𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐚𝐦𝐩

Chapter o

Omicron - Fifteen
∆

Battle Against Hobo Santa

  "Tell me when it's over," Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding on to her so they couldn't fall, but still Thalia clutched his arm like it was the most important thing in the world.

  "It'll be fine, love," (y/n) promised.

  "Are… are we very high?"

  Cyrus looked down. Below them, a range of snowy mountains zipped by. He stretched out his foot and kicked snow off one of the peaks.

  "No," (y/n) said. "Not all that."

  "We are in the Sierras." Zoë yelled. "I have hunted here before. At this speed, we should be in San Francisco in a few hours."

  "Hey, hey, Frisco!" (y/n)'s angel said. "Yo, Chuck! We could visit those guys at the Mechanics Monument again! They know how to party!"

  "Oh, man," the other angel said. "I am so there!"

  "Ye' have visited San Francisco?" Cyrus asked.

  "We automatons gotta have some fun once in a while, right?" (y/n)'s statue said. "Those mechanics took us over to the de Young Museum and introduced us to these marble lady statues, see. And—"

  "Hank!" the other statue, Chuck, cut in. "They're kids, man."

  "Oh, right." If bronze statues could blush, Cyrus swore Hank did. "Back to flying."

  They sped up, so Cyrus could tell the angels were excited. The mountains fell away into hills, and then they were zipping along over farmland and towns and highways.

  Grover played his pipes to pass the time. Zoë got bored and started shooting arrows at random billboards as they flew by. Every time she saw a Target department store—and they passed dozens of them—she would peg the store's sign with a few bulls-eyes at a hundred miles an hour.

  Thalia kept her eyes closed the whole way. She muttered to herself a lot, like she was praying.

  "You did good back there," (y/n) told her, quietly. Cyrus still thought it was freaky that he could listen if he focused enough. "Zeus listened."

  It was hard to tell what she was thinking with her eyes closed.

  "Maybe," she said. "How did you get away from the skeletons in the generator room, anyway? You said they cornered you."

  (y/n) told her about a weird mortal girl, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who seemed to be able to see right through the Mist. Cyrus thought Thalia was going to call him crazy, but she just nodded.

  "Some mortals are like that," she said. "Nobody knows why."

  Suddenly Cyrus flashed on something he'd never considered.

  Mom was like that. She had seen the Minotaur on Half-Blood Hill and known exactly what it was. She hadn't been surprised at all last year when he'd told her his friend Tyson was really a Cyclops. Maybe she'd known all along. No wonder she'd been so scared for him as he was growing up. She saw through the Mist even better than he did.

  "Well, the girl was quite... annoying," (y/n) said. "But I'm glad I didn't vaporize her. That would've been bad."

  Thalia nodded. "Must be nice to be a regular mortal." She said that as if she'd given it a lot of thought.

"Where you guys want to land?" Hank asked, waking Cyrus up from a nap.

  He looked down and said, "Whoa."