Title: Goddamned
Author:
garneticePart: Three of Six
Previous Parts:
1,
2Word Count: 7,375 (of 51,011)
A/N: See Pt. 1 for author's notes, disclaimer, and summary!
---
He is not at any of the coffee stores in town. He is not at the community center or the youth hostel or the churches or the temples or the synagogues. He is not in the hospitals, because they’ve triple checked and quadruple checked, and they even dare to hit up the cops for information.
Shane has fallen off the face of the planet.
“He left,” James decides, and he is full out panicking now, his words tumbling over each other, one after another. They are camped inside the same room in the same abandoned house they woke up tangled together in a few days prior, but everything has changed. “Shane didn’t want to pick you up in the first place. He didn’t want to go to Camp Halfwit, and fuck, I told him to- for you, I wanted to-“
“James.”
Kendall is the master of inopportune timing. He dares, lets his hand rest against the juncture of James’s jaw and his neck. It is a caress, and it is reassurance, and James wants nothing to do with it. His eyes blaze, and there is iron behind all that fire; Kendall suddenly has no trouble at all seeing him as a Prince of Hell. “It’s your fault he’s gone. He never wanted to-”
“My fault?” Kendall’s rage is sudden and uncontrollable, because how is that even fair? “He’s your brother.”
“Exactly. He’s my brother, and I’m going to go find him.”
“Where? Exactly? Because we’ve looked everywhere!”
“Not everywhere. Not the Underworld.”
The word is familiar only from Kendall’s internet searches. He thinks it’s where Hades lives. “That can’t actually be a real place.”
“It is. I’ve been there before,” James says darkly. “To see my dad.”
“So why would Shane go there? He hates your dad.”
“You don’t know anything about Shane! You don’t know anything about either of us,” James yells, pushing up and off the floor, gathering his bags, and Kendall doesn’t even know how he can say that. Kendall knows that they are fierce, that they are wonderful. He knows they’ve run for years to protect their mother. He knows they stuck out their necks to take him where he needs to go. He knows that Shane wouldn’t just up and leave, and he knows that James is making a huge, gigantic, colossal mistake right now.
“You can’t-“
“I can,” James insists, face blotchy with anger. “He’s all I have.”
And despite himself, Kendall thinks you have me.
If he said it out loud, would it be a comfort or the last straw in their short, rocky friendship? Kendall doesn’t know. He breathes knives, ragged, sharp things that serrate his lungs, raw as uncooked steak, and still James won’t look at him. He says, resolute, “I’m going to find Shane,” and then he storms out the door without even saying goodbye.
“Fine, I don’t need you,” Kendall yells at his retreating back.
But even as James walks away, he is memorizing him, from the curve of his spine to the indents beneath his shoulder blades, the dimples above his hips and the corded muscle of his shoulders. He is taking one last snapshot of James, because he cannot stand the idea of never seeing him again.
Just because he does not need James doesn’t mean he does not still want him.
Kendall sags against the wall, digs his fingers into the sockets of his eyes and tries not to do something idiotic, like cry. James will come back, he decides, because they are a tribe, they are family.
---
James does not come back.
---
Kendall kicks his sneakers against the curb, the worn soles scraping over asphalt as he huddles deeper into the folds of his pea coat.
No one ever mentioned how cold it is, being a runaway. Maybe because it wasn’t cold until now.
It scares him, how lonely he is. Each night he walks in nightmares where fear is his only friend. It sings out from his throat, scrapes him bloody and sounds too much like a scream. Morning finds Kendall drenched in sweat, huddled beneath the thin protection of his ratty blanket, the dead shell of his cell phone clutched in one hand.
He always wakes up alone.
He’s dialing his home number on a payphone in front of a Seven Eleven before he’s fully conscious of it. Each ring stretches, feels like minutes when only seconds have gone by. The click of someone picking up is the crescendo of a song.
“Hello?” It’s his mom. She sounds tired, worn and weary. She sounds exactly like home. “Hello?”
Kendall opens his mouth, ready to spill a thousand apologies, but he does not get a chance. His mom’s voice pitches up, “Kendall? Kendall, sweetie, is that you? Kendall, say something, please-“
Kendall hangs up. He hates himself for it, but. If his mom knew he was in the middle of a strange state with less than four dollars to his name, she’d be booking a plane ticket of her own before Kendall could say monster spit. And that would just completely defeat the purpose of him leaving in the first place.
He’s close now. She won’t have to worry, once he’s at Camp Half-Blood. Traveling by himself is so much faster. He does not have to cough up cash for coffee or pie. All the money he makes with his guitar goes straight into bus tickets. And he’d trade it all in, because he hates being alone.
This is just like before, with his dad, his false father. Shane and James are gone, and Kendall is never as important to people as he likes to think.
Kendall groans and buys himself a blueberry slurpee with that four dollars of his.
