OPHELIA PROBABLY SHOULD have been terrified by the idea of Leo, an unlicensed and inexperienced teenage boy, flying a helicopter into battle, but honestly—it was one of the least terrifying things that had happened over the course of the last few days.
"Going okay?" Piper asked from the co-pilot's seat.
"Aces," Leo said. "So, what's the Wolf House?"
Jason knelt between their seats. "An abandoned mansion in Sonoma Valley. A demigod built it—Jack London."
"He an actor?" Leo asked.
"Writer," Piper said. "Adventure stuff, right? Call of the Wild? White Fang?"
Ophelia nodded. "He's a child of Mercury, like me. He traveled the world, even lived as a hobo for a while. Then he got rich from writing, bought a ranch in the country and decided to build this huge mansion—the Wolf House."
"Named that 'cause he wrote about wolves?" Leo guessed.
"Partially," Jason said. "But the site, and the reason he wrote about wolves—he was dropping hints about his personal experience. There're a lot of holes in his life story—how he was born, who his dad was, why he wandered around so much—stuff you can only explain if you know he was a demigod."
The bay slipped behind them, and the helicopter continued north. Ahead of them, yellow hills rolled out as far as the eye could see.
"So Jack London went to Camp Half-Blood," Leo guessed.
"No," Ophelia said. "He didn't."
"Okay, you're both freaking me out with the mysterious talk," Leo said. "Are you guys getting your memories back or what?"
"Pieces," Jason said, grimacing slightly to himself. "Just pieces. None of it good. The Wolf House is sacred ground."
"It's where London started his journey—where he found out he was a demigod," Ophelia said, unsure how she knew all of this but certain it was the truth. "That's why he went back. He thought he could live there, claim that land, but it wasn't meant for him. The Wolf House was cursed—it burned down a week before London and his wife were supposed to move in. A few years later, London died, and his ashes were buried on the site. His ghost haunts it to this day."
"So," Piper said, "how do you guys know all this?"
Jason looked at Ophelia, something electric passing between them. "We started our journeys there," he said. "It's a powerful place for demigods, a dangerous place. If Gaea can claim it, use its powers to entomb Hera on the solstice and raise Porphyrion—that might be enough to awaken the earth goddess fully."
It was quiet for a few moments as that sank in, then Leo said, "Thirty minutes out. If you want to get some rest, now's a good time."
Ophelia didn't need to be told twice. She leaned her head on Jason's shoulder and was out in seconds.
❖
After a blissfully dreamless nap, Ophelia woke to the sound of something—multiple somethings—hitting the helicopter's windshield.
"An ice storm?" Piper shouted over the engine and the wind. "Is it supposed to be this cold in Sonoma?"
Jason had been startled awake by the commotion as well. "We've got to be getting close."
Leo was too busy trying to steer the copter to respond. The aircraft shuddered in the icy wind and they began 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 Leo yanked the stick, just clearing the treetops.
"There!" Ophelia shouted.
A small valley opened up before them, with the murky shape of a building in the middle. Ophelia knew it was the Wolf House, the place where she had trained with a she-wolf and a gentleman ghost. It felt like another life, but it was her life—it was the beginning of her journey, where she stopped being a child and became a soldier far too young.
Just like her mother, her aunt, her brother. Just like the thousands of heroes that had come before her.
Ophelia reached into her pack, taking out the bag full of ambrosia and breaking off a piece. She needed to be in as close to perfect working order as she could be with a still-aching stab wound in her side. The ambrosia still tasted like chocolate chip cookies, but judging by the heat that coursed through her veins as it went down, she was pretty sure she was toeing the line between healing and spontaneous combustion.
Leo aimed the helicopter straight for the valley. All around them were flashes of light. Trees cracked and exploded at the edges of the clearing. Shapes moved through the fog—there was combat everywhere.
Leo set down the helicopter in an icy field about fifty yards from the house and killed the engine. Before any of them could relax, there was a whistling sound, and Leo screamed, "Out!"
They all leaped from the helicopter and barely cleared the rotors before a massive BOOM shook the ground.
Leo was knocked off his feet. He got up shakily as the rest of them ran over to him.
"You all right?" Jason asked.
"Yeah." Leo shivered. "Guess we owe that ranger lady a new helicopter."
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.
"Jason!" a girl's voice called.
Thalia appeared from the fog, her parka caked in 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 Earthborn—burst out of the storm behind her, a raised club in each hand.
"Look out!" Leo yelled. They rushed to help, but Thalia had it covered. 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.
Thalia stood and retrieved her arrow, but the point snapped off. "That was my last one." She kicked the pile of clay resentfully. "Stupid ogre."
"Nice shot, though," Leo complimented.
