Renegade

Griffin's POV

Dreams came back to me as nightmares. All I kept seeing, like a messed-up broken record repeating, was the bloody scene in Thorn’s cabin. All I could hear was Thorn mangled French accent laughing,

“Andrews Charles Smith…nice snack…you’re too late.”

And then I would watch, helplessly, as Thorn sprinted past me, punching me so hard in the ribs all the air in body whooshed out and the world went black. And then I would open my eyes as I pointed my gun at the door handle, destined to watch the scene once more.

When I finally woke, Emily was nudging my shoulder, and the first thing I saw was her concerned eyes looking at mine. I mean, that’s not bad sight. She was really pretty with her chocolate brown hair and her dark blue eyes that seemed to draw any guy’s attention. She didn’t notice it, but she got looks from almost everyone in the café in Gibraltar. But that didn’t matter; she didn’t give them any attention.

“You alright, Griff?” She asked, worried.

“I’m fine,” I answered bitterly. I was still reeling over last night’s incident, and I was still angry about Dr. Thorn, still appalled by the death of that poor kid. I had wanted to cry so badly that night, but I found myself too shocked to even tear up.

“Are you sure?” She asked, not convinced. I knew that she wasn’t trying to be annoying, but I just was not in the mood to answer questions about my emotional state.

“Yeah,” I responded gruffly. She looked like she was about to ask another question, but she was interrupted by the deep, resonant sound of the ship’s foghorn.

We had landed in a little town only half an hour outside Rome. We took a taxi from the harbor all the way to the Parthenon, paying the cab driver extra for gas and the long ride (Money was easy when you work for an Organization funded directly by the Gods). When we reached the Parthenon, we didn’t exactly know what to do, so we walked in.

It was crazy. People walked around in every different direction, interlaced with neon-colored shirt-wearing tourist groups getting lectured in 50 different languages. But that was okay. As a demigod with ADHD, chaos came easy to me. That’s how I noticed the one guy standing still among all the movement.

He was wearing all black, and when I say all black, I mean all black. From his black hair down to his black leather shoes, the guy was a metal rock demigod. He had on a black t-shirt and black jeans, which couldn’t have been comfortable in the Italian summer. On his back was a black backpack that looked like it had the logo of the Organization on it, the letter Eta-Pi-Phi in bronze colored paint. Strapped to his side was a pure black sword, something I recognized. During my training, Xavier had described the metal.

“Stygian iron,” Emily gasped, “I’ve never seen a sword like it.”

"TFG told you about those kids of metals, too? Huh, I thought only my Uncle Xavier would be that boring. He’s the guy we’re looking for?” I asked, hoping the question would be rhetorical.

“Most probably,” Emily answered, and we walked towards him. He didn’t smile in greeting, barely acknowledged us, and when we did get close enough, he greeted us with,

“Don’t. Move. Do what I say, and you might not die. Probably.”

“We don’t even know you,” I protested, but the guy silenced me with a glare.

“That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you two managed to lure two extremely powerful monsters into the middle of a Roman landmark because you were stupid enough to take a taxi all the way from the harbor.”

He looked over my shoulder and seemed to rest his eyes on the monsters in question, and it took every ounce of my will power not to look at what he was looking at.

Continuing to stay completely still, I snapped, “Stupid? Look who’s talking, here! You asked us to meet in the middle of said ‘Roman landmark’, so how about you help us out a little, eh?”

The guy in black laughed, “You sound so much like your dad, it scares me.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” I asked, annoyed.

“Because you know you admire and love your father, you just choose not to because he hasn’t let you go on enough quests, Griffin Charles Jackson.”

I winced. Almost nobody knew my middle name, which was another reason why the kid’s death last night had messed with me. We had the same middle name.

“Who are you?” I asked, irritated.

“My name,” the guy started, glancing up towards the monsters he had seen following us, “doesn’t matter right now. Quick, duck behind the columns behind me!”

So we did. I ducked behind a column that faced Rafael’s tomb, and Emily and the guy in black ducked behind the one next to it.

“Do you two know how to fight?” He asked grimly from his column.

Emily drew her two daggers and I drew my two pistols, and the guy said,

“Oh, thank the Gods. That solves so many problems. All right. I think we can take the Leukrokottas if we catch it by surprise, but the other one, I don’t know about.”

Leukrokottas, I thought, and then the name popped into my brain, Africanus Expansion Pack #6, 2012.

“Wait, the half deer, half-lion?” I asked, and the guy in black seemed impressed.

“You really are a grandson of Athena,” He remarked. Then, he looked into my eyes, and seemed to see something.

“No,” He realized, astonished, “you play Mythomagic, don’t you!”

“Shh!” Emily hushed, looking like the only sane person in this situation who realized how much trouble we were in, “Who’s the other monster, the humanoid one?”

“I don’t…Oh, Styx,” the guy answered, and I took my chance, peeking around the corner to get a look at them.

They were walking slowly through the middle of the Parthenon, not caring about the tourist groups they bumped into, nor the security guards that were checking them out. One of them was obviously a monster in human form, just barely holding his human shape through the Mist. For demigod eyes, he was clearly a Leukrokottas. For those not familiar with the Africanus Expansion Pack #6, a Leukrokottas, or Leu for short, was a mythical creature comprised of the body of a stag and the head of a lion. Think of a hyena with no gums or teeth, but rather two incredibly sharp jawbones that made a chilling click, click! when the beast snapped its jaw together.

