79Kiss of Death Chapter 8: New Eyes
Hey, guys; about time I showed up, right?
Lynn
It only took about five minutes for us to get back to my cabin, give or take a few.
We stopped at the front door of Cabin 7, and stood there uneasily, unsure of what to say. I felt like I had just gotten a rare, fleeting look at an endangered species; it was like I had finally seen a part of who Nico di Angelo really was.
"Alright," I said slowly, reaching for the door handle, "I should probably head inside; it's kinda—" Nico suddenly lunged at me and clapped his hand over my mouth, bringing my back to his chest. I turned my head toward him as best as I could and gave him a questioning look.
"Did you hear that?" he asked, whispering. The dull timbre of his voice vibrated against my spine.
"Hear what?" I hissed back after wrenching his hand off of my face. "All I hear is the sound of you going crazy. What'd you do—get in a fight with Mr. D?"
He rolled his eyes. "I really did hear something." A twig snapped and my head instantly turned in that direction.
"Nico?"
"Yeah?"
"I think...I think it'd be best if I went inside…"
"Yeah; that'd probably be a good idea—"
"Naughty, naughty campers are not in bed!" a voice suddenly shrieked, making both of us jump—at least, I jumped. I'm not sure if he did, considering that I was in a bit of a panicked haze. "Looks like Edith will eat well tonight!" I could hear the muffled, thudding footsteps of the harpy as it rushed toward us.
I frantically started hitting his shoulder. "Open the door; open it now!" He responded quickly, only having to fumble with the doorknob for a few seconds.
We burst through the door and I shut it quickly. For a few moments, we just sat in the darkness, and all you could hear was my wild heartbeat and both of our deep breaths. I could actually feel his warm breath on my ear.
Just as I was about to try and turn on the lights, they suddenly came on, nearly blinding me. "Oh gods," Nico moaned. "Have you no decency? Where is your mercy?"
Jane snorted. "You're reprimanding us about decency, di Angelo? You just burst in and disturbed our sleep. And it's," —she glanced at her wristwatch—"it's 2 in the morning! Really, Lynn?"
"I'm sorry," I said, trying to sound as apologetic as I could. "I would've come back earlier but Will left with Drew and Nico was just being nice and offered to bring me back here after his party."
He gave me a weird look. "No, I didn't. You—" he abruptly stopped and let out a grunt. He gave me a dirty look and I shrugged, knowing full well that he could never get me to apologize for elbowing him. "Yep. Just being the kind lad I always am." He smiled sarcastically.
The twins rolled their eyes in sync. "Because you're always so helpful," Dani said sarcastically, folding her arms over her chest. The son of Hades scowled.
"Well, there was that one time when I almost got trampled in Capture the Flag and—"
"Shut up, Ty," Drew snapped from his pile of blankets. "No one cares."
I glared at him. "Hey! I get that you're tired, but you don't need to be a dick, okay? We're a family, so act like it." Next to me, Nico snorted and I elbowed him again.
Drew rolled his eyes and turned over in his bunk. "Whatever; I'm going to bed."
"So am I," Jane said, and gave me a look that clearly said, "Get the death breath out of here."
"So…" I started slowly, turning to Nico, "how exactly are you getting out of here? There's a bloodthirsty harpy outside our door, so that's out. And I mean, I don't mind—kind of—but I don't think my brothers and sisters will appreciate you bunking here for the night." My eyes darted around the cabin, noticing that most of them were in their bunks, but still watching him cautiously.
He shrugged. "It's fine; I can tell when I'm not wanted, anyway." I bit my lip, but didn't say anything. "I'll just shadow travel back to my cabin."
I stared at him blankly.
"It's like using that shadows as a path to another destination. They can form connections between two different places that can be traveled. It's a gift that Hades passes down to his kids and some monsters like hellhounds can do it also," he explained.
I still stared.
"You know what? Never mind," he sighed, walking over to the light-switch. I followed his movement with my eyes. "I'm going to turn off the lights now," he started quietly, "then I'll be gone."
I nodded, fixing my eyes on an interesting stain on the floor—it was either pudding or blood, I think.
