Seattle Demigods--Day 4

Rome may have been gone, but its monsters certainly weren’t.  And, like the arrogance, sexuality, and gods, the monsters had migrated halfway around the world to its modern counterpart, Seattle.  And that’s why we were there tonight, hunting the Hydra sighted here just last week.  We’d seen all kinds of monsters in these strange days, monsters thought dead for centuries.  Monsters that had hunted the heroes of ancient Rome.

Heroes like us, the modern children of the gods.

“Are you sure this is where it will be?” Clary asks from behind me.  I can’t see her, but I can hear her fiddling with her bowstring—her nervous tic.  She’s a daughter of Apollo, and snakes make her jittery.  I can’t exactly blame her.

“Of course,” Lisa says.  She’s crouched by the water, spear in hand.  She looks bulky in all that armor, with her plumed helmet giving her a Mohawk.  “This is the center of all the sightings—its den has to be nearby.  Now all we need to do…”  She puts down the spear and picks up the other set of equipment she brought with, a fishing rod and tackle-box.  “Is wait for it to come to us.”

And so we wait.  I’m in charge of the fishing pole—as a son of Ares, I’m the strongest and the most likely to hang on if we hook it.  Clary sits on one of the steps, bow and arrow lying across her lap.  Lisa is a few paces away, still as stone—well, except for her eyes.  They never stop moving.  It feels like hours.  My hands get stiff from holding the pole.

And then it happens.  The rod almost jumps out of my hands, and I grab tight and pull back, reeling in the line.  The water boils and the creature erupts from the deep.  Its scales are deep green, black, and tarnished silver, and its eyes—all fourteen of them—are frigid yellow with slit pupils.  It bares fangs as long as a butter-knife, and grabs the curb with its taloned forefeet.  Those claws bite into the concrete, and I hate to imagine what they could do to me.

“Now!” Lisa shouts.  The point of her spear glows red-hot—a gift from her father, Hephaestus—as she lunges for the nearest Hydra head.  Fluids hiss and steam, and the Hydra shrieks.  One neck goes limp, the head dropping to drag on the concrete.

Clary hauls back on her bowstring and shoots another head in the eye.  I drop the fishing pole and grab for my gladiolus, just barely getting it up to deflect the fangs of yet another head.

That’s when everything goes wrong.  A fifth head sneaks up on Lisa and bites her in the shoulder, straight through her armor.  Seconds later, she drops like a fly.  The Hydra’s tail smacks Clary into a wall, and I hear her neck snap.

“Well, godling?” It hisses, voice like a waterfall. “Are you ready to die?”

“Never,” I say.