LUNACY; percy jackson

03.16

[act three; chapter sixteen     -     meeting]

"We will never make it," Zoë said. "We are moving too slow. But we cannot leave the Ophiotaurus."

"Mooo," Bessie said. He swam next to Percy as they jogged along the waterfront. They'd left the shopping center pier far behind. They were heading toward the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was a lot farther than any of them had realized. The sun was already dipping in the west and Andromeda felt her chest tightening with panic.

"I don't get it," the raven haired boy said. "Why do we have to get there at sunset?"

"The Hesperides are the nymphs of the sunset," Zoë said. "We can only enter their garden as day changes to night."

"What happens if we miss it?"

"Tomorrow is the winter solstice. If we miss sunset tonight, we would have to wait until tomorrow evening. And by then, the Olympian Council will be over. We must free Lady Artemis tonight."

And Annabeth could die, Andromeda thought bitterly.

"We need a car," Thalia said.

Donnie scoffed, shaking his head a few times. "A car, Thalia? Where are we, a bunch of teenagers, supposed to find a random car in San Francisco?"

It seemed Percy wasn't as concerned with that as everyone else. "But what about Bessie?" He asked.

Grover stopped in his tracks. "I've got an idea! The Ophiotaurus can appear in different bodies of water, right?"

"Well, yeah," Percy said. "I mean, he was in Long Island Sound. Then he just popped into the water at Hoover Dam. And now he's here."

"So maybe we could coax him back to Long Island Sound," Grover said. "Then Chiron could help us get him to Olympus."