DEVIL TOWN ━━ jason grace²

iii. burning out



CHAPTER THREE:
BURNING OUT

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WHEN ANNAIS AND THE others finally caught up with a fuming Leo, there wasn't much time to avoid the blast. They were several feet behind him, Mel running close enough to almost collide with his back when the world seemed to explode in a pit of fire. Annais' body crashed against the deck, her lungs momentarily forgetting how to inhale air as the air itself seemed to burn and melt. Then, just when her vision began to blacken at the edges, the smoke cleared and the rumble remained.

Those damn grenades, Annais thought to herself, slowly wheezing but breathing nonetheless. Hadn't she told Leo they were a terrible idea? Once again, he didn't listen and now look at what happened.

Oh, she was so going to kill him.

That is, if the dwarf-monkeys, as she'd taken to calling them in her head, didn't get to him first. They were near the ballista when Annais pushed herself up, blinking in confusion at the hawking frame of gorilla-Frank knocked out cold beside her. The dwarf-monkey with the brown fur jumped onto the projectile like it was a skateboard, screeching happily as his red-furred friend shot him high into the sky. With his friend now gone, the second dwarf-monkey danced over to Gleeson, smacking him once on each cheek for good measure, before backflipping over the side of the ship with Leo's precious tool belt slung over one shoulder.

Going out in a blaze of glory was one hell of an understatement.

Annais still had the delirious urge to laugh.

"Piper!" Jason cried, rushing past Annais to where Piper remained tied up at the helm. She seemed relieved that someone had come at last, though she was quick to hurry Jason along with a wide-eyed look to where the dwarf-monkeys had just been standing.

"Don't waste your time on me," she insisted, to which Coach Hedge seemed to agree as he screamed through his own gag. Kill them, Annais managed to make out, to which she just scoffed. "Go after them before it's too late!"

That was when Melanie screamed. Annais felt her insides freeze up in an instant, the fear boiling over as she searched desperately for where she'd seen her sister last. She swore Mel had been beside Hea, helping her to her feet as she groaned and clutched her head. Now, Melanie Min was sprinting up the stairs, panicked tears streaming down her face as she stammered, struggling to get the words out.

"Mel, what's wrong?" Annais frowned, gripping her sister's arms tight. Mel was so fragile, practically skin and bone. Annais feared that one day she'd snap completely, that Annais would never get the old pieces of her back. "Why are you crying?"

"The pin," she blubbered, much to everyone's confusion but Annais' own. "It's gone, they took it."

"Hey, it's okay."

"No, I have to get it back," she weakly protested, resisting Annais' hold when the daughter of Hades refused to release her. "I promised Ezra I'd keep it safe, I promised."

Annais knew that wasn't true. Ezra hadn't known she'd end up in Tartarus, so there was no way she would've told Melanie to watch over the pin she'd held so dear to her. Penelope's pin. The heirloom of a not-so-dead dead girl. When Ezra cut the tether between them, Annais had feared it would be lost forever, falling into the pits of Tartarus with no way of knowing where it landed. But by some miracle, the cursed pin of Penelope Min was laying on Melanie's pin when they sombrely returned to the Argo II. Like Percy's riptide; when lost, it found its way back again. Mel took this as a sign that Ezra wanted her to take care of it. Since that day, she kept it beneath her pillow where she knew it was safe.