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Two of them came at me. I backed up toward the creek, tried to raise my shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn’t been wearing an armored breastplate, I would’ve been shish-ke-babbed. As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-sized cut.
Seeing my own blood made me dizzy — warm and cold at the same time.
“No maiming,” I managed to say.
“Oops,” the guy said. “Guess I lost my dessert privilege.”
He pushed me into the dirt and I landed with an oof. They all laughed. I figured as soon as they were through being amused, I would die.
Clarisse and her cabinmates advanced on me. The first guy slashed me with his sword on my other arm.
I bit back a scream. My skin parted like butter and blood poured down my arm. The cut felt like fire. I grit my teeth and crab-walked backwards.
If I’d counted before moving, I would have realized that one of the Ares kids was out of my line of sight. I didn’t notice until I felt a stinging cut across my shoulder blade. The strap of my breastplate was cut straight through and it hung at an angle. There was laughter.
I swung my head around wildly but there was no one to come to my rescue. I was alone here. Then I saw a gap between the Ares kids. I made a dash for it.
A foot tripped me.
I rolled in the dirt. Before I could even get up, Clarisse was back with her spear. She thrust it down and it went through my knee.
I couldn’t hold in the scream this time. My leg was on fire. I was going to black out from the pain. Part of me wished I would because I didn’t want anymore pain. I wanted it to stop. Were they really doing this to me because of the bathroom incident? How could someone be that petty?
Clarisse’s spear stayed lodged in my knee, funneling in a constant stream of electricity that made my skin burn and blister. There was no numbness this time. The air smelled faintly of cooking meat.
They were really going to kill me, I realized. And I wanted them to. Anything to make this pain stop.
At least that’s what I thought until Clarisse pulled her spear out of my knee.
I screamed again, then bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood in my mouth. My arms ached but I forced myself to drag my body along the ground...just like at military school but a million times worse.
The shwing of a sword was the only warning I got before someone slashed me across the shoulder blades again, cutting my other breastplate strap and making an X in my skin. They were laughing and talking but I couldn’t make out words over the rush of blood in my ears.
Someone kicked my ribs and compared to being cut and electrocuted that was a minor irritation. They stepped on my back, crushing me into the dirt.
The pain in my back made me scream again. I tasted dirt in my mouth. There was blood all over my arms, in the earth around me. Now that I was down, it was dripping over my shoulders and staining the front of my shirt. I blinked tears out of my vision. Did I see something? A flicker of movement? A human-shaped shadow without a person attached? “Help,” I croaked.
Clarisse’s spear sank into the center of the X on my back. Bolts of electricity coursed through me. My heart beat overtime, so hard that I thought it was going to explode. My heart didn’t explode. It just stopped and so did I.
—-
Clarisse pulled her spear from the boy beneath her and felt a deep, visceral satisfaction in the red blood dripping from the point of it. She held it over her head and roared.
Her siblings joined her, roaring their victory to the heavens. They had put the little punk in his place. He wouldn’t be forgetting this so easily.
Clarisse’s victory roar faded and she looked down at the boy beneath her boot. And frowned. She lifted her foot and nudged his ribs with the steel toes.
He didn’t react at all.
Her siblings fell silent too and watched. The air suddenly felt heavy. They exchanged looks with each other but no one spoke.
Clarisse looked at the blood and the small, still body on the ground. She stared at her spear, the red electricity crackling at the point. It was made to kill monsters but like all celestial bronze weapons, it didn’t see the difference between a monster and a demigod. She looked around and saw no one. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Clarisse,” one of her sisters started. They fell silent after a look from Clarisse.
Her siblings followed her silently, melting into the shadows as though they had never been there. This wasn’t the first time a camper had been killed during an activity. Maybe they would go for a month without dessert but there wouldn’t be a harsher punishment than that. Right?
Clarisse didn’t look back so no one saw the worry in her eyes or the hard set of her jaw. She twisted the spear to cut off the electrical current and dipped the head into the stream to wash off the blood. She didn’t stop walking as she washed away the evidence.
