Hera's Daughter | Luke Castellan¹

ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕋𝕖𝕟

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𝒲𝑒 𝒮𝒽𝑜𝓅 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝒲𝒶𝓉𝑒𝓇𝒷𝑒𝒹𝓈

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It was Annabeth's idea.

She shoved her quest mates into the back of a Vegas taxi as if they 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 them. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe them through first."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card.

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it." Annabeth invited.

The cabbie 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 them, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles... uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica pier." Annabeth sat up a littler straighter. Selene could tell that Annabeth liked the 'Your Highness' thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

Selene looked down at her own LotusCash card and brought it to her lips, kissing it. "You are now my new best friend. Infinite money!"

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On the road, they had plenty of time to talk. Percy told them about his latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more he tried to remember them. The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited his memory. He couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like, though he was sure it was somebody he knew. The servant had called the monster in the pit something other than 'my lord'... some special name or title...

"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."

"Maybe..." Percy didn't think either sounded quite right.

"The throne room sounds like Hades's." Grover said. "The way that it's usually described."

Percy shook his head. "Somethings wrong. The throne room wasn't a part of the main part of the dream. That voice from the pit... I don't know. It just didn't feel like a god's voice."

Annabeth's eyes widened.

"What?" Percy asked.

"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 then something went wrong -"

"Like what?" Percy questioned.

"I- I don't know." Annabeth shrugged. "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 would have 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 filed. 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."