Oh my… the story is coming to an end in a few chapters…:) I actually wrote the entire ending during the English Final, when I was bored out of my mind and dying a slow, painful death.

Sorry for typos/OOCness. End of school countdown: 4 and a half days…

Happy Reading!

Chapter 40

Jason

Jason felt like he'd just fought a giant and it had kicked his butt.

He had, however, just watch his old friend Reyna's mother, Bellona, torture his sister without even laying a finger on her, and then watched Bellona go head to head with Taygete, who was still back there fighting the Roman goddess of war.

Jason had always thought of Bellona as a pretty cool goddess, because Reyna had always been one heck of a fighter. He had always thought that it would be cool to have Bellona as a mother. How wrong his judgment had been. Bellona was one bad cookie.

He wished Coach Hedge was there. He would've put up one heck of a fight with his baseball bat.

The group of them sprinted through the woods as the sounds of Taygete and Bellona's battle raged on behind them. Jason tried to calm down the terrible storm but nothing would happen. The best he could do was work with what was going on. He ran backwards and redirected the lightning from the sky back through the trees in a horizontal line. His friends screamed, and once it was over, he heard Bellona screamed, "Jupiter scum!"

He felt the love.

It was the least he could do, since Taygete was risking everything so that they could escape in one piece.

Jason had a terrible feeling that Taygete wouldn't be the one winning this fight, but she could still hold Bellona off just until they could get to Old Faithful. After that, everything would be okay.

"I can't believe Taygete did that," Hazel screamed through the rain as they continued to run. "She did that for us."

Thalia looked like she was crying, but it was hard to tell. Jason wanted to give her a hug but knew that it wasn't the right time. She had to be hurt, and she didn't show it. She had retrieved her bow and arrows. But in that moment, Thalia sounded furious. "News flash, Hazel," she said. "She didn't do it for me or for you. She did it because she believes that we are the best hope for the survival of the Olympians."

"I-I didn't mean it like—" Hazel tried to say, but Frank was at her side. He put a hand on her shoulder, silencing her with one quick touch.

They ran for quite some time after that in silence, but Jason was close enough to Thalia that he could hear her mumbling. He could've sworn that he heard her say something like, "Egotistical Romans." He narrowed his eyes at her. It was annoying that she was kind of prejudiced against the Romans, which were his people, but he understood why. Camp Jupiter had attacked her friends, and she was defensive.

Suddenly, the entire forest opened up, and they were on a road.

They all stopped, unsure of where to go from there on out. Piper looked down the road and jumped. "I got an idea." Jason followed her gaze and his eyes met a giant van that sort of looked like a Mystery Machine rip off. What was she getting at?

Piper ran into the middle of the road, right in front of the car. She started waving her arms and jumping up and down. The driver slammed down on the brakes so hard that Jason heard squeaking. He couldn't react fast enough to push her out of the way, but she seemed like she had everything under control.

The construction van stopped not five feet from her. "Should we go out there with her?" asked Jason.

"I think your girlfriend can handle this," Frank said earnestly, and they just waited from the safety of the trees.

Jason could hear the entire conversation. "Are you okay?" the man asked worriedly. Piper was still beautiful, but she was scratched up and covered in mud. Plus, she was soaking wet and shivering from the rain. It was pretty convincing that she was not okay.

Piper moved to the side, and Jason saw the man. He looked like he was in his late fifties with a huge beard and jean overalls. In other words, he looked a like a total creeper, with a van included. "No, sir, I'm not okay at all." And that was when Jason realized Piper's plan.

Her voice was laced with charmspeak.

Even from his spot on the side of the road, Jason could see the man's eyes clouding over from the power. "Well, is there anything I can do to help?" He spoke as if he were in a trance or an eidolon had taken over his body.

"Actually there is a lot that you can do to help," Piper told him. "Do you mind if we take your car from you? We've been traveling on our feet for a long time now, and we were almost killed a few minutes ago, so you're car would help us out a lot." The charmspeak in her voice was so heavy that Jason felt like getting up and helping her find a car.

The man didn't even ask a question about why they were almost killed. Instead, he asked, "We? Where are your friends?" Okay, he sounded like a complete creeper now.

"Please let us take your car. I promise we'll come right back with it." Now, that was a lie.

"Well, if you insist." The man got out of his car and put on a cap. He tossed Piper the keys. "I'll just go back to the old filling station. It's not too far from here… just a few miles. I should be good, so please meet me back there if possible."

"Will do, sir. Oh, and can you give us directions to Old Faithful."

"Yep. It's just up the road a little ways, but you can't miss the signs. It's quite an amazing sight, but the park is usually closed down in this kind of weather, because no one wants to look at some geyser in the rain. Are you sure that's where you wanna go? The filling station has a Golden Corral."

The second to last place Jason wanted to be at was some Golden Corral with little kids picking their noses and then sticking their fingers into some chocolate waterfall. The last place he wanted to be was anywhere within a ten mile range of Bellona, and he already was, so the faster they all got out of there, the better.

"I'm sure."

"Be careful then." The man tipped his hat and then started walking away like he didn't have a care in the world. Charmspeak could do the weirdest things.

Piper beckoned her friends over. "Who can drive?" she asked, and everyone looked at Thalia.

