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chapter eighty-six. ☄︎. *. ⋆
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I KNEW WE WERE IN DEEP SHIT when my brother called and begged for our help. But Percy was currently at the bottom of the New York Harbor, trying to reason with the gods of the river. We needed protection from all sides, and we could only hope the minor gods would start to step up and give us a hand. Percy had had a brilliant idea to try and negotiate with the gods of both the Hudson and the East to try and get them to sink Luke's ships.
But since I wasn't the daughter of Poseidon, I was stuck on the shore, waiting impatiently for Percy to emerge from the disgusting waters he had dunked into ten minutes ago. I'd just gotten off the phone with Michael when Percy reappeared, not even wet.
"It worked," he told me. "The rivers are safe."
"Good thing," I said, tucking my phone into my back pocket. "Because Michael just called. Another army is marching over the Williamsburg. My siblings need help. Are you in?"
Wasting no time, Percy whistled, calling for his pegasus friend. When we heard the thumping of big horse wings coming in the distance, Percy looked back to me and said, "Of course I'm in."
When Blackjack landed in front of us, Percy began chatting with it, as he could do with pegasi. (Weird, man.)
"Thanks for coming, Blackjack," he said to the horse. "We need to get to the Williamsburg Bridge."
The pegasus lowered his neck and whinnied something I obviously couldn't understand. Percy looked back at me and nodded to the horse, telling me it was okay to start boarding.
On the way to the bridge, a knot formed in the pit of my stomach. My siblings weren't many. We had lost most of our strongest fighters in the battle last summer. If the stakes were as bad as Michael claimed over the phone, they were in a lot of trouble. I only hoped Percy and I could be strong enough to save them.
We saw the battle before we were close enough to make out individual fighters. It was well after midnight now, but the bridge blazed with light. Cars were burning. Arcs of fire streamed in both directions as flaming arrows and spears sailed through the air.
We came in for a low pass, and I saw my siblings retreating. It was a tactic we had learned together. They would hide behind cars and snipe at the approaching army, setting off explosive arrows and dropping caltrops in the road, building fiery barricades wherever they could, dragging sleeping drivers out of their cars to get them out of harm's way. But the enemy kept advancing. An entire phalanx of dracaenae marched in the lead, their shields locked together, spear tips bristling over the top. An occasional arrow would connect with their snaky trunks, or a neck, or a hole in their armor, and the unlucky snake woman would disintegrate, but most of the Apollo arrows glanced harmlessly off their shield wall. About a hundred more monsters marched behind them.
