Chapter Text
(A/N): I am not going to rewrite word-for-word the beginning chapters of the book. You can read that then come back here or not. I'd assume most of y'all know the story anyway. 🧌
Jason's POV
Piper turned Leo over, and he groaned. His army coat was soaked from the rain. His curly hair glittered gold from rolling around in monster dust. But at least he wasn't dead.
"Stupid...ugly...goat," he muttered.
"Where did he go?" Piper asked.
Leo pointed straight up. "Never came down. Please tell me he didn't actually save my life."
"Twice," I said.
Leo groaned even louder. "What happened? The tornado guy, the gold sword...I hit my head. That's it, right? I'm hallucinating?"
I had forgotten about the sword. I walked over to where it was lying and picked it up. The blade was well balanced. On a hunch I flipped it. Midspin, the sword shrank back into a coin and landed in my palm.
"Yep," Leo said. "Definitely hallucinating."
Piper shivered in her rain-soaked clothes. "Jason, those things—"
"Venti," I said. "Storm spirits."
"Okay. You acted like...like you'd seen them before. Who are you?"
I shook my head. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. I don't know."
The storm dissipated. The other kids from the Wilderness School were staring out the glass doors in horror. Security guards were working on the locks now, but they didn't seem to be having any luck.
"Coach Hedge said he had to protect three people," I remembered. "I think he meant us."
"And that thing Dylan turned into..." Piper shuddered. "God, I can't believe it was hitting on me. He called us...what, demigods?"
Leo lay on his back, staring at the sky. He didn't seem anxious to get up. "Don't know what demi means," he said. "But I'm not feeling too godly. You guys feeling godly?"
There was a brittle sound like dry twigs snapping, and the cracks in the skywalk began to widen.
"We need to get off this thing," I said. "Maybe if we—"
"Ohh-kay," Leo interrupted. "Look up there and tell me if those are flying horses."
At first I thought Leo had hit his head too hard. Then I saw a dark shape descending from the east—too slow for a plane, too large for a bird. As it got closer I could see a pair of winged animals—gray, four-legged, exactly like horses—except each one had a twenty-foot wingspan. And they were pulling a brightly painted box with two wheels: a chariot.
"Reinforcements," I said. "Hedge told me an extraction squad was coming for us."
"Extraction squad?" Leo struggled to his feet. "That sounds painful."
"And where are they extracting us to?" Piper asked.
I watched as the chariot landed on the far end of the skywalk. The flying horses tucked in their wings and cantered nervously across the glass, as if they sensed it was near breaking. Two teenagers stood in the chariot—a tall (H/C) haired guy maybe a little older than me, and a bulky dude with a shaved head and a face like a pile of bricks. They both wore jeans and orange T-shirts, and the bulky dude has a shield tossed over his back. The (H/C) haired guy leaped off before the chariot had even finished moving. He pulled out a sword and ran toward us while the bulky dude was reining in the horses.
"Where is he?" the (H/C) haired guy demanded. His (E/C) eyes were fierce and a little startling.
"Where's who?" I asked.
He frowned like my answer was unacceptable. Then he turned to Leo and Piper. "What about Gleeson? Where's your protector, Gleeson Hedge?"
The coach's first name was Gleeson? I might've laughed if the morning hadn't been quite so weird and scary. Gleeson Hedge: football coach, goat man, protector of demigods. Sure. Why not?
Leo cleared his throat. "He got taken by some...tornado things."
"Venti," I said. "Storm spirits."
The (H/C) haired guy arched an eyebrow. "You mean anemoi thuellai? That's the Greek term. Who are you, and what the hell happened?"
I did my best to explain, though it was hard to meet those intense (E/C) eyes, especially when the guy looked like he wanted to kill me where I stood. About halfway through the story, the other guy from the chariot came over. He stood there glaring at us, his arms crossed. He had a tattoo of a rainbow on his biceps, which seemed a little unusual.
When I had finished my story, the (H/C) haired guy didn't look satisfied. He started cursing angrily. "Damn it! She told me he would be here. She told me if I came here, I'd find the answer."
"(Y/N)," the bald guy grunted. "Check it out." He pointed at my feet.
I hadn't thought much about it, but I was still missing my left shoe, which had been blown off by the lightning. My bare foot felt okay, but it looked like a lump of charcoal.
"The guy with one shoe," said the bald dude. "He's the answer."
