Chapter Text
The air smelled unfamiliar.
Scent. That was the first thing Jason registered. He jolted awake with a barely muffled yelp, eyes manic and wild as he took in his surroundings—the back of a school bus. To his right, a girl with choppy brown hair, asleep on his shoulder. Around them, kids the age of fifteen, maybe sixteen, slept or poked at their devices with disinterest.
Jason gingerly pushed the girl off. He searched for more clues, driven by pure instinct, and he tentatively began sniffing the air. Heavy cologne from the boy in front of him, who sat alone in a two-seater. Some leftover snack crumbs gave off a sweet, chocolate-y smell about three rows in front. Further down the aisle—something that reminded him of petrichor and… goats? And lastly—
The hair on the back of Jason’s neck rose. A growl began rumbling at the back of his throat, but before he could vocalize it, a sharp pain hammered at his temples, and the growl tapered off into an agonized whine. Jason put a palm to his head with a wince.
Gods, why was he sniffing the air and snarling? And what exactly was it that set him off? A terrible, bitter tang…
Wait. Gods, plural?
The headache pounded harder behind Jason’s eyes.
“Dude, you alright back there?”
Jason jumped. The boy in front of him had turned behind his seat, giving him the world’s most concerned yet simultaneously unimpressed stare. As if saying, Hey, if you’re gonna go feral, make sure you don’t foam over my headrest. You good, though?
“Huh?” came Jason’s genius response. His voice was raspy.
“You’re standing up and everything,” the boy continued, gesturing to Jason. He looked down, and oops, he’d inched out of his seat in the midst of scanning his surroundings. Sheepishly, he sat back down.
“Sorry.”
“It’s cool. Just don’t fall over, unless you want Coach Hedge to put you on toilet-scrubbing duty for disrupting the peace.”
“Coach… Who?”
“Hedge,” the boy said, raising a finely-trimmed brow. “Did you hit your head on the back of the bus? Y’know, the guy that made us run ten miles a week ago because he said, and I quote: ‘You wrote your dates wrong, cupcakes! And some of you didn’t even write the dates in your worksheets!’”
Now that Jason was properly looking at him, everything about the boy was well-groomed—his dark, curly hair was perfectly styled; his skin seemed to have a radiant sheen; and his fingers, encircled by an assortment of gleaming, silver and gold rings, made satisfying clink-clink-clinks every time his fingers drummed on the armrest.
A Latino model for Gucci—if they sold in kids’ sizes, that is—was what he reminded Jason of.
Snapping back to attention, Jason realized too late that a reply was expected of him. The boy had been waving a hand in his face. “Uh, hello? Earth to Jason?”
Panicked, Jason reached out and grabbed the boy’s wrist, earning an undignified yelp. Nobody paid them any attention.
“I’m not supposed to be here.” His voice began to rise. “I don’t remember anything. Who—who are you again?”
“Are you serious, man? I’m Leo! Leo Valdez! Your one and only best friend!” Leo looked so affronted that he yanked his hand back to mime a scandalized gasp. “Well, including Piper, that’s your two and only best friends.”
Jason’s completely empty stare must’ve sold his story, because the cheeky smile beneath Leo’s hand immediately faded.
“Oh, shit. You actually lost your memory.”
Jason jerked his head down.
“And you don’t know who we are.”
Another nod.
“Or that we’re headed to the Grand Canyon for a school trip, organized by none other than our beloved Gleeson Hedge for the Wilderness School; a place for people like Yours Truly and Co. to go to when they’ve been given up on by society?”
Jason was tempted to ask if this was an elaborate prank he wasn’t informed of. Enrolling in a school for misfits felt like the opposite of what he was meant to be. But before he could get the words out, Leo was already reaching through the seat gaps to shake the girl next to Jason awake.
“Pipes! Piper Mc-fucking-Lean, wake up—”
The girl in question scrunched her nose before swatting Leo’s hand away. She blinked her eyes open, and her irises swirled with a miasma of colors—blue, then brown, then grayish-green.
“What?” she groaned. “Leo! I told you guys to wake me up only after we’ve arrived—”
Leo cried, “Jason’s gone crazy!”
Piper stopped tucking stray hair behind her ears. Next to her, Jason blinked like a deer caught in headlights.
“…Wow. Nice try, Valdez. I’m going back to sleep.”
“No, I’m serious! Just ask him yourself! He doesn’t remember—well, everything!”