The other monster was a lot more human. He was very pale-skinned, so pale you could see his veins, but he was short, only five feet tall. Through the Mist, he probably looked like an American walking his abnormally large dog in a historic monument, but to us demigods, they were monsters.

“The other monster is a guy named Mormo,” I heard the guy in black say faintly, “He used to hunt bad children back in Ancient Greece.”

I ducked back behind the column as the guy gave me a knowing look, and I retorted,
“What? Since when did we become ‘bad kids’?”

Then, the Leu growled, and I realized much too late that I had made a mistake. While quickly glancing at them, the two monsters had somehow noticed the movement, and dropped all pretenses of stealth. They charged. The guy in black cursed as he dropped his backpack and drew his sword, Emily and I following. But, when the monsters were only five feet away, the guy in black disappeared into a shadow, leaving us two to fend off the monsters.

“That coward!” I cursed at the guy in black as I charged. The Leu charged at Emily, barring its knife-edge jawbones, leaving the humanoid to me. But the humanoid looked pleased, asking,

“Are you ready to die, child?”

“Are you? I asked in return, and I aimed my weapons. But before I could fire, Mormo leaped at me and bit my left arm, and searing pain went up my forearm and into my shoulder. I punched him free and fired my right pistol, hitting him in the leg and the shoulder. He should have turned into dust, but he must have been wearing protective clothing, because he kept on coming. He bared a set of fangs and leaped at me again, and this time I saw a green liquid flowing from his mouth.

Poison, I thought, Oh, Gods.

I could already feel the burn in my left side intensifying, but I kept dodging the monster until I could draw my dagger out of a holster on my belt. I realized that I was now fighting with my mother’s own dagger, and that I was supposed to hate my parents, but this was life or death. I would have time to worry about using my mother’s dagger later.

I continued firing, but Mormo just dodged, weaving impossibly quickly through my bullets. But, he got carried away in dodging the pistol fire and came within reach of my dagger. Even though my left side still burned from the poison, I swiped at him and connected, slicing him in the ribs. He fell to his knees, and I caught my breath. I had him.

I looked over my shoulder to see Emily pulling her knives out of the carcass of the Leu that was now crumbling to yellow monster dust. Mormo looked up at me and started to pout, whimpering,

“Pity, child, show me mercy!”

“A friend of mine didn’t receive any mercy!” I shouted, even though the blonde kid hadn’t really been a friend, “Andrew Charles Smith, you recognize the name?”

“No!” Mormo wailed, “I swear, I had nothing to do with that!”

“Yeah, and I had nothing to do with you ‘till you came attacking us. Face the wall,” I spat, wrenching Mormo around with my poisoned arm, which still burnt like crazy. Then, I pointed my gun at the back of his head, and murmured,

“In the name of the Gods.”

I fired one shot, and he exploded softly into cornmeal-like dust.

“You freak,” I spat, still in a rage.

Then, the adrenline stopped flowing as I realized two things. 1) Oh my Gods I just killed a guy! 2) My arm feels like it’s about to fall off.

I collapsed to the floor from the pain and Emily rushed to help me out.

“I don’t have any ambrosia!” She wailed, but I responded, in a raspy voice,

“Backpack…check…the backpack!”

She sprinted over to the bag and found the med-kit, and started applying magical salve and ambrosia to the bite area and let me sip nectar. It took about fifteen minutes, but I started to feel better. I started to focus on what had just happened, and realized that neither Mormo nor the Leukrokottas was the monster I was looking for. I would find Dr. Thorn, if it was the last ting I did, and I would kill him.

I started to sit up, and Emily helped me sit against one of the columns. The rest of the tourists were running around like crazy, and we could hear police sirens outside, but that didn’t matter for now.

We ended up escaping out of a back exit only seconds before the police arrived, and we decided to stop at a park and rest. Emily dug through the bag and found a slender box, like something from the postal service, with the words ‘Do Not Open’ in bold letters, translated into approximately 50 languages, including Latin and Ancient Greek. I felt like total crap, but it was a nice day out, so that made my body feel a little better. After another five minutes of digging, Emily exclaimed,

“Got it!”

“Got what?”

“A letter from the guy in black,” she responded, clutching a piece of parchment, “It’s addressed to us.”

“No way,” I said, sitting up straighter. But, there it was.

Dear Mr. Jackson and Ms. Grace,

By now you’re probably somewhere in Rome, resting after your fight with the monsters that will no doubt have chased you in from the harbor because you probably forgot to check for people following you as you took a taxi all the way to the Parthenon. In this bag you will find a package which you are not to open under any circumstances. It is for your client, who is in Berlin. The directions are enclosed. Please don’t screw this up, eh? By the way, it would be wisest and cheapest to rent a car. More incognito.

Signed,
Nico di Angelo, Son of Hades

“Uncle Nico sent this?” I asked in shock.

“You have another Uncle?” Emily asked, with equal shock.

“Well, he wasn’t really my uncle, but my dad always told me he was. I guess my father’s that kind of guy. You know, the ones that make everyone one of your uncles?”

“Berlin,” Emily pondered, “Always wanted to learn German.”

“Well,” I noticed, “now’s your chance.”

After that, we were silent all the way to the to the rent-a-car shop.

Notes

Enjoy! I know this is a really long one, but it's got a whole huge fight scene in it, so calm down and just read it!