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I. A Creature in the Mirror
Annabeth Chase is dead.
The body still lives.
It breathes, it blinks, it speaks with a voice that once belonged to her. But Annabeth is gone, and something else— something hungry —wears her skin.
It is young. It is learning.
It watches its reflection with fascination, flexing tiny fingers, rolling its human shoulders. The grey eyes in the mirror are not quite right —too wide, too sharp, a flicker of something too many moving beneath the surface.
It smiles.
Too many teeth.
It corrects the mistake.
Later that night, the spiders come.
They scuttle from the dark, sent by their mother, they are drawn to the scent of something half-divine. Something fragile —little Athena girl, lost and alone.
They think they are the predators.
They are wrong.
The creature does not move as they approach.
Not at first.
It waits. It listens to the rustling of their many legs, the chitter of their curiosity. The spiders think they are clever, but the creature inside Annabeth Chase is patient. It lets them think they are winning—lets them get close —
Then it moves.
(Too fast. Too sharp.)
Something wet and crunching and wrong.
When the sun rises, the bed is clean. The sheets are unruffled.
There is no sign of the visitors from the night before.
But beneath the little girl’s fingernails, there is something dark and chitinous.
She licks it away.
It gets bored easily.
Bored of the waiting. Bored of the hiding. Bored of the things that come crawling, thinking they are the predator, thinking they are the ones with teeth.
It is not like them. It does not crawl . It does not wait.
The creature inside Annabeth lives for the hunt. It is the hunter. The only hunter.
It does not remember hunger as a pain. It remembers hunger as purpose . The thing that moves it, drives it forward. The thing that tells it to run .
And so it does.
It leaves the nest, bare feet on cold pavement, little fingers brushing brick and stone. The scent is everywhere— familiar , like meat left too long in the sun. Like rot blooming in a ribcage.
It makes its mouth water.
So it follows.
The first ones are stupid. Like the spiders.
They come out of the dark, slinking from alleyways and sewer grates, licking their teeth, tasting the air.
A girl, alone. Small. Half-blooded. Soft.
They do not see the way she tilts her head, listening. They do not hear the way her bones shift, the way her fingers flex.
They only see prey.
They die quickly. Too quickly.
The creature inside Annabeth does not even have to try.
One swipe. One twist. One shattering of soft bodies against hard concrete.
And then: stillness.
Boredom.
The hunger still gnaws. Still aches .
It needs something better. Something stronger.
Something that will run.
It sniffs the air.
The prey are everywhere, hiding in the dark, waiting to pounce.
They think they are safe in their shadows.
They think they are the hunters.
They are wrong.
It smiles.
And it begins to chase.
II. A New Meeting
When Thalia and Luke find her, she is fiddling with a monster horn.
A child, small and alone, sitting on a suitcase that isn’t hers.
She watches them as they approach.
Her eyes are wide and unblinking.
Luke, concerned. Thalia, curious.
They are survivors, both of them. They know what hungry looks like.
“Hey, kid,” Luke says. “You lost?”
The girl tilts her head. Not quite a yes, not quite a no.
Thalia shifts her weight, eyes narrowed.
“You got a name?”
The girl does not answer.
Not at first.
Something unnoticeable moves beneath her skin, a flicker of something too fast, too imperceptible to be human.
Then:
“Annabeth.”
The voice is small and steady.
Luke kneels, offering a smile. “Well, Annabeth, we’re heading somewhere safe. You wanna come?”
A moment.
A heartbeat.
Then Annabeth smiles.
It is almost human.
She slides off the suitcase, takes Luke’s hand.
Her fingers curl around his wrist, grip firm and steady.
Luke hesitates.
Something inside him whispers: run.
But he doesn’t.
Because she is just a kid.
Because her hands are warm.
Because he wants to believe she is just another lost demigod, like them.
She isn’t.
But they don’t know that yet.
The weaklings are feeble.
One burns hot, full of lightning and rage. The other is quick, sharp, clever.
But neither are enough.
Not fast enough. Not strong enough. Not like it.
It should leave them. Should let them die.
Should eat them.
But the lightning-one snarls at the prey, bares her teeth like it is a beast. The clever one places himself between it and the world, ready to die for it, though it would mean nothing.
They are weak. But they do not run.
The creature watches them. Watches as they fight. Watches as they bleed.
Watches as they make space for it in their firelight.
They do not ask what it is.
Only if it is hungry.
(They do not know. They should know. But they do not run. Not even when they should.)
The creature decides to keep them.
For now.
The clever one is foolish.
He walks in front, always watching the road, the shadows, the places things might crawl from.