The (H/C) haired guy shot me an interrogating glare. "No. He can't be. I was tricked, Butch. Simple as that." He turned his glare to the sky as though it had done something wrong. "Is this how you get back at me? You can't harm me, but you can mess with the people I care about? What have you done with him?"
The skywalk shuddered, and the horses whinnied urgently.
"(Y/N)," said the bald dude, Butch, "we gotta leave. Let's get these three to camp and figure it out there. Those storm spirits might come back."
The (H/C) haired guy fumed for a moment. "Fine." He fixed me with a resentful look. "We'll settle this later."
He turned on his heel and marched toward the chariot.
Piper shook her head. "What's his problem? What's going on?"
"Seriously," Leo agreed.
"We have to get you out of here," Butch said. "I'll explain on the way."
"I'm not going anywhere with him." I gestured toward the (H/C) haired guy. "He looks like he wants to kill me."
Butch hesitated. "(Y/N)'s usually chill and laidback. You gotta cut him some slack. He had a vision telling him to come here, to find a guy with one shoe. That was supposed to be the answer to his problem."
"What problem?" Piper asked.
"He's been looking for one of our campers, who's been missing three days," Butch said. "He's going out of his mind with worry. (Y/N) hoped he'd be here."
"Who?" I asked.
"His boyfriend," Butch said. "A guy named Percy Jackson."
...
Piper's POV
After a morning of storm spirits, goat men, and flying boyfriends, I should've been losing my mind. Instead, all I felt was dread.
It's starting. Just like the dream said.
I stood in the back of the chariot with Leo and Jason, while the bald guy, Butch, handled the reins, and the (H/C) haired guy, (Y/N), adjusted a bronze navigation device. We rose over the Grand Canyon and headed east, icy wind ripping straight through my jacket. Behind us, more storm clouds were gathering.
The chariot lurched and bumped. It had no seatbelts and the back was wide open, and I wondered if Jason would catch me again if I fell. That had been the most disturbing part of my morning—not that Jason could fly, but that he'd held me in his arms and yet didn't know who I was.
All semester I'd worked on a relationship, trying to get Jason to notice me as more than a friend. Finally I'd gotten the big dope to kiss me. The last few weeks had been the best of my life. And then, three nights ago, the dream had ruined everything—that horrible voice, giving me horrible news. I hadn't told anyone about it, not even Jason.
Now I didn't even have him. It was like someone had wiped his memory, and I was stuck in the worst "do over" of all time. I wanted to scream. Jason stood right next to me: those sky blue eyes, close-cropped blond hair, that cute little scar on his upper lip. His face was kind and gentle, but always a little sad. And he just stared at the horizon, not even noticing me.
Meanwhile, Leo was being annoying, as usual. "This is so cool!" He spit a pegasus feather out of his mouth. "Where are we going?"
"A safe place," (Y/N) said. "The only safe place for kids like us. Camp Half-Blood."
"Half-Blood?" I was immediately on guard. I hated that word. I'd been called a half-blood too many times—half Cherokee, half white—and it was never a compliment. "Is that some kind of bad joke?"
"He means we're demigods," Jason said. "Half god, half mortal."
(Y/N) looked back. "You sure know a lot, Jason. But, yeah, demigods. My dad is, uh..." He hesitated.
I raised an eyebrow. "Your dad is what?"
"My dad's Erebus, god of darkness." He said it so fast, I almost couldn't hear him.
"Wait, wait, wait," Leo said, while Jason frowned. "Back up. Your dad's the god of darkness?"
(Y/N) scowled. "That doesn't mean I'm evil."
"I mean, you did threaten us with a sword."
"Look, I'm sorry about that, but I'm just really pissed off right now."
"Because of your boyfriend," I said.
He nodded and turned away from us.
"So you like dudes?" Leo asked.
"Is that a problem?"
"No, no. That's cool. Totally cool," Leo said. He looked at Butch like he wanted to change the subject. "So who's your dad?"
"My godly parent is my mom," corrected Butch. "Iris, goddess of the rainbow."
Leo choked. "Your mom is a rainbow goddess?"
"Got a problem with that?" Butch asked.
"No, no," Leo said again. "Rainbows. Very macho."
"Butch is our best equestrian," (Y/N) said. "He gets along great with the pegasi."
"Rainbows, ponies," Leo muttered.
