˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚ I WILL NEVER TURN MY BACK ON PEOPLE WHO NEED ME ˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚
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IF YOU EVER TOLD CARMEN PALOMA MIRANDA THAT SHE WAS BORN TO DIE SHE WOULD HAVE AGREED.
Mythologically speaking, if there's anything she hates worse than trios of old ladies, it's monsters. Last summer, she fought the tons of monsters in the quest she was on. Not to mention the fall to her death. And Percy Jackson had fought the Minotaur on the top of Half-Blood Hill. This time what he saw up there was even worse: two bulls. And not just regular bulls—bronze ones the size of elephants. And even that wasn't bad enough.
Naturally they had to breathe fire, too. As soon as we exited the taxi, the Gray Sisters peeled out, heading back to New York, where life was safer. They didn't even wait for their extra three-drachma payment. They just left them on the side of the road, Annabeth with nothing but her backpack and knife, Tyson and Percy still in our burned-up tie-dyed gym clothes. Carmen and Blair with their own gym clothes both taking off their hair clip and Blair her bracelet.
"Oh, man," said Annabeth, looking at the battle raging on the hill. What worried them most weren't the bulls themselves. Or the ten heroes in full battle armor who were getting their bronze-plated booties whooped.
What worried them was that the bulls were ranging all over the hill, even around the back side of the pine tree. That shouldn't have been possible. The camp's magic boundaries didn't allow monsters to cross past Thalia's tree. But the metal bulls were doing it anyway. One of the heroes shouted, "Border patrol, to me!" A girl's voice—gruff and familiar. Border patrol? The camp didn't have a border patrol.
"It's Clarisse," Carmen said first knowing her best friends voice from anywhere, "Come on, we have to help her."
Normally, rushing to Clarisse's aid would not have been high on Percy's "to do" list. She was one of the biggest bullies at camp. The first time they'd met she tried to introduce his head to a toilet. She was also a daughter of Ares, and Percy and Carmen had a very serious disagreement with her father last summer, so now the god of war and all his children basically hated Percy's guts not to much Carmen, his kids adored her.
Still, she was in trouble. Her fellow warriors were scat-tering, running in panic as the bulls charged. The grass was burning in huge swathes around the pine tree. One hero screamed and waved his arms as he ran in circles, the horse-hair plume on his helmet blazing like a fiery Mohawk. Clarisse's own armor was charred. She was fighting with a broken spear shaft, the other end embedded uselessly in the metal joint of one bull's shoulder. Percy uncapped his ballpoint pen. It shimmered, growing longer and heavier until he held the bronze sword RipTide in his hands. "Tyson, stay here. I don't want you taking any more chances."
