Fearless¹ Percy Jackson

-𝕾𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖊𝖊𝖓

🕊️.⋆｡⋆༶⋆˙⊹🤍

┌── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┐

"𝓵𝓸𝓸𝓴𝓼 𝓵𝓲𝓴𝓮 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓷'𝓽 𝓶𝓾𝓽𝓪𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓪𝓯𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓪𝓵𝓵, 𝓹𝓲𝓽𝔂"

└── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ──┘

It was Annabeth's idea. And Lyric loved her for it.

She loaded them into the back of a Vegas taxi as if they actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized them up. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Annabeth asked.

He shrugged. "Some of 'em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe 'em through first."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card.

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," Annabeth invited.

He did.

His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.

The cigar fell out of the driver's mouth. He looked back at them, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles. . . uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica Pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. You could tell she liked the 'Your Highness' thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

So maybe she probably shouldn't have told him that. The cab's speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert.

On the road, they had plenty of time to talk. Percy told his friends about his latest dream.

"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."

"Names, he despises" Lyric muttered her chin in her hand, her phone had died. It made her wish she'd plugged it while she was at the Lotus Casino

"Maybe . . ."

"That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said. "That's the way it's usually described."

"No, that's how you all imagine it"

"Then, how does it look?" Annabeth asked clearly annoyed at Lyric always jumping at the chance to defend Hades, "you keep defending Hades how are you sure he isn't the culprit"

"I just know!" She yelled back, "Hades isn't like that you'll see"

The tension was thicker than Chiron and that was saying something, Percy cleared his throat "Something's wrong. The throne room wasn't the main part of the dream. And that voice from the pit . . . I don't know. It just didn't feel like a god's voice."

Annabeth's eyes widened.

Lyra looked straightened in her seat, the two looked at each other as if they were having a silent conversation.

"What?" Percy asked.

"Oh . . . nothing. I was just-No, it has to be Hades. Maybe he sent this thief, this invisible person to get the master bolt, and something went wrong-"

"Like what?"

"I-I don't know," she said. "But if he stole Zeus's symbol of power from Olympus, and the gods were hunting him, I mean, a lot of things could go wrong. So this thief had to hide the bolt, or he lost it somehow. Anyway, he failed to bring it to Hades. That's what the voice said in your dream, right? The guy failed. That would explain what the Furies were searching for when they came after us on the bus. Maybe they thought we had retrieved the bolt."