BLOODSHOT . . . piper mclean

70.

COULDN'T EDEN KISS her girlfriend without impending doom happening?

She'd just trailed her fingertips up Piper's shirt when the boat lurched forward, and the love child promptly hit her head on the headboard.

"Fuck!" She swore as the alarm bells started ringing.

"Holy shit, you okay, love?" Eden held her tighter with one hand, the other reaching for nectar.

"Yeah, yeah," Piper's lips were swollen, and it made Eden feel proud as she fed her the nectar. "Well, we should go see what kind of creature I can blame for interrupting us."

It was a fucking turtle.

Eden had gaped at it as she'd almost stepped on Hazel and Frank, who were on the ground tangled in rope. Leo was screaming, Perfect Jason had jumped over said people on the ground, and Eden's hot girlfriend was already on the quarterdeck, shooting food from her cornucopia and yelling, "Hey! HEY! Eat this, ya stupid turtle!"

Eden sprinted up the steps, twisting her ring and getting out a spear.

Leo frantically worked the ship's controls. "Oars won't retract. Get it away! Get it away!"

Up in the rigging, Nico's face was slack with shock.

"Styx — it's huge!" he yelled. "Port! Go port!"

Coach Hedge was the last one on deck. He compensated for that with enthusiasm. He bounded up the steps, waving his baseball bat, and without hesitation goat-galloped to the stern and leaped over the rail with a gleeful "Ha-HA!"

The boat shuddered. More oars snapped, and Leo yelled, "No, no, no! Dang slimy-shelled son of a mother!"

Meanwhile, Eden was just staring at the thing in shock.

The creature was the fucking size of an island. When she saw the massive dome of craggy black and brown squares, the word turtle simply did not compute. Its shell was more like a landmass — hills of bone, shiny pearl valleys, kelp and moss forests, rivers of seawater trickling down the grooves of its carapace.

On the ship's starboard side, another part of the monster rose from the water like a submarine.

Connor's fucking underwear . . . was that its head?

Its gold eyes were the size of wading pools, with dark sideways slits for pupils. Its skin glistened like wet army camouflage — brown flecked with green and yellow. Its red, toothless mouth could've swallowed the Athena Parthenos in one bite.

Eden watched as it snapped off half a dozen oars.

"Stop that!" Leo wailed.

Coach Hedge clambered around the turtle's shell, whacking at it uselessly with his baseball bat and yelling, "Take that! And that!"

Perfect Jason flew from the stern and landed on the creature's head. He stabbed his golden sword straight between its eyes, but the blade slipped sideways, as if the turtle's skin were greased steel. Frank shot arrows at the monster's eyes with no success. The turtle's filmy inner eyelids blinked with uncanny precision, deflecting each shot. Piper shot cantaloupes into the water, yelling, "Fetch, ya stupid turtle!" But the turtle seemed fixated on eating the Argo II.

"How did it get so close?" Hazel demanded.

Leo threw his hands up in exasperation. "Must be that shell. Guess it's invisible to sonar. It's a freaking stealth turtle!"

"Can the ship fly?" Piper asked.

"With half our oars broken off?" Leo punched some buttons and spun his Archimedes sphere. "I'll have to try something else."