They spent two days on the Amtrak train, heading west through hills, over rivers, past amber waves of grain.
They weren't attacked once, yet Y/N didn't relax. He felt that they were traveling around in a display case, being watched from above and maybe below. Something was waiting for the right opportunity.
He spent his day alternately pacing the length of the train—he had a hard time staying still—or looking out the windows.
Once, he spotted a family of centaurs galloping across a wheat field, bows at the ready, as they hunted lunch. The little boy centaur, who was the size of a second-grader on a pony, caught his eye and waved. He looked around the passenger car, but nobody else had noticed. The adult riders all had their faces buried in laptop computers or magazines.
Another time, toward evening, he saw something huge moving through the woods. He could've sworn it was a lion, except that lions didn't live wild in America, and this thing was the size of a Hummer. Its fur glinted gold in the evening light. Then it leaped through the trees and was gone.
Their reward money for returning Gladiola the poodle had only been enough to purchase tickets as far as Denver. They couldn't get berths in the sleeper car, so they dozed in their seats. Y/N's neck got stiff.
Grover kept snoring and bleating and waking him up.
Once, Ethan shuffled around, and his fake foot fell off. Y/N and Annabeth had to stick it back on before any of the other passengers noticed.
"So," Annabeth asked him once they'd gotten Ethan's sneaker readjusted. "Why do you need to run?"
"What do you mean?"
"When you were asleep just now, you mumbled, 'Run, run, run.' What were you dreaming about?"
He didn't want to talk about it. These dreams made no sense after all. At best, Annabeth would take him for an idiot.
"Hey, what would you do if it was your dad in the Underworld?" he asked to change the subject. "I mean, like Percy's mom."
"That's easy," she said. "I'd leave him to rot."
Y/N stared at her a moment. How could someone wish something like that to their parent? "You're not serious?"
Annabeth's gray eyes fixed on him. "My dad's resented me since the day I was born, Y/N," she said. "He never wanted a baby. When he got me, he asked Athena to take me back and raise me on Olympus because he was too busy with his work. She wasn't happy about that. She told him heroes had to be raised by their mortal parent."
"But how...I mean, I guess you weren't born in a hospital...."
"I appeared on my father's doorstep, in a golden cradle, carried down from Olympus by Zephyr the West Wind. You'd think my dad would remember that as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he'd take some digital photos or something. But he always talked about that arrival as if it were the most inconvenient thing that had ever happened to him. When I was five he got married and totally forgot about Athena. He got a 'regular' mortal wife, and had two 'regular' mortal kids, and tried to pretend I didn't exist."
Y/N stared out the train window. The lights of a sleeping town were drifting by. He'd have liked making Annabeth feel better, but he didn't even know what having a dad was like.
"Maybe..." he began. But he stopped. No, he didn't know what to say.
Annabeth kept worrying at her necklace. She was pinching a gold college ring that hung with the beads. It had to be her father's. Y/N wondered why she wore it if she hated him so much.
"He doesn't care about me," she said. "His wife—treated me like a freak. She wouldn't let me play with her children. My dad went along with her. Whenever something dangerous happened—you know, something with monsters—they would both look at me resentfully, like, 'How dare you put our family at risk.' Finally, I took the hint. I wasn't wanted. I ran away."
"How old were you?"
"Same age as when I started camp. Seven."
"But...you couldn't have gotten all the way to Half-Blood Hill by yourself."
"Not alone, no. Athena watched over me, guided me toward help. I made a couple of unexpected friends who took care of me, for a short time, anyway."
Y/N wanted to ask what happened, but Annabeth seemed lost in sad memories. So he listened to the sound of Grover snoring and gazed out the train windows as the dark field of Ohio raced by. Percy's head fell on his shoulder. After an instant, he remembered Percy drooled in his sleep and raised his head. Too late; drool was already on his sweatshirt.
Toward the end of their second day on the train, June 13, eight days before the summer solstice, they passed through golden hills and over the Mississippi River into St. Louis.
Annabeth craned her neck to see the Gateway Arch.
"I want to do that," she sighed.
"What?" Y/N asked.
"Build something like that. You ever see the Parthenon, Y/N?"
"Only in pictures?"
"Someday, I'm going to see it in person. I'm going to build the greatest monument to the gods, ever. Something that'll last a thousand years."
They pulled into the Amtrak station downtown. The intercom told them they'd have a three-hour layover before departing for Denver.
Grover stretched. Before he was even fully awake, he said, "Food."
"Come on, goat boy," Annabeth said. "Sightseeing."
"Sightseeing?" Ethan repeated, stretching too.
"The Gateway Arch," she said. "This may be my only chance to ride to the top. Percy, wake up," she added, nudging him.
The Arch was about a mile from the train station. Late in the day the lines to get in weren't that long. They threaded their way through the underground museum, looking at covered wagons and other junk from the 1800s. It wasn't all that thrilling, but Annabeth kept telling them interesting facts about how the Arch was built, and Ethan kept passing Y/N jelly beans, so he was okay.
