Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN ( everyone has that bad relative )
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A COAST GUARD boat picked us up, but with the disasters all over the city because of Hades's anger, they were too busy to question why four kids wandered onto the middle of the bay with street clothes. It was such a chaotic scene, that their radios were jammed with distress calls. They dropped us off at the Santa Monica pier with towels around our shoulders and water bottles that said I'M A JUNIOR COAST GUARD! and sped off to save more people. Our clothes were soaking wet, and they were starting to itch. At least I wasn't also barefoot like Percy, who had given his shoes to Grover. Better the Coast Guard wonder why one of us was barefoot than wonder why one of us had hooves.
After reaching dry land, we stumbled down the beach, watching the city burn against the beautiful sunrise.
"I don't believe it," Annabeth said. "We went all that way –"
"It was a trick," Percy cut her off. "A strategy worthy of Athena."
"Hey," she warned.
"You get it, don't you?"
She dropped her eyes, her anger fading away. "Yeah. I get it."
"Well, I don't!" Grover complained. "Would somebody –"
"I'm so sorry about your mother, Percy," I looked back at him. I don't know if that offered the comfort I intended it to have, but at least I wanted him to know he wasn't alone.
"The prophecy was right," he said instead, completely ignoring what I had told him. "'You shall go west and face the god who has turned'. But it wasn't Hades. Hades didn't want war between the Big Three. Someone else pulled off the theft. Someone stole Zeus's master bolt, and Hades's helmet, and framed me because I'm Poseidon's kid. Poseidon will get blamed by both sides. By sundown today, there will be a three-way war. And I'll have caused it."
Grover shook his head, mystified. "But who would be that sneaky? Who would want war that bad?"
Percy stopped walking and looked down at the beach. "Gee, let me think."
