Valentina screamed as the van we were about to bang inside of flipped and launched down the street with a series of very different bangs. I was on my feet in seconds. Even though I'd lost my pants, Riptide still ended in my palm during the chaotic escape. I uncapped it as I faced down whatever terrifying monster was after us.
"MOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
I started, thinking for a second that the Ophiotuarus was here somehow. But Bessie was miles away in his cushy Olympus-side pool, and the sweet cow-serpent could never sound this aggressive. Instead, a bright red cow twice the size of our ruined ride angrily pawed the ground, flailing its head.
Annabeth, Clarisse and Lou Ellen were running toward us down the street. That must've been who was shouting my name. They were too far away to help as the massive bull's eyes landed on me.
Except, it wasn't a bull. There were no horns. It was just a very big, very angry cow. It charged me, and the street underneath us quaked.
I was in a bad spot. Valentina hadn't reacted as quickly as I had. She was just getting to her feet behind me, still in the path of the charging monster. I couldn't let it trample her before she caught her bearings.
The plan I came up with was a little crazy, but being sane never got a guy anywhere in this line of work.
I ran to meet the cow.
I could've sworn it looked excited. I raised Riptide, trying to make my sword shiny and distracting. Just a few steps before we collided, I jumped high into the air.
Mounting cow-themed monsters is a habit that goes all the way back to my first day as a demigod. It worked pretty well then, so I had high hopes for it this time too. I managed to clear the cow's hard head, landing on its back. I wrapped my arms around its head and dragged to the side, steering the cow out of Valentina's path.
As soon as she was safe, I raised riptide and hacked at the monster's neck, only for my blade to bounce off. It felt like striking the Nemean Lion all over again. I tried a few more times, but felt no closer to breaking through the iron-like coat. Sick of giving out free rides, the cow began to buck. I was hurled around, wincing as coarse fur scraped my bare crotch and each jump crushed my balls just a little bit more.
Finally I couldn't hang on. I was hurled off into the air. A nearby fire hydrant burst, water spewing out to catch me as I fell, slowing my fall.
"Its fur is too strong!" Annabeth shouted.
I looked up and spotted her. Her knife was in her hand and Clarisse's spear was out and ready, but they weren't close enough to fight. That didn't stop Annabeth from shouting out instructions.
"Look for gaps in the coat!"
The cow had reoriented. It was still acting strangely, tossing its head and staring at me more intently than a bovine had any right to. Pawing the ground, it charged me.
The water that had caught me boosted me into the air now, letting me meet the charge. I raised my sword, propelled forward at the same height as the cow's huge head.
The entire way my exposed penis flapped as freely as it had while chasing harpies around my cabin. Except this time, I had four girls and a whole Manhattan street for an audience instead of just Rachel.
"Why is this becoming a habit?!" I screamedas Riptide buried deep in the monster's eye.
This time, there was no resistance. My momentum carried me past as the cow burst into a spray of dust and strange little golden packages with a startled "Moo?" I landed in a roll, which might've even been cool if I didn't look like a half-dressed lunatic. Monster residue fell to the street behind me— far enough away that I didn't have to worry about it, thank the gods. I didn't even want to guess how long it would take if I had to clean that stuff off my balls.
The girls pulled to a stop next to me, staring at my missing pants. Well, I think Clarisse at least was staring at what those pants usually covered. I caught the way she licked her lips and hoped she wasn't getting ideas. This really wasn't the time.
As if proving my point, the sound of sirens started somewhere not all that far away.
"Run?" I asked.
Annabeth grabbed my lost jeans and tossed them into my face. "Put on pants," she corrected. "Then we run."
"Did we lose them?
We were pressed into an alley not too far from the crime scene. Lou Ellen was bent over breathing hard. Apparently cardio wasn't one of her specialties. Annabeth was at the alley's entrance, poking her head out to watch the street. A siren passed by, before the noise slowly faded out.
Annabeth turned back to us. "Now we did."
"I have a question," I said. "The three of you went out for sandwiches, right?" They all nodded. "So how did you come back with a thousand-pound bull instead?"
"Cow," Annabeth corrected, as if that was the important part. "An Ethiopian Cow, to be specific."
"Fine. Cow. So… How?"
"We actually didn't bring it," Lou said. Her pale face was still pretty pink in the cheeks, but I guess she'd gotten her breath back.
"It was on a beeline for the van," Annabeth said grimly. "We heard it four blocks away. We could see it from two. It was like it knew where we parked from across the city."
I didn't have an answer for that. I tested for possible monster-attraction in the woods before we left, but found nothing. Now, just hours after we left, it was the opposite? I couldn't make sense of it.
"If we're doing questions, I have one," Clarisse said. "Who in Hades is this?"
Standing behind me, Valentina gave a cheerful wave.
"Valentina Diaz," she said, "daughter of Aphrodite, at your service."
"Why are you here?" Annabeth asked. Her brow furrowed. "Actually, where did you come from?"
"She was inside Chiron's bag," I said.
"He packed her?"
"I packed myself," Valentina said.
"And what about everything else in the bag?"
"She tossed it out to make room," I said.
Annabeth spun toward me, her eyes going wide. For a second I thought she was going to scream at someone, but instead her tightened fists slowly unclenched. She looked at the ground.