He kept looking around, though, at the other people in line. "You smell anything?" he murmured to Ethan.
Ethan took his nose out of the jelly-bean bag long enough to sniff. "Underground," he said distastefully. "Underground air always smells like monsters. Probably doesn't mean anything."
But something felt wrong. Y/N had the feeling they shouldn't be there.
Percy shivered. "Guys," he said. "You know the gods' symbols of power?"
Annabeth had been in the middle of reading about the construction equipment used to build the Arch, but she looked over. "Yeah?"
"Well, Hade—" Percy started to say.
Grover cleared his throat. "We're in a public space.... You mean, our friend downstairs?"
"Um, right," Percy said. "Our friend way downstairs. Doesn't he have a hat like Annabeth's?"
"You mean the Helm of Darkness," Annabeth said. "Yeah, that's his symbol of power. I saw it next to his seat during the winter solstice council meeting."
"He was there?" Y/N wondered.
She nodded. "It's the only time he's allowed to visit Olympus—the darkest day of the year. But his helm is a lot more powerful than my invisibility hat, if what I've heard is true...."
"It allows him to become darkness," Ethan confirmed. "He can melt into shadow or pass through walls. He can't be touched, or seen, or heard. And he can radiate fear so intense it can drive you insane or stop your heart. Why do you think all rational creatures fear the dark?"
"But then...how do we know he's not here right now, watching us?" Percy asked.
Annabeth and Ethan and Grover exchanged looks.
"We don't," Grover said.
"Thanks, that makes us feel a lot better," Y/N said. "Got any green jelly beans left?" he asked Ethan.
They arrived in front of the tiny little elevator car they were going to ride to the top of the Arch.
They got shoehorned into the car with a big fat lady and her dog, a Chihuahua with a rhinestone collar. It had to be a seeing-eye Chihuahua because none of the guards said a word about it. Was it usual to use a Chihuahua as a seeing-eye dog?
They started going up, inside the Arch. Y/N had never been in an elevator that went in a curve—it must be said he hadn't been in a lot of elevators.
"No parents?" the fat lady asked them.
She had beady eyes; pointy, coffee-strained teeth; a floppy denim hat, and a denim dress that bulged so much, she looked like a blue-jean blimp.
"They're below," Annabeth told her. "Scared of heights."
"Oh, the poor darlings."
The Chihuahua growled. The woman said, "Now, now, sonny. Behave." The dog had beady eyes like its owner, intelligent and vicious.
"Sonny. Is that his name?" Y/N asked.
"No," the old lady told him.
She smiled, as if that cleared everything up.
At the top of the Arch, the observation deck reminded Y/N of a tin can with carpeting. Rows of tiny windows looked out over the city on one side and the river on the other. The view was beautiful, and Y/N understood why Annabeth wanted to build something like that.
Annabeth kept talking about structural supports, and how she would've made the windows bigger, and designed a see-through floor. She probably could've stayed up for hours, but the park ranger announced that the observation deck would be closing in a few minutes.
Percy steered everyone toward the exit—he didn't seem to like the heights. He looked worried and got in the elevator first.
Y/N was about to get in himself when he realized there were already two other tourists inside. No room for him.
The park ranger said, "Next car, sir."
"We'll get out," Annabeth said. "We'll wait with you."
Yet, before she or the others could do anything, the park ranger closed the door and they all disappeared. The last thing Y/N saw was Percy looking nervous and Ethan frowning, raising his nose out of another jelly-bean bag.
Now the only people left on the observation deck were him, a little boy and his parents, the park ranger, and the fat lady with her Chihuahua.
Y/N smiled uneasily at the fat lady. She smiled back, her forked tongue flickering between her teeth.
Wait a minute. Forked tongue?
Y/N was still deciding whether or not he had seen what he thought he had that her Chihuahua jumped down and started yapping at him.
"Now, now, sonny," the lady said. "Does this look like a good time? We have all these nice people here."
"Doggie!" the little boy said. "Look, a doggie!"
His parent pulled him back.
The Chihuahua bared his teeth at Y/N, foam dripping from his black lips.
"Well, son," the fat lady sighed. "If you insist."
Okay, at that point Y/N had ice forming in his stomach, warning of danger. He twiddled the ring in his pocket. If you could change into a sword like last time, it'd be nice.
"Um, did you just call that Chihuahua your son?" he asked.
"Chimera, dear," the fat lady corrected. "Not a Chihuahua. It's an easy mistake to make."
She rolled up her denim sleeves; the skin of her arms was scaly and green. When she smiled, Y/N saw that her teeth were fangs. The pupils of her eyes were sideway slits, like a reptile's.
The Chihuahua barked louder, and with each bark, it grew. First to the size of a Doberman, then to a lion. The bark became a roar.
