Percy Jackson: The Complete Series Page 10

‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ares and Athena always lead the teams?’

  ‘Not always,’ he said. ‘But often.’

  ‘So, if another cabin captures one, what do you do – repaint the flag?’

  He grinned. ‘You’ll see. First we have to get one.’

  ‘Whose side are we on?’

  He gave me a sly look, as if he knew something I didn’t. The scar on his face made him look almost evil in the torchlight. ‘We’ve made a temporary alliance with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And you are going to help.’

  The teams were announced. Athena had made an alliance with Apollo and Hermes, the two biggest cabins. Apparently, privileges had been traded – shower times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities – in order to win support.

  Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter, Aphrodite and Hephaestus. From what I’d seen, Dionysus’s kids were actually good athletes, but there were only two of them. Demeter’s kids had the edge with nature skills and outdoor stuff, but they weren’t very aggressive. Aphrodite’s sons and daughters I wasn’t too worried about. They mostly sat out every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and gossiped. Hephaestus’s kids weren’t pretty, and there were only four of them, but they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a problem. That, of course, left Ares’s cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest, meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet.

  Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble.

  ‘Heroes!’ he announced. ‘You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!’

  He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxhide shields coated in metal.

  ‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘We’re really supposed to use these?’

  Luke looked at me as if I were crazy. ‘Unless you want to get skewered by your friends in cabin five. Here – Chiron thought these would fit. You’ll be on border patrol.’

  My shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the middle. It weighed about a million pounds. I could have snowboarded on it fine, but I hoped nobody seriously expected me to run fast. My helmet, like all the helmets on Athena’s side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes.

  Annabeth yelled, ‘Blue team, forward!’

  We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off towards the north.

  I managed to catch up with Annabeth without tripping over my equipment. ‘Hey.’

  She kept marching.

  ‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked. ‘Got any magic items you can loan me?’

  Her hand drifted towards her pocket, as if she were afraid I’d stolen something.

  ‘Just watch Clarisse’s spear,’ she said. ‘You don’t want that thing touching you. Otherwise, don’t worry. We’ll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you your job?’

  ‘Border patrol, whatever that means.’

  ‘It’s easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan.’

  She pushed ahead, leaving me in the dust.

  ‘Okay,’ I mumbled. ‘Glad you wanted me on your team.’

  It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view. Annabeth stationed me next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.

  Standing there alone, with my big blue-feathered helmet and my huge shield, I felt like an idiot. The bronze sword, like all the swords I’d tried so far, seemed balanced wrong. The leather grip pulled on my hand like a bowling ball.

  There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? I mean, Olympus had to have liability issues, right?

  Far away, the conch horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue-plumed ally from Apollo raced past me like a deer, leaped through the creek and disappeared into enemy territory.

  Great, I thought. I’ll miss all the fun, as usual.

  Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up my spine, a low canine growl, somewhere close by.

  I raised my shield instinctively; I had the feeling something was stalking me.

  Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating.

  On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors came yelling and screaming out of the dark.

  ‘Cream the punk!’ Clarisse screamed.

  Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a two-metre spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had only the standard-issue bronze swords – not that that made me feel any better.

  They charged across the stream. There was no help in sight. I could run. Or I could defend myself against half the Ares cabin.

  I managed to sidestep the first kid’s swing, but these guys were not as stupid as Minotaurs. They surrounded me, and Clarisse thrust at me with her spear. My shield deflected the point, but I felt a painful tingling all over my body. My hair stood on end. My shield arm went numb, and the air burned.

  Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric. I fell back.

  Another Ares guy slammed me in the chest with the butt of his sword and I hit the dirt.

  They could’ve kicked me into jelly, but they were too busy laughing.

  ‘Give him a haircut,’ Clarisse said. ‘Grab his hair.’

  I managed to get to my feet. I raised my sword, but Clarisse slammed it aside with her spear as sparks flew. Now both my arms felt numb.

  ‘Oh, wow,’ Clarisse said. ‘I’m scared of this guy. Really scared.’

  ‘The flag is that way,’ I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid it didn’t come out that way.

  ‘Yeah,’ one of her siblings said. ‘But see, we don’t care about the flag. We care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid.’

  ‘You do that without my help,’ I told them. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to say.

  Two of them came at me. I backed up towards the creek, tried to raise my shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn’t been wearing an armoured breast plate, I would’ve been shish-kebabbed. As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-size cut.