Behind her, she heard her siblings doing the same with their bloodied weapons. The war was won. They were Ares kids. No one could fault them for killing the punk. It’s not like he was anyone special.
—
Annabeth watched the battle with the same detachment that she’d had when she watched a baby bird fall from the nest and slowly die because she didn’t put it back. Sometimes it was more interesting to see what would happen. Besides, even though there were five huge war machines masquerading as teenagers, Jackson was the son of Poseidon. Annabeth was sure of it. He would go crazy and show them all just how strong a child of the Big Three was. Then she would go on his quest with him and finally get the glory she deserved. Simple logic.
She waited for Jackson to get into the stream but he never did. He didn’t even try to drag himself to it. Annabeth rolled her eyes. He was so stupid. If he couldn’t even figure out something so basic, then he deserved to be stabbed. There was no room for weakness in this life. It was like watching someone pin a butterfly, all the while knowing that if the butterfly just used its wings, it would get out of the situation.
Jackson went down and one of the boys kicked him in the ribs. There was a crack.
Clarisse shoved the boy out of the way and stomped her boot on Jackson’s lower back to stop him from worming away. She raised her spear and stabbed Jackson in the back. X marks the spot. The smell of burning meat rose in the air once again.
Jackson didn’t scream this time. Point to him. He also stayed down. Smart boy. His fingers twitched and jerked.
Annabeth rolled her eyes again when the Ares kids roared. She waited for them to leave. Now that Jackson was down, they would lose interest in him. He should have stayed down to begin with and the fight wouldn’t have been so bad. The Ares cabin were like cats; they liked to play with their prey. Especially when they knew the victory would be easy.
Jackson didn’t get up even after the Ares kids left. He lay still in the dirt. Maybe he was playing possum. Coward. Annabeth mentally took away his points.
Annabeth waited a few minutes but eventually grew impatient. She stalked up to him and looked down. His spine was visible between the flayed skin of his shoulder blades and there was a deep, deep red hole that was outlined by broken ribs. Annabeth didn’t like the look of it but she was sure that Jackson would be fine if he just got in the water. If she really thought he would die, she wouldn’t have stood by, she told herself without conviction.
The problem with trying to drag someone to the stream five feet away, was when they weighed the same as you. She pulled on his blood-slick arm. He was a total deadweight. Annabeth heaved and huffed. Her sneakers skidded in the dirt and she got blood on her heels. “Ugh! Stupid demigod!” She was panting and had lost her hat by the time she got him to the stream. Sweat rolled down her temples. “You better be grateful for everything I’m doing for you,” Annabeth said.
Jackson lay face down in the stream, half in the water and half out of it. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t made a single sound. At least his bleeding stopped.
Annabeth stood with her hands on her hips and glared at Jackson. She was beginning to suspect that he was too far gone for the stream water to heal. The idea that she was wrong about who he was didn’t even cross her mind; she’d seen what he could do with water.
Annabeth washed her hands in the stream while she waited for the wounds to close up. When Jackson woke up, Annabeth was going to kill him. She stood and waited. The minutes ticked in and nothing happened. Annabeth stomped her foot. “Why is this taking so long? You can’t be dead that easily! What about my quest?!”
After another minute, Annabeth heard running footsteps approach her. That should be Luke with the flag, right on time. She waved her arms and yelled for him. “LUKE! HEY LUKE!” Luke would make things right. He would fix this stupid demigod.
—
Luke sprinted toward the border with the red banner in his hands but he slowed when he heard Annabeth calling his name. She sounded...annoyed. His gaze found her standing where the stream should be located and he headed in her direction.
That was where she’d stationed Percy. Luke couldn’t see the boy…. Maybe he was hurt. Strike that, if he had been used as bait for Clarisse then he was definitely hurt.
The brambles and thickets grew thick along the banks of the stream so Luke was almost right next to Annabeth when he saw the body in the water. Luke was distantly aware that he’d dropped the banner. His vision tunneled to the body in the stream. And it was a body. Luke had seen enough dead children to recognize one when he saw it.
