The Tyrant's Tomb Read online

  Hazel’s fingers still hesitated over the concrete. “Close enough to risk it?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to channel my inner Frank Zhang confidence. “Write it as a date: Two hundred and fifty-four. C-C-L-I-V.”

  Hazel did. The numbers glowed silver. The entire stone slab dissipated into smoke, revealing steps leading down into darkness.

  “Okay, then,” Hazel said. “I have a feeling the next part is going to be harder. Follow me. Step only where I step. And don’t make any noise.”

  Meet the new Tarquin

  Same as the old Tarquin, but

  With a lot less flesh

  SO…NO JOLLY TUNES on the ukulele, then.

  Fine.

  I silently followed Hazel down the steps into the merry-go-tomb.

  As we descended, I wondered why Tarquin had chosen to reside under a carousel. He had watched his wife run over her own father in a chariot. Perhaps he liked the idea of an endless ring of horses and monsters circling above his resting place, keeping guard with their fierce faces, even if they were ridden mostly by mortal toddlers. (Who, I suppose, were fierce in their own way.) Tarquin had a brutal sense of humor. He enjoyed tearing families apart, turning their joy into anguish. He was not above using children as human shields. No doubt he found it amusing to place his tomb under a brightly colored kiddie ride.

  My ankles wobbled in terror. I reminded myself there was a reason I was climbing into this murderer’s lair. I couldn’t remember what that reason was at the moment, but there had to be one.

  The steps ended in a long corridor, its limestone walls decorated with rows of plaster death masks. At first, this did not strike me as odd. Most wealthy Romans kept a collection of death masks to honor their ancestors. Then I noticed the masks’ expressions. Like the carousel animals above, the plaster faces were frozen in panic, agony, rage, terror. These were not tributes. They were trophies.

  I glanced back at Meg and Lavinia. Meg stood at the base of the stairs, blocking any possible retreat. The glittery unicorn on her T-shirt grinned at me hideously.

  Lavinia met my eyes as if to say, Yes, those masks are messed up. Now, keep moving.

  We followed Hazel down the corridor, every clink and rustle of our weapons echoing against the barreled ceiling. I was sure the Berkeley Seismology Lab, several miles away, would pick up my heartbeat on their seismographs and send out earthquake early warnings.

  The tunnel split several times, but Hazel always seemed to know which direction to take. Occasionally she’d stop, look back at us, and point urgently to some part of the floor, reminding us not to stray from her path. I didn’t know what would happen if I took a wrong step, but I had no desire to have my death mask added to Tarquin’s collection.

  After what seemed like hours, I began to hear water dripping somewhere in front of us. The tunnel opened into a circular room like a large cistern, the floor nothing but a narrow stone path across a deep dark pool. Hooked on the far wall were half a dozen wicker boxes like lobster traps, each with a circular opening at the bottom just the right size for…Oh, gods. Each box was the right size to be fitted over a person’s head.

  A tiny whimper escaped my mouth.

  Hazel glanced back and mouthed, What?

  A half-remembered story floated up from the sludge of my brain: how Tarquin had executed one of his enemies by drowning him in a sacred pool—binding the man’s hands, placing a wicker cage over his head, then slowly adding rocks to the cage until the man could no longer keep his head above water.

  Apparently, Tarquin still enjoyed that particular form of entertainment.

  I shook my head. You don’t want to know.

  Hazel, being wise, took my word for it. She led us onward.

  Just before the next chamber, Hazel held up a hand in warning. We halted. Following her gaze, I could make out two skeleton guards at the far side of the room, flanking an elaborately carved stone archway. The guards faced each other, wearing full war helmets, which was probably why they hadn’t spotted us yet. If we made the slightest sound, if they glanced this way for any reason, we would be seen.

  About seventy feet separated us from their position. The floor of their chamber was littered with old human bones. No way could we sneak up on them. These were skeleton warriors, the special forces of the undead world. I had zero desire to fight them. I shivered, wondering who they had been before the eurynomoi stripped them to the bones.

  I met Hazel’s eyes, then pointed back the way we’d come. Retreat?

  She shook her head. Wait.

  Hazel shut her eyes in concentration. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of her face.

