The Demigod Grand Prix: Chapter 5



Damiko Thorne

V

Listening to the Radio

I smiled a little when I heard the sound of the announcer listing every single vehicle in the race... except mine.

I was driving the motorcycle underground using a homemade tunnel. Nobody could lay any traps and nobody could stand in my way because of my plan. And once I got far enough ahead of the others...

I took my hands off the bars once again and felt the ramp form. An opening shot out in front of me as the rocks went higher. I zoomed out of the tunnel and back into the race. The rocks that I sent up had knocked one car, a shiny silver sports car, upside down. The driver, a Hunter, crawled out from underneath and stared daggers at me. I kept driving, since I figured she'd be able to get back in the race fairly easily.

"And what's this?" the announcer, well. announced. "Hades has popped out of nowhere into the race!"

"So that's what the Hades kid can do," another racer, a blonde girl on a Harley Davidson, muttered. She started shooting spikes from the sides, straight at my wheels. I quickly formed walls of earth to block them, then another one right in front of her. She easily drove around it without breaking pace and even caught up with me.

"Not bad," I admitted. "So which one are you again?"

"Yuna," she said. "Racing for Hestia." Before she even said the word "for" she had already shot another spike at my tire. Thanks to the conversation distracting me I couldn't protect my bike in time. The back tire went down with a pwoosh.

"See you at the finish line," Yuna said with a grin as she drove off.

"Not bad at all," I repeated, mostly to myself since Yuna was too far gone to hear. Two people managed to pass me while I fixed up the bike. The Hunter that I knocked over was not among them. Rather, it was a chariot pulled by pegasus-unicorn hybrids and a tall limousine. Once the bike was all fixed, I accelerated as quickly as possible to make up for lost time.

I turned on the radio in between the handles - not strictly necessary to put in the bike, but some of these songs get my blood going wild and ready to speed up.

After going through several awful stations, I finally managed to find something halfway decent. I sped up even more as I sang along to the Black-Eyed Peas until I caught up with the limousine that passed me earlier.

"Made it to Vegas," the driver called to me. Indeed, we were just entering the checkpoint at Las Vegas, Nevada. "Sorry about this," the limo driver continued. He rammed into my bike, forcing me slightly off course. Not only that, he also changed the radio station.

"Hey! It was hard finding good travel music!" I turned the street in front of the limousine into a ramp that turned around 180 degrees.

I started to turn the radio back to what it was before, but then I heard the sound.

"The race must continue," a raspy voice said. "As long as the gods and half-bloods are focused on the race, they won't notice us until it's too late..."

"How do we just make the race last longer?" a separate voice asked. "Extend the racetrack? Cause the gods are going to notice that."

"So we'll have to just push back whoever's in the lead..."

The one in the lead... that was the Hermes driver, Richie. And by this point I was in fourth - behind Richie, Yuna, and the charioteer who passed me earlier.

An explosion shook me from my thoughts and sent me into the air. I shot the earth up as fast as I could to form a path that pretty much kept me alive and in the race.

So, I thought. ''Someone's trying to sabotage the race. But who? And what are they keeping the gods distracted for?''

I sped up some more. If I could win the race quickly - maybe warn Yuna and the others about the traps - then the sabotage wouldn't even work.

I drove on through Las Vegas in pursuit of the finish line.