Crimson Rivers [1] - Percy jackson

Chapter 10: Percys has the Worst Family Reunion Ever

Annabeth volunteered to go alone since she had the cap of invisibility, but I
convinced her it was too dangerous. Either we all went together, or nobody went. ‘Nobody!’ Tyson voted. ‘Please?’

But in the end he came along, nervously chewing on his huge fingernails. We
stopped at our cabin long enough to gather our stuff. We figured whatever
happened, we would not be staying another night aboard the zombie cruise ship, even if they did have million-dollar bingo. Percy made sure Riptide was in his pocket and the vitamins and flask from Hermes were at the top of my bag. I didn’t wantbTyson to carry everything, but he insisted, and Annabeth told me not to worry about it. Tyson could carry four full duffel bags over his shoulder as easily as I could carry a backpack.

We sneaked through the corridors, following the ship’s YOU ARE HERE
signs towards the admiralty suite. Annabeth scouted ahead invisibly. We hid whenever someone passed by, but most of the people we saw were just glassy-eyed zombie passengers. As we came up the stairs to deck thirteen, where the admiralty suite was supposed to be, Annabeth hissed, ‘Hide!’ and shoved us into a supply closet.

I heard a couple of guys coming down the hall. ‘You see that Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?’ one of them said.

The other laughed. ‘Yeah, it’s awesome.’

Annabeth was still invisible, but she squeezed my arm hard. I got a feeling I
should know that second guy’s voice. ‘I hear they got two more coming,’ the familiar voice said. ‘They keep arriving at this rate, oh, man – no contest!’

The voices faded down the corridor.
‘That was Chris Rodriguez!’ Annabeth took off her cap and turned visible. ‘You remember – from Cabin Eleven.’

I sort of recalled Chris from the summer before. He was one of those undetermined campers who got stuck in the Hermes cabin because his Olympian dad or mom never claimed him. Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t
seen Chris at camp this summer. ‘What’s another half-blood doing here?’

Annabeth shook her head, clearly troubled. We kept going down the corridor. I didn’t need maps any more to know I was getting close to Luke. I sensed something cold and unpleasant – the presence of evil. ‘Guys.’ Annabeth stopped suddenly. ‘Look.’

She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistorey canyon
that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade – a
mall full of shops – but that’s not what had caught Annabeth’s attention.
A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen
Laistrygonian giants like the ones who’d attacked me with dodgeballs, two
hellhounds and a few even stranger creatures – humanoid females with twin serpent tails instead of legs.

‘Scythian Dracaenae,’ Annabeth whispered. ‘Dragon women.’

The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armour who
was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in my throat when I realized the dummy was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As we watched, the
guy in armour stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upwards. Straw flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled. Annabeth stepped away from the window. Her face was ashen.

‘Come on,’ I told her, trying to sound braver than I felt. ‘The sooner we find
Luke the better.’

At the end of the hallway were double oak doors that looked like they must
lead somewhere important. When we were ten metres away, Tyson stopped.
‘Voices inside.’

‘You can hear that far?’ Percy asked.

Tyson closed his eye like he was concentrating hard. Then his voice changed, becoming a husky approximation of Luke’s. ‘– the prophecy ourselves. The fools won’t know which way to turn.’

Before I could react, Tyson’s voice changed again, becoming deeper and
gruffer, like the other guy we’d heard talking to Luke outside the cafeteria. ‘You really think the old horseman is gone for good?’

Tyson laughed Luke’s laugh. ‘They can’t trust him. Not with the skeletons in
his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw.’

Annabeth shivered. ‘Stop that, Tyson! How do you do that? It’s creepy.’

Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. ‘Just listening.’

‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘What else are they saying?’

Tyson closed his eye again. He hissed in the gruff man’s voice, ‘Quiet!’ Then Luke’s voice, whispering, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ Tyson said in the gruff voice. ‘Right outside.’

Too late, I realized what was happening. I just had time to say, ‘Run!’ when the doors of the stateroom burst open and
there was Luke, flanked by two hairy giants armed with javelins, their bronze tips aimed right at our chests.

‘Well,’ Luke said with a crooked smile. ‘If it isn’t my two favourite cousins.bCome right in.’

The stateroom was beautiful, and it was horrible. The beautiful part: huge windows curved along the back wall, looking outbover the stern of the ship. Green sea and blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon. A Persian rug covered the floor. Two plush sofas occupied the middle of the room, with a canopied bed in one corner and a mahogany dining table in the other. The table was loaded with food: pizza boxes, bottles of soda and a stack of roast beef sandwiches on a silver platter.

The horrible part: on a velvet dais at the back of the room lay a three-metre-
long golden casket. A sarcophagus, engraved with Ancient Greek scenes of cities in flames and heroes dying grisly deaths. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, the casket made the whole room feel cold.n‘Well,’ Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. ‘A little nicer than Cabin Eleven, huh?’

He’d changed since last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he
wore a button-down shirt, khaki trousers, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil malebmodel, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.

He still had the scar under his eye – a jagged white line from his battle with a
dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting strangely, with its half steel, half Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.

‘Sit,’ he told us. He waved his hand and four dining chairs scooted themselves into the centre of the room. None of us sat. Luke’s large friends were still pointing their javelins at us. They looked like twins, but they weren’t human. They stood about two and a half metres tall, for one thing, and wore only blue jeans, probably because their enormous chests were already shag-carpeted with thick brown fur. They had claws for fingernails,feet like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed canines.