RED ¹ / Percy Jackson !

36

PERCY WANTED TO SCREAM AND FLOOD THE ENTIRE SHIP WHEN THEY COULDN'T FIND VIVIENE. So, imagine his shock when Tyson told them she was with Luke.

Tyson stopped. "Voices inside.""You can hear that far?" Percy asked

Tyson closed his eye like he was concentrating hard. Then his voice changed, becoming a husky
approximation of Luke's. "-the prophecy ourselves. The fools won't know which way to turn."
Before Percy could react, Tyson's voice changed again, becoming deeper and gruffer, like the other
guy they'd heard talking to Luke outside the cafeteria. 

"You really think the old horseman is gone for good?"

Tyson laughed Luke's laugh. "They can't trust him. Not with the skeletons in his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw."

Annabeth shivered. "Stop that, Tyson! How do you do that? It's creepy."

Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. "Just listening."

"Keep going," Percy said. "What else are they saying?"

Tyson closed his eye again.

" Viviene still isn't up." Tyson imitated and Annabeth shared a look of terror with Percy.

Then he hissed in the gruff man's voice: "Quiet!" Then Luke's voice, whispering: "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Tyson said in the gruff voice. "Right outside."

Percy  just had time to say, "Run!" when the doors of the stateroom burst open and there was Luke, flanked by two hairy giants armed with javelins, their bronze tips aimed right at their chests.

"Well," Luke said with a crooked smile. "If it isn't my two favorite cousins. Come right in."

The stateroom was beautiful, and it was horrible.

The beautiful part: Huge windows curved along the back wall, looking out over the stern of theship. Green sea and blue sky stretched all the way to the horizon. A Persian rug covered the floor.Two plush sofas occupied the middle of the room, with a canopied bed in one corner and a mahogany dining table in the other. The table was loaded with food-pizza boxes, bottles of soda, and a stack of roast beef sandwiches on a silver platter.

The horrible part: On a velvet dais at the back of the room lay a ten-foot-long golden casket. A sarcophagus, engraved with Ancient Greek scenes of cities in flames and heroes dying grisly deaths. Despite the sunlight streaming through the windows, the casket made the whole room feel cold.

"Well," Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. "A little nicer than Cabin Eleven, huh?"

He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year. He still had the scar under his eye-a jagged white line from his battle with a dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting strangely with its half-steel, half-Celestial bronze blade that could kill both mortals and monsters.

"Sit," he told them. He waved his hand and three dining chairs scooted themselves into the center of the room.

None of them sat.