It does not make him feel better.
---
The first time a monster attacks and James and Shane are not there, it looks like a sheep. Or maybe a lion. Or maybe both. Truth is, he isn’t paying much attention to the thing’s anatomy, not when it’s all red-eyed and trying to eat him. Kendall’s playing a very intricate game of dodge and weave, right up until he remembers Riptide.
The pen sits in the front right pocket of his jeans, and as far as he can tell, reappears there even when he changes jeans. Which is weird, hinky magic that Kendall tries not to question, because mostly it was a relief when he forgot to take it out of the pants he scrapped left of the Poconos and didn’t realize until he was already over the mountains.
Riptide fits in his hand like it has always belonged there. It sings out currents and waves. It tells him, I am here, I am here, you are not alone, because I am here.
It also beheads the angry fire breathing lion-sheep-monster-thing, so hey, bonus.
---
Walking on the Long Island Expressway; surprisingly treacherous.
Kendall’s faced down all kinds of mythical monsters, but nothing beats an angry New York driver at rush hour. So when a cherry red muscle car skids onto the shoulder, stopping half an inch from Kendall’s toes, he reaches for Riptide. Yeah, the sword won’t hurt a mortal, but he can always jab ‘em in the eye with the pointy pen end.
The window slides down, shimmering silver-gray. The driver is a teenage girl, with long, dark, pin-straight hair. Kendall can’t see her eyes behind her bug-eyed sunglasses, but from the curve of her redredred lips, he thinks they must be dancing. “Hiya, Dimples. Need a ride?”
“Hitchhiking’s illegal,” Kendall says, because he likes trudging across unforgiving concrete for miles and miles and miles.
The girl shrugs, nudging her sunglasses up onto her head. Her eyes are kinder than Kendall thought they would be. “Alright. Figured you were headed to Camp Half-Blood, but-“
“You know Camp Half-Blood?”
“Sure do. Headed there myself.”
“How did you know I-“ Kendall stops. “Are you a monster?”
The girl’s eyes narrow. “Seen a lot of those lately?”
“A few.”
“Thought so. You look like you came out the wrong end of a fist fight or five.” Her voice is soft, but her features are schooled.
Kendall feels pathetic in comparison. He protests, “Hey, I won,” and he did, although the last one with the gigantic ghostly horse things passing over the BQE was kind of a close call.
The girl’s lips curve into something that is not quite a smile. “Barely, I’d guess.”
Kendall’s shoulders slump. The air conditioned car beckons. He slides into the passenger seat, decisively. If all else fails, he figures he can get stabby with his magic pen.
“I’m Lucy,” the girl holds out her hand, and Kendall shakes politely, introducing himself in turn. She asks, “Where are you coming from?”
“Minnesota.”
She blinks. “Alright. I’ll bite. I’m curious. Why didn’t you take a plane?”
“Didn’t have the cash. Don’t like enclosed spaces.” Kendall shrugs. “I guess it would have been easier.”
Lucy glances up at the sky. “You’d think so.”
She pushes the car into gear, pulling out into traffic. Kendall says, “Nice ride.”
“Right?” Lucy hums happily, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. She carries the blackness of caves on the delicate curl of her eyelashes, but the eyes beneath them flash like an electrical storm. Lightning strikes when she laughs. “I stole it from Apollo.”
Kendall chokes on his own spit. “You what now?”
“Guy’s a total blowhard. If I had to listen to one more haiku about my eyes and toffee, I was going to stick an arrow through his eye socket.”
“Apollo writes haikus?” Kendall asks faintly, caught between amused and incredulous.
“And limericks and sonnets and really, really horrible ballads. Do yourself a favor and never get trapped in a small room with him.”
---
Lucy, it turns out, is awesome. And probably not a monster. Kendall’s like, seventy percent sure of it. She’s on her way to the camp for business, although what kind, she doesn’t say. She does regale him with tales of drunken satyrs (even though he has no idea what a satyr is) and mischievous nymphs (he’s still pretty vague on ideas here) until he asks, “You sound like you’ve been at this demigod thing a long time.”
Lucy arches an eyebrow. “My whole life. Same as you.”
“That’s not what I-“
She laughs, “I know what you mean. I left home for Camp Half-Blood at ten. I was there, on and off, until, uh. Last year, I guess?”
“What happened last year?”
This time, when Lucy laughs, it is accompanied by a smile that is almost feral. “I became a Hunter.”
“Come again?”
“I swore my loyalty to Artemis. And, uh, became immortal.”
Kendall’s mouth drops open. “You’re what now?”
“Don’t make me have to repeat myself,” Lucy says, and Kendall wonders if maybe he does have to whip out Riptide after all. Human beings don’t just go and get themselves immortality, not outside of fricking Twilight.
