𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔾𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕥 𝕎𝕒𝕣||HoO

𝐗𝐈𝐈𝐈

MAISIE WAS sure they were going to lose their target. The Anemoi moved like...well, like the wind.

"Speed up!" Jason urged.

"Bro," Leo said, "if I get any closer, he'll spot us. Bronze dragon ain't exactly a stealth plane."

"Slow down!" Piper yelped.

The storm spirit dove into the grid of downtown streets. Festus tried to follow, but his wingspan was way too wide. His left wing clipped the edge of a building, slicing off a stone gargoyle before Leo pulled up.

"Get above the buildings," Jason suggested. "We'll track him from there."

"You want to drive this thing?" Leo grumbled, but he did what Jason asked.

After a few minutes, Maisie spotted the storm spirit again, zipping through the streets with no apparent purpose - blowing over pedestrians, ruffling flags, making cars swerve.

"Oh great," Piper said. "There's two."

She was right. A second Anemoi blasted around the corner of the Renaissance Hotel and linked up with the first. They wove together in a chaotic dance, shooting to the top of a skyscraper, bending a radio tower, and diving back down toward the street.

"Those guys do not need any more caffeine," Leo said.

"I guess Chicago's a good place to hang out," Piper said. "Nobody's going to question a couple more evil winds."

"More than a couple. Look," Maisie said, pointing at a group of at least a dozen whirling around a big public are installation in the park they were circling over.

"Which one do you think is Dylan?" Leo asked. "I wanna throw something at him."

There was something off about the art installation. It just looked like a public fountain with two five-story monoliths rising from either end of a long granite reflecting pool. The monoliths were built of large video screens, flashing the combined image of a giant face that spewed water into the pool. Something about it seemed familiar, but Maisie could place where from.

As Maisie watched, the image on the screen changed to the face of a woman with her eyes closed. Maisie did know where he had seen her. It was the woman from her dream. 

"Leo..." Jason said nervously.

"I see her," Leo said. "I don't like her, but I see her."

Then the screens went dark. The Anemoi swirled together into and formed a single funnel could and skittered across the fountain, kicking up a waterspout almost as high as the monoliths. They got to its center, popped off a drain cover, and disappeared underground.

"Did they just go down a drain?" Piper asked. "How are we supposed to follow them?"

"Maybe we shouldn't," Leo said. "That fountain thing is giving me seriously bad vibes. And aren't we supposed to, like, beware the earth?"

"Leo's right," Maisie pointed out, even though she knew that following the Anemoi was their best bet to finding Hera. "We'll have to find another way to find them."

"Put us down in that park," Jason suggested. "We'll check it out on foot."

Festus landed in an open area between the lake and the skyline. The signs said Grant Park. Maisie remembered coming here once when she was seven. Her mother had been on tour in Chicago and they had come here. She remembered it being a lot nicer in the summer, now it was field of ice, snow, and salted walkways.

The dragon's hot metal feet hissed as they touched down. Festus flapped his wings unhappily and shot fire into the sky, but there was no one around to notice. The wind coming off the lake was bitter cold, and Maisie pulled her jacked tighter around her. She had to squint because her eyes stung from the wind.