“I’m a dangerous girl. ”
“That, I believe. ”
He got up and brushed off his shorts. He offered her a hand. “Leo says he’s got something to show us out in the woods. You coming?”
“Wouldn’t miss it. ” She took his hand and stood up.
For a moment, they kept holding hands. Jason tilted his head. “We should get going. ”
“Yep,” she said. “Just a sec. ”
She let go of his hand, and took a card from her pocket—the silver calling card that Thalia had given her for the Hunters of Artemis. She dropped it into a nearby eternal fire and watched it burn. There would be no breaking hearts in Aphrodite cabin from now on. That was one rite of passage they didn’t need.
Across the green, her cabinmates looking disappointed that they hadn’t witnessed a kiss. They started cashing in their bets.
But that was all right. Piper was patient, and she could see lots of good possibilities.
“Let’s go,” she told Jason. “We’ve got adventures to plan. ”
LEO HADN’T FELT THIS JUMPY SINCE HE offered tofu burgers to the werewolves. When he got to the limestone cliff in the forest, he turned to the group and smiled nervously. “Here we go. ”
He willed his hand to catch fire, and set it against the door.
His cabinmates gasped.
“Leo!” Nyssa cried. “You’re a fire user!”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “I know. ”
Jake Mason, who was out of his body cast but still on crutches, said, “Holy Hephaestus. That means—it’s so rare that—”
The massive stone door swung open, and everyone’s mouth dropped. Leo’s flaming hand seemed insignificant now. Even Piper and Jason looked stunned, and they’d seen enough amazing things lately.
Only Chiron didn’t look surprised. The centaur knit his bushy eyebrows and stroked his beard, as if the group was about to walk through a minefield.
That made Leo even more nervous, but he couldn’t change his mind now. His instincts told him he was meant to share this place—at least with the Hephaestus cabin—and he couldn’t hide it from Chiron or his two best friends.
“Welcome to Bu
nker Nine,” he said, as confidently as he could. “C’mon in. ”
The group was silent as they toured the facility. Everything was just as Leo had left it—giant machines, worktables, old maps and schematics. Only one thing had changed. Festus’s head was sitting on the central table, still battered and scorched from his final crash in Omaha.
Leo went over to it, a bitter taste in his mouth, and stroked the dragon’s forehead. “I’m sorry, Festus. But I won’t forget you. ”
Jason put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Hephaestus brought it here for you?”
Leo nodded.
“But you can’t repair him,” Jason guessed.
“No way,” Leo said. “But the head is going to be reused. Festus will be going with us. ”
Piper came over and frowned. “What do you mean?”
Before Leo could answer, Nyssa cried out, “Guys, look at this!”
She was standing at one of the worktables, flipping through a sketchbook—diagrams for hundreds of different machines and weapons.
“I’ve never seen anything like these,” Nyssa said. “There are more amazing ideas here than in Daedalus’s workshop. It would take a century just to prototype them all. ”
“Who built this place?” Jake Mason said. “And why?”
Chiron stayed silent, but Leo focused on the wall map he’d seen during his first visit. It showed Camp Half-Blood with a line of triremes in the Sound, catapults mounted in the hills around the valley, and spots marked for traps, trenches, and ambush sites.
“It’s a wartime command center,” he said. “The camp was attacked once, wasn’t it?”
“In the Titan War?” Piper asked.
Nyssa shook her head. “No. Besides, that map looks really old. The date … does that say 1864?”
They all turned to Chiron.
The centaur’s tail swished fretfully. “This camp has been attacked many times,” he admitted. “That map is from the last Civil War. ”
Apparently, Leo wasn’t the only one confused. The other Hephaestus campers looked at each other and frowned.
“Civil War …” Piper said. “You mean the American Civil War, like a hundred and fifty years ago?”
“Yes and no,” Chiron said. “The two conflicts—mortal and demigod—mirrored each other, as they usually do in Western history. Look at any civil war or revolution from the fall of Rome onward, and it marks a time when demigods also fought one another. But that Civil War was particularly horrible. For American mortals, it is still their bloodiest conflict of all time—worse than their casualties in the two World Wars. For demigods, it was equally devastating. Even back then, this valley was Camp Half-Blood. There was a horrible battle in these woods lasting for days, with terrible losses on both sides. ”
“Both sides,” Leo said. “You mean the camp split apart?”
“No,” Jason spoke up. “He means two different groups. Camp Half-Blood was one side in the war. ”