Chapter 26

                                    

                                          
Percy ended up spending more time with Chaos than he thought he would've, and while he enjoyed it he wanted to get back as soon as possible to check on how Annabeth was doing. So after a quick goodbye he opened a portal to the library he could now feel thanks to Annabeth walking through it, and stepped through into the room. However he didn't see her anywhere. 
"Annabeth?" Percy said looking around only seeing the books she'd grabbed and not the immortal herself, "Annabeth where are you?" Percy was starting to get worried now, sure she was someone that got very sucked into her books but yelling her name was usually enough to get her to snap out of her reading trance to answer a call. The stranger thing was that there seemed to be nothing wrong either, sure there was a hint of her magic from Hestia's gift of flames that hung around the areas he guessed she'd walked through there wasn't really any other damage in the general area that she'd been reading at. 
The middle area didn't count as Percy knew that that was already like that even before him having gotten there, but where was Destruction, or even her dagger. Surely one of those would be around if she'd been in a fight and gotten in trouble with something. Percy decided to look deeper to see if there was something that he'd missed and then he noticed a trail of what looked like darkness that had seeped through into his domain without him noticing, and without permission to have been manipulated as it seemed. 
"ANNABETH!" Percy roared tracing the trail of darkness to its source. It seemed familiar and ancient, something that he felt like he should've known about, and yet hadn't payed much attention to for some reason. Then he got to the place it lead and everything came back at once. This was the House of Night, the place him and Annabeth had seen Nyx and humiliated her in front of her legions of monsters among kin. He teleported just outside of her temple as he couldn't go directly inside without letting Nyx know he had caught on. 
If he'd waited even a minute or two to come back there might not have been a trail to follow back here, and he didn't want to imagine what could've happened to Annabeth had he not. He didn't want to imagine what was happening to her now either, but he could feel that she was here as well as Destruction. It felt like Destruction was tied down by something, and whatever that was was preventing it from teleporting to Annabeth's side. 
"Ah you've finally arrived!" A raspy female voice like that of a witch howled out among the shadows clinging to the temple, "I was starting to think I needed to leave a clue as to where your precious Annie-girl was." Percy's power flared at it's full strength and all of the shadows closing in on him were washed away with light. 
"I swear if you've hurt her--" Percy growled and the demon herself came forwards with a large grin. 
"Sadly I haven't gotten the chance to take anything but a bite, but she tastes good enough with the amount of pain and fear I've harvested" Nyx cackled but she'd underestimated him, and within the blink of her eyes she had been captured by the throat and shoved into the very stone that made up her shadowy walls. 
"I'm going to tear you --"
"Oh please," Nyx rasped giving him a wry smile, "You know that I must be alive if you want to find her again, and we both know that you wouldn't kill your one lead to your newly announced mate. Did you know that she tastes like fresh rasberries? Oh how sweet her fear was, I can't wait to taste her --" Nyx lost the ability to breathe as a sharp pain punctured her chest. Her beating heart was now being held by the very claws of the man she'd wanted to beg and plea for her prisoner's life. 
"I already know that you don't have her," Percy growled, "Why else would you meet me here other than to stall and make me waste time while your goons bring her to your master, Order." 
Nyx was shocked, even if she literally couldn't breath this would've shocked her speechless. This wasn't the same man she'd seen the last time they'd been here. This was a ruthless killer that had faced death many times over centuries, a killer that had no remorse for those that wronged him, a king. Oh how she should've listened to her Grandfather, she should've waited, bided her time and savored the girl while she had the chance.