Chapter 8
Leo was confused as he was in a workshop. He took all of it in trying to figure out how the warm and comfortable shop fit into this. It wasn’t one he’d been in and it wasn’t abandoned. Leo answer came from the something blocking the middle of his view. Staring down at him was a bearded man in grimy blue coveralls. His face was lumpy and covered with welts, as if he’d been bitten by a million bees, or dragged across gravel. Possibly both.
“Holy mother!” he yelped.
“Humph,” the man said. “Holy father, boy. I should think you’d know the difference.”
Leo blinked. “Hephaestus?” Being in the presence of his father for the first time, the usually reactions were benched. After what he’d been through the last couple of days, all Leo felt was a surge of complete annoyance. “Now you show up?” he demanded. “After fifteen years? Great parenting, Fur Face. Where do you get off sticking your ugly nose into my dreams?”
The god raised an eyebrow. A little spark caught fire in his beard. Then he threw back his head and laughed so loudly, the tools rattled on the workbenches. “You sound just like your mother,” Hephaestus said. “I miss Esperanza.”
“She’s been dead seven years.” Leo’s voice trembled. “Not that you’d care.”
“But I do care, boy. About both of you.”
“Uh-huh. Which is why I never saw you before today.”
The god made a rumbling sound in his throat, but he looked more uncomfortable than angry. He pulled a miniature motor from his pocket and began fiddling absently with the pistons. A trait he passed on to most of his children, Leo recognized his own habit in his father. “I’m not good with children,” the god confessed. “Or people. Well, any organic life forms, really. I thought about speaking to you at your mom’s funeral. Then again when you were in fifth grade ... that science project you made, steam-powered chicken chucker. Very impressive.”
“You saw that?”
Hephaestus pointed to the nearest worktable, where a shiny bronze mirror showed a hazy image of Leo asleep on the dragon’s back.
“Is that me?” Leo asked. “Like—me right now, having this dream—looking at me having a dream?”
Hephaestus scratched his beard. “Now you’ve confused me. But yes—it’s you. I’m always keeping an eye on you, Leo. But talking to you is, um ... different.”
“You’re scared,” Leo said.
“Grommets and gears!” the god yelled. “Of course not!”
“Yeah, you’re scared.” Leo’s anger seeped away. His thoughts went from yelling at a Deadbeat dad like he’d always wanted to do, to something akin to understanding. Leo thought about his dad watching his progress over the years, even his stupid science experiments. Maybe Hephaestus was still a jerk but Leo knew about running away from people, not fitting in. He knew about hiding out in a workshop rather than trying to deal with organic life forms.
“So,” Leo grumbled, “you keep track of all your kids? You got like twelve back at camp. How’d you even—Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
Hephaestus might’ve blushed, but his face was so beat up and red, it was hard to tell. “Gods are different from mortals, boy. We can exist in many places at once—wherever people call on us, wherever our sphere of influence is strong. In fact, it’s rare our entire essence is ever together in one place —our true form. It’s dangerous, powerful enough to destroy any mortal who looks upon us. So, yes ... lots of children. Add to that our different aspects, Greek and Roman—” The god’s fingers froze on his engine project. “Er, that is to say, being a god is complicated. And yes, I try to keep an eye on all my children, but you especially.” Leo caught the slip Hephaestus made but didn’t understand the importance of it.
“Why contact me now?” Leo asked.
“I finally could.” Hephaestus stated “King Hades gave us orders to help with your quest but not interfere too much. I finally understand why. After being embarrassed like that. We won the second Titan War because the demigods of”—again he hesitated, as if he’d almost made a slip— “of Camp Half-Blood took the lead. We won because our children fought our battles for us, smarter than we did. If we’d relied on Zeus’s plan, we would’ve all gone down to Tartarus fighting the storm giant Typhon, and Kronos would’ve won. Bad enough mortals won our war for us, but then that young upstart, Percy Jackson—”
“The guy who’s missing.”
“Hmph. Yes. Him. He had the nerve to tell us to pay better attention to our children. Er, no offense.” Hephaestus got tired of his engine and tossed it over his shoulder. Before it could hit the floor, it sprouted helicopter wings and flew itself into a recycling bin.
“Oh, how could I take offense? Please, go on ignoring me.”
