Seven

Loud Owls and Misbehaving Doggies

It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and a snake woman was tied up in front of me hurling non-stop profanities in ancient Greek. So, you know, a Thursday

"Alright Percy," Thalia called over to me. She was stood a distance away, holding the end of the rope that the monster was bound with. "What's rule number one?"

For what felt like the thousandth time but was probably only the hundredth, I said, "Never take my eyes off the enemy."

She nodded. "And rule two?"

"Remember what you taught me."

"Which is?"

I readjusted my grip on my spear impatiently. "Stay light on my feet, use my range, and focus on accuracy. Can we start already?"

She wasn't moved. "Not until I hear rule three from you."

"If it gets at all dangerous, run and let you take care of it," I said. "I know the rules. Come on, let's do this."

"Right," Thalia said. She nodded her head once. Then she nodded it again. "Right. Here it comes." Her grip on the rope loosened, the snake woman perked up… And her hands tightened once more. "Maybe we should go over the rules one more time. Just to be safe."

"Thalia," I complained. She'd been teaching me to use a spear for almost two weeks, and in that time she'd already pushed back my first test against a live monster twice. I was determined not to let her make it a third. "I need to do this. If I don't, I won't get better."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." She shook her head, trying to steel her nerves. I'd seen her face down giants and laugh off killer birds, but the thought of me facing a bound monster was enough to leave her pale and shaky. I couldn't make sense of it.

But finally her hesitation seemed to run out. She met my eyes, and once she was certain I was focused, dropped the rope. The monster lurched toward me the moment it could, baring its fangs.

A Dracaena, Thalia had called it, half woman and half snake like Lamia. Unlike Lamia the Dracaena had two tails instead of one, a few less feet of height, and a hell of a lot less intimidation factor. With its hands bound at its sides I could barely take it seriously.

The Dracaena lunged. I stabbed. And the monster dissolved to dust with one final curse.

"That wasn't so bad," Thalia said, smiling tentatively. She looked like she'd just passed her driver's test.

"Shouldn't that be my line?" I asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah I guess so."

I gave her a weird look. "You okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" She asked. One eyebrow arched challengingly. That was the most like herself she'd been in the last hour, so I let the topic drop.

Instead I shook my spear to ditch the accumulated monster dust before spinning it around so that the point was facing the ground. Two taps later it was a mechanical pencil in my hand, which I slipped into my pocket. When I turned I found Thalia looking on appreciatively.

"I'd still love to check that weapon out sometime," she said. "You know, hands on…"

I shook my head as we started in the direction of our temporary camp. "It's too dangerous. It–"

"Could suck out my soul. I know, you said. Very scary.

We walked a few steps in silence.

"I'd be careful, though."

"Thalia, no."

She sighed. "I'll wear you down eventually."

Up ahead our camp came into sight. It wasn't much to look at: a few ratty sleeping bags and old food wrappers stuffed up under a bushy oak tree. Compared to the permanent shelter we'd slept in the first night it was somewhat depressing, but it got the job done. Besides, it was the best we could do while on the move. There wasn't the money for a five-star hotel laying around– or even a two-star one, for that matter.

Luke and Annabeth were already there, munching away on a thrown-together lunch, leaning against the tree's wide trunk. They'd been training too; you could see it in the bruises and dried sweat on them. Or on Annabeth, at least. Luke looked like he always did, but that was normal so long as he wasn't fighting Thalia.

"Food," Luke called over when he saw us. An array of open cans sat in front of him. "We have beans, some more beans, and ham. A meal fit for the gods."

Thalia and I each grabbed a can and a fork, settling in to eat. It tasted vaguely like rust, but I was too hungry to care.

"So," Luke started, finishing his beans and dropping the empty can without a second thought. "Did the training go well?"

"Percy killed the Dracaena we caught last night," Thalia told him. "In a few seconds, too."

"I told you keeping one alive would come in handy." He gave me a thumbs up. "We'll make a fighter out of you yet. Even more than you already are, I mean."

