When I woke up, Apollo was gone and the train had stopped moving. I sighed and climbed out of the car. Everyone else was climbing out of there cars as well. We jumped of the train and made our way up to the nearest town, Cloudcroft, New Mexico. There was tons of snow up here. I picked up a snowball and threw it at the back of Zoe's head. It hit its target.
Zoe whipped around and glared at me. I smiled and waved innocently. An evil smile grew on her face. She held a finger to her lips then scooped up her own snowball. She threw it at Percy. He flipped around and glared at me. I shook my head. He turned his glare to Thalia who pointed at Zoe. Zoe just smirked at Percy. He threw a snowball at her. We started an all out snowball war.
The war ended when I tackled my brother and we landed in a huge pile of snow. A laughing Thalia helped pull us out. Percy and I used our magic to remove the water from everyone's cloths. Thank the gods we did that, otherwise Grover would smell like wet goat. Yuck!
We started to walk to the edge of town, but Grover collapsed. I felt a power surge around me and the nature seemed to come to life. The plastic rat Percy bought at a side store in the town turned into a real rat and scurried away. Grover was mumbling something that none of us could understand. Thalia and Percy lifted him up and we continued walking. We had only four days left, we couldn't stop now. Out of nowhere, five skeleton men showed up. They had been tracking us since D.C. Percy said that the General had created them. Now, I just need to find out who the General is.
We fought hard. We just couldn't kill the things. Everytime we knocked a head off, the demon would just pick it up and put it back on. Bianca stabbed one with her hunting knife, and it burst into green flames. That one stayed dead. It didn't work with Zoe's knife, though. They were made of the same metal. Suddenly, I got an idea. I pulled out my wand. "Incendio!" I shouted, pointing my wand at a skeleton man. He burst into flame and fell to the ground.
I didn't have any time to see what happened to him, because just then, a giant hog showed up. We have the worst luck. Grover, who was now awake, ordered us to climb on. At the moment, we would all do anything as long as it would get us away from the skeleton men. When we were all on, the boar to run. It turned out it was the Erymanthian Boar. How wonderful, not. We rode that creature all day. It was ridiculously uncomfortable and I don't recommend it.
We got off in Gila Claw, Arizona. It was the definition of a ghost town. All of the shops were boarded up. There were absolutely no people. The only thing there, was a two lane road straight through the middle of the town. We decided to camp out there. Zoe and Bianca produced six sleeping bags and foam mattresses and Percy and Grover collected some wood from a nearby shop. Thalia zapped it with lightning, she was a Lightning Mage because she was a daughter of Zeus, and it burst into flames. I summoned some hot dogs from my charm and we roasted them over the fire.
Later on, I sat staring at the sky. It was beautiful with all the stars out. There were millions of them since there were no city lights to block them from view. I had never actually seen the Milky Way before and here I was staring up at it. I was amazed.
A bright light flashed a little ways down the road. A sat up with everyone else. It was a car. A pure white limo pulled to a stop in front of us. A man stepped out of the driver's seat. I recognized him instantly. He was Ares. I growled when I saw him. He sneered at me and turned to my brother. He pointed his sword at Percy's throat. "At ease, people. This is a friendly meeting." He snapped his fingers and our weapons dropped to the ground. "Of course I'd love taking your head and your sister's head as a trophy, but someone wants to see you. And I never behead my enemies in front of a lady."
"What lady?" asked Thalia.
Ares glared at her and said, "I doubt she wants to meet the rest of you. Particularly not them." He gestured at the Hunters. "Why don't you all go get some tacos while you wait."
"Okay," I smirked at him. I summoned some tacos from my bracelet. "Want one?" I should have known my sarcasm would get me in trouble. He gripped me around the throat and slammed me into the wall of an out of business general store.
"Watch your tongue, girl. You should be glad I haven't killed you yet," he growled.
"I'd like to see you try," I choked back. "A twelve-year old with two weeks of training beat you in a sword fight." He growled and let me drop to the floor.
"This isn't over, punk." I glared at him. Ares threw my brother into the limo and got back in. I massaged my throat and Grover rushed over to me with some nectar.
When Ares threw Percy out of the limo, a cloud of dust covered everything. After it disappeared, everything was gone. The limo was gone as was Gila Claw. We were in the middle of the junkyard we had seen outside of Gila Claw. "Be careful," Percy warned. "Aphrodite told me not to bring anything out of this place. Now, which way do we go?"
I pointed directly in front of us. "We need to go west. The North Star is on our right. That makes west forwards." Everyone nodded and followed me. Thank the gods we have to take Astronomy classes in Hogwarts. We started our trek across the junkyard of the gods. A lot of the stuff in here was solid gold. We couldn't help but check a few things out.
