Percy Jackson The Complete Collection (23 page)

I tried not to feel hurt. Here was my own dad, telling me he was sorry I’d been born. ‘I don’t mind, Father.’

‘Not yet, perhaps,’ he said. ‘Not yet. But it was an unforgivable mistake on my part.’

‘I’ll leave you then.’ I bowed awkwardly. ‘I – I won’t bother you again.’

I was five steps away when he called, ‘Perseus.’

I turned.

There was a different light in his eyes, a fiery kind of pride. ‘You did well, Perseus. Do not misunderstand me. Whatever else you do, know that you are mine. You are a true son of the Sea God.’

As I walked back through the city of the gods, conversations stopped. The muses paused their concert. People and satyrs and naiads all turned towards me, their faces filled with respect and gratitude and, as I passed, they knelt, as if I were some kind of hero.

I caught a taxi to my mom’s apartment, rang the doorbell, and there she was – my beautiful mother, smelling of peppermint and licorice, the weariness and worry evaporating from her face as soon as she saw me.

‘Percy! Oh, thank goodness. Oh, my baby.’

She crushed the air right out of me. We stood in the hallway as she cried and ran her hands through my hair.

I’ll admit it – my eyes were a little misty, too. I was shaking, I was so relieved to see her.

She told me she’d just appeared at the apartment that morning, scaring Gabe half out of his wits. She didn’t remember anything since the Minotaur, and couldn’t believe it when Gabe told her I was a wanted criminal, travelling across the country, blowing up national monuments. She’d been going out of her mind with worry all day because she hadn’t heard the news. Gabe had forced her to go into work, saying she had a month’s salary to make up and she’d better get started.

I swallowed back my anger and told her my own story. I tried to make it sound less scary than it had been, but that wasn’t easy. I was just getting to the fight with Ares when Gabe’s voice interrupted from the living room. ‘Hey, Sally! That meat loaf done yet or what?’

She closed her eyes. ‘He isn’t going to be happy to see you, Percy. The store got half a million phone calls today from Los Angeles… something about free appliances.’

‘Oh, yeah. About that…’

She managed a weak smile. ‘Just don’t make him angrier, all right? Come on.’

In the month I’d been gone, the apartment had turned into Gabeland. Garbage was ankle-deep on the carpet. The sofa had been reupholstered in beer cans. Dirty socks and underwear hung off the lampshades.

Gabe and three of his big goony friends were playing poker at the table.

When Gabe saw me, his cigar dropped out of his mouth. His face got redder than lava. ‘You got nerve coming here, you little punk. I thought the police –’

‘He’s not a fugitive after all,’ my mom interjected. ‘Isn’t that wonderful, Gabe?’

Gabe looked back and forth between us. He didn’t seem to think my homecoming was so wonderful.

‘Bad enough I had to give back your life insurance money, Sally,’ he growled. ‘Get me the phone. I’ll call the cops.’

‘Gabe, no!’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you just say “
no
”? You think I’m gonna put up with this punk again? I can still press charges against him for ruining my Camaro.’

‘But –’

He raised his hand, and my mother flinched.

For the first time, I realized something. Gabe had hit my mother. I didn’t know when, or how much. But I was sure he’d done it. Maybe it had been going on for years, when I wasn’t around.

A balloon of anger started expanding in my chest. I came towards Gabe, instinctively taking my pen out of my pocket.

He just laughed. ‘What, punk? You gonna write on me? You touch me, and you are going to jail forever, you understand?’

‘Hey, Gabe,’ his friend Eddie interrupted. ‘He’s just a kid.’

Gabe looked at him resentfully and mimicked in a falsetto voice: ‘
Just a kid!’

His other friends laughed like idiots.

‘I’ll be nice to you, punk.’ Gabe showed me his tobacco-stained teeth. ‘I’ll give you five minutes to get your stuff and clear out. After that, I call the police.’

‘Gabe!’ my mother pleaded.