"Its hands were still tied," I mumbled, blushing. "You guys did all the work capturing it."

"Don't give me that," he told me. "You did the important bit. I won't hear anything else."

Embarrassed and eager to change the subject, I asked Annabeth, "Did your training go well?"

She just stared at me at first, like she was trying to puzzle out what nefarious motive my question hid. She did that a lot with me. Unfortunately for her, the effect was ruined this time by a stray bean that had found its way onto her cheek. "It was successful," she finally said.

I nodded. "That's…good?"

"Yes," she said. "It is."

Then Luke wiped the bean off her cheek. She eeped and scrambled away, cupping a hand to her face. So much for serious and composed.

"What was that for?" she complained.

"Fun," he said. "Now come back here. I didn't get all of it."

The conversation sunk into jokes and name-calling. I let the words wash over, my thoughts turning elsewhere.

By all accounts, things had been going pretty good. I hadn't had any strange dreams since the first night, and none of the monsters we'd run into were anywhere near as dangerous as Lamia. Certainly not enough to give Thalia or Luke problems. We'd even made good time, covering most of Pennsylvania through a combination of scrounged-up bus tickets, hitch-hiking, and good old-fashioned walking. Greensburg, the town with the camp we were making for, was only a day or two away now tops.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that time was running out.

A bird caught my attention as it flew down and landed in a nearby tree. That itself wouldn't have been unusual, but this wasn't just any bird.

It was an owl. A fluffy, brown one, with two tufts sticking up above the eyes like the eyebrows on an angry cartoon character. The owl cocked its head, its wide pupils sliding over me before coming to rest on Thalia.

"Guys," I said, pointing to the bird. "Is that normal?"

The others looked to where I was pointing. The owl cocked its head even further.

"It's a bird, Percy," said Thalia. "What wouldn't be normal about it?"

"But it's an owl. Don't they only do things at night? I thought that was their whole thing."

Thalia shrugged. "I guess it got up early. Or went to bed late. Either way, so what?"

"No, he's right," Annabeth said. I wasn't sure which surprised me more: that she was agreeing with me, or that she looked almost…scared? "It's a screech owl. They don't move during the day. Ever. Something's wrong."

Luke smiled. "Come on, we're overthinking things. If it were a monster it would've attacked by now. Just ignore it." But I noticed that despite what he said, he scooted his sword a little closer to himself.

The conversation moved on, but I couldn't. I kept my eyes on the owl, and the longer I did the more certain I became that something wasn't right. It was too focused for one thing. Its eyes were stuck wide-open and glued to Thalia as if she were a mouse scurrying through some tall grass. And it was too alert. It hadn't even blinked since I saw it.

All of which meant I was the first to notice when it opened its beak- not that I had any way of expecting what was about to come.

Annabeth had called it a screech owl, and that's exactly what it did, just a thousand times louder than should've been possible. The noise itself was like a dying door hinge, and the volume had me desperately pressing my hands to my ears trying not to go deaf. Thalia fumbled for her spear, lips were moving nonstop. The owl must've been censoring the harshest stream of profanities the world had ever heard.

Finally, after what felt like hours, a bolt of lightning from Thalia's spear nailed the tree, forcing the bird to take off. And, mercifully, to shut up. The owl flew in one lazy arc above our heads then flapped off, heading West.

I saw Luke's lips move but couldn't hear a word. Thalia and Annabeth must've been in the same boat because they didn't answer either. We just sat there, looking around frantically to make sure it was over.

"What," Thalia said once our ability to hear had faded back in, "was that?"

"That'swhat screech owls sound like," Annabeth said. "But they shouldn't be so, well, loud."

"And then it just…left," I added. "No becoming giant and attacking, no trying to peck our eyes out. It just screamed, and that was it."

None of us could explain it. The experience was just strange, even for demigods. And painful.

"We should move," Thalia said. She was still glancing this way and that, waiting for a follow-up assault on more than just our ears. "I don't know what that was, and I don't feel like sticking around and finding out."

