Chapter Text
-Annabeth-
The snake-haired women were really starting to piss me off.
They should have died three days ago when I dropped a crate of bowling balls on them at the Napa Bargain Mart. They should have died two days ago when I ran them over with a police car back in Martinez. And they really should’ve died this morning when I lost my shit and finally cut off their heads in Tilden Park.
No matter how many times I killed them and watched as they crumbled to golden powder, they just continued re-forming like the most malicious of dust bunnies. I couldn’t even seem to outrun them.
I reached the top of the hill and managed to catch my breath. How long had it been since I had last killed them? Two hours at most. They never seemed to want to stay dead longer than that.
I had barely slept over the past few days, eating whatever I could get my hands on—nurtience bars from a vending machine, stale bagels, even a Jack in the Crack burrito, which had to be a new low.
My clothes were torn, burned and splattered with monster slime.
I’d only survived this long because my mind seemed to work quicker than the snake-haired-women—or gorgons as they’d called themselves—I somehow managed to predict attacks and know just how to block them. Even as quickly as I could think, I knew I couldn’t last much longer. Sooner than later I would collapse from exhaustion and be left vulnerable to the gorgons.
Where to run?
I scanned my surroundings. Under different circumstances, I knew that I would’ve enjoyed the view. To my left golden hills rolled inland, dotted with clear lakes, woods, and a few herds of cows. To my right, the flatlands of Berkeley and Oakland marched west—a vast checkerboard of neighborhoods, with several million people who probably did not want their morning interrupted by two monsters and a filthy demigod.
Farther west, the San Francisco Bay glittered under a silvery haze. Past that, a wall of fog swallowed most of the city, leaving only the tops of skyscrapers and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.
A vague sense of adoration and sadness weighed on my chest. San Franciso… something told me that I had a connection to the city. Maybe I had been there before with Percy—the only person I could remember from the clean slate that was my past. My memory of him was frustratingly dim. The wolf had promised me that I would see him once again and gain back my memory in full—if I succeeded in my journey.
Should I try to cross the bay?
It was tempting. I could sense familiarity coming from the ocean. Percy. A vague memory of an injured teenage boy’s wounds being healed came to mind. The sea was the only lead that I had. Maybe the gorgons would even drown.
I hesitated. The she-wolf Lupa had taught me to sharpen my senses—to trust the instincts that had been guiding me south. My homing radar was tingling like crazy now. The end of my journey was close—almost right under my own feet. But how could that be? There was nothing on the hilltop.
The wind changed. I caught the sour scent of reptile. A hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods—snapping branches, crunching leaves, hissing.
Gorgons.
For the millionth time, I prayed their noses weren’t so good. They had always said they could smell me because I was a demigod—the half-blood daughter of some old Roman goddess. I had tried rolling in mud, splashing through creeks, even keeping air-freshener sticks in my pockets so that I would have that new car smell; but I had quickly learned that demigod stink was hard to mask.
I scrambled to the west side of the summit. It was too steep to descend. The slope plummeted eighty feet, straight to the roof of an apartment complex built into the hillside. Fifty feet below that, a highway emerged from the hill’s base and wound its way toward Berkeley.
Great. No other way off the hill. I had managed to get myself cornered.
I watched the stream of cars flowing westward toward San Francisco and wished that I were in one of them. Then I realized that the highway must cut through the hill. There had to be a tunnel… right under my feet.
My internal radar went nuts. I was in the right place, just far too high up. I had to get to that tunnel. I needed a way down to the highway. Fast.
I slung off my backpack. I had managed to grab a lot of supplies back at the Napa Bargain Mart: a portable GPS, duct tape, lighter, superglue, water bottle, camping roll, a Comfy Panda Pillow Pet (as seen on TV), and a Swiss army knife—pretty much every tool a modern demigod could want. But nothing that would serve as a parachute or a sled.
That left me two possible outcomes: jump eighty feet to my death, or stand and fight. Both options sounded pretty bad.
I cursed and grabbed my hat from my pocket.
The hat didn’t look like much, just a regular cheap baseball cap, but when I wore it, it managed to turn me invisible. It didn’t do much to hide my scent from the gorgons, but it helped when I needed to catch a quick nap.
I had woken up with the hat and a knife my first night at the Wolf House—two months ago? More? I had lost track. I found myself in the courtyard of a burned-out mansion in the middle of the woods, wearing shorts, an orange T-shirt, and a leather necklace with a bunch of strange clay beads.
My knife had been wielded in my hand, but I had no idea how I had gotten there, and only the vaguest idea who I was. I;d been barefoot, freezing, and confused. And then the wolves came....
Right beside me, a familiar voice jolted me back to the present: “There you are!”
I stumbled away from the gorgon, almost falling off the edge of the hill.
It was the smiley one—Beano.
Okay, her name wasn’t really Beano. As far as I could tell, I was dyslexic, words got twisted around and mixed up when I tried to read.
The first time I’d seen the gorgon, posing as a Bargain Mart greeter with a big green button that read: Welcome! My name is STHENO, although I thought it said BEANO.
She was still wearing her green Bargain Mart employee vest over a flower-print dress. If you looked just at her body, you might think she was somebody’s dumpy old grandmother—until you looked down and realized she had rooster feet. Or you looked up and saw bronze boar tusks sticking out of the corners of her mouth. Her eyes glowed red, and her hair was a writhing nest of bright green snakes.
The most horrible thing about her? She was still holding her big silver platter of free samples: Crispy Cheese ’n’ Wieners. Her platter was dented from all the times I had killed her, but those little samples looked perfectly fine. Stheno just kept toting them across California so she could offer me a snack before she killed me. I didn’t know why she kept doing that, but if I ever needed a suit of armor, I was definitely going to make it out of Crispy Cheese ’n’ Wieners. They were indestructible.
