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It did not smell like a library here.
Annabeth had been in many a library. The one at camp was more of an archive than a traditional one, rows and rows of filing cabinets stuffed full of hand written letters and papyrus scrolls from the demigods of the past, each one meticulously filed away and documented in whatever strange system Chiron never explained but knew like the back of his hand.
She’d been to more traditional libraries. She’d been into community libraries and high school libraries and college libraries and the famous libraries that only the most intellectually stimulated actually visited as if some kind of strange tourist attraction.
They’d all had that distinct smell, even the dusty one at camp full of cabinets that were covered in dust and rusted closed.
The smell of books was a familiar one. Like a warm blanket or fresh laundry or Sally Jackson’s newly baked cookies still warm and gooey in the centre and burning Annabeth’s fingertips as she snatched one before Percy could.
This library did not smell like that, if it even was a library in the first place.
If it was then it was the strangest library Annabeth had ever stepped foot in. It was a tight space, the aisles between each row of papyrus scrolls, tight and just barely wide enough for her to walk normally through, perhaps enough space for her to place a finger or two between the shelves and her shoulders.
The rows and rows of shelves were not organised how Annabeth would expect them to be. Instead, they formed winding tunnels and offshoots, dead ends and paths to steps ascending and descending to the other levels, like the labyrinth in a way and Annabeth shuddered at the thought.
Instead of a chandelier or overhead lights, the place was lit by torches and braziers connected directly to the wooden shelves. Idly, as Annabeth wandered through the tight rows of this strange, strange place, she wondered if she would ever have such faith in something as the designer of this library had in the torches to not light this whole place on fire and send it burning into the flames.
It was strange in design but it was the smell that had Annabeth most on edge.
She’d woken suddenly barely three days ago, gagging and retching and surrendering whatever dignity she had left when the smell of rot and decay hit the back of her throat, bile rising as her stomach spasmed.
Three days she had been stuck in this labyrinth of a library, trapped in its twists and turns and endless stairs and rows upon rows of scrolls that only seemed to get narrower and narrower the further she went in.
She’d tried desperately to map it, to find her way like Theseus once did in the actual labyrinth but nothing seemed to work. Just when she thought she had memorised the floor plan, it was like the library heard her, like it suddenly shifted ever so slightly so any mental map she made was ruined.
She was helpless but to wander and wander and hope that she would find a way out soon.
Food, surprisingly, had not been a problem. Occasionally, on her journey, Annabeth would find little outshoots from the main library, an alcove, a separate room, a table and a chair filled with grapes or apples or olives or figs. The problem, unfortunately, was still the smell.
It was everywhere. Rot and decay and occasionally something sickly-sweet that Annabeth somehow knew meant a fresh kill. The smell was everywhere, in every corridor, in every room, on every tapestry she saw and every piece of furniture like it was woven into the very fabric.
That was what made it difficult to eat, difficult to chew and swallow without gagging.
Occasionally, wine would appear on that table and Annabeth would inhale it greedily, the only scent stronger than the rot, stronger than the decay and Annabeth could close her eyes and pretend she was anywhere but here, anywhere but this cursed library that refused to let her go.
So, she walked the endless corridors, mapped the routes even if they changed. Five floors were how many she had counted so far. The one she woke up on. Three above her and one below. All of them had been mapped out or attempted to be mapped out.
The routes changed but the basic things about them stayed the same.
The topmost floor had a skylight. It was always there, no matter what route Annabeth took to the centre of the floor. A skylight that she would find and sit under for a few hours, when the sun was highest and she would soak in its rays, would soak in the hope it gave her that there was a way out of here.
Who would build a library with no way out?
The floor under that was full of alcove rooms. There were no others when she finally found a door and dipped through. Tiny rooms, if they could even be called rooms. Each one held a tapestry. Some looked new. Some looked old. Some were torn open and lay tattered against the walls.
Annabeth didn’t like thinking about what made those marks.
The next floor was the floor that held the food, two rooms that alternated so Annabeth was left stumbling to find the right one where her energy drained and she needed to renew it. The next floor down was the one that she woke up on. She really should have expected it to have the only bed in it, though bed was putting it nicely.
In truth, it was nothing more than a few scraps of sheets and two meagre pillows but Annabeth wasn’t about to shoot a gift horse in the mouth and chase it out the water or whatever the idiom was meant to be. She didn’t have time to wonder over linguistic choices and cultural idioms when she was trapped in this damn library.
