We had ordered our food and were waiting to pick it up when I started to think that Alec was enjoying our charade a little too much. I had just pulled away from him when a low voice coming from behind us said, “How are you doing, little lady?”
Slowly Alec and I turned around, knowing full well what was coming, and we found ourselves face-to-face with the four guys who had been staring at me not five minutes earlier. Next to me, Alec’s muscles grew taut as he studied the boys. The speaker, a tough, overconfident blond guy with gleaming brown eyes, grinned at me in a flirty manner and carefully reached around me to grab the food that the McDonald’s worker had just set down for Alec and me, pausing to get a better look at my breasts. Apparently, he liked what he saw, because a sly smile crept onto his face. Anger rolling off him in powerful waves, Alec yanked the white paper bag away from the blond and growled, “Thanks, man, but I got it.”
The boy narrowed his dark eyes at Alec, studying him closely. “You got a problem with me, pretty boy?” the blond sneered. He probably thought a guy as good-looking as Alec would be afraid to get his face messed up, but he was dead wrong.
Alec handed the food to me and clenched his fists, looking as if he were ready to strike, and silently I prayed for him to restrain himself. Please don’t do it, Alec. Please don’t punch him right now, right here. We really did not need to draw any more attention to ourselves at the moment.
The hero stood up a little straighter, sizing up the tough blond boy, a flicker of hatred in his blue eyes. I was watching the two of them very closely, along with the members of the other boy’s posse, who were getting agitated and appearing as if they too were ready to jump in to join the fight. Only they didn’t know that Alec, trained by the best, could probably take all four of them down by himself in little more than a minute. Normal humans just couldn’t compare to monsters or gods.
Suddenly, something making its way toward us caught my eye in the small crowds milling about the airport. I gulped and nudged Alec nervously. “Alec,” I whispered, “we need to go. Like, now.”
But Alec just frowned, not moving a muscle or taking his eyes off of the annoying blond boy. Starting to feel the slightest bit of panic, I whispered again in frustration, this time in Greek, “You’ll be killed by the Minotaur in less than thirty seconds if we don’t move now.”
Now that got his attention. Immediately, Alec’s eyes flicked in the direction that I had motioned to, where the meaty Minotaur was pushing its way through the crowds toward the two of us, its furry black hands clenched in tight fists. I couldn’t help but wonder what the regular humans without the Sight in the airport saw the Minotaur as, since they obviously didn’t look twice at the bloodthirsty monster. But even though the rest of the gods and I had killed the beast every single time we ran into it, for some reason that hungry beast never seemed to stay dead for very long.
Alec cursed under his breath, and we took off toward the gate where we were supposed to wait for our flight. The blond boy and his posse just stared at us in confusion, and we ran as quickly as we could through the thick crowds of people, determined to avoid the monster.
When something occurred to me, like a light bulb flicking on in my brain, I pushed my way more toward Alec.
“Hey,” I whispered in Greek, “what if the Minotaur is on the same flight?” Alec’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, as he was still struggling to comprehend what I had said. “How would the Minotaur get a plane ticket?”
I shook my head and replied grimly, “I don’t know—maybe Hades, but I wouldn’t put it past a monster. We need to kill it before we get on the plane.”
Alec nodded in agreement. I handed him the food. Grunting, I ran in a U-turn, now going head-on toward the Minotaur, whose unblinking red eyes instantly locked onto me. Then I jumped sideways, narrowly avoiding crashing into an elderly couple, but I quickly apologized and continued on my course.
The Minotaur and I were getting closer and closer, until we were only a few feet apart. My hand moved to my pocket, from which I pulled out the small round rock. With a tiny squeeze, the sharp, shiny sword blade popped out, and it pierced the Minotaur’s gut right as I stepped sideways to avoid crashing into its thick body, although one of its muscular arms slammed into my neck. The Minotaur gasped and groaned, trying to pull out the sword as I twisted the blade in its midsection, squeezing the hilt of the sword at the same time. When I finally pulled the blade all the way out, it had returned to its rock state.