Thalia ignored him, pulling Jason into a hug and nodding at Piper and Ophelia. "Just in time. My Hunters are holding a perimeter around the mansion, but we'll be overrun any minute." She frowned at Ophelia's bloody shirt. "You good to fight?"
"If I can stand, I can fight," she answered, pulling her compass out of her pocket.
Thalia nodded with a look of approval.
"We're fighting Earthborn?" Jason asked.
"And wolves—Lycaon's minions." Thalia blew a fleck of ice off her nose. "Also storm spirits—"
"But we gave them to Aeolus!" Piper protested.
"Who tried to kill us," Leo reminded her. "Maybe he's helping Gaea again."
"I don't know," Thalia said. "But the monsters keep re-forming almost as fast as we can kill them. We took the Wolf House with no problem: surprised the guards and sent them straight to Tartarus. But then this freak snowstorm blew in. Wave after wave of monsters started attacking. Now we're surrounded. I don't know who or what is leading the assault, but I think they planned this. It was a trap to kill anyone who tried to rescue Hera."
"Where is she?" Jason asked.
"Inside," Thalia said. "We tried to free her, but we can't figure out how to break the cage. It's only a few minutes until the sun goes down. Hera thinks that's the moment when Porphyrion will be reborn. Plus, most monsters are stronger at night. If we don't free Hera soon—"
She didn't need to finish the thought.
The four of them followed her into the ruined mansion.
Jason collapsed as soon as they stepped into the house.
"Hey!" Leo caught him. "None of that, man. What's wrong?"
"This place..." Jason shook his head. "Sorry... It came rushing back to me."
"So you have been here," Piper said.
"We both have," Thalia said, her expression grim. "This is where my mom took us when Jason was a child. She left him here, told me he was dead. He just disappeared."
"She gave me to the wolves," Jason murmured. "At Hera's insistence. She gave me to Lupa."
It was tradition.
The memories came flooding in, blurry but there—finally within reach. Ophelia remembered kneeling on the grass as ghosts overwhelmed her with their emotions, with their pleas, with their attempts to take her strength for their own. She remembered her ghost brother's instructions, teaching her how to control the curse she'd inherited rather than let it control her. She remembered the weeks of endless fighting drills as Lupa snarled at her, correcting her stances, reminding her to never let her guard down, to never give up with a sword still in her grasp.
The Wolf House was where their line of demigods came to train, to prove themselves strong enough to serve the legion and Rome. It was where Ophelia had let go of her anger at her mother and what the curse had turned her into; her fury at the gods for taking her aunt away from her too young; her resentment for Trivia for the curse that had ruined Ophelia and her mother's lives.
It was the place that had made her into a soldier.
"That part I didn't know," Thalia said, frowning at her brother. "Who is Lupa?"
An explosion shook the building. Just outside, a blue mushroom cloud billowed up, raining snowflakes and ice like a nuclear blast made of cold instead of heat. Ophelia's bare arms prickled with goosebumps as she shivered.
"Maybe this isn't the time for questions," Leo suggested. "Show us the goddess."
Once inside, Jason and Ophelia led the way to an outside courtyard with an empty reflecting pool—the sight of her first dream about Lupa, the night before they set off on their quest. It looked the same as it had in her dream: two spires of rock and root tendrils cracking through the foundation of the pool.
One was much bigger than the other—a solid dark mass about twenty feet high. Underneath the mass of fused tendrils, Ophelia could make out the shape of a head, wide shoulders, a massive chest and arms, like the creature was stuck waist deep in the earth.
No, not stuck—rising.
At the other end of the pool, the other spire was smaller and more loosely woven. Each tendril was as thick as a telephone pole, with little space between them. Still, Ophelia could see Hera inside, and she didn't look pleased.
"Took you long enough." Ophelia looked at the edge of the reflecting pool, where the ghost of Jack London was standing with his arms crossed over his chest. Behind him, around two dozen ghosts stood—spirits of fallen demigods, who either hadn't been strong enough to survive Lupa's training, or who returned to the Wolf House in the wake of their death to guard the place that had given them their first taste of battle.
Ophelia raised her chin. "We're here now."
"Good." Jack looked at her with an appraising look. "I hope you've at least remembered some of the lessons I taught you here."
"I remember enough," she said. "Are you here to help?"
Her dead half-brother cracked the smallest of smiles. "Of course."
Ophelia nodded, then returned her attention to the goddess.
Leo dropped into the pool and approached the cage, his friends following close behind. "Hola, Tía. Little bit of trouble?"
The goddess crossed her arms and sighed in exasperation. "Don't inspect me like I'm one of your machines, Leo Valdez. Get me out of here!"
Thalia stepped next to him and looked at the goddess with distaste. "We tried everything we could think of, Leo, but maybe my heart wasn't in it. If it were up to me, I'd just leave her in there."