Judging by the expression Piper was making, Jason was in deep trouble. She turned to face him, and for some reason, when her gaze met his, Jason tensed up—his muscles screamed, don’t back down. Meet her challenge.
“So,” she said to test the waters. “Last month.”
“Last month,” he echoed, stern.
“Yes, Jason. Tell me what we did last month. The incident.”
Jason balked.
“We… uh,” he stammered, swiping his tongue over his dry lips, “got… got scolded by Coach Hedge? For not doing our homework?”
Silence. Until Leo scoffed.
“That’s on us. We set the bar too low. …What?! Pipes, don’t give me that look. It’s a solid guess,” he admitted. “I mean, when are we never being scolded by Hedge?”
Piper wasn’t as amused. “I take it back. He’s lost it.”
She had broken eye contact first, and some inner thing in Jason preened. The angry storm in her kaleidoscopic eyes softened into a few overhead clouds. “Did you get a concussion? Let me see the back of your head… Huh, nothing. Maybe you were replaced by an alien. Who are you,” she said with a tone somewhere between grave and joking, “and what did you do to our Jason?”
“See, you get it,” supposedly-not-their-Jason exclaimed. Maybe he was an alien. “I’m not supposed to be here. I don’t know you guys! I’m—”
The shriek of a megaphone turning on blared throughout the bus. “Alright, cupcakes, listen up!”
Leo groaned and flopped back into his seat.
At the front of the bus was Coach Hedge, who stood loud and proud in his five-foot glory. The man was built like he wrestled semi-auto trucks for fun, with bulging arms and chest muscles pushing through his orange polo shirt.
Coach Hedge’s wispy beard quivered as he yelled into his megaphone, “We’re arriving in five minutes! Stick with your partner—in twos, people! No exceptions! And don’t lose your worksheet!”
The bus ignored him. Not that it seemed to bother Hedge. His beady eyes scanned the crowd, then landed on Jason with a deep scowl.
Jason’s pulse hammered in his ears. He was almost sure he’d be called out and made an example of. Maybe he’d be beaten by the baseball bat the coach kept at his side. The Grand Canyon would be a great place to dispose of his body.
With a grunt, Coach Hedge adjusted his cap and left him alone. Piper helped to interrupt his train of morbid thoughts.
“I know we can’t work in threes,” she said as she accepted Leo’s gift through the seat gap—a bunch of little paper strips to fold into colorful stars. “But maybe we can convince Coach Hedge to let us group up.”
“Duh.” Leo began folding the strips with speed and precision. "Especially since ol’ Wolfy here is now an amnesiac and all. I don’t trust anyone to handle him.”
Splitting pain once again slammed into Jason’s head. Wolfy. That nickname felt oddly familiar, or at least oddly relevant. The information was on the tip of his tongue, just barely out of reach; it was burned into his muscles, though he couldn’t consciously recall it.
“Wolfy?” he probed instead, hoping his new friends could provide answers.
Leo tossed a purple star at him. “Yeah, dude. Sharp teeth? Almost took a chunk off Dylan’s throat for pissing you off? We can name ten more.”
A sudden bout of self-consciousness made Jason cover his mouth. He ran his tongue over his incisors. Sharp.
“See?” Leo sighed. “Anyway, Pipes, I hope you can share your worksheet with Yay-son and I. Folded mine into a paper crane ages ago.”
Leo dropped another star into Jason’s lap as Piper rolled her eyes. She aimed and chucked her own red star, grinning successfully as it caught in Leo’s hair, much unbeknownst to the boy.
“Figures he already trashed it.” She offered a strip to Jason. “Wanna fold one?”
Without much to do, Jason took the strip and tried to copy Piper’s movements. The tangled panic in his head soothed little by little, slowly morphing into a manageable discomfort. From Piper’s gentle smile and background humming, she had likely anticipated this.
Finally, the bus rolled to a shuddering halt. Jason’s paper ‘star’ had become a victim of a mauling under his clumsy fingers.
Their bus let out a mechanical exhale, and everyone stood and shoved themselves to the exit. Piper, Leo, and Jason sat quietly in the back, with Jason watching them fold more and more stars until the aisle cleared. Only then did Leo scoop all of his spoils of origami-war into Piper’s backpack. She followed suit.
“Come on,” Leo said, hopping off his seat. The last few chatty kids filed off the bus, leaving Coach Hedge alone and eyeing the three of them. “You remember how to walk, right?”
