I'll be here forever

chapter 18

We were aiming to get out of the way of all the cars, hopefully not endanger any more people, but the Chimera had other plans. Its goat head blew fire toward us, singing the hairs on the back of my neck, barely missing our faces, but melting the road in front of us. We stopped, turning to face it.

Percy and I looked at each other, once. I nodded.

I hope he had some sort of telekinetic abilities or something, or that he understood me.

I'll distract, you stab.

I repeated it over and over, like a mantra, hoping he got the message. Percy nodded as well, and I wasn't sure if it was just in response to mine or he'd gotten my mind message.

Either way, he darted to the side, and the chimera started to follow him, so I shouted and unsheathed my dagger, waving it like a flag.

"Over here, you ugly, fat fuck! I've seen mortals scarier than you are!" I yelled, which wasn't a complete lie. The Chik-Fil-A cashier lady had had a pretty terrifying glare.

The Chimera turned to me, a lot quicker that I expected it to. The goat opened its mouth to blow fire at me, and I stared it down. I hoped I made the right decision, trusting Percy.

Suddenly, instead of blowing fire, the goat let out a smoky burp, then started screaming, and the lion raised itself on its hind legs, roaring in pain. I quickly glanced around, looking for Percy, and- there he was. Standing by the decapitated back end of the snake. I almost scolded him for cutting off its snake tail first; he'd lost the element of surprise.

That was when my eyes followed to where the snake's head had been; my eyes quickly moved along and realized that the snake had been directly behind me, probably poised to bite, and I hadn't noticed. Percy had saved my life, probably not for the first time, and probably not for the last.

Then the Chimera gathered its wits, albeit tailless, even angrier than before, which I wasn't sure was possible until just now. The lion head ignored me and turned to face Percy, while the goat's square-shaped eyes stayed trained on me.

They attacked simultaneously, the goat spraying molten lava toward me (a step up from fire, so props to you, goat) and the lion lunged for Percy.

I stumbled and broke into a run, trying to get as far away from the molten lava as possible, but its blast range seemed to be a lot further than you'd think. I hoped Percy was doing okay. I could feel the heat on the back of my neck, on my back on my arms; it almost felt like I was melting, and still I kept running, hoping and praying.

And then it stopped. I didn't feel the heat on my back  or my arms anymore, just near my feet where the lava soaked into the ground, so I stumbled forward a bit and turned.

The Chimera's goat head screamed in pain as the lion's legs tripped over themselves, turning into golden dust. The goat head was the last to go.

As the entire monster melted into glittery golden monster guts, and Percy and I met each other's eyes from across the road. His sword clattered to the ground a few feet away from him, smoking from being in the lion's mouth.

We stood there for just a second, meeting each other's eyes across the road, before sprinting toward each other, crossing the middle distance quicker than I thought possible.

I met him in the middle in a bone-crushing hug, him squeezing the life out of me, and I'm sure I was doing the same. My arms stung, and I was sure they were covered in first degree burns.

He held me there for a while, in the middle of the road. I'm certain I cried a little. Every second that had passed I worried for him, and in the back of my mind, I'd wondered what the hell I'd do without him.

Five days. Five days, and this boy was such an irreplaceable part of me that it made my chest hurt just thinking about what might happen to me if he wasn't there. Five days with him, and I knew I wanted to be with him for as long as the both of us were alive. There had to have been something before this, something we'd been through before we woke up without any memories. I wasn't sure how else I could be so attached to him.

"Are you okay?" he murmured into my shoulder.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. Are you?" I laughed breathlessly, pulling away and wiping my face, just in case.

"I'm fine," he exhaled quickly, in relief.

Slowly, a grin split Percy's face.

"That was pretty fucking awesome."

I laughed, shaking off the tension in my shoulders.

"Yeah. It was pretty fucking awesome," I admitted, and Percy pumped his hand in the air in triumph.

"You are such an idiot," I laughed, shaking my head, but his excitement was contagious. We had just defeated a centuries old monster that breathed lava. I think it was cause for a little celebration.

Of course, that celebration was cut short when we remembered that the Chimera had completely decimated our car.

"Fuck," I breathed.

"Guess we're walking again, huh?" Percy asked, and I groaned. I already missed the hum of the car beneath my feet, the feeling of safety while speeding along the highway at eighty miles an hour. I guess it probably wasn't the legal speed limit, but there was something calming about the landscape blurring as you shot past.

Cars started slamming on their breaks in the middle of the road behind our smashed car, the line piling up. There must be something obstructing their vision, because there's no way the people zooming past in the other lanes just "didn't see" the giant lion-goat-snake that was terrorizing I-86.

I thought of the almost perfume-looking bottle in our backpack that read Emergency Mist.

If I had to bet, I would bet that regular people were shielded from the world of Greek Myth by something called the Mist. Otherwise, people would think they were going crazy, so I supposed it was there to protect them. Instead of a shit ton of gold dust and a bunch of chewed-up and smashed cars dripping with Chimera saliva and being melted by the heat of the lava it spewed, they probably saw a bad car crash or something of the sort.

I spotted the first person in the car line nearest to us calling someone on their phone.

"We should probably run before the police show up and blame this on us, since we're the only ones left alive," I winced.

"They didn't see the huge fucking lion thing? It seemed pretty hard to miss," Percy said incredulously.

"Chimera. And I don't think so. Don't you think they'd be a lot more worried if they had?"

Percy surveyed the people in the cars beyond our mess.

"Yeah, you're right. We should probably go."