‘He ran away,’ Gabe told her. ‘Let him stay gone.’

I was itching to uncap Riptide but, even if I did, the blade wouldn’t hurt humans. And Gabe, by the loosest definition, was human.

My mother took my arm. ‘Please, Percy. Come on. We’ll go to your room.’

I let her pull me away, my hands still trembling with rage.

My room had been completely filled with Gabe’s junk. There were stacks of used car batteries, a rotting bouquet of sympathy flowers with a card from somebody who’d seen his Barbara Walters interview.

‘Gabe is just upset, honey,’ my mother told me. ‘I’ll talk to him later. I’m sure it will work out.’

‘Mom, it’ll never work out. Not as long as Gabe’s here.’

She wrung her hands nervously. ‘I can… I’ll take you to work with me for the rest of the summer. In the autumn, maybe there’s another boarding school –’

‘Mom.’

She lowered her eyes. ‘I’m trying, Percy. I just… I need some time.’

A package appeared on my bed. At least, I could’ve sworn it hadn’t been there a moment before.

It was a battered cardboard box about the right size to fit a basketball. The address on the mailing slip was in my own handwriting:

Suddenly I understood what Poseidon had told me on Olympus.

A package. A decision.

I looked at my mother. ‘Mom, do you want Gabe gone?’

‘Percy, it isn’t that simple. I –’

‘Mom, just tell me. That jerk has been hitting you. Do you want him gone or not?’

She hesitated, then nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Yes, Percy. I do. And I’m trying to get up my courage to tell him. But you can’t do this for me. You can’t solve my problems.’

I looked at the box.

I
could
solve her problem. I wanted to slice that package open, plop it on the poker table, and take out what was inside. I could start my very own statue garden, right there in the living room.

That’s what a Greek hero would do in the stories, I thought. That’s what Gabe deserves.

But a hero’s story always ended in tragedy. Poseidon had told me that.

I remembered the Underworld. I thought about Gabe’s spirit drifting forever in the Fields of Asphodel, or condemned to some hideous torture behind the barbed wire of the Fields of Punishment – an eternal poker game, sitting up to his waist in boiling oil listening to opera music. Did I have the right to send someone there? Even Gabe?

A month ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Now…

‘I can do it,’ I told my mom. ‘One look inside this box, and he’ll never bother you again.’

She glanced at the package, and seemed to understand immediately. ‘No, Percy,’ she said, stepping away. ‘You can’t.’

‘Poseidon called you a queen,’ I told her. ‘He said he hadn’t met a woman like you in a thousand years.’

Her cheeks flushed. ‘Percy –’

‘You deserve better than this, Mom. You should go to college, get your degree. You can write your novel, meet a nice guy maybe, live in a nice house. You don’t need to protect me any more by staying with Gabe. Let me get rid of him.’

She wiped a tear off her cheek. ‘You sound so much like your father,’ she said. ‘He offered to stop the tide for me once. He offered to build me a palace at the bottom of the sea. He thought he could solve all my problems with a wave of his hand.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

Her multicoloured eyes seemed to search inside me. ‘I think you know, Percy. I think you’re enough like me to understand. If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. I can’t let a god take care of me… or my son. I have to… find the courage on my own. Your quest has reminded me of that.’

We listened to the sound of poker chips, swearing and ESPN from the living-room television.

‘I’ll leave the box,’ I said. ‘If he threatens you…’

She looked pale, but she nodded. ‘Where will you go, Percy?’

‘Half-Blood Hill.’

‘For the summer… or forever?’

‘I guess that depends.’

We locked eyes, and I sensed that we had an agreement.
We would see how things stood at the end of the summer.

She kissed my forehead. ‘You’ll be a hero, Percy. You’ll be the greatest of all.’

I took one last look around my bedroom. I had a feeling I’d never see it again. Then I walked with my mother to the front door.

‘Leaving so soon, punk?’ Gabe called after me. ‘Good riddance.’

