Chapter Text
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Chapter 1: Perseus Jackson
When he opened his eyes, he knew nothing except for two things: his name was Perseus Jackson; and the faint memory of an older woman smiling down at him, her blue eyes warm and brown hair curly.
My mom, he thought, eyes wet. He wanted his mom so badly.
Though his head felt heavy with sleep, Perseus managed to push himself into a sitting position. As he sat up, he had to pull at the moss and vines that had grown over his body. There was dirt caked into his clothes and hair, his hands muddy and his fingernails overgrown. He scanned his surroundings, not sure where he was, but knowing with certainty that he wasn’t supposed to be there. He belonged somewhere else, somewhere with … flashes of orange, a lake with smiling faces, and a home with warmth from the hearth. Instead, Perseus found himself abandoned in a dark forest. Around him were pine trees that must have been over fifty feet tall each. Mist pooled over the dirt ground, swirling around the wild ferns and spotty grass. And in front of him was a house – or what looked to be the remains of one.
In all honesty, it would have been beautiful in its prime – a large mansion, with many windows and rooms – but the years and weather were not kind to it. Rotting wood, shattered glass, and crumbling stone were all that was left of the place. Vines had grown over the stone base. Somewhere along the way, maybe from a particularly bad storm, several trees had fallen and crushed the support beams of the house.
Perseus took this all in and more, but before he could do anything else, he sensed eyes on him.
“He’s finally awake!” A voice hissed.
“Of course, he’s awake, I told you he would wake!” Yipped another.
“But he’s been there for months –”
“Silence,” a louder, much smoother voice, demanded. “He’s awake, which means he can hear you.”
Perseus looked down at his hands, crumbling the moss and dirt beneath his fingers, then back up at the house. Those voices … they didn’t sound human, though why that was important – or how he knew that – or whether he was human himself – he didn’t know.
“Hello?” He called. “Who’s there?”
“Young one,” the smooth voice said. From the behind the nearest tree, a large wolf stepped out. She must have stood at seven feet at her shoulders, her fur a beautiful chocolate red, and her eyes as silver as the mist surrounding the forest. Behind her, smaller wolves slinked over, sniffing, and making small growl sounds. One of them stepped close enough for Perseus to reach out and touch, but another wolf growled and pulled it back by the scruff. The large wolf, eyes seeming to see through Perseus, stepped forward. “My name is Lupa,” she said. “The Wolf Goddess, Guardian of Rome, and Guide of Demigods, like you.”
“Demigod …” Perseus mumbled. “I’m … a demigod?”
“You certainly smell like one,” Lupa said. “I could smell the sea for miles around you. Such a strong scent – you must be a powerful demigod, to have survived this long, and to smell so divine.”
Perseus wasn’t sure if he should take what Lupa said as a compliment, or if he should sniff himself to make sure he didn’t stink. Though, considering he was covered in dirt and vegetation, he must not smell that great. Where the scent of the sea came in, though, Perseus didn’t know. How far were they from the ocean? But even just thinking about the sea – a deep yearning started in his chest and spread to his fingertips, making them tingle and shake. The mist around him condensed suddenly, there was a startled bark, and then the mist dissipated into a thinner fog.
“Hmm,” Lupa hummed. “Very powerful, indeed. Who are you, young demigod?”
“Perseus Jackson,” he said, one of the few things he knew for certain.
“Well, Perseus,” Lupa said, “Welcome to the Wolf House.”
*
The gorgons were starting to annoy Perseus.
There were two of them, an ugly pair of sisters. Had they been mortal, Perseus might have found them charming – except for the fact that they had living, venomous snakes for hair, bronze gargoyle wings, large tusks sticking out of their snarling mouths, and they were constantly trying to kill him.
Now, Lupa didn’t spend months training Perseus in survival for nothing. Even waking up at the Wolf House, with his memories completely gone, Perseus had a certain instinct. His talents, Lupa said, laid in fighting, chaos, and destruction. Whether that was to be taken as a compliment or not, it didn’t belay the fact that it was the truth. He was a natural at it, like it flowed through his blood, it was as easy as breathing – like every bit of it was built into his very being. And being trained by a goddess and her pack of talking wolves had only honed those natural skills.
“Good survival instinct,” is what Lupa had called it.
“Not wanting to die,” is what Perseus called it.
Thinking about it made Perseus smile ruefully. His time at the Wolf House was not something he looked back on fondly, and he was sure Lupa would agree with the sentiment. Perseus had a feeling he was the most difficult demigod to have ever graced the goddess’ doorstep – mostly because she had not been shy about telling him just how much she hated his stubbornness. Nonetheless, Perseus was grateful for the skills he learned, regardless how he was taught. Perseus may have been skilled before, but now, as some of the wolves had said, he was deadly.
He fingered the pen in his pocket.
The pen didn’t look like much – almost like Perseus, looking like a regular teenager – but hiding beneath the cheap looking ballpoint, once uncapped, was a razor sharp, glowing celestial bronze sword. The blade balanced perfectly. The leather grip fit his hand like it had been custom designed for him. Etched along the guard was an Ancient Greek word Perseus somehow understood: Anaklusmos.
He had woken with the pen his first night at the Wolf House. With nothing but an orange t-shirt, ripped jeans, a leather necklace with a bunch of strange clay beads, and only two memories – his name, and the faint image of his mother – the sword had been a comfort to Perseus. Anaklusmos had been in his back pocket, but Perseus had no idea how it had gotten there, or even why he was in the forest. He’d only the vaguest idea who he was. He had been barefoot, freezing, and confused. And then the wolves came …
Wait, he was getting off-topic, reminiscing about the Wolf House.
Lupa always said he got too distracted for his own good.
