The Unknown (A Percy Jackson Fanfiction)

8. Home Sweet Home

Hullo! 

This chapter isn't very long because i'm running out of time because its so near Christmas, and people actually expect me to buy them presents XD But i have like, £5 haha 

Enjoy! 

Chapter 8

I had a love-hate relationship with shadow-travelling.

We spiralled into pitch blackness at what seemed like one million metres per second, the temperature dropping until I couldn't even feel my hands anymore. Whispered voices crept in from all around me, ghostly hands clinging towards me as we sped past.

I wanted to shout something along the lines of, "Wheee!" But my voice was stolen away by the wind.

Yellow and red light flooded into my vision, and then sudden darkness as –

I stumbled into something that seemed like the side of a building. I was caught off-balanced and so I fell back, slamming into the cool ground with a painful thunk!

That was definitely the hate part of the relationship.

"Ow." I moaned and blinked spots out of my eyes.

"Graceful." I heard Nico comment, but his usual sarcasm wasn't as stark as normally was.

I struggled to my feet and processed my surroundings. Despite it being at least after midnight, I recognised it immediately. "Upper East End." I said, and thought of my mother. If I was where I think I was, then she was only a few apartments up ahead.

Annabeth and Thalia were sat on the sidewalk, looking drained and tired.

"Are you okay?" Nico asked. He was using his Stygian iron sword much like a walking stick. The shadow-travelling had taken a lot out of him.

Annabeth rubbed the back of her head. "Fine. I just got a bump or two, that's all."

"I'm okay." Thalia wobbled to her feet, looking pale.

I glanced around, feeling my heart sink like a three thousand ton boulder in my chest.

Manhattan was quiet. The last time it had been this silent, it had been in the war against Kronos and his troops.

The streetlamps were lit, illuminating wrecked and smoking cars, sometimes with a flicker of a flame climbing up the frame. I saw huge smears of blood across the pavement, and a still crumpled mass that was no doubt a body.

I put my head in my hands and desperately tried to calm myself down, but panic was building in my sternum. I thought about Paul and my mother, and whether they were at home with boarded doors and windows, hiding. Were they even alive?

I had thought that maybe Poseidon would've protected her and Paul, but now that the reality was clear that New York, as well as every other city, had been overtaken, I wasn't so sure. Besides, the gods had become silent again and the elevator to the 600th floor was closed.

Car alarms wailed in the distance, as well as several screams, but were quickly cut off all at once, leaving an ominous silence that nighttime New York had rarely experienced.

Thalia glared at Nico, her electric blue eyes glowing in the dim light. "We told you not to shadow-travel."

Nico threw his hands up. "What else was I supposed to do? Let you all get eaten?"

Annabeth sighed. "As much as I regret it, Nico's right. He saved us all." She studied him with a calculating gaze. "But you're not to do it again, you hear me? You could get yourself killed."