The Tyrant's Tomb Read online

  The greyhounds needed no encouragement. They charged uphill, plowing through the underbrush. Meg followed, clearly determined to rip her clothes on as many brambles and thorn bushes as possible.

  Reyna must have noticed my pained expression as I contemplated the climb.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can take it slow. Aurum and Argentum know to wait for me at the top.”

  “But does Meg?” I imagined my young friend charging alone into a relay station filled with guards, zombies, and other “neat” surprises.

  “Good point,” Reyna said. “Let’s take it medium, then.”

  I did my best, which entailed lots of wheezing, sweating, and leaning against trees to rest. My archery skills may have improved. My music was getting better. But my stamina was still 100 percent Lester.

  At least Reyna didn’t ask me how my wound felt. The answer was Somewhere south of horrible.

  When I’d gotten dressed that morning, I had avoided looking at my gut, but I couldn’t ignore the throbbing pain, or the deep purple tendrils of infection now licking at the bases of my wrists and my neck, which not even my long-sleeve hoodie could hide. Occasionally, my vision blurred, turning the world a sickly shade of eggplant. I would hear a distant whisper in my head…the voice of Tarquin, beckoning me to return to his tomb. So far, the voice was just an annoyance, but I had the feeling it would get stronger until I could no longer ignore it…or fail to obey it.

  I told myself I just needed to hang in there until tonight. Then I could summon godly help and get myself cured. Or I’d die in battle. At this point, either option was preferable to a painful, lingering slide into undeath.

  Reyna hiked alongside me, using her sheathed sword to poke the ground as if she expected to find land mines. Ahead of us, through the dense foliage, I saw no sign of Meg or the greyhounds, but I could hear them rustling through leaves and stepping on twigs. If any sentries waited for us at the summit, we would not be taking them by surprise.

  “So,” Reyna said, apparently satisfied that Meg was out of earshot, “are you going to tell me?”

  My pulse accelerated to a tempo suitable for a parade march. “Tell you what?”

  She raised her eyebrows like, Really? “Ever since you showed up at camp, you’ve been acting jumpy. You stare at me like I’m the one who got infected. Then you won’t make eye contact. You stammer. You fidget. I do notice these things.”

  “Ah.”

  I climbed a few more steps. Perhaps if I concentrated on the hike, Reyna would let the matter drop.

  “Look,” she said, “I’m not going to bite you. Whatever is going on, I’d rather not have it hanging over your head, or mine, when we go into battle.”

  I swallowed, wishing I had some of Lavinia’s bubble gum to cut the taste of poison and fear.

  Reyna made a good point. Whether I died today, or turned into a zombie, or somehow managed to live, I would rather face my fate with my conscience clear and no secrets. For one thing, I should tell Meg about my encounter with Peaches. I should also tell her I didn’t hate her. In fact, I liked her pretty well. All right, I loved her. She was the bratty little sister I’d never had.

  As for Reyna—I didn’t know whether I was or wasn’t the answer to her destiny. Venus might curse me for leveling with the praetor, but I had to tell Reyna what was bothering me. I was unlikely to get another chance.

  “It’s about Venus,” I said.

  Reyna’s expression hardened. It was her turn to stare at the hillside and hope the conversation went away. “I see.”

  “She told me—”

  “Her little prediction.” Reyna spat out the words like inedible seeds. “No mortal or demigod will ever heal my heart.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry,” I promised. “It’s just—”

  “Oh, I believe you. Venus loves her gossip. I doubt there’s anyone at Camp Jupiter who doesn’t know what she told in me Charleston.”

  “I—Really?”

  Reyna broke a dry branch off a shrub and flicked it into the underbrush. “I went on that quest with Jason, what, two years ago? Venus took one look at me and decided…I don’t know. I was broken. I needed romantic healing. Whatever. I wasn’t back at camp a full day before the whispering started. Nobody would admit that they knew, but they knew. The looks I got: Oh, poor Reyna. The innocent suggestions about who I should date.”