He hated to prove her right, but Perseus found he got lost in his own head a lot. But back to the problem, it wasn’t that Perseus couldn’t kill the gorgon sisters – he was actually really good at killing them – it was that they didn’t stay dead.
For example, they should have died three days ago when he ran over them with a police car. They should have died two days ago when he cornered them by a river and drowned them for an hour. They definitely should have died this morning when he cut their heads off – Lupa would have been proud of his sword work there – and they burst into golden dust. But no matter how many times Perseus killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just didn’t seem to stay dead.
He couldn’t even seem to outrun them.
Perseus reached the top of a hill and caught his breath. It had been several hours at most, and the gorgons were already back on his tail. They never seemed to stay dead longer than that.
The only reason Perseus had survived this long was because the two gorgons couldn’t seem to kill him either. Perseus was invulnerable – something that he had learned at the Wolf House, something Lupa called the “Curse of Achilles” – and the gorgon’s claws couldn’t cut his skin. Their gold teeth broke whenever they tried to bite him. Everything they threw at him could only bounce off him, not even leaving a bruise. But Perseus couldn’t keep going much longer. Soon, he would collapse from exhaustion, and then – as hard as he was to kill, Perseus was pretty sure the gorgons would find a way.
But where could he run to?
Perseus scanned his surroundings. Under different circumstances, he might have enjoyed the view. To his left, golden hills rolled inland, dotted with lakes, woods, and a few herds of cows. To his right, flatlands marched west – a vast checkerboard of neighbourhoods, with several million people who probably did not want their morning interrupted by two monsters and a filthy demigod.
Farther west, the bay glittered under a silvery haze. Past that, a wall of fog had swallowed most of the city, leaving only the tops of skyscrapers.
Perseus was tempted to cross the bay. He could feel the power of the ocean just over the horizon. Water always revived him, and saltwater was the best. He had discovered his affinity for water when training with Lupa – using the mist that often covered the Wolf House to his advantage – and the saltwater trick had been revealed two days ago when Perseus had strangled a sea monster in a strait. If he could reach the bay, he might be able to make a last stand. Maybe he could even drown the gorgons again – mix their dust remains in the vast ocean water, stopping them from reviving for at least several hours. But the shore was at least two miles away, and he would need to cross an entire city.
He also hesitated for another reason. Lupa had taught him to sharpen his senses – to trust the demigod instincts that had been guiding him south. His homing radar was tingling like crazy now. The end of his journey was close – almost right under his feet. But Perseus didn’t understand, there was nothing on the hilltop. Just then, the wind changed, and Perseus caught the sour scent of reptile. A hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods, snapping branches, crunching leaves, and hissing.
The gorgons.
For the hundredth time, Perseus wished that monsters and gods didn’t have such good noses. Lupa, and even the gorgons, had said that they could smell him because he was a demigod – the half-blood son of some old Roman god. A pretty powerful god, if Lupa was to be believed by how strong Perseus’ scent apparently was. She had said Perseus smelled more divine than not. So, Perseus had tried rolling in mud, splashing through creeks, and even keeping air-freshener sticks in his pockets so that he would have that new car smell; but apparently, the demigod scent was hard to mask.
There was more noise and Perseus caught sight of bronze wings. He scrambled to the west side of the summit, but 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 the city.
Great. No other way off the hill. He had managed to get himself cornered.
He stared at the stream of cars flowing west toward the city and wished he were in one of them. Then he realised the highway must cut through the hill. There must be a tunnel … right under his feet. His internal radar went nuts. He was in the right place, just too high up. He had to check out that tunnel. He needed a way down to the highway, and fast.
Perseus slung his backpack off his shoulders. He had managed to grab (read: steal) a lot of supplies at the first market he came across. Some of said supplies included, but was not limited to, a portable GPS, duct tape, a lighter, superglue, water bottle, camping roll, a Comfy Panda Pillow Pet (as seen on TV), and a Swiss army knife – pretty much even tool a modern demigod could want. Unfortunately, he had nothing that would serve as a parachute or a sled. And that left him with two options: jump eighty feet to his death or stand and fight. Both options were bad.
He cursed and pulled his Anaklusmos from his pocket.
Right next to him, a familiar voice jolted him back to the present: “There you are!”
Perseus stumbled away from the gorgon, almost falling off the edge of the hill.
It was the stupid one – Stheno.
Perseus had first met her when she was posing as a greeter at the market he stole from. The mortals around Perseus hadn’t reacted to her monstrous appearance, easily fooled by the Mist. That was a concept that Perseus had a hard time wrapping his head around – the Mist was, according to Lupa, a force that twisted a mortal’s sight from seeing anything supernatural by replacing them with things the mortal mind could comprehend. Apparently, even demigods could be fooled by the Mist from time to time – especially by powerful monsters – but, as was quickly discovered, Perseus had a knack for seeing through the Mist. He had never met a monster that he couldn’t sniff out – quite literally – and Perseus didn’t know if it was a curse or a blessing that he wasn’t able to stay ignorant for just a little longer.
Stheno was still wearing her green market employee vest over a flower-print dress. If you looked just at her body, you might think she was somebody’s frail old grandmother – until you looked down and realised, she had rooster feet. Or you looked up and saw golden boar tusks sticking out of the corners of her mouth, along with her bronze gargoyle wings. 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 silver platter of free samples: Crispy Cheese ’n’ Wieners. Her platter was dented from all the times Perseus had killed her, but those little samples looked perfectly fine. Stheno just kept toting them across the state so she could offer Perseus a snack before she killed him. He didn’t know why she kept doing that, but if he ever needed a suit of armour, he was going to make it out of Crispy Cheese ’n’ Wieners. They were indestructible.
“Try one?” Stheno offered.
