The Lost Hero

Chapter 10

The other guy looked like he'd just stepped off one of Leo's mom's 1980s rock album covers—Journey, maybe, or Hall & Oates, or something even lamer. His ice-white hair was long and feathered into a mullet. He wore pointy-toed leather shoes, designer pants that were way too tight, and a god-awful silk shirt with the top three buttons open. Maybe he thought he looked like a groovy love god, but the guy couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds, and he had a bad case of acne.

So, they were Aphrodite's worst nightmare.

The angels pulled up in front of the dragon and hovered there, swords at the ready.

The hockey ox grunted. "No clearance."

"'Scuse me?" Leo said while Vivian said, "What?".

"You have no flight plan on file," explained the groovy love god. On top of his other problems, he had a French accent so bad Vivian was sure it was fake. "This is restricted airspace."

"Destroy them?" The ox showed off his gap-toothed grin.

The dragon began to hiss steam, ready to defend them. Jason summoned his golden sword and Vivian summoned her Celestial Bronze sword, but Leo cried, "Hold on!Let's have some manners here, boys. Can I at least find out who has the honor of destroying me?"

"I am Cal!" the ox grunted. He looked very proud of himself, like he'd taken a long time to memorize that sentence.

"That's short for Calais," the love god said. "Sadly, my brother cannot say words with more than two syllables—"

"Pizza! Hockey! Destroy!" Cal offered.

"—which includes his own name," the love god finished.

"I am Cal," Cal repeated. "And this is Zethes! My brother!"

"Wow," Leo said. "That was almost three sentences, man! Way to go." Vivian mentaly facepalmed.

Cal grunted, obviously pleased with himself.

"Stupid buffoon," his brother grumbled. "They make fun of you. But no matter. I am Zethes, which is short for Zethes. And the ladies there—" He winked at Piper and Vivian, but the wink was more like a facial seizure. "They can call me anything they like. Perhaps they would like to have dinner with a famous demigod before we must destroy you?"

Piper made a sound like gagging on a cough drop. "That's ... a truly horrifying offer."

"Holy Hades, hell no. I will send skeletons after you." Vivian threatened.

"It is no problem." Zethes wiggled his eyebrows ignoring the threat. "We are very romantic people, we Boreads."

"Boreads?" Jason cut in. "Do you mean, like, the sons of Boreas?"

"Ah, so you've heard of us!" Zethes looked pleased. "We are our father's gatekeepers. So you understand, we cannot have unauthorized people flying in his airspace on creaky dragons, scaring the silly mortal peoples."

He pointed below, and Leo saw that the mortals were starting to take notice. Several were pointing up—not with alarm, yet—more with confusion and annoyance, like the dragon was a traffic helicopter flying too low. Dang it! My focus in fading. Vivian thought. Controlling the Mist takes a lot of energy.

"Which is sadly why, unless this is an emergency landing," Zethes said, brushing his hair out of his acne-covered face, "we will have to destroy you painfully."

"Destroy!" Cal agreed, with a little more enthusiasm than Leo thought necessary.

"Wait!" Piper said. "This is an emergency landing."