Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
━━ chapter twenty-seven mount diablo (devil mountain ) ( leo )
✿✼:*ﾟ:༅。.。༅:*·ﾟﾟ·⭑
━━Anything with devil in its name was never a good sign.
Diablo━Leo has heard that word too often. Mount Diablo, was where they were heading. Niño diablo, was what his aunt would call him. Some might even call fire Diablo's curse. Somehow, the devil followed Leo around; with ghosts, with his traumatic past, with the flames that danced along his fingertips and left ashes in his wake.
Fire was dangerous. Fire was deadly. Fire left entire buildings nothing more than melted steel, sparking embers and ashes, turned entire forests into woods for ghosts: still black charred graves of wood. It burnt men alive, it suffocated the life out of people, destroyed lives, homes, families and was still never satisfied.
If anything was the power of Diablo, it was the power Leo was cursed with.
And now he was heading towards the mountain with devil in its name. Where something terrible awaited them, he could just feel it in his bones: a giant who might just not only have Piper's father for lunch, but them as well. Coach Hedge told them this place was cursed, and Leo believed him.
It hadn't taken them too long to figure out where they were. The menus said 'Café Verve, Walnut Creek, CA'. And according to the waitress, it was nine in the morning on the twenty-first of December: the winter solstice, which gave them exactly three hours until the deadline.
Leo gazed upwards at Mount Diablo━it didn't look very large, nor was it covered in the snow. It seemed peaceful for something with such a name: its golden creases marbled with grey-green trees. But they always said the devil had been the prettiest of all the angels.
As they waited for a cab to pick them up to take them to the mountain, Leo found himself reaching for the old crayon drawing Aeolus had given him. He pulled it out of his pocket, confused that it was still there. He stared at the drawing━a ship he had come up at barely even six. He stared at the figurehead, tongue growing dry. He remembered that day, and it chilled him to the bone.
"What is that?" Piper had seen him, and her question was gentle despite the curiosity Leo knew she had brewing.
He folded it up and put it away again━it was another problem for another day. "Nothing. You don't want to see my kindergarten artwork."
"It's more than that," said Jason. Leo clenched his hands in the pocket of these stupid pinstripe pants. "Aeolus said it was the key to our success."
Leo shook his head. He didn't want to talk about it. His gaze brushed over Savreen's concerned one. "Not today," he managed. "He was talking about ... later."