That was an idea I could get behind. The upside of a ratty camp is that it can be packed up as quickly as you want. Within half an hour we were stood on the side of the road with everything loaded into backpacks, trudging along with our thumbs up.

Unsurprisingly no one stopped for us, but that was fine. Walking was good by me so long as way-too-loud owls were nowhere to be seen.

For the next week, things returned to normal. Or as normal as life got for four traveling demigods, by which I mean no more screaming owls and nothing too dangerous attempting to make us its snack.

We reached the permanent camp on the third day, this one made of interwoven plants. When I first saw it I asked if it would stay up when it was windy. Annabeth told me it was a Native American design. I repeated my question, and she called me stupid. I took that as a yes.

I had a few strange dreams, but all of them were short ones. Just snippets really. One time I saw a whole group of owls, just like the one that'd screamed at us. They were flying as a pack over what looked like farmland, before splitting and going off in their own directions. Other times I saw the old women I'd dreamt of before. The biker and the one in the dress, Megaera and Tisiphone. Each time they were somewhere new: on top of the Statue of Liberty, in front of the Washington Monument, poking around New Orleans. Other times they were in the middle of nowhere, wandering over farmland or down the Main Street of a small town. Every time they were arguing.

"There has to be a better way," Tisiphone complained one of the times. She gestured to town around her. "Leather jackets were not made for humid summers."

"Then change!" Her sister snapped at her. "No one is forcing you to wear that hideous thing. Do you want to find the girl or not?"

"Hideous," Tisiphone mumbled. "My baby called hideous by the skank in an eyesore of a dress. Will the insults never cease?"

"Skank, is it? To hell with the girl, maybe I'll gut you instead."

But for all their threats, I never saw them fight. They'd always be distracted before it could get that far. One time, in the background, I could've sworn I saw a screech owl, but I chalked that up to my imagination.

We fell into a routine– training, eating, talking. Annabeth stayed fairly cold toward me, but even that I got used to. For five days things carried on like this until, one morning, the routine was broken by necessity. Supplies had run low, and Luke had headed into town with Annabeth to restock. By the time Thalia and I finished our training session and returned to camp, hours into the day, the two were still nowhere to be seen.

"They're still gone?" Thalia said. She frowned. "They left hours ago."

I shrugged. It seemed a little strange to me, but they'd done this a million times before. "Luke knows what he's doing," I said, hoping to reassure her.

She didn't answer, and I blinked.

"He does, doesn't he?"

Thalia sighed, long and tired. Like my old teacher used to when someone in the class did something especially bad– usually me. "I hope so, Percy," she said. "I really do."

I didn't know what to make of that. Thalia and Luke always seemed so confident and assured, in both themselves and each other. To be told, point blank, that she wasn't certain about him? It was pretty close to the last thing I expected.

"He used to," she carried on. "I trusted him with my life. I still do, it's just–"

Anything more was cut off by the sound of giggles and crunching leaves. Out of the woods, about twenty feet away, burst Annabeth and Luke. Twigs were stuck to their clothes and their faces were red with exertion, but they were grinning and laughing like kids in a candy shop.

"Hey!" Luke called, seeing me and Thalia. He looked thrilled, like he was riding an adrenaline rush. At his side, Annabeth pulled on his sleeve, giggling.

"Luke, show them what we got!"

He chuckled. "As you say, M'lady." He never stopped grinning, but something in his expression changed as he reached behind his back. It was hard to tell exactly what – the look in his eyes, maybe, or the slant of his lips – but whatever it was, I felt a chill run down my spine as he pulled out a crumpled paper bag.

"What is it?" Thalia asked. The way she said it made me think she'd noticed the shift too. It was hidden, but there was worry in her voice.

"Ta-da," Luke said, and he drew from the bag a thick wad of cold hard cash.

"We got so much," Annabeth said proudly. She still hadn't let go of Luke's shirt, which seemed to only be boosting her already good mood.

"Where did you get that?" Thalia asked.