  Seeing my own blood made me dizzy, warm and cold at the same time.

  ‘No maiming,’ I managed to say.

  ‘Oops,’ the guy said. ‘Guess I lost my dessert privilege.’

  He pushed me into the creek and I landed with a splash. They all laughed. I figured as soon as they were through being amused, I would die. But then something happened. The water seemed to wake up my senses, as if I’d just had a bag of my mom’s double-espresso jelly beans.

  Clarisse and her cabinmates came into the creek to get me, but I stood to meet them. I knew what to do. I swung the flat of my sword against the first guy’s head and knocked his helmet clean off. I hit him so hard I could see his eyes vibrating as he crumpled into the water.

  Ugly Number Two and Ugly Number Three came at me. I slammed one in the face with my shield and used my sword to shear off the other guy’s horsehair plume. Both of them backed up quick. Ugly Number Four didn’t look really anxious to attack, but Clarisse kept coming, the point of her spear crackling with energy. As soon as she thrust, I caught the shaft between the edge of my shield and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig.

  ‘Ah!’ she screamed. ‘You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!’

  She probably would’ve s
aid worse, but I smacked her between the eyes with my sword-butt and sent her stumbling backwards out of the creek.

  Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing towards the boundary line with the red team’s banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.

  ‘A trick!’ she shouted. ‘It was a trick.’

  They staggered after Luke, but it was too late. Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn.

  The game was over. We’d won.

  I was about to join the celebration when Annabeth’s voice, right next to me in the creek, said, ‘Not bad, hero.’

  I looked, but she wasn’t there.

  ‘Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?’ she asked. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she’d just taken it off her head.

  I felt myself getting angry. I wasn’t even fazed by the fact that she’d just been invisible. ‘You set me up,’ I said. ‘You put me here because you knew Clarisse would come after me, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all figured out.’

  Annabeth shrugged. ‘I told you. Athena always, always has a plan.’

  ‘A plan to get me pulverized.’

  ‘I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but…’ She shrugged. ‘You didn’t need help.’

  Then she noticed my wounded arm. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘Sword cut,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘No. It was a sword cut. Look at it.’

  The blood was gone. Where the huge cut had been, there was a long white scratch, and even that was fading. As I watched, it turned into a small scar, and disappeared.

  ‘I – I don’t get it,’ I said.

  Annabeth was thinking hard. I could almost see the gears turning. She looked down at my feet, then at Clarisse’s broken spear, and said, ‘Step out of the water, Percy.’

  ‘What –’

  ‘Just do it.’

  I came out of the creek and immediately felt bone tired. My arms started to go numb again. My adrenalin rush left me. I almost fell over, but Annabeth steadied me.

  ‘Oh, Styx,’ she cursed. ‘This is not good. I didn’t want… I assumed it would be Zeus.…’

  Before I could ask what she meant, I heard that canine growl again, but much closer than before. A howl ripped through the forest.

  The campers’ cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly: ‘Stand ready! My bow!’

  Annabeth drew her sword.

  There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.

  It was looking straight at me.

  Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, ‘Percy, run!’

  She tried to step in front of me, but the hound was too fast. It leaped over her – an enormous shadow with teeth – and just as it hit me, as I stumbled backwards and felt its razor-sharp claws ripping through my armour, there was a cascade of thwacking sounds, like forty pieces of paper being ripped one after the other. From the hound’s neck sprouted a cluster of arrows. The monster fell dead at my feet.

  By some miracle, I was still alive. I didn’t want to look underneath the ruins of my shredded armour. My chest felt warm and wet, and I knew I was badly cut. Another second, and the monster would’ve turned me into fifty kilograms of delicatessen meat.

  Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.

  ‘Di immortales,’ Annabeth said. ‘That’s a hellhound from the Fields of Punishment. They don’t… they’re not supposed to…’

  ‘Someone summoned it,’ Chiron said. ‘Someone inside the camp.’

  Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone.

  Clarisse yelled, ‘It’s all Percy’s fault! Percy summoned it!’

  ‘Be quiet, child,’ Chiron told her.

  We watched the body of the hellhound melt into shadow, soaking into the ground until it disappeared.

  ‘You’re wounded,’ Annabeth told me. ‘Quick, Percy, get in the water.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ she said. ‘Chiron, watch this.’

  I was too tired to argue. I stepped back into the creek, the whole camp gathering around me.

  Instantly, I felt better. I could feel the cuts on my chest closing up. Some of the campers gasped.

