ENTRAPPED ₂

17

ETHAN'S DREAMS WERE ALWAYS RECURRING, AND THEY WERE ALWAYS ABOUT MADELEINE.

This time, though, they didn't start that way.

He was standing in an abandoned apartment building. There was still blood all over the carpet. He found it amusing that they hadn't cleaned it up, though he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised. It wasn't as if they had broadcasted his father's murder all over the news. They had cleaned it up nice and neat, and no one ever spoke Ethan's name again.

The place was dark. Ethan could see the sagging leather couch pocked with gunshot holes. Their TV, shattered from a knife his father had thrown into it. He didn't dare go down into their basement.

He was not here for sentiment. He was here because he knew his mother would be here.

Ethan Nakamura had never met Nemesis; but he knew, from his time at Camp Half-Blood, that she was his mother. He hated her, but he was alone right now and he needed her. He felt weak and exposed, gutted from the inside out. Stupid fucking Madeleine Aetos and Zoe Nightshade.

Nemesis appeared on the ruined couch. She had a silver knife in her hand that gleamed, reflecting light from the streetlamps outside. She wore a black leather jacket, black leather pants, and a red shirt that read DEATH TO FREAKS in messy black lettering. Her hair was dark and choppy, her skin uniquely pale. Her eyes were like twin dark pits, flickering brown. She looked like Hestia, if Hestia had been starved to death five times over.

Nemesis sat with one leg folded over the other, reclining back into the couch, tossing her knife and catching it. She looked completely relaxed, as if it was a usual thing to meet her son in the apartment where he had killed her former lover.

"Ethan Nakamura," she said. There was no familiarity in her voice. Ethan hated her in that moment more than he had ever hated her. The only thing that stopped him from trying to claw the skin off of her face was the favor.

"I need something," Ethan said. He took a careful step toward his mother, his hands twitching toward his knives.

Nemesis smiled. Her teeth had been sharpened into razor points. "What do you need, dear?"

"I need to make a difference," Ethan said. "Make me make a difference."

For a moment, mother and son just stared at each other. Then Nemesis threw back her head and laughed. It was unkind and vicious.

"You want to make a difference." Nemesis shook her head. Her eyes were locked on him like grenades. "My son wants to make a difference. Are you done being pathetic? Pining over the gods? Switching sides? Pick something, Ethan. Pick something."

Ethan hated her. He drew his knife and threw it at her neck, but it buried itself harmlessly in the couch. Nemesis disappeared and reappeared a few feet away, standing now, leaning against a wall, her knife lodged in her teeth.

"Try harder," she told him.

Ethan lunged at her with his second knife. He had her by the throat, but then the room flashed white and suddenly Ethan's father had a hand around his neck. Ethan was frozen with fear, temporarily paralyzed. He couldn't breathe.

He knew this wasn't real. He had watched his father die. Had made sure he was dead. Had checked the pulse a dozen times before he had left.

It didn't matter. His body reacted to fear like any other body. And he had spent so many years being afraid of his father.

His father slammed him into the wall. Ethan's head lolled, pain shooting through his skull. Dimly, he saw Nemesis transform back into herself. She had her silver knife poised just centimeters away from Ethan's eye. He thrashed, but it was no good.