  The two guards snapped to attention. They turned away from us, facing the archway, then marched through, side by side, into the darkness.

  Lavinia’s gum almost fell out of her mouth. “How?” she whispered.

  Hazel put her finger to her lips, then motioned for us to follow.

  The chamber was now empty except for the bones scattered across the floor. Perhaps the skeleton warriors came here to pick up spare parts. Along the opposite wall, above the archway, ran a balcony accessed by a staircase on either side. Its railing was a latticework of contorted human skeletons, which did not freak me out at all. Two doorways led off from the balcony. Except for the main archway through which our skeleton friends had marched, those seemed to be the only exits from the chamber.

  Hazel led us up the left-hand staircase. Then, for reasons known only to herself, she crossed the balcony and took the doorway on the right. We followed her through.

  At the end of a short corridor, about twenty feet ahead, firelight illuminated another balcony with a skeletal railing, the mirror image of the one we’d just left. I couldn’t see much of the chamber beyond it, but the space was clearly occupied. A deep voice echoed from within—a voice I recognized.

  Meg flicked her wrists, retracting her swords into rings—not because we were out of danger, but because she understood that even a little extra glow might give away our position. Lavinia tugged an oil cloth from her back pocket and draped it over her manubalista. Hazel gave me a look of warning that was completely unnecessary.

  I knew what lay just ahead. Tarquin the Proud was holding court.

  I crouched behind the balcony’s skeletal latticework and peered into the throne room below, desperately hoping none of the undead would look up and see us. Or smell us. Oh, human body odor, why did you have to be so pungent after several hours of hiking?

  Against the far wall, between two massive stone pillars, sat a sarcophagus chiseled with bas relief images of monsters and wild animals, much like the creatures on the Tilden Park carousel. Lounging across the sarcophagus lid was the thing that had once been Tarquinius Superbus. His robes had not been laundered in several thousand years. They hung off him in moldering shreds. His body had withered to a blackened skeleton. Patches of moss clung to his jawbone and cranium, giving him a grotesque beard and hairdo. Tendrils of glowing purple gas slithered through his rib cage and circled his joints, coiling up his neck and into his skull, lighting his eye sockets fiery violet.

  Whatever that purple light was, it seemed to be holding Tarquin together. It probably wasn’t his soul. I doubted Tarquin ever had one of those. More likely it was his sheer ambition and hatred, a stubborn refusal to give up no matter how long he’d been dead.

  The king seemed to be in the midst of scolding the two skeleton guards Hazel had manipulated.

  “Did I call you?” demanded the king. “No, I did not. So why are you here?”

  The skeletons looked at each other as if wondering the same thing.

  “Get back to your posts!” Tarquin shouted.

  The guards marched back the way they had come.

  This left three eurynomoi and half a dozen zombies milling around in the room, though I got the feeling there might be more directly beneath our balcony. Even worse, the zombies—vrykolakai, whatever you wanted to call them—were former Roman legionnaires. Most were
still dressed for battle in dented armor and torn clothing, their skin puffy, their lips blue, gaping wounds in their chests and limbs.

  The pain in my gut became almost intolerable. The words from the Burning Maze prophecy were stuck on replay in my mind: Apollo faces death. Apollo faces death.

  Next to me, Lavinia trembled, her eyes tearing up. Her gaze was fixed on one of the dead legionnaires: a young man with long brown hair, the left side of his face badly burned. A former friend, I guessed. Hazel gripped Lavinia’s shoulder—perhaps to comfort her, perhaps to remind her to be silent. Meg knelt at my other side, her eyeglasses glinting. I desperately wished I had a permanent marker to black out her rhinestones.

  She seemed to be counting enemies, calculating how fast she could take them all down. I had great faith in Meg’s sword skills, at least when she wasn’t exhausted from bending eucalyptus trees, but I also knew these enemies were too many, too powerful.

  I touched her knee for attention. I shook my head and tapped my ear, reminding her that we were here to spy, not to fight.

  She stuck out her tongue.

  We were simpatico like that.

  Below, Tarquin grumbled something about not being able to find good help. “Anyone seen Caelius? Where is he? CAELIUS!”

