The Kiss Of Death - A Percy Jackson And The Sea Of Monsters Fanfiction

4 - I Imagine Shooting the Activities Director in the Face

After bidding Chiron goodbye, we made our way to dinner.

The sun was setting behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins. We stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in. Annabeth was still pretty shaken up, but she promised she'd talk to us later.

Then she went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin -a dozen boys and girls with blond hair and grey eyes like hers. Annabeth wasn't the oldest, but she'd been at camp more summers than just about anybody. You could tell that by looking at her camp necklace – one bead for every summer, and Annabeth had six. No one questioned her right to lead the line.

Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn't seem to have fazed her. Someone had taped a piece of paper to her back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell her about it.

After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin (my favourite) – six demi-gods led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteen-year-old African American kid. He had hands' the size of catchers' mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmith forge all day. He was the first friend I ever made at camp and was the one who taught me smithcraft. Everyone called him Beckendorf. Rumour was he could make anything. Give him a chunk of metal and he could create a razor-sharp sword or a robotic warrior or a singing birdbath for your grandmother's garden. Whatever you wanted.

The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came up from the canoe lake. Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came a dozen satyrs, who reminded me painfully of Grover.

I'd always had a soft spot for the satyrs. When they were at camp, they had to do all kinds of odd jobs for Mr. D, the director, but their most important work was out in the real world. They were the camp's seekers. They went undercover into schools all over the world, looking for potential half-bloods and escorting them back to camp. That's how Percy'd met Grover. He had been the first one to recognize he was a demigod.

After the satyrs filed in to dinner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. We were always the biggest cabin. Last summer, it had been led by Luke, the guy who'd fought with Thalia and Annabeth on top of Half-Blood Hill. For a while, before Poseidon had claimed Percy, he'd lodged in the Hermes cabin. Luke had befriended him ... and then he'd tried to kill him. I lived in the Hermes Cabin – no one knew Thanatos was my father, besides Chiron, Percy, Annabeth, Grover, Bekendorf and Luke.

Thalia did too – but she's a pine tree now.

Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll. They weren't twins, but they looked so much alike it didn't matter. Travis was older, though. They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes's kids had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes whenever they looked at you - like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt. I'd always thought it was funny that the god of thieves would have kids with the last name "Stoll," but the only time I mentioned it to Travis and Connor, they both stared at me blankly like they didn't get the joke.

We pranked lots of people together – they were lightheaded, fun to hang around.

As soon as the last campers had filed in, Percy and I led Tyson into the middle of the pavilion. Conversations faltered. Heads turned.

"Who invited that?" somebody at the Apollo table murmured.

I glared in their direction, but I couldn't figure out who'd spoken.