Perseus fended her off with his sword and frowned. “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 on Perseus’ right so fast that he almost didn’t have time to react. Fortunately for him, she was too busy glaring at her sister to pay him much attention. Sometimes the monsters Perseus fought, fought with each other, giving him an advantage; however small. “I told you to sneak up on him and kill him!”
Stheno’s smile wavered. “But Euryale, can’t I give him a sample first?”
“No, you imbecile!” Euryale turned toward Perseus and bared her fangs.
Euryale looked exactly like her sister – with a few key differences, like her hair, which was a nest of coral snakes instead of green vipers. Her market 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, Percy Jackson,” Euryale said.
Perseus frowned. “It’s Perseus,” he said. “Not Percy.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, now. You’re trapped, and we’ll have our revenge!”
“The Cheese ’n’ Wieners are only two-ninety-nine,” Stheno added helpfully. “Grocery department, aisle three.”
Euryale snarled. “Stheno, the Bargain Mart was a front! You’re going naïve! Now, put down that ridiculous tray and help me kill this demigod. Or have you forgotten that he’s the one who vaporised Medusa?”
Perseus shuffled backward. A few more inches and he would be tumbling through thin air. He sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth. He turned back to the gorgons and spread his hands out, trying to look innocent. “Look, ladies, we’ve been over this. I don’t remember killing 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 blood-red eyes bore into Perseus. “I don’t care what you remember, son of the sea. 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!”
Perseus didn’t really get that. The whole “dying then returning from Tartarus” concept gave him a headache. Of course, so did the idea that a ballpoint pen could turn into a sword, or that monsters could disguise themselves with the Mist, or that Perseus was the son of a barnacle-encrusted god from five thousand years ago. But he did believe it. Even though his memory was erased, he knew he was a demigod the same way he knew his name was Perseus Jackson. From his very first conversation with Lupa, he’d accepted that this crazy messed-up world of gods and monsters was his reality. Which pretty much sucked.
“How about we call it a draw?” He offered. “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 cried 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, boy! 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, Percy Jackson, it’s true you bear the Curse of Achilles. That makes you a little tougher to kill. But don’t worry, we’ll find a way.”
“It’s Perseus,” Perseus insisted for the hundredth time. Why monsters insisted on calling him a silly nickname, he didn’t know, but it was starting to bother him. It wasn’t his name!
“Achilles!” Stheno said cheerfully, completely ignoring Perseus. “Oh, he was gorgeous! Dipped in the River Styx as a child, you know, so he was invulnerable except for a tiny spot on his ankle. That’s what happened to you, dear. Someone must’ve dumped you in the Styx and made your skin like iron. But not to worry – heroes like you always have a weak spot. We just need to find it, and then we can kill you. Won’t that be lovely? Have a Cheese ’n’ Wiener!”
Perseus tried to remember when he would have had time to take a dip in the Styx. He knew that it was a river in the Underworld, and that making oaths sworn on the Styx were important, but that was about it. He didn’t remember visiting the Underworld. Then again, he didn’t remember much of anything. That said, maybe if he just fell down the mountain … would he survive? The Curse of Achilles made him near invincible, but even he didn’t think it would save him from an eighty-foot drop through the air. He didn’t want to risk it – not without something to slow the fall, like a sled, or …
He looked at Stheno’s large silver platter of free samples.
“Reconsidering?” Stheno asked. “Very wise, dear. I added some gorgon’s blood to these, so your death will be quick and painless.”
Perseus’ 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 him that! He won’t eat the wieners if you tell him they’re poisoned!”
Stheno looked utterly stunned. “He won’t? But I said it would be quick and painless.”
“Never mind!” Euryale’s fingernails grew into claws. “We’ll kill him the hard way – just keep slashing until we find the weak spot. Once we defeat Percy Jackson, we’ll be more famous than Medusa! Our patron will reward us greatly!”
Perseus gripped his sword tighter, taking a step back. He would need to time his move perfectly – a few seconds of confusion, grab the platter with his left hand – he would need to keep them talking, though.
“Before you slash me to bits,” he said, “who’s this patron you mentioned?”
Euryale sneered. “The primordial 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 screeched, storming toward her sister. “You stupid –” Perseus took the opening. He grabbed Stheno’s platter, scattering poisoned Cheese ’n’ Wieners, and slashed Anaklusmos across Euryale’s waist, cutting her in half.
He raised the platter, and Stheno found herself facing her own greasy reflection.
“Medusa!” She screamed.
Gods, Perseus loved how stupid she was.
Her sister Euryale had crumbled to dust, but she was already starting to re-form. “Stheno, you fool!” She gurgled as her half-made face rose from the mound of dust. “That’s just your own reflection! Get him!”
Perseus slammed the metal tray on top of Stheno’s head, and she passed out cold.
He put the platter behind his ass, said a silent prayer to whatever Roman god oversaw stupid sledding tricks, and jumped off the side of the hill.
*
Now, the thing about plummeting downhill at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter – if you realise it’s a bad idea when you’re halfway down, it’s already too late.
Perseus narrowly missed a tree, glanced off a boulder, and spun a three-sixty as he shot toward the highway. There was no way to steer the sled, even if he wanted to. He heard the gorgon sisters screaming and caught a glimpse of Euryale’s coral-snake hair at the top of the hill, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. The roof of the apartment building loomed below him like the prow of a battleship.
Head-on collision in ten, nine, eight …
He managed to swivel sideways to avoid breaking his legs on impact. The snack platter skittered across the roof and sailed through the air. The platter went one way and Perseus went the other. As he fell toward the highway, a horrible scenario flashed through his mind: his body smashing against a truck’s windshield, causing an accident, and a thirteen-car pile-up. His body might remain in one piece – courtesy of the Curse of Achilles – but that would be a lot of mortals dead, and potentially Perseus, no matter what his curse could help him withstand. But instead, miraculously, almost like the gods were intervening, a gust of wind blew him to one side – just enough to miss the highway and crash into a clump of bushes. It wasn’t a soft landing, but it was better than asphalt.
