Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: Long chapter today, hooray! Also, just gotta say, I love the guest review that I removed from FFN earlier this week that said they couldn't wait until this story was removed for smut XD If you're gonna complain about a story having smut, maybe check to see if actually has smut (yet) or not...
Anyways, as always, I hope you enjoy! Until next week,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~The Finding Home Saga~
~Finding Home~
~Chapter 60: I Learn How To Grow Zombies~
The thing about flying a pegasus during the daytime is that if you're not careful, you can cause a serious traffic accident on the Long Island Expressway. I had to keep Blackjack up in the clouds, which were, fortunately, pretty low in the winter. We darted around, trying to keep the white Camp Half-Blood van in sight. And if it was cold on the ground, it was seriously cold in the air, with icy rain stinging my skin.
I was wishing I'd brought some of that Camp Half-Blood orange thermal underwear they sold in the camp store, but after the story about Phoebe and the centaur-blood t-shirt, I wasn't sure if I could trust their products anymore. Not when the Stolls were around, anyways.
We lost the van twice, but I had a pretty good sense that they would go into Manhattan first, so it wasn't too difficult to pick up their trail again.
Traffic was bad with the holidays and all. It was mid-morning before they got to the city. I landed Blackjack near the top of the Chrysler Building and watched the white camp van, thinking it would pull into the bus station, but instead it just kept driving.
"Where's Argus taking them?" I muttered.
"Oh, Argus ain't driving, boss," Blackjack informed me. "That girl is."
"Which girl?"
"That one Hunter girl. The one with the silver crown in her hair."
"Zoë's driving?"
"That's the one. Hey, look! There's a donut shop. Can we get something to go?"
I tried explaining to Blackjack that taking a flying horse to a donut shop would give every cop in there a heart attack, but she didn't seem to get it. Meanwhile, the van kept snaking its way towards the Lincoln Tunnel. It had never occurred to me that Zoë could drive. I mean, she didn't look sixteen. Then again, she was an immortal. I wondered if she had a New York driver's license, and if so, what her birth date said.
"Well," I said. "Let's go after them."
We were about to leap off the Chrysler Building when Blackjack whinnied in alarm and almost threw me. Something was curling around my leg like a snake. I reached for my sword, but when I looked down there was no snake. Vines – grape vines – had sprouted from the cracks between the stones of the building. They were wrapping around Blackjack's legs, too, and lashing down my ankles so that I couldn't move.
"Going somewhere?" Mr. D asked.
He was leaning against the building with his feet levitating in the air, his leopard-skin warm-up suit and curly black hair whipping around in the wind.
"God alert!" Blackjack yelled. "It's the wine dude!"
Mr. D sighed in exasperation. "The next person, or horse, who calls me 'the wine dude' will end up in a bottle of Merlot!"
"Mr. D." I tried to keep my voice calm as the grape vines continued to wrap around my legs. "What do you want?"
"Oh, what do I want. You thought, perhaps, that an immortal, all-powerful director of camp would not notice you leaving without permission?"
"Well...maybe. It did work before."
He snorted. "If it wasn't for your patron, I would be tempted to throw you off this building, minus the flying horse, and see how heroic you sound on the way down."
I balled my hands into fists. I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but Mr. D had just said he would be tempted to kill me in any other situation and that made me think he wanted to haul me back to camp in shame, and I couldn't stand that idea. "Why do you hate me so much? What did I ever do to you?"
Purple flames flickered in his eyes. "You're a hero, boy. I need no other reason."
"I have to go on this quest! I've got to help my friends! That's something you wouldn't understand!"
"Um, boss," Blackjack said nervously. "Seeing as how we're wrapped in vines nine hundred feet in the air, you might want to talk nice."
The grape vines coiled tighter around me. Below us, the white van was getting farther and farther away. Soon it would be out of sight.
"Did I ever tell you about Ariadne?" Mr. D asked. "Beautiful young princess of Crete? She liked helping her friends, too. In fact, she helped a young hero named Theseus, also a son of Poseidon. She gave him a ball of magical yarn that let him find his way out of the Labyrinth. And do you know how Theseus rewarded her?"
The answer I wanted to give was, "I don't care!" But I didn't figure that would make Mr. D finish his story any faster.
"They got married," I said. "Happily ever after. The end."