Like she’s read his mind, Lucy says, “If you ding my paint job with your toy pen, I’ll make sure dad turns you into stir fry.” And then she yells up at the sky, “Because that’s the least you could do for me, dickhead.”
Kendall tries to see what Lucy is looking at, but he can’t find anything above the Long Island Sound other than endless blue. He asks, “…why are you yelling at the sky?”
“Oh. Didn’t I mention that part?” Lucy asks, and now she is not grinning at all. “My father’s Zeus.”
“So. You just called Zeus a dickhead?”
“It’s part of our unique rapport,” Lucy replies easily, brightening as lightning rumbles overhead. Kendall stares, openly and obviously, because what? “I don’t judge your relationship with…uh, who are you related to again?”
Kendall shrinks down in his seat. Outside, heavy woods and flashes of clapboard houses rush by. Assholes with vanity plates swerve in and out of lanes. This conversation is fucking surreal. “Poseidon. Apparently.”
“Oh, hey, Uncle Fish Breath. Nice.” She holds her fist out to bump, and Kendall does, a little tentatively. “I met him once.”
“I haven’t. And I don’t have a relationship with, uh, him for you to judge.”
“Color me surprised.” Something must show on Kendall’s face, because Lucy softens. “Look, it’s not that our parents don’t…love…us. They’re gods. They have big, important, godly things to do with their time.”
“Is that the party line?”
“It’s better than blaming yourself,” Lucy explains, and the car shakes as she hits a cattle guard briefly. “Also, good call on nixing the plane. In fact, let me give you some advice, Knight. Stay away from air-travel.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say my cousins don’t have the greatest track record. Our parents hate each other, and besides. The Lord of the Sky thinks you’re all loud mouth upstarts.” She says Lord of the Sky like she might say dirty gym socks.
Kendall considers. “He’s probably not wrong. You, uh. Did you know a son of Poseidon before me?”
“I’m a Hunter. I’ve been around.”
“Did you ever meet any sons of Hades?”
“Hades doesn’t do rugrats. He’s gotten with a few human women- which, having met the guy, I can authoritatively say gross, by the way- but it’s rare. He’s gaga over Persephone. She’s got him on a tight leash.”
A muscle in Kendall’s back pinches. He tries not to squirm.
Lucy perks up, gaze sharpening. “Do you know something?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Kendall wants to change the subject now. “When you say sworn to Artemis, you mean…?”
“I mean, sworn to Artemis. I travel with her, hunting…oh, all kinds of game. It’s an honor.”
Kendall wonders what that must be like, having an actual purpose. Even if it sounds like a fairytale. He’s never wanted anything but hockey before, and he’s beginning to think that what with all the monsters, hockey is no longer an achievable goal. “Maybe I should look into that.”
“Guys can’t be Hunters, sorry.” Lucy doesn’t sound sorry. “You have to be a maiden.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Untouched,” she clarifies. “Devoted. You can’t fall in love.”
“Oh.” Kendall bunches his fingers in the knees of his jeans and tries not to think about anything at all. “I guess I couldn’t do that then. Is it really nosy if I ask why you wanted to, um, Hunt?”
Lucy shrugs, her expression turning fierce. “The alternative was staying here and playing pawn for the gods. You’ll see what it’s like, once you’re at camp. I tried, for a while, but…I am not a toy. So I took myself out of the game.”
---
Lucy parks sideways on a patch of overgrown grass that exactly resembles every other patch of overgrown grass on this long stretch of empty road off the LIE. Kendall searches for signs of civilization, but other than a knotted, gnarled pine tree sitting atop a hill, the spot has no distinguishable features at all.
“Is this the part where you kill me?” He asks, only half-joking.
Lucy claps him on the shoulder. “You’ve got bigger things than me to worry about.” Laughter sits at the corner of her lips, but her words are dead serious. Kendall’s hands fumble over the fastener for his seatbelt.
Outside the car, Lucy is considerably shorter than Kendall thought she would be. She barely comes up to Kendall’s shoulder, but it doesn’t make a difference; she is still regal. She holds herself like a queen.
Lucy starts up the hill, and Kendall can’t quite figure out where they’re going. He can hear a distant crash, rhythmic in its repetition, but he cannot see the source of the sound. Nothing else makes a peep; no birds, no crickets, no cars, even though the highway is not far from here. He could scream at the top of his lungs, and it is likely that no one would be able to hear.
The sky overhead is the kind of white-blue that is characteristic of midwinter, like the atmosphere is evaporating up into space. Yellow-brown grass still crunches beneath Kendall’s sneakers, stiff with frost. Then they reach the top of the hill, and the landscape changes completely.
It is bitterly cold.
Then it is not.
