ONE LAST TIME . . . heroes of olympus

29

KAT WOKE TO jostling and a sound like rocks pinging glass.

She groggily opened her eyes, feeling Jason's arms around her as he unstrapped them from the helicopter. When she looked up, she saw ice frosting over the windshield.

"An ice storm?" Piper shouted over the engine and the wind. "Is it supposed to be this cold in Sonoma?"

Jason finally unstrapped him and Kat. He crawled forward, grabbing Leo and Piper's seats for balance, then held a hand out for Kat, who took it and pulled herself in to be next to him, grabbing Piper's seat. "We've got to be getting close."

Leo was too busy wrestling with the stick to reply. The copter's movements turned sluggish and jerky. The whole machine shuddered in the icy wind. The helicopter probably hadn't been prepped for cold-weather flying. The controls refused to respond to whatever Leo was doing, and they started to lose altitude.

Below them, the ground was a dark quilt of trees and fog. The ridge of a hill loomed in front of them and Leo yanked the stick, just clearing the treetops.

"There!" Jason shouted.

A small valley opened up before them, with the murky shape of a building in the middle. The helicopter went straight for it. All around them were flashes of light that reminded Kat of the tracer fire at Midas's compound. Trees cracked and exploded at the edges of the clearing. Shapes moved through the mist. Combat seemed to be everywhere.

Leo set down the helicopter in an icy field about fifty yards from the house and killed the engine. Kat was about to relax when he heard a whistling sound and saw a dark shape hurtling toward them out of the mist.

"Out! Out! Out!" Kat screamed.

She leaped from the helicopter and sped away as a massive BOOM shook the ground, and she dashed away from the shockwaves and the ice heading toward her.

When she finally turned around, she saw that the world's largest snowball — a chunk of snow, ice, and dirt the size of a garage — had completely flattened the helicopter. Well, there goes bringing back that. Kat would have to ask her mama to buy another one.

She ran over to Leo, who was lying down on the disgusting ground, and gingerly pulled him to his feet.

"You two all right?" Jason ran up to them, Piper at his side. They both looked fine except for being speckled with snow and mud.

"No," Kat grimaced as she ran a hand through her hair, getting some ice speckles out of it. "My poor hair."

"You'll be fine," Leo rolled his eyes at her. "Guess we owe that ranger lady a new helicopter."

Piper pointed south. "Fighting's over there." Then she frowned. "No . . . it's all around us."

She was right. The sounds of combat rang across the valley. The snow and mist made it hard to tell for sure, but there seemed to be a circle of fighting all around the Wolf House.

Behind them loomed Kat's brother's dream home — a massive ruin of red and gray stones and rough-hewn timber beams. She could imagine how it had looked before it burned down — a combination log cabin and castle, like a billionaire lumberjack might build. But in the mist and sleet, the place had a lonely, haunted feel. She could totally believe the ruins were cursed.

"Jason!" a girl's voice called.

Thalia appeared from the fog, her parka caked with snow. Her bow was in her hand, and her quiver was almost empty. She ran toward them, but made it only a few steps before a six-armed ogre — one of the Earthborn — burst out of the storm behind her, a raised club in each hand.