Mr. D sneered. "Not quite. Theseus said he would marry her. He took her aboard his ship and sailed for Athens. Halfway back, on a little island called Naxos, he – what's the word you mortals use nowadays? – he dumped her. I found her there, you know. Alone. Crying her eyes out. She had given up everything, left everything she knew behind, to help a dashing young hero who tossed her away like a broken sandal."
"That's...that's wrong," I breathed. "But that was thousands of years ago. What's that got to do with me?"
Mr. D regarded me coldly. "I fell in love with Ariadne, boy. I healed her broken heart. And when she died, I made her my immortal wife on Olympus. She waits for me even now. I shall go back to her when I am done with this infernal century of punishment at your ridiculous camp."
I stared at him. "You're...you're married? But I thought you got in trouble for chasing a wood nymph – "
Don't get me wrong, I knew that the gods cheated on their spouses with immortals and mortals alike all the time – I was proof of that – but it was still shocking to me that he'd done it.
"My point is," Mr. D continued over me, "you heroes never change. You accuse us gods of being vain. You should look at yourselves. You take what you want, use whoever you have to, and then you betray everyone around you. So you'll excuse me if I have no love for heroes. They are a selfish, ungrateful lot. Ask Ariadne. Or Medea. Or, for that matter, Zoë Nightshade."
"What do you mean, ask Zoë?"
He waved his hand dismissively. "Go. Follow your silly friends."
The vines uncurled around my legs.
I stared at him in disbelief. "You're...you're letting me go? Just like that?"
"The prophecy says at least two of you will die. Perhaps I'll get lucky and you'll be one of them. But mark my words, Son of Poseidon, Champion of Demeter, live or die, you will prove no better than the other heroes."
With that, Dionysus snapped his fingers. His image folded up like a paper display. There was a pop and he was gone, leaving a faint scent of grapes that was quickly blown away by the wind.
"Too close," Blackjack said.
I nodded, though I almost would have been less worried if Mr. D had hauled me back to camp. The fact that he'd let me go meant he really did believe we stood a fair chance of crashing and burning on this quest.
"Come on, Blackjack," I said, trying to sound upbeat. "I'll buy you some donuts in New Jersey."
As it turned out, I didn't buy Blackjack any donuts in New Jersey. Zoë drove south like a crazy person, and we were into Maryland before she finally pulled over at a rest stop. Blackjack damn near tumbled out of the sky, she was so tired.
"I'll be okay, boss," she panted. "Just...just catching my breath."
"Stay here," I told her. "I'm going to go scout."
"'Stay here' I can handle. I can do that."
I walked over to the convenience store of the rest stop, creeping along and employing the tricks that I'd been taught by Luke and the other residents of Cabin Eleven to be unnoticeable even with being seen...if that makes sense. I was tempted to go inside and warm up, maybe buy (read: steal, I didn't have that much money on me) a hat and a jacket to cover up my hair and orange t-shirt and then actually buying a cup of hot chocolate (as if that would make up for my thievery).
But before I could get in the motion of actually doing that, my plan was ruined as Zoë, Iphigenia, Thalia, and Katie all came out of the store, once again forcing me to hide behind something as quickly as possible. It was at times like these that I really wished I had something like Annabeth's cap of invisibility.
"Katie, are you sure?" Thalia was saying.
"Mostly sure, yeah," she answered.
"And you did this with thy powers?" Iphigenia asked, disbelieving.
"I can sense things using the roots systems of various trees. They talk to each other with them and their pheromones. I've never used it this far before, but." She shuddered in a breath. It sounded like what she'd done had taken a lot more out of her than her powers usually did. "Sixty miles. Washington DC. That's where they said we should go." I was impressed. I'd never heard her talk about this ability before. We children of the eldest gods are just full of surprises, aren't we?
"I dislike this," Zoë said. "We should go straight west. The prophecy said west."
"Oh, like your tracking skills are better?" Thalia growled.
I couldn't see them due to how I was hiding, but I could hear Zoë's voice raise. "You challenge my skills, you scullion? You know nothing of being a Hunter!"
"Oh, scullion. You're calling me a 'scullion?' What the hell even is that?"
"Whoa, you two," Katie cut in exasperatedly. "Come on. Not again!"
"I agree with Katie," Iphigenia said. "DC is most likely our best bet, Zoë."
Zoë seemed to settle down, even though she clearly wasn't happy about it. "Fine. Very well. Let us keep driving."