Kendall cranes his neck back, forwards, and back again, but the cognitive dissonance does not right itself. To his back, it is empty, barren, winter-cold and desolate. At his front, life is in full swing. The grass has turned green, green, green, crisp and new, despite lying beneath a thin layer of powdered snow. The sky is suddenly this ridiculous blue, the color that makes a person think summer will never, ever end, wholly at odds with the slight chill in the air. The Long Island Sound is a sapphire sparkling in the distance, and between there and the hill, Kendall can see meadows rolled straight from a fairytale, spotted here and there with architecture that he only knows to be Greek because of that report he did in sixth grade on the Parthenon.
Abruptly, he can hear the giggle-shriek of children, the thwack of wood on metal, cicadas and birdsong, all overlaid on the previous track of thunder, which Kendall thinks must be the crash of waves. He’s never seen a real ocean before, never seen anything larger than the Great Lakes, and the Atlantic calls to him like nothing ever has.
Kendall breathes deep. The air smells of sea salt and strawberries. Lucy says, “You should see this place in July. It’s deserted right now, but once school’s out? Demigods everywhere.”
“It doesn’t look that empty to me,” Kendall tells her, spotting a group of kids playing kickball right at the foot of a big clapboard house, the only thing that isn’t white graceful pillars for miles.
“Some kids can’t leave, even during the school year. Monsters get a whiff of them the second they step foot outside of camp.”
Kendall’s not dumb. He spots the way Lucy’s body language changes, extrapolates from how James and Shane were too scared to go home. He sees the implications, here.
“Is that why my mom didn’t want me to come here?”
“She probably thought you would never be able to leave. You’re lucky, though, you know. That you didn’t come into your powers until now. Most demigods start figuring it out by the time they’re twelve, and once you’ve figured out who you are, the monsters can scent that knowledge on you.”
“Why do they even care?”
Lucy shrugs. “Some monsters were created to destroy heroes. Some are ordered to.”
“Who would order-“
“The hierarchy of the gods is complicated, Kendall. They treat us like chess pieces, and they’re all huge cheaters. They like nothing more than to knock a few rooks off of the board. Come on, you’ve got people to meet, and I’ve got a mission to fulfill.” She is brisk, she is clear; the subject is officially off limits.
Kendall changes tracks, “Which is what, exactly?”
Lucy starts off down the hill, big black boots completely out of place amidst the golden sun and sudden soft snow. She calls over her shoulder, “If I told you, I really would have to kill you.”
---
Kendall really has no idea how to talk to a centaur.
This is mostly because he’s never met one before.
Wait, he’s getting ahead of himself here. Camp Half-Blood’s activities are run by a man with shaggy blond hair and a well-trimmed goatee. He is also part horse. Apparently.
“It’s rude to stare,” Lucy tells Kendall, laughter rumbling in her throat, her tiny shoulders shaking with mirth.
“Uh. But. Are you seeing Seabiscuit, here?”
“My name,” the horse-man intones gravely, “Is Chiron.” He stares down at Kendall like he’s considering making him his new stable boy.
Kendall decides to get with the program quick, because he absolutely did not travel halfway across the country to work with manure. He introduces himself posthaste, with a lot more respect than he started out.
Chiron does not stop looking disgruntled. “What have you brought me, Lucy?”
“I found him walking on the Expressway like a sad, lost puppy. Figured I’d give him a lift. Kendall is Poseidon’s son.”
“Is this true? Are you sure?” Chiron leans in close, like Kendall might remember the right answer with increased proximity.
“Um. I mean, I guess. The floating green fork could belong to some other god, I guess. Which one’s in charge of cafeteria food?”
Chiron settles back on his haunches, making a displeased noise that is halfway between a snort and a whinny. “I think you best start at the beginning.”
“Right,” Lucy decides. “You two play nice. I need to go talk to Mr. D.”
“What’s a Mr. D?” Kendall asks blankly.
“The Camp Director.” Lucy grins. “You have so much to look forward to.”
“Why doesn’t that sound encouraging?” Lucy just laughs, disappearing into the Big House while Chiron watches Kendall expectantly.
With a sigh, Kendall tells horse-dude his story, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t distracted most of the time by the hypnotic swish of the centaur’s tail. So he’s a little preoccupied when a new voice breaks in.
“Not another one.” The man speaking has narrow, watery eyes. “We’re closed. Go away. Get lost.”
“We are not closed,” Chiron tells Kendall gently, because he must have flinched.
“I suppose this is your fault,” the man accuses Lucy. She smiles serenely. “Ugh. How philanthropic of you.”
He says it like he finds charity abhorrent. The man doesn’t appear to find much agreeable, actually, so Kendall does his best not to overreact and like, punch him in the face.
“Down, boy,” Lucy tells him, unfooled. “Mr. D doesn’t like anyone.”
“Untrue,” Mr. D chimes in, focused completely on the glass he’s got cradled in his hand. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, Kendall notices. It bulges around his belly. “I’m quite fond of Francis Ford Coppola.”
“That better not be wine,” Chiron warns.
