The Tower of Nero Read online

  Paul and Sally leaned forward, ready for marching orders.

  Lu shook her head. “Not you, my good hosts. I have no doubt you are brave and strong, but I will not see any harm come to this family.”

  I nodded. “On that, at least, we agree. Once the morning comes, we’re out of here. Possibly after a good breakfast, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Sally smiled, though there was a tinge of disappointment in her eyes, as if she’d been looking forward to busting some evil Roman heads. “I still want to hear the plan. What will you do?”

  “Best to not share too many details,” Lu said. “But there is a secret way into Nero’s tower—from below. It is the way that Nero takes to visit…the reptile.”

  Coils of lasagna seemed to tighten in my stomach. The reptile. Python. Interloper at Delphi, my archnemesis, and winner of Olympus Magazine’s Least Popular Serpent award for four thousand years running.

  “That sounds like a terrible way in,” I noted.

  “It is not wonderful,” Lu agreed.

  “But we can use it to sneak in,” Meg guessed. “Surprise Nero?”

  Lu snorted. “Nothing so easy, Sapling. The way is secret, but it is still heavily guarded and under constant surveillance. If you tried to sneak in, you would be caught.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m still not hearing anything resembling a plan.”

  Lu took a moment to gather her patience. I was familiar with this look. I got it often from Meg, and my sister Artemis, and…well, everyone, actually.

  “The way is not for you,” she said. “But it could be used to sneak in a small squad of demigods, if any were brave enough and sufficiently skilled at navigating underground.”

  Son of Hades, I thought, the amphisbaena’s words echoing in my head, cavern-runners’ friend, / Must show the secret way unto the throne.

  The only thing more unsettling than not understanding a prophecy was beginning to understand it.

  “Then they would just get captured,” I said.

  “Not necessarily,” Lu said. “Not if Nero were sufficiently distracted.”

  I had a feeling I was not going to like the answer to my next question. “Distracted by what?”

  “Your surrender,” Lu said.

  I waited. Lu did not seem the type for practical jokes, but this would have been a good moment for her to laugh and yell NOT!

  “You can’t be serious,” I said.

  “I’m with Apollo,” Sally said. “If Nero wants to kill him, why would he—?”

  “It’s the only way.” Lu took a deep breath. “Listen, I know how Nero thinks. When I return to him and tell him you two got away, he will issue an ultimatum.”

  Paul frowned. “To whom?”

  “Camp Half-Blood,” Lu said. “Any demigods, any allies anywhere who are harboring Apollo. Nero’s terms will be simple: Apollo and Meg surrender themselves within a certain amount of time, or Nero destroys New York.”

  I wanted to laugh. It seemed impossible, ridiculous. Then I remembered Caligula’s yachts in San Francisco Bay, launching a barrage of Greek-fire projectiles that would have destroyed the entire East Bay if Lavinia Asimov hadn’t sabotaged them. Nero would have at least as many resources at his disposal, and Manhattan was a much more densely populated target.

  Would he burn his own city, with his own palatial tower in the middle of it?

  Dumb question, Apollo. Nero had done it before. Just ask ancient Rome.

  “So you rescued us,” I said, “just to tell us we should surrender to Nero. That’s your plan.”

  “Nero must believe he has already won,” Lu said. “Once he has you two in his grasp, he will relax his guard. This may give your demigod team a chance to infiltrate the tower from below.”

  “May,” I echoed.

  “The timing will be tricky,” Lu admitted, “but Nero will keep you alive for a while, Apollo. He and the reptile…They have plans for you.”

  A distant thunderclap shook my chair. Either that, or I was trembling. I could imagine what sort of plans Nero and Python might have for me. None of them included a nice lasagna dinner.

  “And, Sapling,” Lu continued, “I know it will be hard for you, going back to that place, but I will be there to protect you, as I’ve done many times before. I will be your inside woman. When your friends invade, I can free you both. Then, together, we can take down the emperor.”

  Why did Meg look so pensive, as if she were actually considering this insane strategy?

  “Just a minute,” I protested. “Even if we trust you, why would Nero? You say you’ll go back to him with your tail between your legs and report that we got away. Why would he believe that? Why won’t he suspect you’ve turned on him?”

  “I have a plan for that, too,” Lu said. “It involves you pushing me off a building.”

  I’D HEARD WORSE PLANS.

  But while the idea of pushing Lu off a building had a certain appeal, I was skeptical that she really meant it, especially since she wouldn’t explain further or offer us details.

  “Tomorrow,” she insisted. “Once we’re on our way.”

  The next morning, Sally made us breakfast. Estelle giggled at us hysterically. Paul apologized for not having a car to lend us, since the family Prius, which we usually crashed, was on its way to California with Percy, Grover, and Annabeth. The best Paul could offer us was a subway pass, but I wasn’t ready to ride any more trains.

