Chapter 8

His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which

had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black

eyes, and horns—

enormous black-and-white horns with points you just couldn’t get from an

electric sharpener.

I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr.

Brunner told us.

But he couldn’t be real.

I blinked the rain out of my eyes. “That’s—”

“Pasiphae’s son,” my mother said. “I wish I’d known how badly they want to

kill you.”

“But he’s the Min—”

“Don’t say his name,” she warned. “Names have power.”

The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards uphill at least.

I glanced behind me again.

The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows—or not looking,

exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn’t sure why he bothered, since we were

only about fifty feet away.

“Food?” Grover moaned.

“Shhh,” I told him. “Mom, what’s he doing? Doesn’t he see us?”

“His sight and hearing are terrible,” she said. “He goes by smell. But he’ll

figure out where we are soon enough.”

As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe’s Camaro by

the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a shower of

sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank exploded.

Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying.

Oops.

“Percy,” my mom said. “When he sees us, he’ll charge. Wait until the last

second, then jump out of the way— directly sideways. He can’t change directions

very well once he’s charging. Do you understand?”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’ve been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected this.

I was selfish, keeping you near me.”

“Keeping me near you? But—”

Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.

He’d smelled us.

The pine tree was only a few more yards, but the hill was getting steeper and

slicker, and Grover wasn’t getting any lighter.

The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he’d be on top of us.

My mother must’ve been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. “Go, Percy!

Separate!

Remember what I said.”

I didn’t want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right—it was our only

chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me. His

black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.

He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at my

chest.

The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn’t work. I could

never outrun this thing. So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to the

side.

The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration

and turned, but not toward me this time, toward my mother, who was setting Grover

down in the grass.

We’d reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley,

just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow through the

rain. But that was half a mile away. We’d never make it.

The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who

was now retreating slowly downhill, back toward the road, trying to lead the monster

away from Grover.

“Run, Percy!” she told me. “I can’t go any farther. Run!”

But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to

sidestep, as she’d told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand

shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she

struggled, kicking and pummeling the air.

“Mom!”

She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: “Go!”

Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother’s

neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden

form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was simply ...

gone.

“No!”

Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs—the same

rush of energy I’d gotten when Mrs. Dodds grew talons.

The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The

monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift Grover up

and make him dissolve too.

I couldn’t allow that.

I stripped off my red rain jacket.

“Hey!” I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster.

“Hey, stupid!

Ground beef!”

“Raaaarrrrr!” The monster turned toward me, shaking his meaty fists.

I had an idea—a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the

big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I’d jump out

of the way at the last moment.

But it didn’t happen like that.

The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried

to dodge.

Time slowed down.

My legs tensed. I couldn’t jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off

from the creature’s head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair, and landing on

his neck.

How did I do that? I didn’t have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the

monster’s head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth out.

The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around

his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going strong.

The rain was in my eyes.

The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.

The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should

have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to realize

that this thing had only one gear: forward.

Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to

shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I’d bite my

own tongue off.

“Food!” Grover moaned.

The bull-man wheeled toward him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to

charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her

disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both hands

around one horn and I pulled backward with all my might. The monster tensed, gave

a surprised grunt, then— snap!

The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back

in the grass.

My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I

had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.

The monster charged.

Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster

barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry

rib cage.

The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to

disintegrate—

not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown

away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart.

The monster was gone.

The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I

smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting

open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief I’d just seen my moth e r

vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I

managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the

farmhouse. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn’t

going to let him go.

The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a

ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces

of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blond hair curled like a

princess’s. They both looked down at me, and the girl said, “He’s the one. He must

be.”

“Silence, Annabeth,” the man said. “He’s still conscious. Bring him inside.”

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