Of Blood and Darkness

The Gilded King

Eventually, the smoke from the burning department store faded in the distance, but Leo didn't relax until the suburbs of Chicago gave way to snowy fields, and the sun began to set.

"Good job, Festus." He patted the dragon's metal hide. "You did awesome."

The dragon shuddered. Gears popped and clicked in his neck.

Leo frowned. He didn't like those noises. If the control disk was failing again—No, hopefully, it was something minor. Something he could fix.

"I'll give you a tune-up next time we land," Leo promised. "You've earned some motor oil and Tabasco sauce."

Festus whirled his teeth, but even that sounded weak. He flew at a steady pace, his great wings angling to catch the wind, but he was carrying a heavy load. Two cages in his claws plus three people on his back. Even metal dragons had limits.

Beside them Valen stifled a yawn, grumbling, "I could really use some coffee right about now."

"How did you do that?" Piper asked suddenly.

"Huh?" Valen turned to face her, confused at her question.

"Resist Madea's charmspeak I mean."

"Oh that, I just created a vacuum over my ears so that no sound reached me. I essentially deafened myself." He explained, "Her magic wouldn't work if I couldn't hear it."

Leo turned around to face Jason "Can you do that too?"

Jason frowned and furrowed his brows, but all he could do was create an air barrier around his ears.

Valen shook his head, "At the speed we're going at, making a vacuum will be really hard. But the principles are easy enough. First you need to make a hollow air barrier around your ears, and make sure it's connected airtight to your head. Once you're done with that, drain out the air inside but be careful not to let the barrier collapse."

"..." Jason stared at him as he processed all he would need to do.

"If that's simple, I'd hate to see what you consider complicated." Leo joked.

Valen shrugged, although it looked more like jumping in midair, "It's not that bad."

Festus creaked again, and Leo turned his attention back to the bronze dragon. He couldn't go on like that for long.

"We're going to have to put down soon," he warned his friends. "Couple more hours, maybe, to make sure Medea's not following us. I don't think Festus can fly much longer than that."

"Yeah," Piper agreed. "Coach Hedge probably wants to get out of his canary cage, too. Question is—where are we going?"

"The Bay Area," Leo guessed. His memories of the department store were fuzzy, but he seemed to remember hearing that. "Didn't Medea say something about Oakland?"

Piper didn't respond for so long, Leo wondered if he'd said something wrong.

"Piper's dad," Jason put in. "Something's happened to your dad, right? He got lured into some kind of trap."

Piper let out a shaky breath. "Look, Medea said you would both die in the Bay Area. And besides ... even if we went there, the Bay Area is huge! First, we need to find Aeolus and drop off the storm spirits. Boreas said Aeolus was the only one who could tell us exactly where to go."

Valen shrugged, "I'm fine with either, but personally I wouldn't put much trust in Medeas words."

Leo grunted. "So how do we find Aeolus?"

Jason leaned forward. "You mean you don't see it?" He pointed ahead of them, but there was nothing there except clouds and the lights of a few towns glowing in the dusk.