Jason snorted and took a step forward. He pretended to trip. “Carry me?”
“Eh, if you’re back to joking, you’ll live. Vamos, vamos!”
Halfway down the aisle, Piper nudged Jason’s hand and giggled. She pointed at the lone red star still clinging to Leo’s curls, then made a shushing motion over her lips.
Jason smiled back. At least Leo and Piper were willing to stick with him—they were easy to get along with and treated him as part of their group, even if Jason had no memory of hanging out with them.
Had Jason been alone, he would’ve panicked harder.
They got off the bus.
The Grand Canyon was, to put it mildly, dry and unbearable.
It was December, but today’s temperature soared past the normal winter chill and reverted back to its default summer settings. Jason grimaced as the heat baked into his skin and coated him in a sheen of sweat. The sun, bright and glaring, burned as a miniature death ray with Jason selected as its first victim. Within seconds, he wanted to retreat into the coolness of the air-conditioned bus; never to come out until the snow season arrived.
“Terrible weather,” he complained to Leo, who stuffed his jacket into his leather cross-body bag. Underneath, Leo’s long-sleeved shirt was silky white with a low V-neck cut, drawing attention to the golden necklace sparkling warmly against his skin.
“Then take that windbreaker off.” Leo pinched Jason’s gray sleeve. “You’ll cook yourself alive, dumbass.”
“Don’t feel safe without it.”
“Meh. Suit yourself. Remember to tell Coach Hedge about your memory thingy. Would whacking you over the head like a Looney-Tunes character fix it?”
Jason did not have the heart to admit that he had no clue what a Looney-Tune was.
Piper, who split off earlier to convince Coach Hedge to let them group as three, joined them eventually with her arms crossed. Jason saw a muscle in Leo’s face twitch at the godawful outfit coordination she had going: a neon pink crewneck clashing frightfully against her floral jogging pants; an olive denim jacket now tied at her waist; and a messy assortment of wrist accessories that were a mix between metal jewelry, crystals, and kandi bracelets with various words and names: one wrote PIPER, and Jason could spot another on her right wrist that spelled LEONIDAS!!! with a bunch of angry-faced charms.
Underneath the oppressive sunlight, Piper’s outfit stood out hideously. She even had mismatched cat socks (complete with sown-in ears at the edges) and glittery red bargain-bin sneakers snaked with polka-dot shoelaces.
It was akin to watching a car, ship and plane crashing together at once; more and more mis-matched details would pop up until Jason had the urge to avert his eyes. Maybe that was why she wore no makeup. Piper drew attention away from her beautiful features to her nightmarish clothes, then made you wish you had never noticed her in the first place.
Leo beat Jason to the punch. He wrenched his head to the side, grimacing. The boy refused to spare even one glance at this abomination, sticking his index finger out to disapprovingly wag it at her.
Piper huffed, “I asked Coach Hedge to let us work in a group. No luck. Looks like I’ll have to—”
“Change?” Leo offered, sounding hopeful. “Dios mío, Piper. This is your worst one yet.”
“Aww, you flatter me! I’m still missing a rainbow scrunchie to tie it all together. A shame I left it in the dorms.”
Before Leo could respond, one of the other boys—a dark-haired teenager with a Dallas Cowboys jersey—swaggered up to their three-man group. He wedged himself between Leo and Jason and flashed all thirty-two of his straight, pearly white teeth, temporarily blinding the lifeforms within a meter radius.
Jason could imagine a bling! going off in the back of his head. Then his nose wrinkled, and he wondered if that metallic air freshener scent the guy wore was used to mask something stronger.
“Ugh, it’s you.” From the side, Piper fished out a pair of bedazzled, tropical-themed sunglasses from her backpack; discounted price tag and all. She wore them and muttered to Jason, “So I don’t have to look at his ugly mug. That’s Dylan, by the way.”
From the way Dylan was trying to not-so-subtly pull Leo away from their group, Jason justified his apparent attempt at tearing this guy’s throat out.
“Leo, my man! Don’t talk to these bottom-feeders. You’re my partner, remember?”
Leo’s uncomfortable expression translated as a scream for help. “Uh, yeah,” he coughed. “Totally remember. Unfortunately for you, Jason and I lost our worksheets and have to stick with Piper for the rest of the day.”
Dylan pulled out a single, spare worksheet, to which Leo violently sucked in a lungful of air. He turned to the cloudless sky, eyes shut. Probably lamenting his life choices up to this moment.
