Haunted || Leo Valdez

9 - Leo Gets to Meet His Big Bro

By the time Leo was through, his hands were black with grease and his clothes looked like he'd just lost a mud-wrestling contest. He slipped in the disk, connected the last wire, and sparks flew. The dragon shuddered. Its eyes began to glow.

Rebecca was impressed. She'd seen Leo put things together, like the pipe-cleaner helicopter earlier at the Grand Canyon, but she'd never have thought that he could fix the dragon.

"Better?" Leo asked. Rebecca rolled her eyes. The only downside was that Leo kept talking to the dragon like it was a dog.

The dragon made a sound like a high-speed drill. It opened its mouth and all its teeth rotated.

"I guess that's a yes," Rebecca muttered.

"Hold on, I'll free you," Leo said.

It took another thirty minutes to find the release clamps for the net and untangle the dragon, but finally it stood and shook the last bit of netting off its back. It roared triumphantly and shot fire at the sky.

"Seriously," Leo said. "Could you not show off?"

Creak? the dragon asked.

"You need a name," Leo decided. "I'm calling you Festus."

"Festus?" Rebecca repeated. "The Latin word for happy?"

The dragon whirred its teeth and grinned. At least Rebecca hoped it was a grin.

"Seems cool with him," Leo said. "But we still have a problem, because you don't have wings."

And he was back to talking to the dragon.

Festus tilted his head and snorted steam. Then he lowered his back in an unmistakable gesture. He wanted Leo and Rebecca to climb on.

"Where we going?" Leo asked. But he was too excited to wait for an answer. He climbed onto the dragon's back. Then he looked back at Rebecca expectantly.

"Uh..." Rebecca glanced at the dragon. "I can just walk."

"Uh, no." Leo grinned and offered a hand. "Live dangerously, yeah?"

"Said every demigod who lived dangerously and died."

"Aw, come on!"

Leo was so excited about this, it didn't seem like he was going to take no for an answer. Rebecca sighed, took Leo's hand, and pulled herself up behind him.

Festus bounded off into the woods. The dragon traveled until the trees were like skyscrapers and the canopy of leaves completely blotted out the stars. The dragon's glowing red eyes acted like headlights.

Finally they crossed a stream and came to a dead end, a limestone cliff a hundred feet tall—a solid, sheer mass the dragon couldn't possibly climb.

Festus stopped at the base and lifted one leg like a dog pointing.

"What is it?" Leo slid to the ground. Rebecca jumped down. They walked up to the cliff—nothing but solid rock. The dragon kept pointing.

"It's not going to move out of your way," Leo told him.

The loose wire in the dragon's neck sparked, but otherwise he stayed still. Leo put his hand on the cliff. Suddenly his fingers smoldered. Lines of fire spread from his fingertips like ignited gunpowder, sizzling across the limestone. The burning lines raced across the cliff face until they had outlined a glowing red door five times as tall as any person. Leo and Rebecca backed up and the door swung open.

"Perfectly balanced," he muttered. "That's some first-rate engineering."

The dragon unfroze and marched inside, as if he were coming home.