The Lost Hero

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Dirt Women

VIVIAN WISHED THE DRAGON HADN'T LANDED on the toilets.

Of all the places to crash, a line of Porta-Potties would not have been her first choice. A dozen of the blue plastic boxes had been set up in the factory yard, and Festus had flattened them all. Fortunately, they hadn't been used in a long time, and the fireball from the crash incinerated most of the contents; but still, there were some pretty gross chemicals leaking out of the wreckage. They had to pick their way through and try not to breathe through their nose. Heavy snow was coming down, but the dragon's hide was still steaming hot. Of course, that didn't bother Leo or Vivian.

After a few minutes climbing over Festus's inanimate body, Leo started to get irritated. The dragon looked perfectly fine. Yes, it had fallen out of the sky and landed with a big kaboom, but its body wasn't even dented. The fireball had apparently come from built up gasses inside the toilet units, not from the dragon itself. Festus's wings were intact. Nothing seemed broken. There was no reason it should have stopped.

"Not my fault," he muttered. "Festus, you're making me look bad Especially in front of V."

"At least Festus is okay," Vivian said, hearing Leo and blushing, but was trying to hide it. "But what caused it to fall if there was nothing wrong with it?"

Leo shrugged, not knowing the answer.

Vivian climbed onto Festus and then she opened the control panel on the dragon's head, and Vivian's heart sank. "Oh, Festus, what the heck?"

The wiring had frozen over. Vivian knew it had been okay yesterday. She and Leo worked so hard to repair the corroded lines, but something had caused a flash freeze inside the dragon's skull, where it should've been too hot for ice to form. The ice had caused the wiring to overload and char the control disk. She couldn't see any reason that would've happened. Sure, the dragon was old, but still, it didn't make sense.

Well when you're a demigod nothing makes sense.

They could replace the wires. That wasn't the problem. But the charred control disk was not good. The Greek letters and pictures carved around the edges, which probably held all kinds of magic, were blurred and blackened.

The one piece of hardware Leo and Vivian couldn't replace—and it was damaged. Again.

Leo imagined his mom's voice: Most problems look worse than they are, mijo. Nothing is unfixable.

His mom could repair just about anything, but Leo was pretty sure she'd never worked on a fifty-year-old magic metal dragon.

He clenched his teeth and decided he had to try. He wasn't walking from Detroit to Chicago in a snowstorm, and he wasn't going to be responsible for stranding his friends.

"Right," he muttered, brushing the snow off his shoulders.

"Let's do this," Vivian said with a slight smile.

"Gimme a nylon bristle detail brush, some nitrile gloves, and maybe a can of that aerosol cleaning solvent." Leo said. He was probably talking to the toolbelt.

The tool belt obliged. Leo couldn't help smiling as they pulled out the supplies. The belt's pockets did have limits. They wouldn't give him anything magic, like Jason's sword, or anything huge, like a chainsaw. He'd tried asking for both. And if he asked for too many things at once, the belt needed a cooldown time before it could work again. The more complicated the request, the longer the cooldown. But anything small and simple like you might find around a workshop—all Leo had to do was ask.