Nico Di Angelo, Assistant of Ironman

Part 15- Hellhounds and Nightmares Come Alive

Hellhounds always brought Drew back to the day her father told her she was a demigod. It attacked in the dead of night. The image of its large bloodred eyes and drooling mouth filled with sharp teeth haunted her dreams.

Now she was face to face with one just like it. But now she wasn't a little girl being protected by her dad, now she was an immature teenager with someone she needed to protect.

Drew's eyes were unfocused, trying desperately to pretend it was just a figment of her imagination. Her hands shook, her breath quickened, and she tried desperately to remember the breathing technique Camreon showed her, but it was no use. Her head was too muddled.

It isn't real. Please don't let it be real.

Her mind kept on repeating the same scenes, same words, over and over again until it felt like that was all she could see, all she could hear, all she could think. Her mind went faster and faster, like a broken carnival ride without an off button.

She was only broken out of her trance-like state when Camreon grabbed her hand, rubbing his thumb across the back, reminding her of the technique.

"Three things you can see..."

She forced her eyes to focus, training them onto anything other than the giant dog that should have killed them by now,

stone walls... one.

Inhale, exhale,

dirt floor... two.

She took a final deep breath, looking him in the eye.

Camreon. three.

Now that her mind was back in the present, she began to wonder. Why hadn't it killed them yet? It had so many chances, so many opportunities.

Hell, how was Camreon even still alive?! Why leave him injured on the floor?

Taking yet another deep breath, she cautiously looked toward the Hellhound, thinking of it as an... abnormally large dog, yeah.

It was further down the tunnel, its haunches raised with its head down low. Its large bloodred eyes were watching her carefully, tail wagging.

Excited to eat them?

Drew briefly wondered if it had rabies due to its excessively drooling mouth, but quickly shut that idea down. An abnormally large dog with large teeth was already scary enough, an abnormally large dog with large teeth and rabies was a whole 'nother thing.

She watched it carefully, doing her best at dissociating it from her memories. This was reality. This was real. She glared at the hellhound as she willed it to disassociate from the one she remembered, but it... whimpered? She was a daughter of Aphrodite, she wasn't very scary, she knew that. Its tail stopped as well, something was clearly wrong with it, though she wasn't sure what. Was it injured? From what? Camreon only had a knife he carried around, but that wasn't able to do nearly enough damage to make it that timid. It must have been something else. But what could be worse than a hellhound?

Nothing, as far as Drew was concerned. And if there was, she never wanted to meet it.

Ever.

While she was wrapped up in her thoughts, she heard a whistle coming from the entrance, making the hellhound perk its ears up, its tail picking up speed so quickly she almost had whiplash. It started to bound into a different corner behind it, but stopped once it got near. It turned its head towards them, and that was when Drew finally got the answer as to why it hadn't killed them yet-

It had a collar. Not just any collar, it was Mrs. O'Leary's collar.

Drew had seen the hellhound and heard about her, but refused to go near it, which most dismissed as her being a scaredy-cat daughter of Aphrodite.