Capítulo 84: My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting
Percy Jackson POV
We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn't know how my mom could see anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.
Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me in the backseat and I wondered if I'd gone insane or if he was wearing some kind of shag carpet trousers. But no the smell was one I remembered from kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo, the distinct smell of wool. The smell of a wet barnyard animal.
All I could think to say was, "So you and my mom know each other?"
"Not exactly," he said. "I mean, we've never met in person. But she knew I was watching you."
"Watching me?"
"Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn't faking being your friend," he added hastily. "I am your friend."
"Umm, what are you exactly."
"That doesn't matter right now."
"It doesn't matter? From the waist down my best friend is a donkey-"
Grover let out a sharp, throaty "Blaa-ha-ha!"
I always thought it was a kind of weird laugh but now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.
"Goat!" he cried.
"What?"
"I'm a goat from the waist down."
"You just said it didn't matter."
"Blaa! There are satyrs who would trample you under hoof for such an insult."
"Whoa. Wait satyrs like from Mr Brunner's myths?"
"Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs Dodds a myth?"
"So you admit there was a Mrs Dodds."
"Of course."
"Then why-"
"The less you knew, the fewer monsters you'd attract." Grover said, like that should be perfectly obvious. "We put Mist over the human's eyes. We hoped you'd think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started to realize who you are."
"Who I- wait a minute what do you mean?"
The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.
"Percy," my mom said, "there's too much to explain and not enough time. We have to get you to safety."
"Safety from what' Who's after me?"
"Oh nobody much, just the Lord of the Dead and his blood thirstiest minions."
"Grover!"
"Sorry, Mrs Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?"
My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"The summer camp I told you, the place your father wanted to send you."
"The place you didn't want me to go."
"Please dear, this is hard enough. Try to understand. You're in danger."
"Because some old ladies cut yarn."
"Those weren't old ladies," Grover intervened. "Those were the Fates. Do you know what it means, the fact that they appeared in front of you? They only do that when you're about to.. when someone's about to die."
"Whoa. You said you."
"No I didn't. I said someone."
"You meant you. As in me."
"I meant you, like someone. Not you, you."
"Boys!" my mom said.
She swerved to the right and I caught a glimpse of what was following a giant harrowing shadow.
"What was that?" I asked.
"We're almost there," my mom said ignoring my question. "Just one more mile, one more."
Suddenly there was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom, and our car exploded. I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried and hosed at the same time.
I opened my eyes, the car hadn't exploded. We had just swerved into a ditch, the doors were wedged by the mud, the roof was cracked. Lightning that was the only explanation, we had been struck.
Grover was lumped unconscious blood trickling down his forehead. I thought he was dead but then he groaned "Food," and I knew he was okay. I looked back staring at the lumbering figure etching closer toward us. His top half was fuzzy like a blanket was covering him, his upraised hands made it looked like he had horns.
I swallowed hard "Who is-"
"Percy, out now."
Our doors were stuck, we climbed out of our passengers side, my mom told me to run to the big pine tree in the nearest hill.
"That's the property line," my mom told me. "Get over that hill, don't stop for anything."
"Mom you're coming with me," I pleaded she just looked at me with sad eyes. The man with the blanket on his head kept coming toward us. I soon realized that he couldn't be holding a blanket because his hands were on at his sides, and what I thought were its hands were actually horns.
"He doesn't want us, he wants you. Besides I can't cross the property line."
I yelled at my mom to come with us, put Grover on my back and started to walk towards the hill. I couldn't have carried him far were it not for the fact that my mom had come to my aid.
Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the figure. He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle's Man magazine. He wore no clothes except underwear, his top half was coarse brown hair, his neck was a mass of muscle that led up to his head, the head of a bull.
"That's-"
"Pasiphae's son," my mother said. "I wish I'd known how badly they wanted to kill you."
"But he's a mino-"
"Don't say his name, names have powers."
The pine tree was still too far away, a hundred meters uphill at least. The bull man hunched over our car snuffling the window. I wasn't sure why he was bothered when we were only fifteen meters away.
"Food?" Grover moaned.
"Mom what's he doing, doesn't he see us?"
"His sight and hearing are terrible, he goes by smell. But he'll find us soon enough."
The bull-man lifted up the car in rage and threw it down and not a moment later it went up in a spark of flames.
'Not a scratch' I remembered Gabe's words.
"Percy, when he sees us, he'll charge. Wait until the last second, then jump out of the way directly sideways. He can't change direction very well once he's charging. Do you understand?"
"How do you know all of this?"
"I've been worried about an attack for a long time. I was selfish, I thought I could keep you near me."
"Keeping me near you, but-"
A bellow of rage resounded, the bull man started tromping up hill, it had smelled us. The pine tree was only a few meters away but the hill was getting steeper and slicker and Grover wasn't getting any lighter.
The bull man closed in, a few more seconds and he would be on top of us.
My mother yelled, "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, the bellowed in frustration and turned, but not towards me this time but my mother, who was setting Grover down in the grass.
In the midst of it all I heard a squawk, I looked up for just a moment, my eyes met those of a small crow perched on the pine tree right above me. We'd reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley 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 towards the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover.
"Run, Percy!" she told me. "I can't go any further. 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 learnt it's lesson. His hand shot out to grab my mom's throat but it suddenly stopped a few inches away.
A black tendril filled with barbs had spawned from the ground, pulling the arm away from my mother. A boy appeared as if from nowhere, I couldn't see his face well, just his shoulder length black hair and piercing almost purple eyes.
A lightning struck down allowing me to see him better, then I realized the boy looked young, a little order than me but not by much.
"Ha," the boy sighed. "This feels really familiar."
The half bull half man turned, his nose sniffing the air, his eyes widened at the sight of the boy. He broke the tendril that had restrained his arm and charged at the boy. I was about to tell him to jump out of the way when dozens of tendril started appearing from behind the bull-man wrapping themselves around it, until the monster's charge stopped a few inches away from the boy.
Out of nowhere a spear appeared in the boy's hand, then he lunged forward piercing the bull's head before it turned into a pile of crumbling sand which was blown away in chunks of wind.
The boy turned to look at me and for a moment I could see his eyes widen, then he said "Welcome to Camp Half-Blood, Jackson it's good to see you again."
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