Falling Through Portals

Clubbing with Demons and Sleuthing with Vampires

Chapter 68

There was a place in his world called Monster Doughnut, a restaurant hang out for the scariest of bad monsters that . . . wanted to grab a quick Boston Crème before their long days of hunting Demigods. Percy had always thought that monsters congregated there to talk about the worst demigods.

"Ugh," Billy Joe would groan to Hank, "I just got back out of Tartarus again."

"What got you there this time?" Hank would ask, taking a bite of powdered sugar, cherry filled doughnut.

"This brat named Percy Jackson," Billy Joe would probably say some big monster curses along with it. Then Hank would groan through his cherry filled bite of doughnut and nod vigorously while holding his doughnut out to Billy Joe in understanding.

"He did that to me too!" Hank would say before all of the doughnut was gone from his mouth.

"I am SO DONE with that stupid son of Poseidon," Billy Joe would say with some choice words thrown in about his annoyingly perfect hair.

Then another monster would walk up to the doughnut bar and munch down on his French Cruller. The monsters would exchange greetings in some form of grunting/sign language.

"I heard about you guys talking about that horribly gorgeous Percy Jackson," the other monster would say.

"Isn't he awful?" Hank would say. The other monster would nod.

"But you know who is worse?"

The two monster friends would look at each other and silently communicate their confusion before looking back at the other monster.

"Annabeth Chase,"

All three of the monsters would groan and list on and on the lists of times she had sent them down to Tartarus with those stormy gray eyes.

This conversation in Percy's head was the only thing that could keep him from running back out the door he had come in once he had entered the demon bar. Because One thing was for sure, this place was no Monster Doughnut.

Everything was shrouded in darkness that Percy could have sworn was going to reach out and grab him. It had a scary similarity to Tartarus. He could feel eyes on him as he tried to make his way through the crowd. This was harder than he had first imagined since it was so dark in the room that even when his eyes had adjusted, he could hardly see anything. No doubt everything else in the room could see perfectly. Percy forced himself to keep moving. It took everything he had not to flinch at every being that came near him. different demons, some clearly one gender or the other while many were so crazy looking that he had no idea what they were, checked him out like someone would look at a prime rib.

While most of the smells in the room were clearly drugs and whatever else demons smoked, the smell of rotting flesh was the background smell of everything. He didn't even want to know what they were serving for dinner.

Percy had made it to the well-lit portion of the room. It was ironically the bar area where neon lights lit up the glassware and liquors. He silently prayed Simon would find him soon.

He positioned himself to be leaning against the bar so that he could see anything that entered the lit area of the bar. Some of the demons already there looked him over but seemed to have no interest, thankfully. But Percy knew that this would not last when a woman walked into the pool of light. She was dressed in a blood red dress and lips that even in the light, made her skin look as pale as white paper. The neon lights caught on her blonde-silver hair. And she was looking right at him.