Leo said, “No comment.”
He ended up walking away with Dylan, desperately avoiding the boy’s attempts at sticking closer or showing him off to the popular girls: check it out! I’m partnered with our local fashion celebrity!
Piper donned her parrot sunglasses even after Dylan left. Were they stolen? Jason didn’t know, and he wasn’t ready to ask.
“Not stolen,” the girl assured as if she could read Jason’s mind. “I told the cashier to keep the tag on. Makes it funnier.”
Without Leo, the two of them partnered up and walked side-by-side into the museum, flashy sunglasses and all.
The exhibit was interesting enough. It went over the formation of cliffs and the Hualapai tribe, whose traditional homeland included portions of the Grand Canyon. As they toured the museum, Jason heard some stray snickers and giggles directed at Piper, especially whenever Native Americans were brought up, but when Jason tried to glare at the offenders, the crowd would go opportunistically quiet.
Piper put a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Save it,” she whispered. “They’re not worth your time.”
“But they…”
“Seriously, Jason. Just drop it.” A heavy pat on his back. “I’m Cherokee, not Hualapai. These idiots think all Native tribes are the same. You can’t change their minds.”
Beneath Piper’s composure, Jason sensed an immense amount of withheld anger—she knew from experience which fights were too juvenile to fall for.
One boy began poorly imitating a traditional dance, adding in some mocking faces and sticking out his tongue. Fed up, Jason tore away from the spectacle and tailed behind Piper. It was safer next to her. He cast a wistful glance at the front of the group where Leo was, letting Dylan’s yammering enter one ear and exit the other.
“Piper?” Jason nudged her gently. They were now moving away from the exhibits to see the Canyon up close. “Leo said this school was for delinquents. How did we end up here?”
She looked contemplative. “Well, to recap… Leo ran away six times and counting. I, uh, convinced people to lend me stuff that I never returned. But you, Jase, even for Wilderness standards, you’re special! Assault—”
“Assault?!”
“—ted some officers—”
“Officers?!”
“—by biting them bruised after they arrested you for looting a leg of meat from a butcher.”
Jason gaped at Piper as if she had grown another head.
“The meat was raw, too. Didn’t know you liked it that way.”
“No, you’re kidding. That’s—that doesn’t—Piper, I’d never do that! I don’t bite people. Not as often as you remember!” He added the last sentence as an afterthought.
No, no. He couldn’t hurt anyone here. He shouldn’t.
A heavy, pulsating pressure layered as a blanket over Jason’s mind—innate orders that would never be gouged and scraped off of his bones, even if someone else tried.
Hide your fear. Make yourself larger. Act human; act normal; act safe.
I don’t understand, Jason helplessly reasoned to his instincts. I’m lost. I’m terrified. I only have two people to help me, and I swear I’ve never met them in my life.
He never got a response. The tour group reached a set of double doors connected to a horseshoe-shaped walkway outside, and as soon as the view of the Grand Canyon emerged, Jason’s jaw went slack.
Raised rocks and earthy ledges captured dark shadows at different angles, jagging in steep, red layers across the chasm. At the bottom of the pit was a barely visible cord of blue slithering between the canyon’s walls—the Colorado River, presumably. Jason had to squint to make out its vague shape. The sun blazed, dyeing everything in fiery gold and shading details with vivid black.
“It’s beautiful,” Piper couldn’t help but gasp. Despite his headaches and amnesia, Jason agreed—being connected to such an incredible natural phenomenon made his heart soar.
Coach Hedge barked something about filling in their worksheets and minding their safety. He glared at the sky, where a mass of gray storm clouds started to congregate in record time.
Jason swallowed back a ball of fear rising in his throat. Piper looked up, too; her shades were propped on the top of her head, giving the illusion of two rhinestone parrots nesting in her hair.
“I’m not liking that.” She pointed at the clear skies far off from their skywalk. “Look—the storm is gathering right above us.”
The dread in Jason’s stomach lurched into something more primal. “Piper.”
“Yes?”
“You should tuck those sunglasses into your bag. Just so you don’t lose them.”
He sprinted to find Coach Hedge. The man was very, very unhappy to see Jason—for a good reason, too. Hedge quickly became the only person Jason could relax around as the man confirmed his doubts right off the bat.
