TERRIFIED . . . annabeth chase

thirty seven.

DIONYSUS, YOU BASTARD, Val thought.

Knife at her throat, those were the words she mouthed. Basically. She didn't even know she was doing it, but the thought had just clicked in her mind, while her life was being threatened, because naturally there was no better time to get ideas.

"Fine!" Percy shouted, so loudly that he got her attention. "Take us away, if our captain will let you."

Chrysaor turned his golden mask. "What captain? My men searched the ship. There is no one else."

Percy raised his hands dramatically. "The god appears only when he wishes. But he is our leader. He runs our camp for demigods. Doesn't he, Annabeth, Val?"

Annabeth was quick. "Yes!" She nodded enthusiastically. "Mr. D! The great Dionysus!"

A ripple of uneasiness passed through the dolphin-men. One dropped his sword.

"Stand fast!" Chrysaor bellowed. "There is no god on this ship. They are trying to scare you."

"You should be scared!" Percy looked at the pirate crew with sympathy. "Dionysus will be severely cranky with you for having delayed our voyage. He will punish all of us. Didn't you notice the girls falling into the wine god's madness?"

Hazel and Piper had stopped the shaking fits. They were sitting on the deck, staring at Percy, but when he glared at them pointedly, they started hamming it up again, trembling and flopping around like fish. The dolphin-men fell over themselves trying to get away from their captives.

"Fakes!" Chrysaor roared. "Shut up, Percy Jackson. Your camp director is not here. He was recalled to Olympus. This is common knowledge."

"So you admit Dionysus is our director!" Percy said.

"He was," Chrysaor corrected. "Everyone knows that."

"We are doomed," Val added, elbowing the dolphin off of her, and letting her death aura emanate stronger than it usually did, making her look more intimidating, because she wished she could look intimidating. "I am the cursed one. I see all death, and death is looming upon us. I see this because I am favored by the god, and from me, his soldier, he has wanted death. He gave me a couple of items to assist in a ritual made to bring him back here. One of them is right there, if you'll let me get it."

Val sauntered over to the magical cooler. No one tried to stop her. She knocked open the lid and rummaged through the ice. Gods, she hoped that she didn't drink them all. She was rewarded with a silver-and-red can of soda. She brandished it at the dolphin warriors as if spraying them with bug repellent.

"Behold!" Val shouted. "The main item used in the death ritual. Tremble before the horror of Diet Coke!"

The dolphin-men began to panic. They were on the edge of retreat. Val could feel it.

"The god will take your ship," Val warned. "He will finish your transformation into dolphins, or make you insane, or transform you into insane dolphins! Your only hope is to swim away now, quickly! Before I am forced to make the ritual."

"Ridiculous!" Chrysaor's voice turned shrill. He didn't seem sure where to level his sword — at Val, who was shaking the coke can, or his own crew.

"Save yourselves!" Val warned, opening the coke can and drawing a demonic looking circle with the coke. "It is too late for us!"

Then Percy gasped and pointed to a mast. "Oh, no! Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!"

Nothing happened.

"I said," Percy repeated, "Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!"

Frank stumbled out of nowhere, making a big show of grabbing his throat. "Oh, no," he said, like he was reading from a teleprompter. "I am turning into a crazy dolphin."