The Life of Zander Hamilton

We met up with Grover at the Hotel he was staying at, about a mile from the school. He had been hiding out her for a couple months, and had gotten in good with the unknowing demigods’ group of friends. “So, these demigods, what are their names?” Cody asked. “The first guy is Markus Statham, he’s sixteen, and then there’s Tony and Jill Parsons. Brother and sister. Jill is the older sibling at sixteen, Tony is fourteen.” Grover said. “What do they look like?” I asked curiously, “We don’t want to end up pulling the wrong kid in the hallway.” Grover thought for a minute before replying “Markus has long brown hair, he’s kind of built like you Zander. Tall, broad shoulders, he’s really muscular. I’m pretty sure he’s a son of Hephaestus, he loves to tinker. Jill is kind of short, maybe 5’5”, and dark blonde with bright green highlights. Tony is kind of skinny, about 5’8”. He’s tall for his age. He also has dark blonde hair. He and his sister love nature, like me, so I’m guessing children of Persephone.” “What about the monsters, anything new on them?” Cody asked. “Well, I don’t want to say their names so I’ll just say snake women. One is posing as a teacher. No wonder I got F’s in her class.” He said in an annoyed voice. “The other is a student so it’ll be hard to know which one; I mean there are about eighty kids in the school. “So, what’s the plan to get them out of school? I mean, we can’t just walk into the class and say ‘Hey guys guess what. You’re demigods, come with us or your teacher’s gonna eat you.’” I said with mocking happiness. “Well I was thinking that Cody and I grab them after first period before the snake women can get to them. Then I’ll send them to them library, where you will be hiding, and tell them to look for you or more specifically a tall guy with a bronze ring on his left middle finger. Then we walk out the back exit and take them back to camp hopefully with little to no resistance on their part.” Grover explained. It was obvious that he had thought about his plan for a while. So far our plan was going great, Grover and Cody had already found Jill and Markus and told them to go to the library and look for me. We were sitting at a table close to the exit we were taking just in case something went wrong, which it usually did. They were asking me questions left and right trying to figure out what was going on. I could understand though, I had been right where they were five years ago. “Listen,” I told them, “I promise I will explain everything when we are on the move but right now I need to focus.” It was true; I needed to keep an eye out for anything or anybody that looked like they might be a monster. I looked at a girl, about 11th grade, staring at me as if I were a meal. She looked average until I made eye contact. Her eyes were slits like a snakes’ and when she blinked, they blinked sideways. She yawned, what I saw confirmed my suspicions. She had a forked tongue. I slowly turned to Markus, I leaned closer and spoke quietly so only he could hear me. “When I tell you to, run out that door.” He looked around as if trying to find what my reasons were. It was at this time that Grover and Cody walked in with Tony following close behind them. I guess that the girl saw him too because she stood up and dove behind a book-shelf. A few seconds later she smashed through the shelve, but not as the girl I’d seen before. No, this time she was a seven foot tall dracaena. Half human half snake hybrid with two snake tails for legs. There were kids running around trying to hide under tables or behind book shelves. “You ssshall never ssstop usss, little heroesss.” She bellowed, rolling her S’s when she spoke, “We will rissse and dessstroy your puny godsss.” I turned to Markus, “Run, get out of here! I’ll deal with snake breath.” They ran to the exit and out the door, hopefully I could buy them enough time to escape. Cody and Grover ran out the other door with Tony. The dracaena turned to go after them but I ran to cut her off. I stepped in front of the door and held out the sword that I had hidden under the table before school started. She took an experimental swing at me and hissed. I swung back, I had fought these before but not one this big. Dracaenas were usually pretty fast. Hopefully I could be faster, my plan was to take a step one way and wait for her to attack and step back quickly and attack her. My plan didn’t work, I took a fake step as she attacked, stepped back, and attacked. But she judged my trick so when I attacked, I barely scraped the end of one of her legs. Before I could attack again she hit me in the chest sending me into a book case, knocking it over onto a couple of hiding kids. I quickly said my apologies and stood back up to face my enemy. “You heroesss will never win; Criusss will rissse and ussse your puny godsss as ssslavesss.” She cackled. She lunged at me but I quickly side stepped and stabbed her straight in the chest, turning her dust. I thanked my dad and ran after Markus and Jill. I found them hiding behind a bush near the school boarder. “You guys okay?” I asked after I had assured them that I was a friend. Jill walked up to me and punched me in the face, “No I’m not ok! I almost died by a freaking ten foot tall snake!” Jill screamed as she continued to hit me. Markus ran up to her and through his arms around her and pulled her back. “Jill, calm down. He did just risk his life to kill that thing, whatever it was.” He said. He held her close until she calmed down; it was obvious that there was something going on between them. I stood there feeling kind of awkward. “Hate to break this up, but we need to find Grover and your brother.” We ran for our backup meeting place if we got separated. They were there, Cody was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, and Grover was sitting next to him saying something I couldn’t make out. Only problem was I didn’t see Tony. “Where’s my brother?” Jill asked. Cody looked up slowly; it was obvious he was crying. He looked at Jill, “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t stop it.” He said through tears. It took Jill a second to realize that her brother didn’t make it. “NO!” she screamed. She pressed her face into Markus’ shoulder, and was now crying worse than Cody was. “Cody, what happened?” I said in a quiet voice sitting next to him. He looked at me and sniffed, “We… we were just out the door of the school. The other Dracaena… it must have known we were coming because it was waiting for us, I… I tried my best to fight her off but she was better than me. She hit me into Grover knocking us both down. And in the time that it took us to get back up, she… she cut his throat. He bled out in seconds. I was so close… And just the fact that could have saved him, it just... I hate it. Just knowing that I failed but had a chance, even if it were a slight one. It’s just…” He didn’t need to finish. I put an arm around him, not knowing what to say to him. I thought while he cried next to me. I thought about my first failed recovery mission. It was my second year; it took me three months to get over. But at least it wasn’t my very first mission like it was for Cody. I had been on multiple quests before that one. I had no idea what it was like for him. I thought about ways to console him but my thoughts were interrupted by a deep growl. I looked and saw a hellhound, my worst nightmare. I instantly felt pain in my right arm, remembering that day. Cody’s face hardened as he went into action. He hastily brought his bow to eye level, drew back, and let loose. The arrow flew straight through the dogs’ eye turning it to dust. The other one was right behind it and was a dust pile just as quickly as the one before it. He spoke slowly in a lower register than usual, “I will not fail again.”

Notes

Greetings readers.

It's 2:00 AM I would've posted earlier but I have been having internet troubles, but it's all good now. As I promised, this is much more up beat in action. Also be on the look out for my new story coming out. I would tell you the name but I don't want to take any risk of some of the idiots on this site from stealing the story, just keep looking for new stories by me.

Bubba Boy.