“It’s strawberry juice. Killjoy.”
Kendall is confused. Lucy explains, “Mr. D is, uh. You know.”
“I…don’t think I do?” Kendall scratches his head.
“You do too,” Lucy insists. “Wine. God. Of.”
Ohhhh. Kendall’s eyes get very, very large. Mr. D smirks.
Lucy rushes to change the subject. “We- uh, the camp sells the strawberries to different markets in the city. It keeps Chiron and Mr. D rolling in cash, so we’re never short on supplies, and there’s zero effort involved.” At Kendall’s questioning look, she continues, “Plants like Mr. D. Which is good, because no one else does.”
“I heard that. Brat,” Mr. D says mildly, but his eyes are sharp. “How fortunate that you’re my sister’s problem and not mine. The Big House is in need of an attractive lawn ornament.”
“And yet, Lady Artemis requires my service, so you’ll have to endure,” Lucy tells him cheerfully.
“Lucy,” Chiron warns, but there is too much affection in his voice for it to be a true chide.
This is Lucy’s family, Kendall realizes. This is the place she grew up. Kendall wonders how she ever worked up the resolve to leave.
“Oh, fine,” Lucy agrees. She faces Kendall, and behind her, the windows of the Big House reflect blue, as if the glass is cut from patches of sky. “Let me give you the tour.”
Together, they bound off the sprawling front porch of the Big House, which reminds Kendall exactly of his grandmother’s, from the creaky wooden floorboards to the overlaying odor of must. Across the thin trickle of a creek, Kendall can see a field of leafy green, spots of blood-red peeking out from beneath the powder cover of snow. Strawberries, even though they shouldn’t be alive in the midst of winter.
To his right are empty volleyball courts, and the arts and crafts center, the amphitheater, and the climbing wall, with real lava and at least eighteen other safety hazards that Kendall can spot on sight. Past the strawberry fields are the stables, the armory, the arena, the cabins and the mess hall, lined by the woods, and beyond that, the sea, glittering blue. Kendall thinks that Camp Half-Blood is not at all what he expected, beginning with how it’s an actual summer camp.
Lucy starts the tour with the cabins, breaking each one down in turn.
Zeus’s looks like it belongs in a cemetery, all black marble and the flicker of lightning across the imposing doors. “You used to live here?”
Ruefully, Lucy replies, “I wouldn’t call it living.”
Standing right inside the doorway is an attractive blond boy, an orange shirt with Camp Half-Blood written in black, block letters stretched across his chest. He notices Lucy almost immediately, and the cheery color of his shirt does not match the unimpressed tilt of his head at all.
“What is that? What’s wrong with its face?”
He’s talking about Kendall.
“That is a boy, and his name is Kendall Knight,” Lucy replies airily. Conversationally, she informs Kendall, “And that is Jett, also a son of Zeus. I try to pretend we’re not related.”
She starts walking away. Jett calls, “Don’t lie, you love me, Big Sis.”
“Stop calling me that, doucheface.”
Next is Hera’s cabin, a graceful structure of white marble, flowers, and fruit.
“Hera’s place is for show,” Lucy explains, “Because Hera is a frigid bitch.”
“That’s not actually the reason.”
“No, fine, it’s because she believes in the sanctity of marriage.” Lucy lets out a breath. “Which is why she’s not super fond of her step-kids.”
She flips off Hera’s cabin and keeps walking, skidding to a stop in front of the next building, a long, low, sea-shanty of a place, and Kendall knows instinctively what it is before Lucy even bothers announcing, “Home sweet home.”
The walls are curved sea stone, and an assortment of shells line the rough molding of the door. Kendall is struck again by the epiphany that if his father has a cabin, that must mean that Kendall has half siblings. Who aren’t Katie.
Weird.
“Do you want to go in? Check it out?”
Kendall bites his lower lips so hard that he draws blood. “Maybe later.”
Lucy doesn’t seem surprised.
“Okay. So your neighbors, over here, are Demeter’s kids. They’re all eco-freak hippies, but they’ve always got organic vegetables in stock if you’re craving carrots or something.” She leads him past a bramble shack that’s been mostly reclaimed by nature, tomatoes sprouting off the walls, the ceiling made of grass.
It stands in stark contrast to the monstrosity next to it, garish red paint slapped on walls that shake with the reverberations of a wailing guitar. A beady eyed boar’s head looms over the entry.
Lucy rolls her eyes. “Ares, obviously.”
Kendall doesn’t know how that was obvious, but he has a feeling he’ll find out soon enough. The gray cabin following Ares’ belongs to Athena’s children, and then there is a glowing gold thing that is the property of Apollo.
“Ostentatious dickhole,” Lucy mutters.
The tiny silver cabin next to Apollo’s abode belongs to, “The Lady Artemis. I’d be staying here, you know, if I was staying.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I’ve got places to be, monsters to hunt.” Lucy waves her hand dismissively. “Anyway, I’ve…outgrown this place, I guess. It’s not home anymore.”
