Daughter Of Lightning - Book 3 (A Percy Jackson x OC Fanfic)

CHAPTER 7

(Ella's POV)

The Hunters piled into the van. They all crammed into the back so they'd be as far away as possible from Apollo & the rest of the highly infectious males.

Bianca sat with them, leaving her little brother to hang in the front with us, which seemed cold. But Nico didn't seem to mind, & kept standing next to me, gripping my hand tight.

"This is so cool!" Nico said, jumping up & down. "Is this really the sun? I thought Helios & Selene were the sun & moon gods. How come sometimes it's them & then it's you & Artemis?"

"Downsizing," Apollo said. "The Romans started it. They couldn't afford all those temple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties into our job descriptions. My sis got the moon. I got the sun. It was pretty annoying at first, but at least I got this cool car."

"But how does it work?" Nico asked. "I thought the sun was a big fiery ball of gas!"

Apollo chuckled & ruffled Nico's hair.

"That rumor probably got started because Artemis used to call me a big fiery ball of gas. Seriously, kid, it depends on whether you're talking astronomy or philosophy. You want to talk astronomy? Bah, what fun is that? You want to talk about how humans think about the sun? Ah, now that's more interesting. They've got a lot riding on the sun...er, so to speak. It keeps them warm, grows crops, powers engines, makes everything look, well, sunnier. This chariot is built out of human dreams about the sun, kid. It's as old as Western Civilization. Every day, it drives across the sky from east to west, lighting up all those puny little mortal lives. The chariot is a manifestation of the sun's power, the way mortals perceive it. Make sense?"

Nico shook his head. "No."

"Well then, just think of it as a really powerful, really dangerous solar car."

"Can I drive?"

"No. Too young."

"Oo! Oo!" Grover raised his hand.

"Mm, no," Apollo said. "Too furry." He looked past Percy & me & focused on Thalia.

"Daughter of Zeus!" he said. "Lord of the sky. Perfect."

"Hey wait. Nora is a daughter of Zeus too. Why can't she drive?" Percy asked. I kicked his foot, warning him not to question the sun god's decision but then Apollo just said.

"She's not old enough, you know. If she had been I wouldn't have hesitated to pick her."

"But-"

"Percy, don't. It's fine.." I whispered.

"Oh, no." Thalia shook her head. "No, thanks. I'm not much of a driver anyways."

"C'mon," Apollo said. "How old are you?"

Thalia hesitated. "I don't know."

It was sad, but true. She'd been turned into a tree when she was twelve, but that was seven years ago. So she'd be nineteen, if you went by years. But she still felt like she was twelve, & if you looked at her, she seemed somewhere in between.

The best Chiron could figure, she had been aging in tree form, but much more slowly.

Apollo tapped his finger to his lips.

"You're fifteen, almost sixteen."

"How do you know that?" Percy asked.

"Hey, I'm the god of prophecy. I know stuff. You'll turn sixteen in about a week."

"That's my birthday! December twenty-second."

"Which means you're old enough now to drive with a learner's permit!"

Thalia shifted nervously. "Uh..."

"I know what you're going to say," Apollo said. "You don't deserve an honor like driving the sun chariot."

"That's not what I was going to say."

"Don't sweat it! Maine to Long Island is a really short trip, & don't worry about what happened to the last kid I trained. You're Zeus's daughter. He's not going to blast you out of the sky."

Apollo laughed good-naturedly. The rest of us didn't join him.

Thalia tried to protest, but Apollo was absolutely not going to take "no" for an answer.

He hit a button on the dashboard, & a sign popped up along the top of the windshield. I had to read it backwards (which, for a dyslexic, isn't that different than reading forward). I was pretty sure it said WARNING: STUDENT DRIVER.

"Take it away!" Apollo told Thalia. "You're gonna be a natural!"

I'll admit I was jealous. I couldn't wait to start driving. But pf course she'd get the chance to do it instead of me. Then again, how different was a sun chariot be from a normal car, right?

"Speed equals heat," Apollo advised. "So start slowly, & make sure you've got good altitude before you really open her up."

Thalia gripped the wheel so tight her knuckles turned white. She looked like she was going to be sick.

"What's wrong?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she said shakily. "N-nothing is wrong."

She pulled back on the wheel. It tilted, & the bus lurched up so fast I fell & crashed into something soft, getting sandwiched further by Percy who crashed against me.

"Ow" Grover said.

"Sorry." Percy & I said together.

"Slower!" Apollo said.

"Sorry!" Thalia said. "I've got it under control!"

I managed to get to my feet. Looking out the window, I saw a smoking ring of trees from the clearing where we'd taken off.

"Thalia," I said, "lighten up on the accelerator."

"I've got it, Nora." she said, gritting her teeth. But she kept it floored.

"Loosen up," Percy told her.

"I'm loose!"Thalia said. She was so stiff she looked like she was made out of plywood.

"We need to veer south for Long Island," Apollo said. "Hang a left."

Thalia jerked the wheel & again threw me into Grover, who yelped.

"The other left," Apollo suggested.

I made the mistake of looking out the window again. We were at airplane height now—so high the sky was starting to look black.

"Ah.." Apollo said. I got the feeling he was forcing himself to sound calm. "A little lower, sweetheart. Cape Cod is freezing over."

Thalia tilted the wheel. Her face was chalk white, her forehead beaded with sweat. Something was definitely wrong. I'd never seen her like this.

The bus pitched down & someone screamed. Maybe it was me, maybe it wasn't. Now we were heading straight toward the Atlantic Ocean at a thousand miles an hour, the New England coastline off to our right. And it was getting hot in the bus.

Apollo had been thrown somewhere in the back of the bus, but he started climbing up the rows of seats.

"Take the wheel!" Grover begged him.

"No worries," Apollo said. He looked plenty worried. "She just has to learn to -WHOA!"

I saw what he was seeing. Down below us was a little snow-covered New England town. At least, it used to be snow-covered. As I watched, the snow melted off the trees & the roofs & the lawns. The white steeple on a church turned brown and started to smolder.

Little plumes of smoke, like birthday candles, popped up all over the town. Trees & rooftops were catching fire.

"Pull up!" I yelled.

There was a wild light in Thalia's eyes. She yanked back on the wheel, & I held on this time. As we zoomed up, I looked through the back window. The fires in the town got snuffed out by the sudden blast of cold.

"There!" Apollo pointed. "Long Island, dead ahead. Let's slow down, dear. 'Dead' is only an expression."

Thalia was thundering toward the coastline of northern Long Island.

There was Camp Half-Blood: the valley, the woods, the beach. I could see the dining pavilion and cabins & the amphitheater.

"I'm under control," Thalia muttered. "I'm under control."

We were only a few hundred yards away now.

"Brake," Apollo said.

"I can do this."

"BRAKE!"

Thalia slammed her foot on the brake, and the sun bus pitched forward at a forty-five-degree angle, slamming into the Camp Half Blood canoe lake with a huge FLOOOOSH!

Steam billowed up, sending several frightened naiads scrambling out of the water with half-woven wicker baskets.

The bus bobbed to the surface, along with a couple of capsized, half-melted canoes.

"Well," said Apollo with a brave smile. "You were right, my dear. You had everything under control! Let's go see if we boiled anyone important, shall we?"

Sorry for the delay...AGAIN..🙈

Enjoy the chapter tho!!

Until next time...👋🏻

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Alice signing off.
XOXO.