"You're going to get us arrested, driving," Thalia grumbled. "I actually look sixteen, unlike you."
"Perhaps," Zoë snapped. "But I have been driving since automobiles were invented. Let us go."
Miraculously, they all got into the car and drove off without them noticing me.
As Blackjack and I continued south, following the van, I couldn't help but wonder how old Zoë and Iphigenia actually were, since they pretty much talked the same way. And what had Mr. D been talking about? What bad experience had Zoë had with heroes?
As we got closer to Washington, Blackjack started slowing down and dropping altitude. She was breathing heavily.
"You okay?" I asked her.
"Fine, boss. I could...I could take on an army."
"You don't sound so good." And suddenly I felt guilty, because I'd been running the pegasus for half a day, nonstop, trying to keep up with the highway traffic. Even for a flying horse, that had to be rough.
"Don't worry about me, boss! I'm a tough one."
I figured she was right, but I also figured that Blackjack would run herself into the ground for me before she complained, and I didn't want that.
Fortunately, the van started to slow down. It crossed the Potomac River into central Washington. I started thinking about air patrols and missiles and stuff like that. I didn't exactly know how all those defenses worked, and wasn't sure if pegasi even showed up on your typical military radar, but I didn't want to find out by getting shot out of the sky.
"Set me down there," I instructed Blackjack. "That's close enough."
Blackjack was so tired, she didn't complain. She dropped towards the Washington Monument and set me on the grass.
The van was only a few blocks away. Zoë had parked on the curb.
I looked at Blackjack. "I want you to go back to camp when you're able to. Get some rest. Graze. I'll be fine."
She cocked her head skeptically. "You sure about that, boss?"
"You've done enough already," I said. "I'll be fine. And thanks a ton."
"A ton of hay, maybe," she mused. "That sounds good. Alright, but be careful, boss. I got a feeling they didn't come here to meet anything gorgeous and friendly like me."
I promised to be careful. Then Blackjack took off, circling twice around the monument before disappearing into the clouds.
I looked over at the white van. Everybody was getting out. Katie was pointing towards one of the big buildings lining the mall. Thalia nodded, and the four of them trudged off into the cold wind.
I started to follow. But then I froze.
A block away, the door of a black sedan opened. A man with grey hair and a military buzzcut got out. He was wearing dark shades and a black overcoat. Now, maybe in Washington, you'd expect guys like that everywhere. But it dawned on me that I'd seen this same car a couple of times on the highway, going south. It had been following the van.
The guy took out his mobile phone and said something into it. Then he looked around, like he was making sure the coast was clear, and started walking down the Mall in the direction of my friends.
The worst of it was: when he'd turned towards me, I'd recognized his face. It was Dr. Thorn, the manticore from Westover Hall.
I followed Thorn from a distance, snagging a baseball cap off of some stand when the vendor wasn't looking and once again praying that I wouldn't be discovered. My heart was pounding. If he had survived that fall from the cliff, then Silena must have too. My dreams had been right and not just a figment of my imagination. She was alive and being kept prisoner.
Thorn kept well back from my friends, careful not to be seen.
Finally, Katie stopped in front of a big building that said NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM. The Smithsonian! I'd been here a million years ago with my mom, but everything had looked so much bigger then.
Thalia checked the door. It was open, but there weren't too many people going in. Too cold, and school was out of session. They slipped inside.
Dr. Thorn hesitated. I wasn't sure why, but he didn't go into the museum. He turned and headed across the Mall. After some quick deliberation, I followed after him in lieu of my friends.
Thorn crossed the street and climbed the steps of the Museum of Natural History. There was a big sign on the door. At first I thought it said CLOSED FOR PIRATE EVENT. Then I realized PIRATE must've been PRIVATE.
I followed Dr. Thorn inside, through a chamber full of mastodons and dinosaur skeletons. There were voices up ahead, coming from behind a set of closed doors. Two guards stood outside. They opened the doors for Thorn, but didn't notice me, because as soon as I'd seen them, I'd hid behind the wall in order to avoid being detected.
They presented a problem. How was I going to get close enough to listen to what was going on without being detected? Maybe...maybe there was another entrance?
...Or maybe, I thought as I realized that I was standing right next to an air vent. I grinned. Maybe, I could use that instead.
