SILVER ◼percy jackson◼

💠SEVENTEEN💠

EDITED NOVEMBER 20TH, 2018

"Luna?"

My eyes opened as I pulled back, seeing Percy lightly shaking his head to rid himself of the haze that he had been put in. He looked at me, though, his eyes wide.

"Did you just-"

"Maybe, but we have bigger issues right now," I hurriedly told him, looking around for any of the bellhops and waitresses, especially the one who knew my name. Arrow stood guard by my feet, sniffing the air to probably see if he could smell either of the people I was looking for.

"Luna, you just said-"

"Yeah, I know what I said. That's a conversation for later because you and Grover both just ate Lotus Flowers," he tried to interrupt, obviously with a question, but I pushed a finger to his lips to silence him, "We are standing in the Land of the Lotus Eaters. Their flowers make you forget everything and make you only want to have fun and never leave. They've been luring people into their trap for years. Now we need to find Grover and leave."

I looked behind me, feeling eyes burning into my back, and saw the bellhop from before staring Percy and I down from the other side of the room, a walkie talkie up to his mouth.

"Percy," he shook his head, focusing on me again. I pointed my finger toward the man as he talked into the walkie talkie, still eyeing us down, "That man knows my name, Percy. He knew my name."

His eyes grew wide and he grabbed my hand, tugging me in the opposite direction of the bellhop as Arrow ran with us.

"Then we need to find Grover and get out of here. They must know who we all are, and that we're looking for the pearl."

**********

"Grover! Dude, snap out of it!" Percy tried to reason with our friend as he stood in front of us, pants off and goat legs showing. Not that any of the girls around him cared or even noticed. They were all under the spell of the Lotus Flowers and didn't even notice the goat legs.

"Dude you need to chill out! Let loose! Have some fun! Am I right, ladies?" Grover cheered, earning a scream of happiness from all of the girls around him. Grover walked to Percy and I, standing in-between us and throwing an arm around both of our shoulders.

"You two should really lighten up. Have fun like my ladies and I. Heard there's some awesome table games going on over there, go check them out!"

"Grover, just wake up!" I pleaded, grabbing his shoulders and spinning him to face me. Percy moved over and stood behind me, staring down the giddy Grover just as I was.

"We are in the Land of the Lotus Eaters, Grover. You ate the flowers and now we're stuck here," I began to tell him, as calmly and quickly as I could. Percy and I watched as the smile on his face disappeared and the magic of the flowers began to wear off, "We are on a time sensitive mission at the moment and we really need to go or we're never going to make it to the Underworld. Do you understand Grover?"

He slowly started to shake his head, waking up out of his trance and causing me to almost smile, "Yeah, yeah I understand. Crap, we got to go.

"I know we do-"

No, Luna, we need to go now, I looked down at Arrow, who was growling at something behind us.

Percy and I turned, peering over our shoulders. The bellhop who knew my name was walking towards us, three more of them right behind him. They most definitely weren't coming for a friendly discussion about being underage in a casino.

"We need to go!"

We took off for the exit as quickly as we could, more and more of the bellhops showing up all around us. Regular people began to wake up out of their trances, staring in horror and screaming in shock as Percy punched one of the guys that came our way in the face. Grover used his goat legs to his advantage, kicked most of the guys in the gut. Arrow ran beside me, growling and attempting to bite anyone that close to me. Our weapons were all in my backpack, and I didn't have time to open that up right now.

"Head for the entrance!" Percy yelled to me, knocking another man down. I only nodded, taking off towards the entrance of the casino. Something caught my eye, though, at one of the gambling stations as I ran by. I stopped in my tracks, staring at the small blue orb that rolled around one of the games. The pearl.

"Grab her!" I heard from behind me. I scrambled as fast as I could to the table, swinging my feet onto it and grabbing the pearl in my hands as I stood up, assessing the situation.

Four guys were making their way towards me, Percy and Grover not too far behind them. I could easily knock down the two to my left while Arrow dealt with the ones on my right.

I followed my plan exactly, knocking two of the men out with a simple kick to the face while I held the pearl as tightly as I could without breaking it. Arrow fended off the ones to my right before we both turned back to the direction of the boys, running toward them.

Percy and I ran side by side toward the front entrance, Arrow and Grover right behind us and more of the bellhops gaining.

"The car! Get in the car!" Percy took control, following Grover's words and dragging me towards the spinning platform that said 'You could win this car!' that held a shiny, black sports car on top.

"In! Get in!" I threw myself into the passengers seat, Percy grabbing Arrow and throwing the both of them into the back while Grover climbed into the driver's seat.

"Get the keys!" I yelled at Grover as he frantically searched every possible place for the keys. I looked out the side mirror, seeing the bellhops gaining on the car as we continued to spin on the stationary platform, "Grover! Find the damn keys!"

"I got them!" he yelled. He wasted no time, pushing them into the ignition and punching the gas, sending us flying off the platform and straight through the glass doors of the casino.

Shattering glass was all the could be heard as Grover raced us into oncoming traffic, swerving around multiple cars until we were finally in the correct lane, heading out of Las Vegas.

I leaned back in the seat, one of my hands rubbing my forehead while the other laid between Grover's seat and mine. I let out a sigh of relief, happy to be out of that casino. 

"Guys, look!" Grover shouted, pointing at the Las Vegas sign as we left the city, "Look at the date!"

"That can't be right," I whispered as we left the city, the sign with today's date on it far behind us.

"Guys, we were in there for five days," Grover told us slowly, making sure we all heard him right. I closed my eyes, realizing what this meant.

"We have three days to get the bolt back to Zeus, and get Percy's mother."