The Ambassador of the Gods

3. Magic Vampires & (No-Longer-Just-)Summer Camp

-- 17th December 2009 --

Nico really really hated the Roman Senate.

He was just leaving the maintenance tunnel of the Caldecott Tunnel, still reeling from the four hours of drudgery he'd just been forced to sit through. It didn't help that the amphitheater style benches and his mandatory front row seat made it very, very obvious if he was falling asleep.

The traffic rolled past on both sides, echoing down the tunnel and creating gusts of wind that pushed Nico's long parka around. He picked up the pace: he didn't have the time to be taking it slow. The monster camping outside Half-Blood, his appointment in Asphodel, the son of Hephaestus, Hymenaios's wedding bands -- Nico ran through them in his head, and then again.

And those were just the most urgent. Daedalus insisted he should keep a book on them, but Nico didn't like the idea of leaving evidence, even if he knew he would never misplace something like that.

At present the monster outside Half-Blood was the most urgent. He knew what Chiron would say if he knew Nico had put himself a country away from a task due in eight hours -- irresponsibility something, complacency, unnecessarily dangerous, and so on -- but the plan was for Chiron to not know until after the task was completed.

"Hello hello hello!"

Nico slowed and squinted. The dropping sun angled directly through the mouth of the tunnel into his eyes, but surrounded by the reddening glare were two slender silhouettes -- mortals?

They were giggly, young adults, dressed in slightly revealing hiking clothes. The entrance to Jupiter was behind him: and however Greek he was, he had a duty to keep them off Rome in case the Mist decided to have one those hiccups it had become fond of having recently.

Nico stopped.

"Hello, child," said the one in the tracksuit, smiling. "What are you doing here?"

As his eyes adjusted, Nico noticed they were pretty. He... couldn't point out anything about them that set them apart from the demigods in Cabin 10 and goddesses he'd met and never once thought that about, but as he looked over them the same thought came back.

The girls were really pretty.

The other giggled. "You're awfully beautiful for one so young, aren't you? Such dark, watchful eyes." The distance between them closed.

Nico looked on silently, disturbed by their tone.

"You could go into modelling, you know," said Tracksuit. "Acting? You look absolutely divine." They giggled behind their hands.

Nico felt like he had when Psyche had appeared to him to give him a task and she'd talked about her godhood and her husband: like Hestia but unawaredly sinister, like a set of massive eyes were watching his back and he couldn't turn to confront them. He felt like backing away.

"Are you okay?" asked the other, dressed in little more than a sport bra on her top half. "You don't talk much, do you?"

Maybe it was the low sleep talking paranoia to him. Or the Senate meeting. Or both.

But he did think it was strange to be showing so much skin in the middle of December. Granted, he wasn't exactly an average Californian female in her early twenties inexplicably outside the maintenance entrance of the Caldecott Tunnel, which was really the entrance into Camp Jupiter...

Sports Bra giggled and slunk closer to him.

"Are you 'checking me out', young one? We're much too old for you, you know. You're simply so youthful, and... bursting with health." Then she flashed a coy smile at him, a row of brilliant, perfectly arranged, white teeth. "But I'll give you a kiss if you want one so badly."