Surprisingly, no one in the airport had even given us a second look, but I turned around, running and pushing my way through the crowds as I tried to return to Alec, just in case he had come face-to-face with another monster in my absence. I then took a glance behind me and sighed in relief when I saw a pile of dust on the cheap, navy-blue airport carpet where the Minotaur had been standing not a minute before. Thankfully, it was dead.
Only a minute later, I caught up to Alec, who was sitting in a small leather seat at the gate, by a tall window overlooking the runway. When he caught my eye, he gave a helpless shrug. “What do we do now? We have a while until the flight leaves,” Alec complained.
“Stay alive” was my only reply as I watched him stuff a Chicken McNugget into his mouth. Then I just watched the planes outside roll in and out of the gates and waited until Alec finished his food and passed the rest to me. Eventually, a flight attendant called for us to board the plane, and we hurried on board.
Sighing in relief, I sat down by the window seat, and Alec took the one on the aisle. “How long is the flight?” I asked him. I had only been on a plane once or twice before, and I had never been to Kentucky.
Alec just shrugged and answered, “Maybe about four or five hours. Did you bring a book?” I shook my head, suddenly wishing I had. “Me neither,” he said.
“You don’t even own a book!” I reminded him.
Grinning, he replied, “Not in the Woods anyway, but it’s a good thing they have Sky Mall magazine. You know, the one with all of those crazy inventions and stuff?”
I nodded and told him, “Oh, please. I could invent something better in my sleep.”
“I bet you could,” he agreed, still smiling. Then I smirked and rested my head against the back of the seat, closing my eyes in preparation to catch up on lost sleep and perhaps even invent something while I was dreaming.
___________________
Suddenly I was jolted awake, and the loud voice of a female flight attendant sounded over the intercom while the button telling me to buckle my seat belt clicked on. “Please put your seat belts on and return your seats to their upright positions. We will be landing in approximately twenty minutes. The current temperature outside the airport is seventy degrees, and it is partly cloudy.”
I shook my head and rubbed my eyes to help wake myself up a little quicker. Sighing, I stared out the window at the large, open fields and rolling hills—almost the complete opposite of the forest at home. We were getting closer and closer to the ground as we circled the airport, waiting for our plane’s turn to land, and the sky slowly grew darker with each passing minute. It was nearly eight o’clock in Kentucky.
“Hey, you’re awake,” Alec noticed, nudging me playfully. “Did you invent anything while you were sleeping?”
I paused to think for a moment, trying to remember my dream. When I couldn’t, I just replied slyly, “Not this time.” Alec laughed, and I smiled back at him as I returned the seat to its upright position in accordance with the flight attendant’s orders. “And how are you? Did you get any sleep?” I asked, studying him closely.
Alec shrugged. “Not really. But don’t look so worried; I’ll be fine,” he answered, and I nodded as the plane touched down on the runway and started to taxi toward the gate. As soon as the flight attendants opened up the door, Alec and I jumped off, eager to get out of the airport as quickly as possible. There were too many people in one place for our liking; it didn’t matter to us if they were Knowing or not.
Because we only had o
ur backpacks, we didn’t have to wait at the baggage claim, and so we simply walked out the front entrance of the airport right away. “How far is the camp from here?” I wondered aloud as we strode confidently through the sliding doors out into the cool night air.
He shrugged again. “About a hundred miles, give or take a few. I was thinking about taking another taxi most of the way there. There aren’t any roads leading to the camp.”
I gave a short nod, and together we waited on the sidewalk for a taxi to pull up. The driver smiled at us and asked if we wanted to put our bags in the trunk, but just like the previous time with Larry, we declined. Close to two hours later, Alec and I were dropped off at an empty bus stop in the middle of the countryside, no questions asked. Our surroundings were almost pitch black, except for one street lamp illuminating the covered black bench with a dull orange glow.