  Sally gave us all hugs and wished us well. Then she said she had to get back to baking cookies, which she did to relieve stress while she was working on the revisions for her second novel.

  This raised many questions for me. Second novel? We hadn’t discussed her writing at all the night before. Cookies? Could we wait until they were done?

  But I suspected that good food was a never-ending temptation here at the Jackson/Blofis home. There would always be a next sweet or savory snack that was more appealing than facing the harsh world.

  Also, I respected the fact that Sally needed to work. As the god of poetry, I understood revisions. Facing monsters and imperial mercenaries was much easier.

  At least the rain had stopped, leaving us a steamy June morning. Lu, Meg, and I headed toward the East River on foot, ducking from alley to alley until Lu found a location that seemed to satisfy her.

  Just off First Avenue, a ten-story apartment building was in the process of a gut renovation. Its brick facade was a hollow shell, its windows empty frames. We sneaked through the alley behind the lot, climbed over a chain-link construction fence, and found the back entrance blocked only by a sheet of plywood. Lu broke through it with one sturdy kick.

  “After you,” she said.

  I eyed the dark doorway. “We really have to go through with this?”

  “I’m the one who has to fall off the roof,” she muttered. “Stop complaining.”

  The building’s interior was reinforced with metal scaffolding—rung ladders leading from one level to the next. Oh, good. After climbing Sutro Tower, I just loved the idea of more ladders. Rays of sunlight sliced through the structure’s hollow interior, swirling up dust clouds and miniature rainbows. Above us, the roof was still intact. From the topmost tier of scaffolding, a final ladder led up to a landing with a metal door.

  Lu began to climb. She had changed back into her Amtrak disguise so she wouldn’t have to explain the Electronics Mega-Mart shirt to Nero. I followed in my Percy Jackson hand-me-downs. My funny valentine, Meg, brought up the rear. Just like old times at Sutro Tower, except with 100 percent less Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano and 100 percent more tattooed Gaul.

  On each level, Meg stopped to sneeze and wipe her nose. Lu did her best to stay away from the windows, as if worried that Nero might burst through one and yell, Boare!

  (I’m pretty sure that was Latin for boo! It’s been a while since I attended one of Cicero’s famous haunted-house parties. That man did love to put a toga over his head and scare his guests.)

  Finally, we reached t
he metal door, which had been spray-painted with a red-stenciled warning, ROOF ACCESS RESTRICTED. I was sweaty and out of breath. Lu seemed unperturbed by the climb. Meg kicked absently at the nearest brick as if wondering whether she could collapse the building.

  “Here’s the plan,” Lu said. “I know for a fact Nero has cameras in the office building across the street. It’s one of his properties. When we burst out this door, his surveillance team should get some good footage of us on the roof.”

  “Remind us why that’s a good thing?” I asked.

  Lu muttered something under her breath, perhaps a prayer for her Celtic gods to smack me upside the head. “Because we’re going to let Nero see what we want him to see. We’re going to put on a show.”

  Meg nodded. “Like on the train.”

  “Exactly,” Lu said. “You two run out first. I’ll follow a few steps behind, like I’ve finally cornered you and am ready to kill you.”

  “In a strictly playacting way,” I hoped.

  “It has to look real,” Lu said.

  “We can do it.” Meg turned to me with a look of pride. “You saw us on the train, Lester, and that was with no planning. When I lived at the tower? Lu would help me fake these incredible battles so Father—Nero, I mean—would think I killed my opponents.”

  I stared at her. “Kill. Your opponents.”

  “Like servants, or prisoners, or just people he didn’t like. Lu and I would work it out beforehand. I’d pretend to kill them. Fake blood and everything. Then after, Lu would drag them out of the arena and let them go. The deaths looked so real, Nero never caught on.”

  I couldn’t decide what I found most horrifying: Meg’s uncomfortable slip calling Nero Father, or the fact that Nero had expected his young stepdaughter to execute prisoners for his amusement, or the fact that Lu had conspired to make the show nonlethal to spare Meg’s feelings rather than—oh, I don’t know—refusing to do Nero’s dirty work in the first place and getting Meg out of that house of horrors.

  And are you any better? taunted a small voice in my brain. How many times have you stood up to Zeus?

  Okay, small voice. Fair point. Tyrants are not easy to oppose or walk away from, especially when you depend on them for everything.

  I swallowed the bitter taste in my mouth. “What’s my role?”

  “Meg and I will do most of the fighting.” Lu hefted her crossbow. “Apollo, you stumble around and cower in fear.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Then, when it looks like I’m about to kill Meg, you scream and charge me. You have bursts of godly strength from time to time, I’ve heard.”

  “I can’t summon one on command!”

  “You don’t have to. Pretend. Push me as hard as you can—right off the roof. I’ll let you do it.”

  I looked over the scaffold railing. “We’re ten stories up. I know this because…we’re ten stories up.”

