Bloody Lover | Piper McLean

CHAPTER 19 : Not your usual son of Hephaestus

Leo (& EARLANA)

Leo would have preferred the dragon to crash anywhere but on the porta-potties.

Of all the possible and imaginable places to fall, he wouldn't have put a row of porta-potties at the top of the list. Twelve of these small blue cabins were lined up in the factory yard, and Festus had flattened them all. Fortunately, they hadn't been used in a long time, and the fireball that formed at the moment of impact had incinerated much of their contents, but there were still some unappetizing chemicals leaking from the debris. Leo had to make his way through, trying not to breathe through his nose. It was snowing heavily, but the dragon's shell was still smoking. Of course, that didn't bother Leo.

After spending a few minutes pacing around Festus's lifeless body, the boy began to get frustrated. The dragon appeared to be in perfect condition. Sure, it had fallen from the sky and crashed loudly to the ground, but its body wasn't even dented. The fireball must have come from gas buildup in the porta-potties, not from the dragon. Festus's wings were intact. Nothing seemed broken. Nothing that could explain his fall.

"It's not my fault," muttered Leo. "Festus, you're making me look like a fool."

He then opened the control panel on the dragon's head, and his heart sank.

"Oh, damn. Festus, what happened to you ?"

The wiring had frozen. Leo knew it had been in good shape before. He had worked tirelessly to repair the corroded wires, but something had caused a freeze in the dragon's head, where the heat should have been far too intense for ice to form. The freeze had caused an overload in the wiring, which had fried the control disk. Leo couldn't see anything that could explain this freeze. Festus was old, sure, but that didn't mean anything.

He could redo the wiring; that wasn't a problem. But the charred control disk? The Greek letters and drawings engraved all around, likely the key to many magical powers, were partially erased and blackened.

There was one piece Leo couldn't replace, and it was damaged. Again.

He imagined his mother's voice : Most problems look worse than they really are, mijo. Nothing is irreparable. His mother could fix anything, but Leo was almost certain she had never worked on a fifty-year-old metal dragon.

He gritted his teeth and decided he was going to try. He wouldn't make the journey from Detroit to Chicago on foot in a snowstorm, and he wouldn't leave his friends stranded.

"All right," he grumbled, brushing off the snow accumulated on his shoulders. "Give me a nylon bristle cleaning brush, nitrile gloves, and an aerosol solvent."

The tool belt complied. Leo couldn't help but smile as he retrieved the items. The pockets of the tool belt had their limits. They couldn't give him anything magical like Jason's sword or Earlana's weapons, nor anything too bulky like a chainsaw—he had tested that. And if he asked for too many items at once, the tool belt needed recovery time. The more complicated the request, the longer the recovery time. But for simple tools and other small items that could be found in a workshop, no problem : Leo just had to ask for them and he got them immediately.

He began by meticulously cleaning the disk. As he worked, snow accumulated on the now cooled-down dragon. Leo had to stop from time to time to summon fire and melt it away, but otherwise, he went into autopilot, letting his hands work while his thoughts wandered.

The young boy was dismayed by his foolish behavior at Boreas' palace. He should have known that a family of Winter gods would immediately take offense. A son of the god of Fire landing with a fire-breathing dragon in an ice palace—clearly not the wisest move.