Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Book Six
“The Dark Olympians”
Prologue: Luke and I
Fight a Dead God
Now
That was an understatement.
Really.
It looked more like the Underworld on acid.
Not that I’d know. Perhaps the guy hanging off me, being dragged the last however many miles, knew better, but at the moment, he was as stunned as I was.
Stunned, being an understatement.
“It’s…It’s gone,” Luke Castellan whispered, his voice weak not from the gaping hole in his side. “Percy, it’s completely gone.”
And burned and destroyed and desecrated.
The mess was nothing more than a blackened crater of despair. The climbing wall was a climbing pit, and don’t get me started on the Zephyros Creek. It physically hurt—worse than even a toxic waste spill in the middle of the Pacific.
“Come on, Luke,” I urged, clinging to him harder than I should’ve with his wound. “Let’s see if there’s anyone left.”
Part of me missed Thalia’s pine, watching over the camp like a guardian angel (now a smoldering pile of ashes). A bigger part of me missed her, the way she moved behind my back, watching it during a fight. I missed her punk hair and her silver smile of power.
I shook my head and treaded forward, aware of Luke’s growing weight. He was almost unable to carry any part of himself anymore.
“I…I can believe nothing’s left,” he murmured.
Luke voiced the words that echoed
in my own heart. Dragging our bodies through the smoky deathscape,
I wondered if I truly remembered the camp clearly. How could this hellish scene
be where I spent my magical, surreal summers? To the left I saw the bathrooms
where Clarisse tried to dunk me during my first year. And the
amphitheater—Chiron had almost burned my flag when the camp thought I’d died
fighting in
I directed my attention to the cabins.
Whatever was left of my heart died.
“You were wrong,” I informed Luke, who tensed and gasped. “They left something for us.”
A twisted, evil, demented present that would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life—for however long that would be.
If this were only a dream.
Blood soaked the cabins like a fresh coat of paint and pinned in the middle of each door was the god or goddess’s sacred animal—an eagle, a lion, an owl, a dove, a boar, a mouse, a she-bear, a tiger…
On Poseidon’s door—a Pegasus.
Blackjack.
On Hades’s—a hellhound.
Mrs. O’Leary.
Luke suddenly found strength neither of us knew he had and grabbed my face, manually turning it from the macabre scene. “They died fast. One swift shot. It barely hurt.”
“How can you say that?” I argued, the tears stinging my eyes. “My horse, my dog…They killed my pets.”
“But they didn’t kill the Half-Bloods. They’re not here. No one’s here, even Chiron. Maybe he got them to safety.”
“Or maybe the bastard has them all.”
Luke smirked, the boyish grin he used to give me my first summer at camp. “Percy Jackson, you are not thinking like the God of Wisdom.”
“I’m not. Maybe that’s why.”
“You dated the Goddess of Wisdom. You know what she would say right now?”
Luke, you bastard. I didn’t want to think of her. I couldn’t think of her. Not now. Not if we wanted to survive.
But I did—think of her and her know-it-all voice.
“There’s nothing to gain from their deaths,” I murmured, hearing her speak them to me.
Luke smacked my forehead. “Wrong. Their deaths would have demoralized any reinforcements from becoming heroes. Then again, it would have—”
“—marked their deaths with our swords.”
Luke smiled again. “There’s the Seaweed Brain we all know and love.”
“Yes,” a cryptic voice bleated behind me. “We all know and love, the liar.”
“Grover?” I asked, hesitant. It sounded like Grover but didn’t. Did that make sense?
Not to mention one little problem: Grover’s dead.
I’d know. The empathy link we used to share almost killed me, too.
From what remained of the forest, the dark figure came forth, his eyes bright gold, his once brilliant blond hair a mucky brown. Scratches scraped across his gray, moldy face, and dirt splashed across his cheeks like blood splashed across mine.
Oh, gods.
“You promised,” Grover continued, his face contorted in a painful but powerful grimace. “You promised nature wouldn’t be harmed. You said you would protect us all. You said you could save us, and yet everything—everything is gone!”
He lunged faster than I ever knew Grover to move, and I unceremoniously dropped Luke, so I could pull Riptide.
Huffing, bracing himself in the mud, Luke rasped, “This isn’t Grover, Percy. It can’t be…”
“No duh.”
I kept telling myself that. I mean, I buried the body myself, gave it final, Wild rites. I knew this couldn’t be Grover.
Now if only he didn’t look like him, sound like him.
*sniff*
Smell like him.
Grover dove
for me, and Riptide absorbed his blow from his—his bronze dagger? No. Annabeth’s dagger, the one Luke had given her, the one Luke
turned on himself in
I didn’t attack. I couldn’t. This was Grover, and he lunged with a fierceness he never had before. My sword moved a little slower than it should’ve, and when I turned, his dagger snagged across the small of my back—my weak point.
That was close, but I couldn’t fight. I just couldn’t.
“Percy, snap out of it!” Luke screamed. “It’s not Grover!”
“But what if it is!” I shouted back, giving ground with each slice of Grover’s dagger. “What if he came back, too?”
Like Luke.
