We Both Walk Among the Dead: A Percy Jackson Fanfiction

Ch. 10 ;D

Here's Ch. 10, as promised :) Everything that belongs to Rick Riordan belongs to him, and everything else belongs to me :D ENJOY!!!

            I woke up abruptly to a loud laugh, jarring my consciousness and snapping my eyes open to the pitch-black room. I started, not knowing where I was, when I always remembered where I was (just a little something I picked up from bring on the run all those years). My pulse was racing, and I was out of bed with my scythe in hand before I realized what the noise had been.

            Beside me, on the bed opposite to me, was a dark shape curled up on her side. I recognized the short dark hair from the light pouring from her digital alarm clock, and I lowered my scythe. Ree shifted again on the bed, causing it to creak, and mumbled a little in her sleep.

            I narrowed my eyes in the darkness, now fully awake and alert. I had originally thought that Ree had snored loudly enough to wake me up, but it was clear to me now that she didn’t snore. The noise that had woken me up had been a giggle, something high-pitched and intended.

            I was on my guard now, scythe prepared and reflecting the bright light from the alarm clock. I scanned the room, depicting every single shape and every shadow from the objects. I didn’t relax when I discovered it was empty. That only increased my defence.

            I opened the door quietly, turning quickly to look at Ree when the door creaked. Her huddled form hadn’t stirred, even after I’d gotten up. Figures. The giggle wouldn’t have woken her up, because I was the only one who could hear it.

            I took a step out into the dark hall, memorizing the surroundings as best as I could through the blackness. There were no large objects in the hall, only closed doors, and yet I could make out the fuzzy form standing in the middle of the carpet. I shut the door behind me securely, and tried to move to the opposite door inconspicuously. I held in my gasp of pain, even when the fiery tongue of pain burned me from my middle. I resisted the impulse to touch it; I could feel that my middle was heavily bandaged, and wet.

            I refused to touch my wound and look weak in front of the…thing in the hall with me, but I already knew from the pain and the stiffness in my muscles that fighting was not my advantage tonight. I was still sore from the fight with the Chimera, and I couldn’t quite recall what had happened after. I had a few flashbacks of a carpeted hallway, a dimly lit room with two beds, and an anxious pale face framed with dark, shaggy hair…

            I sharpened my focus as the thing moved, and I went into aura mode. I felt exhausted immediately, but I was fuelled by the knowledge that I had to protect this door with my life. The thing with me could be malevolent if it wanted to be, and I knew that Caleb was even more tired than me right now. He hadn’t yet learned how to fight without sleeping for weeks, or how to preserve energy in order to fight at any moment. He was unprepared, and that meant that I was going to have to be prepared for him.

            The thing shifted again, moving closer in less than a second. Since there was no light in the hall, I could barely make out the form of it, and since it was already dead, there was no light from its aura to guide me. I loosened my muscles when it drew closer, attempting to dislodge the instinctive body response of tension. If I was tense, I couldn’t move as quickly, and I was going to have to be fast. Just because it was dead, didn’t mean it wasn’t deadly.

            A short, high-pitched laugh raised both my attention and the hair on the back of my neck. I firmed my hold on my weapon, even though I knew it was useless against a ghost. It moved, blurring through the physical realm that I lived in, and the other dimension that the immortal and dead resided in. This way, it could be impossibly fast, as it demonstrated now.