Solstice

III

 Jared blinked between the girls, trying to piece together all that he had just heard. "Wait, wait, wait...Olympus? Hunters?"

 "Yeah," Sera deadpanned. "Now if you don't mind, we'll be on our way." 

 "Wait!" Jared said. "I can help you."

 At that, Sera and Daphne locked eyes, looking at Jared incredulously. "How?"

 "I'm from Montana," Jared scratched the back of his neck. "I could help you find out where you need to go." 

 "We know where to go," Sera tried.

 "But you don't know how to get there." Jared smiled, the trace of an impish smirk on his lips. "I can show you."

 Sera felt like she was seething, but she took another breath of the chilly air around her. She needed to focus. "Fine. You show us how to get there and then you leave us. It's for your own safety." 

 Jared looked skeptical, but nodded. "So...the first place you wanna go is the airport." 

 "We can't do that." Daphne and Sera said in unison. 

 Jared knit his eyebrows together. "Why not?"

 "We aren't permitted to fly," Sera said flatly, tugging on the end of her braid. "Zeus forbids it."

 Jared's eyes went funny. "Zeus? Like the Greek god?" 

 "Yes," Daphne said breezily. "He controls the air, and no one is allowed to travel through the air but Zeus and the other Olympians."

 "You talk about them as if they're real," Jared scoffed. 

 Sera rolled her eyes, turning on her heel. "I can't do this."

 "Hey, wait, I was kidding!" Jared called. "I'll...this sounds crazy, but my life's been a whole lot of crazy lately. I'll help you get to Montana, and in the meantime, you can explain everything that's been happening."

 "Why, what's been happening?" Daphne asked, but they began to walk.

 "I've been seeing these really weird things. Things that shouldn't exist like...I don't know, men with one eye, dragons, shadows where there's no one there." Jared explained, his voice hollow. "And now that I see you again, Sera, I feel like it's somehow all connected."

 "Why's that?" Sera asked, keeping her eyes on the snowy pavement.

 "Because you were always extraordinary," Jared spoke, slowing the rapid beat of her heart. "Always larger than life. And something tells me that whatever this is...it's just as intricate as you are." 

 Sera took a deep breath, but kept moving. She wouldn't do this again. But why was her heart thumping so loudly? It echoed in her ears, in her bones.

 "Sera," Daphne hedged.

 "What?" Sera asked.

 She looked over and saw that Daphne had drawn her bow, an arrow already strung. "Look."

 Sera followed Daphne's line of sight and instantly, her blood chilled. A trio of smoky figures loomed in a nearby alley, tendrils of stormy matter extending from their frames. The entire sky around them seemed to darken in that moment, like a storm was about to break. The temperature dropped, rain started to fall, and the figures in the alley only seemed to be the epicenter of it all.

 "Jared," Sera managed as she drew an arrow. "Run."

 The smoky figures started forward like they were made of air, gliding above the blacktop. Sera and Daphne fired, but their arrows flew clean through the storm spirits which kept advancing towards them.