Daughter of Neptune, Book one

X

Leo pov

I was totally buzzing.

The expression on everyone's face when I flew the dragon into camp? Priceless! I thought my cabinmates were going to bust a lug nut.

Festus had been awesome too. He hadn't blowtorched a single cabin or eaten any satyrs, even if he dribble a little oil from his ear. Okay, a lot of oil. I could work on that later.

So maybe I didn't seize the chance to tell everybody about Bunker 9 or the flying design. I needed some time to think about all that. I could tell them when I came back.

If I came back, part of me thought.

Nah, I'd come back. I'd scored a sweet magic tool belt from the bunker, plus a lot cool supplies now safely stowed in my backpack. Beside, I have a fire-breathing, only slightly leaky dragon on my side. What could go wrong?

Well, the control disk could bust, the bad part of me suggested. Festus could eat you.

Okay, so the dragon wasn't quite as fixed as I might've let on.

Then my thoughts drifted over to one person. One girl.

Tori.

I've had a crush on her for as long as I've "known her". Even though Hera probably put these feelings there on purpose, they were real now and were not going away any time soon. But can you blame me for liking her, she is seriously beautiful. Maybe it was the way her sea green eyes shimmered though her glasses? Because when I looked into her eyes the sky's the limit. I was completely helpless. But who was that guy in the picture? Had she remembered something about her life before? Was that a photo of her real boyfriend?

Anyway, I had worked all night attaching those wings to Festus, but I hadn't found an extra dragon brain anywhere in the bunker. Hey, we were under a time limit! Three days until the solstice. We had to get going. Besides, I had cleaned the disk pretty well. Most of the circuits were still good. It would just have to hold together.

My bad side started to think, Yeah, but what if--

"Shut up, me." I said aloud.

"What?" Piper asked. Tori let go of me and sat up.

"Nothing," I said. "Long night. I think I'm hallucinating. It's cool."

Sitting in the front, I couldn't see their faces, but I assumed from their silence my friends were not pleased to have a hallucinating dragon driver.

"Just joking." I decided it might be good to change the subject. "So what's the plan, Water girl? You said something about catching wind, or breaking wind, or something?"

As we flew over New England, Jason and Tori laid out the game plan:
First, find some guy named Boreas and grill for him for information--

"His name is Boreas?" I had to ask. "What is he, the God of Boring?"

Secondly, Tori continued, we had to find to find those venti that had attacked us at the Grand Canyon.

"Can we just call them storm spirit?" I asked. "Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks."

And third, Jason finished, we had to find out who they worked for so we could find Hera and free her.

"So you want to look for Dylan, the nasty storm dude, on purpose," I said. "The guy who threw me off the skywalk and sucked Coach Hedge into the clouds."

"That's about it," Tori said. "Well...there may be a wolf involved, too. But I think she's friendly. She probably won't eat us, unless we show weakness."