"And Lynn?"
My eyes met his, which were strangely colder than I remembered them being.
"What happened tonight doesn't change anything."
The lights went out.
"Cabin 7, fall in," I yawned. "You know the drill." Once they were situated, I took my place in the front of the line since Will decided not to show up—probably skipping breakfast with Drew in her cabin, no doubt—and led my siblings toward our food.
Gods, I was tired. My eyes felt puffy and I could barely take two steps without yawning. "If you hadn't gone to that kid's party you wouldn't be so exhausted," Jane said from behind me. "I don't even get why you went, anyway."
I was glad that she couldn't see me roll my eyes at her. "That kid has a name, you know. And I went because Will went."
"Oh, she knows his name," Adriana, another half-sister of mine, piped from behind Jane. "She just thinks he's a 'conceited moron that thinks he's above everyone else because of a stupid poll that everyone got coerced into taking'. That's a direct quote, just so you know."
I could practically hear the scowl in Jane's voice. "No, it's not; I called him a conceited idiot, not a conceited moron."
Both Adriana and I scoffed. "Are you forgetting that I have photographic memory?" the fourteen-year-old retorted.
"Shut up," Jane said, and when I glanced back at her I could see that she was blushing. "I had a late night, alright?"
"So did I," Adriana and I said in unison.
"And as I said before: you shouldn't have gone to that party, Lynn."
We were almost at the dining pavilion. "Are you quite finished?" I asked tiredly. "It's not like it's a big deal, anyway. It was just a party."
"You're leaving out the part where you mention that it was Nico di Angelo's party," she snapped back.
Gods, she was making me mad and it was only eight in the morning. I stopped and whirled around to face her. "Really, Jane? I really feel like you, of all people, would know better than to judge someone like that. I may not know Nico very well, but I know him better than you do. He's not a bad guy."
Back before Jane came to camp, she was bullied by some girls in middle school because she used to be overweight—like, really overweight—and because of her dyslexia. She had no friends because no one wanted to talk to the freak of nature. It got so bad that she begged her mom and step-dad to transfer her to another school, but she didn't have to because she came to camp.
So I thought that she would at least try to understand.
I felt bad, though, when I saw the look on her face. Guilt was swimming in her blue eyes and I could see a frown beginning to form on her forehead and on the edges of her mouth. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "It's just that seeing you around him is going to take a little getting used to."
"It's fine," I replied. "Just…think about it, because—"
"Hey! I'm sure you guys are having some sort of heartwarming sisterly heart-to-heart up there, but some of us just want to get up to breakfast," someone calls from the back of the line. Without even looking past Jane's shoulder, I could tell it was Drew just by his voice.
Drew...was a bit of a problem child, even if he was barely a year younger than me. He was having a lot of trouble coming to terms with the fact that his dad was actually one of the all-powerful Greek gods of ancient times. Needless to say, his anger was a bit misdirected, seeing as he was taking it out on everyone, including Apollo.
One of the twins—not sure which one—came to our defense. "I'd rather have them resolve an issue than go eat while they're angry. We don't need unwanted tension."
"Umm," Max, yet another sibling of ours, tentatively started, "I still would like to go to breakfast." Then he shrank back like one of us older kids was going to hit him.
I knew what that felt like.
Shaking that thought out of my head, I took my place at the front of the line again. "Fine, let's go to breakfast," I said, once again leading my brothers and sisters to the dining pavilion.
"Quit looking at him," Dani said, sitting next to me on my left.
Dylan sat on my other side. "Seriously. One of these times, he's gonna catch you looking and he's gonna sic one of his Underworld buddies on you." I gave her my most unamused look. "You know I'm just kidding," she said, munching on a grape. "I don't think of him like that."
"I know."
Dani gave me a smirk. "But you really need to stop staring at him all the time. You're gonna give yourself away."
My cheeks began to heat up despite that fact that I had nothing to be embarrassed about. "I wasn't looking at him. That'd be weird," I scoffed, quickly scarfing down a bite of my ham-and-cheese sandwich.
They rolled their eyes in unison, which shouldn't be allowed. "Oh, of course you weren't," Dani retorted.
