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Honestly, Annabeth was surprised that this hadn’t happened earlier. It had been a few years since she had stopped spending Christmas at camp and would instead be spending it at the Jackson’s apartment — or on the occasional times, with her family in San Francisco.
Either way, Percy was always a constant.
Considering they were two of the most powerful demi-gods of the current generation, Annabeth had expected a monster attack on Christmas to happen much, much earlier. At first, she and Percy hadn’t even noticed that anything was wrong because they were enjoying a pleasant dinner at Percy's family's apartment, and she had momentarily forgot that there was anything special about her and Percy anyways. They were just two almost-adults spending Christmas with their families and enjoying themselves.
It was a special Christmas dinner because Annabeth's family had come up to visit New York, and the last that they would spend at the apartment while Percy was still living there. Since they were graduating from university in May, they planned to move back to New York and get an apartment of their own in the city with the financial assistance of Annabeth’s family.
Just for the occasion, Sally had gone all out with the decorations for the apartment; she and Paul had decorated a six-foot tall Christmas tree complete with tinsel, ornaments, twinkle lights, and presents underneath the tree, and they had put up a green garland around the balcony doors.
At first everything was going fine as they were chatting happily as they made their way through dinner. Annabeth had never been more happy to take up Percy on his idea to reach back out to her father and patch up her relationship with him as she was in the moment. She had a decent relationship with her step-brothers, despite the lingering tension between her and her step-mother that they both tried to ignore as much as possible (honestly, as long as they weren’t alone together, it was fine).
She had gotten up from the dining table to grab a few more cans of soda from the refrigerator and was in the kitchen when an IM came through, scaring her half to death.
“Annabeth! Thank gods!” came Chiron’s voice through the mist. Jumping in her place, Annabeth shrieked slightly and dropped a can of soda. She whipped her head around, heart beating out of her chest as she looked into the mist only to find him looking slightly panicked.
“Chiron? You scared me!” she gasped, a hand coming to rest on her chest. From the living room she heard a scuffle of chairs being moved and quick footsteps. She turned to see Percy gripping Riptide, still in its pen form, as he ran into the kitchen. His eyes were worried, glancing all over the kitchen to make sure there was nothing immediately wrong.
“Are you okay?” he asked, immediately moving to her. Annabeth nodded mutely, simply pointing to the mist that he clearly hadn’t seen yet. When he looked up, he squinted at the image of Chiron’s worried expression. The centaur had furrowed brows, and he looked like he was about to deliver some very bad news.
“Merry Christmas, Chiron,” Percy spoke up, “but I’m guessing that’s not why you are messaging us.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right. I’m sorry to disturb your Christmas night, but we just received word from one of the satyrs that was sent to pick up a demi-god, but they got attacked on the way there. They’re hiding, but I told Francis to try to make it as close as possible to your apartment, Percy.”
“I’ll get our jackets, Perce,” Annabeth softly said, gripping his forearm, and he nodded.
“Got it,” he responded, immediately moving back to the living room, presumably going to tell his family that they had to leave now.
“We’ll get there soon, Chiron,” Annabeth promised as she waved a hand through the mist, ending the IM.
She put the cans of soda away quickly before jogging straight from the kitchen to Percy’s bedroom where she grabbed their jackets and her sword before meeting Percy by the open door. Sally and Frederick were standing in the hallway as well, and they both sent them small smiles.
“Stay safe,” Frederick called out, and Annabeth managed to give them a smile of her own in response.
Annabeth felt a pang of sadness in her heart for their parents who had to watch their children willingly walk into dangerous situations that they might not walk out from, and she admired their courage to even let her and Percy leave the house.
Percy shrugged on his jacket quickly and moved Riptide into the jacket pocket for easy access as Annabeth shrugged on hers as well, and within minutes they were making their way out of the building, glancing around for any signs of a monster or struggle to locate the demi-god and Francis, the satyr. He was one of the newer satyrs that had joined working for the camp so Annabeth had only met him once or twice, but he was insanely sweet and fiercely strong, so she had no doubt that he would get them to the apartment from where Percy could hopefully drive them to Camp.
“Hey, I’ll check behind the alley. You should stay here,” Percy called out.
“Alright, stay safe,” she responded. He nodded and ran off, and she watched him till she saw him disappear behind the building. She trained her eyes to the main road, watching carefully. There was nothing out of ordinary, and despite the fact that it was Christmas evening, there were a decent amount of people out and about.
It was also ridiculously cold, and she was just thankful for the small mercy that was the lack of snow.