  ‘Look, I – I don’t know why,’ I said, trying to apologize. ‘I’m sorry…’

  But they weren’t watching my wounds heal. They were staring at something above my head.

  ‘Percy,’ Annabeth said, pointing. ‘Um…’

  By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident.

  ‘Your father,’ Annabeth murmured. ‘This is really not good.’

  ‘It is determined,’ Chiron announced.

  All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn’t look happy about it.

  ‘My father?’ I asked, completely bewildered.

  ‘Poseidon,’ said Chiron. ‘Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God.’

  9 I Am Offered a Quest

  The next morning, Chiron moved me to cabin three.

  I didn’t have to share with anybody. I had plenty of room for all my stuff: the Minotaur horn, one set of spare clothes and a toiletry bag. I got to sit at my own dinner table, pick all my own activities, call ‘lights out’ whenever I felt like it and not listen to anybody else.

  And I was absolutely miserable.

  Just when I’d started to feel accepted, to feel I had a home in cabin eleven and I might be a normal kid – or as normal as you can be when you’re a half-blood – I’d been separated out as if I had some rare disease.

  Nobody mentioned the hellhound, but I got the feeling they were all talking about it behind my back. The attack had scared everybody. It sent two messages: one, that I was the son of the Sea God; and two, monsters would stop at nothing to kill me. They could even invade a camp that had always been considered safe.

  The other campers steered clear of me as much as possible. Cabin eleven was too nervous to have sword class with me after what I’d done to the Ares folks in the woods, so my lessons with Luke became one-on-one. He pushed me harder than ever, and wasn’t afraid to bruise me up in the process.

  ‘You’re going to need all the training you can get,’ he promised, as we were working with swords and flaming torches. ‘Now let’s try that viper-beheading strike again. Fifty more repetitions.’

  Annabeth still taught me Greek in the mornings, but she seemed distracted. Every time I said something, she scowled at me, as if I’d just poked her between the eyes.

  After lessons, she would walk away muttering to herself: ‘Quest… Poseidon?… Dirty rotten… Got to make a plan…’

  Even Clarisse kept her distance, though her venomous looks made it clear she wanted to kill me for breaking her magic spear. I wished she would just yell or punch me or something. I’d rather get into fights every day than be ignored.

  I knew somebody at camp resented me, because one night I came into my cabin and found a mortal newspaper dropped inside the doorway, a New York Daily News, opened to the Metro page. The article took me almost an hour to read, because the angrier I got, the more the words floated around on the page.

  BOY AND MOTHER STILL MISSING AFTER FREAK CAR ACCIDENT<
br />
  BY EILEEN SMYTHE

  Sally Jackson and son Percy are still missing one week after their mysterious disappearance. The family’s badly burned ‘78 Camaro was discovered last Saturday on a north Long Island road with the roof ripped off and the front axle broken. The car had flipped and skidded for several hundred metres before exploding.

  Mother and son had gone for a weekend vacation to Montauk, but left hastily, under mysterious circumstances. Small traces of blood were found in the car and near the scene of the wreck, but there were no other signs of the missing Jacksons. Residents in the rural area reported seeing nothing unusual around the time of the accident.

  Ms Jackson’s husband, Gabe Ugliano, claims that his stepson, Percy Jackson, is a troubled child who has been kicked out of numerous boarding schools and has expressed violent tendencies in the past.

  Police would not say whether son Percy is a suspect in his mother’s disappearance, but they have not ruled out foul play. Below are recent pictures of Sally Jackson and Percy. Police urge anyone with information to call the following toll-free crime-stoppers hotline.

  The phone number was circled in black marker.

  I wadded up the paper and threw it away, then flopped down in my bunk bed in the middle of my empty cabin.

  ‘Lights out,’ I told myself miserably.

  That night, I had my worst dream yet.

  I was running along the beach in a storm. This time, there was a city behind me. Not New York. The sprawl was different: buildings spread farther apart, palm trees and low hills in the distance.

  About a hundred metres down the surf, two men were fighting. They looked like TV wrestlers, muscular, with beards and long hair. Both wore flowing Greek tunics, one trimmed in blue, the other in green. They grappled with each other, wrestled, kicked and head-butted, and every time they connected, lightning flashed, the sky grew darker, and the wind rose.

  I had to stop them. I didn’t know why. But the harder I ran, the more the wind blew me back, until I was running on the spot, my heels digging uselessly in the sand.