The Nature of a Demigod

Madness

[Percy's POV]

"Tell me when it's over," Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding on to us so we couldn't fall, but still Thalia clutched his arm like it was the most important thing in the world.

"Everything's fine," I promised. "Are... are we very high?"

I looked down. Below us, a range of snowy mountains zipped by. I stretched out my foot and kicked snow off one of the peaks. "Nah," I said. "Not that high."

"We are in the Sierras.'" Zoe yelled. She, Y/N, and Grover were hanging from the arms of the other statue. "I have hunted here before. At this speed, we should be in San Francisco in a few hours."

"Hey, hey, Frisco!" our angel said. "Yo, Chuck! We could visit those guys at the Mechanics Monument again! They know how to party!"

"Oh, man," the other angel said. "I am so there!"

"You guys have visited San Francisco?" I asked.

"We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" our statue said. "Those mechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble lady statues, see. And-"

"Hank!" the other statue Chuck cut in. "They're kids, man."

"Oh, right." If bronze statues could blush, I swear Hank did. "Back to flying." We sped up, so I could tell the angels were excited. The mountains fell away into hills, and then we were zipping along over farmland and towns and highways. Grover played his pipes to pass the time.

Zoe got bored and started shooting arrows at random billboards as we flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store. And we passed dozens of them. She would peg the store's sign with a few bulls-eyes at a hundred miles an hour. Y/N held her arrows and called out more signs as he saw them. Zoe was smiling at a joke he told.

Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole way. She muttered to herself a lot, like she was praying. "You did good back there," I told her. "Zeus listened." It was hard to tell what she was thinking with her eyes closed.

"Maybe," she said, leaning over to look at Y/N who was telling a smirking Zoe something. "How did you get away from the skeletons in the generator room, anyway? You said they cornered you."

He told us about this weird sounding mortal girl, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to have no trouble seeing through the mist. Turns out, I ran into her too. Quite literally, I ran into her.

She was just standing there in the middle of the hallway, and I almost impaled her. Well, I would have if she wasn't mortal. I explained that to the others, but Thalia just nodded and said, "Some mortals are like that," she said. "Nobody knows why."

Suddenly I flashed on something I'd never considered.

My mom was like that. She had seen the Minotaur on Half-Blood Hill and known exactly what it was. She hadn't been surprised at all last year when I'd told her my friend Tyson was really a Cyclops. Maybe she'd known all along. No wonder she'd been so scared for me as I was growing up. She saw through the Mist even better than I did.

"The girl was a bit annoying." Y/N said, rolling his eyes. "But I'm glad I didn't cut her in half. Wouldn't want that on my permanent record." Thalia nodded, considering. "Must be nice to be a regular mortal." She said that as if she'd given it a lot of thought.

***

"Where do you guys want to land?" Hank asked, waking me up from a nap. I looked down and said, "Whoa."