Warren threw open the door to cabin five. It hit the wall with a deafening BANG, and all of her siblings whipped around to look at her. They were grouped together on the bottom bunks, in the middle of an intense conversation.
"What the hell was that!" Warren shouted, glaring daggers at Clarisse.
Her sister lifted her chin haughtily. "You're going to have to be more specific."
"Cut the crap, Clare. You threw a hissy fit at the council meeting."
"I was getting us what's rightfully ours!"
"And what, exactly, would that be?"
"The flying chariot," Maya spoke up.
"The what?"
"The chariot," Maya continued. "We raided some of Luke's demigods in Philadelphia, they were flying it."
"And what does that have to do with the Apollo cabin?" Warren asked.
"Because," Ellis said. "We led the raid, but Apollo seized the chariot. They think that makes it theirs."
"They wouldn't have gotten anywhere near it if it wasn't for us!" Clarisse yelled. "They all whine and cry for Ares to come in and do the dirty work that they're too weak to do! And how are we repaid? With a big fat 'screw you'. And I'm tired of it!"
Warren exhaled hard and tugged a hand through the roots of her hair. "I get it, but Clare...we're in the middle of a war. The camp needs us. You can't withdraw our support! You don't have the authority, and even if you did, it would be a stupid move."
"The stupid move is letting the camp use us!" Clarisse said. "It's like I said, no justice, no cooperation."
Warren turned to the rest of her siblings. "And how do you feel about all of this, huh? The end of the world in exchange for Clarisse's bruised ego?"
Naomi shifted uncomfortably. "I mean...I hate the way everyone talks about us, like we're not even there. We deserve more recognition."
"Yeah," Mark said. "There's no respect. We need to take a stand."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this," Warren muttered.
"Of course you wouldn't get it," Clarisse said. "You're the only one of us that gets treated fairly."
"That's not true!"
Clarisse raised an eyebrow. "Isn't it? People are nice to you. You are dating the golden boy. You get to break the rules and go on quests. And you get rewarded for it! Do you think any of us have that privilege? Do you think any of us could step an inch out of line? Don't think I don't know what people say about me."
"I didn't know you felt that way," Warren said, stunned. "But we can handle our issues ourselves. We don't have to bring the whole camp into it. People are going to die."
"They wouldn't if Yew would hand over the chariot," Maya grumbled.
"Oh my gods," Warren blinked. "Look, I don't mean to be a bitch...well, yeah actually I do- what is wrong with all of you!?"
"What's wrong with us?" Clarisse said hotly. "What's wrong with us? More like what's wrong with you! You're so hellbent on keeping precious Prissy safe that you leveled a city block. Maybe if you cared a little less about him and more about your actual family, you would have fewer problems. Besides, the prophecy is all over camp, we all know he isn't going to make it."
"Take that back," Warren hissed.
"Or what?" Clarissed challenged, stepping close to Warren. "You gonna tell Chiron on me?"
"I could," Warren said coldly. "Or I could tell dad what a disappointment you are."
Clarisse's face turned purple with rage, but Warren continued. "I wonder how he'd react to the news that big, brave Clarisse is refusing the fight of a lifetime, all because she didn't get her way. She can't take orders, she can't be told 'no', and she can't get over herself! I don't know about you, but if I were him I'd see nothing more than a failure-"
Clarisse slapped Warren clean across the face. The impact was so hard that Warren saw stars. She cupped a hand to her stinging cheek.
Clarisse looked back at her, eyes shining with angry tears. "Get out."
"What?"
"Get out!" she repeated.
"I live here, you can't kick me out."
"No," Clarisse spat. "This is where my family lives. And I don't recognize you."
"I could say the same."
Warren turned on her heel, and with harsh, furious movements she began shoving her belongings into the duffle bag under her bed. She knew when she wasn't wanted, and she also knew she couldn't be in the same room as her sister without committing first degree murder. The rest of her siblings kept their mouths shut and looked at the floor. Some were angry, others were sad. But Warren just shouldered her bag silently and headed for the door.
