Escape from camp half blood

Chapter8

"So . . ." said Sadie once she and Nico had been sitting in silence for awhile. And by silence that means Nico's teeth had stopped chattering.

"Hmm?" asked Nico. He sat with his feet curled under him, probably to try to keep warm. His jacket was still in tatters, and Sadie noticed that he was still wearing Percy's blue sweat shirt beneath it.

"He's been gone awhile, hasn't he?"

"He probably went to the woods with Chiron," said Nico. He didn't seem overly concerned.

"So is it true?" asked Sadie.

"Is what true?"

"That Percy is like Achilles?" she asked. "That the only way you can hurt him is if you cut him in the heel?"

Nico paused and Sadie got the feeling that he was deciding whether or not to tell her the truth. "Yes," he said at last. "He's almost invincible. That's why he was able to shrug it off so easily when you hit him in the head last month."

Sadie laughed but her heart wasn't in it. "Hey Nico?"

"Hmm?" said Nico again.

"Who do you think it is?"

She watched as Nico's face fell and felt a little bit bad about asking, but she didn't think that Nico hadn't been considering that question already.

"I don't know," said Nico. "I should have some kind of idea, I know, but I don't. None of the campers have anything to gain doing this. Nothing that I can think of anyway. The Hunters don't either. I don't like them but I don't think they'd ever kill one of their own unless she betrayed them all. The only reason I can think of that anyone would do something like this is to cause trouble between the campers and the Hunters, and maybe start a feud between us but . . . but I can't think of who that would benefit."

"Do you think . . . that the House of Life could be behind this?" asked Sadie.

Nico shook his head. "I don't think they could get past the camp's borders."

"Carter and I got past them."

"You had an invitation," said Nico. "Or an implied invitation. Getting invited into a chariot by demigods, that is then driven into camp by demigods makes it pretty clear that you're welcome here. Just like putting a god in your head then walking across the borders lets the god be here too."

"It could be them. It's not impossible," said Sadie. "They'd certainly benefit from conflict between you and the Hunters."

"Only if they were planning on starting something," argued Nico. "And considering how much trouble they went to in order to avoid starting a war last month, I don't think they'd be charging back toward war this month."

That was true, Sadie had to admit.

"But . . ." Nico looked troubled. "If someone was doing this without any real reasons . . . I mean if they had their own reasons, but their reasons were illogical . . . Then it might be someone from the House of Life."

"You're thinking of Aziza," guessed Sadie, and she could see by the way Nico visibly went paler that she had guessed right. "You think she's behind this."

"I never said that."

"But you were thinking it," pressed Sadie.

"I was trying not to think it actually," said Nico, sounding like he was trying to use a dry tone, but his voice caught and he looked more scared than anything else.

Sadie didn't blame him. Not after what Aziza had put him through. In their first meeting Aziza had pretty much killed Nico. His soul had been sent to the Egyptian Halls of Judgment, which was where the whole mess with getting his soul fused with Anubis' had started. He'd been in a coma for four days because of her. At their next meeting she'd tried to burn him alive. Then when she finally did succeed in capturing him she'd tortured him. She'd put a collar around his neck with a healing spell on it that negated the energy that kept him alive, or as alive as any child of the underworld whose powers were as developed as Nico's could be. And when that energy was being destroyed he'd been in too much pain to even move. Sadie still remembered the defeated look on his face and the agony in his eyes as he just lay there, waiting for his life to completely drain away.