“Which way?” I looked to Alec, and he pointed north before he started walking without saying another word. For another hour, we walked over the rolling hills in silence, keeping an ear out for anything suspicious, but we could hear absolutely nothing, other than the sound of squishing grass from under our worn-out boots. We really were in the middle of nowhere, I noticed, though I supposed it was quite a logical place for the secret Knowing base camp.
However, for the very first time, our prolonged state of silence seemed awkward. Usually, I welcomed the peaceful quietness as, together, we strode confidently through the dark forest and listened for any sign of a monster we could brutally beat to death. But there in the open fields of Kentucky, I felt kind of clueless and strangely exposed in more than one way, and I was sure that Alec would have agreed if I had asked him about it. His footsteps seemed much more like a march to me now, and he stood up straight and rigid, obviously on high alert. Alec was acting as if he were trying to fit himself into a mold that didn’t suit his personality or his naturally rugged appearance very well, and the way his fists were clenched by his sides only highlighted his great agitation. To be honest, the young hero seemed uncomfortable in his own skin, and I was sure it had something to do with the Knowing.
A couple minutes later, I stopped to give my aching feet a short break, and Alec halted next to me. “We could sleep here for the night, if you want,” he offered sweetly, but I noticed that Alec seemed to be getting more agitated as we got closer to the camp, so he probably just wanted to delay his arrival even more. Again, I wondered why, although still I didn’t say anything to him about it.
So I shook my head and said firmly, “I’m not tired. Let’s get as close as we can to the Knowing camp tonight.” Reluctantly, Alec nodded in agreement and continued to walk, picking up the pace. We jogged for another forty-five minutes before we reached the bottom of a steep hill, where Alec stopped nervously in his tracks once more.
“Let’s stop here for tonight,” he announced. “We can sleep under this tree.” We then threw our backpacks down on the grass, and Alec carefully leaned against the tree, crossing his arms over his chest for warmth.
“We should probably take turns on guard duty, watching out for monsters,” I suggested, brushing a stray piece of hair out of my face.
“I’ll take the first shift,” Alec said, and I agreed reluctantly, lying down on the grass and using my backpack as a pillow. It was warm enough that I didn’t need a blanket, and even though I had slept on the plane for a couple of hours, I still fell asleep almost right away. (If I had the chance to get extra rest, I always took it.)
___________________
A bird cawed from somewhere above me, and I woke with a start. Adjusting my lopsided ponytail, I looked through the darkness of the night over at Alec, who was glaring alertly at the tall hill in front of us. “What time is it?” I asked him, still a little bit sleepy.
Alec checked his watch and replied harshly, “Almost four.” I frowned, noticing the sharp edge in his voice.
“You should have woken me up half an hour ago,” I told him softly, sitting up next to him and leaning against the rough tree trunk. “Why didn’t you?”
Alec continued to stare at the empty hillside. “You needed to sleep,” he replied simply.
“And so do you,” I retorted, but Alec didn’t move a muscle, so I sighed. “All right, what’s the matter? You act crankier with every step closer to the camp.”
Alec didn’t answer right away; he just kept staring at the stupid hill instead. What was so interesting about it anyway? I was starting to get fed up with his strange actions, and so, with taut muscles, I just sat back, pausing to look up at the glittering stars in the clear night sky and subconsciously identifying familiar constellations.
Finally, he ran his fingers through his dark hair and spoke in a guilty whisper, “I should’ve told you this sooner.”
“Should have told me what?” I looked over at Alec expectantly, waiting for an explanation.
“The Knowing didn’t actually let me leave the camp to find you and the other gods. I sneaked out in the middle of the night,” he confessed, wincing as if speaking the truth hurt him.
My jaw dropped in surprise and confusion. “What? Why?” I asked, getting slightly angry with him. The Knowing members probably thought he was dead! They wouldn’t even be expecting us, which would make my job of convincing them to fight on our side a lot harder.