"The emergency train tickets were in there," she said.
"And we just lost our ride," Clarisse said. "Unless you think it'll still start after the cow sent it flipping."
"Oooh, I'm sorry!" Valentina's pretty face screwed up into a frown that tugged at my heart. "I had to, though! If I couldn't get close to Percy, I was going to die!"
Annabeth's face softened. "You were sick? Why didn't you just tell someone?"
"I was nervous," Valentina said. "I'm not like you guys. I'm not used to having my life on the line. When I realized I'd been cursed—"
"You're not cursed though?"
Everyone froze. Lou Ellen, recovered from the short sprint, was right in front of Valentina. She sniffed the dark-skinned girl.
"There isn't a single bit of magic on you. Just perfume. A lot of perfume."
I gaped. Annabeth and Clarisse crossed their arms. Valentina smiled nervously.
"Oops. Busted?"
Her giggles didn't catch on with the rest of us.
"I can't believe her!"
Annabeth marched left to right in our hotel room, pacing past the foot of two queen-sized beds. I sat on the foot of one. Clarisse had gone out with Lou Ellen to find a cab back to camp for Valentina, desperate to get rid of the troublesome demigod.
With the money kept in pockets and wallets we just had enough for a hotel for the night. Since we'd lost our car and our train access in one go, it wasn't like we could keep going. We rented a room in a cheap motel 6 near Interstate 278, which was where Annabeth and I were now. In theory we were supposed to be relaxing. The reality was, Annabeth wasn't in any mood to lie down on a bed, so she was up and moving.
"She got rid of our supplies. She lied to our faces. And… And… She took your entire cock like it was nothing!"
The others had heard the entire story of what happened while they were gone, including details I would've left out that Valentina just had to chime in and add.
"Is that really what we should be complaining about?" I asked.
Annabeth spun, raising an accusing finger in the air. "It's cheating is what it is! She doesn't even understand how difficult that is for the rest of us!"
I held my hands up in surrender. "I'm just saying, it's really not the worst part. We wouldn't have even been able to eat if it hadn't been for the world's least sanitary hamburgers."
When we returned to the scene of the attack hoping to salvage some supplies, we found about a dozen confused cops standing over a totaled van, a busted hydrant, and, for some reason, about a dozen packaged hamburgers. They were the golden paper balls I'd spotted in the dust left by the Ethiopian Cow. Somehow, the monster left hamburgers behind as trophies like my minotaur horn, or the Nemean Lion's coat I sacrificed when I was fourteen.
Convincing the cops to let us take them hadn't actually been too hard, at least with a few careful manipulations of the Mist. I think they were so confused how hamburgers got there that they were actually happy to let them 'disappear'.
Annabeth huffed and crossed her arms. "Of course you're not complaining."
I couldn't really argue with that, so I kept quiet and let her go back to pacing.
Except, before she made it more than a few steps, the hotel room door opened.
Clarisse and Lou Ellen stepped in. I didn't expect them to be grinning after the day we'd had, but their faces still looked a little grim.
"How'd it go?" Annabeth asked eagerly
Chiron promised he would cover the cab costs over the phone. By tomorrow, we'd have Valentina out of our hair and be able to focus on traveling west again.
"See for yourself," Clarisse said.
She stepped out of the way, revealing none other than Valentina herself.
"Hey," said the daughter of Aphrodite. "Long time no see."
Annabeth scowled, but I looked closely at the girl. Something was off about her. Some of that permanent energy she walked around with wasn't there. Her eyes looked heavy, like holding them up was taking extra effort.
"Could you not find a single cab?" Annabeth complained.
"About that," Clarisse said. She pushed Lou Ellen forward, and the smaller girl stumbled toward us with a squeak. "You tell them, if you're so sure about this."
Lou stared at Annabeth and I. She steeled herself with a deep breath. "I smell magic on her."
"But earlier you said—"
She cut Annabeth off. "It wasn't there earlier. I'm sure of that. But just as we were about to send her home, boom. There it was!"
Annabeth turned to Valentina. "What did you do?"
"Nothing!" The dark-skinned girl held up her hands. "Look, I understand why you wouldn't trust me right now, but I really didn't do a thing. I was just standing there, praying to my mom this would all work out, when Lou here spun around and shouted that she sensed magic!"
"Valentina was around Percy here for most of the day," Clarisse said. "It only makes sense she caught the curse eventually, even if she was lying at the start."
Annabeth growled. Instead of blowing up, though, she sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Fine. We can giver her treatment the same way as with you two—"
"I disagree," Clarisse said.
Everyone looked at her. Valentina, who was being conspicuously quiet, stepped further away from the Ares girl.
"Are you saying to let her die?" Annabeth asked, some shock entering her voice.
"Of course not."
"Then Percy needs to sleep with her."
"Sure," Clarisse said. "But that doesn't mean he has to do it the same way as before. This girl got the curse because she poked around where she didn't need to, and now we have to deal with the results of that. She's gotta be punished."
"What are you telling me to do?" I said slowly.
Clarisse snatched Valentina off the floor by the back of her shirt. The daughter of Aphrodite flinched, then started to flail, but Clarisse's grip stayed firm. She marched forward and literally dropped Valentina in my lap.
"C'mon, Jackson," she said. "Pound some discipline into her."