“Mighty understanding of you ...” Hephaestus frowned, then sighed wearily. “That was sarcasm, wasn’t it? Machines don’t have sarcasm, usually. But as I was saying, the gods felt ashamed, shown up by mortals. At first, of course, we were grateful. But after a few months, those feelings turned bitter for some. We’re gods, after all. We need to be admired, looked up to, held in awe and admiration.”
“Even if you’re wrong?”
“Especially then! However, The King and Queen quickly squashed it. Athena the one that started the dissidence in the council ended up … Queen Hestia might have cut her off from all of the libraries for a month as punishment. Now we’ve started hearing of bad things stirring under the earth.”
“The giants, you mean. Monsters re-forming instantly. The dead rising again. Little stuff like that?”
“Aye, boy.” Hephaestus nodded “Zeus would have thought he could reverse the tide,” the god said, “lull the earth back to sleep as long as we stayed quiet. Hades is a much better King, now I understand why. He knows Mortals better then us. Hestia too, they are their domain. You guys don’t have thousands of years holding you down. You act as you see; you don’t compare the old model to the new one. You guys fight for here and now, it’s your greatest strength. We barely survived the Titans. If we’re repeating the old pattern, what comes next is even worse. You guys are our only hope, one the Gods need to learn from.”
“The giants,” Leo said. “Hera said demigods and gods had to join forces to defeat them. Is that true?”
“Mmm. I hate to agree with my mother about anything, but yes. Those giants are tough to kill, boy. They’re a different breed.”
“Breed? You make them sound like racehorses.”
“Ha!” the god said. “More like war dogs. Back in the beginning, y’see, everything in creation came from the same parents—Gaea and Ouranos, Earth and Sky. They had their different batches of children—your Titans, your Elder Cyclopes, and so forth. Then Kronos, the head Titan—well, you’ve probably heard how he chopped up his father Ouranos with a scythe and took over the world. Then we gods came along, children of the Titans, and defeated them. But that wasn’t the end of it. The earth bore a new batch of children, except they were sired by Tartarus, the spirit of the eternal abyss —the darkest, most evil place in the Underworld. Those children, the giants, were bred for one purpose—revenge on us for the fall of the Titans. They rose up to destroy Olympus, and they came awfully close.”
Hephaestus’s beard began to smolder. He absently swatted out the flames. He was used to spontaneously combusting. “What my blasted mother Hera is doing now—she’s a meddling fool playing a dangerous game, but she’s right about one thing: you demigods have to unite. That’s the only way to defeat what’s coming. You’re a big part of that, Leo.” The god’s gaze seemed far away seeing the playing out of what he was doing in a way, getting them on the right path, giving the information the Fates would allow and better the information that could only come from a father.
“Why me?” Leo asked, and as soon as he said it, more questions flooded out. “Why claim me now? Why not when I was thirteen, like you’re supposed to? Or you could’ve claimed me at seven, before my mom died! Why didn’t you find me earlier? Why didn’t you warn me about this?” Leo’s hand burst into flames.
Hephaestus regarded him sadly. “Hardest part, boy. Letting my children walk their own paths. Interfering doesn’t work. The Fates make sure of that. As for the claiming, you were a special case, boy. The timing had to be right. I can’t explain it much more, but you have a role to play. Your friend Jason is right—fire is a gift, not a curse. I don’t give that blessing to just anyone. They’ll never defeat the giants without you, much less the mistress they serve. She’s worse than any god or Titan.”
“Who?” Leo demanded.
Hephaestus frowned, “I told you. Yes, I’m pretty sure I told you. Just be warned: along the way, you’re going to lose some friends and some valuable tools. But that isn’t your fault, Leo. Nothing lasts forever, not even the best machines. And everything can be reused.”
“What do you mean? I don’t like the sound of that.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Hephaestus was looking nearly panicked now. “Just watch out for—”
Leo snapped awake to Jason and Piper screaming. They were spiralling through the dark in a free fall, still on the dragon’s back, but Festus’s hide was cold. His ruby eyes were dim. He’d been failing for a while now; the strain had simply been too much.
“Not again!” Leo yelled. “You can’t fall again!”