Finally, we saw the end of the junkyard about a half mile ahead of us. The one problem was there were 10 large, bronze columns blocking our path. They looked like toes. I exchanged a glance with Thalia and Zoe. They recognized them too. "Let's go around. Far around," said Thalia. I was quick to voice my agreement. Percy did not agree. He wanted to climb over them. Eventually, we agreed to walk around it. It was too late.
The ten toes tilted over. The automaton's knees bent. It sat up and used its hands to lift it up until it was standing. I was terrified. We were facing the bronze giant, Talos, or at least a prototype of him. Talos turned to face us. "Who?" I hissed. "Who took something?" One shall be lost in the land without rain. The line of the prophecy rang through my head. One of us was going to die. Talos took his sword out of its sheath. The metal screeching against metal hurt my ears. It felt like they were bleeding. It hurt so badly. The blade was 100 feet long easy.
Talos took a giant step forward, closing half the distance between us. "Run!" Grover shouted. He didn't need to tell me twice. We split up and all ran in different directions around Talos. This seemed to confuse him. I ran with Grover around back and we tried to find weak links in his joints. I saw Percy and Bianca on the other side. Bianca ran forward and Percy tried to stop her. She ran straight under Talos' foot. Bianca disappeared beneath it.
"No!" I don't know who shouted. It might have been me, but I'm not sure. Talos froze and began to twitch. His head began to turn full 360° circles. Bianca had somehow made it into his control system. He completely froze and his head stopped swiveling. With a loud CRASH!, Talos exploded. Debris flew everywhere. I ran forwards, I needed to find Bianca. Grover grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I struggled against him, but he held me back. When all the debris had settled, he finally let me go. I rushed forwards and began digging through the piles of metal.
I searched for hours. After a while, the others joined my search. I knew someone was going to die here. I just didn't want to believe it. As the sun began to lift over the eastern horizon, we gave up. We stumbled to the road. There was an old pickup truck at the edge. It was old and rusty, but it had a full tank of gas. We decided to borrow it. Grover, Percy, and I sat in the bed and Zoe and Thalia sat up front. Thalia was driving us. I leaned against Percy. For some reason, he kept muttering about how Bianca's death was his fault. I was too tired to correct him.
When the truck ran out of gas, Thalia got out and slammed the door shut. Immediately, one of the tires popped. Wonderful, everything is going just great. Grover spotted a path and we followed it up. We found two canoes. I climbed in with Thalia and Zoe and Percy and Grover climbed into another one. Percy asked the naiads to bring us upstream. They were happy to help. They brought us all the way up to the Hoover Dam, then went back downstream, grumbling about stupid dams. I felt kinda bad for them.
We decided to go see the dam when we got out of the water. It was for Annabeth. She had always wanted to come here. "Let us find the dam snack bar," said Zoe.
"The dam snack bar?" asked Grover, cracking a smile. I giggled softly.
"Yes. What is funny?"
"Nothing," Grover said, trying to keep a straight face. "I could use some dam french fries."
Even Thalia started smiling at that. "And I need to use the dam restroom." I think it was because we were all so stressed out, but we all started cracking up, except Zoe. She was still confused.
"I want to use the dam water fountain," I smiled.
"And I want to buy a dam T-shirt," Thalia chuckled. I kept laughing til I heard a moo.
"Did I just hear a cow?" Grover and I asked at the same time. We looked over at Percy. He looked a little ill.
"Fratello, are you feeling okay? You don't look so good."
Percy nodded. "I-I'm fine. I just need a minute to think. Go on ahead." I looked back at my twin one last time before following everyone else inside. We went to the snack bar and I ordered a cheeseburger. When I finished, I got up to throw out my garbage. Normally, I would give it to Grover, but that didn't seem like a good idea in a place full of tourists. Percy burst in. "We need to leave. Now!"
Zoe stood up and muttered an Ancient Greek curse. "He's right look!" All of the skeleton men were accounted for except the one Bianca killed. Turns out incendio does not kill skeleton people, whoops! We ran as fast as we could. Soon, we were surrounded by the things. We were cornered up against two winged angel statues. They were sacred to Zeus. Why did I remember that? Wait, they're sacred to Zeus!
"Thalia, pray to your dad. Ask him for help!" She began to argue about how he never listens. Eventually, I got her to cave. When she opened her eyes, nothing happened. The skeletons were closing in on us. We turned around so we could defend ourselves. Two great shadows loomed over us. A giant bronze arm swept the skeletons out of the way. I looked up to see the two bronze statues were moving.
The angels looked down at us. They asked Thalia if she was the daughter of Zeus and she said yes. They picked us up and began to fly. Thalia and I were squeezed together in the same hand. She clung to me as the angels took off. This can not be good for her fear of heights.
The statues names were Hank and Chuck. I didn't know statues had names. They were flying us to San Francisco. Along the way, they told stories about their times spent in Frisco. I was shocked that they had been to Frisco before. Who would have guessed?