A/N: Normally I won't be a good person and update this often, but I had the chapter ready to go, so I figured sooner was better than later.
Reyna was not where she should have been when the alarms went off.
She wasn't even near where she should have been. She was supposed to be preparing for the luau, which probably meant toting plastic cups and decorations around from pool deck to pool deck, but she had found an opening. She had been asked to voyage into the storage room in search of inflatable plastic palm trees that floated on the pools and doubled as drink holders, but she was stalling under the pretense that she couldn't locate them. She was purposely ignoring the large wooden crate that was labeled, 'INFLATABLES'.
The storage room was a large, underground basement with concrete walls and floors, and was completely abandoned except for Reyna. She took advantage of this.
She cracked open a box of pool cues and pretended to throw it like a javelin. It just didn't work. Despite having never actually used a javelin, Reyna knew that the pool cue wasn't weighted properly. Making it long and pointy wasn't enough; there was a balance to be achieved.
Reyna replaced the cue and glanced around. There— in the far corner, large wooden crates were stacked in a neat pile, almost all the way to the ceiling. It was the perfect climbing course. Maybe…with a running start…
Reyna's fingertips just caught on the top of the massive bottom crate. She heaved herself up onto the small ledge and almost fell sideways when her sandal caught. She ripped them off uncaringly. She had minutes at most before she could stall no longer.
She clambered up the pile box by box, until she sat on the topmost one, ducking to keep from banging her head on the ceiling. She stretched her feet out and knocked her heels together sourly. Too easy. It was too easy to clamber up the neatly stacked crates. She needed more of a challenge. She surveyed the room with her piercing black eyes narrowed calculatingly. The wire shelves were too tippy. The boxes were stacked in formations that made them insulting simple to clamber up. Aside from that, there wasn't much else in the room—
A high pitched wail made Reyna smash her head on the ceiling. The red lights on the walls began to spin and flash. With a deafening screech, the metal door to the storeroom slowly began to lower, accompanied by a staccato thunk, thunk, thunk. The alarm continued to howl.
It took Reyna less than a second to work out that she had to move now, or else be trapped in the room.
She launched herself off of the top box and landed on the crate two layers down. Without even properly thinking, just letting her mind run on autopilot, she scrambled down the pile, sprinted across the room, and drove under the falling door with only a foot left. She never remembered that she'd forgotten her shoes.
Before she could stand or even take a knee, someone grabbed her in a rough headlock. She screamed and, thrashing violently, kneed the man where she knew it hurt. He howled and released her, giving her just enough time to scramble away. He was a terrifying figure. He stood over a head taller than her, with an unkempt black beard and shoulder-length, greasy hair. Large rings shimmered on his fingers and his clothes were patched and ripped and patched again. He wasn't armed—luckily for Reyna— but he wheeled around on unsteady legs with a snarl, looking more like a rabid dog than a man.
Reyna ran.
She forgot all of her past desires to fight and to prove herself. She simply fled, pounding up the side street to the nearest pool deck.
It wasn't much better there. The wild men ran around, herding the screaming spa attendants and uprooting the flaming luau torches. They smashed bottles and pulled down the cabanas. They threw chairs into the pool and generally destroyed everything they came across. Reyna knew what they were called in Spanish—piratas— but it had never exactly come up in her English studies. The piratas laughed like maniacs while they pillaged, setting fire to the stacks of furniture and binding the hands and feet of the spa attendants. In the distance, Reyna saw the blonde haired girl and the black haired boy from earlier running toward the shore. They looked guilty as hell.
Reyna made up her mind to follow them and sprinted around the farthest edge of the pool deck, ducking under the arm of one pirata before another jumped in her way. She didn't even think, but grabbed a broken chair leg and hit him in the back of the knee with all the force she could muster. He fell, a surprised look on his face, and she planted a kick square in the back, toppling him into the flotsam-chocked pool. She continued on.
Her targets had disappeared behind a row of hedges, but once she got close enough to see over… she was fast, maybe she could catch up to them…
"Reyna!"
Someone jumped into her path and she slammed into it, sending both her and the other person onto the hard paving stones. Ow, Reyna thought, registering that she had probably bruised her hip pretty badly but pushing the thoughts from her mind. Hylla fought to untangle herself from her sister, looking panicked. "They escaped!"
"Not yet!" Reyna said, mistaking her meaning and fighting to get up, intent on pursuing the two demigods.
"Of course they have!" Hylla cried, grabbing Reyna's arm. "Don't go out there, they'll catch you!"
"Shut—" As soon as Reyna was on her feet she was tackled again, this time by someone worse smelling than her sister. A glint of a gold tooth was all Reyna saw before cloth was tied around her eyes, and Hylla's shrieks were all she needed to confirm her fears. The piratas had caught them.
Knowing that her sister, who had been so strong until their arrival on the island, was screaming her head off made Reyna more unsettled than she would have liked to admit.
Someone hauled her to her feet and Reyna lashed out blindly. All it bought her was a rough slap to the back of the head and an abrasive rope around her hands. The pirata began to march her down the cobbled path. Reyna struggled more, but in vain; she could hear Hylla near her, but her sisters voice soon became indistinguishable from the generally wailing of spa attendants echoing on all sides. Near her, something collapsed with a loud crack, and heat bathed her right side. Smoke told her that something was burning. The pirata's pace quickened, and the smooth cobblestones under Reyna's bare feet changed to wood. They had reached the dock at the shore of the island.
A large hand closed on the back of her neck and she whimpered. What were they going to do? What were they going to do to her?
There was a distinctly masculine howl and the hand vanished from her neck; it snagged on the blindfold and loosened it. Reyna looked up into Hylla's face, pale and scared but determined. There was a knife in her hands and the pirata lay still on the dock behind her.
Reyna was not thankful.
She was annoyed. Hylla— Hylla who hadn't spent any time training, who had run from the piratas, who had screamed in fright— that Hylla had saved her. Reyna. Who had trained, who had fought, and who had been totally overcome. This was not how things were supposed to work. A large purple bruise was developing on Reyna's pride, and she smoldered in anger.
She glanced up toward the spa, and froze.
It was burning. All of it was burning. As she watched, Circe's private rooms at the top of the island collapsed in on themselves, sending glowing sparks dozens of feet into the air. Cabanas had been torn down, stores raided, walkways vandalized. And it was burning. All of it was burning.
Reyna had never loved the spa. She had never loved Circe, never loved the other attendants. But this… this was true villainy. Years of deceit and hated flamed before her, leveling buildings and destroying the lives of those who lived there. In front of the flames swarmed black silhouettes of people, all either slim women or burly men. The women were cowering. The men were encouraging the destruction. Come sunrise, and there would be nothing left on the island but smoking ruins and singed trees.
On the farthest horizon and shrinking rapidly was a ship, and the two demigods who had fled in guilt.
A blow to the back of the head ensured that she saw no more.