The last floor was the one directly below the bed floor. There were fewer torches there. No braziers to light her way. The gap between the shelves got closer and closer together, narrower and narrower and darker and darker. There were no rooms on that floor, no little alcoves. Nothing.
But a set of stairs that led down into inky darkness.
She’d found those stairs on the second day. She’d refused to go down them.
There was no light down there. The smell of rot and decay was concentrated and there were marks on the stone flooring, deeper gouges into the marble and Annabeth wasn’t in a rush to meet what was down there.
Because there had to be something trapped in here with her. The original labyrinth held the Minotaur.
Annabeth was no Theseus but she was a demigod and demigod trapped in a library with an unknown monster was enough to put anyone on edge.
It came out at night, Annabeth was sure of that. She’d heard it every night for those three nights she’d been there. The click-click-click sound of claws on marble. The rip-rip-rip and the crack-crack-crack of claws gouged into a wooden door.
It never broke the door. It never forced its way in but it put its mark there. It let Annabeth know it knew she was here.
And in those three days that they were aware of each other, neither seemed keen to meet face to face.
It took Annabeth a week to perfect her routine.
In the mornings, she would rise and ignore the gouges in her door. She would go to the topmost floor and read under the skylight, horrified each time she remembered that the words in this library were entirely in ancient Greek. When she got bored, she would descent a floor and look for any new tapestries that had been put up. They were strange things, the new tapestries. She could make sense of none of them. A beast with scales and fins pulling a child from a shipwreck. A dove monster covered in beautiful jewellery and bangles that seemed embedded in its skin bound a young girl to her in a pearl necklace turned leash. A being made of flesh and fire and bronze, each part twisted and mangled yet somehow clinging on, hovered a boy over an open flame.
Something pricked in Annabeth’s spine as she watched them appear. The sea monster came first then a handful of days later, the dove monster and just yesterday came the being of fire and metal made flesh.
Her stomach would shift with unease every time Annabeth saw them. She would convince herself it was hunger each time and move to the next floor to eat. The selection of food would change each day, a rotation of food, a rotation of wine and Annabeth would desperately ignore the way that rotting smell grew stronger, like she was being enticed to follow it.
And each day, without fail, Annabeth would follow it. She would follow that smell, push down her gag and sit at the top of those steps, sit on the claw marks and stare into the abyss. She would wait and watch and grind her teeth.
Sometimes, if she stared too long, if she lingered just a minute longer, the hairs on the back of her neck would rise and the abyss would stare back at her.
She would scramble up each time and run, sprint with all the energy she had left, shoulders painfully brushing against those narrow shelves until she found her floor and slammed the door shut behind her, resolved to never, ever let the abyss watch her again.
But she would.
Each and every day. And the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months.
Three months was when the routine changed.
The beast, the monster, the creature, whatever it was, would still come to her door each night. It would still rake its claws into the wood, it would still leave a mark of itself on the marble flooring.
And it would leave a gift.
They started small, almost normal. A book. An actual book and an accompanying pen fashioned out of reed with the tiniest of inkwells. Then came a satchel to carry it in the next day. Then clothes, a welcome surprise considering Annabeth had been wearing the same outfit for three months now and it was clear whoever designed this place had never heard of a shower before.
She tried not to think of the poor soul that the monster had snatched those items from, tried not to think of the way their body had joined the rotting smell that converged on the lowermost floor.
But then the gifts changed.
A vole. A mouse. A rat. All of them dead.
Then, it somehow got worse.
A severed hand, still warm to the touch. An eye. Someone’s voice box.
Parts of people arrived at Annabeth’s door like an offering, like a gift, like a big blaring sign of ‘why would I eat you when I can show off all my kills instead?’.
Clearly, this monster had no intention of killing her, not yet at least. Perhaps, it fed on fear, Annabeth mused. There was no way that wooden door actually held it back but it wasn’t coming in for a reason, it wasn’t striking when it could. Maybe it was buttering her up. The visits each night, the staring back at her from the darkness, the proof of its kills outside her bedroom door.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it fed on terror. Maybe forcing Annabeth to endure more and more and more was its way of cooking her to perfection.
And then the changes in the routine got too terrible to ignore.
The flames of the torches, the fire in the braziers would go out suddenly, randomly, at any time in the day and Annabeth would hear that sound, that click-click-click of claws against marble. The whole library became swirling darkness, that abyss that would stare at her.
