The Veiled Legacy | PJO - Book Two

two

CREEPY GODS AND A CREEPY CAMP

The thing about plummeting at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter - if you realize it's a bad idea when you're halfway down, it's too late.

They narrowly missed a tree, glanced off a boulder, and spun a three-sixty as they shot towards the highway. The stupid snack tray did not have power steering.

Ariana heard the gorgon sisters screaming and caught a glimpse of Euryale's coral-snake hair at the top of the hill, but she didn't have time to worry about it.

The roof of the apartment building loomed below her like the prow of a battleship. Head-on collision in ten, nine, eight ...

Percy managed to swivel sideways to avoid breaking their legs on impact.

The snack platter skittered across the roof and sailed through the air.

The platter went one way. Percy and Ariana went the other.

As they fell towards the highway, a horrible scenario flashed through her mind: her body smashing against an SUV's windshield, some annoyed commuter trying to push her off with the wipers. Stupid sixteen-year-old kid falling from the sky! I'm late!

Miraculously, a gust of wind blew her to one side - just enough to miss the highway and crash into a clump of bushes. It wasn't a soft landing, but it was better than tarmac.

Percy groaned.

Ariana wanted to lie there and pass out, but she had to keep moving.

She struggled to her feet and helped Percy up.

Her hands were scratched up, but no bones seemed to be broken. Percy still had his backpack.

"You're so lucky we aren't dead right now." Ariana hissed at the boy.

"Sorry." He whispered quickly. "Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "No. You?"

"Nope, I'm all good."

Ariana glanced up the hill. The gorgons were hard to miss, with their colourful snake hair and their bright green Bargain Mart vests.

They were picking their way down the slope, going slower than Ariana but with a lot more control. Those chicken feet must've been good for climbing.

Ariana figured they had maybe five minutes before they reached them.

Next to her, a tall chain-link fence separated the highway from a neighbourhood of winding streets, cosy houses and eucalyptus trees.

The fence was probably there to keep people from getting onto the highway and doing stupid things - like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays - but the chain-link was full of big holes.

Ariana and Percy could easily slip through into the neighbourhood.

Maybe they could find a car and drive west to the ocean. She didn't like stealing cars, but over the past few weeks, in life-and-death situations, they had 'borrowed' several, including a police cruiser.

They had meant to return them, but they never seemed to last very long.

She glanced east. Just as she'd figured, a hundred yards uphill the highway cut through the base of the cliff.

Two tunnel entrances, one for each direction of traffic, stared down at her like eye sockets of a giant skull.

In the middle, where the nose would have been, a cement wall jutted from the hillside, with a metal door like the entrance to a bunker.