Alec frowned and rubbed his forehead, beginning again and assuring me, “Nearly everything I’ve told you has been the truth, except for that. I swear. It’s just that when I told the leaders of the camp about my vision of the Oracle leading me to the Woods, they didn’t believe me. So of course, they wouldn’t train me to fight, especially since I wasn’t sixteen and old enough to be trained in the first place. I tried to convince them otherwise, but they only forbade me to leave the camp and pushed back the real start of my training another few months as punishment.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groaned, and he shook his head solemnly. “Why wouldn’t they believe you?” I asked, still slightly confused as to why the camp leaders would do such a thing. It sounded awfully ignorant to me. You would have thought that the Knowing would have wanted to find their beloved gods, but apparently not. Perhaps the Knowing was even more troubled than I had previously thought.
He sighed. “No one at the Knowing camp had gotten a vision like that in years … or maybe they had, and they just didn’t want to admit it. To be honest, we hadn’t gotten a sign from any god in about a century. Some people at the camp have even stopped praying as much as they used to and have started to believe that it’s the gods’ job to find us, but that made absolutely no sense to me. If you had to teach yourselves everything, how could we expect you to find out about us?”
I nodded in understanding and admitted, “Yeah, we probably never would have found out about the Knowing if you and your father hadn’t shown up.”
Alec put his head in his hands, obviously distressed. “So that was about the time I started to train myself at night and prepare for the journey, even though my family was the laughingstock of the camp,” he continued bitterly, hating to admit the weakness that was his family’s identity in the Knowing. “Eventually, when I thought I was ready, I left. But my father wanted to come as well. He believed in me when no one else did, and now it’s my fault he’s dead,” Alec finished, angry with himself. “And well, let’s just say that the Knowing probably won’t want to give me a homecoming celebration.”
I sighed. “Hey, what’s done is done, and at least you have most of the gods on your side,” I comforted him, placing a hand on his arm, although I still wished he had told me all of this sooner. I hated not being prepared. It was downright dangerous.
“But it’s not just about us and the rest of the gods saving the Woods anymore—it also has to be about fixing the Knowing. I don’t want any other kids growing up like I did, victimized in such a corrupt society,” Alec said wishfully, wiping his eyes. He paused and sighed. I watched as his brow started to furrow, but he stopped himself from frowning by giving me a pathe
tic half-smile.
Thinking about our destinies, like I always did at the back of my mind, I gulped and told him, “There will be plenty of time to fix the Knowing when this war is over, but right now, you should get some rest.” But he shook his head stubbornly, even though he had dark circles under his eyes—obvious signs of fatigue. “Suit yourself,” I added with a shrug and placed my head on Alec’s shoulder, but he only sighed again and continued to glare at the hillside, too disturbed by the thought of the Knowing to even smile at my comforting gesture.
A few minutes later, we heard the sound of heavy footsteps in the grass making their way toward us, and my eyes flew open instantly. Instinctively, Alec and I both reached for the rocks in our pockets and simultaneously looked in the direction of the sound. My first thought was that the footsteps coming from behind us shook the earth a lot like Poseidon’s, and I hoped they were Poseidon’s, just so we wouldn’t have to fight a monster there in the middle of the open field, where we had absolutely no territorial advantages.
But of course, Poseidon was at home in the Woods, and standing in front of us was a very chubby, fifteen-foot-tall monster of a man, who had one giant brown eye in the center of his forehead, and who was wearing nothing but an old brown loincloth. A Cyclops.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I heard Alec mutter as we quickly stood up to face the gigantic man, now holding deadly swords instead of the dirty gray rocks.
The Cyclops stomped his large, bare foot in front of us, making the earth under our feet shake slightly and the flabby skin on his stomach roll. He pointed his sausage-like finger at Alec and me, and then his booming voice thundered in Greek, “Who do you think you are? You are in my territory!”
I gulped. Even though I knew revealing my identity probably wouldn’t work, I figured it was worth a try and said in an equally powerful voice, “I am the goddess Athena, and I am the patron of this hero. I order you to leave us alone.”
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