"I'm gonna toss you off this chariot," Butch warned.
"Demigods," I said, allowing it to finally register. "You mean you think you're...you think we're—"
Lightning flashed. The chariot shuddered, and Jason yelled, "Left wheel's on fire!"
I stepped back. Sure enough, the wheel was burning, white flames lapping up the side of the chariot.
The wind roared. I glanced behind us and saw dark shapes forming in the clouds, more storm spirits spiraling toward the chariot—except these looked more like horses than angels.
I started to say, "Why are they—"
"Anemoi come in different shapes," (Y/N) said, looking unconcerned. "Sometimes human, sometimes stallions, depending on how chaotic they are. Now hold on. This is gonna get rough."
Butch flicked the reins. The pegasi put on a burst of speed, and the chariot blurred. My stomach crawled into my throat. My vision went black, and when it came back to normal, we were in a totally different place.
A cold gray ocean stretched out to the left. Snow-covered fields, roads, and forests spread to the right. Directly below us was a green valley, like an island of springtime, rimmed with snowy hills on three sides and water to the north. I saw a cluster of buildings like Ancient Greek temples, a big blue mansion, ball courts, a lake, and a climbing wall that seemed to be on fire. But before I could really process all I was seeing, our wheels came off and the chariot dropped out of the sky.
(Y/N) and Butch tried to maintain control. The pegasi labored to hold the chariot in a flight pattern, but they seemed exhausted from their burst of speed, and bearing the chariot and the weight of five people was just too much.
"The lake!" (Y/N) yelled. "Aim for the lake!"
I remembered something my dad once told me, about hitting the water from up high being as bad as hitting cement.
And then—BOOM.
The biggest shock was the cold. I was underwater, so disoriented that I didn't know which way was up.
I just had time to think: This would be a stupid way to die. Then faces appeared in the green murk—girls with long black hair and glowing yellow eyes. They smiled at me, grabbed my shoulders, and hauled me up.
They tossed me, gasping and shivering, onto the shore. Nearby, Butch stood in the lake, cutting the wrecked harnesses off the pegasi. Fortunately, the horses looked okay, but they were flapping their wings and splashing water everywhere. Jason, Leo, and (Y/N) were already on shore, surrounded by kids giving them blankets and asking questions. Somebody took me by the arms and helped me stand. Apparently kids fell into the lake a lot, because a detail of campers ran up with big bronze leaf blower-looking things and blasted me with hot air; and in about two seconds my clothes were dry.
There were at least twenty campers milling about—the youngest maybe nine, the oldest college age, eighteen or nineteen—and all of them had orange T-shirts like (Y/N)'s. I looked back at the water and saw those strange girls just below the surface, their hair floating in the current. They waved like, toodle-oo, and disappeared into the depths. A second later the wreckage of the chariot was tossed from the lake and landed nearby with a wet crunch.
"(Y/N)!" A blond guy with a bow and quiver on his back pushed through the crowd. "Are you okay?"
(Y/N) nodded, rubbing his head. "Yeah, yeah, we're fine. Thanks."
The guy frowned at the wrecked chariot. "What happened to the chariot I let you borrow?"
"Sorry, Will," (Y/N) sighed. "We got attacked by storm spirits on the way. I'll get it fixed, I promised."
Will sighed. Then he sized up, me, Leo, and Jason. "These are the ones? Way older than thirteen. Why haven't they been claimed already?"
"Claimed?" Leo asked.
Before (Y/N) could explain, Will said, "Any sign of Percy?"
"No," (Y/N) admitted.
The campers muttered. I had no idea who this guy Percy was, but his disappearance seemed to be a big deal.
A girl stepped forward—tall, Asian, dark hair in ringlets, plenty of jewelry, and perfect makeup. Somehow she managed to make jeans and an orange T-shirt look glamorous. She glanced at Leo, fixed her eyes on Jason like he might be worthy of her attention, then curled her lip at me as if I were a week-old burrito that had just been pulled out of a dumpster. I knew this girl's type. I'd dealt with a lot of girls like this at Wilderness School and every other stupid school my dad had sent me to. I knew instantly we were going to be enemies.
"Well," the girl said, "I hope they're worth the trouble."
Leo snorted. "Gee, thanks. What are we, your new pets?"
"No kidding," Jason said. "How about some answers before you start judging us—like, what is this place, why are we here, how long do we have to stay?"
