I was pretty sure I understood what it felt like to be roadkill now, which was impressive considering I didn't need to be struck by any vehicles to do it.
My back was plastered to the wooly cushions of our new ride's backseat. My clothes were scattered across the floor. Despite having escaped the monster swarm over two hours ago, I hadn't had a single chance to pull them on.
Instead, my naked body had been ridden and worked to the point of being coated in thick sweat. Lou Ellen was passed out beside me, while Emily lay on the other side, equally unconscious. Valentina wasn't even in her seat anymore. She lay face-down on the floor, wonderful ass raised above her head.
My eyes drifted toward the front seat, where Annabeth drove in silence next to a snoring Clarisse. I wasn't sure how exactly the daughter of Ares managed to drift off with all the noise we had been making, but I learned long ago not to question anything when it came to her. My life was easier that way.
"Do we have enough fuel?" I asked tiredly.
"It was full about an hour ago," Annabeth said.
"Oh."
She laughed. "Yes, oh."
"Why didn't you tell us?"
She glanced back at me, taking her eyes off the road for a minute just to roll them.
"And get in their way? I think they would've killed me. Much easier to keep quiet."
I glanced at the girls scattered around me.
"Yeah," I said. "That makes sense."
I tried to think of something else to say, but my brain was running pretty much on fumes. The van descended into silence.
"Go to sleep, Percy," Annabeth said gently, returning her attention to actually driving. "We can talk later."
I meant to say okay, only to nod off before I even managed that much.
-
The brakes were what woke me up. Our speed dropped from a cool eighty-five miles per hour all the way to a hard stop. I leaned forward, shaking the cobwebs out of my head. Before I could ask why we stopped, I saw the reason.
It was a pretty good one. There was no road.
There had been at some point. We were on a highway now, not the tiny country road we'd been following at the start. It was two lanes wide and perfectly straight, exactly the type of place you could push ninety without anybody batting an eye. The only thing out of place was the fact that a forest had grown straight through the asphalt. The road simply ended in a wall of bark and twigs.
"That's probably not natural, is it?" I said.
Everyone else was awake by now, too.
"You really think so?" Clarisse asked with a snort.
"Hey. I'm just trying to be optimistic."
"Try getting dressed instead," she said. "We're going to investigate."
She stomped outside. Annabeth and the others followed a moment later while I lagged behind, pulling on my clothes as quickly as I could.
When I joined them at the edge of the forest, it didn't seem like I'd missed much.
The terrain around us had changed. The endless seas of corn were gone, replaced by forests with lots of thin-trunked trees. I wasn't an expert in forestry, but if I had to guess, I'd say we were somewhere around the middle of the country. Kansas, maybe, or Missouri.
Nothing about the forest changed in front of us — not the type of trees, the color of their leaves, or anything else — except for the fact it had simply grown over the road. It was only halfway, too. The concrete median between both lanes marked the end of the unexpected forest. No other cars were visible on our side, but I could see tons passing the other way, not even breaking to look at the natural roadblock next to them. If we needed any more confirmation that this was magic in some way, that was it.
"Do we just… go around?" Lou said.
I glanced back at our ride. The van sat there in all its glory— which wasn't much. I took in the bent front fender and glanced at the tires, each missing their hubcaps.
"I don't think off-roading is on the table," I said.
"I have an idea." Clarisse rolled up her sleeves. "Two hours and an ax. I'll have the way clear for us."
Annabeth wasn't impressed.
"You can't chop a trunk out of the ground, Clarisse. Cutting the trees won't help us drive through them."
"Plus you don't have an ax," Valentina pointed out.
Clarisse crossed her arms. She tilted her head, deep in thought. Finally, she said, "Anybody have a match?"
"Stop trying to hurt us!"
The shout didn't come from any of us. Slowly, four almost-identical girls peeled themselves out of the trees in front of us. If the entrance hadn't given it away already, their green skin and colorful orange hair marked them as dryads.
"Are you the ones that blocked the road?" Clarisse asked.
"Indeed," said the one in the middle. "We have a task for you, heroes!"
Unfortunately for her, Clarisse had stopped listening halfway through. As soon as she had confirmation who had caused this problem, she was marching forward cracking her knuckles.
"We— What are you doing?" said the nymph. "Hero, you… Stop. Stop!"
Clarisse did not, in fact, stop. She grabbed the nymph by her throat, lifting her off the ground. Her three friends quickly scurried halfway back into their trees, glaring.
"Get this crap out of our way," Clarisse growled, squeezing down.
"Harder!" said the nymph.
Everyone stopped for a minute, and she blushed bright green. "I mean, stop!"
"Put her down, Clarisse," Annabeth said.
