Daughter of Apollo (Percy Jackson)

Chapter Eleven

"This is so pretty!" Kelly exclaims as we look over the beautiful site known as Cumberland Falls.

We had decided to take a pit-stop In Kentucky to see the falls, under Kelly's request. Now I see why. This place is beautiful. And it's on the route to Hollywood which makes it ten times better. It's historical and it helps us learn about geography, which in my opinion, we shouldn't be doing outside of a school environment. But, Chiron deems it 'necessary' and whenever we get the opportunity, we have to. So here we are with a tour group learning about how the waterfall was actually a mile down the river and every year it moves back a little. After that I tuned the annoying 30 year old tour guide out, only snapping out of it when I heard Kelly yelling over the loud water.

"There's a cave over there!"

I nod and turn to Percy, who's trying a little too hard to get his beats to play music louder than the guide's talking and the water rushing. Shaking my head, I pull the headphones down so they're hanging around his neck. I point to the small path Kelly showed me. We walk over to it, careful not to allow the tour guide to see us. We were given very specific rules which included some words like, "don't leave the group," and, "it's dangerous" or some shit like that, I don't know, didn't really listen

"Look, there's an opening." Kelly points out.

"Hm," Percy walks over to it, peering up. "You should be able to get up."

"Can we?" I ask excitedly.

"Sure, what else are we going to do?" Kelly starts heading up.

Once on top of it, I sat down next to Kelly, looking out over the river. Percy sat somewhere where he played with the water, I don't know.

"You seem gloomy" I tell her.

"Yeah, I just want to know what happened to dad. We all do. I've been getting Iris messages from everyone back home. The girls are still freaking out."

"Yeah, I understand how they feel, of course I only met dad once, but when you spend so long without a dad and finally know who it is, you get attached quickly."

"That's how we all are. Of course, you have it bad because most of us got claimed pretty early. And we were here when we were younger, so that might be it. Anyway, what do you think of Cumberland?" She was staring off into the river, then turns to look at me with her question.

"It's pretty! And there are so many things to explore. I want to go down to the beach before we leave." I gush, pointing down to the small beach.

"I used to live down here, it's honestly my favorite place. The-" Kelly gets cut off.

"Excuse me, girls, you aren't supposed to be up there." We look below us to see the tour guide behind us, clipboard in hand, hair in a bun, looking stiff as ever. Shit. 

"Oh, I'm sorry. We can leave now..." I tell the uptight lady before turning around to Percy. "C'mon Perce, we're leaving."

"Shit..." I hear Kelly mumble. After that word, I see Percy's eyes widen and the sound of swords appearing comes to my ears.

I spin around seeing the creepiest thing I have ever seen. It looked like it belonged in a freaking myth zoo. The creature had a head of a lion, had a goat head sticking out of its torso, and had a snake tail whipping around. Like, what the hell?

"μια χίμαιρα της!" Percy blurts out in Greek.

"That's great! Really! Now can the non-Greek speaking girl hear it in English?" I say sarcastically, getting my bow and arrows, loading one and pointing it at the animal.