Perseus groaned. He wanted to lie there and pass out, but he had to keep moving.
He struggled to his feet. His hands were covered in dirt, but no bones seemed to be broken. He still had his backpack. Somewhere on the sled ride he’d lost his sword, but Perseus knew it would eventually reappear in his pocket in pen form. That was part of its magic.
He glanced up the hill. The gorgons were hard to miss, with their colourful snake hair and their bright green Bargain Mart vests. They were picking their way down the slope, going slower than Perseus but with a lot more control. Those chicken feet must have been good for climbing. Perseus figured he had maybe five minutes before they reached him.
Next to him, a chain-link fence separated the highway from a neighbourhood of winding streets, cosy houses, and tall trees. The fence was probably there to keep people from getting onto the highway and doing stupid things – like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays – but the chain-link was full of big holes. Perseus could easily slip through into the neighbourhood. Maybe he could find a car and drive west to the ocean. He didn’t like stealing cars, but over the past few weeks, in life-and-death situations, he had “borrowed” several, including a police cruiser. He had meant to return them, but they never seemed to last very long.
He glanced east. Just as he had figured, a hundred yards uphill, the highway cut through the base of the cliff. Two tunnel entrances, one for each direction of traffic, stared down at him like eye sockets of a giant skull. In the middle, where the nose would have been, a cement wall jutted from the hillside, with a metal door like the entrance to a bunker. It might have been a maintenance tunnel. That’s probably what mortals thought, if they noticed the door at all. But they couldn’t see through the Mist like Perseus could. He knew the door was more than that.
Two people – kids, barely teenagers, probably not even as old as Perseus – flanked the entrance. They wore a bizarre mix of plumed Roman helmets, breastplates, scabbards, blue jeans, purple t-shirts, and white athletic shoes. The guard on the right looked like a girl, though it was hard to tell for sure with all the armour. The one on the left was a stocky guy with a bow and quiver on his back. Both kids held long wooden staffs with iron spear tips, like old-fashioned harpoons.
Perseus’ internal radar was pinging like crazy. After so many horrible days, he had finally reached his goal. His instincts told him that if he could make it inside that door, he might find safety for the first time since the wolves had sent him south.
So, why did he feel such dread?
Farther up the hill, the gorgons were scrambling over the roof of the apartment complex. They were three minutes away, maybe less.
Part of Perseus wanted to run to the door in the hill. He would need to cross the median of the highway, but then it would be a short sprint. He would make it before the gorgons reached him, at the very least. But another part of him – the part that didn’t remember why, but knew his true home was the sea – wanted to head west to the ocean. That’s where he would be safest, where his power would be greatest, where the waves would accept him like a true family member. That small part of him, that yearned for the ocean, was made to be uneasy by the Roman guards at the door. Something inside of him said: this isn’t my home. This is dangerous.
Considering how his instincts hadn’t led him astray so far, Perseus was hard pressed to make a decision.
“You’re right, of course,” said a voice next to him.
Perseus jumped and had his sword at the woman’s throat within seconds.
At first, he thought Stheno had managed to sneak up on him again – because the only ones capable of sneaking up on him had been monsters – but the old lady sitting in the bushes was even more repulsive than a gorgon. She looked like she had clawed her way up from Tartarus maybe forty years ago and had been living on the side of the road ever since, her clothing and body an amalgamation of all the trash and putrid smells that lined the highway. She wore a dress made of tie-dyed cloth, ripped-up quilts, and plastic grocery bags. Her earrings were made of rubber tire, her ears red and irritated. Her hair was matted and grey brown, like the polluted Hudson River, tied back by a rotting leather band. When she smiled at Perseus, she showed exactly three teeth. She smelled like a dumpster and looked even worse.
“Right about what?” Perseus demanded, ready to cut her head off and call it a day. He was already dealing with two murderous gorgon sisters; he did not need a crazy old lady added to the mix.
“It isn’t a maintenance tunnel,” the woman confided. “It’s the entrance to Camp.”
A jolt went up Perseus’ spine. He lowered his sword. Camp – that’s where he was from; a camp, he was sure of it. If that door and tunnel led to a camp – to his camp – then maybe this was his home. Maybe his mother was close by. Still, something about it felt wrong and made his insides crawl from uneasiness.
Behind the two, the gorgons were still on the roof of the apartment building. Perseus could hear them getting closer and closer. The old lady raised her brow. “Not much time, child. You need to make your choice.”
“Who are you?” Perseus asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He knew that she wasn’t a monster – he would have seen through the Mist if she was – but the only other option … well, the only ones capable of sneaking up on him had been monsters and Lupa – and Lupa was a goddess. Perseus did not need a goddess on his hands.
“Oh, you can call me June.” The old lady’s eyes sparkled as if she’d made an excellent joke. “It is June, isn’t it? They named the month after me!”
“It’s June?” Perseus parroted, mind spinning. How long had he been at the Wolf House – how long had he been sleeping before that? Just then, Perseus heard Stheno shriek with delight. Ugh, he didn’t have time to ponder over the missing time. There were much more pressing matters to attend to – like not getting killed by a gorgon. “Okay … look, I should go. Two gorgons are coming. I don’t want them to hurt you.”
June clasped her hands over her heart. “How sweet! But that’s part of your choice!”
“My choice …” Perseus glanced nervously toward the hill. The gorgons had taken off their green vests. Wings sprouted from their backs – small bat wings, which glinted like brass.