"One last thing, Walker," Clarisse called out. "If you thought you had any chance of changing my mind, forget it. You and the rest of this camp are on your own."
"Thanks for letting me crash, guys." Warren said, wringing out her damp hair and tossing it over her shoulder.
Connor Stoll shrugged. "It's what we do. Wanderers, the lost and weary, well, our casa es...theirs too, or whatever."
"Yeah," Travis said. "We wouldn't want you sleeping out in the dirt."
"Although our floor isn't much better," Connor frowned at the scuffed and battered floorboards. "Sorry there's no more beds."
The Hermes cabin was overcrowded at the best of times, campers, unclaimed or otherwise, stuffed shoulder to shoulder like sardines in their bunks and on sleeping bags. But Warren didn't mind, anything was better than sharing with Clarisse.
"It's really fine," she said.
"Why not bunk with Percy?" Conner asked.
"Romantic cabin for two," Travis winked.
"Shut up." Warren chucked her pillow at him.
"Trouble in paradise?"
"No," she lied. "It's just too risky. Chiron would kill us."
"I'm more worried about Percy killing us," Connor laughed. "You in a cabin full of dashing young demigods? He might get the wrong idea."
"Not even if you were the last men on earth. Besides, Percy's not the jealous type."
The Stoll brothers exchanged a glance. "Uh, you sure about that?"
"I mean, yeah? Why?"
"Because," Travis said, "he totally knocked Pollux into the canoe lake three summers ago when he said he had a crush on you."
Warren's jaw dropped. "What! No, no way. First of all, Pollux?? And second of all, Percy would never."
"Pollux swears he tripped," Conner shrugged, "but I know what I saw."
"You've told a lot of crazy lies, but I think this one is your most ridiculous."
"It's not a lie!" Travis protested.
"Uh-huh. Next you're gonna tell me Santa Clause is real too." Warren grabbed her pillow back and settled into her sleeping bag.
"But-"
"OH MY GODS SHUT UP!" a voice shouted from the top bunk to their right. "Some of us are trying to sleep!"
Surprisingly, sleep found Warren easily that night. But she wished it hadn't. She was back there again. Where it had all gone so wrong. Flames obscured her vision and licked viscously at all corners of the room.
"We've got to get out! This place is coming down." It was Annabeth, but Warren couldn't see her. There was too much burning debris.
"Abs?"
"Careful," Annabeth spoke again. "Watch his right side."
"I'll call Chiron." This time is was Beckendorf's voice.
Warren coughed around a lungful of smoke. No matter where she looked she couldn't see them, but the air was getting steadily hotter. Somewhere up above a window shattered.
"Guys!" Warren yelled. "Where are you?"
"Oh Styx, I think he's going into shock," Annabeth cursed. "Clarisse hurry!"
Warren screamed in frustration. Why couldn't they hear her? Why couldn't she see them? She took a step toward the voices, but suddenly a burning beam fell from the ceiling right in front of her. Warren reeled backward, tripping over her feet. She landed hard, feeling the smoldering embers sear through her thin cotton shirt.
"It's going to be okay, baby." This voice stole the air from Warren's lungs.
"Mom?" she whispered. A nine headed shadow danced in the smoke above her, looming dark and oppressive. Warren felt like it was stepping on her chest.
"It's going to be okay. I promise."
***
Across the pavilion, alone in his cabin, Percy Jackson dreamed. And it wasn't scary...but it was troubling. He saw his friend, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, surrounded by her usual avalanche of art supplies and half-baked sketches. She was talking to her father.
"Are you still having bad dreams?" he asked her. "Headaches?"
Rachel scowled at the floor. "I should never have told you about that."
"I'm your father," he said. "I'm worried about you."
"Worried about the family's reputation," Rachel muttered.
Her father didn't react- maybe because he'd heard that comment before, or maybe because it was true.
"We could call Dr. Arkwright," he suggested. "He helped you get through the death of your hamster."
"I was six then," she said. "And no, Dad, I don't need a therapist. I just..." She shook her head helplessly.
Her father stopped in front of the windows. He gazed at the New York skyline as if he owned it- which wasn't true. He only owned part of it. "It will be good for you to get away," he decided. "You've had some unhealthy influences."
