you gave me this curse, this burden ----- I didn't ask for the wolf, nor the god
book one in the wolf series
apollo x oc ( x ethan nakamura )
the lightning thief ----- the last olympian
...
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IT WAS ANNABETH'S IDEA. she'd loaded them into the back of a Vegas taxi as if any of them 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 us, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles. . . uh, Your Highness?"
"The Santa Monica Pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change." Maybe she 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 Annabeth, Bowie and Grover about his latest dream ----- something about an invisible servant in a pit talking to someone.
though, percy couldn't seem to remember what the invisible servant had sounded like or what the monster in the pit was called. "The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades." "Maybe . . ." "That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said. "That's the way it's usually described." I shook my head. "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. "What?"
"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."
"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt," percy said, "why would I be traveling to the Underworld?" "To threaten Hades," Grover suggested. "To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back." percy whistled. "You have evil thoughts for a goat." "Why, thank you."