“Yes, a choice,” June said, as if she were in no hurry. “You could leave me here at the mercy of the gorgons and go to the ocean. You’d make it there safely, I guarantee. The gorgons will be quite happy to attack me and let you go. In the sea, no monster would bother you. You could begin a new life, live to a ripe old age, and escape a great deal of pain and misery that is in your future.”
Perseus was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like the second option. “Or?”
“Or you could do a good deed for an old lady,” she said, “and carry me to the camp with you.”
“Carry you?” Perseus hoped she was kidding. But, sure enough, June hiked up her skirts and showed him her feet, which were swollen and splotched, purple, blue, and green. It was an ugly sight and made Perseus want to hurl.
“I can’t get there by myself,” she confessed. “Carry me to camp – across the highway, through the tunnel, across the river.”
Perseus didn’t know what river she meant, but it didn’t sound easy. June looked pretty heavy. Not to mention, the gorgons were only fifty yards away now – leisurely gliding toward him as if they knew the hunt was almost over. Perseus didn’t have time to lug an old lady across the highway.
Perseus looked at June. “And I’d carry you to this camp because …”
“Because it’s a kindness!” She snapped, like it was obvious. As if Perseus had nothing better to be doing right now. Then she dropped a metaphorical bomb in the conversation: “And if you don’t, the gods will die, the world we know will perish, and everyone from your old life will be destroyed. Of course, you wouldn’t remember them, so I suppose it won’t matter. You’d be safe at the bottom of the sea …”
Perseus swallowed. The gorgons shrieked with laughter as they soared in for the kill.
“So, no biggie,” he said, sarcastic. But onto the most important thing for him: “If I go to the camp, will I get my memories back?”
“Eventually,” June said. Perseus grit his teeth. Eventually? Did this bitch think she was funny? “But be warned, you will sacrifice much! You’ll lose the Curse of Achilles. You will feel pain, misery, and loss beyond anything you’ve ever known. But you might have a chance to save your old friends and family, to reclaim your old life.”
The gorgons were circling right overhead. They were probably studying the old woman, trying to figure out who the new player was before they struck.
“What about those guards at the door?” Perseus asked.
June smiled. “Oh, they’ll let you in, dear. You can trust those two. So, what do you say? Will you help a defenceless old woman?”
Perseus took several precious seconds to glance between the door and the ocean. When he stared a little too longingly at the water, June sputtered, like she hadn’t expected him to pick the other option. Perseus squinted at her, doubting she was defenceless. At worst, this was a trap. At best, it was some kind of test – and Perseus hated tests. Since he had lost his memory, his whole life was one big fill-in-the-blank. Not to mention that Lupa had run him through plenty of tests at the Wolf House, and none of those had been worth it.
Then he thought about his mother, the only part of his old life he could remember. He had to find her. And if going to this camp guaranteed he would get his memories back – even just eventually, and not right away – then it had to be worth it.
“Fine, I’ll carry you,” he decided. He scooped up the old woman in a bridal carry. She was lighter than he expected. Perseus tried to ignore her sour breath and her calloused hands clinging to his neck. He made it across the first lane of traffic. A driver honked. Another yelled something that was lost in the wind. Most just swerved and looked irritated. A shadow fell over him from above.
Stheno called down gleefully, “Clever boy! Found a goddess to carry, did you?”
A goddess? Perseus thought. So, he had been right. This was a test.
June cackled with delight, muttering, “Whoops!” as a car almost killed them.
If this is a test, Perseus thought, lunging away from another car and almost getting hit, I better get full marks, or else I’m killing this goddess myself.
Somewhere off to his left, Euryale screamed, “Get them! Two prizes are better than one!”
Perseus bolted across the remaining lanes. Somehow, he made it to the median alive, but not without leaving some very angry drivers on the road. Above, he saw the gorgons swooping down from their aerial position. Cars swerved as the monsters passed overhead. Briefly, Perseus wondered what the mortals saw through the Mist – giant birds or off-course hang gliders? Lupa had once told him that mortal minds could believe almost anything except the truth.
Taking a deep breath, Perseus kept running. He headed to the door in the hillside, toward the kids in janky Roman armour. June got heavier with each step, like pushing a weight uphill. Perseus’ heart pounded as he heard the gorgon sisters get closer with each step.
When the guards finally noticed Perseus – how could they not, with the scene he was making? – the smaller one yelled out in surprise. The guy with the bow nocked an arrow.
Perseus had half a mind to think that the guy was aiming at him. He stared down the point of the arrow facing straight at his chest, thinking that’s going to leave a bruise, but at least I won’t die, before the guy released the arrow and Perseus ducked. Fortunately, the arrow flew over Perseus’ head. He heard a gorgon wail in pain. The second guard readied her spear, gesturing frantically at Perseus to hurry his steps.
He was barely thirty feet from the door when Euryale shrieked, “Gotcha!”
Perseus felt the ghost of claws scraping his shoulders before another arrow was flying over his head, thudding into Euryale’s forehead. Euryale tumbled into the fast lane and a truck slammed into her, going over a hundred miles an hour, and carried the gorgon backward a hundred yards. Unfortunately, Euryale simply climbed over the truck, yanked the arrow out of her forehead, and launched back into the air. Her eyes were lit with an intense fury.
Perseus reached the door, finally free from the death sprint that was the highway. He turned to the guards. “Thanks,” he said. He nodded to the one with the bow and arrows. “You’re a good shot.”
“That should’ve killed her!” The archer protested.
Welcome to my world, Perseus thought.
“Frank!” The smaller guard – a girl, Perseus realised, now that he could see her better – squeaked. She turned to Perseus and bowed her head. “I’m so sorry for his impudence, Lord Neptune.”
“Lord Neptune –” Perseus started, confused, but then his ears twitched when he heard the gorgons’ shrieks. He checked over his shoulder and saw that they were barely fifty feet away and only getting closer. “Never mind, we need to get inside, and quickly. Those are gorgons and, trust me, they aren’t going to die as easily as an arrow to the head. Or at least, they aren’t going to stay dead. So, let’s go!”