Kendall tries not to let that get to him. He’s just met Lucy. It’s not like he should care that she’s walking away already.
The line continues with a miniature factory (Hephaestus) and a log cabin that reeks of Chanel No. 5 (“Aphrodite,” Lucy says, disgusted). Cabin Eleven is overrun with kids, and Lucy explains, “Hermes reproduces like a rabbit. You should see it in the summertime.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” Kendall replies, wincing. The brown cabin with its peeling paint is not very inviting. “They all squeeze inside there?”
“Kids whose parents haven’t claimed them live in Cabin Eleven too. It gets…crowded.”
Dionysus’s cabin is the last in the row, and it is covered in grape vines. Kendall can’t really imagine who would want to reproduce with Mr. D.
“Wait, what about Hades’?” Kendall asks, because his mind is never far from James or Shane these days.
“Hades doesn’t get a cabin. He doesn’t know how to play well with others,” Lucy replies, “And neither do his kids. Seriously, Knight, what’s with all the interest in Skeletor? Are you holding out on me? “
Kendall folds his arms over his chest. “Why would you think that?”
Lucy snorts. “Alright, sassypants. I’m not here to pry. Let the magic and wonder continue. On your left, you’ll see the arena. …why do you not look impressed?”
“No, this is…nice. I’ve never been to a camp that has its own Coliseum. Will I be fighting someone to the death now, or is that an after-dinner treat?”
“Suck it up, Knight. No one will make you play with the big boys if you don’t want to.”
In the middle of the arena is a girl wearing a halo of blonde curls and who appears more than a little satisfied with herself. She’s pretty, the kind of pretty that’s hard not to appreciate, but what really grabs Kendall’s attention is the sword balanced in her hand.
She’s using it to beat down a boy about the same age and height, and she’d doing that particularly well. He’s whimpering and whining, trying to dodge her hits and failing hard.
Lucy watches the girl with the sword, breath held. Kendall asks, “Are you okay?”
She doesn’t answer. They watch the girl in silence, her graceful, lethal movements more like a dance than anything Kendall has ever managed with Riptide. He turns to ask Lucy if he’ll learn to us a sword like that, except she is no longer there.
“How the fuck…?”
The words have barely left his mouth when the pretty warrior girl and her sword are up in his face. “Were you with Lucy Stone?” she demands, sweaty, curls flouncing everywhere.
“Uh, yeah.” Kendall replies, searching beneath the rows of bleachers, like maybe Lucy is playing hide-and-seek.
The girl looks crushed. “And she left, already?”
Kendall winces. “Is that bad?”
She shakes her head, blonde flying back and forth. “No, it’s just- you’re new here, aren’t you? I’m Jo. Jo Taylor.”
“Kendall Knight.”
Kendall reaches out to shake her hand, but before she can take it, something else catches her attention.
“Uh, can we put a raincheck on this conversation? Rook’s about to stab himself in the eye. Mitchell, what have I told you about form?” Jo calls across the courtyard, and even from this distance Kendall can make out the flush that stains Mitchell’s skin. He adjusts his grip on the handle and only succeeds in smacking himself with the flat end of the blade.
Jo shakes her head. “Is it just me, or does he just get progressively worse? Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical, you just got here and I am going to fix this. One day.”
Kendall volunteers, “I have a sword.” Probably because he also has a death wish.
Jo’s head swivels back towards him, her face lighting up. “Oh, do you now? Know how to use it?”
Kendall says, “Yeah, of course.”
He is lying so hard.
---
Jo kicks his ass.
Seven times.
In a row.
“Maybe I, uh, need practice,” Kendall tells her sheepishly.
“You think?” She smacks Kendall in the calf with the flat of her sword. “Your stance sucks.”
“Who cares about my stance?”
“Legwork, Knight. It’s all about legwork.”
“I thought it was all about skewering monsters with sharp pointy things before they skewer you.”
“That too. You’ll get better.” Jo grins, her hair haloed by sunlight. “Probably.”
“Hey, I haven’t had a coliseum to fool around in,” he responds, a little miffed.
“It’s not the Coliseum, yeesh, mind your mouth.” Jo is up in his face, her tiny palm pressed tight to his lips.
Kendall mumbles, “I don’t get it,” but it sounds more like ai-yeon-ge.
Jo understands anyway, because gobbledygook is a language in her repertoire. “The Coliseum is Roman. Romans were jerks.”
Mitchell- who is actually named Logan - nods sagely from where he’s been sitting on the sidelines, enjoying Kendall having his ass handed to him.
“Oh. Uh. Sorry. I don’t-“ Kendall folds his arms across his chest and tries very hard not to feel helpless. Riptide shrinks back to pen-sized in his palm. “I didn’t know. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing here.”
