I'll be here forever

chapter 17

We drove in silence for a while. I was still a little mad that he wouldn't tell me what the hell was going on. But looking over to him, his arms were crossed tightly over himself, his eyebrows furrowed, and he seemed to be staring a hole into the dashboard. Whatever he'd seen had really scared him. My anger melted away, and all that was left was concern.

"I'm, um... I'm really sorry for snapping at you," he said quietly, breaking the thick silence.

"It's- it's okay, really. I was being annoying."

"No, you weren't, it was completely uncalled for and I-"

"Percy. It's okay. Don't worry about it," I told him, but he still didn't relax.

I reached over and placed a hand on his arm, attempting to reassure him. Instead, he shifted away slightly. Confused, I pulled back.

"Daisy?" he asked faintly.

"Mhm?"

"You know... you know I care about you, right?"

I paused. I wasn't completely sure where this was going.

"Uh- yeah. I... I care about you too."

Percy chewed on his lower lip anxiously.

"And... you know I'd- I'd never do anything to hurt you, right? Never," he swore.

I blinked, confused. Of course he wouldn't... right? What the fuck had he seen that made him ask that?

"...Yeah. I trust you," I decided. I did trust him, probably more than I trusted myself.

Percy exhaled quickly, nodding.

"Okay. Okay," he muttered, relaxing a bit.

"Are you... sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Yeah. I'm sure."

I was really curious and really worried about him, but I decided that the best way to move on would be to forget about it. I let us sit in silence for a couple more minutes before moving on.

"Well, if you're done moping-"

"I was not moping!" he protested, and a small smile came back on his face. I did a quick celebration dance in my brain.

"Uh, you were totally moping. Anyways, if you're finished with that, wanna switch me? I'm tired," I complained.

Percy snorted but didn't protest, so I pulled us over once again. The sun had almost sunk below the horizon again, about to start our fifth day together. I had a few more mysteries added to my plate that needed solving; like what the hell was going on with Percy, and why didn't he want to tell me about it. But I figured I could pester him about it another day.

We switched seats again, Percy at the wheel, me in the passenger's seat. I pulled out our container of blueberries and ate that for dinner, listening to the radio. I was even able to sing along to a couple songs, they were repeated so often.

Percy and I would flip through the stations until we found a good song, and then we would learn it, and hope it would play again. And if you needed to know, I was a really bad singer, but I enjoyed singing along anyways. We did this for a long time before it got dark.

"Have you seen any monsters lately?" I asked him, yawning.

"I've seen a couple on the side of the road, but we've been driving for almost two days now with no incidents. It's starting to worry me," Percy said.

"I know what you mean. When nothing bad is happening, it's almost like you're expecting something bad to happen," I nodded. A silence fell over the car. We were afraid we were about to kill our good luck streak.

Unfortunately, the silence made me drowsy, and I found myself nodding off. The last thing I saw before I fell asleep were the miles of road in front of us, the taillights of cars that held people, the same as him and I. I wondered if they had to worry about monsters attacking them every second too.

I woke up when I was jolted forward, Percy slamming on the breaks.

I opened my eyes and saw a huge... thing, fur glinting in the morning light of the sun, roaring and smashing cars.

"Fuck. We jinxed it," Percy swore, his voice panicked, quickly stepping out of our car. I started gathering everything we had, which wasn't much. Most of the things stowed in the backpack we'd kept in there, in the instance we'd have to get out quickly.

I jumped out of the car with our backpack on our back just a half a second before the... thing smashed the roof in with it's tail. I winced. I liked that car.

A couple of other overturned and smashed cars surrounded us, but all the people who had been driving them were nowhere to be found. So either they'd made it clear, or... they'd been eaten.

Percy had charged it and was fighting against it's head and tail at the same time; and I tried to get a better look at it.

It had the head of a lion, its mane matted and bloody, snarling. I moved my eyes down, and... in the center of its back sprouted a goat's head. And while you might not think of goats as terrifying, this one was. It had abnormally large fangs dripping with saliva, and snapped at anything that came close. Then its tail... was not a tail. It was a huge snake, one that slithered around and hissed at everything it could see.

It batted its enormous paws toward Percy, who held it off, until the goat took a deep breath.

It clicked in my brain. Chimera; head of a lion, goat, and snake.

Poisonous bite. Fire breath.

"Dive!" I screeched, as loud as I could.

The good news is that he listened, diving out of the way right as the goat blew fire toward him and melted the spot where Percy had stood barely moments before. He rolled to his feet and started forward, breaking into a sprint.

The bad new is, both the lion and the snake turned toward me, training their beady eyes on me.

"Fuck," I breathed, turning and breaking into a run as well. Percy caught up to me and we ran from the roaring Chimera, but it was hot on our heels.

"How- how did you-" Percy said as we ran, out of breath.

"It's a Chimera. Its hide is impenetrable; Bellerophon killed it by stabbing its mouth," I replied breathlessly. Percy opened his mouth like he had a question, then closed it again, and we both kept on running.