The Death God Alliance

chapter 13

They shadow traveled to a graveyard outside of New York City, right after the sun set. The graveyard they picked was a big one, but a quiet one that didn't see a lot of traffic. No one wanted any interruptions, after all.

"It has to be set up perfectly," said Nico, grabbing the McDonald's bag that was filled with discarded packaging from various McDonald's foods and setting it so that it was propped against a nearby bench.

Anubis appeared in his human-looking form, right on top of a sarcophagus-style grave and began laying down cards. Nico jumped up, fished out his own deck, and began arranging them as well, trusting Percy to line up the McDonald's toys from the twenty-odd Happy Meals they'd picked up that afternoon. Until he saw the incredibly sloppy job that Percy was doing.

"No, not like that!" he said, hopping back down and storming over, not sure why he was so irrationally angered about it. All he knew was that it was wrong and it bothered him.

"Like what then?" asked Percy.

"Straight," said Nico. "Perfectly straight. Like this." He began rearranging the figures. "Grouped by predominant color, starting with red on the left side, and moving along in the same order that they appear in the color spectrum. Then grouped by relative heights once they've been grouped by color, putting the tallest on the left and working your way down to the shortest. And when you line them up-"

"I'll just let you do it," decided Percy, stepping back.

"OCD much?" asked Sadie.

"I don't know what that means," said Nico impatiently as he began lining up his toys the proper way.

"Obsessive Compulsive Disorder," said Carter.

"I still don't know what that means."

"It's a –"

"He doesn't really care either," said Anubis. The god had finished setting up his half of the Mythomagic game. "Now's really not the time for explanations about psychology either."

"I told you to get out of my head," said Nico. "Or as much out of it as you can. If you can read my thoughts you're in too deep."

He immediately felt Anubis's presence in his mind begin to retreat until only the faintest echo of the god's presence was still there. But he could feel Anubis' power all around him, seeping into the graveyard, saturating every tombstone and statue, and even the earth itself. That kind of power was heady, almost intoxicating. It was also unexpected. Nico didn't think that the Lotus Casino could have had a stronger pull on him than Anubis' power. He felt like he could stay there forever, living only on that raw death energy. He wondered if he was going to have some sort of withdrawl symptom when this was over, but decided it would be worth the extra realism that it added to his plan.

The others' reaction to Anubis' power seeping into everything was very, very different. Percy's expression grew more and more uncomfortable. He could sense the danger he was in. Death radiation wasn't any better for him than it was for anyone else, even if he was invulnerable everywhere except for that one weak spot. A weak spot that Nico as pretty sure he'd figured out where it was, despite the fact that he'd been deliberately trying not to figure it out. The death that the graveyard was radiating wouldn't kill Percy, unless Anubis willed it to, but Percy's instincts still made him want to avoid it and be anywhere else in the world than where he was at that moment.

Carter and Sadie were affected much more drastically. Nico saw their hands start shaking, and they kept looking around kind of fearfully, like they thought something was trying to sneak up on them.

"You should get clear now, Percy," said Nico. He felt a bit guilty about subjecting Percy to this, especially since Percy wasn't needed here for the plan at all. He'd tried to get his cousin to stay behind, but Percy would have none of it, and so he'd brought him along. Just like both of the Kanes, even though they only really needed one of them. At least the stupid cat had stayed behind. Nico wasn't sure if it was a result of having Anubis in his head, or if he would have felt that way anyway, but he couldn't bring himself to really like Bast.