The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus #1)(38)

Later, his neighbors at the apartment complex told the police what a strange boy he was. They talked about the burned handprints on the picnic table. They’d always known something was wrong with Esperanza Valdez’s son.

His relatives wouldn’t take him in. His Aunt Rosa called him a diablo and shouted at the social workers to take him away. So Leo went to his first foster home. A few days later, he ran away. Some foster homes lasted longer than others. He would joke around, make a few friends, pretend that nothing bothered him, but he always ended up running sooner or later. It was the only thing that made the pain better—feeling like he was moving, getting farther and farther away from the ashes of that machine shop.

He’d promised himself he would never play with fire again. He hadn’t thought about Tía Callida, or the sleeping woman wrapped in earthen robes, for a long time.

He was almost to the woods when he imagined Tía Callida’s voice: It wasn’t your fault, little hero. Our enemy wakes. It’s time to stop running.

“Hera,” Leo muttered, “you’re not even here, are you? You’re in a cage somewhere.”

There was no answer.

But now, at least, Leo understood something. Hera had been watching him his entire life. Somehow, she’d known that one day she would need him. Maybe those Fates she mentioned could tell the future. Leo wasn’t sure. But he knew he was meant to go on this quest. Jason’s prophecy warned them to beware the earth, and Leo knew it had something to do with that sleeping woman in the shop, wrapped in robes of shifting dirt.

You’ll find your destiny, Tía Callida had promised, and your hard journey will finally make sense.

Leo might find out what that flying boat in his dreams meant. He might meet his father, or even get to avenge his mother’s death.

But first things first. He’d promised Jason a flying ride.

Not the boat from his dreams—not yet. There wasn’t time to build something that complicated. He needed a quicker solution. He needed a dragon.

He hesitated at the edge of the woods, peering into absolute blackness. Owls hooted, and something far away hissed like a chorus of snakes.

Leo remembered what Will Solace had told him: No one should go in the woods alone, definitely not unarmed. Leo had nothing—no sword, no flashlight, no help.

He glanced back at the lights of the cabins. He could turn around now and tell everyone he’d been joking. Psych! Nyssa could go on the quest instead. He could stay at camp and learn to be part of the Hephaestus cabin, but he wondered how long it would be before he looked like his bunkmates—sad, dejected, convinced of his own bad luck.

They cannot stop me from breaking your spirit, the sleeping woman had said. Remember this night, little hero, when they ask you to oppose me.

“Believe me, lady,” Leo muttered, “I remember. And whoever you are, I’m gonna face-plant you hard, Leo-style.”

He took a deep breath and plunged into the forest.

THE WOODS WEREN’T LIKE ANYPLACE he’d been before. Leo had been raised in a north Houston apartment complex. The wildest things he’d ever seen were that rattlesnake in the cow pasture and his Aunt Rosa in her nightgown, until he was sent to Wilderness School.

Even there, the school had been in the desert. No trees with gnarled roots to trip over. No streams to fall into. No branches casting dark, creepy shadows and owls looking down at him with their big reflective eyes. This was the Twilight Zone.

He stumbled along until he was sure no one back at the cabins could possibly see him. Then he summoned fire. Flames danced along his fingertips, casting enough light to see. He hadn’t tried to keep a sustained burn going since he was five, at that picnic table. Since his mom’s death, he’d been too afraid to try anything. Even this tiny fire made him feel guilty.

He kept walking, looking for dragon-type clues—giant footprints, trampled trees, swaths of burning forest. Something that big couldn’t exactly sneak around, right? But he saw nada. Once he glimpsed a large, furry shape like a wolf or a bear, but it stayed away from his fire, which was fine by Leo.

Then, at the bottom of a clearing, he saw the first trap—a hundred-foot-wide crater ringed with boulders.

Leo had to admit it was pretty ingenious. In the center of the depression, a metal vat the size of a hot tub had been filled with bubbly dark liquid—Tabasco sauce and motor oil. On a pedestal suspended over the vat, an electric fan rotated in a circle, spreading the fumes across the forest. Could metal dragons smell?

The vat seemed to be unguarded. But Leo looked closely, and in the dim light of the stars and his handheld fire, he could see the glint of metal beneath the dirt and leaves—a bronze net lining the entire crater. Or maybe see wasn’t the right word—he could sense it there, as if the mechanism was emitting heat, revealing itself to him. Six large strips of bronze stretched out from the vat like the spokes of a wheel. They would be pressure sensitive, Leo guessed. As soon as the dragon stepped on one, the net would spring closed, and voilà—one gift-wrapped monster.

Leo edged closer. He put his foot on the nearest trigger strip. As he expected, nothing happened. They had to have set the net for something really heavy. Otherwise they could catch an animal, human, smaller monster, whatever. He doubted there was anything else as heavy as a metal dragon in these woods. At least, he hoped there wasn’t.

He picked his way down the crater and approached the vat. The fumes were almost overpowering, and his eyes started watering. He remembered a time when Tía Callida (Hera, whatever) had made him chop jalapeños in the kitchen and he’d gotten the juice in his eyes. Serious pain. But of course she’d been like, “Endure it, little hero. The Aztecs of your mother’s homeland used to punish bad children by holding them over a fire filled with chili peppers. They raised many heroes that way.”