Where You Go ― Jason Grace

viii. to destroy or not destroy, that is the question

Quietly, she said, "We have to succeed. Not just to save the world, which—yeah, that's all well and good and super important, but... we need our memories back. I'm so sick of not remembering who I am, who the people are that I love, where I come from... It's like I'm a puzzle with all of its pieces missing." She bit her lip. "I hate it." 

Jason rested his chin on her shoulder. "I know," he murmured. "I hate it too. But we'll get our memories back. I'll make sure of it." 

❖

"Tell me that's Quebec and not Santa's workshop," Leo said. 

Ophelia looked down at city below them. Snow covered the fields around it, but the city itself glowed warmly in the winter sunset. In the center stood a castle, massive with red brick walls and a square tower with a peaked, green gabled roof. She looked back down at her compass. 0.3 mi.

"Yeah, Quebec City," Piper confirmed. "One of the oldest cities in North America. Founded around sixteen hundred or so?" 

Leo raised an eyebrow at the daughter of Aphrodite. "Your dad do a movie about that too?" 

Piper made a face. "I read, okay? I'm not an airhead." 

"Feisty!" Leo said. 

"What's that building?" Ophelia asked, nodding at said building. 

"A hotel, I think," Piper said. 

Leo laughed. "No way."

As they grew closer,  Ophelia saw that Piper was right. The entrance was bustling with doormen, valets, bellhops; sleek sports cars idled in the drive, with people in elegant suits and winter coats hurrying into the castle to escape the cold. 

"The North Wind staying in a hotel?" Leo questioned. "That can't be—"

"Heads up, guys," Jason interrupted. "We got company!"

Ophelia saw what he was talking about. Rising from the top of the tower were two winged figures—angry-looking angels with swords, coming right at them. 

Festus swooped to a halt in midair, wings beating and talons bared. "Steady, boy," Leo muttered. 

"I don't like this," Jason said, his arm tense around Ophelia's waist. "They look like storm spirits." 

Ophelia watched the strange angels approach, her fingers clutching her now-closed compass, ready to slide her finger through the ring and summon her weapon the moment things turned dicey. They looked more solid than the venti they'd faced at the skywalk, young-looking with icy-white hair and their feathery purple wings. They carried jagged bronze swords, and they didn't look like they'd hesitate to use them. 

The angels pulled up to the front of Festus and hovered there. The larger of the two grunted, "No clearance." 

"Excuse me?" Leo said. 

"You have no flight plan on file," the other angel explained, his French accent so awful it sounded fake. He looked like he'd just walked out of the 1980s, but he certainly hadn't been winning any modeling contracts with his mullet-styled hair and horrific sense of fashion. "This is restricted airspace."

"Destroy them?" the larger one suggested.  

Festus hissed steam, like a guard dog prepared to defend his owners. Ophelia's grip on her compass tightened, about to summon her sword, but Leo called out, "Hold on! Let's have some manners here, boys. Can I at least find out who has the honor of destroying me?"

Ophelia had to hand it to Leo, he seemed to have a knack for stalling. 

"I am Cal!" the big angel grunted proudly.