Then, right next to Jason, the air began to shimmer. At first, Amoriel thought it was heat off the tarmac, or maybe gas fumes from the helicopter, but she'd seen something like this before in Medea's fountain. It was an Iris message. An image appeared in the air—a dark-haired girl in silver winter camouflage, holding a bow.
Jason stumbled back in surprise. "Thalia!"
"Thank the gods," said the Hunter. The scene behind her was hard to make out but Amoriel heard yelling, metal clashing on metal and explosions.
"We've found her," Thalia said. "Where are you?"
"Oakland," he said. "Where are you?"
"The Wolf House! Oakland is good; you're not too far. We're holding off the giant's minions, but we can't hold them forever. Get here before sunset, or it's all over."
"Then it's not too late?" Piper cried. Hope surged through them, but Thalia's expression quickly dampened it.
"Not yet," Thalia said. "But Jason—it's worse than I realized. Porphyrion is rising. Hurry."
"But where is the Wolf House?" he pleaded.
"Our last trip," Thalia said, her image starting to flicker. "The park. Jack London. Remember?"
This made no sense to Piper, but Jason looked like he'd been shot. He tottered, his face pale, and the Iris message disappeared.
"Bro, you all right?" Leo asked. "You know where she is?"
"Yes," Jason said. "Sonoma Valley. Not far. Not by air."
Amoriel looked like an electric shock ran through her body. She straightened up, and her eyes widened. When Leo asked what was wrong, she shook her head and brushed him off. Piper knew something was up, and she made a mental note to ask her about it later.
Amoriel turned to the ranger pilot, who'd been watching all this with an increasingly puzzled expression.
"Ma'am," Piper said with her best smile. "You don't mind helping us one more time, do you?"
"I don't mind," the pilot agreed.
"We can't take a mortal into battle," Jason said. "It's too dangerous." He turned to Leo. "Do you think you could fly this thing?"
"Um ..." Leo's expression didn't exactly reassure Amoriel. But then he put his hand on the side of the helicopter, concentrating hard as if listening to the machine.
"Bell 412HP utility helicopter," Leo said. "Composite four-blade main rotor, cruising speed twenty-two knots, service ceiling twenty-thousand feet. The tank is near full. Sure, I can fly it."
Amoriel smiled at the ranger again. "You don't have a problem with an under-aged unlicensed kid borrowing your copter, do you? We'll return it." As if the ranger could deny her from anything she wanted.
"I—" The pilot nearly choked on the words, but she got them out: "I don't have a problem with that."
Leo grinned. "Hop in, kids. Uncle Leo's gonna take you for a ride."
"Can you say something that's actually gonna make us want to ride it?" Amoriel asked with a groan, but like the rest of them, she hopped on anyway.
The sun was going down as they flew north over the Richmond Bridge, and Amoriel couldn't believe the day had gone so quickly. Once again, nothing like ADHD and a good fight to the death to make time fly.
Piloting the chopper, Leo was going pretty steady. Leo would pause for some time, and then start flipping switches pushing buttons. Then he would go silent again. This continued, until-
"Going okay?" Amoriel asked from the copilot's seat. She sounded more nervous than he looked, or tried to look.
"Aces," he said. "So what's the Wolf House?"
Jason knelt between their seats. "An abandoned mansion in the Sonoma Valley. A demigod built it—Jack London."
Leo couldn't seem to place the name.
"He an actor?"
"Writer," Amoriel said. "Adventure stuff, Call of the Wild, White Fang."
"Yeah," Jason said. "He was a son of Mercury—I mean, Hermes. He was an adventurer, traveled the world. He was even a hobo for a while. Then he made a fortune writing. He bought a big ranch in the country and decided to build this huge mansion—the Wolf House."
"Named that 'cause he wrote about wolves?" Leo guessed.
"Partially," Amoriel 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 Amoriel could see.
"So Jack London went to the Camp Half-Blood," Piper guessed.
"No," Jason said. "No, he didn't."
"Bro, you guys freaking me out with the mysterious talk. Are you remembering your pasts or not?"
"Pieces," Jason said. "Only pieces. None of it good. The Wolf House is on sacred ground. It's where London started his journey as a child—where he found out he was a demigod. That's why he returned there. He thought he could live there, claim that land, but it wasn't meant for him. The Wolf House was cursed. It burned in a fire a week before he and his wife were supposed to move in. A few years later, London died, and his ashes were buried on the site."
"So," Piper said, "how do you know all this?"
A shadow crossed their face.
"We started our journey there too," Amoriel said. "It's a powerful place for demigods, a dangerous place. If Gaea can claim it, use its power to entomb Hera on the solstice and raise Porphyrion—that might be enough to awaken the earth goddess fully."
Leo kept his hand on the joystick, guiding the chopper at full speed—racing toward the north. There was a small dark spot where they were headed. Amoriel could only hope they could go around it.
There were some sudden metal creaking sounds that did not sound good. Leo leveled out the chopper, and the creaking stopped.