I had one last twinge of doubt. How could I turn down the perfect chance to take revenge on him? I was leaving here without saving my mother.

‘Hey, Sally,’ he yelled. ‘What about that meat loaf, huh?’

A steely look of anger flared in my mother’s eyes, and I thought, just maybe, I was leaving her in good hands after all. Her own.

‘The meat loaf is coming right up, dear,’ she told Gabe. ‘Meat loaf surprise.’

She looked at me, and winked.

The last thing I saw as the door swung closed was my mother staring at Gabe, as if she were contemplating how he would look as a garden statue.

Annabeth’s shroud was so beautiful – grey silk with embroidered owls – I told her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. She punched me and told me to shut up.

Being the son of Poseidon, I didn’t have any cabin mates, so the Ares cabin had volunteered to make my shroud. They’d taken an old bedsheet and painted smiley faces with X’ed-out eyes around the border, and the word
LOSER
painted really big in the middle.

It was fun to burn.

As Apollo’s cabin led the sing-along and passed out toasted marshmallows, I was surrounded by my old Hermes cabinmates, Annabeth’s friends from Athena and Grover’s satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand new searcher’s licence he’d received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had called Grover’s performance on the quest
‘Brave to the point of indigestion. Horns-and-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past.’

The only ones not in a party mood were Clarisse and her cabinmates, whose poisonous looks told me they’d never forgive me for disgracing their dad.

That was okay with me.

Even Dionysus’s welcome-home speech wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits. ‘Yes, yes, so the little brat didn’t get himself killed and now hell have an even bigger head. Well, huzzah for that. In other announcements, there will be
no
canoe races this Saturday…’

I moved back into cabin three, but it didn’t feel so lonely any more. I had my friends to train with during the day. At night, I lay awake and listened to the sea, knowing my father was out there. Maybe he wasn’t quite sure about me yet, maybe he hadn’t even wanted me born, but he was watching. And so far, he was proud of what I’d done.

As for my mother, she had a chance at a new life. Her letter arrived a week after I got back to camp. She told me Gabe had left mysteriously – disappeared off the face of the planet, in fact. She’d reported him missing to the police, but she had a funny feeling they would never find him.

On a completely unrelated subject, she’d sold her first life-size concrete sculpture, entitled
The Poker Player
, to a collector, through an art gallery in Soho. She’d got so much money for it, she’d put a deposit down on a new apartment and made a payment on her first term’s tuition at NYU. The Soho gallery was clamouring for more of
her work, which they called ‘a huge step forward in super-ugly neorealism’.

But don’t worry,
my mom wrote.
I’m done with sculpture. I’ve disposed of that box of tools you left me. It’s time for me to turn to writing.

At the bottom, she wrote a P.S.:
Percy, I’ve found a good private school here in the city. I’ve put a deposit down to hold you a spot, in case you want to enrol for seventh grade. You could live at home. But if you want to go year-round at Half-Blood Hill, I’ll understand.

I folded the note carefully and set it on my bedside table. Every night before I went to sleep, I read it again, and I tried to decide how to answer her.

As Annabeth and I were spreading a picnic blanket, Grover showed up to tell us goodbye. He was dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt and trainers, but in the last few weeks he’d started to look older, almost high-school age. His goatee had got thicker. He’d put on weight. His horns
had grown a few centimetres at least, so he now had to wear his rasta cap all the time to pass as human.

‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I just came to say… well, you know.’

I tried to feel happy for him. After all, it wasn’t every day a satyr got permission to go look for the great god Pan. But it was hard saying goodbye. I’d only known Grover a year, yet he was my oldest friend.

Annabeth gave him a hug. She told him to keep his fake feet on.

I asked him where he was going to search first.

‘Kind of a secret,’ he said, looking embarrassed. ‘I wish you could come with me, guys, but humans and Pan…’

‘We understand,’ Annabeth said. ‘You got enough tin cans for the trip?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you remembered your reed pipes?’

