There was so much blood. I could feel it, hot and salty like brackish water, but filled with the essence of life. It flowed slowly along the cracked and worn pavement and soaked into Glory Girl’s pristine white costume. It flowed far too quickly from Crystal’s wounds, torn open veins and arteries weeping scarlet tears like falling rain.

Crystal’s legs were all but gone from the knee down. I could almost see how it had happened in my mind’s eyes. She’d gotten just a bit too close and trusted her flimsy shields too much. A tendril from Hookwolf’s amorphous body had caught her as she tried to fly away, shattering her defense like a soap bubble and shredding everything it touched.

I winced as my eyes focused on the extent of the damage. Hookwolf’s strike had shattered and then powdered bone, turned muscles into bloody scraps, and left horrible cuts and gouges in the remaining flesh. Nearly five years as an active demigod had gotten me rather used to violence, however I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the sight of blood splattered clothing and mangled limbs.

Monsters were everywhere, but at least they had the decency to turn to dust when they died, and if a demigod got hurt like that odds were you’d never find the body. What was left of Crystal’s legs had the rough consistency of ground meat and suddenly I found the usual hunger I felt after a good fight die with a little whimper. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be eating any hamburgers anytime soon.

Glory Girl looked as pale as a ghost. She was holding her cousin in her arms, eyes wide with fear and panic as she desperately stared down at the bleeding girl. For all that she’d been a superhero for two years now, she was still just a mortal kid with a fraction of the experience a demigod her age would have. She was in shock––frozen by fear and indecision.

She shouldn’t have been here. Neither of them should have been here. Hookwolf might not have been much of a danger to me, but to an ordinary mortal––Hades, to an ordinary demigod even––he may as well have been Ladon himself. An untouchable, unhurtable, painful death.

I fucked up. I had been treating this like a game, testing myself and trying to hide the extent of what I could do. I didn’t think I’d been totally wrong to do so, but now someone had gotten hurt and that was on me. Crystal and Vicky had just been trying to help me. I hadn’t needed any help, but they didn’t know that.

Memories of Annabeth rose unprompted to the forefront of my mind. She had looked so very pale at the end. Pale and fragile and scared. Nothing like the brash and ever-confident girl I’d grown to love.

It hurt to remember her that way. On the rare nights I let myself remember, I liked to think of evenings spent sitting around the bonfire, of carefree laughter and Annabeth’s seriously beautiful smile. Not of that day. Not of hot blood splattering across my back. Not of the fear and love in her stormy eyes.

I was already reaching for the meager few squares of ambrosia I had tucked away under my armor when I realized those wouldn’t help. I hadn’t yet risked trying to feed a parahuman the food of the gods, but something inside me told me that they would burn up just like any other mortal.

Even if it did work, I wasn’t sure that what I had would be enough. Crystal’s wounds looked horrible, the sort of injuries that would have had Will Solace called over immediately to––

My eyes widened. “Vicky!” I barked. “Your sister. We need your sister! Go! I got Crystal.”

It took a moment for her to realize what I was saying. Then I suddenly found Crystal’s body shoved into my arms and Glory Girl was off like one of Zeus’s thunderbolts, leaving a small crater in the ground beneath her feet as she vanished up into the sky.

Amy Dallon, the moody girl I’d met during our spar on Saturday who had noticed that I was missing half my DNA, was apparently one of the best healers in the world. She could heal anything that didn’t touch the brain, from cancer to heart attacks and even severed limbs. If anyone could help Crystal now, it was her. I just hoped and prayed she would get here fast enough.

My armored gauntlets vanished and I pressed two fingers against her neck. I could still feel a pulse, and the shaky shuddering of her chest told me she was still breathing, but it was just a question of how much longer that would last. She was losing a lot of blood. She was losing a lot of blood, and I was just sitting here and watching her slip away.

Fuck, focus Percy. Here I was criticizing Glory Girl and yet I was doing just as little as she had. After the number of people we’d lost during the Battle of Manhattan––seventeen shrouds lined up by the bonfire, but my eyes wouldn’t budge from gray silk embroidered with countless golden owls––I’d worked tirelessly to make sure I never felt so horribly, awfully helpless again.

Blood dripped onto my bare palm and flowed over invulnerable skin. Closing my eyes, I focused on the Sea. I pushed past the roar of distant waves, past the rushing of pipes and the deep, steady thrum of the aquifer far beneath my feet. I felt the moisture in the air, the seawater still trickling down my leg and pooling in my boots, and the slowly drying puddles of rainwater still lingering beneath dumpsters and in dark corners.

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I pushed further, further, further, ignoring the growing pain in my gut as I searched for something that I knew was possible, but rarely had reason to use. Water was water, and all that flowed fell within my domain. I was Percy fucking Jackson, Son of Poseidon, Prince of the Seas, Slayer of Hyperion, Hero of the Prophecy, and Savior of Olympus, and I would not let any more of my friends day Hades damn it.