Luke tossed the cash to her, and she caught it deftly, making sure none of the bills slipped to the ground. As Thalia began leafing through the money, Luke eased himself from Annabeth's grasp and strowed forward. "Come on," he said, "Let's just think of all the things we can do with this. Hells, we could get a hotel room! An actual roof over our heads for once!"

"Yeah," Thalia muttered, still counting. "Until they kick us out for being a bunch of dirty kids with no parents. Or worse, call someone on us."

"Please," Luke said. "If they start asking questions, we throw in an extra fifty. Problem solved."

"Or," I said, "they take the extra fifty and then call someone on us."

He turned to me. "Oh don't be such a pessimist. We can-"

"Seven-hundred and ninety dollars," Thalia cut him off. She was looking up now, her counting done, her eyes wide and dangerous. Blue pupils shone with the first hints of electricity. "Luke Castellan, where did you get this?"

Luke's good mood evaporated. "You know I don't like the last name, Thals. How would you like it if I called you Grace?"

Thalia didn't raise her voice, which is how I knew she was really pissed. "I'd accept it," she said, "if I did something this stupid. Where did you get the money, Luke?"

"So I did some stealing," he said. "No big deal for a son of Hermes like me, since you want to bring up parents."

It occurred to me that that was the first time I'd heard Luke mention his godly parent. Judging from the look on his face when he said it, I didn't think that was an accident.

"I don't have a problem with stealing," Thalia said. "We have to. But you don't get all this from shoplifting or picking a pocket." She walked toward him, one word after every step. "What. Did. You. Do."

Luke squared his shoulders. "So I busted open a cash register. Or two. Or three."

Thalia threw her arms up and turned away in disgust. "Great. Just great. Start packing, we need to be out of here before someone find us. We can't afford to be arrested–"

"Hold on," Luke said, grabbing hold of her shoulder. I half expected him to be zapped to a crisp just for that. He wasn't, but the glare Thalia fixed him with was so venomous that I wasn't sure he got off any lighter.

"You're mad," he said. "I get that. I understand. But isn't it about time we start taking risks? We live in the woods, barely owning a damn thing. We deserve better than this! Besides, we were careful."

"Totally careful," Annabeth chimed in, backing him up. "No one saw us. I stood guard."

"See?" Luke said. "We can enjoy this. Buy something nice for ourselves. It'll work out!"

He smiled hopefully, wishing Thalia to understand. Instead she wrenched her shoulder away from him and stuffed the bills into his outstretched hand.

"Next time you get a brilliant idea," she said, "run it by me first." And she stormed– literally, given the sparks fizzling around her – into the woods, stopping only to snatch her mace canister/spear along the way. I felt bad for the trees unfortunate enough to be in her path.

"She's angry with us," Annabeth said, watching her go.

"No," Luke corrected. "She's angry with me."

Annabeth didn't seem to find that idea very comforting. She frowned and said, "I don't want you two to fight."

"We aren't," Luke said. Annabeth fixed him with a deadpan stare, and he amended himself. "We won't be for long. She'll come around."

I noticed he said she and not we. I hadn't known her for nearly as long as he had, but it seemed very optimistic to expect Thalia to change her mind on any argument. Stubbornness was in her DNA.

Then Luke's attention turned to me, and a sense of awkwardness crept up my spine. I'd been hoping to stay out of this.

"You agree with me, right Percy?"

And there it was. The question I'd been hoping not to hear.

"That she'll change her mind?" I asked, trying to play dumb.

"That I was right to take something for once. That we shouldn't be so scared of risks."

"I don't know," I admitted. "But…I think that both are important. You can't be too safe, or you won't get anywhere. But if you take too many risks, you'll end up slipping eventually."

It sounded a lot better when I didn't mention that I was repeating my mom's advice on playing Chutes and Ladders, so I kept that bit to myself. Luke frowned but nodded. Annabeth just glared at me through his legs for daring to disagree with him.

Silence settled thickly in the air, and I had to resist the urge to fidget. It was worse than when my first-grade teacher had made us introduce ourselves in front of the class, one by one. I broke.

"I'll go check on Thalia," I blurted out. "Someone should."