The first time caught her off guard, sitting under the skylight with books open surrounding her and her new notebook open to write in. The flames flickered once then twice, a third time.
The library plunged into darkness and the click-click-click blared like a warning sign in her head. Up the floors. On the stairs. The creature, that being, lingered in the darkness, stalking around the area still lit by the sun. It didn’t reveal itself. It didn’t pounce or snarl or bark.
It just paced. Round and round and round it went, circling Annabeth slowly before skulking off, back to the lowermost floor as the flames flickered on again.
Annabeth’s stomach rumbled that night, deep hunger pans after she had sprinted back to her room, refusing to come out again until day turned to night and night back into day again.
The lights flickered again when she was on the second floor, slipping desperately into an alcove room just as something big and heavy collided with the door swinging closed.
A new tapestry greeted her, half finished yet still displayed.
The library, rows of books both a comforting familiarity and the cause of the pit in her stomach. Half-finished was this tapestry but it showed Annabeth’s library clearly.
The third floor and third case of flickering lights. Annabeth dove into one of the meal rooms. Again, the being gouged at the door, wooden splintering and creaking under its weight. The food in the room was rotting, little more than mush that crumbled and splattered onto the table when Annabeth tried to lift them.
The flickering of the lights on the fourth floor happened long before Annabeth would usually retreat to her room. More gouging of the door, more click-click-click on the marble flooring. A severed head lay on the floor when she cracked it open, eyes wide and face frozen in fear.
The fifth floor had no rooms to hide in when the light from the flames flickered and Annabeth froze, rooted to the spot in pure terror.
Click-click-click.
Closer it came and Annabeth couldn’t move. Her hand plastered over her mouth as if that would stop the being from locating her, as if her breaths were the things that led the being to her each and every time, like it wasn’t her scent, like it wasn’t the being’s superior night vision.
Still, she stayed frozen.
She could feel its breaths against her.
Gods, it was huge. It towered over her, soft puffs of breath descending down from upon high to lightly rustle her hair. She could still see nothing but she knew it was right in front of her, watching, waiting.
She could keep her eyes open no longer, unwilling to look her beast in its eyes.
“An.”
The being croaked out, each letter accompanied by the sharp snapping of a beak that felt like a bolt of lightning down her spine.
“Na.”
Gods, somehow its head was behind her now, staring at the her from behind. A beak grazed the shell of her ear, speaking directly to her.
“Beth.”
Her name. Gods, it knew her name.
“Annabeth,” It said now, beak clicking and hovering right next to her ear,” Annabeth. Annabeth. Annabeth. Annabeth. Annabeth.” Each call of her name was more frenzied than before, tone dropping high and low somehow in the middle of her name and screeches echoing around her head like someone had banged a gong right in her ear at camp. “Annabeth. Annabeth. Annabeth.”
Again and again it went, crying her name. Shouting her name. Screeching her name.
Then, it stopped.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere.
Nothing but silence.
Panting of breath. Annabeth couldn’t tell if she was panting or the monster was.
“Annabeth,” It said finally,” I will be waiting.”
The flames flickered again, sparking into light and it was like the creature was never there in the first place, back into the underbelly of the library.
Annabeth’s hands shook. They trembled. She couldn’t get them to stop. Her legs shook too, knees knocking together. The air caught in her throat, mind buffering no matter how desperately she tried to get it to work.
She’d been here for months. Months on end. Trapped with that monster. It knew her name. Gods, it knew her name. It knew who she was and still, it toyed with her. Kept her trapped inside here with it.
Tears slipped down her cheeks without warning and Annabeth angrily swiped them away, legs still shaking as she arrived back to her room, refusing to be caught out again. There was no telling what would happen when that monster’s patience ran out.
Months, she had been here. Months without human interaction. At this point, she’d take anyone, even Clarisse. Just anybody. She would take Octavian. Anybody to keep her company. Anybody to talk to.
She was losing her mind, she could tell. Jumping at shadows. Freezing at odd sounds. A sitting duck for this beast to snap her up in its beak the moment her concentration broke.
Annabeth’s resolve strengthened.
No.
She would not be a sitting duck for this beast. She would not just lay down and welcome her death. If she was going to die, if this creature was going to eat her, she would go down fighting.
