The Lost Hero

the earth goddess fully.”

Leo kept his hand on the joystick, guiding the chopper at full speed—racing toward the north. He could see some weather ahead—a spot of darkness like a cloudbank or a storm, right where they were going.

Piper’s dad had called him a hero earlier. And Leo couldn’t believe some of the things he’d done—smacking around Cyclopes, disarming exploding doorbells, battling six-armed ogres with construction equipment. They seemed like they had happened to another person. He was just Leo Valdez, an orphaned kid from Houston. He’d spent his life running away, and part of him still wanted to run. What was he thinking, flying toward a cursed mansion to fight more evil monsters?

His mom’s voice echoed in his head: Nothing is unfixable.

Except the fact that you’re gone forever, Leo thought.

Seeing Piper and her dad back together had really driven that home. Even if Leo survived this quest and saved Hera, Leo wouldn’t have any happy reunions. He wouldn’t be going back to a loving family. He wouldn’t see his mom.

The helicopter shuddered. Metal creaked, and Leo could almost imagine the tapping was Morse code: Not the end. Not the end.

He leveled out the chopper, and the creaking stopped. He was just hearing things. He couldn’t dwell on his mom, or the idea that kept bugging him—that Gaea was bringing souls back from the Underworld—so why couldn’t he make some good come out of it? Thinking like that would drive him crazy. He had a job to do.

He let his instincts take over—just like flying the helicopter. If he thought about the quest too much, or what might happen afterward, he’d panic. The trick was not to think—just get through it.

“Thirty minutes out,” he told his friends, though he wasn’t sure how he knew. “If you want to get some rest, now’s a good time.”

Jason strapped himself into the back of the helicopter and passed out almost immediately. Piper and Leo stayed wide-awake.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Leo said, “Your dad’ll be fine, you know. Nobody’s gonna mess with him with that crazy goat around.”

Piper glanced over, and Leo was struck by how much she’d changed. Not just physically. Her presence was stronger. She seemed more … here. At Wilderness School she’d spent the semester trying not to be seen, hiding out in the back row of the classroom, the back of the bus, the corner of the lunchroom as far as possible from the loud kids. Now she would be impossible to miss. It didn’t matter what she was wearing —you’d have to look at her.

“My dad,” she said thoughtfully. “Yeah, I know. I was thinking about Jason. I’m worried about him.”

Leo nodded. The closer they got to that bank of dark clouds, the more Leo worried, too. “He’s starting to remember. That’s got to make him a little edgy.”

“But what if … what if he’s a different person?”

Leo had had the same thought. If the Mist could affect their memories, could Jason’s whole personality be an illusion, too? If their friend wasn’t their friend, and they were heading into a cursed mansion—a dangerous place for demigods—what would happen if Jason’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 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…”

“I know,” Leo said. After seeing her dad break down, Leo understood Piper couldn’t afford to lose Jason as well. She’d just watched Tristan McLean, her cool suave movie star dad, reduced to near insanity. Leo could barely stand to watch that, but for Piper—Wow, Leo couldn’t even imagine. He figured that would make her insecure about herself, too. If weakness was inherited, she’d be wondering, 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. You can trust yourself. For what it’s worth, you can trust me too.”

The helicopter dipped in a wind shear, and Leo almost jumped out of his skin. He cursed and righted the chopper.

Piper laughed nervously. “Trust you, huh?”

“Ah, shut up, already.” But he grinned at her, and for a second, it felt like he was just relaxing comfortably with a friend.

Then they hit the storm clouds.

XLVIII LEO

AT FIRST, LEO THOUGHT ROCKS WERE pelting the windshield. Then he realized it was sleet. Frost built up around the edges of the glass, and slushy waves of ice blotted out his view.

“An ice storm?” Piper shouted over the engine and the wind. “Is it supposed to be this cold in Sonoma?”

Leo wasn’t sure, but something about this storm seemed conscious, malevolent—like it was intentionally slamming them.

Jason woke up quickly. He crawled forward, grabbing their seats for balance. “We’ve got to be getting close.”

Leo was too busy wrestling with the stick to reply. Suddenly it wasn’t 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. The controls refused to respond, and they 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 them, 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 Leo 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.

He set down the helicopter in an icy field about fifty yards from the house and killed the engine. He was about to relax when he 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 Leo off his feet and splattering ice all over him.

He got up shakily and 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 him, 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. Leo 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. Leo 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. They rushed to help, but Thalia had it under control. She launched herself into a flip,