The Second Jackson- Piper McLean book 1

Snake Hair is Stupid

Lani

The snake women were starting to get on my last nerve. No matter what, they wouldn't die. Not when my brother Percy dropped a crate of bowling balls on them three days ago in the Napa Bargain Mart. Not two days ago when I ran over them with a police car in Martinez. Even if that didn't kill them, they certainly should have died when we cut off their heads in Tilden Park.

However, no matter how many times they crumbled to dust, they always reformed moments later like evil dust bunny demons. Of course we had also tried outrunning them, but that didn't work.

My twin and I reached the top of a hill, stopping to catch our breath. How long has it been since we last killed them? Maybe two or three hours, they never seemed to stay dead longer than that. The past few days we'd hardly slept, and our diet consisted of things like vending machine gummy bears, stale bagels, even a Jack in the Crack burrito, not our best decision. Our clothes were torn, burned, splattered with monster slime, and our backpacks weren't in much better shape.

We'd only survived this long because the two snake-haired ladies, gorgons they called themselves, couldn't seem to kill my brother, and since we learned that he's been taking every single hit for me, which I am not at all fine with, but it's not like I could stop to argue with him about it. We're too busy trying not to die! Unfortunately I knew we couldn't keep going much longer, soon we'd collapse from exhaustion, and then, as hard as my brother is to kill, they'd probably find a way, at least I wouldn't still be alive to see it.

The main question on my mind right now was, where to run? My brother looked at me, making eye contact and I knew he was thinking the same thing.

We scanned our surroundings. If I wasn't worried about dying it would be a beautiful view. To my left, on the other side of my brother, golden hills rolled inland, dotted with trees, lakes, and a few cow herds. To my right, the flatlands of Berkeley and Oakland marched west. A vast chessboard of neighborhoods, with several million people who probably didn't want their days interrupted by two monsters and a set of filthy twin demigods.

Farther west, San Francisco bay glimmered under a silvery haze. Past that, a wall of fog had swallowed most of San Francisco, leaving just the tops of skyscrapers and the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I felt this strange pressure in my chest and reached up for a fading streak of grey in my hair. I couldn't help but feel like it was connected to my past, which I can't remember. The only thing I remember is that Percy and I are twins and my name is Lani. The wolf promised we would regain our memories- if we succeeded in his journey.

I couldn't help but wonder if we should try to cross the bay, at least it seemed familiar. Besides, I could feel the power of the ocean just over the horizon. Water always revived us; salt water was best. We found that out after we strangled a sea monster in the Carquinez Strait. If we could reach the bay, we might be able to make a last stand. Maybe we could even drown the gorgons. But the shore was at least two miles away. We'd have to cross an entire city.

I hesitated for another reason; I feel the same reason as Percy. The she-wolf Lupa had taught us to sharpen our senses- to trust our instincts that had been guiding us south. My homing radar was tingling like crazy now. The end of our journey was near, right under our feet. But that wasn't possible, there was nothing on the hilltop.

The wind changed. I caught the sour scent of reptile. Roughly a hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods, snapping branches, crunching leaves, hissing. I twisted my wrist, tapping the back of Percy's hand, a gesture he returned to let me know he heard them too.

Gorgons.

For the millionth time since I can remember, which isn't long, I wished their noses weren't so good. They had always said they could smell us because we were a demigod, the half-blood children of some old Roman god. We had tried rolling in the mud, splashing through creeks, and we'd even tried keeping air-freshener sticks in our pockets. Unfortunately, the demigod scent was not that easy to mask.