The buffering of Annabeth’s brain continued, sluggish and slow.
She knew nothing about this monster, could not even begin to place which one it was. All she knew was it was large with a beak and a neck so long that it shouldn’t be possible. It could speak, it could communicate, rough and cracking as it voice was. And it was waiting. Waiting for her.
It didn’t like the light. Annabeth knew that.
Why else would it wait for complete darkness to crawl out from the lowermost floor? Why else would it wait for the torches and braziers to extinguish to snarl into Annabeth’s ear and stay hidden in the shadows when she sat under the skylight?
She had woken here with no weapons and no matter how many paths she took, how many twists and turns, how many doors she went through, no weapon ever materialised. No knife. No swords or spears. Not even something she could use as a shield.
But the thing didn’t like light and it only ever appeared when the flames went out. Perhaps it wasn’t light that it didn’t like. It had still crawled out of its hellhole when Annabeth sat under the skylight after all. Perhaps it was fire that it didn’t like.
Desperately, she pulled free one of the torches. Desperately, she yanked it from its spot against a shelf. Desperately, she held it in her hands and made that walk.
The walk down to the lowest level, the level that she had never once walked before.
The torch didn’t offer much light against the crushing darkness. Inky blackness was everywhere and horror crept up Annabeth’s spine.
The rot was all encompassing here. It was everywhere. Sickly sweet and rotting, wrapping a hand around Annabeth’s throat and squeezing, forcing her to drink in more of it, more of that smell until it danced on her tongue and she had to bite down her panicked retch.
The marble was wet. Her shoes slipped against the stone and the scream that fought to escape her throat had to be swallowed down.
It wasn’t water.
The marble was wet with blood. Wet with blood and guts and a trail of snapped bones that she had to walk over. Hundreds of little bones, splintered. Already splintered and broken. Broken and splintered under the weight of Annabeth’s foot now too.
She covered her mouth to stamp down on any noises that might escape her. Any scream. Any gag. Anything and everything that could get her caught so quickly.
This level was just as crowded as the others. Rows and rows of bookshelves that got narrower and narrower the more Annabeth walked. She couldn’t memorise these routes. She couldn’t even begin to visualise what it was. This path. This route.
So, she walked and walked and walked through the winding pathways, shoulders brushing against papyrus scrolls.
Each step doing nothing but sealing her fate. If she were to die tonight, she wouldn’t do it in fear, she wouldn’t hide away in her room until the monster came for her. She would meet her fate head on, like a hero did.
The sound of snapping bones was horrific, ringing in her brain, louder and louder until it echoed in her head, pounding against her skull. The crunching was worse, teeth grinding up bones and the guttural sound of swallowing.
The rows of shelves disappeared into an atrium, the last room.
The source of the rot. The source of the blood and guts. The source of the crunching and grind of bones.
It was just as dark as the rest of this floor, the inky swirling darkness. She could scarcely see in front of her the entire time but now it was like the shadows retreated at the sight of the flames of the torch.
She wished they hadn’t.
The most important thing was the tunnel at the very end of the room. At the far end, there was hope. A long tunnel shrouded in darkness with the barest hint of light at the end, sunlight. That was the hope. Hope that was wrenched from Annabeth’s hands almost as soon as she saw it.
The pile of bones. A mountain of bones. Grizzly and snapped in half. Some still contained flesh, rotting and sickly sweet in Annabeth’s nose. Dried blood on the mountain. Guts still tumbling down. And atop it all, the monster.
It flickered in and out of existence like Annabeth’s mortal mind couldn’t contain its true image. Vaguely humanoid. Long, twisted limbs. A beak and a body covered in feathers. A long neck capable of twisting and turning on itself. What Annabeth had originally thought of as claws were actually talons, twisted and curled and covered in dried blood.
It flickered in and out of her eyes, body warped and buffering as it opened its eyes, one after the other and the face of it...Gods, could something even smile of it had a beak? A smiling beak stretching from either ears? A jaw unhooking and hanging low and revealing sharp, serrated teeth that had no business being in a beak?
“Annabeth,” It chittered,” Annabeth. Annabeth. Annabeth.”
The sound echoed, bouncing off the high ceiling and screaming down the tunnel. A crescendo of her name grew and Annabeth peered upwards, rafters full of owls repeating her name over and over and over again, staring at her with unblinking eyes.
She couldn’t hold their gazes, returning back to the monster.