"Ohh, Thalia Grace," Hera said. "When I get out of here, you'll be sorry you were ever born."
"Save it!" Thalia snapped. "You've been nothing but a curse to every child of Zeus for ages. You sent a bunch of intestinally-challenged cows after my friend Annabeth—"
"She was disrespectful!"
"You dropped a statue on my legs."
"It was an accident!"
"And you took my brother!" Thalia's voice cracked with emotion. "Here—on this spot. You ruined our lives. We should leave you to Gaea!"
"Hey," Jason intervened gently. "Thalia—Sis—I know. But this isn't the time. You should help your Hunters."
Thalia clenched her jaw. "Fine. For you, Jason. But if you ask me, she isn't worth it." She turned, leaped out of the pool, and stormed away from the building.
Leo turned to Hera. "Intestinally-challenged cows?"
"Focus on the cage, Leo," the goddess grumbled. "And Jason—you are wiser than your sister. I chose my champion well."
"I'm not your champion, lady," Jason countered. "I'm only helping you because you stole our memories and you're better than the alternative. Speaking of which, what's going on with that?"
He nodded to the other spire, where the creature sat half-way in the earth.
"That, Jason," Hera said, "is the king of the giants being reborn."
"Gross," Piper said. Ophelia nodded her agreement.
"Indeed," Hera said. "Porphyrion, the strongest of his kind. Gaea needed a great deal of power to raise him again—my power. For weeks I've grown weaker as my essence was used to grow him a new form."
"So you're like a heat lamp," Leo said. "Or fertilizer."
Hera glared at him. "Joke all you wish," she said in a clipped tone. "But at sundown, it will be too late. The giant will awaken. He will offer me a choice: marry him, or be consumed by the earth. And I cannot marry him. We will all be destroyed. And as we die, Gaea will awaken.
Leo frowned at the giant's spire. "Can't we blow it up or something?"
"Without me, you do not have the power," Hera said. "You might as well try to destroy a mountain."
"Done that once today," Jason said.
"Just hurry up and let me out!" Hera demanded.
Jason scratched his head. "Leo, can you do it?"
"I don't know," Leo said. "Besides, if she's a goddess, why hasn't she busted herself out?"
Hera paced furiously around her cage, cursing in Ancient Greek. "Use your brain, Leo Valdez. I picked you because you're intelligent. Once trapped, a god's power is useless. Your own father trapped me once in a golden chair. It was humiliating! I had to beg—beg him for my freedom and apologize for throwing him off Olympus."
"Sounds fair," Leo said.
Hera glared at him. "I've watched you since you were a child, son of Hephaestus, because I knew you could aid me at this moment. If anyone can find a way to destroy this abomination, it is you."
"But it's not a machine. It's like Gaea thrust her hand out of the ground and..." Leo paused. "Hold on. I do have an idea. Piper, I'm going to need your help. And we're going to need time."
The air turned brittle and cold. The temperature dropped suddenly, turning Ophelia's breath into mist. Frost coated the walls of the Wolf House. Venti rushed in—but instead of winged men, these were shaped like horses, with dark storm-cloud bodies and manes that crackled with lightning. Some had silver arrows sticking out of their flanks. Behind them came red-eyed wolves and the six-armed Earthborn.
Piper drew her dagger. Ophelia summoned her sword and threw it to Jason, who caught it easily, and she pulled out her silver switchblade.
One of the wolves padded forward. It was dragging a human-size statue by the leg. At the edge of the pool, the wolf opened up its jaw and dropped the statue for them to see—an ice sculpture of a girl, an archer with short spiky hair and a surprised look on her face.
"Thalia!" Jason rushed forward, but Ophelia and Piper pulled him back. The ground around Thalia's statue was already webbed with ice—if he touched it, he might freeze, too.
"Who did this?" Jason yelled. His body crackled with electricity. "I'll kill you myself!"
From somewhere behind the monsters, Ophelia heard a girl's laugh, clear and cold. She stepped out of the mist in her snowy white dress, a silver crown atop her long black hair.
"Bon soir, mes amis," Khione said. She gave Leo a frosty smile. "Alas, son of Hephaestus, you say you need time? I'm afraid time is one tool you do not have."
The snow goddess smiled menacingly at them, her dark eyes glittering as a dagger of ice grew in her hand.
"What've you done?" Jason demanded.
"Oh, so many things," Khione purred. "Your sister's not dead, if that's what you mean. She and her Hunters will make fine toys for our wolves. I thought we'd defrost them one at a time and hunt them down for amusement. Let them be the prey for once."
The wolves snarled appreciatively, and Ophelia tightened her grip on her switchblade.