It is a wasted effort.
The creature already knows.
It watches from the trees, from the dark, from the places the clever one does not look. It sees the glint of eyes where he cannot. It hears the breath of things hiding, waiting, hungry.
The clever one does not notice the way some prey hesitate. The way they shift in the dark but do not move forward.
Sometimes the clever one glances at it. A flicker of something in his eyes.
Understanding.
Fear.
No.
Not fear.
The clever one does not fear it.
Foolish.
The lightning-one is angry.
She breathes like the storm. Like rolling thunder before the strike.
She wants to strike first.
The creature watches her as she snarls, as she thrums with the need to fight.
It tilts its head.
The lightning-one is like it. But not enough .
Still, the creature understands. The want.
The need to chase, to strike, to rip and tear.
The lightning-one does not hesitate.
The creature likes this.
It will keep her, too.
III. A Different Perspective
Luke is the first to figure it out.
Not all of it. Not the important parts. But enough to know that something is different.
It starts small. The way Annabeth doesn’t flinch when she gets hurt. The way her cuts close too fast even for a half-blood. The way her bones don’t break right—how she can snap her fingers back into place without so much as a wince.
The way she doesn’t sleep.
“You’re not normal ,” Luke tells her one night.
They’re camped out under an overpass, the highway groaning above them. Thalia is asleep, her jacket pulled up over her face, one booted foot twitching like she’s running in her dreams.
Annabeth is perched on a concrete ledge, feet swinging, her hands busy with something small and silver—some broken thing she picked up earlier. She turns it over and over in her fingers, bending the metal in ways it shouldn’t be able to bend.
Annabeth tilts her head. A slow, deliberate motion, like a bird watching something twitch in the grass.
“Yes,” she says. “No joking.”
Luke exhales, scrubs a hand over his face. “No, I mean—” He stops. Narrows his eyes at her. “How much sleep do you actually get?”
Annabeth shrugs. “Enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She smiles at him, all teeth. “I don’t need sleep. I just wait.”
That’s not creepy at all.
Luke glares at her. She just grins wider.
“Okay, freak,” he says. “Just don’t get us murdered in our sleep.”
Annabeth hums. “I could ,” she muses. “But you’re more fun alive.”
Luke pointedly rolls over and pretends he didn’t hear that.
Thalia is the second to figure it out.
Not because Annabeth tells her, but because Thalia sees it.
It’s a stormy night, rain pounding against the pavement, when it happens. They get caught between two dracaenae, their scales gleaming wet, their swords hissing as they drag them across the asphalt.
Luke yells something. Thalia doesn’t hear him—because Annabeth moves.
Moves wrong.
Too fast. Too smooth.
Like something with too many joints.
Like something that doesn’t have bones at all.
One second, she’s there. The next, she’s inside the dracaenae’s guard, her hands already moving—long fingers curling into something not quite human.
She tears the monster apart.
Claws through it, rips it in half like she’s peeling an orange. Like it’s easy.
Like it’s nothing.
The rain smears ichor across her face. She licks it off her fingers.
“Gross,” Thalia says automatically.
Annabeth glances at her. Her pupils are too wide, swallowing up the grey.
Luke is staring. Mouth open. Knife halfway raised like he forgot what he was doing.
Annabeth licks her lips. Swallows.
“Huh,” she says.
“What the hell was that?” Luke cries out.
Annabeth blinks. “Me winning.”
Luke makes a noise like he’s about to have a stroke. “Did you just—” He gestures vaguely. “Lick that thing?”
Annabeth frowns. “No.” She tilts her head, thoughtful. “Not all of it.”
Thalia kicks the air like she’s trying to dispel the ghost of what she just saw. “I’m going to pretend that was normal.”
Luke still looks mildly horrified and slightly ill. “We are so going to die.”
Annabeth rolls her eyes and shoves him. “Get over it,” she says. “You should be thanking me.”
Luke and Thalia exchange a glance.
Luke shakes his head. “I hate this.”
It doesn’t take long for them to stop being weirded out.
If anything, they start using it.
“Annabeth, go check if there’s a monster.”
Annabeth doesn’t even hesitate—she just climbs up the side of the building like a deranged spider and peers over the edge.
“Yeah,” she calls down. “There’s like, three.”
Thalia sighs and cracks her knuckles. “Well, that’s annoying.”
“Not for me ,” Annabeth says cheerfully, licking her lips.
Luke groans.
“Annabeth, go steal some food.”
“On it.”
They watch as she drops from the ceiling of the convenience store, snags a loaf of bread and some protein bars, and climbs straight back up before anyone notices.