‘Jeez, Annabeth,’ he grumbled. ‘You’re like an old mama goat.’

But he didn’t really sound annoyed.

He gripped his walking stick and slung a backpack over his shoulder. He looked like any hitchhiker you might see on an American highway – nothing like the little runty boy I used to defend from bullies at Yancy Academy.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘wish me luck.’

He gave Annabeth another hug. He clapped me on the shoulder, then headed back through the dunes.

Fireworks exploded to life overhead: Hercules killing
the Nemean lion, Artemis chasing the boar, George Washington (who, by the way, was a son of Athena) crossing the Delaware.

‘Hey, Grover,’ I called.

He turned at the edge of the woods.

‘Wherever you’re going – I hope they make good enchiladas.’

Grover grinned, and then he was gone, the trees closing around him.

‘We’ll see him again,’ Annabeth said.

I tried to believe it. The fact that no searcher had ever come back in two thousand years… well, I decided not to think about that. Grover would be the first. He had to be.

I spent my days devising new strategies for capture-the-flag and making alliances with the other cabins to keep the banner out of Ares’s hands. I got to the top of the climbing wall for the first time without getting scorched by lava.

From time to time, I’d walk past the Big House, glance up at the attic windows and think about the Oracle. I tried to convince myself that its prophecy had come to completion.

The campers had one last meal together. We burned part of our dinner for the gods. At the bonfire, the senior counsellors awarded the end-of-summer beads.

I got my own leather necklace, and when I saw the bead for my first summer, I was glad the firelight covered my blushing. The design was pitch black, with a sea-green trident shimmering in the centre.

‘The choice was unanimous,’ Luke announced. ‘This bead commemorates the first son of the Sea God at this camp, and the quest he undertook into the darkest part of the Underworld to stop a war!’

The entire camp got to their feet and cheered. Even Ares’s cabin felt obliged to stand. Athena’s cabin steered Annabeth to the front so she could share in the applause.

I’m not sure I’d ever felt as happy or sad as I did at that moment. I’d finally found a family, people who cared about me and thought I’d done something right. And in the morning, most of them would be leaving for the year.

The decision should have been easy. I mean, nine months of hero training or nine months of sitting in a classroom – duh.

But there was my mom to consider. For the first time, I had the chance to live with her for a whole year, without Gabe. I had a chance be at home and knock around the city
in my free time. I remembered what Annabeth had said so long ago on our quest:
The real world is where the monsters are. That’s where you learn whether you’re any good or not.

I thought about the fate of Thalia, daughter of Zeus. I wondered how many monsters would attack me if I left Half-Blood Hill. If I stayed in one place for a whole school year, without Chiron or my friends around to help me, would my mother and I even survive until the next summer? That was assuming the spelling tests and five-paragraph essays didn’t kill me. I decided I’d go down to the arena and do some sword practice. Maybe that would clear my head.

The campgrounds were mostly deserted, shimmering in the August heat. All the campers were in their cabins packing up, or running around with brooms and mops, getting ready for final inspection. Argus was helping some of the Aphrodite kids haul their Gucci suitcases and makeup kits over the hill where the camp’s shuttle bus would be waiting to take them to the airport.

Don’t think about leaving yet, I told myself. Just train.

I got to the sword-fighters’ arena and found that Luke had had the same idea. His gym bag was plopped at the edge of the stage. He was working solo, whacking away at battle dummies with a sword I’d never seen before. It must’ve been a regular steel blade, because he was slashing the dummies’ heads right off, stabbing through their straw-stuffed guts. His orange counsellor’s shirt was dripping with sweat. His expression was so intense, his life might’ve really been in danger. I watched, fascinated, as he disembowelled
the whole row of dummies, hacking off limbs and basically reducing them to a pile of straw and armour.

They were only dummies, but I still couldn’t help being awed by Luke’s skill. The guy was an incredible fighter. It made me wonder, again, how he possibly could’ve failed at his quest.

