Rain: A Twilight/Percy Jackson Crossover

7|Waking Up

DISCLAIMER: Everything belongs to Rick Riordan and Stephanie Meyer. I own nothing.

A/N: I honestly have no words for this chapter. It is not how I expected this story to go, at all. But I got to writing and, poof, here we are. Don't worry, though, it's always Percabeth.

x.X.x.

IT WAS ALL so confusing. One second, Annabeth had been taking a walk through the woods, hoping to get away from her nagging cousin and that overbearing boyfriend of hers. All that she could hear was the chirping of birds and the low hum of some insect that she couldn't identify. There was no warning, no thump of footsteps. There hadn't even been that feeling you get when there is another presence around you, our sixth sense, perhaps, until a couple of split seconds before it happened.

     There was a sudden flash of color, something moving too quickly to be seen. She was tackled to the ground, by something rock hard and cold, oh, so cold. And then burning, right above her wrist, that began to spread through her body like a wildfire. Annabeth cried out in pain, and tried to focus her eyes on the object above her—it was a person, but not a person. He had the glowing red eyes of an Empousi, and his lips were on her arm, and there was an odd, gruesome slurping noise. Once, he briefly took his mouth away from her wrist to wipe something red off of his lips, and then Annabeth realized: he was drinking her blood.

     Annabeth tried to shout, scream, but the creature quickly clapped his free hand over her mouth. "Quiet, dear. Someone might hear you," he whispered. Somewhere under her haze of pain in fear, it registered in Annabeth's mind that she had been training for years to fight monsters, and yet she had been taken down so easily.

     There was a low, loud growl from somewhere to the left, though she barely heard it, as the loss of blood was making her lightheaded and dizzy, which had previously been something she hadn't thought could happen as easily while you were lying down. The creature was thrown off of her, and the weird feeling, like her life was being suctioned out of her, stopped, though the pain didn't. There was a horrible noise, like metal being split.

     She registered dark eyes and a fuzzy, almost furry face, and then it was gone. The treetops were spinning above her, and she closed her eyes, biting her lip to keep from crying out or, even worse, whimpering. There was the sudden roar of a fire coming to life, and a burning heat coming from somewhere besides her wrist.

     Annabeth wished that she could just pass out from the pain, but no matter how much it hurt and how much the pain intensified, she remained conscious. There was lots of shouting, and she was suddenly yanked up into cool arms. More shouting, then the rush of wind in her ears and on her burning skin, though the chill did nothing to soothe it.

     Through the pain, which intensified with every second, Annabeth could just barely register what was happening around her. She still kept her eyes shut, but she could hear voices around her. They were faint and sounded like jibberish to her, but they were something.

      She burned for what felt like both an eternity and a fraction of a moment. After a while, the hurt began to lessen but just slightly. First her fingertips, then her whole hands, and then the arm just below her elbows seemed to cool. Her heartbeat seemed to speed up. An odd chill crept up her body, and as the pain lost some of its impact, Annabeth found herself able to comprehend the voices that had been around her, snatching parts of conversations.