“Try one?” Stheno offered.
I fended her off with my knife. “Where’s your sister?”
“Oh, put the sword away,” Stheno chided. “You know by now that even Celestial bronze can’t kill us for long. Have a Cheese ’n’ Wiener! They’re on sale this week, and I’d hate to kill you on an empty stomach.”
“Stheno!” The second gorgon appeared at my right so fast, I didn’t have time to react. Fortunately she was too busy glaring at her sister to pay me much attention. “I told you to sneak up on her and kill her!”
Stheno’s smile wavered. “But, Euryale...” She said the name so it rhymed with Muriel. “Can’t I give her a sample first?”
“No, you imbecile!” Euryale turned toward me and bared her fangs.
Except for her hair, which was a nest of coral snakes instead of green vipers, she looked exactly like her sister. Her Bargain Mart vest, her flowery dress, even her tusks were decorated with 50% off stickers. Her name badge read: Hello! My name is DIE-DEMIGOD-SCUM!
“You’ve led us on quite a chase, Annabeth Chase,” Euryale said. “But now you’re trapped, and we’ll have our revenge!”
“The Cheese ’n’ Wieners are only $2.99,” Stheno added helpfully. “Grocery department, aisle three.” Euryale snarled. “Stheno, the Bargain Mart was a front! You’re going native! Now, put down that ridiculous tray and help me kill this demigod. Or have you forgotten that she’s the one who helped vaporize Medusa?”
I stepped back. Six more inches, and I would be tumbling through thin air. “Look, ladies, we’ve been over this. I don’t even remember meeting Medusa. I don’t remember anything! Can’t we just call a truce and talk about your weekly specials?”
Stheno gave her sister a pouty look, which was hard to do with giant bronze tusks. “Can we?”
“No!” Euryale’s red eyes bored into mine. “I don’t care what you remember, daughter of the weaving goddess. I can smell Medusa’s blood on you. It’s faint, yes, several years old, but you were the last one to defeat her. She still has not returned from Tartarus. It’s your fault!”
I didn’t really get that. The whole “dying then returning from Tartarus” concept gave me a headache. Of course, so did the idea that a cap could turn me invisible, or that monsters could disguise themselves with something called the Mist, or that I was the daughter of a goddess who liked to craft from five thousand years ago. But I did believe it. Even though my memory was almost completely erased, I knew that I was a demigod the same way I knew my name was Annabeth. From my very first conversation with Lupa the wolf, I’d accepted that this crazy messed-up world of gods and monsters was my reality. Which pretty much sucked.
“How about we call it a draw?” I said. “I can’t kill you. You can’t kill me. If you’re Medusa’s sisters—like the Medusa who turned people to stone—shouldn’t I be petrified by now?”
“Heroes!” Euryale said with disgust. “They always bring that up, just like our mother! ‘Why can’t you turn people to stone? Your sister can turn people to stone.’ Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, girl! That was Medusa’s curse alone. She was the most hideous one in the family. She got all the luck!”
Stheno looked hurt. “Mother said I was the most hideous.”
“Quiet!” Euryale snapped. “As for you, Annabeth, it’s true you bear the burden of your mothers mind. That makes you a little tougher to kill. But don’t worry. We’ll find a way.”
“Slow down please?”
Stheno grinned. “Would you take a Cheese ’n’ Wiener!”
I needed to get out of here before they shoved the platter down my throat.
I examined Stheno’s large silver platter of free samples. Hmm...
“Reconsidering?” Stheno asked. “Very wise, dear. I added some gorgon’s blood to these, so your death will be quick and painless.”
My throat constricted. “You added your blood to the Cheese ’n’ Wieners?”
“Just a little.” Stheno smiled. “A tiny nick on my arm, but you’re sweet to be concerned. Blood from our right side can cure anything, you know, but blood from our left side is deadly—”
“You dimwit!” Euryale screeched. “You’re not supposed to tell her that! She won’t eat the wieners if you tell her they’re poisoned!”
Stheno looked stunned. “She won’t? But I said it would be quick and painless.”
“Never mind!” Euryale’s fingernails grew into claws. “We’ll kill her the hard way—just keep slashing until we wear her down. Once we defeat Annabeth Chase, we’ll be more famous than Medusa! Our patron will reward us greatly!”
I gripped my knife. I would have to time my move perfectly—a few seconds of confusion, grab the platter with my left hand...
Keep them talking.
“Before you slash me to bits,” I said, “who’s this patron you mentioned?”
Euryale sneered. “The goddess Gaea, of course! The one who brought us back from oblivion! You won’t live long enough to meet her, but your friends below will soon face her wrath. Even now, her armies are marching south. At the Feast of Fortune, she’ll awaken, and the demigods will be cut down like—like—”
“Like our low prices at Bargain Mart!” Stheno suggested.
“Gah!” Euryale stormed toward her sister. I took the opening. I grabbed Stheno’s platter, scattering poisoned Cheese ’n’ Wieners, and slashed the blade across Euryale’s waist, cutting her in half.
I raised the platter, and Stheno found herself facing her own greasy reflection.
“Medusa!” she screamed.
Her sister Euryale had crumbled to dust, but she was already starting to re-form, like a snowman un-melting. “Stheno, you fool!” she gurgled as her half-made face rose from the mound of dust. “That’s just your own reflection! Get her!”
I slammed the metal tray on top of Stheno’s head, and she passed out cold.
I put the platter behind my butt, said a silent prayer to whatever Roman god oversaw stupid sledding tricks, and jumped off the side of the hill.