Penelope Orion: Prophecies

Chapter 12

Leo's P.O.V.

I was buzzing.

The expression on everyone's faces when we flew the dragon into camp? Priceless! I thought my cabin mates were going to bust a lug nut. Festus - in which Penelope had named him - had been awesome too. He hadn't blowtorched a single cabin or eaten any satyrs, even if he did dribble a little oil from his ear. Okay, a lot of oil. I could work on that later.

So maybe I didn't seize the chance to tell everybody about Bunker 9 or the flying boat design. I needed some time to think about all that. I could tell them when I came back.

If I come back, part of me thought.

Nah, I'd come back. I'd scored a sweet magic tool belt from the bunker, plus a lot of cool supplies now safely stowed in my backpack. Besides, I had a fire-breathing, only slightly leaky dragon on my side. What could go wrong?

Well the control disk could bust, the bad part of me suggested. Festus could eat you.

Okay, so the dragon wasn't quite as fixed as I might've let on. I'd work all night attaching those wings, but - even with Penelope's help - I hadn't found an extra dragon brain anywhere in the bunker. Hey, we were under a time limit! Three days until the solstice. We had to get going. Besides, I had cleaned the disk pretty well. Most of the circuits were still good. It would just have to hold together.

My bad side started to think, Yeah, but what if--

"Shut up, me," I said aloud.

"What?" Piper asked, holding a sleeping Penelope. That little girl had been working so hard last night, I guess sleep finally took over.

"Nothing," I said. "Long night. I think I'm hallucinating. It's cool." Sitting in front, I couldn't see their faces, but I assumed from their silence that my friends were not pleased to have a sleepless, hallucinating dragon driver. "Just joking." I decided it might be good to change the subject. "So what's the plan, bro? You said something about catching wind, or breaking wind, or something?"

As we flew over New England, Jason laid out the game plan: First, find some guy named Boreas and grill him for information--

"His name is Boreas?" I had to ask. "What is he, the God of Boring?"

Second, Jason continued, they had to find those venti that had attacked us at the Grand Canyon--

"Can we just call them storm spirits?" Mumbled Penelope. "Venti makes them sounds like evil espresso drinks." I looked over my shoulder and saw that she was sitting sideways on Festus' back.

"Hey, Penelope, can you sit up? That's kinda freaking me out." I asked her.

"Sure." The seven year old yawned, stretched, and sat upright on the dragon. Thanks to Piper, her hair wasn't all in her face.

And third, Jason finished, we had to find out who the storm spirits worked for, so we could find Hera and free her.

"So you want to look for Dylan, the nasty storm dude, on purpose," I said. "The guy who threw both me and Penelope off the skywalk and sucked Coach Hedge into the clouds."

"That's about it," Jason said. "Well... there may be a wolf involved, too. But I think she's friendly. She probably won't eat us, unless we show weakness." Jason told us about his dream - the big nasty mother wolf and a burned-out house with stone spires growing out of the swimming pool.

"Uh-huh," I said. "But you don't know where this place is."

"Nope," Jason admitted.

"There's also giants," Piper added." The prophecy said the giants' revenge." I felt Penelope tense up behind me at the mention of the giants' revenge.