The monster could probably stand on two legs but it didn’t, using its arms to drag it down from its perch on the mountain of bones, neck unwinding until the face was right in Annabeth’s eyeline.
“Annabeth,” It said again and blindly, Annabeth swiped at it with her torch.
It didn’t even flinch and horror seeped into her stomach. It wasn’t scared of the fire. It hadn’t been avoiding the upper levels because of the fire. It hadn’t been arriving in the night because of the flames.
It was just a game. It had been playing with her. Like a pet. Like she was a mouse trapped in a cage and forced to run on her wheel until she died from exhaustion.
“Annabeth,” It said again,” Annabeth.”
The neck twisted. In front of her. Behind her. To the side.
The body stayed on its mountain of bones, feathered limbs stretched and grotesque, each one topped by talons that drew gouges on its perch.
If Annabeth was to die today, which she certainly was, it would be with her questions satiated and the uncomfortable crushing feeling in her chest alleviated.
There was no hope now, just the fleeting, teasing wink of sunlight at the end of the tunnel that she had no chance of reaching with such a monster on her tail.
“Annabeth.” Her name again. Only ever her name, from the monster, from the owls, from the echoes bouncing off the walls.
“What are you?” She snarled out, still clutching at her torch though she knew that it didn’t strike fear into the monster’s heart. She refused to give it up, her only lifeline left. “Who are you?”
“You do not recognise me?”
Bile rose in Annabeth’s throat, her stomach swirling. This was meant to be someone she had met before?
“Ah, perhaps not.”
That head swung around, vertebrae snapping as its neck coiled around Annabeth’s body. The words were directly in her ear, that beak within biting distance.
“I do not know where you came from,” That voice continued, that terrible, grating voice, right in her ear,” Just that you woke up here. With me.”
“And you are who, exactly?”
The laughter was horrific. Annabeth had thought the voice was terrible. The laughter was worse. The sound dug claws into Annabeth’s mind, bouncing the walls of her skull and spreading through her brain.
“So far you must have travelled to not have even heard of me. So stupid your father must have been to not tell you of me.”
Annabeth whipped around, waving the torch and the neck unwound with a snap, the monster’s face pulled back in an expression of discontent, perhaps some disappointment. “My father? What has he got to do with anything?”
Her father had never mentioned a monster like this to her before. Granted, they didn’t have the best of relationships but even he knew to report such things to Annabeth, if only so she could know one was hunting her. And this was as monstrous as they came. There was no way he wouldn’t have mentioned it to her.
“Though,” The monster continued,” Perhaps he did not see me like this either. Mortal minds cannot conceptualise my true body like this.”
It happened so quickly that Annabeth would think she had imagined it, imagine all of this, right down to the size and shape of this monster. She would have thought it was one big hallucination if the grotesque sound of skin shedding and slapping wetly on the floor, and bones snapping and twisting themselves had not buried itself into her mind, finding a home for itself in her mind next to the rot and the laughter.
No.
It couldn’t be.
No, no, no, no, nononononono-
“Annabeth,” The creature purred,” Daughter of mine. My first and only. I do not remember helping to create you. Yet here you stand.”
The crunch of human bones under her feet were the least of Annabeth’s problems. Her eyes darted to that tunnel now. Athena stood in front of her in a human form. No long limbs. No long neck. No talons or feathers or beak.
A renewed sense of hope filled her gut.
“I did not expect you even when Poseidon’s boy appeared in the ocean, Hephaestus’ boy in the forge and Aphrodite’s girl upon Cyprus. And here you are. In my library.”
The stickiness of the blood on the floor was forgotten as Annabeth tightened her grip on her torch, another glance over to the sunlight out the end of the tunnel.
“Did you enjoy your gifts? The clothes I brought you? The book to note down your thoughts? Your satchel? What about the food? I wasn’t sure what you would eat after you were bored of the fruits. Did you like the vole? The mouse? The rat?”
Something terrible swirled in Athena’s grey eyes, the mirror to the horror in her daughter’s. Annabeth didn’t want to call it insanity but she couldn’t find another word for it.
“I wasn’t sure what else you would enjoy. I ripped the hand off myself. One of my owls plucked out the eyes. Another helped me strip the voice box. Did you enjoy them?”
Annabeth’s throat bobbed, her breath coming out in heavy pants. She didn’t respond.