Annabeth put her back to the building to make sure that she wouldn’t be jumped from the back and stayed painfully aware of her surroundings, focusing on the cold to help her focus instead of worrying about Percy. He was more than capable of taking care of himself.
In the end, it was a good thing to put her back up against the wall because suddenly she heard a cry coming from her left, and she quickly turned only to duck, squatting towards the ground because an empousa had launched herself at Annabeth.
The empousa landed on all fours behind Annabeth, and she quickly looked around her. It seemed like it was just the sole empousa with her at the moment, but Annabeth knew better than to let her guard down because they rarely hunted in groups.
Which meant the others were after Percy.
Shaking her head slightly to get the worries about Percy out of her mind, she focused on the empousa in front of her. She was in her true form, complete with the flaming hair, milky white skin, the fangs that she was currently baring at Annabeth, red eyes that were glowing, and her mismatching Celestial Bronze and donkey legs with wings.
Ever since Kelli, Annabeth had a certain hatred for empousai, but ever since Tartarus, that hatred had become more deep-rooted.
“Annabeth Chase,” the empousa hissed. “How nice of you to show up.”
Annabeth simply rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You do realize it’s Christmas and not Halloween, right? Not the right day for a vampire to show up.”
“I’m not a vampire!”
“Close enough,” Annabeth responded, waving her hand in the air.
“Mind telling me where that precious young demi-god is? I’d like to eat for him as an appetizer before I sink my fangs into that boyfriend of yours.”
“Oh so you’re telling me that you’re alone right now and that there’s not another one of you currently going after them?” Annabeth asked in a sickly sweet fake voice.
The empousa hissed again as a response, and Annabeth reined in a sigh. She really wasn’t in the mood to deal with them. She spent three years in therapy trying to work through her PTSD after Tartarus and a lot of that involved dealing with empousas again. She was sick of thinking about them and letting them ruin her life. Instead of letting the monster speak, Annabeth lunged with her sword, but the empousa was fast and evaded her. The sword glanced off of the monster’s arm, and Annabeth immediately turned back to face the empousa.
“I’m going to enjoy snapping your neck,” the empousa hissed. Annabeth didn’t bother to respond, instead moving to attack again, but stopping at the last second to grab the empousa’s attention long enough to force her to chase Annabeth. Annabeth needed to make sure that she could distract the empousa long enough for Percy and Francis to deal with the others, however many they were, until she could deal with this one on her own.
Sure enough, the empousa was running after her, and Annabeth ran along the block, trying to dodge people in her way. The empousa was insanely fast, and she had even nearly grabbed only Annabeth’s jacket a few times. Within a minute, Annabeth saw her chance and ran into an empty alleyway, and quickly faced the entrance and moved her back against the building, trying to avoid backing herself too far in and blocking any way out.
The empousa just lunged for Annabeth, and she lunged out with her sword, forced herself to extend her arm enough while balancing her weight on the center of her feet to make sure she could push off the empousa while also slashing her in the chest.
The monster backed away with a hiss, and in the moment that she was distracted, looking down at the tear in the shirt the empousa was wearing, Annabeth shot out, stabbing her in the shoulder and slashing diagonally, cutting from her right shoulder down to the left side of her waist.
Within seconds, the monster was dust, and Annabeth leaned over, bracing her hands on her knees, breathing heavily.
She knew that Percy would be looking for her, but she really needed to catch a quick breather, so she tilted her head back against the brick wall, looking up at the darkened sky.
Gods, she couldn’t even get a break on Christmas . She supposed she should get used to this if she was going to be living in the city starting from May.
She jogged her way over to the apartment building, only to find herself stopping when she saw Paul’s Prius at the side of the road.
“Annabeth!” she heard Percy’s voice call out. “Hurry!” She looked behind the car and saw a few more empousai running towards them, and she cursed, running to the car and scrambling to get into the passenger seat. Percy had already stepped on the accelerator, pulling away from the apartment building before she had even buckled up.
“How’d you get so far away?” he asked, panting.
“Had to run to distract one of them. Killed her in an alley.”
“I killed one too and then four more came after us.” It was then that Annabeth looked in the backseat, finding herself looking at a young boy who looked about fifteen with Francis. Francis saw her looking and sent her a shaky smile.
Annabeth huffed out a laugh, only realizing just how dumb she must’ve looked running away from a girl on Christmas.
“What’s up?” Percy asked, glancing at her briefly.
“Our lives from now on are just going to be dealing with monsters on Christmas.”
It seemed like Percy hadn’t thought of that just then because his face crumpled.
“Oh no.”