Jo stares at him, pink lips parted with concern. She says, “You’re safe. At Camp Half-Blood, the only monsters you’ll find are the ones stocked in the woods-“
“Wait, stocked?”
“-and we can teach you how to protect yourself. You won’t have to run anymore, Kendall.”
“Running wasn’t so bad.”
“Maybe,” Jo plops down on the stone floor of the arena and wraps an arm around her knee. “But eventually you run out of places to go.”
---
Jo and Logan take Kendall under their wing. Specifically, they take him to dinner.
Which ends up being more food than Kendall’s seen in months. He tries not to fall upon his meal like a ravenous beast, but it takes all of his self-control, and he can’t understand why Logan guides him from the buffet line away from the table that they tell him is his.
Because he has his own table.
Where he has to sit alone. Summer camp is fun!
“Why are we going to the fire? I don’t want to go to the fire. I want to eat,” Kendall whines at Logan, possibly drooling on his potatoes.
“You can, you will. You just have to offer some to the gods first.”
“Why do the gods want my chicken? Do they eat? Do they even have mouths, or are they just giant blob creatures? Because that’s what I see in my head when I think of my dad. A giant blob.”
“It’s a sign of respect,” Logan chides, nervously searching the mess area to see if anyone’s heard. He tugs on Kendall’s arm so hard that he almost drops his tray.
Kendall digs in his heels. “Respect? Why should I respect them?”
“Kendall!”
“What? I didn’t even know my dad was my dad until like, a week ago. What, exactly, has he done for me?”
“You’re lucky your father claimed you,” Logan says seriously. “Some never do.”
“I don’t feel lucky,” Kendall pouts, but he obediently offers up a potato to the fire. It sizzles into the flames with a smell that reminds Kendall of a thousand delicious things.
He still sulks his way through his entire meal.
Alone.
---
The Poseidon cabin smells of sea salt and ocean breezes. Inside, there is a mobile of shells and sea glass hanging over an old, knotted hammock. The walls curve and gleam, obsidian-black, but wetter, more like an underwater cave. There is a fountain off to one side, a trickle of water that reminds Kendall of summers at the lake with his family, of sun dappled water and waves crested gold. He thinks of the scent of brine and dead kelp and fish scales, and how he’s always found weird comfort in it.
How his mom would stare out at the water for hours on those lazy, hazy days, and Kendall had thought once or twice or a million times that someone could snuff out the sun and she still wouldn’t notice.
The idea makes him mad, and the empty cabin makes him madder, because it is so strange. It feels nothing like home.
Which reminds him. Jo did tell Kendall how to call his mom. Kendall thought she was joking, but she, apparently, was not. Which is how Kendall finds himself tossing a Greek coin he finds at the bottom of the fountain into the rainbow coming off the spray from the spout. He feels like an idiot, muttering, “Oh, Iris, goddess of the rainbow, accept my offering.”
He feels slightly less stupid when, in the shimmering wall of water, he sees his mom. She doesn’t notice him for long seconds on end, so long that Kendall has to clear his throat loudly. Her eyes widen, and oh, gods, Kendall has missed her.
“Kendall?” His mom reaches for him, and Kendall closes his eyes and pretends that he can feel her fingers soft against his cheek, that he can smell the sweet undertones of her perfume clouding his nose. “Where have you been, young man? Do you have any idea how worried sick I was? Never, ever, ever take off like that without telling me ever again, I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere and do you know how many hospitals I’ve called? Do you know how many hospitals there are in the state of Ohio, because I do, and I called them all and -“
He interrupts her mid-tirade to say, “Mom, I’m sorry,” and his voice is choked raw with how much he really does.
“Oh, sweetheart.” His mom’s voice hitches, and Kendall’s eyes snap open. He can’t tell if she’s crying or if all the distorted wet from the Iris message - that’s what Jo called it - is throwing him off. “Did you make it to camp okay? Have you been eating? How have you been eating?”
Kendall tells her everything, from the monsters to James and Shane, and when he finishes, his mom looks like she could spit nails. “He just left you in the middle of Pennsylvania? Do you know what happens in the Poconos? They eat people there! There are actual cannibals, it was on the news, I always knew that James Diamond was no good. Do you remember when he came for dinner and you two spent the entire meal talking about that horrible game, and then you fought, and you wouldn’t just go play outside?”
She props her hands on her hips, clearly full of opinions on James and his manners.
“ Mom, I- “ a shadow in the corner of the spray catches Kendall’s attention. “Katie?”
Katie walks into the frame of the water, her small shoulders rigid. She stands tall and still by their mom and announces, “I’m not talking to you.” Her lower lip wobbles. “Although if I was, I’d ask if you were okay. But I’m not talking to you.”
“I’m fine,” Kendall says carefully. “I’m great.”