My girlfriend sounded stern, but mostly just tired. Giving the nymph a disgusted look, Clarisse let her throat go and watched her drop onto the ground. I don't think she cared that much what Annabeth said. I think she just had a natural disdain for anything submissive.
Touching her throat tentatively, the nymph said, "If you let me explain, I would've said we have no problem letting you through."
"Then do it," Clarisse said.
"Not yet!" the nymph insisted. "We cannot allow you to pass for free."
"What do you want? More choking?" Clarisse asked.
For half a second, the nymph looked tempted. "No!"
One of her friends took over.
"We need your strength," she said. "You fight monsters, don't you? That's what heroes do!"
"There's a terrible monster in these woods," said another. "If you rid us of it, we'll clear the road right away! We swear it on the River Styx!"
I'd been on enough quests to see similar things. It reminded me of Triple G ranch, where Geryon gave me a task to save my friends and earn safe passage.
Of course, back then, the giant had been lying and betrayed us. This time, though, we had a binding oath. And I didn't think these nymphs were as conniving as that old monster anyway.
The problem was time. We'd made our escape from the monsters chasing after us, but there was no telling how long it would be before they caught up. Thinking along similar lines, Annabeth said, "Group conference!"
Once Clarisse had stomped back over, we grouped up in a huddle like a sports team at halftime.
"I say we do it," Lou said. "They need help. Why don't we just get it over with?"
"We don't know how long this might take," I pointed out.
"We also don't know how long it would take to go around," Annabeth said. "This is likely our fastest way, with or without a task."
"I say we go straight through!" Clarisse stomped her foot. "A little more and they'll cave. Does anybody have a lighter?"
"You already asked that," Valentina told her. "No, we don't. Why do you want to threaten everything that moves?"
"Life's more fun that way," Clarisse said matter-of-factly.
"So are we helping them or not?" I asked.
"We'll talk to them some more," Annabeth decided. "If we tell them we'll do it, we can get more information. Whether we follow through from there… That depends on what we find out."
All of us nodded. The huddle broke apart as we turned to the nymphs.
"Tell us about this monster," Annabeth said.
"It's horrible!" said the one that spoke first. "It's covered with bright, shiny skin that glows in the dark. I felt like its glare would kill me! There was a bright ring around its forehead, and it was fast, faster than even a mountain lion as it ran through the woods!"
I glanced at Annabeth, but from the look on her face that description wasn't ringing any bells for her either.
"Anything else?" Annabeth asked.
"It moved on two legs," said one nymph thoughtfully. "It could speak, too. I didn't like the sound of its voice one bit."
Any time I thought about talking monsters, my head went straight to a cyclops. As much as I loved my half-brother Tyson, rogue cyclopes had the nastiest habit of talking to you in different voices as they fought. It wasn't an experience I'd wish on anyone.
"Do you know where we can find this monster?" Annabeth asked.
The nymphs looked at each other.
"Not exactly," one admitted.
"But it's close by!" said another. "We saw it just the other day! And we can still smell its stink."
All of them scrunched up their noses.
"We'll do it," I said. "We'll track down this monster and get rid of it for you."
I still wasn't sure it was a good idea to cooperate when we were essentially being blackmailed, but we had to deal with this quickly. Whatever this monster was, it sounded like it was alone. Sending it back to Tartarus seemed quicker than forcing the nymphs to cave. Plus I would've felt kind of bad, burning down their trees and leaving them stuck with a monster.
"When you find it, bring it back to us here," said one of the nymphs. "We'll be waiting!"
-
In the end, it was decided that we would split up.
Annabeth and I went into the woods with Lou Ellen, while the rest stayed to protect the van. If anything happened to our ride, we would be completely stranded again.
Besides, even with three of us there weren't many monsters we couldn't handle. Annabeth had her knife, I had Riptide, and Lou didn't need a weapon to work her spells. The three of us walked between the trunks as evening dawned, light beginning to fade slowly.
"This would be a lot easier if we knew what to look for," I said.
"We do!" Lou said. "Silver skin, two legs, mean eyes… Oh. That really isn't much, is it?"
"Just keep your eyes peeled," Annabeth said. "With how these things go, trouble will find us. We only have to be ready."
She was right, but the phrasing got me thinking. It reminded me of what was on our tail, and more specifically, about how all those monsters were chasing us. Or at least why they were.
"Speaking of trouble finding us…"
Over the next fifteen minutes as Lou, Annabeth and I crunched through midwestern woods, checking thickets and letting Lou cast spells to tell her if anything passed through them, I explained everything that Lamia had told me before her vaporization.
When I was done Lou wrinkled her nose. "You mean that monster actually almost… With you…?"