“Gorgons?” The archer, Frank, squeaked. It was hard to tell much about him from under the helmet (that was too big for him and made him look silly, but Perseus digressed), but he looked to be of East Asian descent and barely fourteen or fifteen years old. “Will the door hold them?”
In Perseus’ arms, June was starting to feel more like Perseus was carrying several heavy bowling balls instead of a person. She cackled like they weren’t all about to die. Well, the kids would die painful, unfortunate deaths, but Perseus knew that he would probably be okay, courtesy of his Curse of Achilles. And the goddess … well, she was a goddess.
“No, no it will not,” June said. “Onward, Percy Jackson! Through the tunnel, over the river!”
“Percy Jackson?” The female guard parroted, looking utterly confused. She was black, with dark curly hair sticking out the sides of her helmet. Her eyes were a bright brown. She looked even younger than Frank – maybe thirteen, at most. Her sword scabbard came down almost to her ankle. Still, she sounded like she was the one in charge.
“It’s Perseus, not Percy!” Perseus said, for the nth time. He would feel bad about snapping at the kid, but between being hunted like prey for a week, almost dying several times, and dealing with an insane goddess, he was not in the mood to be nice.
“I – I thought you were Neptune,” the girl stuttered, looking embarrassed.
“He very well could be,” June said cryptically.
“Not helping!” Perseus snapped.
Finally, the girl seemed to gather her wits about her. “Okay, okay – so, not Neptune. You’re obviously a demigod, like us. But who’s –” She glanced at June. “… never mind. Just get inside. I’ll hold them off.”
“Hazel,” Frank said, “Don’t be crazy!”
“Go!” Hazel insisted.
Frank cursed in another language that, somehow, Perseus understood – was it Latin? It sounded strange – and opened the door. “Come on!”
Perseus followed without complaint, staggering under the weight of June, who was definitely getting heavier. She was not this heavy when Perseus first picked her up. He only spared a glance behind him for a moment, wondering how the young girl, Hazel, would hold off the gorgons by herself, but he was too tired to give a damn at that point. She would die, or she wouldn’t. It wasn’t Perseus’ job to keep track of other demigods, no matter how guilty it made him feel.
As he followed Frank through the tunnel, Perseus scoped out the area around him. The tunnel cut through solid rock in the hillside and was about nine feet tall and eighteen feet across. At first, it looked like a typical maintenance tunnel, with electric cables, warning signs, fuse boxes on the walls, and lightbulbs in wire cages along the ceiling. As they ran deeper into the hillside, the cement floor changed to a colourful tiled mosaic. The walls became chiselled limestone. The lights changed to reed torches, which burned but didn’t smoke. A few hundred yards ahead, Perseus saw a square of daylight.
By now, the goddess was heavier than a pile of sandbags. Perseus’ arms shook from the strain. June mumbled a song in Latin, like a lullaby, which didn’t help Perseus concentrate.
Behind them, Stheno and Euryale’s voices echoed through the tunnel. Hazel shouted and suddenly, the entire tunnel shook with the rumble of falling stone. There was a squawking sound, just like the gorgons had made when Perseus had dropped a crate of bowling balls on top of them several days back. He chanced a glance back down the tunnel. The entire west end of the tunnel was now filled with dust.
“Should … should we check on her?” Perseus asked, slightly concerned.
“Hazel will be okay,” Frank said; then added, “I hope.” He looked back with a worried expression. “She’s good underground, courtesy of her godly parent – but that doesn’t matter right now. Just keep moving! We’re almost there!”
“Almost where?” Perseus demanded.
June chuckled. “All roads lead there, child. You should know that.”
“Death?” Perseus guessed.
“Rome, child,” June said. “Rome.”
Perseus wasn’t sure he had heard her right. His memory may have been gone, and maybe his brain hadn’t felt right since he had woken up at the Wolf House with Lupa and her wolves surrounding him, but he was almost sure that Rome wasn’t in California.
Nonetheless, they kept running.
The glow at the end of the tunnel grew brighter, and finally, they burst into daylight.
Perseus slowed to a jog and then stopped. His breathing was ragged, but it felt like the breath had been stolen from his chest as he laid eyes upon the landscape.
Spread out at his feet was a bowl-shaped valley several miles wide. The basin floor was rumpled with smaller hills, golden plains, and stretches of forest. A small clear river cut a winding course from a lake in the centre and around the perimeter. The geography could have been anywhere in northern California – live oaks and eucalyptus trees, gold hills, and blue skies. But Perseus felt like he had stepped into a secret world. In the centre of the valley, nestled by the lake, was a small city of white marble buildings with red-tiled roofs. Some had domes and columned porticoes, like national monuments. Others looked like palaces, with golden doors and large gardens. Perseus could see an open plaza with freestanding columns, fountains, and statues. A five-story-tall Roman coliseum gleamed in the sun, next to a long oval arena like a racetrack.
Across the lake to the south, another hill was dotted with even more impressive buildings – temples, Perseus guessed. Several stone bridges crossed the river as it wound through the valley, and in the north, a long line of brickwork arches stretched from the hills into the town. Perseus thought it looked like an elevated train track, but then he realised it must be an aqueduct.
The strangest part of the valley was right below him. About two hundred yards away, just across the river, was some sort of military encampment. It was about a quarter mile square, with earthen ramparts on all four sides, the tops lined with sharpened spikes. Outside the walls ran a dry moat, also studded with spikes. Wooden watchtowers rose at each corner, manned by sentries with oversized, mounted crossbows. Purple banners hung from the towers. A wide gateway opened on the far side of camp, leading toward the city. A narrower gate stood closed on the riverbank side. Inside, the fortress bustled with activity: dozens of kids going to and from barracks, carrying weapons, and polishing armour. Perseus could hear the clank of hammers at a forge and smelled meat cooking over a fire.
