23 Chapter 23

The punk girl didn't move but kept her spear pointed towards Alex's face. The hostage tried to speak.

"We—"

"Your names and why you thought to crash in my home was a good idea." Alex's eyes travelled to the punk's hands. She was holding her weapon so hard her hands were trembling. It was probably from the rain, or maybe from fear, he considered.

"And why you thought a golf club was a good weapon." He added as an afterthought.

The dude Alex was threatening with the sword and knife was still as a rock, knowing that moving backwards would let Alex kill him with a sword in the lung and that going forward would see him with a slit throat. Incredibly mature of him, honestly.

"L-let's just calm down." The boy said, but the initial stammer told Alex that he was nervous. "If you could just, you know, take the knives away from me…"

Alex pretended he was thinking extremely hard about the kid's proposal. "Hm… how about, no? And this is a sword, buddy. I could make a kebab out of you two with it."

That froze them. The girl, however, caught a glimmer of the celestial bronze sword, and her eyes widened. "Wait. You're a demigod?" She asked, the frown of worry in her face turning into one of surprise.

Alex raised an eyebrow, looking into her eyes. His silence underlined perfectly how much her question was stupid. She schooled her expression, and after glancing again at the positions of the sword and knife on the body of her friend, her shoulders sagged a bit. Alex didn't relax his stance, and he expertly ignored the outraged muttering he could hear coming from behind the drawers. He'd have to calm the little knife-wielding girl later.

"My name is Thalia Grace." She introduced herself. Grace, Alex thought, like that old actress?

The sandy dude cleared his throat, probably feeling the coldness of the blade against his Adam's apple.

"Castellan," He said, somewhat calmly. "Luke Castellan."

Looking between the two, Alex sighed somewhat in relief.

"I'm going to let you go now, James Bond," Alex said, feeling Luke's tense muscles relax. "Do not attack me. It would be a hassle for everyone." Slowly, he distanced the sword from the back and the knife from the throat, and took a step back. Luke turned on himself, quickly but not in a threatening way. Uh, look at that, he really isn't an idiot.

The two arrivals let out a breath that they had been holding in since Alex appeared. Thalia now had her back to the living room.

Alex looked at the drawer, and his expression softened. "You can come out now, pipsqueak."

Thalia almost yelped when Annabeth appeared at her side out of nowhere, clutching a dagger the size of her forearm. She hid behind Alex, clutching the hem of his Radiohead shirt.

The young demigod patted her head and walked toward the kitchen counter, where he put down the knives. "There's a bathroom on the next door with warm water. The first bedroom on the right after the stairs is mine, the one on the left is this kiddo's, but the rest are yours to use. Take clothes, and whatever you need to change, you'll have a cold otherwise." He calmly spoke.

Opening the refrigerator, Alex started taking out some stuff; he turned only to see Annabeth glaring daggers at the other two, while Luke was trying to have a silent conversation with Thalia. Alex looked at the little girl again, tilting his head questioningly so she'd stop. She pouted, so Alex grabbed a bottle of mango juice and poured it into a tall glass before giving it to her.

"Also, I'm waiting for an explanation of what you REALLY are," Alex noted, opening a drawer and taking out a first aid kit, sliding it on the table towards the others. He'd seen their bruises and several scratches on their skin after all.

Luke and Thalia seemingly reached an agreement, and the punk girl left the room first. Alex distractedly heard her hopping on the stairs.

"So…" Luke started, his scanning Alex and Annabeth multiple times. "…we introduced ourselves. Who are you two?"

Alex had no intention of answering the question just yet. "You still need to tell me what you are, since nobody ever managed to reach our house in the time we've been in it. And why do you carry a golf club around."

Luke sighed.

Alex picked out a couple of onions and started chopping them up into little cubes, lighting up the cooker and placing a pan over it, pouring some olive oil before getting started with the tomatoes.

So Luke started explaining. Well, he tried to. "Greek Mythology is real."

Deja vu. Alex blinked, and then just pointed at the celestial bronze sword hanging by his belt. Still, he should learn how to deliver critical information.

"Right," Luke scratched his head. Alex placed a boiler over another coker and looked unimpressed at him. Annabeth stuck her tongue out and made a face. "I'm…" he gritted his teeth. "I'm a demigod, just like you and the kid, nothing weird. And Thalia too."

And then he gave Alex a resume of his last couple of months running across the country. A Son of Hermes and a daughter of Zeus, uh? Alex poured the boiling water, switching it with the boiler over the still-lit cooker, before throwing in it a handful of salt and pouring in the pasta. He listened with mild interest when Luke mentioned a dragon cave near L.A.

"How did you cross the barrier around the cabin?" Alex asked, tossing the diced tomatoes in the full pan along with the onions.

"What barrier?" Luke asked, genuinely confused.

"That's not the answer to the question I made, is it?" Alex objected, a bit miffed. Just his luck. The barrier had been working wonderfully, giving him and Annabeth a safe haven they could relax in. But, all of a sudden, two new demigods appear and fuck it up. Or was it his mother that did a shitty job? Didn't matter.