“So you’ve never seen me before?” Jason repeated one last time. “I’ve never been part of Leo and Piper’s friend group, and I’ve never been sent to this school for assaulting officers and stealing meat?”
Coach Hedge’s thick brows knitted together in exasperation. “Look, kid. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I’ve never seen you in my life. As for the last part? Likely a trick of the Mist, but I wouldn’t put it past you to do it. Now,” Hedge said while jerking a thumb at the sky, “tell me something—do you know who did this?”
Hedge’s comment on ‘not putting it past Jason to go crazy and rob a store’ almost had Jason protesting for his innocence again, but there were more pressing matters at hand.
“I have an inkling, but I might be wrong.” Electric-blue eyes slid across throngs of people to single out a duo—Leo and Dylan. “One of them smelled suspicious. Like a—”
“Monster,” Hedge grunted. “Alright. Keep it down low, kid. Assuming you’re the ‘special package’, I’m in charge of keeping you intact 'til the extraction team picks you up.”
“I’m a… what?”
“Special package. Should be you, anyhow—you said your memories are all busted up, yeah? Don’t worry, ‘cause people from camp are coming to get you and your friends to safety in no time.”
“Friends. You mean Leo and Piper? They’re involved in this?”
Coach Hedge opened his mouth, but he was muted by a deafening crackle of thunder splitting open the sky. Above, the storm clouds morphed into the darkest gray Jason had ever seen occurring naturally. Winds picked up, viciously whipping and whistling across the Grand Canyon. Someone’s worksheet flew over the railing and fluttered into oblivion.
Coach Hedge cursed. “No time! I’ll tell you later. Stay out of trouble, kid!”
He hurried to round screaming kids off the skywalk.
Jason peeled off a worksheet that smacked into his chest. The winds accelerated, shoving Piper back and scattering hair across her face as she gripped the railing to try and get to his side. Unexpected relief washed over Jason when Piper made some hand gestures that said, Don’t worry, my god-awful sunglasses are safe.
…He’d grown surprisingly attached to it.
As Piper continued to fight her way over, protests carried away by the whistling air currents, Jason’s hands automatically found themselves trying to part and tuck loose strands of hair behind his ear, too, despite his current hair being close-cropped.
Another anomaly. He froze. Jason knew for a fact that during colder months, he had a habit of growing his hair out—but why? And who cut it?
Nothing was adding up.
He wasn’t given time to sit and ponder. A bolt of lightning crackled, arcing dangerously close to them, and Piper let out a frightened yelp. Funnel clouds touched down and swirled into miniature tornadoes. They edged closer and closer toward the duo as they backed against the railing.
Feeling nauseous, Jason closed the distance; he grabbed Piper’s arm to keep her at a safe range.
Something smelled foul.
Dylan and Leo held the museum doors open as Coach Hedge ushered the last of the kids inside. By now, the wind and storm had churned into a localized hurricane that threatened to blow off Jason’s windbreaker. Raindrops battered like bullets. Jason fought his way to the doors, keeping his hand on Piper strongly, but each step felt heavier than the last, as if he was pushing against an invisible barrier.
Leo shoved one more student inside the building. It could’ve been a trick of the storm, but Jason swore Dylan loosened his grip and flicked his wrist to direct a blast of wind at Leo, whose hands slipped as a result.
The doors slammed shut. And at the bloodthirsty, demonic grin Dylan began sporting, Jason’s heart sank.
Oh.
He had been right.
That reeking scent Jason smelled earlier leeched out and over the skywalk. It was a concoction of ozone, expired citrus air freshener, and charred, electrocuted corpses—a stench so disturbing and thick that Jason nearly buckled to his knees and gagged. Death clung to Dylan like a mottled blanket. The boy raised his arms, and his skin began unraveling like slicing a continuous fruit peel, bubbling and levitating golden blood.
Ichor, Jason realized.
“Valdez!” Coach Hedge roared. “Get away!”
Dylan’s ichor and human disguise enveloped him. It twisted and overlapped in tendrils, then dispersed into smoky onyx fumes as his veins pulsed, shooting out as electric bolts.
Now, triumphantly laughing next to Leo, Dylan rose—not as a human, but as a ventus—a winged spirit made of cumulonimbus clouds. His maniacal laughter continued echoing throughout the canyon. Thunder boomed, and Dylan’s semi-corporeal form whirled in tandem with the hurricane’s increasing speed.