  She didn’t sound angry. It was more like weighed down and weary. I remembered Frank Zhang’s concern about how long Reyna had shouldered the burdens of leadership, how he wished he could do more to relieve her. Apparently, a lot of legionnaires wanted to help Reyna. Not all of that help had been welcome or useful.

  “The thing is,” she continued, “I’m not broken.”

  “Of course not.”

  “So why have you been acting nervous? What does Venus have to do with it? Please don’t tell me it’s pity.”

  “N-no. Nothing like that.”

  Up ahead, I heard Meg romping through the brush. Occasionally she would say, “Hey, how’s it going?” in a conversational tone, as if passing an acquaintance on the street. I supposed she was talking to the local dryads. Either that or the theoretical guards we were looking out for were very bad at their jobs.

  “You see…” I fumbled for words. “Back when I was a god, Venus gave me a warning. About you.”

  Aurum and Argentum burst through the bushes to check on Mom, their toothy smiles gleaming like freshly polished bear traps. Oh, good. I had an audience.

  Reyna patted Aurum absently on the head. “Go on, Lester.”

  “Um…” The marching band in my bloodstream was now doing double-time maneuvers. “Well, I walked into the throne room one day, and Venus was studying this hologram of you, and I asked—just completely casually, mind you—‘Who’s that?’ And she told me your…your fate, I guess. The thing about healing your heart. Then she just…tore into me. She forbade me to approach you. She said if I ever tried to woo you, she would curse me forever. It was totally unnecessary. And also embarrassing.”

  Reyna’s expression remained as smooth and hard as marble. “Woo? Is that even a thing anymore? Do people still woo?”

  “I—I don’t know. But I stayed away from you. You’ll notice I stayed away. Not that I would’ve done otherwise without the warning. I didn’t even know who you were.”

  She stepped over a fallen log and offered me a hand, which I declined. I didn’t like the way her greyhounds were grinning at me.

  “So, in other words,” she said, “what? You’re worried Venus will strike you dead because you’re invading my personal space? I really wouldn’t worry about that, Lester. You’re not a god anymore. You’re obviously not trying to woo me. We’re comrades on a quest.”

  She had to hit me where it hurt—right in the truth.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I was thinking….”

  Why was this so hard? I had spoken of love to women before. And men. And gods. And nymphs. And the occasional attractive statue before I realized it was a statue. Why, then, were the veins in my neck threatening to explode?

  “I thought if—if it would help,” I continued, “perhaps it was destiny that…Well, you see, I’m not a god anymore, as you said. And Venus was quite specific that I shouldn’t stick my godly face anywhere near you. But Venus…I mean, her plans are always twisting and turning. She may have been practicing reverse psychology, so to speak. If we were meant to…Um, I could help you.”

  Reyna stopped. Her dogs tilted their metal heads toward her, perhaps trying to gauge their master’s mood. Then they regarded me, their jeweled eyes cold and accusatory.

  “Lester.” Reyna sighed. “What in Tartarus are you saying? I’m not in the mood for riddles.”

  “That maybe I’m the answer,” I blurted. “To healing your heart. I could…you know, be your boyfriend. As Lester. If you wanted. You and me. You know, like…yeah.”

  I was absolutely certain that up on Mount Olympus, the other Olympians all had their phones
out and were filming me to post on Euterpe-Tube.

  Reyna stared at me long enough for the marching band in my circulatory system to play a complete stanza of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Her eyes were dark and dangerous. Her expression was unreadable, like the outer surface of an explosive device.

  She was going to murder me.

  No. She would order her dogs to murder me. By the time Meg rushed to my aid, it would be too late. Or worse—Meg would help Reyna bury my remains, and no one would be the wiser.

  When they returned to camp, the Romans would ask What happened to Apollo?

  Who? Reyna would say. Oh, that guy? Dunno, we lost him.

  Oh, well! the Romans would reply, and that would be that.

  Reyna’s mouth tightened into a grimace. She bent over, gripping her knees. Her body began to shake. Oh, gods, what had I done?

  Perhaps I should comfort her, hold her in my arms. Perhaps I should run for my life. Why was I so bad at romance?

  Reyna made a squeaking sound, then a sort of sustained whimper. I really had hurt her!

