Breaking the Gods

chapter 4

The process started off as tediously as Nico predicted it would. He took a taxi to Camp Half-Blood, or as close as one could get him to it, because it wasn't dark enough to shadow travel yet. He knew that he probably could have saved himself a good chunk of money if he'd called Percy and asked him for a ride, but he didn't want to do that. Percy had his own life. One that was filled with a lot more tedious, mundane things than Nico's. Things like school, homework, family obligations, and the like. Sometimes Nico envied him. But that aside, this wasn't Percy's problem. Nico saw no reason to make it Percy's problem, because there really wasn't anything that Percy could do about the situation. He hadn't been there when it happened, so he couldn't answer all the questions Chiron and Mr. D had about what happened. So Nico came on his own, ready to deal with it on his own.

But when it was all said and done, he might as well have bugged Percy for a ride, because Chiron ended up calling Percy and all the other cabin heads back to camp anyway for an emergency meeting after the satyrs retrieved Piers from the hospital and Chiron and Mr. D got a look at him.

Percy and Annabeth arrived together. Holding hands. Looking very happy together. Nico was glad. He knew that a few months ago, they'd been having problems. Annabeth knew that Percy and Nico were keeping things from her. Or more accurately, that Nico had secrets, that he let Percy in on, but that Percy wouldn't reveal to her. Nico felt bad about the strain that had put on their relationship, but over the past half year or so, things had started going smoothly between them again. In large part because Nico hadn't gotten into anymore tight spots since Apophis tried to swallow the sun, so he hadn't had to call Percy to bail him out. And it helped that Sadie and Carter had stayed away from Camp Half-Blood.

The time they showed up had caused a lot of problems, though it wasn't really their fault. They'd accidentally gotten picked up by a half-blood extraction team in Washington, when they were on the run from some House of Life freaks, and had stumbled upon the demigods who the extraction team was there to pick up, while said demigods were being attacked. Naturally, Sadie and Carter had helped them out, then had gone along with the extraction team because they needed to make a fast getaway if they didn't want the House of Life catching them. Their timing for this incident had been horrible for a number of reasons.

One of the lesser reasons was that the Hunters of Artemis had shown up because Thalia had gotten an Iris Message from Nico's deceased sister Bianca. She'd grown concerned that something (Anubis) was blocking her ability to check in (spy) on Nico, and when asking Percy about it proved fruitless, she'd called the leader of the Hunters. Annabeth found out why Thalia was there, and knew that Percy knew something, and had gotten mad when Percy refused to give away Nico's secrets. Nico felt bad about causing problems for them, but keeping the truth a secret was necessary. If word got out that Nico was hosting Anubis, a war was bound to start one way or another. Either Hades would declare war on the Egyptian pantheon for corrupting his son, Zeus would declare war on Hades and the Egyptian pantheon for making what he'd perceive as a power play against him, or the Egyptian pantheon would start kidnapping demigods and trying to use them as hosts, and bring down the wrath of the Greek pantheon on them. Whatever way the dice fell, it would suck, which was why they couldn't tell Annabeth and Thalia the truth.

But the main reason that Sadie and Carter's arrival had been horrible timing was because one of the demigods the team had picked up was a psychotic murderer, who'd killed two people before she was figured out. That girl, Maya, had been one of the youngest demigods at camp, and looked deceptively sweet and innocent, at least before she bit Nico after he stopped her from stabbing Sadie. She'd broken his skin and gotten a mouthful of his black blood, which had rotted her face off, and she didn't look that sweet or innocent anymore. But before they'd figured out who the psycho killer was, suspicion had fallen heavily on all the newcomers. If anyone had learned that Sadie and Carter were actually Egyptian magicians rather than demigods, things could have gotten ugly. Because lately the demigods were being taught to view the Egyptians as a threat.