The Last Olympian

kicked. “No more monsters! Go away!”
    “It’s okay!” Luke struggled to hold her. “Thalia, put your shield up. You’re scaring her.”
    Thalia tapped Aegis, and it shrank into a silver bracelet. “Hey, it’s all right,” she said. “We’re not going to hurt you. I’m Thalia. This is Luke.”
    “Monsters!”
    “No,” Luke promised. “But we know all about monsters. We fight them too.”
    Slowly, the girl stopped kicking. She studied Luke and Thalia with large intelligent gray eyes.
    “You’re like me?” she said suspiciously.
    “Yeah,” Luke said. “We’re . . . well, it’s hard to explain, but we’re monster fighters. Where’s your family?”
    “My family hates me,” the girl said. “They don’t want me. I ran away.”
    Thalia and Luke locked eyes. I knew they both related to what she was saying.
    “What’s your name, kiddo?” Thalia asked.
    “Annabeth.”
    Luke smiled. “Nice name. I tell you what, Annabeth— you’re pretty fierce. We could use a fighter like you.”
    Annabeth’s eyes widened. “You could?”
    “Oh, yeah.” Luke turned his knife and offered her the handle. “How’d you like a real monster-slaying weapon? This is Celestial bronze. Works a lot better than a hammer.”
    Maybe under most circumstances, offering a seven-year-old kid a knife would not be a good idea, but when you’re a half-blood, regular rules kind of go out the window.
    Annabeth gripped the hilt.
    “Knives are only for the bravest and quickest fighters,” Luke explained. “They don’t have the reach or power of a sword, but they’re easy to conceal and they can find weak spots in your enemy’s armor. It takes a clever warrior to use a knife. I have a feeling you’re pretty clever.”
    Annabeth stared at him with adoration. “I am!”
    Thalia grinned. “We’d better get going, Annabeth. We have a safe house on the James River. We’ll get you some clothes and food.”
    “You’re . . . you’re not going to take me back to my family?” she said. “Promise?”
    Luke put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re part of our family now. And I promise I won’t let anything hurt you. I’m not going to fail you like our families did us. Deal?”
    “Deal!” Annabeth said happily.
    “Now, come on,” Thalia said. “We can’t stay put for long!”
    The scene shifted. The three demigods were running through the woods. It must’ve been several days later, maybe even weeks. All of them looked beat up, like they’d seen some battles. Annabeth was wearing new clothes—jeans and an oversize army jacket.
    “Just a little farther!” Luke promised. Annabeth stumbled, and he took her hand. Thalia brought up the rear, brandishing her shield like she was driving back whatever pursued them. She was limping on her left leg.
    They scrambled to a ridge and looked down the other side at a white Colonial house—May Castellan’s place.
    “All right,” Luke said, breathing hard. “I’ll just sneak in and grab some food and medicine. Wait here.”
    “Luke, are you sure?” Thalia asked. “You swore you’d never come back here. If she catches you—”
    “We don’t have a choice!” he growled. “They burned our nearest safe house. And you’ve got to treat that leg wound.”
    “This is your house?” Annabeth said with amazement.
    “It was my house,” Luke muttered. “Believe me, if it wasn’t an emergency—”
    “Is your mom really horrible?” Annabeth asked. “Can we see her?”
    “No!” Luke snapped.
    Annabeth shrunk away from him, like his anger surprised her.
    “I . . . I’m sorry,” he said. “Just wait here. I promise everything will be okay. Nothing’s going to hurt you. I’ll be back—”
    A brilliant golden flash illuminated the woods. The demigods winced, and a man’s voice boomed: “You should not have come home.”
    The vision shut off.
    My knees buckled, but Annabeth grabbed me. “Percy! What happened?”
    “Did . . . did you see that?” I asked.
    “See what?”
    I glanced at Hestia, but the goddess’s face was expressionless. I remembered something she’d told me in the woods: If you are to understand your enemy Luke, you must under stand his family. But why had she shown me those scenes?
    “How long was I out?” I muttered.
    Annabeth knit her eyebrows. “Percy, you weren’t out at all. You just looked at Hestia for like one second and collapsed.”
    I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. I couldn’t afford to look weak. Whatever those visions