Indigo Eyes

Chapter 122

They were able to hold a two-block perimeter around the building with a command tent inside and Chiron informed them that they now had roughly five hundred Party Ponies to work with.

He also informed them that in addition to her father, Hephaestus was also out of action in the battle against Typhon. He'd been knocked out of the sky so hard that he created a new lake in West Virginia. And now they had less than a day before he arrived in New York and then they would definitely lose. But they couldn't hold out another day.

Percy had told Annabeth about the fact that Ethan Nakamura seemed to think that Luke was fighting Kronos for control of his body. And as he predicted, she grew hopeful, even after she explained Hestia's vision to him when he told her. She was angry though when Percy told her that Luke was evil long before Kronos came along and all he was going to do was hurt her. She understood that but she still held out hope that he was wrong.

Percy was then left by himself as he stared across the lobby at Cressida who was sitting with her brother as he changed her bandages. Cressida had a bleeding scrape across her cheek, blood leaking from her eyebrow and dozens of other cuts and bruises, but she still looked as beautiful as ever. He also liked the fact that her eyes seemed like they were almost back to normal, back to that same shade of indigo he was obsessed with.

But one second he was standing there staring like he wasn't a stalker at all, and the next he was standing in a dingy bar with black walls, neon signs and a bunch of partying adults. Country music played on the speakers. Big guys in jeans and work shirts crowded the bar. Waitresses carried trays of drinks and shouted at each other.

Percy was very confused until a familiar voice said, "Oh, good, you're here. I'll have a Diet Coke."

He was a pudgy guy in a leopard-skin Hawaiian shirt, purple shorts, red running shoes and black socks, which didn't exactly make him blend in with the crowd. His nose was bright red. A bandage was wrapped around his curly black hair like he was recovering from a concussion.

"Mr D?" Percy blinked.

He sighed, not taking his eyes from the arcade Pac-man game he was playing - it had been one of Cressida's favourites when he took her out for her fifteenth birthday. "Really, Peter Johnson, how long will it take for you to recognize me on sight?"

"About as long as it'll take you to figure out my name," he muttered. "Where are we?"

"Why, Bobby Earl's birthday party," Dionysus said. "Somewhere in lovely rural America."

"I thought Typhon swatted you out of the sky. They said you crash-landed. Cress and Pollux have been worried sick."

He turned at the mention of his children. "My dear children have enough problems to worry about," he said, his eyes on the floor. "And for the record, I did crash-land. Very painfully. In fact, part of me is still buried under fifty metres of rubble in an abandoned coal mine. It will be several more hours before I have enough strength to mend. But, in the meantime, part of my consciousness is here."

"At a bar, playing Pac-Man."

"My children have not slept in the entire time my presence has been summoned here. I cannot appear in their dreams if they do not sleep and they will not sleep until the little party you're having in your safe, little New York bubble -"

"Safe little bubble?"

"– but, believe me, the mortals out here in the heartland are panicking. Typhon has terrified them. Very few are throwing parties. Apparently, Bobby Earl and his friends, bless them, are a little slow. They haven't yet figured out that the world is ending."

"So ... I'm not really here?"

"No. In a moment, I'll send you back to your normal insignificant life and it will be as if nothing had happened."