Luke said "Sure," but I was already moving. I hurried away from the heavy atmosphere and into the woods.

I smelled Thalia before I saw her- a scent like burnt cookies that just kept getting stronger. The smell of bark being fried. Pretty soon I could follow the burnt patches and slashed limbs. There were more and more of them the further I went.

When I caught sight of her, she was laying into a scrawny cedar with a tall trunk and spindly limbs. Her spear was a blur. Over the crackling of electricity I could hear her muttering to herself.

"Stupid Luke… Stupid Hermes… Stupid burnt cookies…"

"Hey," I called, stopping a good distance away before getting her attention. I wasn't too keen on adding 'being skewered' to my day.

Sure enough, Thalia whipped around spear first, getting halfway through a stab before recognizing my voice and freezing. "Percy," she said stiffly. "You should go back. I'm not in the mood to talk right now."

I shifted my weight. "I think that means you probably should be talking."

Thalia didn't look convinced. "And…?" she prompted.

"And it was awkward back there," I admitted. "Really awkward. I'll take my chances out here."

That at least got a smile on her face. Not much of one, but it was there. "Fine, your honesty has won me over." She shrunk her spear and beckoned me closer. "Come on, let's walk."

For the first few minutes that's all we did. Just walk in silence, enjoying the scenery. Or in Thalia's case, probably cooling off.

"He wasn't always like this."

I started, looking away from where I'd been watching a pair of chirping bluebirds. "You mean Luke?"

Thalia nodded. She didn't look mad anymore, just kind of sad.

"You started to say something about that," I remembered. "That he doesn't know what he's doing…"

"He does," Thalia disagreed. She stamped on a gopher hole, leaving an imprint in the dirt. "It's just… He just… Oh gods damn it, I don't know anymore." We walked a dozen more paces as she gathered her thoughts. "We visited his house, you know. About a month ago. Annabeth and I were hurt, and he said he knew a place. What he didn't count on his father being there."

I thought of Luke's face Thalia used his last name. The way he'd said his father's name. "It didn't go well, did it?"

"No." Thalia said. "No it didn't. And the worst part is–" she broke off to kick a tree, letting off some steam before carrying on. "The worst part is, I don't even know what happened. We were only there for an hour, but Luke spoke with his dad, just the two of them. Whatever was said, whatever they talked about… He hasn't been the same since."

"But he's seemed so fine," I said. "He jokes around. And he's always looking out for us."

Thalia looked at me sadly. "You wouldn't understand, Percy. Not unless you knew him before. But he's changed. Sometimes, when he smiles, it doesn't reach his eyes. And he's gotten reckless. He wants to rob Every town we hit blind. Every monster we meet, it's charge first, think of a strategy later. I'm worried about him."

I wanted to say something to make her feel better. Problem was, I had nothing. If she said something was wrong with Luke, who was I to disagree? Not for the first time that day I felt like I didn't belong. Like I was an outsider.

Maybe those feelings would fade with time. Or maybe this wasn't where I was meant to be. Not for too long, anyway.

"Do you have any family?" I asked, changing the subject. "Other than your dad, I mean."

"He doesn't count," Thalia said. "He left us." Her eyes were hard, staring forward as if looking anywhere else were dangerous. "My only family, the only one that matters, is this group."

"What about your mom? I asked. As soon as I said it I wished I hadn't. If looks could kill I would've had an express ticket to my uncle's domain, and I didn't mean her dad.

"She's gone from my life," Thalia ground out. "Let's leave it at that."

"My mom's gone too," I blurted out. "Like, gone gone."

I'd just wanted to get her to stop glaring at me. It worked, but I didn't like the look of pity I got any better.

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks."

We'd been walking a while now. Up ahead I could see through the trees to where a highway ran. Cars blurred by in streaks of color, the noise of their engines fading in before fading out just as quickly.

"What was she like?"

We were stopped now, a ways back from the edge of the asphalt. I slipped Aelia from my pocket and spun it around my fingers, helping myself focus and order my thoughts.

