Daughter Of Light- Book 1: PJO

Chapter 37: You Can Do All Kinds of Damage!

Nico and I walked in silence for a few more minutes.

"So why did you cuss her out?"

I sighed.

"You really wanna know?"

"Yes."

I sighed again and explained briefly our trip through the labyrinth, into the nursing home and Ikea and then the party, finding our missing Titan god and what happened to Raph, our second stay in the nursing home- which was more like an emergency hospital. What happened with Helios and then what happened with releasing him and then what happened with Raph, setting him off and then yelling at Aphrodite and her cursing me.

"Ya. Valid."

"I thought so."

I turned into a tunnel and saw light up ahead. The gold path led us right to it. It stopped abruptly in a patch of very added sun, it was still very dark stormy and cloudy, I could see patches of sky through a set of bars above my head.

"What's with the sky?" Nico was looking up through the bars.

"Zeus is trying to cover the fact the sun is missing. I'm on a time crunch. We should-

A shadow fell across the grate and a cow stared down at me. It looked like a normal cow except it was a weird color- bright red, like a cherry. I didn't know cows came in that color.

The cow mooed, put one hoof tentatively on the bars, then backed away.

"What in Hades?"

"It's a ranch. They have weird animals."

"Red cows?" I frowned and looked at the boy. He looked almost transparent in the dime cloudy day.

"Isn't your dad Apollo?"  His scoff was real. And I wanted to shove his head.

"Ya? And? I'm still learning all of this."

Nico shrugged. I shook my head. I don't think I'd ever get used to this world.

"Okay, up we go!"

I wasn't sure how to get the grate off. Nice brought his sword out and slammed it into the ground and I saw him say something, but couldn't figure out what he said, but there were suddenly three skeletons clawing their way out of the ground. I watched fascinated as they climbed on top of each other, like a weird deathly version of Cirque du Soleil.

They finally managed to undo the grate and move it. They locked their boney hands together and made some kind of boney stairway. Nico gracefully ran up then and leapt through the hole, he turned and leaned down, reaching a hand out. I climbed out, using the skeletons as Nico helped pull me up. He was surprisingly strong. But as soon as I was up the skeletons collapsed and sunk back into the earth.

Nico flopped to his back panting and sweating. I pulled out a Nectar Aid juice box and forced him to drink it.

"Drink it or I force you!"

"I'm fine!"

"Says the death boy who looks like he's about to die. I can see your panting and sweating, I can feel your heart struggling. Nectar Aid now."

He scowled at me but took the juice box. I could see a bit of colour returning, well, he was less transparent now. He sat up and looked better.

"Better?" I asked with a slight smirk.

"Better."

"Don't lie to me again."

I saw him roll his eyes as he got up. I stood up and finally got a look around. We were on a ranch, all right. Rolling hills stretched to the horizon, dotted with oak trees and cactuses and boulders. A barbed wire fence ran from the gate in either direction. Cherry-colored cows roamed around, grazing on clumps of grass.