Katie turns her head into their mother’s shoulder and doesn’t answer. Kendall spends the rest of the call listening to his mom’s voice, right up until she shimmers into nothingness. There are no more ancient drachmas at the bottom of the fountain, and it is late, so late that he’s not sure who or what in this strange camp will be awake. He thinks of Jo warning about monsters in the woods and decides to try to sleep instead.
Only, the cabin is big and empty and lonely. He does not think he’ll be able to shut his eyes.
But cradled inside the netted hammock, he can hear the crash of waves from the Sound, the rough-and-tumble thunder of water hitting sand, and it is a lullaby he’s never heard before.
He is out before he knows what’s hit him.
---
Jo wears a necklace with thick clay beads on a leather cord. Each bead is painted with a different symbol, and represents a year at camp. Logan has the same thing wound around his wrist like a bracelet, and Kendall’s noticed other campers wearing them as jewelry or key chains or whatever.
As far as he can tell, though, Jo has more beads than anyone.
Kendall likes her. A lot. She’s tough, strong, and so, so smart. Her mom is Athena, the goddess of wisdom and battle, and Jo perfectly embodies both. Aside from being able to gut a man’s organs with deadly accuracy, she can process information about nine times faster than a normal person can. She’s a total genius.
“Wait, so your gigantic brain is your superpower? That kind of sucks,” Kendall complains, picking at a loose thread in his over-shirt. He’s been able to pick up some new clothes at Camp Half-Blood’s store, and his mom managed to send a care package full of all his favorite flannel. No more digging through charity bins for flea-bitten, raggedy hand-me-downs.
He’d wear a muumuu if it meant James or Shane would contact him, somehow, but old lady clothes probably won’t help.
Jo dimples, face turning impish. “I might have one or two other tricks up my sleeve.”
---
Logan, he finds out, lives in Cabin Eleven. His father wants nothing to do with him. Kendall feels like an ass.
Logan spends a lot of time hiding in the strawberry fields with a book in hand, and sometimes Jo accompanies him out there. Kendall starts tagging along too, because he’s got nothing better to do. Most of the other kids at camp look at him like they might a foreign invader, except for Jett, who freaks him the fuck out. Sometimes Jett will smile at him, teeth gleaming like polished pearls, and Kendall will get all angry and itchy beneath his skin. He will think he does not owe James anything.
So yeah. He stays away from Jett.
He’s lying on a blanket amongst iced over strawberries, talking to Jo and Logan about this whole supernatural heritage thing. “You guys keep saying son of Poseidon like it’s a big deal. Why is that?”
“It is a big deal.” Logan folds his hands behind his back in parade rest. His whole body is at attention, as if this is a history test and he very much wants to pass. “The Big Three - uh, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus - made this pact to stop having kids back in like, the forties.”
“Why?”
“Um. Well. Your big brothers and sisters and cousins might have, y’know. Started World War II. I’m sure it was an accident!”
Kendall opens his mouth.
Kendall closes his mouth. He tries to breathe through his nose.
“Are you okay?” Logan squeaks.
“I think I hate my life,” Kendall replies, because okay, that was more information than he expected.
Jo peers up from the gigantic text book she’s brought with her, written entirely in ancient Greek. “The camp has a support group for that. They meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“If Poseidon said he’d stop having kids, how do you explain…me?” He feels his cheeks color, and he hates this, hates it worse than having all the kids make fun of him for having a dad in prison, because now he’s got a dad who’s not just a rule breaker; he broke the rules by letting Kendall exist. “Or Jett, or Lucy?”
Or James and Shane, he wonders silently.
“The short answer is that all the gods are total horndogs,” Logan says apologetically.
“The long answer,” Jo chips in, nose still buried in the book, “Is love.”
“Love? You really believe that?”
Jo cocks an eyebrow prettily. “Don’t you?”
She reads him like Ancient Greek, because yeah, okay, maybe he does. Kendall’s still not sold on the idea of gods, but he does believe in love.
Mostly because he’s not stupid. His mom moved them as far from the ocean as humanly possible, but their house was still surrounded by a million lakes, so much water that it’s always been hard to remember it’s not the sea. Kendall hasn’t ventured out to the Sound yet, hasn’t quite worked up the courage, but he’s dreamt of it once or twice, of it stretching bluer than blue ahead of him. Of curling his toes in the sand, breathing deep and trying not to think words like home.
“Sure,” Kendall agrees. “I believe in love.”
---
The powdery snow never exactly melts. Kendall mentions how weird that is to Jo, and she lights up, happy for an opportunity to teach.
“Chiron and Mr. D control the weather within the confines of the camp. That’s why it never gets too cold. They’ll keep the snow around until the end of winter; they think it’s festive.”
“I think it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Logan frets, picking his way across the path with the care of someone used to falling on their butt too often.
Jo and Kendall both throw snowballs at his face.
---
Part Four