Gone Girl.¹

𝟬𝟮𝟰. to love is to sacrifice

Michael snorted. "Thanks a lot."

Percy kept his eyes on Annabeth, who eventually nodded. "All right. Get moving."

He stepped out from behind the school bus and walked up the bridge in plain sight, straight toward the enemy. Amaryllis saw him before the Minotaur did and she flashed him a smile. There was blood coming off her nose and the corner of her mouth and her armour seemed to had taken quite a few hits, but overall, she looked great. Amaryllis had always been strikingly beautiful — there was no sane person in the world that could say otherwise — but seeing her like that was almost terrifying. He didn't want to know how their enemies felt when they saw her.

"Glad you could join the party," she said half-heartedly. "You take the Minotaur, I take the rest of them?"

When the Minotaur saw him, his eyes burned with hate. He bellowed — a sound that was somewhere between a yell, a moo, and a really loud belch. "Sounds good," Percy told her and then turned to the Minotaur, shouting back. "Hey, Beef Boy. Didn't I kill you already?"

He pounded his fist into the hood of a Lexus, and it crumpled like aluminum foil. A few dracaenae threw flaming javelins at the two, but they knocked them aside easily. A hellhound lunged, and Percy sidestepped. He could have stabbed it, but he hesitated. He had to take a second to remind himself that this wasn't Mrs. O'Leary, but an untamed monster that wanted to kill him and all of his friends.

The second time it pounced, Percy brought Riptide up in a deadly arc. The hellhound disintegrated into dust and fur.

More monsters surged forward — snakes and giants and telkhines — but Amaryllis didn't let them get close. "Hey, wanna see a cool trick?" she said with a mischievous, but tired smile and she turned invisible, becoming one with the shadows. Percy was reminded of the last time she had done that, back at the Labyrinth, though accidentally. Within seconds, most of the other monsters had turned into dust and the others were fighting with all their energy, but still losing.

"One on one?" Percy told the Minotaur, gaining some sudden confidence. "Just like old times?"

The Minotaur's nostrils quivered. He seriously needed to keep a pack of Aloe Vera Kleenex in his armor pocket, because that nose was wet and red and pretty gross. He unstrapped his axe and swung it around. It was beautiful in a harsh I’m going to gut you like a fish kind of way. Each of its twin blades was shaped like an omega: Ω — the last letter of the Greek alphabet. Maybe that was because the axe would be the last thing his victims ever saw. The shaft was about the same height as the Minotaur, bronze wrapped in leather. Tied around the base of each blade were lots of bead necklaces. Percy realized they were Camp Half-Blood beads — necklaces taken from defeated demigods.

Percy was so mad, he imagined that his eyes were glowing just like the Minotaur's. He raised his sword. The remaining of the monster army cheered for the Minotaur, but the sound died when Percy dodged his first swing and sliced his axe in half, right between the handholds.

"Moo?" he grunted.

"Ha!" He spun and kicked him in the snout. He staggered backward, trying to regain his footing, then lowered his head to charge but he never got the chance. Riptide flashed — slicing off one horn, then the other. He tried to grab Percy, but he rolled away, picking up half of his broken axe.

Amaryllis was doing pretty good too. She had returned back to normal, but she was still fighting with the ferocity of a wild animal. Percy remembered what Annabeth told him about how Amaryllis had spent the entire summer training obsessively — he could tell that she had improved a bit too much.