The Demigod Files

The Demigod Files
Rick Riordan



THE INNER CIRCLE!

Okay, it’s not every day that you’ll find yourself battling a doughnut-eating monster but, for the sake of argument, let’s say you did. These are the guys you’d want around as your back-up team.

(NB I only added Clarisse ’cause she’s got me out of a few scraps. Really, I hate her.)

Name: CHIRON

Gender: Male-slash-horse

Age: Like, really, really old, man!

Location: Camp Half-Blood, Long Island, New York

Occupation: Activities Director at Camp Half-Blood

About Chiron: Chiron’s dad is none other than the scariest Titan of them all, Kronos. The same Titan who wants to kill ME!

Body type: When he’s in his wheelchair you wouldn’t know that he’s a centaur. From the waist up he looks like a regular middle-aged guy: curly brown hair, check. Scraggly beard, check. But from the waist down he’s a white stallion!

Name: ANNABETH CHASE

Gender: Female

Age: 13 and a half (and apparently way more mature than me)

Location: San Francisco

Quote: Always, always have a plan.

About Annabeth: She’s had a kinda tough life. She ran away from home when she was seven because her dad got remarried and then she hung around with Luke and Thalia for a while before coming to camp.

Status: Why does everybody think Annabeth and I are a couple? She’s just my friend, seriously!

Body type: 179cm, kinda athletic, I guess, blonde hair, grey eyes.

Name: GROVER UNDERWOOD AKA THE G-MAN

Gender: Male-slash-goat

Age: 26 (but satyrs mature twice as slowly as humans, so he’s really 13)

Location: Camp Half-Blood, Long Island, New York

Quote: Give a hoot, don’t pollute!

Best feature: You’ll never have a problem with recycling when the G-man is around. He’ll eat all your aluminium cans!

Body type: Barnyard. He has shaggy legs and hooves. His top half is… um, very buff. Yes, very…

About the G-man: He’s a satyr: half man, half goat. He finally got his searcher’s licence to find the missing god Pan, but he keeps getting interrupted! Oh well, at least the Cyclopes didn’t eat him.

Name: TYSON

Gender: Cyclops (but don’t worry, he’s a goodie)

Age: 14 going on 4

Location: Poseidon’s palace, somewhere at the bottom of the sea

Body type: Huge, bulky and yeah, oh right, he only has one eye.

About Tyson: He’s had it kinda rough too. As the child of a nature spirit and a god (okay, my dad, Poseidon), he was cast out and tossed aside. Tyson had to grow up on the streets, until I found him, that is.

Name: CLARISSE

Gender: Female (ish)

Age: I’m too scared to ask.

Quote: Hey, Prissy (aka Percy), get ready to be pulverized!

Location: Camp Half-Blood, Long Island, New York

Body type: Big and ugly and real mean-looking.

About Clarisse: I’m gonna give you a massive heads-up here. All you need to know about Clarisse is that her father is Ares. Who’s he? Only the GOD OF WAR!

PERCY JACKSON AND THE STOLEN CHARIOT

I was in fifth-period science class when I heard these noises outside.

SCRAWK! OW! SCREECH! ‘HIYA!’

Like somebody was getting attacked by possessed poultry, and, believe me, that’s a situation I’ve been in before. Nobody else seemed to notice the commotion. We were in the lab, so everybody was talking, and it wasn’t hard for me to go look out the window while I pretended to wash out my beaker.

Sure enough, there was a girl in the alley with her sword drawn. She was tall and muscular like a basketball player, with stringy brown hair and jeans, combat boots and a denim jacket. She was hacking at a flock of black birds the size of ravens. Feathers stuck out of her clothes in several places. A cut was bleeding over her left eye. As I watched, one of the birds shot a feather like an arrow, and it lodged in her shoulder. She cursed and sliced at the bird, but it flew away.

Unfortunately, I recognized the girl. It was Clarisse, my old enemy from demigod camp. Clarisse usually lived at Camp Half-Blood year-round. I had no idea what she was doing on the Upper East Side in the middle of a school day, but she was obviously in trouble. She wouldn’t last much longer.

I did the only the thing I could.

‘Mrs White,’ I said, ‘can I go to the restroom? I feel like I’m going to puke.’

You know how teachers tell you the magic word is please? That’s not true. The magic word is puke. It will get you out of class faster than anything else.

‘Go!’ Mrs White said.

I ran out the door, stripping off my safety goggles, gloves and lab apron. I got out my weapon – a ballpoint pen called Riptide.

Nobody stopped me in the halls. I exited by the gym. I got to the alley just in time to see Clarisse smack a devil bird with the flat of her sword like she was hitting a home run. The bird squawked and spiralled away, slamming against the brick wall and sliding into a trashcan. That still left a dozen more swarming around her.

‘Clarisse!’ I yelled.

She glared at me in disbelief. ‘Percy? What are you doing –’

She was cut short by a volley of feather arrows that zipped over her head and impaled themselves in the wall.

‘This is my school,’ I told her.