Grover pulled out his greatest weapon then—his pipe. Lyrical music filled the dark scene with jingles from Jessica Simpson and Justin Bieber, and my foot snuck into the dirt. No—I tugged at my left leg, where thorn-ed roots encircled and made a root boot around my calf. The roots continued to climb my jeans, tearing through the skin and piercing my skin, first the left side, then the right. As I swiped, the dagger stabbed my sword arm.
Riptide fell helplessly to my side.
Apparently, invincibility wasn’t what it used to be now that I had become…what I was.
“Haven’t you learned by now, Perseus Jackson?” Grover growled, his voice colder than the winter breeze along icebergs. He ripped the dagger from my arm and took great pleasure shoving it into my thigh. “Bow. Bow before your lord and master.”
The dagger twisted, exploding pain throughout my body. I clenched my teeth from crying out and willed myself not to fall to my knees, despite the vines about my legs.
“Kronos,” I bit.
Grover’s lips flicked into a deadly smirk. “Who else did you believe, godling?”
The wind blew through my long hair and scraped along my flushed, bloody cheeks. Then, the hair blew across my eyes, wavering like threads of time.
Kronos-Gover tore the dagger from my thigh and wiped the crimson off upon my shirt. “Gods can’t die—oh, wait. You proved that wrong, didn’t you?”
I looked away, memories piercing more painfully than any dagger. “How can you be here?” I demanded, breathing heavily. “You were thrown back into Tartarus, last time I checked.”
“Yes, but Hades no longer governs that realm.”
Nico did until…
“The Dark Gods have asked for my…assistance in a certain task as they have discovered they cannot kill you.”
My eyes snapped his eyes; knowledge burned in his gaze. “You know.”
“It is hard, if not impossible, to destroy your realm. A half-blooded teenage boy…not so much. This, of course, leaves me with an opportunity of a lifetime.” Kronos feigns comfort, brushing my bangs back from my sea-green eyes. “Do you know what I’m thinking right now?”
Huffing, I didn’t know how I remained standing. “The lyrics to ‘In My Head’? Gods, is it catchy.”
Gods slap pretty hard. Blood trickled from the creek of my lips. “How many ways I can destroy you.”
“Good luck. You couldn’t do it before. What makes you believe you can do it now?”
“Isn’t this your fatal flaw,
“Except you’re not his friend.”
Backbiter ripped through Grover’s chest, spurting green blood across my own. With his last grip on Grover’s body, Kronos whirled and shoved his bronze dagger into Luke’s torso.
“NO!” I shrilled, but it was too late.
Luke collapsed back onto the ground, thumping in emphasis, while Grover’s eyes darkened.
Huffing,
like he’d run a marathon, Kronos rasped, “This isn’t
over. See what has been done to your precious sanctuary. There is no place to
hide anymore,
I tried not to cringe at his braying but deathly laughter.
“…nothing can save you from the Doors of Death.”
His head dropped back against the polluted ground, and just beyond his black eyes, I saw Luke, struggling against the dagger in his already damaged side. With my bloody, shaking hand, I managed to touch the vines holding my legs and drain the water from them. Drying the branches, I broke through and fell to his side, taking a hold of the dagger hilt.
His trembling hand covered mine. “Cursed blade, huh? I can’t seem to win versus this thing.”
“Just…Just hold on, Luke. We’ll get you help.” I beseeched the bubbling water. “We’ll get you to the river, the sound. I can—”
“It’s poisoned. You know that .” He grabbed my shirt and pulled me close to whisper. “We had a good run, didn’t we?”
I shook my head and closed my eyes to hide the tears. No. Not again. I refused to let him go. Grover, Thalia, Rachel, Nico, The Stoll Brothers, Clarisse even. Tyson. Triton. Dad.
Annabeth.
Not Luke, too. I couldn’t handle it.
“Maybe the third time’ll be the charm, right?” he gasped. “Percy…Percy, look at me.”
I did, pitifully and painfully.
“Promise me, Percy. Promise me you’ll finish this.”
“Luke…”
With the strength of a god, he
pulled me close, so we were nose-to-nose. His eyes glowed
an ethereal blue. “Promise me, Percy. Please…finish this. For
Whom he loved.
“For Annabeth.”
Whom I loved.
An oath to keep with a final
breath.
“I…I promise, Luke.”
He smiled contently, like he knew I always would, like he always knew I was the child of another great prophecy.
“You always were the best of us,” he muttered. “…Percy Jackson of the Olympians.”
Then, his eyes grew dark, and warmth fled his body.
I bowed my head into his chest and wept.
For the first time since I saw my mom taken by a minotaur, I was alone. Even the sea couldn’t comfort me as I heard the waves crest and fall against the beach.
I buried Luke under the ashes of Thalia’s tree, Grover by Juniper again.
I gave final rites to Luke, praying for his father to keep him safe. I gave Grover the blessing of the Wild, knowing he died hating me for a promise I couldn’t fulfill.
Not again, I vowed as I stood and dusted the dirt from my knees. Never again.
Kronos said the Dark Gods couldn’t kill me, but they could kill a half-blooded teenage boy. There’s only one way that could ever happen.
With a heavy heart, I fell to my knees at the top of Half-Blood Hill and closed my eyes. Water rose up from the Long Island Sound and flooded what was left of the camp. There was no going back.
Steeling my
nerves, I rose and headed toward
I had
sacrilege to commit on the 600th Floor of the
To Be Continued…