Because of Cabin Eleven, it didn't take me long to get the air vent opened and to slip inside. It did take me several minutes to get on top of the room that the voices were coming from, but when I did –
I nearly gasped, which probably would've gotten me found out and killed. But, you can't blame me: what I was looking at was really fucking terrible.
I was in an upper air vent still in the wall on the first floor, looking in at a huge round room with a balcony ringing the second level. At least a dozen mortal guards stood on the balcony – since I had a good enough view to see all of it – plus two dracaenae, the reptilian women with double snake-trunks instead of legs.
But that wasn't the worst of it. Standing between the snake women – and I could swear, if I didn't know better, he was looking straight down at me, through the vent and all – was Luke. Now that I could see him in more proper light, I couldn't help but think he looked even more horrible than he had in my last couple demigod dreams of him, Silena, and Artemis. His skin was paler, ashen, and his sandy blonde hair still had those grey streaks in it. The angry light in his eyes that I'd seen during the Sea of Monsters and before he'd stabbed me in the side the summer before last (and that I suspected was always in his eyes when he wasn't around me) was back. And the scar that ran down the side of his face, which I still didn't really know how it had been inflicted outside of it having happened on his quest with Alan Bolloré, Silena's half-brother and his boyfriend before me, was now an ugly red, as though it had recently been reopened.
Next to him, sitting down so that the shadows covered him, was another man. All I could see were his knuckles on the gilded arms of his chair, like a throne.
" – Have their hands full already," this man was saying, even as I was taking in everything about the room. His voice was deep, and I recognized it immediately. This was the voice of the man that I had heard in my dream, just as much in the shadows then as he was now. This was the General. "I've sent a little playmate to keep them occupied."
"But – " Luke started to say.
"We cannot risk you, my boy," the General said over him.
"Yes, boy," Dr. Thorn spoke. His back was turned to me, so I couldn't see it, but I could practically hear the smirk that had to be on his face. It made me sneer. Nobody should've been able to talk to my boyfriend that way and get away with it, no matter how pissed at him I was. "You are much too fragile to risk. Let me finish them off."
"Them."
It didn't take me three guesses to figure out who they meant by that.
Before I was able to give too much consideration into how they were going to attack my friends, though, I got my first look at the General as he rose from his chair. He was tall and muscular, with light brown skin and slicked-back dark hair. He wore an expensive brown suit like the guys on Wall Street wear, but you'd never mistake this dude for a broker. He had a brutal face, huge shoulders, and hands that could snap a flagpole in half. His eyes were like stone. I felt as if I was looking at a living statue. It was amazing he could even move.
"You have already failed me, Thorn," he said.
"But, General – "
"No excuses!"
Thorn flinched back. I'd thought Thorn was scary when I had first seen him in his black uniform at the academy. But now, standing before the General, Thorn looked like a silly wannabe soldier. The General was the real deal. He didn't need a uniform. He was a born commander.
"I should throw you into the pits of Tartarus for your incompetence," the General spoke. "I send you to capture one of the children of the sons of Kronos and Rhea, or even perhaps the daughter of Demeter, and instead you bring me a pitiful daughter of Aphrodite."
"But you promised me revenge!" Thorn protested. "A command of my own!"
"I am Lord Kronos' senior commander," the General retorted, "and I will choose lieutenants who get me results! It was only thanks to Luke that we salvaged our plan at all. Now get out of my sight, Thorn, until I find some menial task for you."
Thorn's posture stiffened, but he knew this was not a fight he would win. He bowed awkwardly and left the room.
"Now, my boy." The General turned to Luke. "The first thing we must do is isolate the half-blood Thalia. The monster we seek will then come to her."
"The Hunters will be difficult to dispose of," Luke said. The way he said it made me cringe, because he made it sound like they didn't even matter. But I knew him. I could tell just from the look in his eyes that he hated the Hunters for their allegiance to Artemis, but he didn't really want to kill them. "Zoë Nightshade – "
"Do not speak her name!"
Luke swallowed. "S – sorry, General. I just – "
The General silenced him with a wave of his hand. "Let me show you, my boy, how we will bring the Hunters down."
He pointed to a guard on the ground level. "Do you have the teeth?"
The guy stumbled forwards with a ceramic pot. "Yes, General!"
"Plant them," he said.
In the center of the room was a big circle of dirt, where I guess a dinosaur exhibit was supposed to go. I watched nervously as the guard took sharp white teeth out of the pot and pushed them into the soil. He smoothed them over while the General smiled coldly.