  A moment later, a eurynomos shuffled in from a side tunnel. He knelt before the king and screamed, “EAT FLESH! SOOOON!”

  Tarquin hissed. “Caelius, we’ve discussed this. Keep your wits!”

  Caelius slapped himself in the face. “Yes, my king.” His voice now had a measured British accent. “Terribly sorry. The fleet is on schedule. It should arrive in three days, just in time for the blood moon’s rising.”

  “Very well. And our own troops?”

  “EAT FLESH!” Caelius slapped himself again. “Apologies, sire. Yes, everything is ready. The Romans suspect nothing. As they turn outward to face the emperors, we will strike!”

  “Good. It is imperative we take the city first. When the emperors arrive, I want to be already in control! They can burn the rest of the Bay Area if they wish, but the city is mine.”

  Meg clenched her fists until they turned the color of the bone latticework. After our experiences with the heat-distressed dryads of Southern California, she had gotten a little touchy whenever evil megalomaniacs threatened to torch the environment.

  I gave her my most serious Stay cool glare, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  Down below, Tarquin was saying, “And the silent one?”

  “He is well-guarded, sire,” Caelius promised.

  “Hmm,” Tarquin mused. “Double the flock, nevertheless. We must be sure.”

  “But, my king, surely the Romans cannot know about Sutro—”

  “Silence!” Tarquin ordered.

  Caelius whimpered. “Yes, my king. FLESH! Sorry, my king. EAT FLESH!”

  Tarquin raised his glowing purple skull toward our balcony. I prayed that he hadn’t noticed us. Lavinia stopped chewing her gum. Hazel looked deep in concentration, perhaps willing the undead king to look away.

  After a count of ten, Tarquin chuckled. “Well, Caelius, it looks like you’ll get to eat flesh sooner than I thought.”

  “Master?”

  “We have interlopers.” Tarquin raised his voice: “Come down, you four! And meet your new king!”

  Meg, don’t you dare—MEG!

  Or you could just get us killed

  Yeah, sure, that works, too

  I HOPED THERE WERE four other interlopers hidden somewhere on this balcony. Surely, Tarquin was talking to them and not us.

  Hazel jabbed her thumb toward the exit, the universal sign for LET’S VAMOOSE! Lavinia began crawling that way on her hands and knees. I was about to follow when Meg ruined everything.

  She stood up tall (well, as tall as Meg can be), summoned her swords, and leaped over the railing.

  “MEEEEEEEEEGAH!” I shouted, half war cry, half What in Hades are you doing?

  Without any conscious decision, I was on my feet, my bow in hand, an arrow nocked and loosed, then another and another. Hazel muttered a curse no proper lady from the 1930s should’ve known, drew her cavalry sword, and jumped into the fray so Meg would not have to stand alone. Lavinia rose, struggling to uncover her manubalista, but the oil cloth seemed to be stuck on the crossbeam.

  More undead swarmed Meg from under the balcony. Her twin swords whirled and flashed, cutting off limbs and heads, reducing zombies to dust. Hazel decapitated Caelius, then turned to face another two eurynomoi.

  The deceased former legionnaire with the burned face would have stabbed Hazel in the back, but Lavinia loosed her crossbow just in time. The Imperial gold bolt hit the zombie between the shoulder blades, causing him to implode in a pile of armor and clothes.

  “Sorry, Bobby!” Lavinia said with a sob.

  I made a mental note never to tell Hannibal how his former trainer had met his end.

  I kept firing until only the Arrow of Dodona remained in my quiver. In retrospect, I realized I’d fired a dozen arrows in about thirty seconds, each a kill shot. My fingers literally steamed. I hadn’t unleashed a volley like that since I was a god.

  This should have delighted me, but any feeling of satisfaction was cut short by Tarquin’s laughter. As Hazel and Meg cut down the last of his minions, he rose from his sarcophagus couch and gave us a round of applause. Nothing sounds more sinister than the ironic slow-clap of two skeletal hands.

  “Lovely!” he said. “Oh, that was very nice! You’ll all make valuable members of my team!”

  Meg charged.

  The king didn’t touch her, but with a flick of his hand, some invisible force sent Meg flying backward into the far wall. Her swords clattered to the floor.