Leo through burning eyes got into the panel accessible from his seat. The Main control panel on the head was inaccessible during flight. It left Leo toggling switches and tugging the wires hoping for the best. The dragon’s wings flapped once which brought the smell of burning bronze to Leo’s nose. The drive system was overloaded. Festus didn’t have the strength to keep flying.
The light flashes in the dark made them all know a city was below them as they plummeted in circles. They had only seconds before they crashed. “Jason!” Leo screamed. “Take Piper and fly out of here!”
“What?”
“We need to lighten the load! I might be able to reboot Festus, but he’s carrying too much weight!”
“What about you?” Piper cried. “If you can’t reboot him—”
“I’ll be fine,” Leo yelled. “Just follow me to the ground. Go!”
Jason grabbed Piper around the waist. They both unbuckled their harnesses, and in a flash, they were gone shooting into the air. Praying that Festas had just enough energy left to let Leo land safely.
“Now,” Leo said. “Just you and me, Festus—and two heavy cages. You can do it, boy!”
Leo talked to the dragon while he worked, falling at terminal velocity. He ignored the city lights getting closer and closer. He summoned fire in his hand, but the wind kept extinguishing it, leaving him groping in the dark. He pulled a wire that he thought connected the dragon’s nerve center to its head, hoping for a little wake-up jolt.
Festus groaned, weakly coming back to life, and he spread his wings. Their fall turned into a steep glide. They were still flying in way too hot, and the ground was too close. Leo needed a place to land and fast. Leo tossed out the idea of putting them in the water, instead turning to the large snowy field inside a tall brick perimeter fence, the mansion could be ignored for now. All that mattered was that with its blazing lights it made the perfect landing field. He did his best to steer the dragon toward it, and Festus seemed to come back to life. They could make it.
As they approached the lawn everything went wrong. Spotlights along the fence fixed on them, blinding Leo. He heard bursts like tracer fire, the sound of metal being cut to shreds—and BOOM. Leo blacked out.
Piper screamed and Jason yelled. They had been blocked from the lasers attack because Festus took all of the fire. Festus hit the ground hard disintegrating at first impact. The main section of his body plowed a massive trench across the mansion’s yard before breaking apart. His limbs were scattered across the lawn. His tail hung on the fence. What remained of his hide was a charred, smoking pile of scraps. Only his neck and head were somewhat intact, resting across a row of frozen rosebushes like a pillow.
Jason and Piper noted that the cages hadn’t busted open after Festus had been forced to drop them coming over the fence. They ran to Leo’s side where he was laying in the snow. Piper was crying as Jason tried to determine if it was all mud and grease he was covered or if there was blood. Leo wasn’t even out long enough for them to check for injuries, not that it was a bad thing. He was far too quick to get up and move though. Not hearing Piper’s words to ‘lie still’. Leo looked like he had a concussion, which wouldn’t have been surprising at all. He was mostly stunned and confused. He wouldn’t stay still even with Jason’s protest.
Leo let out a sob when he saw the wreckage. He ran to the dragon’s head and stroked its snout. The dragon’s eyes flickered weakly. Oil leaked out of his ear. “You can’t go,” Leo pleaded. “You’re the best thing I ever fixed.” The dragon’s head whirred its gears, it’s version of purring. Jason and Piper stood next to him, just letting Leo deal with this for now, even as Leo remembered what Hephaestus had said. His dad had been trying to warn him. “It’s not fair,” he said.
The dragon clicked. Long creak. Two short clicks. Creak. Creak. A pattern that triggering an old memory in Leo’s mind. Morse code, just like Leo’s mom had taught him years ago. Leo listened more intently to what Festus was trying to say, translating the clicks into letters: a simple message repeating over and over just for him.
“Yeah,” Leo said. “I understand. I will. I promise.” The dragon’s eyes went dark. Festus was gone.
Leo cried. He wasn’t even embarrassed. His friends stood on either side, patting his shoulders, saying comforting things; but the buzzing in Leo’s ears drowned out their words. Finally, Jason ‘s voice broke through the buzzing “I’m so sorry, man. What did you promise Festus?”
Leo sniffled. He opened the dragon’s head panel, he had to be sure. There was no luck, the control disk was cracked and burned beyond repair. “Something my dad told me,” Leo said. “Everything can be reused.”
“Your dad talked to you?” Jason asked. “When was this?”