"Thirty minutes out," Leo told us, though Amoriel wasn't sure how he knew. "If you want to get some rest, now's a good time."
Jason and Amoriel strapped themselves into the helicopter and passed out almost immediately. Piper and Leo stayed wide-awake.
After a few minutes of awkward silence, Leo said, "Your dad will be fine, you know. Nobody's gonna mess with him with that crazy goat around."
Piper glanced at him
"My dad," she said thoughtfully. "Yeah, I know. I was thinking about Jason and Amorie. I'm worried about them."
Leo nodded. The closer they got to that bank of dark clouds, the more Piper worried, too.
"They're starting to remember. That's got to make them a little edgy."
"But what if ... what if they're different persons?"
Leo had had the same thought. If the Mist could affect their memories, could Amoriel's whole personality be an illusion, too? If his girlfriend wasn't his girlfriend, and they were heading into a cursed mansion—a dangerous place for demigods—what would happen if Amoriel's full memory came back in the middle of a battle?
"Nah," Leo decided. "After all we've been through? I can't see it. We're a team. Jason and Amorie can handle it."
Piper smoothed her blue dress, which was tattered and burned from their fight on Mount Diablo. "I hope you're right. I need him ..." she cleared her throat. "I mean I need to trust him... and you obviously love Amoriel."
"I know," Leo said.
After seeing her dad break down, Piper couldn't afford to lose Jason as well. she'd just watched her dad, her cool suave movie star dad, reduced to near insanity. It made her feel insecure, too. If weakness was inherited, she wondered, could she break down the same way her dad did?
"Hey, don't worry," Leo said. "Piper, you're the strongest, most powerful beauty queen I've ever met, after Amorie of course. You can trust yourself. For what it's worth, you can trust me too."
The helicopter dipped in wind shear, and Piper almost jumped out of her skin. Leo cursed and righted the chopper.
Amoriel woke up due to the consistent rocking of the helicopter. Jason seem to wake up at the same time. He crawled forward, grabbing Leo's seat for balance.
"We've got to be getting close."
"Where are we, Leo?" Amoriel asked.
Leo was too busy wrestling with the stick to reply. Suddenly it didn't look so easy to drive the chopper. 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. There was a sudden beeping noise, and we 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 Leo yanked the stick, just clearing the treetops.
"There!" Jason shouted.
A small valley opened up before us, with the murky shape of a building in the middle. Leo aimed the helicopter straight for it. All around them were flashes of light that reminded Amoriel 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.
Leo set down the helicopter in an icy field about fifty yards from the house and killed the engine. They were about to relax when they heard a whistling sound and saw a dark shape hurtling toward them out of the mist.
"Out!" Leo screamed.
They leaped from the helicopter and barely cleared the rotors before a massive BOOM shook the ground, knocking Amoriel and Leo off their feet and splattering ice all over them.
Amoriel got up shakily and she then gave Leo a hand, seeing as she flattened. She 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 all right?" Jason ran up to them, Piper at his side. They both looked fine except for being speckled with snow and mud.
"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.
Behind them loomed Jack London's dream home—a massive ruin of red and gray stones and rough-hewn timber beams. Amoriel could imagine how it had looked before it burned down—a combination log cabin and castle, like a billionaire lumberjack, might build. But in the mist and sleet, the place had a lonely, haunted feel. Amoriel 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 Earthborn—burst out of the storm behind her, a raised club in each hand.
"Look out!" Leo yelled. We 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.
Thalia stood and retrieved her arrow, but the point had snapped off. "That was my last one." She kicked the pile of clay resentfully. "Stupid ogre."
"Nice shot, though," Leo said.
Thalia ignored him as usual. She hugged Jason and nodded to Amoriel and Piper. "Just in time. My Hunters are holding a perimeter around the mansion, but we'll be overrun any minute."
"Here, use some of these. İt's okay, mine's never run out." Amoriel handed Thalia some enchanted silver arrows. Thalia smiled at her gratefully.
"Thanks, Amorie."
"By Earthborn?" Jason asked.
"Here we go again," Amoriel muttered in annoyance as she released her sword, the pointy end still stained with ogre blood.
"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," Amoriel 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."
"Gaea already knows we're here," Amoriel said. "We're on her turf, guys," Amoriel muttered.
"Where's Hera?" 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.
All of them followed her into the ruined mansion.
Jason and Amoriel stepped over the threshold and immediately collapsed.
"Hey!" Leo caught Amoriel. "None of that, guys. What's wrong?"
"This place ..." Jason shook his head. "Sorry ... It came rushing back to me."
"We've been here before," Amoriel said.
"We both have," Thalia said. Her expression was grim like she was reliving someone's death. "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."
"That part I didn't know." Thalia frowned. "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.
"Maybe this isn't the time for questions," Leo suggested. "Show us the goddess."
Once inside, Jason and seemed to get their bearings. The house was built in a giant U, and Jason led them between the two wings to an outside courtyard with an empty reflecting pool. At the bottom of the pool, just as Jason had described from his dream, two spires of rock and root tendrils had cracked through the foundation.