  Then she straightened, tears streaming down her face, and burst into laughter. The sound reminded me of water rushing over a creek bed that had been dry for ages. Once she started, she couldn’t seem to stop. She doubled over, stood upright again, leaned against a tree, and looked at her dogs as if to share the joke.

  “Oh…my…gods,” she wheezed. She managed to restrain her mirth long enough to blink at me through the tears, as if to make sure I was really there and she’d heard me correctly. “You. Me? HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA.”

  Aurum and Argentum seemed just as confused as I was. They glanced at each other, then at me, as if to say, What have you done to our mom? If you broke her, we will kill you.

  Reyna’s laughter rolled across the hillside.

  Once I got over my initial shock, my ears began to burn. Over the last few months, I had experienced quite a few humiliations. But being laughed at…to my face…when I wasn’t trying to be funny…that was a new low.

  “I don’t see why—”

  “HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

  “I wasn’t saying that—”

  “HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Stop, please. You’re killing me.”

  “She doesn’t mean that literally!” I yelped for the dogs’ benefit.

  “And you thought…” Reyna didn’t seem to know where to point—at me, herself, the sky. “Seriously? Wait. My dogs would have attacked if you were lying. Oh. Wow. HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”

  “So that’s a no, then,” I huffed. “Fine. I get it. You can stop—”

  Her laughter turned to asthmatic squeaking as she wiped her eyes. “Apollo. When you were a god…” She struggled for breath. “Like, with your powers and good looks and whatever—”

  “Say no more. Naturally, you would have—”

  “That would have been a solid, absolute, hard-pass NO.”

  I gaped. “I am astonished!”

  “And as Lester…I mean, you’re sweet and kind of adorkable at times.”

  “Adorkable? At times?”

  “But wow. Still a big-time NO. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  A lesser mortal would have crumbled to dust on the spot, their self-esteem imploding.

  In that moment, as she rejected me utterly, Reyna had never seemed more beautiful and desirable. Funny how that works.

  Meg emerged from the hackberry bushes. “Guys, there’s nobody up there, but—” She froze, taking in the scene, then glanced at the greyhounds for explanation.

  Don’t ask us, their metal faces seemed to say. Mom is never like this.

  “What’s so funny?” Meg asked. A smile tugged at her mouth, as if she wanted to join in the joke. Which was, of course, me.

  “Nothing.” Reyna held her breath for a moment, then lost it again in a fit of giggles. Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, daughter of Bellona, feared praetor of the Twelfth Legion, giggling.

  At last she seemed to regain some of her self-control. Her eyes danced with humor. Her cheeks glowed beet-red. Her smile made her seem like a different person—a happy different person.

  “Thanks, Lester,” she said. “I needed that. Now let’s go find the soundless god, shall we?”

  She led the way up the hill, holding her ribs as if her chest still hurt from too much hilarity.

  Then and there, I decided that if I ever became a god again, I would rearrange the order of my vengeance list. Venus had just moved up to the top spot.

  Frozen in terror

  Like a god in the headlights

  Why U speeding up?

  MORTAL SECURITY WAS NOT a problem.

  There wasn’t any.

  Across a flat expanse of rocks and weeds, the relay station sat nestled at the base of Sutro Tower. The blocky brown building had clusters of white satellite dishes dotting its roof like toadstools after a rain shower. The door stood wide open. The windows were dark. The parking area out front was empty.

  “This isn’t right,” Reyna murmured. “Didn’t Tarquin say they were doubling security?”

  “Doubling the flock,” Meg corrected. “But I don’t see any sheep or anything.”

  That idea made me shudder. Over the millennia, I’d seen quite a few flocks of guardian sheep. They tended to be poisonous and/or carnivorous, and they smelled like mildewed sweaters.

  “Apollo, any thoughts?” Reyna asked.

  At least she could look at me now without bursting into laughter, but I didn’t trust myself to speak. I just shook my head helplessly. I was good at that.

  “Maybe we’re in the wrong place?” Meg asked.

  Reyna bit her lower lip. “Something’s definitely off here. Let me check inside the station. Aurum and Argentum can make a quick search. If we encounter any mortals, I’ll just say I was hiking and got lost. You guys wait here. Guard my exit. If you hear barking, that means trouble.”

