Annabeth was fucked.

Completely, enormously, astronomically fucked.

The blonde cursed in ancient Greek as she felt cold brick press into her back. She was cornered, a woman was dead, and three fucking—Annabeth didn't even know what they were, let alone what to call them—thugs, for lack of a better word, advanced on her in the dark alleyway.

"What are you gonna do, sweetheart?" the one closest to her—the leader, she'd concluded—purred perversely. "It's not really nice to interrupt a man and his friends when they're having a meal, is it?"

The two other goons behind him snickered.

Annabeth tightened her hold around the hilt of her dagger and flattened herself further against the wall. Her head was bleeding, her lip was busted, and she was pretty sure that a few of her ribs were broken after getting the shit beat out of her.

She took a shuddering breath and glared into the set of wild, red eyes that gazed at her hungrily. After fighting at the front line for two different wars and surviving twenty years in the mortal world as a Greek demigod, you'd think she'd encountered every type of monster Hades (or Hera) had that he could throw at her.

But not them. These guys were made of something else—their existence so fundamentally wrong and absurd that for the first time in a very long time, Annabeth was scared to fucking the bone.

For a brief second, her eyes flickered to the mangled corpse of a woman strewn on the ground a few feet away.

They were eating her.

Annabeth's stomach twisted.

She pointed her knife at her assailants. "Touch me," she hissed, "and I'll gut you, motherfucker."

A loud, sardonic laugh bellowed throughout the tight corridor. "I'd like to see you try!"

Without their leader, Annabeth would've been able to take the two goons behind him. Brass knuckles and a baseball bat were nothing compared to what she'd taken down before. But their alpha—Annabeth wasn't so sure about him. He was strong. Too strong for her to have been prepared for.

The leader was dressed like his two other accomplices: ragged clothing and hard expressions that made them look like regular street thugs at first glance. But him, Annabeth could just sense he was capable of much more than your average alleyway beat-down. His bloodred eyes and the maniacal glint inside them betrayed that.

For a sick moment, Annabeth wondered if he was another demigod, but she quickly shook the thought away. The energy she was getting from them was completely different. These guys were beyond her realm of understanding.

The alpha began to walk a half circle around Annabeth, analyzing her. "Say, are you a virgin by any chance?"

Annabeth stiffened. "Shut the fuck up."

"'Cause you sure smell like one. I'm surprised a girl as pretty as you and at your age hasn't been—"

"Shut the fuck up!"

Her own voice surprised her. Annabeth noticed that she was shaking—no, trembling, and she choked back a sob.

It dawned on her that this man and his friends were going to do terrible, terrible things to her far worse than death.

Before she could even react, the leader swiped a long arm in front of her and pinned her knife-wielding hand on the wall above her head. Annabeth tried to shove him away with her free hand, but it felt like pushing against a concrete slab. She was too weak, and he was overpowering her.

His fingers tightened, and tightened, and tightened around Annabeth's wrist until she heard the sound of her bones crack and she screamed. The knife clattered to the ground, and her attacker's free hand grabbed the collar of her shirt and ripped it from her body.

"Guess I gotta change that—"

Annabeth spat in his face.

She was pretty sure she'd just signed her own death warrant. As the leader recoiled with a flurry of curses tumbling out of his mouth, her attention wandered to the dark figure that was now standing at the entrance of the alleyway. Annabeth felt a hand clamp around her neck, and she watched the figure soundlessly approach as she was choked to near death.

She was numb to the hands that started groping and tugging at different parts of her chest. She was numb to her jeans that were shoved off her hips and pushed down to her ankles. She was numb to the pain in her ribs when she was forced onto her knees.

Because while these things happened, she watched, with an abject fascination, as the dark figure inched closer and closer. Was it another demigod? A ghost? A fucking demon? Annabeth wasn't sure what to make of it, until it lifted a three-foot long blade in the air, and beheaded all of her attackers in three quick strokes.

Their bodies tumbled to dust around her and Annabeth looked up to see a set of dark red, no, green —they were fading into an impenetrable sea green—eyes staring back at her, and she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding.

And then she fainted.