Leo didn’t answer, couldn’t answer as his throat wanted to close up again. He worked at the dragon’s neck hinges until the head was detached. It weighed about a hundred pounds, but Leo managed to hold it in his arms. He looked up at the starry sky and said, “Take him back to the bunker, Dad. Please, until I can reuse him. I’ve never asked you for anything.”
The wind picked up, and the dragon’s head floated out of Leo’s arms like it weighed nothing. It flew into the sky and disappeared. Piper looked at him in amazement. “He answered you?”
“I had a dream,” Leo managed. “Tell you later.”
Leo knew he owed his friends a better explanation, but he could barely speak. He felt like a broken machine, like one little part of him had been removed, and now he’d never be complete. He might move, he might talk, he might keep going and do his job. But he’d always be off balance, never calibrated exactly right. Still, he couldn’t afford to break down completely. Otherwise, Festus had died for nothing. He had to finish the quest, for his friends, for his mom, for his dragon.
The large white mansion taunted Leo. Tall brick walls with lights and security cameras surrounded the perimeter, but now Leo could sense just how well those walls were defended. He was learning skills he wished he’d had sooner. It took Leo asking where they were to find out that Piper had been paying attention. Omaha, Nebraska. Not where they needed to be.
Leo had to explain how they survived the defenses. Piper and Jason were a little horrified and stunned at the overkill the owners had put into their security and thanking Festus for their lives after he’d saved them. More the problem was they couldn’t leave, not with the defenses and the gate being locked… they had to enter the mansion and hope they could be let out.
Leo was mostly silent as he saved their lives just heading to the front door. He was quickly mastering his sensing of traps ability. He could quickly decide what tool he needed to disable them. He noted them at the back of his mind. Piper was just horrified by the traps. The motion-activated trapdoor on the sidewalk, then the lasers on the steps, then the nerve gas dispenser on the porch railing, the pressure-sensitive poison spikes in the welcome mat, and of course the exploding doorbell. He mastered them all.
“You’re amazing, man,” Jason said an awed expression on his face, it wasn’t obvious but none of Jason’s expressions were.
Leo scowled as he examined the front door lock. “Yeah, amazing,” he said. “Can’t fix a dragon right, but I’m amazing.”
“Hey, that wasn’t your—”
“Front door’s already unlocked,” Leo announced.
Piper stared at the door in disbelief. “It is? All those traps, and the door’s unlocked?”
Leo turned the knob. The door swung open easily. He stepped inside without hesitation. He was too much in mourning to understand the danger, but he also knew the dangers around them better then they did.
Before Jason could follow him, Piper caught his arm. “He’s going to need some time to get over Festus. Don’t take it personally.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “Yeah, okay.” He knew she was right but Jason really just wanted to pull Leo into a hug, giving him all the time and affection, he needed. But he wasn’t sure how Leo would take his advances after their make-out session. There had been no limit of groping and touching between them. Piper hadn’t gotten out of that encounter easily, either. “Piper,” he said, “I know I was in a daze back in Chicago, but that stuff about your dad—if he’s in trouble, I want to help. I don’t care if it’s a trap or not.”
Her eyes were always different colors, but now they looked shattered, as if she’d seen something she just couldn’t cope with. “Jason, you don’t know what you’re saying. Please—don’t make me feel worse. Come on. We should stick together.” She ducked inside following Leo
“Together,” Jason said to himself annoyed. “Yeah, we’re doing great with that.” He was right behind them.
The House was Dark. The only illumination came from the lights outside. The entry hall was enormous, even bigger than Boreas’s penthouse, they knew simply due to the echo of their footsteps. A faint glow peeked through the breaks in the thick velvet curtains. The windows rose about ten feet tall, spaced between them along the walls were life-size metal statues. As Jason’s eyes adjusted, he saw sofas arranged in a U in the middle of the room, with a central coffee table and one large chair at the far end. A massive chandelier glinted overhead. Along the back wall stood a row of closed doors.
“Where’s the light switch?” His voice echoed alarmingly through the room.
“Don’t see one,” Leo said.
“Fire?” Piper suggested.
Leo held out his hand, but nothing happened. “It’s not working.”
“Your fire is out? Why?” Piper asked.
“Well, if I knew that—”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “What do we do—explore?”