After a while, Luke started again, and he managed to give Alex a picture of what he and Thalia went through. He was starting to see a pattern. Ten minutes later, Alex poured the now-cooked pasta into a colander, shaking it a little bit before tossing it all in the pan with the onions and tomatoes. He lowered the flame under it to the bare minimum and mixed the pasta with the vegetables.

"I… I got us lost, and Thalia ran after an owl. We ended up here; the cabin looked abandoned…" Luke quipped. First, ouch. The outside of the cabin couldn't look that bad. Second, owl?

Alex trained his purple eyes on the other boy, now with a little interest.

"What did that owl look like?" He asked, hearing the footsteps coming down the stairs. He picked a few basil leaves from the potted plant and tossed them into the pan, before taking out a chunk of Parmigiano and grating it over the pasta.

"I didn't get to see it properly, to be honest. But it looked like a ghost."

Placing the pan in the middle of the table, Thalia came back in. She had helped herself to one of Alex's AC/DC t-shirts and looked dead on her feet.

Alex slid four plates on the table and filled them, leaving some pasta in the pan for seconds. He and Annabeth sat, and he ate first, reassuring them that there wasn't anything in the food, while the pipsqueak was still giving the two death glares. Funnily enough, Thalia was doing something similar to Alex, though her eyes softened whenever she glanced at Annabeth. Alex rolled his eyes and turned to look at Luke.

"I'm sorry I almost butchered you, but next time, knock."

Luke snorted. "It's okay; I would've done the same."

"But…" Thalia whirled on him.

"But nothing," the son of Hermes interrupted, "We broke into their home; it's their right to be defensive… by the way, what're your names?"

The light-brown-haired kid watched amusedly as Annabeth softened up a bit, and Thalia slumped her shoulders. "Alright. Fair." then her eyes narrowed, sparks dancing off her fingertips "But pull another stunt like that and I'll—"

"Glare at me like a lost puppy," Alex interrupted with a smile, "My name's Alexander, Son of whocares, and this little one that wants to gut you is Annabeth…"

"…daughter of Athena…" The little girl finished, burying her head in Alex's shirt.

"…and if it fancies you two, you can stay here for a while." He finished.

"Just like that?" Luke asked, preventing Thalia from reacting to Alex's taunt.

"What were the odds of you three casually bumping into us?" Alex retorted, "I recognize a divine intervention when it slaps me out of the blue. And we could use some company. Still, if you're staying, you'll need to learn how we do stuff around here."

"You sound like a hillbilly." Thalia snorted, crossing her arms and looking away.

Luke nodded slowly, "Sounds like a plan."

Alex finished his midnight pasta and rose from the kitchen table. "After you've finished, put the plates in the sink. Annabeth, can you show Taser-girl there her room?"

He turned toward Thalia, who was already gritting her teeth, "I do have some AC/DC albums," he pointed at his vinyl stash on the side of the records player. "Feel free to change the music. I gotta go upstairs," he turned and walked toward the door, "And no offence, Luke, but you stink. Take a goddamn shower," he said over his shoulder.

==========

"That's weird…"

Alex had waited until everyone was asleep to grab a raincoat from the coathanger and come outside. There was no moon in the sky that night, so the only sources of light he had were the sword, and the wisps coming from the keystone. Still, he didn't really need those.

Perhaps the dark would've scared anyone else, but Alex could see in it as well as he saw during daytime; not to mention the amount of times he'd done what he was doing now.

"Everything seems to be fine… so how did they get past the barrier?"

The barrier, his mother's gift, the ward, wherever he called it, wasn't as complex as he had thought at first. Well, he didn't understand an ounce of the magic behind it, but he did know how it worked.

One day, he'd found, around the perimeter of the house and, not coincidently, the barrier, four small stone monoliths, each with a different ancient Greek word, each pulsating with a different form of mist — quite similar, but still different.

Open, close, protect, and repel. Those were the words. From there, Alex deduced that each monolith held the magic that applied the words to the barrier. Open and close were quite straightforward, and were definitely connected to the keystone. As for protect, he guessed it was what gave the barrier a physical attribute, and repel was what kept monsters and mortals away.

So, here he was, in front of the Repel monolith, since, in order for someone to enter the perimeter of the cabin, he concluded this one would be the first to fail, followed by either Close or Protect.

However, contrary to what Alex thought, the monolith was in perfect condition, just like the first time he found it; except for the water dripping down, but with that rain, everything was soaked.

He kneeled down and ran his hand across the rock. Its unevenness felt natural, and there were no cracks or irregularities along the surface.

Everything was how it was supposed to be… so how? Alex sighed. He guessed he was lucky it was still too early for his brain to want a rest.

His eyebags weren't getting any lighter…

It was going to be a long night…

Amidst the deafening sound of rain and thunder, Alex was too busy checking the other monoliths to hear the keystone crack.

**********

A/N: Don't forget to leave some comments and stones!