ENTRAPPED ₂

10

IF ETHAN HADN'T BEEN SO AFRAID OF FLYING, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE FOCUSED ON PURSUING THEIR TARGET. As it was, he felt like he was going to vomit all over Leo's dragon.

"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.

"Please land," Ethan groaned.

The storm spirit dove into the grid of downtown streets. Festus tried to follow, but his wingspan was 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 of Ethan clinging onto Festus desperately and Jason playing lookout, Jason yelled, "There!"

Indeed, the storm spirit was ripping through the streets with no apparent purpose. It blew over pedestrians, ruffled flags, and made cars swerve.

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

She was right. A second storm spirit blasted around the corner of a 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," Jason said. "Look."

The dragon circled over a wide avenue next to a lakeside park. Storm spirits were converging, a least a dozen of them whirling around a large public art installation.

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

"Who the fuck is Dylan?" Ethan asked.

"Guys, stops," Jason said. "Look at the art installation."

Ethan looked. It was a public fountain, and two five-story monoliths rose from either end of a long granite reflecting pool. They seemed to be built of video screens, flashing the combined image of a giant face that spewed water into the pool. As Ethan watched, the image on the screens changed to a woman's face with her eyes closed.

"Leo..." Jason said nervously.

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

Then the screens went dark. The storm spirits swirled together into a single funnel cloud 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?"

"We have no choice," Ethan said. "Without this, we have no leads. Onward we go."

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

⎯⎯ ୨ entrapped ୧ ⎯⎯

Festus landed in an open area between the lake and the skyline. The signs read Grant Park. Grant Park was a field of ice, snow, and salted walkways. The dragon's hot metal feet hissed as they touched down. Festus flapped his wings and shot fire into the sky. Thankfully, there were no mortals around. The wind coming off of the lake was bitter cold. Ethan's eye stung, and he had one of those moments where he wished he had two eyes so he could cover one and see with the other. Fucking Nemesis.