Luke trudged into the water and dropped to his knees beside Percy’s body. He was face down in the stream, which Luke found odd. As a son of Poseidon, Percy shouldn’t have been able to drown. His shirt was red, torn open in the back, and his armor was hanging way lower than it should have been. The straps holding it up had been cut. There was an X sliced deep across his shoulder blades.
“He isn’t healing!” Annabeth said crossly. “He was supposed to get in the stream!”
Luke tore his eyes from Percy’s body to look at Annabeth in shock. “He’s dead,” Luke said, bewilderment slipping into his voice. Annabeth wasn’t stupid. Surely she had to have realized.
“His father must be very disappointed in him,” Annabeth said in a tone of voice that implied Poseidon’s disappointment couldn’t come near her own. She viewed Percy as a failure, unworthy of the divine blood that ran through his veins. If he couldn’t even defend himself from Clarisse then how could Annabeth expect him to live through a quest? “He didn’t even put up a good fight.”
Luke looked down at Percy’s body again. He couldn’t stand to see the boy’s face in the water. So he lifted, awkwardly, Percy’s head out of the water and arranged it on his lap. It didn’t make Luke feel better. “Go get Chiron,” Luke ordered Annabeth. He didn’t want to be around her right now.
“Michael already went for Chiron,” came the small voice of Will Solace. He was looking at them with wide, wide eyes.
Luke wanted to tell him to look away. He was just a kid, younger than a lot of the campers here. There was no need for him to look. “Get everyone out of here,” Luke hissed at Annabeth. “Put them in their cabins until dinner.”
There was a communal groan from the watching campers. They were more upset about being confined to their cabins than they were about the dead boy on Luke’s lap.
“Go!” Luke snarled at them.
Everyone moved after that, scattering toward the cabins. Even the Ares kids who had done this left. Annabeth chased after the group, herding them like a dog herds sheep.
Heavy silence fell.
Luke looked at Percy again. There was a hint of orange at the bottom of his shirt; which meant that this was his Camp shirt, dyed red with his own blood. The stream didn’t wash it out. Luke picked Percy up and carried him out of the water. Son of Poseidon or not, letting him bloat up in the water would be gross.
As he stood on the shore, looking for a place to set Percy down, Luke noticed the drag marks. He cocked his head, curiosity getting the better of him. The drag marks went into the water so...did Annabeth drag Percy to the water? Was he already dead when she got him in? Luke followed the trail. It wasn’t too long - otherwise Annabeth wouldn’t have been able to drag him to the stream - and it ended in a puddle of blood.
Luke spotted five different shoe prints, plus Annabeth and Percy’s. Five kids to take on a twelve-year-old. It was brutally excessive. Luke laid Percy on a clean section of ground. Then he looked between Percy and the ground, mentally piecing together what must have happened.
Clarisse got Percy’s knee; went in through the back with her spear, which meant he’d been on his stomach. Luke could tell by the burnt flesh and the shape of the hole. Percy couldn’t have gone anywhere if he’d tried...and he did try. Both of Percy’s biceps were sliced open: one through to the fatty layer beneath the skin and the other all the way through the muscle. There was a surprising amount of blood in the dirt.
It didn’t escape Luke’s notice that he hadn’t needed to summon that Hellhound to make camp unsafe for Percy. But he wasn’t planning on the beast killing Percy. Just like he hadn’t expected Clarisse killing the boy when Luke agreed to Annabeth’s plan of using him as bait.
Luke sat beside Percy’s body and gently tucked his hair out of his face. “I’m so sorry, kid.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Chiron’s hoofsteps broke the silence in the forest. “Oh,” he said sadly. He was unsurprised but still wounded by the death of a camper. “What happened, Luke?”
Luke paused. His eyes had fallen upon a discarded Yankees baseball cap.
He didn’t even put up a real fight. He isn’t healing. He was supposed to get in the stream!
Bile rose in his throat as Luke realized what Annabeth had been saying. She not only didn’t help him - she watched Percy die. He smoothed his fingertips over Percy’s wet hair and saw that his hands were shaking. Luke closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He slowly let it out, and opened his eyes. He looked up at Chiron, trying to school his features into something neutral so that Chiron wouldn’t see his heart breaking. “I think we need to have a talk about Annabeth.”