Finally, he saw me, and stopped mid-swing. ‘Percy.’

‘Um, sorry,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘I just –’

‘It’s okay,’ he said, lowering his sword. ‘Just doing some last-minute practice.’

‘Those dummies won’t be bothering anybody any more.’

Luke shrugged. ‘We build new ones every summer.’

Now that his sword wasn’t swirling around, I could see something odd about it. The blade was two different types of metal – one edge bronze, the other steel.

Luke noticed me looking at it. ‘Oh, this? New toy. This is Backbiter.’

‘Backbiter?’

Luke turned the blade in the light so it glinted wickedly. ‘One side is celestial bronze. The other is tempered steel. Works on mortals and immortals both.’

I thought about what Chiron had told me when I started my quest – that a hero should never harm mortals unless absolutely necessary.

‘I didn’t know they could make weapons like that.’

‘
They
probably can’t,’ Luke agreed. ‘It’s one of a kind.’

He gave me a tiny smile, then slid the sword into its scabbard. ‘Listen, I was going to come looking for you.
What do you say we go down to the woods one last time, look for something to fight?’

I don’t know why I hesitated. I should’ve felt relieved that Luke was being so friendly. Ever since I’d got back from the quest, he’d been acting a little distant. I was afraid he might resent me for all the attention I’d had.

‘You think it’s a good idea?’ I asked. ‘I mean –’

‘Aw, come on.’ He rummaged in his gym bag and pulled out a six-pack of Cokes. ‘Drinks are on me.’

I stared at the Cokes, wondering where the heck he’d got them. There were no regular mortal sodas at the camp store. No way to smuggle them in, unless you talked to a satyr maybe.

Of course, the magic dinner goblets would fill with anything you want, but it just didn’t taste the same as a real Coke, straight out of the can.

Sugar and caffeine. My willpower crumbled.

‘Sure,’ I decided. ‘Why not?’

We walked down to the woods and kicked around for some kind of monster to fight, but it was too hot. All the monsters with any sense must’ve been taking siestas in their nice cool caves.

We found a shady spot by the creek where I’d broken Clarisse’s spear during my first capture the flag game. We sat on a big rock, drank our Cokes and watched the sunlight in the woods.

After a while Luke said, ‘You miss being on a quest?’

‘With monsters attacking me every metre? Are you kidding?’

Luke raised an eyebrow.

‘Yeah. I miss it,’ I admitted. ‘You?’

A shadow passed over his face.

I was used to hearing from the girls how good-looking Luke was, but at the moment, he looked weary, and angry, and not at all handsome. His blond hair was grey in the sunlight. The scar on his face looked deeper than usual. I could imagine him as an old man.

‘I’ve lived at Half-Blood Hill year-round since I was fourteen,’ he told me. ‘Ever since Thalia… well, you know. I trained, and trained, and trained. I never got to be a normal teenager, out there in the real world. Then they threw me one quest, and when I came back, it was like, ‘Okay, ride’s over. Have a nice life.”

He crumpled his Coke can and threw it into the creek, which really shocked me. One of the first things you learn at Camp Half-Blood is: don’t litter. You’ll hear from the nymphs and the naiads. They’ll get even. You’ll crawl into bed one night and find your sheets filled with centipedes and mud.

‘The heck with laurel wreaths,’ Luke said. ‘I’m not going to end up like those dusty trophies in the Big House attic.’

‘You make it sound like you’re leaving.’

Luke gave me a twisted smile. ‘Oh, I’m leaving, all right, Percy. I brought you down here to say goodbye.’

He snapped his fingers. A small fire burned a hole in the ground at my feet. Out crawled something glistening black, about the size of my hand. A scorpion.

I started to go for my pen.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Luke cautioned. ‘Pit scorpions can jump up to five metres. Its stinger can pierce right through your clothes. You’ll be dead in sixty seconds.’

‘Luke, what –’

Then it hit me.