"The moment I met you,
I held my breath.
And you've been taking
it away ever since,
Nico di Angelo."
[ NICO DI ANGELO x MALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
[ HEROES OF OLYMPUS SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0013. | DO NOT TALK ABOUT MY MOTHER
Geryon had them all load into his truck, Nico sitting at the very back so Vela did that too. Though he sat a row in front. It was obvious Nico was uncomfortable with their presence but Vela wanted to be near him. So one row apart was a happy compromise for him.
"We have a huge operation!" Geryon bragged from the driver's seat. Eurytion was sat beside Nico with his hat over his face but Vela could hear his eyes rolling. "Horses and cattle mostly, but all sorts of exotic varieties too."
Vela glanced out the window to see in the yards of animal pens, a heard of creatures, half rooster, half horse. They looked terrifying but he remembered them. "Hippalek-tryons?" Vela gasped.
"I thought they were extinct!" Annabeth was in shock at the pen.
Tyson felt the same way apparently. "Rooster-ponies!" He pointed excitedly and Vela smiled softly at the cyclops.
Vela heard a shuffle behind him and snapped his head around in worry but it was only Eurytion. Vela looked sideways to watch Nico only to see Nico watching him back. It was only a moment but Vela felt the moment stretching longer than his two thousand years. He smiled at him.
A second passed in which Nico just stared at Vela's smiling lips before he scowled furiously, turning his head to look out the window but with a red blush staining his cheeks that made Vela smile proudly to himself as he turned back around in his seat.
"Now, over there," Geryon continued. "we have our fire breathing horses, which you may have seen on your way in. They're bred for war, naturally."
"What war?" Percy asked, but same as everyone else, he knew exactly which war and what side Geryon was on.
Geryon grinned slyly in a way that made Vela's skin crawl. "Oh, whichever one comes along," he simpered. "And over yonder, of course, are our prized red cows,"
There were hundreds of the cherry red cows milling about, absolutely hundreds. Vela felt his skin crawl. It wasn't right, these animals were sacred to Apollo and he knew that there was no way in Hades that he knew this was happening to his sacred animals. It was barbaric. "So many," Grover mumbled, looking like he was going to be sick.
"Yes, well," Geryon defended. "Apollo's too busy to see them, so he subcontracts them to us. We breed them vigorously because there's such a demand."
Vela could tell Percy was getting angry. "For what?"
"Meat, of course!" Geryon cried. "Armies have to eat!"