And then I had it. For a moment, everything fell away except Crystal. Water flowed over my hand and dripped down onto the pavement. It was not pure water, but neither was the sea. Salt and little bits of life flowed through it, just like within the oceans I commanded.

An incredibly complex network of underground streams and rivers lay before me, one end of it torn and tattered. At its center, a pump slowly thumped out a double rhythm, driving more and more precious water out through the ruined edges to splash across the ground.

‘Not like that,’ I whispered to it. ‘Remember.’

And so it did. The water knew where it belonged, the paths it and the water that came before it had traveled many thousands of times. Water flowed out from damaged arteries and looped gracefully through the air to find well-remembered veins. Interrupted flows resumed as my divine will replaced mortal forces, commanding water to flow and move regardless of what nature demanded.

I’m not really sure how long I knelt there, my mind razor focused on the particular mindset I needed to command blood as though it was water. At some point I felt Hookwolf stir so I used the water still pouring out through the pipe I ruptured to slam him against the ground over and over again until he stopped moving. Was it a little brutal? Perhaps. But it was better than shredding him from the inside out with his own blood.

My healing, though really it was more a stopgap measure, wasn’t perfect by any means. Crystal had still lost a lot of blood, as well as both her legs, but it didn’t need to be perfect. It just needed to be good enough. Every moment I could still feel her heart beating and her lungs drawing in ragged breaths was another victory. Help was coming. She just needed to last long enough for it to reach us.

The first people to reach us were two vans filled with men and a motorbike. The vans screeched to a stop at the end of the street and a half-dozen troopers piled out. The motorcycle continued towards me, its armored rider only stopping once he was all but on top of me. I raised a hand to forestall any questions and jerked my head towards where Hookwolf lay in a growing puddle of water, blood, and bits of shattered metal.

Armsmaster nodded and didn’t try to distract me, so I put him out of my mind for the moment. I was sure he had questions––he worked for the government, of course he had questions, but that could wait. As long as Crystal pulled through––she was so cold. It had only been a few minutes but she already felt so cold––I’d even happily fill out another one of those torturous forms.

Come on, come on. Please. It hadn’t even been a week yet. This wasn’t going to end like Bianca. Like Beckendorf. Like Silena. Like… Like…

A comet fell from the sky and two new rivers appeared beside me. There was a sharp gasp and something…alien, huge and sparkling like crystal, but shifting and soft like flesh, prodded up against my control. I could almost feel its attention. It couldn’t see me, but it could feel my touch. It felt ancient and off putting, and I momentarily wanted to fight it. I needed to keep going, keep pumping the water to make sure Crystal was safe.

Then the rational part of my brain took over and I recognized Amy and Vicky. I let my control slip for a moment and instantly blood began to move, rivers sealed over, and Crystal’s body went slack in my arms as the painful tension in her muscles vanished without a trace.

I released a breath I hadn’t been consciously holding and let my mind relax. The tight pain in my gut loosened and I let the pounding of waves roll over me, washing away fatigue like sand from a beach.

“Is she going to be okay?” I asked, my voice coming out weaker than I had meant it to.

Amy, her eyes closed and her lips drawn into a narrow frown, nodded once.

Thank Apollo. Before my eyes I could see flesh shift and warp, scrapes and cuts from where Crystal had hit the ground closing in moments even as Amy worked on the more serious injuries. Damn, that was impressive to look at. Will and his siblings were good, but I was left silently wondering how many more campers might have survived if we’d had someone like Amy with us. Seeing really was believing; suddenly her cape name, Panacea, didn’t seem nearly as presumptuous as it had when I’d first heard it.

“Vicky, could you––”

She nodded and I carefully handed her cousin back to her, both of us making sure that Amy had no problem keeping her hand planted firmly on Crystal’s bare forearm. Then I turned around to face the approaching hero.

“Riptide,” Armsmaster greeted me firmly.

“Armsmaster. I appreciate you not interrupting me.” I probably could have worked past the disruption, but I was still glad he hadn’t said or done anything stupid.

“I moved to secure the prisoner.” He paused for a moment. “Good work subduing Hookwolf. I believe Laserdream reported that Oni Lee was also in the area?”A bit abrupt, but he seemed to mostly have his priorities straight. I could respect that.

I shrugged. “Last I saw him, he was running off that way with his tail between his legs and I was too busy to catch him.”

“Understood.” He paused again. “Laserdream will recover?” His voice remained as flat and monotone as ever, but I thought I could hear a hint of his concern.

“I think so? I hope so. She shouldn’t have gotten hurt.” She shouldn’t have been anywhere near Hookwolf. Perhaps it was patronizing for me to say that. I'd tangled with tons of monsters way outside my weight class over the years and come out the other side just fine, but that was different.

“Injuries are unfortunately common in our line of work. It is good to have a heroic healer in our city. Few Protectorate teams are so lucky.”

Lucky. Maybe. If Panacea had been there. Next to me. Or perhaps safely tucked away in one of our command points. Would that have made a difference? Would she have been fast enough? I didn’t know. But I had a feeling the thought was going to be keeping me awake tonight.