The Lightning Thief

rushed me, I uncapped my pen and sidestepped. Riptide appeared in my hands. I slashed upward. The boar’s severed right tusk fell at my feet, while the disoriented animal charged into the sea.
    I shouted, “Wave!”
    Immediately, a wave surged up from nowhere and engulfed the boar, wrapping around it like a blanket. The beast squealed once in terror. Then it was gone, swallowed by the sea.
    I turned back to Ares. “Are you going to fight me now?” I asked. “Or are you going to hide behind another pet pig?”
    Ares’s face was purple with rage. “Watch it, kid. I could turn you into—”
    “A cockroach,” I said. “Or a tapeworm. Yeah, I’m sure. That’d save you from getting your godly hide whipped, wouldn’t it?”
    Flames danced along the top of his glasses. “Oh, man, you are really asking to be smashed into a grease spot.”
    “If I lose, turn me into anything you want. Take the bolt. If I win, the helm and the bolt are mine and you have to go away.”
    Ares sneered.
    He swung the baseball bat off his shoulder. “How would you like to get smashed: classic or modern?”
    I showed him my sword.
    “That’s cool, dead boy,” he said. “Classic it is.” The baseball bat changed into a huge, two-handed sword. The hilt was a large silver skull with a ruby in its mouth.
    “Percy,” Annabeth said. “Don’t do this. He’s a god.”
    “He’s a coward,” I told her.
    She swallowed. “Wear this, at least. For luck.”
    She took off her necklace, with her five years’ worth of camp beads and the ring from her father, and tied it around my neck.
    “Reconciliation,” she said. “Athena and Poseidon together.”
    My face felt a little warm, but I managed a smile. “Thanks.”
    “And take this,” Grover said. He handed me a flattened tin can that he’d probably been saving in his pocket for a thousand miles. “The satyrs stand behind you.”
    “Grover . . . I don’t know what to say.”
    He patted me on the shoulder. I stuffed the tin can in my back pocket.
    “You all done saying good-bye?” Ares came toward me, his black leather duster trailing behind him, his sword glinting like fire in the sunrise. “I’ve been fighting for eternity, kid. My strength is unlimited and I cannot die. What have you got?”
    A smaller ego, I thought, but I said nothing. I kept my feet in the surf, backing into the water up to my ankles. I thought back to what Annabeth had said at the Denver diner, so long ago: Ares has strength. That’s all he has. Even strength has to bow to wisdom sometimes .
    He cleaved downward at my head, but I wasn’t there.
    My body thought for me. The water seemed to push me into the air and I catapulted over him, slashing as I came down. But Ares was just as quick. He twisted, and the strike that should’ve caught him directly in the spine was deflected off the end of his sword hilt.
    He grinned. “Not bad, not bad.”
    He slashed again and I was forced to jump onto dry land. I tried to sidestep, to get back to the water, but Ares seemed to know what I wanted. He outmaneuvered me, pressing so hard I had to put all my concentration on not getting sliced into pieces. I kept backing away from the surf. I couldn’t find any openings to attack. His sword had a reach several feet longer than Anaklusmos.
    Get in close , Luke had told me once, back in our sword class. When you’ve got the shorter blade, get in close.
    I stepped inside with a thrust, but Ares was waiting for that. He knocked my blade out of my hands and kicked me in the chest. I went airborne—twenty, maybe thirty feet. I would’ve broken my back if I hadn’t crashed into the soft sand of a dune.
    “Percy!” Annabeth yelled. “Cops!”
    I was seeing double. My chest felt like it had just been hit with a battering ram, but I managed to get to my feet.
    I couldn’t look away from Ares for fear he’d slice me in half, but out of the corner of my eye I saw red lights flashing on the shoreline boulevard. Car doors were slamming.
    “There, officer!” somebody yelled. “See?”
    A gruff cop voice: “Looks like that kid on TV . . . what the heck . . .”
    “That guy’s armed,” another cop said. “Call for backup.”
    I rolled to one side as Ares’s blade slashed the sand.
    I ran for my sword, scooped it up, and launched a swipe at Ares’s face, only to find my blade deflected again.
    Ares seemed to know exactly what I was going to do the moment before I did it.
    I stepped back toward the surf, forcing