A little sneak peak 

Just one more week until summer break, Taeyeon thinks happily as she finds her usual seat in the cafeteria and pulls out her lunch. One more week until she’s back at Camp Half-Blood, where she’s Kim Taeyeon, daughter of Zeus, child of the Great Prophecy, Hero of Olympus, and not Kim Taeyeon, the weird kid at school who can't read, sit still, or make friends. Though, she is grateful for the lack of burden and expectations put on her shoulder here at school. No one here expects her to save the world.

As she opens to bite into her sandwich, three girls suddenly sit down next to her causing her to pause mid-bite. Taeyeon eyes them weirdly, mouth still wide open. No one ever sits with her. Ever.

The girls are your typical popular types, cheerleaders, makeup, good bodies, pretty faces, long blonde hair and fashionable. Instantly, Taeyeon feels out of place with her worn out jeans, bare face, and messy bun. She notices too, that she doesn’t recognize any of the girls.

“That looks delicious,” one of them comments, but Taeyeon notices she doesn’t once glance at her food. Instead she is staring straight at her. Taeyeon raises an eyebrow.

“Um, do you want some?” she offers hesitantly. She doubts her turkey and cheese sandwich is really that appetizing. Taeyeon hates how she can face monsters three times her size, travel to the underworld and back, go one on one in a spar against a war god, defeat Titans, save Olympus, and still get scared of normal high school girls. It's unfair. Gods, she hates high school.

The girls laugh at her and Taeyeon feels herself flush, quickly retracting her sandwich. Now she feels stupid for even trying to be nice to them. She glances around hoping for someone to come help her and catches Jessica staring at her with an unreadable expression. Jessica is sitting alone like usual Taeyeon notices and realizes as brown clash with brown for the first time that it’s usually Taeyeon staring at Jessica, not the other way around. They have never really talked, and a small part of Taeyeon couldn’t deny that she is curious about the blonde. Before she can continue staring at Jessica, the three girls next to her giggle, breaking her out of her thoughts.

“Well, what do you say, daughter of Zeus?” one of the girls giggles and Taeyeon suddenly feels all previous embarrassment leave her, her body tensing in that familiar way as her senses go into overdrive. What did they just call her? Her mind snaps into alertness.

“Who are you? What do you want?” Taeyeon growls, her hand unconsciously reaching into the pocket of her jeans where she keeps her spare dagger. Unfortunately for her, daggers are not her preferred weapon of choice, but she couldn’t just bring her spear to school every day now could she? The Mist can only do so much.

“Come on now, give us your blood, young hero,” the third girl coos. Taeyeon focuses on the three girls, trying to look past the Mist. Within a few seconds, Taeyeon starts seeing them for what they actually are, she-demons. Their white fangs protrude past their red lips (red from blood, not lipstick as Taeyeon has previously wrongly assumed). They are grim-eyed, bloody - their claws are long and sharp and worse of all, they have these giant wings.

'How did I not even see that,' Taeyeon muses to herself. They are the Keres. Taeyeon recognizes them from a book she’d read back in Camp Half Blood. Seohyun has mentioned them to her once or twice too. Taeyeon racks her brain for what she can remember on them. They are known for being the child of Nyx, the goddess of night, and for drinking blood.

Taeyeon scoffs. She should’ve known no one would have actually voluntarily sat down next to her without wanting to kill her or drink her blood. Another giggle breaks her out of her thoughts. She needs to leave fast. She does not want to cause a scene. She can only imagine what it would look like through the Mist when she starts to stab them with her dagger.

“You’re thirsty? Drink this.” Taeyeon grabs her cup of cola, pours the contents onto the three monsters and bolts out the cafeteria, ignoring the stares of her schoolmates. She dashes down the hallways, looking for a empty classroom of sorts to settle this without any mortal interruption.

“You can’t run from us,” they hiss as the Keres flew after her.

Taeyeon pushes past the students in the halls and opens a random door hoping the room is empty - she barely has time to register her surroundings. It turns out to be the locker room. Good news is that it is empty. No one is in here. Bad news - there is barely any room to move about. Taeyeon is  basically trapped. ‘Great.’  Taeyeon turns around. The Keres fly in after her, their claws aimed at .

Taeyeon pulls out her knife and lets her instincts take over. She ducks under the first Keres, and stabs the second one in the leg. Unfortunately for her, she is too slow in pulling her dagger out and the third Keres grabs her by the throat with her claws. Taeyeon winces in pain as talons break through the skin on her neck.

“My,” the Keres that caught her her lips appreciatively. “Your blood smells absolutely delicious.”
 

“Yeah, well you can’t have it,” Taeyeon spits back. She wrenches her arm out of the Keres’ grasp and punches the Keres in the face, freeing herself. She then whirls around and stabs the first Keres that was behind her. Golden ichor pours out of the wound. Taeyeon curses. She’d hoped it would’ve only taken one hit to kill them. Now she is injured, trapped, and facing three Keres alone. So, she did the only thing she can.

She charges.

Grabbing the Keres by the wings, she stabs her knife into its eyes. The monster explodes in a burst of golden dust, leaving only two left. The two remaining Keres fly at her at once, each pinning down of her arms against the wall. Taeyeon grunts as her back hit the wall harshly.

“You killed our sister,” one of them hisses.

“Ah well, more demigod blood for us,” the other comments gleefully.

Taeyeon tries her best to fight against their iron grips, but she can’t break free. She feels blood dripping down her arms. Taeyeon stares at the two demons in her final act of defiance. ‘Great,’ she thinks bitterly. ‘Kim Taeyeon, daughter of Ze