I had the same questions, but a wave of anxiety washed over me. Worth the trouble. If they only knew about my dream. They had no idea...
"Jason," (Y/N) said, "we'll answer your questions, don't worry. And Drew"—he frowned at the glamor girl—"all demigods are worth saving. But I admit, the trip didn't accomplish what I hoped."
"Hey," I said, "we didn't ask to be brought here."
Drew sniffed. "And nobody wants you, hon. Does your hair always look like a dead badger?"
I stepped forward, ready to smack her, but (Y/N) said, "Piper, stop."
I did. I wasn't a bit scared of Drew, but (Y/N) didn't seem like somebody I wanted for an enemy, especially with him being the son of the god of darkness and stuff.
"We need to make our new arrivals feel welcome," (Y/N) said. "Something I didn't do initially, and I apologize for that." He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "We'll assign them each a guide, give them a tour of camp. Hopefully by the campfire tonight, they'll be claimed."
"Would somebody tell me what claimed means?" I asked.
Suddenly there was a collective gasp. The campers backed away. At first I thought I'd done something wrong. Then I realized their faces were bathed in a strange red light, as if someone had lit a torch behind me. I turned and almost forgot how to breathe.
Floating over Leo's head was a blazing holographic image—a fiery hammer.
"That," (Y/N) said, "is claiming."
"What'd I do?" Leo backed toward the lake. Then he glanced up and yelped. "Is my hair on fire?" He ducked, but the symbol followed him, bobbing and weaving so it looked like he was trying to write something in flames with his head.
"This can't be good," Butch muttered. "The curse—"
"Not now, Butch," (Y/N) said. "Leo, you've just been claimed—"
"By a god," Jason interrupted. "That's the symbol of Vulcan, isn't it?"
All eyes turned to him.
"Jason," (Y/N) said carefully, "how did you know that?"
"I'm not sure."
"Vulcan?" Leo demanded. "I don't even LIKE Star Trek. What are you talking about?"
"Vulcan is the Roman name for Hephaestus," (Y/N) stated, "the god of blacksmiths and fire."
The fiery hammer faded, but Leo kept swatting the air like he was afraid it was following him. "The god of what? Who?"
(Y/N) turned to the guy with the bow. "Will, would you take Leo, give him a tour? Introduce him to his bunkmates in Cabin Nine."
"Sure thing, (Y/N)."
"What's Cabin Nine?" Leo asked. "And I'm not a Vulcan!"
"Come on, Mr. Spock, I'll explain everything." Will put a hand on his shoulder and steered him off toward the cabins.
(Y/N) turned his attention back to Jason. I knew (Y/N) was gay, and I wouldn't normally like people checking out my boyfriend, but (Y/N) didn't seem to care that Jason was good-looking. (Y/N) studied Jason like he was a rare specimen he had caught in a fishing pole. "Hold out your arm."
I saw what he was looking at, and my eyes widened.
Jason had taken off his windbreaker after his dip in the lake, leaving his arms bare, and on the inside of his right forearm was a tattoo. How had I never noticed it before? I'd looked at Jason's arms a million times. The tattoo couldn't have just appeared, but it was darkly etched, impossible to miss: a dozen straight lines like a bar code, and over that an eagle with the letters SPQR.
"I've never seen marks like this," (Y/N) said. "Where did you get them?"
Jason shook his head. "I'm getting really tired of saying this, but I don't know."
The other campers pushed forward, trying to get a look at Jason's tattoo. The marks seemed to bother them a lot—almost like a declaration of war.
"They look burned into your skin," (Y/N) noticed.
"They were," Jason said. Then he winced as if his head was aching. "I mean...I think so. I don't remember."
No one said anything. It was clear the campers saw (Y/N) as the leader. They were waiting for his verdict.
"He needs to go straight to Chiron," (Y/N) decided. "Drew, would you—"
"Absolutely." Drew laced her arm through Jason's. "This way, sweetie. I'll introduce you to our director. He's...an interesting guy." She flashed me a smug look and led Jason toward the big blue house on the hill.
The crowd began to disperse, until only (Y/N) and I were left.
"Who's Chiron?" I asked. "Is Jason in some kind of trouble?"
(Y/N) pursed his lips. "That's a good question. I guess I'm giving you a tour. Come on, we need to talk."