The Heroes of Olympus: The Demigod Diari - The Heroes of Olympus book 5 Page 0,2
as her old life in Los Angeles, Thalia didn’t like to talk about it. I respected her too much to pry. I knew her mom had fallen in love with Zeus. Eventually Zeus dumped her, as gods tend to do. Her mom went off the deep end, drinking and doing crazy things—I didn’t know the details—until finally Thalia decided to run. In other words, her past was a lot like mine.
She took a shaky breath. “Luke, when Amaltheia appears, something important is about to happen…something dangerous. She’s like a warning from Zeus, or a guide.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know…but look.” Thalia pointed across the street. “She’s not disappearing this time. We must be close to wherever she’s leading us.”
Thalia was right. The goat was just standing there, less than a hundred yards away, contentedly nibbling grass at the base of the monument.
I was no expert on barnyard animals, but Amaltheia did look strange now that we were closer. She had curlicue horns like a ram, but the swollen udders of a girl goat. And her shaggy gray fur…was it glowing? Wisps of light seemed to cling to her like a cloud of neon, making her look blurry and ghostly.
A couple of cars looped around the traffic circle, but nobody seemed to notice the radioactive goat. That didn’t surprise me. There’s some sort of magical camouflage that keeps mortals from seeing the true appearance of monsters and gods. Thalia and I weren’t sure what this force was called or how it worked, but it was pretty powerful. Mortals might see the goat as just a stray dog, or they might not see it at all.
Thalia grabbed my wrist. “Come on. Let’s try to talk to it.”
“First we hide from the goat,” I said. “Now you want to talk to the goat?”
Thalia dragged me out of the rosebushes and pulled me across the street. I didn’t protest. When Thalia gets an idea in her head, you just have to go with it. She always gets her way.
Besides, I couldn’t let her go without me. Thalia has saved my life a dozen times. She’s my only friend. Before we met, I’d traveled for years on my own, lonely and miserable. Once in a while I’d befriend a mortal, but whenever I told them the truth about me, they didn’t understand. I’d confess that I was the son of Hermes, the immortal messenger dude with the winged sandals. I’d explain that monsters and Greek gods were real and very much alive in the modern world. My mortal friends would say, “That is so cool! I wish I was a demigod!” Like it’s some sort of game. I always ended up leaving.
But Thalia understood. She was like me. Now that I’d found her, I was determined to stick with her. If she wanted to chase a magical glowing goat, then we’d do that, even if I had a bad feeling about it.
We approached the statue. The goat didn’t pay us any attention. She chewed some grass, then butted her horns against the marble base of the monument. A bronze plaque read: Robert E. Lee. I didn’t know much about history, but I was pretty sure Lee was a general who lost a war. That didn’t strike me as a good omen.
Thalia knelt next to the goat. “Amaltheia?”
The goat turned. She had sad amber eyes and a bronze collar around her neck. Fuzzy white light steamed around her body, but what really caught my attention were her udders. Each teat was labeled with Greek letters, like tattoos. I could read a little Ancient Greek—it was sort of a natural ability for demigods, I guess. The teats read: Nectar, Milk, Water, Pepsi, Press Here for Ice, and Diet Mountain Dew. Or maybe I read them wrong. I hoped so.
Thalia looked into the goat’s eyes. “Amaltheia, what do you want me to do? Did my dad send you?”
The goat glanced at me. She looked a little miffed, like I was intruding on a private conversation.
I took a step back, resisting the urge to grab my weapon. Oh, by the way, my weapon was a golf club. Feel free to laugh. I used to have a sword made from Celestial bronze, which is deadly to monsters, but the sword got melted in acid (long story). Now all I had was a nine-iron that I carried on my back. Not exactly epic. If the goat went commando on us, I’d be in trouble.