Athena didn’t need her to though. The goddess, the monster, the creature, whatever she was, just kept talking. She didn’t break to take a breath. Her shoulders didn’t move as she breathed. Her chest didn’t rise and Annabeth was almost certain that the heart in that very same chest wasn’t beating.
“I knew that all I had to do was wait. The others were so impatient with their children, so greedy. They do not understand that it is better to let your children come to you then force them to your side. Children are allowed independence. In moderation.”
Annabeth didn’t like the sound of that. ‘In moderation’. It didn’t sound good at all. She chanced another glance out to that tunnel.
“You may go out,” Athena said impassively and Annabeth’s eyes narrowed, waiting for the catch. “Provided you return.” She took a step closer. She was in human form. She looked like a person, like the goddess that Annabeth had always known to be her mother but she didn’t feel like that. She still felt like that creature with its long, winding neck and awkward grotesque limbs. “And you will return, won’t you, Annabeth?”
Athena shifted, her image wavering like the monster beneath was waiting to be released, like it was impatient and already attempting to push through.
“But I can go? So long as I return?” So long as she returned. No time stipulation, Annabeth noted. She was hardly a Hermes kid but even she could lean into tricky word play when it suited her.
Athena went very still all of a sudden, even the beast within her going still. Too still. Her eyes dilated, colour swallowed up by all consuming darkness. “You will return to me, Annabeth. You will find nothing of interest out there.”
“What makes you so sure?” Bad choice, challenging a god, especially one tinged by insanity but Annabeth’s nerves had long since been frayed, ripped from her body and dipped in fire. She had to know. No matter what.
“Athens will hold your interest for only a moment.”
Athens, then. That’s where that tunnel of light, that beacon of hope, was going to lead her. She’d never heard of Athens having a secret library underneath it but Annabeth filled that little tid-bit under all the other things she still had questions about.
“The people will fall over themselves to serve you.” Athena’s hand shot out and Annabeth’s hand jerked. The goddess didn’t seem to care that her clothes were set ablaze, the torch clattering against her body as it slipped from Annabeth’s grip. She didn’t even flinch when the flames licked at her flesh. She just held Annabeth’s face with her hand, tilting it this way and that in an iron grip. “Each one will recognise you as my daughter. They will all recognise that they are to serve you as they serve me.”
The grip on Annabeth’s face grew tighter and from the edges of her vision, she could just make out the way Athena’s nails grew into those talons, the monster lurking under her skin.
“Children are so rare nowadays, especially in a form such as yours and the other children. So...complete. So...normal. My people will stop you from straying too far. You will find yourself bored. Sooner than you would expect and you will find yourself back here, with me.”
“You seem certain.”
That laugh returned. And the echo. The echo was the worst part of it. No matter how much Annabeth tried, it bounced around her skull. It immobilised her even more than she was, her face in the grip of this monster of a mother.
“I am certain. You forget, I’ve been watching over you, Annabeth. I know what makes you tick. You will come crawling back to the knowledge trapped in this place. To the knowledge you want from me. Such a curious little girl you are.”
Athena’s form flickered. The monster walked under her skin. The feathers sprouted and her limbs elongated, bones snapping and muscles twisting. Feathers grew straight from her flesh, streaked in blood. For a moment, Annabeth wondered if she would be caught in the crossfire of the transformation but Athena froze completely, half transformed as she tilted Annabeth’s chin up to look into her eyes.
They held eye contact for a few brief, suffocating moments.
“I could run,” Annabeth said,” I could do it. Not even all the people in Athens could keep up with me.”
“You could,” Athena agreed,” But you won’t. Because you know if I have to go hunting for you, it won’t be pretty.” Then, she had the audacity to smile, showing off those rows and rows of sharp serrated teeth.
Her clothes still burned but she didn’t even twitch, finally releasing Annabeth’s chin.
“Go on,” Athena said,” Have your independence for a little while longer. Enjoy it, savour it. Do with it what you will.”
It had to be a trick. It had to be. This wasn’t at all like the beast, like the monster that had stalked her in the darkness, that had left talon marks in her door, that perched upon the mountain of bones and left offerings of people on the ground.
But Athena didn’t move even as Annabeth edged away, still glancing at the monster wearing her mother’s face. Athena didn’t move at all. Just watched her, staring, unblinking.
“Annabeth.”
She froze.
“Don’t make me come hunting for you. You won’t enjoy what happens after.”