The Winds Of Heaven (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

21. The Wolf House

They hit storm clouds.

At first, Annabeth thought rocks were pelting the windshield. Then she realized it was sleet. Frost built up around the edges of the glass, and slushy waves of ice blotted out her view.

"An ice storm?" Y/N shouted over the engine and the wind. "Is it supposed to be this cold in Sonoma?"

Annabeth wasn't sure, but something in this storm seemed conscious, malevolent—as if it was intentionally slamming them.

Ethan, Jason, Piper and Leo woke up quickly. Squeezing together, they crawled forward, grabbing the front seats for balance. "We've got to be getting close," Jason said.

Annabeth was too busy wrestling with the stick to reply. Suddenly it wasn't so easy to drive the helicopter—not that it'd ever been. Its movements turned sluggish and jerky. The whole machine shuddered in the icy wind. The helicopter probably hadn't been prepped for cold-weather flying. The controls refused to respond, and they started to lose altitude.

Below them, the ground was a dark quilt of trees and fog. The ridge of a hill loomed in front of them and Annabeth yanked the stick, just clearing the treetops.

"There!" Jason shouted.

A small valley opened up before them, with the murky shape of a building in the middle. Annabeth aimed the helicopter straight for it. All around them were flashes of light that reminded her of the tracer fire at Midas's compound. Trees cracked and exploded at the edges of the clearing. Shapes moved through the mist. Combat seemed to be everywhere.

She set down the helicopter in an icy field about fifty yards from the house and killed the engine. She was about to relax when she heard a whistling sound and saw a dark shape hurtling toward them out of the mist.

"Out!" Annabeth screamed.

All six of them leaped from the helicopter and barely cleared the rotors before a massive BOOM shook the ground, knocking Annabeth off her feet and splattering ice all over her.

She got up shakily and saw that the world's largest snowball—a chunk of snow, ice, and dirt the size of a garage—had completely flattened the Bell 412.

"You're all right?" Y/N ran up to her, Ethan, Jason, Piper, and Leo at his side. They all looked fine except for being spreckled with snow and mud.

"Yeah." Annabeth shivered.

"Guess we owe that ranger lady a new helicopter," Ethan said.

Piper pointed south. "Fighting's over there." Then she frowned. "No . . . it's all around us."

She was right. The sounds of combat rang across the valley. The snow and mist made it hard to tell for sure, but there seemed to be a circle of fighting all around the Wolf House.

Behind them loomed Jack London's dream home—a massive ruin of red and gray stones and rough-hewn timber beams. Annabeth could imagine how it had looked before it burned down—between a log cabin and a castle, the same a billionaire lumberjack might build. But in the mist and sleet, the place had a lonely, haunted feel. Annabeth could totally believe the ruins were cursed.

"Jason!" a girl's voice called.

Thalia appeared from the fog, her parka caked with snow. Her bow was in her hand, and her quiver was almost empty. She ran toward them, but made it only a few steps before a six-armed ogre—one of the Gegenees—burst out of the storm behind her, a raised club in each hand.

"Look out!" Annabeth yelled. They rushed to help, but Thalia had it under control. She launched herself into a flip, notching an arrow as she pivoted like a gymnast and landed in a kneeling position. The ogre got a silver arrow right between the eyes and melted into a pile of clay.