“Three half-bloods,” he drawled, stalking closer to Leo. The boy whimpered in fear and backed up weakly against the glass doors. “A worthy first-kill for our mistress. Think you can protect them all, Coach?”
Coach Hedge’s baseball cap had been blown away, revealing curled horns that protruded from his head. His shoes were also gone—he’d kicked them off for better mobility to balance the weapon in his hands. His bat had transformed into a hefty, gnarled club made of unpolished wood, its leaves and branches still attached as wizened spikes.
Ah. That explained the ‘goatness’ Jason smelled earlier on the bus.
“This is my fight,” Hedge said, warning the three still remaining on the skywalk to back down. “YOU! You dirty, scheming monster—I’ll pummel you and that smile straight back to Tartarus!”
Dylan sneered, “I’d like to see you try.”
Everything happened in a blur. Leo was wrested up by a strong air current and hurled at Jason and Piper, crashing into them like a pair of toppling bowling pins. Coach Hedge howled in fury. He launched himself forward and swung the club at Dylan’s head in full force. It connected with a CRUNCH, and Dylan staggered as if shocked to be hit; a few droplets of ichor beaded down the gray mass that was supposedly his nose. His eyes, completely white and glowing with rage, narrowed.
“A lucky shot.” Dylan thrusted an arm out to block the incoming swing. “But it won't happen twice."
The veins—or electric currents—in his body sparked.
Jason yelled, “COACH! LOOK OUT!”
Too late, he realized that Dylan’s target was not Coach Hedge. A million volts of electricity were discharged straight at Leo and Piper, and Jason, who was the only one who got up in time, threw himself in front of them to absorb the blast.
BANG.
For a moment, there was nothing but ringing in Jason’s ears and the taste of roadkill in his mouth. His vision teetered between total darkness and the blinding white gates of heaven. Two figures, appearing in blurry silhouettes, desperately swarmed above him, trying to make him sit up. Their cries were muffled.
“…ason!”
Again, clearer: “JASON!”
He felt a light, continuous slap on his cheek. “Jason, come alive, man, don’t die on me—”
“I’m alive,” Jason croaked, still woozy from the attack. Dylan was duking it out with Coach Hedge, who was putting up a good fight for a faun.
The ventus must’ve assumed his targets had been charred into unidentifiable husks, and was too occupied by Coach Hedge’s enraged attacks to confirm his kill—the expression Dylan made when stood up and Jason lunged forward, fangs bared and the hurricane be damned, was comedically vivid for a smoke-man.
“What?! But HOW?!” Dylan shrieked, his talons holding back a powerful charge from Hedge. Jason was stopped in his tracks by a redirected mini-cyclone. “That was enough lightning to kill twenty men!”
Frustrated, Jason punched the cyclone into nothingness and, guided by sheer instinct, dropped down on all fours, then sprang forward to launch himself at Dylan’s throat. His teeth connected. Monster ichor exploded in his mouth like the world’s worst gummy Gusher, some of it dripping over his clothes.
Coach Hedge backed away, terrified but also approving. The winds temporarily lessened, and Hedge seized his opportunity to dash in Piper and Leo’s direction.
Dylan screamed again as Jason’s fingers dug into his smoky body. Perhaps something along the lines of, ‘not possible!’, but Jason, with only one goal in his mind, sank his teeth deeper and deeper till his jaw ached from exertion.
Then, with his nails digging bloody crescents into Dylan’s flickering shoulders, Jason yanked his head back and tore.
How he managed to physically damage a ventus like that, Jason had not the foggiest clue. Turns out, Dylan was as confused as he was at being treated like prey. He tried to speak, but ichor gushed like a fountain from his neck wound, where a large chunk of cloud-flesh was missing.
With a hardened glare, the ventus summoned all of his strength to flee, but not before he drew the last ace up his sleeve.
Dylan raced to intercept Coach Hedge, whose back was turned. Before anyone could get a word in, the faun was dragged up by his horns, club and all, kicking and screaming as Dylan whirled away and dissipated, taking Hedge with him.
Now that Dylan was gone, every mini-cyclone and tornado let out a final blast of wind and dispersed, slamming all three survivors against a hard surface—Jason hit the doors, Piper hit the railing, and Leo—
Shit.
Well, Leo didn’t get the memo.
With a start, Jason hauled himself up, sprinted across the skywalk, thinking: I’m a lunatic, and vaulted over the barricade, hurtling after the boy who had been knocked into the chasm below.