The guard stepped back from the dirt and wiped his hands. "Ready, General!"
"Excellent! Water them, and we will let them scent their prey."
The guard picked up a little watering can with daisies painted on it, which was kind of bizarre, because what he poured out wasn't water. It was a dark red liquid, and I got the feeling it wasn't Hawaiian Punch.
The soil began to bubble.
"Soon," the General said. "I will show you, Luke, soldiers that will make your army from that little boat look insignificant."
Luke clenched his fists. "I've spent a year training my forces! When the Princess Andromeda arrives at the mountain, they'll be the best – "
"Ha," the General cut him off. "I don't deny your troops will make a fine honor guard for Lord Kronos. And you, of course, will have a role to play – "
I thought Luke turned paler when the General said that.
" – But under my leadership, the forces of Kronos will increase a hundredfold. We will be unstoppable. Behold, my killing machines."
The soil erupted. I resisted the urge to shuffle nervously in the air vent.
In each spot where a tooth had been planted, a creature was struggling out of the dirt. The first of them said:
"Mew?"
It was a kitten. A little orange tabby cat with stripes like a tiger. Then another appeared, until there were a dozen, rolling around and playing in the dirt.
Everyone stared at them in disbelief. The General roared, "What is this? Cute and cuddly kittens? Where did you find those teeth?"
The guard who'd brought the teeth cowered in fear. "From the exhibit, sir! Just like you said! The saber-toothed tiger – "
"No, you idiot! I said the tyrannosaurus! Gather up those...those infernal fuzzy little beasts and take them outside. And let me never see your face again."
The terrified guard dropped his watering can. He gathered up the kittens and scampered out of the room.
"You." The General pointed to another guard. "Get me the right teeth. Now!"
The new guard ran off to carry out his orders.
"Imbeciles," the General muttered.
"This is why I don't like using mortals," Luke said. "They are unreliable."
"They are weak-minded, easily bought, and violent," the General said. "I love them."
A minute later, the guard hustled into the room with his hands full of large pointy teeth.
"Excellent," the General said. He climbed onto the balcony railing and jumped down, twenty feet.
Where he landed, the marble floor cracked under his leather shoes. He stood, wincing, and rubbed his shoulders. "Curse my stiff neck."
"Another hot pad, sir?" a guard asked. "More Tylenol?"
"No! It will pass." The General brushed off his silk suit, then snatched up the teeth. "I shall do this myself."
He held up one of the teeth and smiled. "Dinosaur teeth – ha! Those foolish mortals don't know the difference, don't even know when they have dragon teeth in their possession. And not just any dragon teeth. These teeth come from the ancient Sybaris herself! They shall do nicely."
He planted them in the dirt, twelve in all. Then he scooped up the watering can. He sprinkled the soil with the red liquid, tossed the can away, and held his arms out wide. Rise!
The dirt trembled. A single, skeletal hand shot out of the ground, grasping at the air.
The General looked up at the balcony. "Quickly, do you have the scent?"
"Yesss, lord," one of the dracaenae said. She took out a sash of silvery fabric, like the kind the Hunters wore.
"Excellent," the General said. "Once my warriors catch its scent, they will pursue its owner relentlessly. Nothing can stop them, no weapons known to half-blood or Hunter. They will tear the Hunters and their allies to shreds! Toss it here."
Now, I really wanted to burst out of the air vent and go into the room, somehow grab the scarf before he could catch it, and then miraculously escape. But I knew that the laws of physics weren't on my side for that.
Moreover, as he spoke, the skeletons erupted from the ground. There were twelve of them, one for each tooth the General had planted. They were nothing like Halloween skeletons, or the kind that you might see in cheesy movies. These were growing flesh as I watched, turning into men, but men with dull grey skin, yellow eyes, and modern clothes – grey muscle shirts, camo pants, and combat boots. If you didn't look too closely, you could almost believe they were human, except their flesh was transparent and their bones shimmered underneath, like X-ray images.
I didn't know how we were going to be able to fight them off if they were as ruthless as the General said. Regardless, I knew that I was out of time for anything else, so I did the one thing that I could:
I turned around, made my way back to where I came and, when I saw that nobody was out of the room yet due to my hurrying, I got out of the air vent and ran as fast as I possibly could out of the museum.
Word Count: 4,481
Next Chapter Title: We Break A Few Rocket Ships