  A guttural sound escaped my throat. I leaped over the railing, landing on one of my own spent arrow shafts (which are every bit as treacherous as banana peels). I slipped and fell hard on my hip. Not my most heroic entrance. Meanwhile, Hazel ran at Tarquin. She was hurled aside with another blast of unseen force.

  Tarquin’s hearty chuckle filled the chamber. From the corridors on either side of his sarcophagus, the sounds of shuffling feet and clanking armor echoed, getting closer and closer. Up on the balcony, Lavinia furiously cranked her manubalista. If I could buy her another twenty minutes or so, she might be able to take a second shot.

  “Well, Apollo,” said Tarquin, purple coils of mist slithering from his eye sockets and into his mouth. Yuck. “Neither of us have aged well, have we?”

  My heart pounded. I groped around for usable arrows but found only more broken shafts. I was half-tempted to shoot the Arrow of Dodona, but I couldn’t risk giving Tarquin a weapon with prophetic knowledge. Can talking arrows be tortured? I didn’t want to find out.

  Meg struggled to her feet. She looked unhurt but grumpy, as she tended to whenever she got thrown into walls. I imagined she was thinking the same thing I was: this situation was too familiar, too much like Caligula’s yacht when Meg and Jason had been imprisoned by venti. I couldn’t let another scenario like that play out. I was tired of evil monarchs tossing us around like rag dolls.

  Hazel stood, covered head to toe in zombie dust. That couldn’t have been good for her respiratory system. In the back of my mind, I wondered if we could get Justicia the Roman law goddess to file a class-action suit on our behalf against Tarquin for hazardous tomb conditions.

  “Everyone,” Hazel said, “back up.”

  It was the same thing she’d told us in the tunnel to camp, right before turning the eurynomos into ceiling art.

  Tarquin just laughed. “Ah, Hazel Levesque, your clever tricks with rocks won’t work here. This is my seat of power! My reinforcements will arrive any moment. It will be easier if you don’t resist your deaths. I’m told it’s less painful that way.”

  Above me, Lavinia continued to crank her hand-cannon.

  Meg picked up her swords. “Fight or run, guys?”

  The way she glared at Tarquin, I was pretty sure I knew her pref
erence.

  “Oh, child,” Tarquin said. “You can try to run, but soon enough, you’ll be fighting at my side with those wonderful blades of yours. As for Apollo…he’s not going anywhere.”

  He curled his fingers. He was nowhere close to me, but my gut wound convulsed, sending hot skewers into my rib cage and groin. I screamed. My eyes welled with tears.

  “Stop it!” Lavinia shrieked. She dropped from the balcony and landed at my side. “What are you doing to him?”

  Meg charged again at the undead king, perhaps hoping to catch him off guard. Without even looking at her, Tarquin tossed her aside with another blast of force. Hazel stood as stiff as a limestone column, her eyes fixed on the wall behind the king. Tiny cracks had begun to spiderweb across the stone.

  “Why, Lavinia,” the king said, “I’m calling Apollo home!”

  He grinned, which was the only facial expression he was capable of, having no face. “Poor Lester would’ve been compelled to seek me out eventually, once the poison took hold of his brain. But getting him here so soon—this is a special treat!”

  He clenched his bony fist tighter. My pain tripled. I groaned and blubbered. My vision swam in red Vaseline. How was it possible to feel so much pain and not die?

  “Leave him alone!” yelled Meg.

  From the tunnels on either side of Tarquin’s sarcophagus, more zombies began to spill into the room.

  “Run.” I gasped. “Get out of here.”

  I now understood the lines from the Burning Maze: I would face death in Tarquin’s tomb, or a fate worse than death. But I would not allow my friends to perish, too.

  Stubbornly, annoyingly, they refused to leave.

  “Apollo is my servant now, Meg McCaffrey,” Tarquin said. “You really shouldn’t mourn him. He’s terrible to the people he loves. You can ask the Sibyl.”

  The king regarded me as I writhed like a bug pinned to a corkboard. “I hope the Sibyl lasts long enough to see you humbled. That may be what finally breaks her. And when those bumbling emperors arrive, they will see the true terror of a Roman king!”