The Second Jackson- Piper McLean book 1

Stupid Hippie Goddess

Lani

The thing about plummeting downhill at fifty miles an hour on a snack platter- if you realize it's a bad idea when you're halfway down, it's too late.

We narrowly missed a tree, glanced off a boulder, and spun a three sixty as we shot toward the highway. The stupid snack tray did not have power steering.

I heard the gorgon sisters screaming and caught a glimpse Euryale's coral-snake hair at the top of the hill, but I didn't have time to worry about it. The roof of the apartment building loomed below us like the prow of a battleship. Head on collision in ten, nine, eight...

Percy managed to swivel us sideways to avoid breaking his legs or mine on impact. The snack platter skittered across the roof and sailed through the air. The platter went one way, Percy and I went the other.

As we fell towards the highway, a horrible scenario flashed through my mind: our bodies smashing against an SUV's windshield, some annoyed commuter trying to push my brother and I off with the wipers. Probably thinking something along the lines of, 'Stupid sixteen-year-old kids falling from the sky! I'm late!'

Miraculously, a gust of wind blew us to one side- just enough to miss the highway and crash into a clump of bushes. It wasn't a soft landing, but it was better than asphalt.

Percy groaned beside me, probably also feeling the urge to lie here and pass out, especially me since I ended up cushioning my brothers landing. Unfortunately, I knew we had to keep moving. Percy struggled to his feet, helping me up, and holding me steady while I blinked black spots out of my vision, after all I was the one who took the brunt of the landing.

I nodded to my brother in thanks and he let me stand on my own, I still had my backpack, but lost my dagger, I knew it would reappear in my hair in clip form, it was part of its magic or something.

I followed Percy's gaze up the hill. The gorgons we hard to miss with their colorful snake hair and their bright green Bargain Mart vests. They were picking their way down the slope, going slower than us Jackson's did, but with far more control. Those chicken feet must have been good for climbing. I figured we had maybe four minutes before they reached us.

Next to us, a tall chain-link fence separated the highway from a neighborhood of winding streets, cozy houses, and tall eucalyptus trees. The fence was probably here to keep people from going on the highway and doing stupid things, like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays, but the chain-link was full of big holes. Percy and I could easily slip through into the neighborhood. Maybe we could find a car and drive west to the ocean. I didn't like stealing cars, neither did Percy, but over the past few weeks, in life-and-death situations, we'd borrowed several, including a police cruiser. We'd meant to return them, but they never lasted very long.

Percy and I glanced east. Just as I'd suspected, a hundred yards uphill the highway cut through the base of the cliff. Two tunnel entrances, on for each direction of traffic, stared down at us like the eye sockets of a giant skull. In the middle, where the nose would be, a cement wall jutted from the hillside, with a metal door like the entrance to a bunker.

It might have been a maintenance tunnel. That's probably what the mortals thought, if they noticed the door at all, but they couldn't see through the Mist like my brother and I can. I knew the door was more than that.

Two kids in armor flaked the entrance. They wore a bizarre mix of plumed Roman helmets, breastplates, scabbards, blue jeans, purple T-shirts, and white athletic shoes. The guard on the right looked like a girl, though it was hard to tell with all the armor. The one on the left was a stocky guy with a bow and quiver on his back. Both kids held long wooden staffs with iron spear tips, but they weren't spears, more like old-fashioned harpoons.