Something about this place felt very familiar, yet not quite right.
This isn’t my camp, Perseus thought.
The thought jarred him. He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. He belonged somewhere else, somewhere with … flashes of orange, a lake with smiling faces, a home with warmth from the hearth, the feeling of leather beneath his hands, warm cookies on his tongue, and the smell of a fresh ocean breeze. Not … whatever this was. His heart ached for something he couldn’t even remember.
“This is Camp Jupiter,” Frank said. “We’ll be safe here once –”
Footsteps echoed in the tunnel behind them and Hazel followed soon after, bursting into the light. She was covered with stone dust and breathing hard. She had lost her helmet somewhere in the tunnel, so her curly brown hair fell around her shoulders. Her armour had long slash marks in the front, probably from the claws of one of the gorgons. One of the monsters had also tagged her with a 50% off sticker, which Perseus found ridiculous in the face of their doom.
“I slowed them down, but not for long,” Hazel admitted. “They’ll be here any second.”
Frank swore in Latin. “We have to get across the river.”
June squeezed at Perseus’ bicep, giggling. “Oh, yes, please. I can’t get my dress wet.”
“You’re crazy,” Perseus said, “You’re absolutely crazy, and I’m going to dunk you in the water just for that comment.”
The goddess spluttered, but Perseus didn’t give her time to talk back. He started toward the river, stumbling the whole way, his arms screaming in protest at carrying so much weight. Frank and Hazel followed behind him, and once they reached the riverbank, Perseus stopped to catch his breath. He eyed the river critically. The current was fast, but the river didn’t look deep. Only a stone’s throw across stood the gates of the fort.
“Go, Hazel,” Frank said. He nocked two arrows at once and turned back to the tunnel. “Escort Perseus so the sentries don’t shoot him. It’s my turn to hold off the monsters.”
Hazel nodded and waded into the stream. Perseus was about to follow, but something made him hesitate. The water was his element, the water was where he was most powerful – but this river seemed … powerful, and not necessarily friendly (if rivers could even have constitutions).
“The Little Tiber,” June said sympathetically. “It flows with the power of the original Tiber, river of the empire. This is your last chance to back out, child. The Curse of Achilles is a Greek blessing, and you can’t retrain it if you cross into Roman territory. The Tiber will wash it away.”
Perseus understood most of what June was saying, but just to clarify: “If I cross, I won’t have iron skin anymore?”
June smiled. “I knew you had a brain in there,” she said. “So, what will it be?”
Behind him, the gorgons screeched as they flew from the tunnel. Frank aimed his arrows and let them fly, but it didn’t so much as slow down the gorgon sisters.
From the middle of the river, Hazel yelled, “Perseus, come on!”
But Perseus was frozen.
Everyone he had met, the monsters and gods, had called his iron skin a curse – the Curse of Achilles – but it was the only protection he had. Perseus recalled the image of his mother, with her bright blue eyes and soft smile, one of the only things he could remember when he woke in the Wolf House. Without the Curse of Achilles, would Perseus be able to survive the monsters? Would he ever go home to his mother? He didn’t want to die before seeing his mother again.
He was snapped back to the present when Hazel’s expression turned to horror. Perseus heard Stheno shriek in delight behind him, and then a yelp. Hazel screamed, “Frank!”
Perseus glanced behind himself and saw that Euryale and Stheno had grabbed hold of Frank by both arms, and were trying to fly into the air, dragging him with them. Frank screamed at the pain of the claws in his skin. Images of Frank dropping twenty feet from mid-air, broken bones, and death, filled Perseus’ head.
Up on the watchtowers, horns blew. The sentries shouted and swiveled their crossbows toward the gorgons, but Perseus knew they wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot. They would end up killing the kid, Frank. The gates opened and dozens of kids in armour poured out. The kids drew their swords and started to cross the Little Tiber, toward Perseus and Frank, but Perseus knew they would be too late. There was only one way to end this.
Perseus unceremoniously dropped the goddess and ignored her squawking.
He thrust his hands out, reaching out to the river in front of him, and grabbed hold of the water. An intense tugging sensation formed in his gut. The water resisted. Water, the ocean especially, didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to be controlled, never wanted to be restrained – but, as Perseus had learned, water was his domain. Water would heal him, water would give him strength, and Perseus would make this water listen to him, whether it wanted to or not. This river, barely a stream, was nothing in the face of his power. With a growl, Perseus formed two giant whirlpools that raised in the air, like tornadoes. Behind him, he could hear the other kids begin to yelp and back away, but he stayed focused on his task. The towers of water reached over the riverbank and greedily swallowed both gorgon sisters within their whirls, forcing them to drop Frank. With barely a thought, Perseus forced the waters to rip Euryale and Stheno apart until they were nothing but golden dust. Glittering clouds of gorgon essence struggled to reform, but Perseus willed the water to scatter the remains far and wide, far enough so that he couldn’t spot a single speck of gold within the waters.
After that was done, Perseus then carefully lowered his hands, letting the towering whirlpools fall back into the stream with a giant splash.
His next goal was much easier than drowning two gorgon sisters with giant fists of water.
Perseus raised his hands again and pushed them apart, forcing the waters to stop with a single command. Like Moses parting the Red Sea (though Perseus had no idea where that comparison came from), he created a dry walkway across the stream, tall walls of water rising on either side. He turned back to Frank, who was gaping at him. Perseus hauled Frank to his feet, shoving him toward the Little Tiber. Frank followed the wordless command with startling efficiency and hurried across to the group of kids armed with swords and spears, who were now looking at Perseus with wide eyes.