Leo shook his head. “After all those traps outside? Bad idea.”
Jason’s skin tingled. He hated being a demigod. Their imaginations usually ended up being a lot more dangerous and likely as they looked around the room expecting something, anything to pop out and attack them. “Leo’s right,” he said. “We’re not separating again—not like in Detroit.”
“Oh, thank you for reminding me of the Cyclopes.” Piper’s voice quavered. “I needed that.”
“It’s a few hours until dawn,” Jason guessed. “Too cold to wait outside. Let’s bring the cages in and make camp in this room. Wait for daylight; then we can decide what to do.”
Nobody had a better idea. That led them to sitting on Sofas that weren’t trapped, with two canary cages that didn’t make the place any less creepy. The venti kept churning in their prison, hissing and spinning. The venti would like nothing better than to tear Jason apart. Leo and Piper were just bonuses. They ate cold rations. There was no fire, and Leo was so down he couldn’t bring himself to cook as it was. It allowed them to look more at their surroundings as they got creepier and more … paranoia triggering.
They ate unable to speak as they looked around them. The metal statues along the walls that looked like Greek gods or heroes were the worse as none of them were sure if they were real people or not. Fancy statues or simply target practice. They all ignored the coffee table’s tea service and a stack of glossy brochures, not that any of them could make out the words between their dyslexia and the darkness. The big chair at the other end of the table looked like a throne. None of them tried to sit in it. It was worse.
As for Coach Hedge, he was still frozen mid-shout, his cudgel raised. Leo was working on the cage, trying to open it with various tools, but the lock seemed to be giving him a hard time. Jason decided not to sit next to him only so that there wasn’t that awkwardness or that deep temptation to kiss him again.
Piper had already curled up on the other sofa. Jason wondered if she was really asleep or dodging a conversation about her dad. Whatever Medea had meant in Chicago, about Piper’s her dad hadn’t sounded good. If Piper had to risk her own dad’s life for their, that just made Jason feel guiltier, especially when he thought about her stopping him from kissing Leo.
Despite how wired he felt, once his stomach was full, Jason started to nod off. The couches were a little too comfortable and he’d taken the last two watches while his friends slept. He was exhausted. But they were running out of time. If Jason had his days straight, this was early morning of December 20. Which meant tomorrow was the winter solstice.
“Get some sleep,” Leo said, still working on the locked cage. “It’s your turn.”
Jason took a deep breath. “Leo, I’m sorry about that … in Chicago. With everything… and Nico… the you know what…” Jason was blushing and fidgeting. The urge to touch him was harder to ignore with how sleepy he was.
Leo lowered his screwdriver. He looked at the ceiling and shook his head like, ‘what am I gonna do with this guy?’ “I’m jealous honestly. Of you and Nico,” Leo said. “I’m jealous he had you and you have him. So how am I supposed to resent you if you go apologizing? I’m a lowly mechanic. You’re like the Prince of the Sky, Son of the Lord of the Universe. He’s the Prince of Darkness and Cuteness…. I’m supposed to resent you.”
“Lord of the Universe?”
“Sure, you’re all—bam! Lightning man. And ‘Watch me fly. I am the eagle that soars—’”
“Shut up, Valdez.”
Leo managed a little smile. “Yeah, see. I do annoy you.”
“I apologize for apologizing.”
“Thank you.” He went back to work, but the tension had eased between them. Leo still looked sad and exhausted, just not quite so angry; his ears were a little pink though having felt Jason’s eyes on him. “Go to sleep, Jason,” he ordered. “It’s gonna take a few hours to get this goat man free. Then I still got to figure out how to make the winds a smaller holding cell, ’cause I am not lugging that canary cage to California.”
“You did fix Festus, you know,” Jason said getting up. The urge to touch was too strong “You gave him a purpose again. I think this quest was the high point of his life.” Jason was afraid he’d blown it and made Leo mad again, but Leo just sighed.
“I hope,” he said. “Now, sleep, man. I want some time without you organic life forms.”
Jason wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he didn’t argue. He did however lean over Leo and tilt his head back. He kissed him again, this one a soft peck. “I think the three of us need to talk when we get back to camp and I have my memories back.” Letting go and going back to settle into his spot again, He closed his eyes and had a long, blissfully dreamless sleep. Leaving a blushing Leo to his thoughts as he was distracted from his mourning by excitement… maybe Jason and Nico would accept him for him.