"You were just staring in his general direction," Dylan finished. "Why would that be weird? I mean, it's not like he has anyone else around him that you could've been looking at instead, right?"
I scowled. "Shut up, you two."
Suddenly, I was being pulled out of my seat by my shirt.
"Where the hell is my brother?" someone hissed in my ear.
Oh, gods—not this crazy bitch.
Scot had a lot of siblings in the Ares cabin. I had yet to find one that I could actually have a civil conversation with because they almost always ended up trying to punch me in the face or add an unwanted scar to my collection. But my least favorite of his brothers and sisters was a girl by the name of Brandy, his younger, full-blooded sister. She was crazy—like, belonged in an insane asylum crazy. I never really did like going inside the Ares cabin, but Brandy just made my experiences worse than they ever had to.
She was always pushing me around, saying that her brother shouldn't have had a wimpy little pansy as a girlfriend. Like I had forced Scott into being in a relationship with me! It wasn't as if I could make him do anything that he didn't want to.
"Where's my brother, bitch?" she snapped loudly, and the whole pavilion went dead silent. "Huh? He's gone and I'd bet my sword you've got something to do with it."
I calmly smoothed out the creases in my shirt but didn't look her in the eye. "I didn't do anything to him, alright? Leave me alone."
"Bullshit!" she shrieked, hair flying, and Chiron stepped forward. But before he could even get a few words of wisdom out, the son of the Underworld himself stepped in, hands raised in the universal sign of back the fuck up.
"Ladies, ladies," Nico said, "I'm sure that whatever problem you have can be resolved some place other than the dining pavilion. This is where we come to eat, in case you haven't noticed. We like to eat in peace, seeing as we spent the rest of our lives fighting."
Di immortales, I thought, why is everyone staring?
Brandy crossed her beefy arms over her chest. "Get out of here, di Angelo; this is a personal matter."
"Can't be that personal if you're discussing it in front of the entire demigod population of Camp Half-Blood, now can't it?" Nico asked, smiling condescendingly. "And I can't do that anyway. From now on, when you have a problem with Blondie here, you also have a problem with me—got it? Which also goes for all of you," he finished loudly, gesturing grandly around the pavilion to the rest of the campers, who were watching our conversation like it was the newest episode of a really shitty soap opera.
Before Brandy could even respond, the son of Hades said quickly, "Now if you'll excuse us, we have a bit of talking to do," and wrapped a firm hand around my wrist. I didn't even realize what was happening until we were already far away from my breakfast and the only thought running through my head was how similar Nico's hand felt to Scott's.
Get back here, you slut!
You deserve this.
Didn't I tell you that you could never leave me?
He dragged me all the way down to the cabins and dropped me at the hearth. I could feel the rising panic start to clog up my chest and it was becoming significantly harder to breathe. I'm pretty sure Nico had started talking at some point, but to be completely honest, I wasn't paying attention. I was still trying to get over the fact that he'd just grabbed me like that in front of everyone, especially after what happened.
I felt his eyes on me, like he was expecting something from me, but instead I pushed him away from me. "Don't you ever grab me like that again or I swear on the River Styx I will do everything in my power to destroy you," I practically choked out, throat tightening painfully. "I swear it, Nico."
I ignored both the shocked look on his face and the rumbling thunder as I walked back to my cabin.
AN: BOY HAVE I MISSED THIS STORY!
Oh my gosh, I don't think you guys know how bad I feel for making you wait this long, especially since I hate it when authors take forever to update. It kind of makes me a hypocrite, but at least I'm updating and not giving up on this story.
The only thing that I liked about my time off was that I was able to use that time to improve my writing. Please tell me what you thought about this chapter and if you thought my writing improved as much as I thought it did. :)
Again, really really sorry about the wait. I think I'll be on a more frequent schedule from now on, especially since I got a new laptop for Christmas. I'll also try and see how soon I can update I'm Sorry (even though it'll probably only be about five chapters long), because I got a few ideas I want to run through first.
Alright, love you lots! Virtual cookies for everyone because I'm a bitch that never updates (::)
~ Daughter-of-Apollo213