"Yes, my dears." Khione kept her eyes on Jason. "Your sister almost killed their king, you know. Lycaon's off in a cave somewhere, no doubt licking his wounds, but his minions have joined us to take revenge for their master—and their fallen brothers. They'll enjoy tearing you into pieces, Lupus Interfectorem." She settled her cold eyes on Ophelia for a moment, before returning her attention to Jason. "And soon Porphyrion will arise, and we shall rule the world."
"Traitor!" Hera shouted. "You meddlesome, D-list goddess! You aren't worthy to pour my wine, much less rule the world."
Khione sighed. "Tiresome as ever, Queen Hera. I've been wanting to shut you up for millennia." She waved her hand, and ice encased the cage, sealing the spaces between the earthen tendrils. "That's better," she said. "Now, demigods, about your death—"
"You're the one who tricked Hera into coming here," Jason said. "You gave Zeus the idea of closing Olympus."
The wolves snarled and the storm spirits whinnied, ready to attack, but Khione held up her hand. "Patience, my loves. If he wants to talk, what matter? The sun is setting, and time is on our side. Of course, Jason Grace. Like snow, my voice is quiet and gentle, and very cold. It's easy for me to whisper to the other gods, especially when I am only confirming their deepest fears. I also whispered in Aeolus's ear that he should issue an order to kill demigods. It is a small service for Gaea, but I'm sure I will be well rewarded when her sons the giants come to power."
"You could've killed us in Quebec," Ophelia said. "Why let us live?"
Khione wrinkled her nose. "Messy business, killing you in my father's house, especially when he insists on meeting all visitors. I did try, you remember. It would've been lovely if he'd agreed to turn you to ice. But once he'd given you guarantee of safe passage, I couldn't openly disobey him. My father is an old fool. He lives in fear of Zeus and Aeolus, but he's still powerful. Soon enough, when my new masters have awakened, I will depose Boreas and take the throne of the North Wind, but not just yet. Besides, my father did have a point. Your quest was suicidal. I fully expected you to fail."
"And to help us with that," Leo said, "you knocked our dragon out of the sky over Detroit. Those frozen wires in his head—that was your fault. You're gonna pay for that."
"You're also the one who kept Enceladus informed about us," Piper added. "We've been plagued by snowstorms the whole trip."
"Yes, I feel so close to all of you now!" Khione said. "Once you made it past Omaha, I decided to ask Lycaon to track you down so Jason could die here, at the Wolf House." She smiled at him. "You see, Jason, your blood spilled on this sacred ground will taint it for generations. Your demigod brethren will be outraged, especially when they find the bodies of these two from Camp Half-Blood. They'll believe the Greeks have conspired with giants. It will be... delicious."
"No," Ophelia breathed. She'd regained enough memories to know just how dangerously effective Khione's plan could be.
"You'll set demigod against demigod," Jason said.
"It's so easy!" she said. "As I told you, I only encourage what you would do anyway."
"But why?" Piper spread her hands. "Khione, you'll tear the world apart. The giants will destroy everything. You don't want that. Call off your monsters."
Khione hesitated, then laughed. "Your persuasive powers are improving, girl. But I am a goddess. You can't charmspeak me. We wind gods are creatures of chaos! I'll overthrow Aeolus and let the storms run free. If we destroy the mortal world, all the better! They never honored me, even in Greek times. Humans and their talk of global warming. Pah! I'll cool them down quickly enough. When we retake the ancient places, I will cover the Acropolis in snow."
"The ancient places." Leo's eyes widened. "That's what Enceladus meant about destroying the roots of the gods. He meant Greece."
"You could join me, son of Hephaestus," Khione said. "I know you find me beautiful. It would be enough for my plan if just these other three die. Reject that ridiculous destiny the Fates have given you. Live and be my champion, instead. Your skills would be quite useful."
Leo looked stunned, as if he was sure the goddess was talking to someone else. For a split second, Ophelia feared he'd accept her offer. Then he laughed, so hard he doubled over. "Yeah, join you. Right. Until you get bored of me and turn me into a Leo-sicle? Lady, nobody messes with my dragon and gets away with it. I can't believe I thought you were hot."
Khione's face turned red. "Hot? You dare insult me? I am cold, Leo Valdez. Very, very cold."
She shot a blast of wintry sleet at them, but Leo held up his hand. A wall of fire roared to life in front of them, and the snow dissolved in a steamy cloud.
Leo grinned. "See, lady, that's what happens to snow in Texas. It—freaking—melts."
Khione hissed. "Enough of this. Hera is failing. Porphyrion is rising. Kill the demigods. Let them be our king's first meal!"
Ophelia met Jack's eyes. Now, she mouthed.
Ophelia raised her switchblade, her friends tensed, and the monsters charged.
❖
i have a 12-page paper due in approx. 5 hours and i'm only 4 pages in so... enjoy the update & let's hope i don't miss my deadline