The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4)

hatch on the sphere, teased out two wires and connected them to his crossbar.
    How long until he hit the water? Maybe a minute?
    He turned the sphere’s control dial, and it whirred into action. More bronze wires shot from the orb, intuitively sensing what Leo needed. Cords laced up the canvas drop cloth. The frame began to expand on its own. Leo pulled out a can of kerosene and a rubber tube and lashed them to the thirsty new engine that the orb was helping him assemble.
    Finally he made himself a rope halter and shifted so that the X-frame was attached to his back. The sea got closer and closer – a glittering expanse of slap-you-in-the-face death.
    He yelled in defiance and punched the sphere’s override switch.
    The engine coughed to life. The makeshift rotor turned.The canvas blades spun, but much too slowly. Leo’s head was pointed straight down at the sea – maybe thirty seconds to impact.
    At least nobody’s around, he thought bitterly, or I’d be a demigod joke forever.
What was the last thing to go through Leo’s mind? The Mediterranean.
    Suddenly the orb got warm against his chest. The blades turned faster. The engine coughed, and Leo tilted sideways, slicing through the air.
    ‘YES!’ he yelled.
    He had successfully created the world’s most dangerous personal helicopter.
    He shot towards the island in the distance, but he was still falling much too fast. The blades shuddered. The canvas screamed.
    The beach was only a few hundred yards away when the sphere turned lava-hot and the helicopter exploded, shooting flames in every direction. If he hadn’t been immune to fire, Leo would have been charcoal. As it was, the midair explosion probably saved his life. The blast flung Leo sideways while the bulk of his flaming contraption smashed into the shore at full speed with a massive
KA-BOOM!
    Leo opened his eyes, amazed to be alive. He was sitting in a bathtub-sized crater in the sand. A few yards away, a column of thick black smoke roiled into the sky from a much larger crater. The surrounding beach was peppered with smaller pieces of burning wreckage.
    ‘My sphere.’ Leo patted his chest. The sphere wasn’t there. His duct tape and rope halter had disintegrated.
    He struggled to his feet. None of his bones seemed broken, which was good, but mostly he was worried about his Archimedes sphere. If he’d destroyed his priceless artefact to make a flaming thirty-second helicopter, he was going to track down that stupid snow goddess Khione and smack her with a monkey wrench.
    He staggered across the beach, wondering why there weren’t any tourists or hotels or boats in sight. The island seemed perfect for a resort, with blue water and soft white sand. Maybe it was uncharted. Did they still
have
uncharted islands in the world? Maybe Khione had blasted him out of the Mediterranean altogether. For all he knew, he was in Bora Bora.
    The larger crater was about eight feet deep. At the bottom, the helicopter blades were still trying to turn. The engine belched smoke. The rotor croaked like a stepped-on frog, but
dang
– pretty impressive for a rush job.
    The helicopter had apparently crashed
onto
something. The crater was littered with broken wooden furniture, shattered china plates, some half-melted pewter goblets and burning linen napkins. Leo wasn’t sure why all that fancy stuff had been on the beach, but at least it meant that this place was inhabited, after all.
    Finally he spotted the Archimedes sphere – steaming and charred but still intact, making unhappy clicking noises in the centre of the wreckage.
    ‘Sphere!’ he yelled. ‘Come to Papa!’
    He skidded to the bottom of the crater and snatched up the sphere. He collapsed, sat cross-legged and cradled thedevice in his hands. The bronze surface was searing hot, but Leo didn’t care. It was still in one piece, which meant he could use it.
    Now, if he could just figure out where he was and how to get back to his friends …
    He was making a mental list of tools he might need when a girl’s voice interrupted him: ‘What are you
doing
? You blew up my dining table!’
    Immediately Leo thought:
Uh-oh.
    He’d met a lot of goddesses, but the girl glaring down at him from the edge of the crater actually
looked
like a goddess.
    She wore a sleeveless white Greek-style dress with a gold braided belt. Her hair was long, straight and golden brown – almost the same cinnamon-toast colour as Hazel’s, but the similarity to Hazel ended there. The