Havoc - Piper McLean

32: Maybe Hera should be left as fertilizer

| maybe hera should be left as fertilizer |

—At first, Piper thought rocks were pelting the windshield. Then she realized it was sleet. Frost built up around the edges of the glass, and slushy waves of ice blotted out her view.

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

Leo didn't answer but she already knew the answer. Something about this storm seemed conscious, malevolent—like it was intentionally slamming them.

Jason woke up quickly. He crawled forward next to Camilla, grabbing their seats for balance. "We've got to be getting close."

The movements of the copter turned sluggish and jerky. The whole machine shuddered in the icy wind. The helicopter probably hadn't been prepped for cold-weather flying.

Piper caught Leo's panicked expression which didn't do much for the pit in her stomach. 

"Leo?" She asked, "We're going down"

"I know that!" he said. 

He didn't seem to be doing much about the loss of 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. Leo aimed the helicopter straight for it. All around them were flashes of light. Trees cracked and exploded at the edges of the clearing. Shapes moved through the mist. Combat seemed to be everywhere.

He set down the helicopter in an icy field about fifty yards from the house and killed the engine. Piper let herself relax for a moment when she heard a whistling sound and saw a dark shape hurtling toward them out of the mist.

"Out!" Leo screamed.

They leaped from the helicopter and barely cleared the rotors before a massive BOOM shook the ground, knocking Piper off her feet. 

The first person her eyes searched for when she recovered was Camilla. She had to be okay, right? 

When Piper did in fact spot her, she went a bit crazy. She practically ran toward her, unsure in the last second what she was hoping to do. Should she hug her or was that too much?

In the end, she settled for an awkward hand grab. She didn't give Camilla much time to laugh at her weird behavior, instead dragging her to the mound of snow. 

"Is that Leo or a snowman?" Camilla snorted as they helped the boy escape from the snow that had piled on top of him. 

Piper looked to the helicopter or what was left of it. She spotted the biggest snowball, the size of a garage—had completely flattened the chopper.

"You all right?" Jason ran up to them. He looked fine except for being speckled with snow and mud.

"Yeah." Leo shivered. "Guess we owe that ranger lady a new helicopter."

Camilla 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 Jack London's dream home—a massive ruin of red and gray stones and rough-hewn timber beams. Leo 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. Piper could totally believe the ruins were cursed.