"I'm not going to Clarion Ladies Academy," Rachel said. "And my friends are none of your business."
Mr. Dare smiled, but it wasn't a warm smile. It was more like, Someday you'll realize how silly you sound.
"Try to get some sleep," he urged. "We'll be at the beach by tomorrow night. It will be fun."
"Fun," Rachel repeated. "Lots of fun."
Her father exited the room, leaving the door open behind him. Rachel walked to one of her easels, which was covered in a sheet.
"I hope they're dreams," she said.
She uncovered the easel. On it was hastily sketched charcoal, but Rachel was a good artist. The picture was definitely Luke as a young boy. He was about nine years old, with a wide grin and no scar on his face. Percy had no idea how Rachel could've known what he looked like back then, but the portrait was so good he had a feeling she wasn't guessing. From what Percy knew about Luke's life (which wasn't much), the picture showed him just before he'd found out he was a half-blood and had run away from home.
Rachel stared at the portrait. Then she uncovered the next easel. This picture was even more disturbing. It showed the Empire State Building with lightning all around it. In the distance a dark storm was brewing, with a huge hand coming out of the clouds. At the base of the building a crowd had gathered...but it wasn't a normal crowd of tourists and pedestrians. There were spears, javelins, and banners- the trappings of an army.
"Percy," Rachel muttered, as if she knew he was listening, "what is going on?"
***
Percy found Warren by the canoe lake the next morning, after she failed to show up for breakfast. She was assailing a training dummy so violently that his straw innards were strewn in a five foot radius. Warren buried Ravager into its burlap head again and again and again.
"You want to talk about it?" Percy asked tentatively.
"Not really." She hacked at the dummy harder.
"Okay. Well, did you want to come with me for cabin inspection? I, uh, think that dummy is dead. He won't miss you for a few minutes."
"Fine." Warren gave it one final chop for good measure. "Wait, this isn't your day for inspections."
"No, actually, it's yours. Chiron has me sorting his reports."
"Then why did you say-?"
"Because the reports are boring and I made the executive decision for us to switch."
Warren crossed her arms. "And why would I agree to that?"
"Because you'd do anything for me?" he said hopefully.
She rolled her eyes and tossed Ravager back into a coin. "You're lucky you're cute."
They started at the Poseidon cabin, which was basically just Percy. He'd made his bunk bed that morning (well, sort of) and straightened the Minotaur horn on the wall, so he gave himself a four out of five.
Warren made a face. "You're being generous." She used the end of her pencil to pick up an old pair of boxer shorts.
Percy snatched them away. "Hey, give me a break. I don't have Tyson cleaning up after me this summer."
Warren tried to skim through Chiron's stack of reports as they walked. There were messages from demigods, nature spirits, and satyrs all around the country, writing about the latest monster activity. They were pretty depressing, and her ADHD brain did not like concentrating on depressing things.
Little battles were raging everywhere. Camp recruitment was down to zero. Satyrs were having trouble finding new demigods and bringing them to Half-Blood Hill because so many monsters were roaming the country. Her friend Thalia, who led the Hunters of Artemis, hadn't been heard from in months, and if Artemis knew what had happened to them, she wasn't sharing information.
Warren and Percy visited the Aphrodite cabin, which of course got a five out of five. The beds were perfectly made. The clothes in everyone's footlockers were color coordinated. Fresh flowers bloomed on the windowsills. The whole place reeked of designer perfume which made Warren's nose itch.
"Great job as usual, Silena," she said, holding back a sneeze.
Silena nodded listlessly. The wall behind her bed was decorated with pictures of Beckendorf. She sat on her bunk with a box of chocolates on her lap, and Warren remembered that her dad owned a chocolate store in the Village, which was how he'd caught the attention of Aphrodite.
"You want a bonbon?" Silena asked. "My dad sent them. He thought- he thought they might cheer me up."
"Are they any good?" Percy asked.
She shook her head. "They taste like cardboard."