Next, Perseus turned back to the goddess, June. Despite her seeming aloofness earlier, she was now glaring at him with brown eyes so intense they were almost gold. Her entire body gave off a faint glow. Her immortality was slipping out, almost like a threat, but Perseus didn’t feel indebted to her. He would not feel indebted to a goddess that almost got two kids killed, almost got Perseus killed, didn’t offer any help, and tried to get Perseus to give up his Curse of Achilles.
So, without fanfare, Perseus grabbed June by her bicep and hauled her across the stream. She started to sputter and choke on her rage, but Perseus kept a firm grip. And as he crossed the stream, not a single drop of water touched him, though the walls of water quivered like the waters wanted to.
As Perseus walked across the dry riverbed, the goddess squawking and yelling in the meanwhile, he remembered what she said when he questioned whether it really mattered that he carried her to this mystical camp: “If you don’t, the gods will die, the world we know will perish, and everyone from your old life will be destroyed.”
That was proof that this goddess needed him. For what, Perseus didn’t know. But it was proof that she wouldn’t touch a single hair on his head until she got what she wanted from him.
Finally, though it only took a few steps, Perseus reached the riverbank on the other side of the river.
It was only then that Perseus realised how quiet the other kids had become. Everyone was staring at him, jaws dropped. It was then that June finally had enough of the rough treatment, and she yanked her arm out of Perseus’ grip, stumbling to her feet.
“Well!” She huffed in anger. “That was not what you were supposed to do, you impertinent little …” She seemed to realise that she had an audience and was still in her old lady disguise. “I mean … thank you, Percy Jackson, for bringing me to Camp Jupiter.” She smiled through gritted teeth.
“For the last time, it’s Perseus, not Percy!” Perseus snapped.
One of the girls in the crowd made a choking sound. “Percy … Jackson?”
Despite getting his name wrong, she sounded as if she recognised him. Perseus spun around, hoping to see a familiar face. What he saw was a girl that looked around his age. She was obviously a leader. She wore a regal purple cloak over her armour. Her chest was decorated with medals. She had a strong nose, dark eyes, and long dark hair that was pinned back in a braid. She was beautiful. Perseus didn’t recognise her, but the girl stared at him as if she had seen him in her nightmares.
June laughed cruelly. “Oh, yes. You’ll have such fun together!”
And then, June began to glow and change. She straightened up from her hunched-over posture, twisting and growing into a seven-foot-tall humanoid form. Her matted hair turned to flowing, silky dark brown locks, in a half-up, half-down hairstyle. Her wrinkles smoothed out, forming a regal looking expression. She wore a palla, made of what looked like mist taken physical form, that was wrapped around her body and covered part of her hair. It glittered in the sunlight. She also wore a stola, a long dress that reached down to her feet, that was a rich purple. Over her shoulders was what looked like a goat’s skin. In her hand was a staff with a sharp golden tip that glowed, almost like celestial bronze. It must have been imperial gold.
If it was possible for the child soldiers to look anymore stunned, they did. The girl with the purple cloak knelt and the others quickly followed her lead. One kid got down so hastily, he almost impaled himself on his gladius. Even Frank and Hazel, who were almost killed by the goddess’ incompetence, knelt. They all started murmuring their prayers to “Juno.”
Perseus did not bother getting down on his knees. Instead, he latched onto the name of the goddess.
“Juno, huh?” Perseus said. “It’s nice to know a goddess needed help crossing such a little rivulet, and almost got kids killed in the process, but I’m ready for my memories back now.”
Behind him, there were several gasps from the child soldiers. Out of the corner of his eye, Perseus caught the girl in the purple cloak rearing back, as if struck by Perseus’ impertinence.
June – or Juno – smiled coldly at Perseus.
“In time, young hero,” Juno said to him, sounding way too smug about it. “But not yet. You must first succeed here at camp. Perhaps there’s hope for you yet, but I doubt it.” She turned to the other kids, now projecting her voice for the audience. “Romans, I present to you: the son of Neptune. For months, he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. His fate is in your hands. The Feast of Fortune comes quicky, and Death must be unleashed if you are to stand any hope in the battle. Do not fail me!”
She shimmered, like a rainbow flickering through a dying mist, and then disappeared. Perseus cursed under his breath in a language he didn’t even know he knew.
So much for regaining his memories.
That bitch.
The girl in the purple cloak stepped forward. She assessed Perseus warily, and Perseus got the feeling that if there were to be no consequences, she would run him through with the dagger at her hip.
“A son of Neptune,” she said coldly, “who comes to us with the blessing of Juno.”
“Look,” Perseus said, “my memory is completely gone. I’ve been running for my life for the past week. I have no idea where I am or what’s going on. Do I know you?”
“I am Reyna Ramírez-Arellano,” she said, then hesitated, and before she even spoke, Perseus knew she was going to lie to him. “I am a daughter of Bellona, praetor of the Twelfth Legion Fulminata of New Rome, and … no, I don’t know you.”
Her titles sounded important, but they meant nothing to Perseus. He simply nodded.
“Hazel,” Reyna said, taking control of the situation, “bring … Perseus inside. I want to question him at the principia. Then we’ll need to send him to Octavian – we must consult the auguries before we decide what to do with him.”
“Whoa, hold up,” Perseus said, putting his hands up, “what do you mean ‘decide what to do with’ me?”
Reyna’s hand tightened on the hilt of her dagger. She was obviously not used to her orders being questioned. “Before we accept anyone into camp, we must interrogate them and read the auguries. Juno said your fate is in our hands. We must know whether the goddess has brought us a new recruit …” Reyna studied Perseus as if she found that doubtful. “… or,” she added, “if she’s brought us an enemy to kill.”
*