EUDAEMONIC - p. jackson

chapter ten

tw : mild mentions of vomit

geryon loaded them into a kiddie-train like maeve had once seen at a zoo. it was painted black and white in a cowhide pattern, and the driver's car had a set of longhorns stuck to the hood.

nico sat in the back, presumably to keep an eye on all of them, and eurytion crawled in next to him. orthus jumped up in the front seat next to geryon and began barking giddily.

tyson sat in the second seat, maeve and percy in the third, and annabeth and grover in the fourth. in the tiny space, maeve managed to pull her knees up to her chest, setting her backpack on the floor under her.

"we have a huge operation!" geryon boasted as the moo-mobile lurched forward. "horses and cattle mostly, but all sorts of exotic varieties, too."

they came over a hill and annabeth gasped. "hippalektryons? i thought they were extinct!"

at the bottom of the hill was a fenced-in pasture with a dozen of the weirdest animals any of the teens had ever seen. each had the front half of a horse and the back half of a rooster. their rear feet were huge yellow claws, and they had feathery tails and red wings.

"rooster ponies," tyson said in amazement. "do they lay eggs?"

"once a year!" geryon grinned in the rearview mirror. "very much in demand for omelettes!"

"that's horrible!" annabeth said as maeve suppressed a gag. "they must be an endangered species!"

geryon waved his hand. "gold is gold, darling. and you haven't tasted the omelettes."

"that's not right," grover murmured, but geryon just kept narrating the tour.

"now, over here," he said, "we have our fire-breathing horses, which you may have seen on your way in. they're bred for war, naturally."

"what wars?" maeve cocked her head curiously.

in response, geryon grinned slyly. "oh, whichever one comes along. and over yonder, of course, are our prize red cows."

"so many," grover said. he wasn't even exaggerating; there were hundreds of them.

"yes, well, apollo is too busy to see them," geryon explained, "so he subcontracts to us. we breed them vigorously because there's such a demand."

"for what?" percy asked, maeve nodding with him as he spoke.

geryon raised an eyebrow. "meat, of course! armies have to eat."

maeve's body tensed and her face took on one of disgust. grover took the statement even worse than her though.

"you kill the sacred cows of the sun god for hamburger meat?" he demanded. "that's against the ancient laws!"

"oh, don't get so worked up, satyr. they're just animals."

"just animals!?" grover said incredulously. he tried to stand up, but got yanked back down by annabeth.

"yes, and if apollo cared, i'm sure he would tell us."

"if he knew," percy muttered.

nico sat forward. "i don't care about any of this, geryon. we had business to discuss, and this wasn't it!"

"all in good time, mr. di angelo. now look over here; some of my exotic game."

the next field was ringed in barbed wire, and the whole arena was crawling with scorpions. even from the distance, maeve could tell those were the same type of scorpion that corner them in the woods. it felt like weeks ago that they found the labyrinth, but it was really only a few days.