The Hidden Follower

22.

   Leo would've fallen to his death if it weren't for Jason, he grabbed Leo's coat and pulled him to safety. The two of them scrambled up the bridge, and when they turned, Thalia was on the other side of a thirty-foot chasm. The bridge was continuing to melt.

  "Go!"  Thalia shouted, backing down the bridge as it crumbled. "Find out where the giant is keeping Piper's dad. Save him! I'll take the Hunters to the Wolf House and hold it until you can get there. We can do both!"

  "But where is the Wolf House?" Jason shouted.

  "You know where it is, little brother!" She was so far away now that they could barely hear her voice over the wind. Delta could barely get then while on the bridge and as Thalia left it was even harder for her to hear but she could've sworn she said: "I'll see you there. I promise. "

  Then she turned and raced down the dissolving bridge.

  "She could've just told him where it was, it would've made this so much easier." Delta complained.

  Leo and Jason climbed for their lives, the ice vapor thinning under their feet. Several times, Jason grabbed Leo and used the winds to keep them aloft, but it was more like bungee jumping than flying.

  When they reached the floating island, Piper and Coach Hedge pulled them aboard just as the last of the vapor bridge vanished. The other stood gasping for breath at the base of a stone stairway chiseled into the side of the cliff, leading up to the fortress as Delta observed the almost castle-like building.

  The top of Pikes Peak floated below them in a sea of clouds, but there was no sign of Thalia. And Leo had just burned their only exit.

  "What happened?" Piper demanded. "Leo, why are your clothes smoking?"

  "I got a little heated," he gasped. "Sorry, Jason. Honest. I didn't—"

  "It's all right," Jason said, but his expression was grim. "We've got less than twenty-four hours to rescue a goddess and Piper's dad. Let's go see the king of the winds."

  As they climbed the only one who seemed in a good mood was Coach Hedge. He kept bounding up the slippery staircase and trotting back down. "Come on, cupcakes! Only a few thousand more steps!"  As they climbed, Leo, Delta, and Piper left Jason in his silence.

  Leo kept swatting his own legs, checking for signs that his pants were on fire, Delta had to keep reassuring him that even if he did catch on fire again that she would push him in the snow before it got too bad.

   Delta was scared of what Leo had said. She couldn't risk Jason getting any of his memories back until the absolute last minute, him knowing anything before needed could ruin everything she and Nico had been making sure didn't happen— a war. And when Leo mentioned a dream about the wolf house, a very Roman place for a Greek to dream of she had gotten worried, and the feeling only got worse when he and Thalia started to figure out what was happening.

  Finally, they arrived at the top of the island. Bronze walls marched around the fortress grounds, Delta was amazed. Twenty-foot-high gates opened for them, and a road of polished purple stone led up to the main citadel—a white-columned rotunda, Greek-style, like one of the monuments in Washington, D. C. —except for the cluster of satellite dishes and radio towers on the roof.

  "That's bizarre," Piper said.

  "Guess you can't get cable on a floating island," Leo said.

  "Leo, please don't start mocking a god's ability to get cable," Delta said.

  Leo ignored her and continued to look at the fortress. "Dang, check this guy's front yard."

  The rotunda sat in the center of a quarter-mile circle. The grounds were amazing in a scary way. They were divided into four sections like big pizza slices, each one representing a season.