The next few hours after dawn passed in a blur or just a blank. The Chaos started when Piper and Jason were launched off the couch as Coach Hedge was now running around making a complete ruckus of destruction. The Blessing of Aphrodite Finally let go of Piper, making her perfect look become natural with no make-up while her choppy hair looked like a nest for a friendly hamster. Even with her hair messed up and wearing two-day-old clothes, she looked extremely cute, and Jason realized finally at the same time as Leo did. The blessing had finally faded. Piper hadn’t noticed yet much to their amusement.
They had to explain things to Coach Hedge and get their satyr under control but the noise drew the owner to them. The master of the house greeted them unintentionally in his bath robe and a sleeping cap. The gold room of statues and the throne should have clued them into who they were talking to but it took introductions. King Midas and his son Lityerses, Lit for short, only because Midas hated the name but could not dismiss the Goddess Demeter’s when she named their son.
They spoke for a time, the three modern demigods sitting on the sofas, while the king reclined on his throne. Tricky in a bathrobe, and the three demi-gods kept worrying the old guy would forget and uncross his legs. Praying he was wearing golden boxers under there. Not that it was likely. All while Lit stood behind the throne, both hands on his sword, glancing at Piper and flexing his muscular arms just to be annoying. Jason and Leo both looked a little jealous of the musculature.
The conversation allowed the three of them to learn five very important things. The old myths were close but slightly out to lunch. King Midas was a self-absorbed narcissist who didn’t learn from his mistakes and liked to blame others for his faults. They more importantly learned Midas was bankrolling this ‘Dark Patron’ who had also brought him back from the dead. They found their next direction, west, the Hunters of Artemis had passed through this way heading that way hunting evil wolves. And finally, they learn (Godly blessing made) gold powers were very useful in limited quantities, but really shitty if used wrong.
The useful aspect of it was when Midas used Piper’s backpack to demonstrate this by making it magical. The power it gained was to be bigger on the inside then the outside and perfectly capable or containing all the Venti. The rest of her stuff ended up in Jason and Leo’s packs. The Bad ending came when Piper and Leo got turned to gold with a touch leaving Jason to try and not join them. Death by Reaper of Men was his only option, Lit had no idea how to take Jason’s roman fighting style as he managed to buy enough time to blast a hole in the ceiling to let the rain come inside removing the gold from the other victims, but used a carpet to keep Lit from turning back after Midas was tricked by Jason into touching him.
Jason after that grabbed statue Piper and Hedge grabbed statue Leo running out of the house. They hit the river to Leo coming out of his gold encasement. Piper however was not. They had to actually dunk her into the river to get the gold layer to come off but she wasn’t conscious yet unlike Leo. They made the decision to get themselves out of there. Jason opened up the gold backpack and harnessed the Venti.
They ended up flying five hundred miles, Jason was following the Vaper trail which lead them to where they were along with Jason’s natural or possibly goddess induced feeling they needed to stop at Pikes Peak, Colorado. The Venti had almost crashed them into the side of the mountain before Jason got them back into the backpack again. Leo and Hedge managed to find a small shallow cave that was just big enough to get them out of the raging storm but not deep enough to offer true protection. The snow was going sideways it was so bad. They just had to ride it out.
Leo got the fire going as Jason was pulling blankets out of his emergency camping kit Hari and Nico had thrown in his pack. They had enough blankets for everyone to curl up in. Piper finally came to, freezing and confused. It took some explaining but she came to understand what was happening. Mostly that according to Hedge, Aeolus’s floating palace should be anchored above them, right at the peak. This was one of his favorite spots to dock. But when Jason seemed not to see that as the whole reason, Piper remembered and mentioned the Hunters of Artemis.
They only worried about this new delay because they were running out of time. Jason moved to cuddle into Piper’s side so she could absorb his body heat as Leo cooked and explained about what his father had told him via dream. Which looped them back to a familiar topic no one would talk about. What was it that the gods thought they were stopping?
“What bothered me was the stuff my dad didn’t say. Like a couple of times, he was talking about the demigods, and how he had so many kids and all. I don’t know. He acted like getting the greatest demigods together was going to be almost impossible—like Hera was trying, but it was a really stupid thing to do, and there was some secret Hephaestus wasn’t supposed to tell me.”