"Don't remind me," I said, shuddering as I thought of Lamia's scaly form.
"So far you've been chased by harpies, a cow, and now Lamia, a half-snake woman," Annabeth listed off, tallying them on her fingers. "But the Myrmekes in the woods at camp didn't act any different, and neither did the Telekhines and the Leukrokotta. What makes them different?"
I'd already come up with a pretty good answer, even if I didn't like it.
"Back in that train car, I got a pretty good look at what was between the Leukrokotta's legs."
"Ew," said Lou.
"The point is, it was definitely male. Same with the Telekhines. I don't know about the ants I tested before, but that seems like a pattern."
"It's the curse!" Annabeth said.
Lou and I let her explain.
"I think those monsters are being attracted to you," she said to me. "In the same way the curse is drawing girls to you, it's affecting monsters, too. It has to be that, right? Just look at how Lamia was acting."
I'd half been hoping I was wrong when I had that thought, and that Annabeth would come up with a completely different answer. Unfortunately, she was right. This was the obvious answer.
"Does that mean all of those monsters chasing us were just, you know, after Percy?" Lou asked, looking paler than usual.
We stopped to look at each other in the shadow of a sprawling elm with a hollowed trunk.
"Not necessarily," Annabeth said. "I'm sure some of them were. But there's clearly something commanding all of them. Whoever the 'Her' is that Lamia was talking about."
"Just like the Telekhines and the Leukrokotta," I said. "They were only sent after me."
"Oh. That's… better, I guess," Lou said.
All of a sudden her eyes widened. She wrapped her arms around Annabeth and I and pushed us toward the elm trunk nearby.
"Something tripped a spell nearby!" she hissed. "Hide!"
All three of us piled inside of the tree. There was enough room, but it was tight. The interior was black and smooth, hollowed out long ago by a fire, or maybe even a strike of lightning that the tree had survived. We held our breath, pressing out of sight.
There was never any sound of footsteps. One moment the forest was empty, the next a person was there, walking deftly over the fauna like they were born on a forest floor. Her parka sparkled in the dimming light.
Even though I'd never seen this girl's face, there was no mistaking that outfit.
"Oh," Lou Ellen said, "it's just a Hunter—"
Annabeth and I clapped our hands over her mouth, pulling back deeper into the tree until dark flakes clung to our shirts. Both of us were thinking the same thing.
Right now, running into the Hunters was worse than any monster.
Where one went, all of them went, meaning if the Hunter in front of us was here so were the rest. We couldn't afford to get mixed up with them. Even if it had been strangely dormant for the last few days, the curse had already shown that it wasn't picky with who it targeted. If it got to any of the Hunters…
The Hunter stopped, turning her head left and right. She'd obviously heard Lou's voice. She tilted her head back, sniffing the wind, but thankfully it was blowing away from us. Still, she wasn't moving on. Her eyes fell on the other side of the tree we were hiding inside of.
Lou flicked her hands. Far away, on the other side of the hunter, a small rabbit formed out of thin air. It wasn't real, but it looked pretty convincing at a glance. Turning, the artificial animal bounded loudly away through the brush. The Hunter spun on a dime, chasing after it.
Annabeth and I relaxed, letting go of Lou.
"What was that about?" she complained.
"Shhhh," we both said.
More quietly, we explained exactly why it was an awful idea to get mixed up with the Hunters right now.
"You don't think Artemis would really blame you, do you?" she asked me.
"I don't know," I said. Our relationship wasn't bad. But then again, I'd heard stories. "The thing is, I'd rather not find out."
"Which means we need to find this monster, and get out of here," Annabeth said. "Fast."
It was not fast, in the end.
We searched through the woods for hours. The moon came out, along with the stars, which only reminded me of the Hunters and made me want to finish quicker.
In the end our lucky break was just that: lucky.
After way too much searching, I hit my limit and excused myself to pee. I found a nice big tree out of sight of the girls and started to relieve myself with a satisfied sigh.
As the stream hissed out and splattered against the leaves, I realized just how badly I had to go. It was long, and not all that quiet. Just as the stream was tailing off, a twig crunched behind me.
"Annabeth?"
"What?" her voice came from out of sight.
"Is Lou still with you?"
"Yeah! Why?"
I didn't answer. I flicked my cock, knocking off the last drops, and drew Riptide in a single fluid motion.
The Hunters didn't make noises in nature, period. If Annabeth and Lou weren't here, that meant someone else was behind me…
A huge shape leaped back as Riptide slashed through the air. The shape let out a startled bellow. Over seven feet of humanoid monster stood behind me, moonlight gleaming off his (for some reason) oiled up muscular body.
The full-grown cyclops reached toward me with a gnarled, crusty hand…