Read The Last Olympian for Free Online Page A

than his brother, Travis, which is the only way I can tell them apart. They are both so unlike my old enemy Luke it’s hard to believe they’re all sons of Hermes.
    “Percy!” he yelled. “What happened? Where’s Beckendorf ?”
    Then he saw my expression, and his smile melted. “Oh, no. Poor Silena. Holy Zeus, when she finds out . . .”
    Together we climbed the sand dunes. A few hundred yards away, people were already streaming toward us, smiling and excited. Percy’s back , they were probably thinking. He’s saved the day! Maybe he brought souvenirs!
    I stopped at the dining pavilion and waited for them. No sense rushing down there to tell them what a loser I was.
    I gazed across the valley and tried to remember how Camp Half-Blood looked the first time I ever saw it. That seemed like a bajillion years ago.
    From the dining pavilion, you could see pretty much everything. Hills ringed the valley. On the tallest, Half-Blood Hill, Thalia’s pine tree stood with the Golden Fleece hanging from its branches, magically protecting the camp from its enemies. The guard dragon Peleus was so big now I could see him from here—curled around the tree trunk, sending up smoke signals as he snored.
    To my right spread the woods. To my left, the canoe lake glittered and the climbing wall glowed from the lava pouring down its side. Twelve cabins—one for each Olympian god—made a horseshoe pattern around the commons area. Farther south were the strawberry fields, the armory, and the four-story Big House with its sky blue paint job and its bronze eagle weathervane.
    In some ways, the camp hadn’t changed. But you couldn’t see the war by looking at the buildings or the fields. You could see it in the faces of the demigods and satyrs and naiads coming up the hill.
    There weren’t as many at camp as four summers ago. Some had left and never come back. Some had died fighting. Others—we tried not to talk about them—had gone over to the enemy.
    The ones who were still here were battle-hardened and weary. There was little laughter at camp these days. Even the Hermes cabin didn’t play so many pranks. It’s hard to enjoy practical jokes when your whole life feels like one.
    Chiron galloped into the pavilion first, which was easy for him since he’s a white stallion from the waist down. His beard had grown wilder over the summer. He wore a green T-shirt that said MY OTHER CAR IS A CENTAUR and a bow slung over his back.
    “Percy!” he said. “Thank the gods. But where . . .”
    Annabeth ran in right behind him, and I’ll admit my heart did a little relay race in my chest when I saw her. It’s not that she tried to look good. We’d been doing so many combat missions lately, she hardly brushed her curly blond hair anymore, and she didn’t care what clothes she was wearing—usually the same old orange camp T-shirt and jeans, and once in a while her bronze armor. Her eyes were stormy gray. Most of the time we couldn’t get through a conversation without trying to strangle each other. Still, just seeing her made me feel fuzzy in the head. Last summer, before Luke had turned into Kronos and everything went sour, there had been a few times when I thought maybe . . . well, we might get past the strangle-each-other phase.
    “What happened?” She grabbed my arm. “Is Luke—”
    “The ship blew up,” I said. “He wasn’t destroyed. I don’t know where—”
    Silena Beauregard pushed through the crowd. Her hair wasn’t combed and she wasn’t even wearing makeup, which wasn’t like her.
    “Where’s Charlie?” she demanded, looking around like he might be hiding.
    I glanced at Chiron helplessly.
    The old centaur cleared his throat. “Silena, my dear, let’s talk about this at the Big House—”
    “No,” she muttered. “No. No .”
    She started to cry, and the rest of us stood around, too stunned to speak. We’d already lost so many people over the summer, but this was the worst. With Beckendorf gone, it felt like