Percy didn't have anything against cardboard, so he tried one. Warren passed. They promised to see Silena later and kept going.
As they crossed the commons area, a fight broke out between the Ares and Apollo cabins. Some Apollo campers armed with firebombs flew over the Ares cabin in a chariot pulled by two pegasi. This was the first time Warren had actually seen the chariot. It gleamed beautifully in the sun, all polished metal and smooth angles. Still, Warren hated it.
Soon, the roof of the Ares cabin was burning, and naiads from the canoe lake rushed over to blow water on it. Then Warren's siblings called down a curse, and all the Apollo kids' arrows turned to rubber. They kept shooting, but the arrows just bounced off. Two archers ran by, chased by Naomi who was yelling in poetry: "Curse me, eh? I'll make you pay! I don't want to rhyme all day!"
Warren sighed. "Not that again. Last time Apollo cursed a cabin, it took a week for the rhyming couplets to wear off."
Not to be dramatic, but Warren had heard Apollo himself recite poetry. She'd rather get shot by an arrow.
"What are they fighting about anyway?" Percy asked.
Warren grit her teeth. "Something stupid."
"Does it have anything to do with why you maimed and dismembered that defenseless training dummy?"
"Maybe." Warren sighed and kicked a rock. It nailed a satyr in the back of the head. She waved apologetically, but he grumbled in goat-speak and left. "It's complicated."
"Are you guys still arguing because of what happened on our mission? I've told you a dozen times Warren, I'm okay."
"You wouldn't have been in danger in the first place if-" she cut herself off. "Never mind. That's not it," Warren finally admitted. "Clarisse and I had a big fight. Not like our usual ones, this one was bad. Anyway, I'm not welcome back in the cabin."
"What?" Percy said. "But she can't just kick you out! Especially since your mom just...they're your family. I knew Clarisse could be mean but I didn't think she'd go that low."
"It doesn't matter," Warren replied, tone clipped. "I don't want to be around her anyway."
"What about your other siblings? I'm sure they'll come around soon."
"I doubt it. They're all pissed because Ares cabin isn't respected. Clarisse meant it when she said none of them were backing camp in the war."
She and Percy had to duck suddenly as Michael Yew's chariot dive-bombed Ellis. The Ares boy tried to stab him and cuss him out in rhyming couplets. Even though she was furious with him, Warren was a little impressed that her brother found a rhyme for "bitch-ass" and "shit stain."
Once Warren and Percy finished their rounds on the cabins, they began making their way to the Big House. As they walked, Warren read over the last report, which was handwritten on a maple leaf from a satyr in Canada. If possible, the note made her feel even worse.
"'Dear Grover,'" she read aloud. "'Woods outside Toronto attacked by giant evil badger. Tried to do as you suggested and summon power of Pan. No effect. Many dryads' trees destroyed. Retreating to Ottawa. Please advise. Where are you? -Gleeson Hedge, protector.'" Warren grimaced. "You haven't heard anything from him? Even with your empathy link?"
Percy shook his head dejectedly. Ever since last summer when the god Pan had died, their friend Grover had been drifting farther and farther away. The Council of Cloven Elders treated him like an outcast, but Grover still traveled all over the East Coast, trying to spread the word about Pan and convince nature spirits to protect their own little bits of the wild. He'd only come back to camp a few times to see his girlfriend, Juniper. Last they'd heard he was in Central Park organizing the dryads, but nobody had seen or heard from him in two months. They'd tried to send Iris messages. They never got through.
Percy scuffed his shoes as he and Warren walked. He was troubled about Grover, but moreover he was troubled by the dream he'd had last night. It was one of those disturbing demigod dreams that left him shaking and confused. Percy didn't exactly want to bring it up, but he trusted Warren's opinion, and he needed her advice.
"Warren." Percy stopped her by the tetherball court. "Listen, I had this dream about, um, Rachel..."
He told her the whole thing, Rachel's weird dreams and the freaky drawings. It had to mean something, right?
For a while Warren didn't say anything. Then she rolled up the report so tight she ripped it. "What do you want me to say?"