  She jogged across the field, Aurum and Argentum at her heels, and disappeared inside the building.

  Meg peered at me over the top of her cat-eye glasses. “How come you made her laugh?”

  “That wasn’t my intention. Besides, it isn’t illegal to make someone laugh.”

  “You asked her to be your girlfriend, didn’t you?”

  “I—What? No. Sort of. Yes.”

  “That was stupid.”

  I found it humiliating to have my love life criticized by a little girl wearing a unicorn-and-crossbones button. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Meg snorted.

  I seemed to be everyone’s source of amusement today.

  I studied the tower that loomed above us. Up the side of the nearest support column, a steel-ribbed chute enclosed a row of rungs, forming a tunnel that one could climb through—if one were crazy enough—to reach the first set of crossbeams, which bristled with more satellite dishes and cellular-antenna fungi. From there, the rungs continued upward into a low-lying blanket of fog that swallowed the tower’s top half. In the white mist, a hazy black V floated in and out of sight—a bird of some sort.

  I shivered, thinking of the strixes that had attacked us in the Burning Maze, but strixes only hunted at nighttime. That dark shape had to be something else, maybe a hawk looking for mice. The law of averages dictated that once in a while I’d have to come across a creature that didn’t want to kill me, right?

  Nevertheless, the fleeting shape filled me with dread. It reminded me of the many near-death experiences I’d shared with Meg McCaffrey, and of the promise I’d made to myself to be honest with her, back in the good old days of ten minutes ago, before Reyna had nuked my self-esteem.

  “Meg,” I said. “Last night—”

  “You saw Peaches. I know.”

  She might have been talking about the weather. Her gaze stayed fixed on the doorway of the relay station.

  “You know,” I repeated.

  “He’s been around for a couple of days.”

  “You’ve seen him?”

  “Just sensed him. He’s got his reasons for staying a
way. Doesn’t like the Romans. He’s working on a plan to help the local nature spirits.”

  “And…if that plan is to help them run away?”

  In the diffused gray light of the fog bank, Meg’s glasses looked like her own tiny satellite dishes. “You think that’s what he wants? Or what the nature spirits want?”

  I remembered the fauns’ fearful expressions at People’s Park, the dryads’ weary anger. “I don’t know. But Lavinia—”

  “Yeah. She’s with them.” Meg shrugged one shoulder. “The centurions noticed her missing at morning roll call. They’re trying to downplay it. Bad for morale.”

  I stared at my young companion, who had apparently been taking lessons from Lavinia in Advanced Camp Gossip. “Does Reyna know?”

  “That Lavinia is gone? Sure. Where Lavinia went? Nah. I don’t either, really. Whatever she and Peaches and the rest are planning, there’s not much we can do about it now. We’ve got other stuff to worry about.”

  I crossed my arms. “Well, I’m glad we had this talk, so I could unburden myself of all the things you already knew. I was also going to say that you’re important to me and I might even love you like a sister, but—”

  “I already know that, too.” She gave me a crooked grin, offering proof that Nero really should have taken her to the orthodontist when she was younger. “ ’S’okay. You’ve gotten less annoying, too.”

  “Hmph.”

  “Look, here comes Reyna.”

  And so ended our warm family moment, as the praetor reemerged from the station, her expression unsettled, her greyhounds happily circling her legs as if waiting for jelly beans.

  “The place is empty,” Reyna announced. “Looks like everybody left in a hurry. I’d say something cleared them out—like a bomb threat, maybe.”

  I frowned. “In that case, wouldn’t there be emergency vehicles here?”

  “The Mist,” Meg guessed. “Could’ve made the mortals see anything to get them out of here. Clearing the scene before…”

  I was about to ask Before what? But I didn’t want the answer.

  Meg was right, of course. The Mist was a strange force. Sometimes it manipulated mortal minds after a supernatural event, like damage control. Other times, it operated in advance of a catastrophe, pushing away mortals who might otherwise wind up as collateral damage—like ripples in a local pond warning of a dragon’s first footstep.