and stumbling back, but Percy makes the water go at the dragon full force. As soon as the water touches the dragon's scales, it melts like the Wicked Witch of the West. Except, you, the dragon part. I glare at the steam in disbelief.
If I'd just brought a water bottle...
Percy helps me limp to the stream, where I dip my burned limbs in the water and hiss at the sting. He touches the water and I choke and sputter in awe at how instantly it heals him. He touches my feet in the water and I feel my whole body regenerate. I drink some to rid my throat of the smoke.
"That's awesome," I praise, my throat finally clear.
We look to the sky as it starts raining, like why couldn't this have happened sooner, but no, it's a helicopter dropping water to save the forest from the flames.
Percy and I both let out a celebratory whoop and he adds in a fist pump.
Percy laughs, " So who are you?"
I meet his green orbs, "I'm Alex, daughter of Aphrodite. I'm helping Annabeth find you."
Said green orbs widen. "Annabeth. Where is she? She's the only thing I remember." That's so sweet- he loses his memory, which I ironically forgot about, but he remember his true love, the daughter of Athena.
I make an 'awww' sound. "She's at camp-" I'm about to explain to the lost hero what's going on, but I'm interrupted with a vision of the queen of the gods.
Hmm... I think, she seems to have no qualms about going against Zeus's wishes. Also, eons old and they still don't understand the concept of 'going silent'.
The goddess wears a simple long regal white toga with the hem at her ankles and a golden clasp at her shoulder. Golden sandals adorn her feet and a light gold tiara rests on her head like a halo. A goat skin flickers offer and on her shoulders, as if unsure whether she was Juno or Hera.
"Daughter of Aphrodite, do not expose where your camp is to Percy Jackson. It will run my plan, and you will perish against Gaea's forces. He is on another path. Do not lead him astray." She spoke with finality.
I regard her. "But he will come to camp, eventually, right? Annabeth and Percy will be reunited?" Another thought occurs to me as I stand in the presence of Hera, "You did this? Why?"
She blinks at my accusation, as if she has no clue what she has done and how it affects the people at camp. "He will reunite with Annabeth, when he remembers everything." The queen of the gods spits out Annabeth's name like a glass of lukewarm water, "and don't be so quick to pass judgement on me, for what I have done will save your life. This was the only way."
I think about it, and decide she's desperate enough. "Lady Hera, may I ask for a small favor?"
She eyes me suspiciously.
"If you can make the forest grow the teensiest bit faster. It was really beautiful here before it burned." Nice spot to get proposed to, I decide mentally. I think Hera reads my thoughts and approves on the concept on my getting married. Maybe I just imagined the small smile then...?
The queen of the gods holds up her perfect hand. "Yes, as you want. It will be done. You will let my plan resume it's movement?"
"Yeah," I say. I cover my eyes as she changes to her true godly form and in a flash of bright light, I'm returned to Percy.
He stares at me worryingly. "What happened?"
"Um... a goddess just visited me."
He goes, "Whaaat?"
Just as I'm about to answer, a silvery wolf runs into my peripheral vision and Percy's direct line of sight. The wolf growls. Percy lets go of me, stands and draws his sword.
"Crap, no, Percy! Don't..."
Both Percy and the wolf cock their heads at me like I'm insane. I may have lost my mind somewhere along the way, but right now I am all right.
"I may have forgotten to mention the werewolf thing."
hey guys. Luv you.
So if i don't get any reviews i won't be happy. I'm shooting for ten before I update again but in all reality if i get one review in the next twenty four hour I'll kiss you.
Funny reviews guys... like, please. I read them, often in a bad bood, saerching for praise so I don't go all suicidal zombie bella ape shit on you guys. So I'd like to hear funny stuff, even if you're making a joke out of my whole fucking book.
Flames are appreciated, if they are hilarious.
Like, lol, i may have forgotten to tell paul i know about the whole werewolf thing too. My bad.
Someone also introduced the idea of having kim be a demigod in the story... tell me what you think. There will be a poll on my profile with all of the conditions. But I only do the poll to see what you guys think and do what I want anyway
#dontbeaghostreader i'm also going to add random la la las so this chapter hits 4000. Record for this story!
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This is gonna be the best day of my life. La la la la la