The little boy screamed. His parents pulled him back toward the exit, straight into the park ranger, who stood, paralyzed, gaping at the monster.
The Chimera was now so tall its back rubbed against the roof. It had the head of a lion with a blood-caked mane, the body and hooves of a giant goat, and a serpent for a tail, a ten-foot-long diamondback growing right out of his shaggy behind. The rhinestone dog collar still hung around its neck, and the plate-sized dog tag was now easy to read: CHIMERA—RABID, FIRE-BREATHING, POISONOUS—IF FOUND, PLEASE CALL TARTARUS—EXT. 954.
Y/N realized he was still twiddling with the ring. He was ten feet away from the Chimera's bloody maw, and he knew that as soon as he'd move, the creature would lunge.
The snake lady made a hissing noise that might've been laughter. "Be honored, Y/N L/N. You'll pay for being Hera's offspring. Lord Zeus rarely allows me to test a hero with one of my brood. For I am the Mother of Monsters, the terrible Echidna!"
Y/N stared at her. He was so stunned all he found to say was: "Zeus's mad at Hera because I'm her child? He realizes he cheated on her like...a lot of time, right?"
The Chimera charged, its lion teeth gnashing. Y/N barely managed to leap aside and dodge the bite.
He ended up next to the family and the park ranger, who were all screaming now, trying to pry open the emergency exit doors. Could he let them get hurt? Not really—it wasn't really nice. But he couldn't watch over them either.
He got out the ring, waved it over his head, ran to the other side of the deck, and yelled, "Hey, Chihuahua!"
The Chimera turned faster than he would've thought possible. Its eyes were fixed on the ring, and as he waved it, the eyes followed. Like playing with the most inoffensive dog. Except it wasn't.
Y/N faked throwing the ring, and the Chimera spun, looking for it. Was it really happening, or did he imagined things?
Anyway, he just ran toward the monster's back. And cursed himself. He was literally racing at a monster without any weapon. He certainly deserved the medal of the hyperactive kid of the year. But now he had nothing to lose, so he jumped, saying to himself that if he had to die, at least dying rodeoing a chimera looked cool.
As he hung on the monster's back, it opened its mouth, emitting a stench like the world's largest barbecue pit, and shot a column of flame straight at a wall. Where the wall had stood was now a ragged hole in the side of the Arch, with melted metal steaming around the edges.
Great, Y/N thought. We just blowtorched a national monument.
Then he realized he had his sword in hand. Not wasting more time, he slashed at the Chimera's neck.
That was his fatal mistake. The blade sparked harmlessly off the dog collar. He tried to regain his balance, but he was so worried about defending himself against the fiery lion's mouth, he completely forgot about the serpent tail until it whipped around and sank its fang into his calf.
His whole leg was on fire. He tried to jab the sword into the Chimera's mouth, but the serpent tail wrapped around his ankles and pulled him off balance, and his blade flew out of his hand, spinning out of the hole in the Arch and down toward the Mississippi River.
Y/N managed to get to his feet, but he knew he had lost. He was weaponless. He could feel the deadly poison racing up his leg.
He backed into the hole in the wall. The Chimera advanced, growling, smoke curling from its lips. The snaked lady, Echidna, crackled. "They don't make heroes like they used to, eh, son?"
The monster growled. It seemed in no hurry to finish Y/N off now that he was beaten.
He glanced at the park ranger and the family. The little boy was hiding behind his father's legs. Well, even if he'd wanted to, he could do nothing for them now. He tried to think, but his whole body was on fire. His head felt dizzy. He had no sword. He was facing a massive, fire-breathing monster and its mother. He wanted to yell, cry and weep. His whole body was out of control, shaking madly.
There was no place else to go, so he stepped to the edge of the hole. Far, far below, the river glittered.
If he died, would the monsters go away? Would they leave the humans alone?
Man, you're going to die. Think about yourself for once!
"If you're the son of Hera," Echidna hissed, "you would not fear the heights. Jump, Y/N L/N. Show me that heaven will not harm you. Jump and retrieve your sword. Prove your bloodline."
Yeah, right, Y/N thought. He watched the water further down. He had read somewhere that jumping into water from a couple of stories up was like jumping onto solid asphalt. From here, he'd splatter on impact.
The Chimera's mouth glowed red, heating for another blast.
"You have no faith," Echidna told him. "You do not trust the gods. I cannot blame you, little coward. Better you die now. The gods are faithless. The poison is in your heart."
She was right; he was dying. He could feel his breath slowing down. Nobody could save him, not even the gods.
He backed up and looked down at the water. If only he'd been the son of Poseidon, he could've dived without fear. Percy was the one who knew how to deal with monsters.
"Die, faithless one," Echidna rasped, and the Chimera sent a column of flame toward his face.
Mother, help me, he prayed.
Y/N turned and jumped. His clothes on fire, poison coursing through his veins, he plummeted toward the river.