The Lightning Thief

sound like you’re leaving.”
    Luke gave me a twisted smile. “Oh, I’m leaving, all right, Percy. I brought you down here to say good-bye.”
    He snapped his fingers. A small fire burned a hole in the ground at my feet. Out crawled something glistening black, about the size of my hand. A scorpion.
    I started to go for my pen.
    “I wouldn’t,” Luke cautioned. “Pit scorpions can jump up to fifteen feet. Its stinger can pierce right through your clothes. You’ll be dead in sixty seconds.”
    “Luke, what—”
    Then it hit me.
    You will be betrayed by one who calls you a friend.
    “You,” I said.
    He stood calmly and brushed off his jeans.
    The scorpion paid him no attention. It kept its beady black eyes on me, clamping its pincers as it crawled onto my shoe.
    “I saw a lot out there in the world, Percy,” Luke said. “Didn’t you feel it—the darkness gathering, the monsters growing stronger? Didn’t you realize how useless it all is? All the heroics—being pawns of the gods. They should’ve been overthrown thousands of years ago, but they’ve hung on, thanks to us half-bloods.”
    I couldn’t believe this was happening.
    “Luke . . . you’re talking about our parents,” I said.
    He laughed. “That’s supposed to make me love them? Their precious ‘Western civilization’ is a disease, Percy. It’s killing the world. The only way to stop it is to burn it to the ground, start over with something more honest.”
    “You’re as crazy as Ares.”
    His eyes flared. “Ares is a fool. He never realized the true master he was serving. If I had time, Percy, I could explain. But I’m afraid you won’t live that long.”
    The scorpion crawled onto my pants leg.
    There had to be a way out of this. I needed time to think.
    “Kronos,” I said. “That’s who you serve.”
    The air got colder.
    “You should be careful with names,” Luke warned.
    “Kronos got you to steal the master bolt and the helm. He spoke to you in your dreams.”
    Luke’s eye twitched. “He spoke to you, too, Percy. You should’ve listened.”
    “He’s brainwashing you, Luke.”
    “You’re wrong. He showed me that my talents are being wasted. You know what my quest was two years ago, Percy? My father, Hermes, wanted me to steal a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides and return it to Olympus. After all the training I’d done, that was the best he could think up.”
    “That’s not an easy quest,” I said. “Hercules did it.”
    “Exactly,” Luke said. “Where’s the glory in repeating what others have done? All the gods know how to do is replay their past. My heart wasn’t in it. The dragon in the garden gave me this”—he pointed angrily at his scar—“and when I came back, all I got was pity. I wanted to pull Olympus down stone by stone right then, but I bided my time. I began to dream of Kronos. He convinced me to steal something worthwhile, something no hero had ever had the courage to take. When we went on that winter-solstice field trip, while the other campers were asleep, I snuck into the throne room and took Zeus’s master bolt right from his chair. Hades’s helm of darkness, too. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was. The Olympians are so arrogant; they never dreamed someone would dare steal from them. Their security is horrible. I was halfway across New Jersey before I heard the storms rumbling, and I knew they’d discovered my theft.”
    The scorpion was sitting on my knee now, staring at me with its glittering eyes. I tried to keep my voice level. “So why didn’t you bring the items to Kronos?”
    Luke’s smile wavered. “I . . . I got overconfident. Zeus sent out his sons and daughters to find the stolen bolt— Artemis, Apollo, my father, Hermes. But it was Ares who caught me. I could have beaten him, but I wasn’t careful enough. He disarmed me, took the items of power, threatened to return them to Olympus and burn me alive. Then Kronos’s voice came to me and told me what to say. I put the idea in Ares’s head about a great war between the gods. I said all he had to do was hide the items away for a while and watch the others fight. Ares got a wicked gleam in his eyes. I knew he was hooked. He let me go, and I returned to Olympus before anyone noticed my absence.” Luke drew his new sword. He ran his thumb down the flat of the blade, as if he were hypnotized by its beauty. “Afterward, the Lord of the Titans . . . h-he punished me with nightmares. I swore not to