Walk With the Shadows [ Percy Jackson OC ]

THIRTY | Alex

THE THOUGHT OF A HOTEL BED AND BREAKFAST overpowered Alex's fear when they reached the outskirts of Orlando. His legs ached from driving all day. His mind couldn't stop twisting in knots thinking about his mother, his father, and that day in the Rocky Mountains.

At first, he'd tried to focus on what Kitty told them over dinner. They had names for the demigods now: Phoebe, Cole, and Julien. They knew the Trigon had the Lyre. They just didn't know quite where. All Kitty remembered was white walls, Four Keys, and the symbols of Hebe, Hermes, and Nike etched into a black Mickey Mouse table. Alex had managed to focus on that for about an hour of their drive before that day on the bikes had taken over again.

He'd turned eleven in September but his mom didn't like to take him out on long rides during the winter. Weather conditions could be dangerous. So they'd waited for spring. They'd waited for April and Alex got to take some time off school. He remembered it like it was yesterday.

They'd brought their road bikes. His mother preferred bikepacking, which meant a mountain bike, but Alex loved the speed of descents. His mom always yelled at him for it. She said not everything was about speed and strength, but about the journey, the struggle, the destination, the challenge. Still, this was his birthday trip so she acquiesced.

The Cyclops trapped them on a small climb. Pedaling in a low gear, laughing with his mom about beating the Presidential Physical Fitness Test again, they'd been easy targets. Even sweaty and confined under a yellow helmet, he remembered the beauty of her blonde hair and stormy blue eyes. He remembered every laugh line, every streak of dirt along her cheeks. Even when he tried to forget, he remembered.

His mom kept him on the inside, always. That way cars would pass her, not him. Alex had been so close to the boulders, he could've touched them. He counted every spruce and pine tree. He never gave the passing cars a second thought.

Then he heard a scream, a crash and scraping of metal, and felt white hot pain. The bike went out from under him, sending Alex tumbling to the asphalt. The details got fuzzy after that.

He remembered feeling warm liquid against his abdomen. But more clearly he remembered the towering figure of a cyclops standing behind a smashed car. And even more, he remembered the way his mother's neck lay at an odd angle, the way his hands shook as he clawed towards her and her twisted bike under the vehicle, the way the blood just wouldn't go back inside her body.

That's where the memories stopped. An endless loop of screaming, crunched metal, and wet hot blood. Until Ophelia had pried them back open.

"Sir?"

Alex refocused on the here and now. The here? An Embassy Suites in Altamonte Springs, about a forty minute drive from Disney. The now? Trying, desperately, to focus on getting a room from the young blonde woman behind the front desk.

"One room is fine, two beds," he said. "Just for a night."

She eyed him carefully but nodded, clicking away at her computer. Ophelia stood beside him, doing her thing with the Mist to make them look old enough to be renting a hotel room unsuspiciously. They all agreed that three teenagers buying a hotel room for a single night in cash wouldn't be a good look. But as Kitty said, they might die tomorrow, so they might as well enjoy a night's sleep.