He put his arms around her and held her. They scooted closer to the fire. Coach Hedge chewed on his club and spit splinters into the fire.
Alex and Leo giggled as they saw their awkward exchange.
"Oh shut up" Piper huffed.
"You two are so cute" Alex whispered.
"Hey, do I say anything about you and Leo?" Jason asked, a blush rising to his cheek. As if on queue Alex and Leo jumped apart and cleared their throats.
Leo broke out some cooking supplies and started frying burger patties on an iron skillet desperate to get away from the awkwardness. "So, guys, long as you're cuddled up for story time... something I've been meaning to tell you. On the way to Omaha, I had this dream. Kinda hard to understand with the static and the Wheel of Fortune breaking in-"
"Wheel of Fortune?" Piper asked.
"The thing is," he said, "my dad Hephaestus talked to me."
Leo told them about his dream. In the firelight, with the wind howling, the story was even creepier. Alex could imagine the static-filled voice of the god warning about giants who were the sons of Tartarus, and about Leo losing some friends along the way.
Alex told them of her dream too, though she left out the part about her and Leo.
"I don't understand. If demigods and gods have to work together to kill the giants, why would the gods stay silent? If they need us-" Piper was broken off.
"Ha," said Coach Hedge. "The gods hate needing humans. They like to be needed by humans, but not the other way around. Things will have to get a whole lot worse before Zeus admits he made a mistake closing Olympus."
"Coach," Alex said, "that was almost an intelligent comment."
Hedge huffed. "What? I'm intelligent! I'm not surprised you cupcakes haven't heard of the Giant War. The gods don't like to talk about it. Bad PR to admit you needed mortals to help beat an enemy. That's just embarrassing."
"There's more, though," Jason said. "When I dreamed about Hera in her cage, she said Zeus was acting unusually paranoid. And Hera-she said she went to those ruins because a voice had been speaking in her head. What if someone's influencing the gods, like Medea influenced us?"
Alex shuddered. She'd had a similar thought-that some force they couldn't see was manipulating things behind the scenes, helping the giants. Maybe the same force was keeping Enceladus informed about their movements, and had even knocked their dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Perhaps the sleeping Dirt Woman, or another servant of hers...
Leo set hamburger buns on the skillet to toast. "Yeah, Hephaestus said something similar, like Zeus was acting weirder than usual. But 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."
"Maybe it was the identity of the sleeping woman or about the roman thing" Alex wondered out loud, then looked at Jason"I've been thinking about it... the sleeping woman calling Jason son of Jupiter- the roman form, the imperial gold weapon and your training..."
"What are you getting at?" Leo asked.
"What if... the roman gods are real too? What if... there's another camp- a roman one?"
Jason seemed to ponder on it, but Piper broke the silence.
"We need to talk." She sat up so she could face Jason. "I don't want to hide anything from you guys anymore."
BẠN ĐANG ĐỌC
Home|| Leo Valdez
Fanfiction"After all those years on the streets, I finally feel like I'm home" "You're lying" Leo didn't even have to look up, he knew her better than anyone. "You're right, I was always at home with you" In which there's an unlikely friendship (... and ma...