One of the spires was much bigger—a solid dark mass about twenty feet high, and to Leo, it looked like a stone body bag. Underneath the mass of fused tendrils he 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.
On the opposite end of the pool, the other spire was smaller and more loosely woven. Each tendril was as thick as a telephone pole, with so little space between them that Leo doubted he could've gotten his arm through. Still, they could see inside. And in the center of the cage stood Hera.
But she didn't look like Hera. There was a grey light off her, and she was weak. The cage was slowly deflating her powers.
Leo dropped into the pool and approached the cage. "Hola, Tía. A little bit of trouble?"
So this was Tía Callida. Leo's psychotic babysitter.
Hera 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 cage with distaste—or maybe she was looking at the goddess. "We tried everything we could think of, Leo, but maybe my heart wasn't in it. If it was up to me, I'd just leave her in there."
"Ohh, Thalia Grace," the goddess 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!"
"What what!?" Amoriel snorted. But her amusement was short-lived.
"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. "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."
Thalia turned, leaped out of the pool, and stormed from the building.
Leo turned to Hera with grudging respect. "Intestinally challenged cows?"
"Focus on the cage, Leo," she grumbled. "And Jason—you are wiser than your sister. I chose my champions well."
"We're not your champion, lady," Jason said. "We're only helping you because you stole our memories and you're better than the alternative. Speaking of which, what's going on with that?" Amoriel asked.
She nodded to the other spire that looked like the king-size granite body bag. Was she imagining it, or had it grown taller since they'd gotten here?
"That, Amoriel," Hera said, "is the king of the giants being reborn."
"Gross," Amoriel said.
"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 guessed. "Or fertilizer."
The goddess glared at him, but Leo didn't look like he cared.
"Joke all you wish," Hera said in a clipped tone. "But at sundown, it will be too late. The giant will awake. 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."
Amoriel frowned at the giant's spire.
"Can't we blow it up or something?" Leo asked.
"Without me, you do not have the power," Hera said. "You might as well try to destroy a mountain."
"Done that once today," Amoriel said.
"Just hurry up and let me out!" Hera demanded.
Jason scratched his head. "Leo, can you do it?"
"I don't know." Leo tried not to panic. "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 gave him the godly stink-eye. "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 looked dizzy. The line of the prophecy-The forge and dove shall break the cage. "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 with cold. The temperature dropped so fast, Amoriel's breath changed to 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. Jason grabbed an ice-covered plank off the pool floor. Leo reached into his tool belt, but all he produced was a tin of breath mints. He shoved them back in and drew a hammer instead. Amoriel activated her bow and aimed an arrow towards the wolves.
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 its maw and dropped the statue for us 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 Piper pulled him back. The ground around Thalia's statue was already webbed with ice. Amoriel was scared that if Jason touched her, he might freeze too.
"Who did this?" Jason yelled. His body crackled with electricity. "I'll kill you myself!"
From somewhere behind the monsters, they heard a girl's laughter, clear and cold. Amoriel bared her teeth as khione stepped out of the mist in her snowy white dress, a silver crown atop her long black hair.
"For the love of gods and all things holy, it's you again," Amoriel said with her voice full of hatred.
"Bon Soir, mes amis," said Khione, the goddess of snow. She gave Leo a frosty smile, which made Amoriel's blood boil. "Alas, son of Hephaestus, you say you need time? I'm afraid time is one tool you do not have."
"What've you done?" Jason demanded.
"Oh, so many things," the snow goddess 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 prey for once."
The wolves snarled appreciatively.
"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 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."
Khione waved her hand, and ice encased the prison, sealing in the spaces between the earthen tendrils.
"That's better," the snow goddess 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 matters? 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 own 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," Jason 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 a 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."
"Gods, you truly are a bitch," Amoriel said.
"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." Khione smiled at him. "You see, Jason, your and the Cupid spawn's 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."
Piper and Leo didn't seem to understand what she was saying. But Jason and Amoriel knew. Jason and her's memories seemed to be returning fast enough for them to know that that plan could be very dangerous.
"You'll set demigods against demigods," he said.
"It's so easy!" said Khione. "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 charm-speak 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." Amoriel's eyes widened. "That's what Enceladus meant about destroy 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 these other two were to die. Reject that ridiculous destiny the Fates have given you. Live and be my champion, instead. Your skills would be quite useful."
Then Leo laughed so hard, he doubled over. "Yeah, join you. Right. Ok, you're hot but why would I go for you when I'm already dating the most beautiful girl in the world. Which idiot would choose you over her? And besides, lady, nobody messes with my dragon and gets away with it."
Amoriel gave the goddess a smug smirk. What she thought was clear. 'Nice try, bitch.'
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 the demigods, but Leo held up his hand. A wall of fire roared to life in front of us, 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!"
Amoriel charged forward, a lazy grin on her face and looking as much as a battle demon as she is. Amoriel Fletcher, the firstborn of Cupid, the daughter of the god of desire and there was a storm brewing inside her.