Stolen

Ch. 12: Very cold baths

Fox:

Fox hated dreaming. Because demigods and legacies never just had pleasant dreams. They were always omens or visions or just plain nightmares that were so realistic she had heard of people dying of heart attacks from fear.

For years and years Fox had been plagued by the same nightmare. Over the years, the dream hadn't come as often, but with the mention of Jason Grace earlier, it had been on her mind. The worst night of her life. She had been eight years old.

The smell of smoke woke her up. That and the sound of her three year old baby sister screaming. Fox bolted out of bed and lifted Aviva into her small arms and ran for the door. It was too hot to touch. Smoke poured into her room through the cracks. "The house is on fire!"

Without Fox's 'Demigod Survival 101' class, she might have panicked. Even as she found something to tie around her sister's and her faces, she could hear her father's voice instructing her. As a son of Apollo, he taught the First Aid and the survival class in the Camp.

But what about her brother? Who would help him? Ari's room was down the hall; the furthest from the stairs.

She looked around for another exit, since the door was out of question. Fox turned toward the window, but their tall two story villa had bars on them. Even so, the jump likely would have broken both of her legs, not to mention Aviva's. She hugged her sister against her fiercely, trying to keep the child from trembling in fear. But she was afraid too.
Her heart was clenching painfully and she was short of breath.

The last resort was to wait for help. But what if they didn't know where they were? She began screaming as loud as she could. "Mama! Daddy!" Her throat was hoarse. After what could have been five minutes or an hour, she could only whisper, the smoke making it hard to breathe. At least Aviva had stopped trembling. Or... Fox looked down fearfully to her baby sister's face . She was unconscious.

Frantically, she pushed her pointer and middle finger to her throat, checking for a pulse. She gave a sigh of relief at the faint, but steady beat she found there. But the relief didn't last long. She was growing increasingly light-headed and knew she would soon follow her sister's footsteps and pass out. The last thing she remembered before she did so was a full grown rhinoceros charging into her room.

When she came to, she was staring at the eyes of her dad's best friend. Well that explained the rhinoceros. Uncle Frank could turn into animals at will. She tried to speak, but she had some sort of plastic thing strapped to her face. Confused, she pulled it off and sat up.

"U-uncle Frank? Wha-" Her speech faltered when she saw Aviva and Cris next to her. Cris was sitting up and looked to be okay, but Aviva- She had several people crowded around her, that Fox recognized as healers. But what frightened her was what they were saying.

"She inhaled too much smoke for one so small-"

"No pulse-"

She saw Frank's wife, Hazel, kneeling next to Aviva's head, with her kind hands cupping the small girl's face.

"Come on baby, breathe. Breathe!" Hazel shot a panicked look to the healer, who didn't look at her, but continued to do CPR on Aviva. Suddenly, Hazel jumped to her feet, and sprinted away. She returned an instant later with a tall, blond man, who Fox recognized as Jason Grace. She'd only met him a few times, when she'd been at Uncle Frank and Aunt Hazel's house at the same time as him, but everyone knew who he was. Not many people forget the faces of one of the seven demigods chosen to save the world during the war with Gaea. Her own parents had fought under his command.

Fox watched as he held his hands over Aviva for a minute before sparks appeared on his fingers. Faster than her brain could process, he slammed his palms on her chest. One of them right below her left shoulder and the other one at the bottom of the right side of her ribcage. His large hands almost touched each other. Aviva's small body arched up with the energy flowing through her and Fox surged forward, having been frozen in place up until then.