Thalia shrugged. "I'm not the best, but Artemis gave me makeshift lessons. I'll do my best."

Piper sat Jason sat in the front of the car with Thalia, while the other piled into the back with all of the man's tools. Once Thalia put the keys in and started driving, Jason wasn't sure if they had made the right decision, because Thalia was like a bat out of hell.

They practically flew down the road, and Jason was thankful that there weren't many cars on the road. Thalia zigzagged back and forth across the median, causing the two of them to hold on for dear life. Thalia as right; she could drive. But she definitely could not drive well.

"Hey, the speed limit is sixty. You're going ninety!" Piper said as calmly as she could, but she sounded a little scared.

"Screw the stupid speed limit. It's either go fast or die."

"I think it's both, actually," Jason heard Leo mumble from the back. They drove on for a few minutes, and the road had no turnoffs.

"You did great out there," Jason whispered into Piper's ear and he kissed her on the cheek. She turned around and smiled at him. Right before they started to kiss, Thalia groaned. "I don't want to see my little brother making out with anyone, so please stop." They pulled away, blushing.

Jason clicked the radio on, and it was on a local new station. The reporter was saying, "Nasty weather patterns are terrorizing the locals that live near Yellowstone National Park. The pop-up storm seemed to materialize from nowhere and has been destroying property and wildlife. So far, the death count is at three civilians, all from unfortunate lightning strikes, and a forest fire has started near Lake Village. The torrential rain seems to do little to stop it."

He turned to radio off. He didn't want to hear any more of what Bellona was doing to the poor people. She was the destroyer of civilizations, and she was living up to her name.

"Did the reporter say Lake Village?" Thalia asked. Jason nodded. "Then we aren't far from Old Faithful at all!"

Soon, a sign came up that said, "Old Faithful National Geyser, 10 Miles." That caused Thalia to press down even harder on the gas. Jason prayed to his father that Thalia wouldn't cause them to crash.

Parking signs for Old Faithful came up, and Thalia made a hard turn into it. There was only one car in the parking lot, and Jason couldn't see a soul in sight. They all scrambled out of the car and ran down the worn path that had a wooden arrow sign saying, "Old Faithful Dead Ahead."

They came to a large clearing with asphalt, probably where people stood to watch the geyser as it blew up tons of thermal water. Jason almost wanted to wait until it did so again, but that wasn't a good idea. Even from where he was, Jason could see how cool Old Faithful was and why it was so popular. It had the oddest darkish sand around the very edges but then faded into a pool of crystal blue. The geyser was blocked off by warning's and railing, because only someone with a death wish would bother jumping into it and burning their skin up.

"Go, you must go," Thalia told them.

"What!" Jason exclaimed when Thalia pushed him along. "We can't just leave you here. You have to come with us!"

"I have to join my Hunters. I am their lieutenant. We have to go to Camp Jupiter, and you must go back to Epirus to the House of Hades. You and your friends must end this, once and for all." There was an explosion a few miles away, but Jason's bones rattled. He saw fire plume into the air along with trees and earth. That was no doubt caused by the goddess of war. She was getting closer.

"Thalia, Bellona will kill you!" Nico told her.

"Then so be it," she said bravely. "We all have a role to play in this war, and if that it mine, then I will fight until I can no longer do so." She spoke with wisdom well beyond her years, as if she was an entirely different person.

Jason feared for his sister's life. He couldn't lose her.

Thalia jumped on him with a huge hug that was all too quick. "I'll see you again," she promised. "I know it."

She pulled away. "Now, go be heroes."

And he watched his sister run away, back towards the woods, notching an arrow as she hit the trees, and then she was gone.

Piper tugged on Jason's hand. "We don't have enough time. We have to go."

The jumped the railing and ran straight for the geyser. The ground underneath Jason's feet seemed to feel different, but he didn't care. He would honor his sister. He would be a hero. They reached the edge of Old Faithful. Jason laced his fingers through Piper's, and they all jumped in at the same time.

The air swirled around him, hot and bubbling with the energy from underneath the earth. He tried to hold together his nausea as he fell and fell until he was sure he was going to hit the thermal waters of the geyser that would boil him up. But that sensation, thank the gods, never happened.

Instead, the world blacked out once again, and Jason knew that they were indeed inside one of the Gates. He could barely feel Piper's hand anymore, which sort of scared him, but deep down he knew that she was still there.

His back hit a very hard surface, successfully knocking all the breath out of his body. Bright spots danced in front of his vision, but the feeling of his girlfriend's hand in his own became more concrete.

"Gods…" Leo trailed off. He sounded confused and a few feet away. "I had no idea that it would take us here."

"Where exactly is here?" Frank asked.

Slowly, Jason's sight cleared and he sat up. At once, he knew where he was, with the endless rows of mechanical supplies and the blueprints hanging off of the wall. Scrap metals littered the floor along with old Starbucks wrappers and coffee drinks. He couldn't believe it.

"We're in Bunker 9," Leo told them. "We're back at Camp Half-Blood."

Review Challenge: What are your thoughts on the amazing House of Hades cover just released? To me, it is my favorite cover of any of the books. It looks outstanding.

Reviews and ideas are loved. They seriously brighten up my crappy life.

-BBH