"Kind," I said. "Especially to me, but also just in general. She raised me by herself. She was always working two jobs to make the Manhattan rent, but she did it with a smile. She remarried, but…" I waved my hand, not feeling like drawing on the words necessary to describe my stepfather. "Well, she did everything she could for me, and she did all of it alone."

"She sounds great. I wish I could've met her."

"So do I."

We stood there a moment, watching the cars zip by. I imagined we looked quite pathetic to the passing drivers: two dirty kids stood beside the road, one just barely keeping himself from crying.

"Wait a minute." Thalia said. "You lived in New York?"

"Hmm? Yeah."

"Then," She said slowly, "how did get all the way to Pennsylvania?"

Shit.

"I had some help," I said.

"From your father?"

I should've said yes. That would've been the smart thing to do. But I couldn't do it. I just couldn't give Poseidon, who'd sat back and done nothing, credit for saving my life.

The end result was my mouth hanging open like a fish's as I shook my head back and forth.

"Percy, who helped you?" She didn't sound accusing, just curious. But what could I say? Tossing out Daedalus' name out would make me sound crazy, considering everyone thought he'd died a thousand years ago. Not to mention it kind of ruined the whole hidden from the world thing he was going for.

My problem was solved in one of the worst ways possible: a black blur bulldozing its way out of the woods straight into Thalia.

Aegis took shape on her wrist as the shape slammed. Her mace canister went flying across the highway before it could transform, landing far out of reach, and the girl and her attacker slid to a stop a distance away from me, overturned grass in their wake.

It all happened so quickly that it took me a moment to recognize the attacker as a hellhound. It was smaller than Mrs. O'Leary, but still as big as a full-grown bear. Its fangs snapped viciously, flinging saliva as it tried to find a way around Thalia's shield, and its claws were dug into the ground for leverage, pinning Thalia down and not letting her up. Little bits of electricity sparked off of its coat, but none of them were strong enough to do more than irritate it.

I clicked Aelia, and Anfisa formed in my hand. My plan was to charge in and help, but by the time my spear was ready the hellhound had gotten ahold of Aegis in its jaws. One jerk of its head and the shield was sent spiraling away like a golden frisbee.

There was no time to think. A desperate plan flashed through my head, and I acted.

"Thalia!" I shouted. "Catch!"

And I threw Anfisa to her, end over end like the world's deadliest pinwheel blade.

Somehow, she caught the shaft perfectly. I sent a silent prayer for demigods' boosted reflexes, and another when she dug the point into the monster's neck, turning it to dust a second before its fangs could sink into her.

"Yuck," she coughed, spitting out monster residue. "For the record, when I said I wanted to check out your weapon, this wasn't what I had in mind."

"That was a hellhound," I said, staring at the spot the monster had dissolved. Daedalus had explained a bit about them, but what I knew didn't make any sense.

Thalia pulled herself to her feet. "You know them?"

"They're supposed to help guard the underworld. I've had experiences." Just usually with a lot more licking and a lot less attempted maiming. But one thing in particular was really weirding me out.

"It was only after you," I said. "I was closer to it, but it ignored me completely. Why would it do that?"

"Who knows," Thalia said, now rubbing at a spot of saliva that just wouldn't come out of her shirt. "Maybe I just looked tastier. Or maybe it didn't think you would be enough food."

I rolled my eyes and grabbed Aegis from where it'd landed. Face-down, luckily, saving me a whole lot of discomfort. The Mace Cannister had flown well out of sight, but that didn't worry me. If Thalia needed it, it would reappear in her pocket as if it had never been gone.

I was about to make an insightful suggestion that would solve all of our problems when, far away, a girl's voice screamed. Thalia and I met each other's eyes, our conversation forgotten.

We knew that voice. It was Annabeth.

(-)

Chapter. Yes.

Another longer one, which I've churned out decently quickly. Good job, me. I've found a good combination of motivation and time for writing recently which if I can keep up - which I really mean to do - should mean much more consistent chapters. Hurrah.