"I'm not sure. You're the best battle strategist I know. If you were Kronos planning this war, what would you do next?"
"I'd use Typhon as a distraction. Then I'd hit Olympus directly, while the gods were in the West."
"Just like in Rachel's picture."
"Percy," she said, her voice tight, "Rachel is just a mortal."
Warren had no bad feelings toward the girl anymore...well, mostly none. But all the stress she'd been carrying had left her emotions simmering just below the surface. She didn't want to waste valuable time considering a mortal who had no business in this war.
"But what if her dream is true?" Percy asked. "Those other Titans- they said Olympus would be destroyed in a matter of days. They said they had plenty of other challenges. And what's with that picture of Luke as a kid-"
"We'll just have to be ready."
"How?" Percy said. "Look at our camp. We can't even stop fighting each other. And I'm supposed to get my stupid soul reaped."
Warren threw down her papers. "I knew we shouldn't have shown you the prophecy." Her voice was angry and sad. "All it did was scare you. If you hadn't known, if I could've protected you-"
"I'm not an invalid, Warren. I don't need you to protect me."
"Well what am I supposed to do?" she tossed her arms up in the air.
"Trust that I can take care of myself! Honestly, you've been smothering me for months and I'm tired of it."
"Smothering you?" she said, completely taken aback.
"Yes! Ever since the summer started you've been acting like a drill sargent, not my girlfriend. And when you're not busy telling me to drop and give you fifty, you're acting all weird and distant. It's like you don't even want to be in the same room with me half of the time. But then I thought...you know, back in the attic..." he exhaled hard. "You're hot then cold, I mean, what am I supposed to think?"
"Have you stopped for a second to consider that maybe I'm terrified of losing you?"
"I get that, really I do. But you can't control everything, Warren."
"You think I don't know that, Percy? That's why I'm scared!"
"What, like I'm not scared too? This is my life on the line here."
"I thought if I could prepare you..." she shook her head, the sentence dying in her throat.
"That's not your responsibility."
"I didn't know what else to do."
"And you thought pushing me away was a good place to start?"
"If I couldn't protect you," Warren admitted shakily, "then I at least had to protect myself."
Percy grabbed her hands. "It's not like I'm planning to die."
"I know, but we're fighting against a prophecy-"
"That you've known about for years."
"Yes, but-"
"But what? You knew I was doomed from the start, so why is it different now?"
"Because!" Warren shouted. "I didn't know how important you'd be to me back then."
Percy looked hurt. "So you were fine with me dying up until you realized you had feelings for me?"
"What? No! I-" her voice faltered. She shook her head and whispered, "I can't keep doing this."
"What?"
"I can't," Warren said miserably. "This...us. I can't."
Percy looked back at her, completely stunned. "I don't understand."
"Percy, I'm in the way," she said. "You're right. I thought I was helping you, but I'm only making things worse. Our relationship is a distraction, and we can't afford that right now."
"What about being a team?" he said sharply. That's what it had always come down to, even in the bleakest of moments- it was the two of them, together.
"This prophecy is your fate, Percy, not mine. No matter how hard I try I can't carry it with you. We- we only have a few days to prepare. Just focus on that, okay?"
He shook his head. "I just want things to be how they were before."
"The world is different now," Warren said. "We have to be different too. You almost died to save me, I can't let that happen again. I refuse to be a liability. From now on you only need to worry about yourself."
"It doesn't matter if you're my girlfriend or not, I'm always going to worry about you."
"Well don't. This is exactly why I'm removing myself from the picture."
"You mean you're running away."
"I'm doing what's best for both of us."
"Because that's your decision, right?" Percy snapped. "If it's not a prophecy deciding my future, it's you?"
Warren had to work very hard to keep her voice from trembling. "I'm sorry."
Percy set his jaw. "You were so worried about losing me? Well congratulations, Warren. You just lost me."
Percy stormed off, leaving Warren where she stood, each of them feeling a piece of their heart missing.
...............................
book 5 really came to hurt my feelings!!!!! literally why do I do this
if you want to REALLY hurt your feelings listen to Close as Strangers by 5sos (Percy's POV)