Luke whistles. “You should’ve been the one robbing stores this whole time.”
Annabeth sticks her tongue out.
“Annabeth, go scare that guy.”
Annabeth grins, teeth too sharp, and stretches.
The guy takes one look at her shadow—too long, too wide, too many legs—lets out a choking noise and sprints in the opposite direction.
Luke and Thalia clap.
Annabeth bows.
Annabeth collects things.
Not normal things, like cool rocks or pocket knives or coins from old payphones.
Annabeth collects bones.
“I think it’s a crow,” she says, turning over a little skull in her hands. “Crows remember faces. They bring gifts to the people they like.”
Luke stares at the actual dead thing she just put in his lap. “Annie. What.”
Annabeth blinks up at him, wide-eyed. “Do you like it?”
Thalia is wheezing in the background.
“No, I don’t like it, why would I like it—”
Annabeth frowns, thoughtful. “Oh.” She takes the skull back. “Maybe I should’ve given you the other bones instead.”
Luke stands up and walks away.
Annabeth gets a reputation.
At first, it’s funny.
They run into another dracaena, and the second it lays eyes on her, its pupils shrink. It takes a step back.
Then another.
Then runs.
Luke nearly busts a lung laughing.
Annabeth frowns (pouts more like.) “I didn’t even do anything.”
Thalia claps her on the shoulder. “They know better now.”
Annabeth grumbles under her breath. “I liked the chase.”
Luke wipes a tear from his eye. “No more late-night snacks for you, kid.”
Annabeth glares at him.
Luke wisely does not elaborate.
It stops being funny when nothing comes after them.
No monsters. No half-blood-hungry creatures slinking in the shadows. Not even a harpy.
At first, it’s great. They get to sleep in one place for more than a night. They don’t have to keep moving.
Then it gets weird.
Luke frowns. “You think they’re planning something?”
Annabeth tilts her head. “No.”
Thalia stabs a stick into the fire. “Then where are they?”
Annabeth flexes her fingers. Stretches.
“I think they’re hiding.”
Luke and Thalia exchange a look.
Thalia groans. “Annabeth, don’t.”
Annabeth grins with way too many teeth. “Annabeth, do.”
Luke buries his face in his hands.
Annabeth stands, stretches again, and inhales.
The world cracks open.
(It smells them—lurking, quivering, pressed into the folds of streets and buildings, trying to make themselves small.)
She grins.
“I found them,” she says.
Luke makes a distressed noise.
Annabeth takes off running.
They call her the Monster Eater.
Luke hears it in whispers. In hisses.
In the silence, when nothing dares to step too close.
It should freak him and Thalia out more, but Thalia just thinks it's ‘metal.’
Annabeth stretches her limbs, rolls her neck. She sighs.
She's bored again.
Luke looks at her and groans. “No.”
Annabeth perks up. “Yes?”
“No,” Luke says again, firm. “You are not hunting them for fun.”
She pouts. “Why not?”
“Because it’s weird,” Thalia says.
Annabeth squints at her. “You electrocute things for fun.”
“That’s different.”
Luke throws his hands up. “You shouldn't do that either!”
Thalia shrugs, throwing a pointed look at Luke. “Well it's fine, because I do it.”
Annabeth grins.
Luke groans into his hands again.
She pats his shoulder. “Don’t worry,” it says. “I’ll bring back souvenirs.”
Luke makes another distressed noise.
She hunts.
IV. A Place to Call Home
They speak, they laugh, even when they are cold, even when they are hungry.
The creature does not understand.
But when the clever one reaches out, tapping its arm to get its attention, it does not bite.
And when the lightning-one grins at it, teeth sharp, waiting —it grins back.
It is pack, now.
It is not sure when that happened.
But it is certain.
Months before they suspect, months before the prey started cowering, before they called it Monster Eater, the creature curls close to their fire and does not sleep.
It watches the dark.
It listens.
And when something moves—when something hunts—
It devours.
They should be scared of her.
Maybe they are.
But they’re all a little monstrous.
Luke, with his knife and his easy smile, and his ability to slip silently in the shadows and move like he belongs in every room.
Thalia, with her sharp teeth and sharper eyes, the storm in her blood, the electricity that makes her spine hum .
Annabeth, with her endless hunger and the too-wide way she grins, with her spider-limbed climb and the way she never stops chasing.
They fit.
They are sharp edges and feral grins, dirty sneakers pounding pavement, mismatched laughter in the dark.
But more than anything—
She’s Annabeth.
She’s their weird little sister.
She’s theirs.
Whatever she is.