Jason shifted to the point Piper could feel the tension in his arms. “Chiron was the same way back at camp,” Jason said. “He mentioned a sacred oath not to discuss—something. Coach, you know anything about that?”
“Nah. I’m just a satyr. They don’t tell us the juicy stuff.” Coach Hedge then started a rather impressive rant that none of them were willing to argue with. Which turned into learning that even the most violent satyrs were vegetarians. Leo was cooking burgers for them, Tofu for Piper and Coach Hedge and beef for Jason and himself. They were all hungry to the point even Piper’s stomach which usually rioted at the smell of cooked meat was willing to mutiny. Coach Hedge wasn’t that desperate.
Leo frowned as he was thinking “Hang on… Civil war… Nico mentioned it, something about the civil war being caused by demigods. But he flinched… as if trying to keep from saying something. Could that have something to do with it too?”
“Hari and Nico did seem to know more then anyone else.” Piper muttered
Jason sighed “They’re like that. You would be too if the dead told you secrets simply for asking.” They all looked at him as this seemed to just come out of no where but he was completely unfazed, he was used to it.
It was as they were eating that Piper spilled everything. The Nightmares, her father’s kidnapping, Jane being under Medea’s control. How she was supposed to sabotage the quest, and now kill Jason and Leo in exchange for her dad. She was crying and then getting mad. They made her feel even worse by supporting her. She didn’t want hugs though she got them anyway from both boys, she wanted to be called a fool and an idiot. She had screwed up and instead of angry they were understanding. Instead of thinking about the mission they were thinking about how to rescue her dad from a giant.
Weirdly enough it was actually Coach Hedge that actually was the most help in calming her down “Giant hasn’t gotten what he wants yet, so he still needs your dad for leverage. He’ll wait until the deadline passes, see if you show up. He wants you to divert the quest to this mountain, right?”
Piper nodded uncertainly.
“So that means Hera is being kept somewhere else,” Hedge reasoned. “And she has to be saved by the same day. So, you have to choose—rescue your dad, or rescue Hera. If you go after Hera, then Enceladus takes care of your dad. Besides, Enceladus would never let you go even if you cooperated. You’re obviously one of the seven in the Great Prophecy.”
“So, we have no choice,” Piper said miserably seeing herself as a useless daughter of a love goddess. “We have to save Hera, or the giant king gets unleashed. That’s our quest. The world depends on it. And Enceladus seems to have ways of watching me. He isn’t stupid. He’ll know if we change course and go the wrong way. He’ll kill my dad.”
“He’s not going to kill your dad,” Leo said. “We’ll save him.”
“We don’t have time!” Piper cried. “Besides, it’s a trap.”
“We’re your friends, beauty queen,” Leo said. “We’re not going to let your dad die. We just gotta figure out a plan.”
Coach Hedge grumbled. “Would help if we knew where this mountain was. Maybe Aeolus can tell you that. The Bay Area has a bad reputation for demigods. Old home of the Titans, Mount Othrys, sits over Mount Tam, where Atlas holds up the sky. I hope that’s not the mountain you saw.”
Piper tried to remember the vista in her dreams. “I don’t think so. This was inland.”
Jason frowned at the fire, like he was trying to remember something. “Bad reputation ... that doesn’t seem right. The Bay Area ...”
“You think you’ve been there?” Piper asked.
“I ...” He looked like he was almost on the edge of a breakthrough. Then the anguish came back into his eyes. “I don’t know. Hedge, what happened to Mount Othrys?”
Hedge was still eating his paper plate wrapped burger. “Well, Kronos built a new palace there last summer. Big nasty place, was going to be the headquarters for his new kingdom and all. Weren’t any battles there, though. Kronos marched on Manhattan, tried to take Olympus. If I remember right, he left some other Titans in charge of his palace, but after Kronos got defeated in Manhattan, the whole palace just crumbled on its own.”
“No,” Jason said.
Everyone looked at him.
“What do you mean, ‘No’?” Leo asked.
“That’s not what happened. I—” He tensed, looking toward the cave entrance. “Did you hear that?”
For a second, nothing. Then they all heard it, howls piercing the night.