  “Yes,” Lu agreed. “Should be about right. I don’t die easily, little Lester. I’ll break some bones, no doubt, but with luck, I’ll survive.”

  “With luck?” Meg suddenly didn’t sound so confident.

  Lu summoned a scimitar into her free hand. “We have to risk it, Sapling. Nero has to believe I did my very best to catch you. If he suspects something…Well, we can’t have that.” She faced me. “Ready?”

  “No!” I said. “You still haven’t explained how Nero intends to burn down the city, or what we’re supposed to do once we get captured.”

  Lu’s fiery look was quite convincing. I actually believed she wanted to kill me. “He has Greek fire. More than Caligula did. More than anyone else has ever dared to stockpile. He has some delivery system in place. I don’t know the details. But as soon as he suspects something is wrong, one push of a button and it’s all over. That’s why we have to go through this elaborate charade. We have to get you inside without him realizing it’s a trick.”

  I was trembling again. I stared down at the concrete floor and imagined it disintegrating, dropping into a sea of green flame. “So what happens when we’re captured?”

  “The holding cells,” Lu said. “They’re very close to the vault where Nero keeps his fasces.”

  My spirits rose at least a millimeter. This wasn’t good news, exactly, but at least Lu’s plan now seemed a little less insane. The emperor’s fasces, the golden ax that symbolized his power, would be connected to Nero’s life force. In San Francisco, we’d destroyed the fasces of Commodus and Caligula and weakened the emperors just enough to kill them. If we could do the same to Nero…

  “So you break us out of our cells,” I guessed, “and lead us to this vault.”

  “That’s the idea.” Lu’s expression turned grim. “Of course, the fasces is guarded by…well, something terrible.”

  “What?” Meg asked.

  Lu’s hesitation scared me worse than any monster she might have named. “Let’s deal with that later. One impossible thing at a time.”

  Yet again I found myself agreeing with the Gaul. This worried me.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “Lester, after you push me off the roof, you and Meg get to Camp Half-Blood as fast as you can, find a demigod team to infiltrate the tunnels. Nero’s people won’t be far behind you.”

  “But we don’t have a car.”

  “Ah. Almost forgot.” Lu glanced down at her belt as if she wanted to grab something, then realized her hands were full of weapons. “Sapling, reach into my pouch.”

  Meg opened the small leather bag. She gasped at whatever she saw inside, then pulled it out tightly clutched in her hand, not letting me see.

  “Really?” She bounced up and down with excitement. “I get to?”

  Lu chuckled. “Why not? Special occasion.”

  “Yay!” Meg slipped whatever it was into one of her gardening pouches.

  I felt like I’d missed something important. “Um, what—?”

  “Enough chat,” Lu said. “Ready? Run!”

  I was not ready, but I’d gotten used to being told to run. My body reacted for me, and Meg and I burst through the door.

  We scrambled over the silver tar surface, dodging air vents and stumbling on loose bricks. I got into my role with depressing ease. Running for my life, terrified and helpless? Over the last six months, I’d rehearsed that plenty.

  Lu bellowed and charged after us. Twin crossbow bolts whistled past my ear. She was really selling the whole “murderous Gaul” thing. My heart leaped into my throat as if I were actually in mortal danger.

  Too quickly, I reached the edge of the roof. Nothing but a waist-high lip of brick separated me from a hundred-foot drop into the alley below. I turned and screamed as Lu’s blade slashed toward my face.

  I arched backward—not fast enough. Her blade sliced a thin line across my forehead.

  Meg materialized, screaming with rage. She blocked the Gaul’s next strike and forced her to turn. Lu dropped her crossbow and summoned her second blade, and the two dimachaeri went at it in a full-bore dramatic interpretation of kung-fu Cuisinarts.

  I stumbled, too stunned to feel pain. I wondered why warm rain was trickling into my eyes. Then I wiped it away, looked at my fingers, and realized, Nope, that’s not rain. Rain wasn’t usually bright red.

  Meg’s swords flashed, driving the big Gaul back. Lu kicked her in the gut and sent her reeling.

  My thoughts were sluggish, pushing through a syrupy haze of shock, but I seemed to remember I had a role in this drama. What was I supposed to do after the running and the cowering?

  Oh, yes. I was supposed to throw Lu off the roof.

  A giggle bubbled up in my lungs. I couldn’t see with the blood in my eyes. My hands and feet felt like water balloons—wobbly and warm and about to burst. But, sure, no problem. I would just throw a huge dual-sword-wielding warrior off the roof.

  I staggered forward.

  Lu thrust with her left blade, stabbing Meg in the thigh. Meg yelped and stumbled, crossing her swords just in time to catch Lu’s next strike
, which would have cleaved her head in two.

  Wait a second. This fight couldn’t be an act. Pure rage lit the Gaul’s eyes.

  Lu had deceived us, and Meg was in real danger.

  Fury swelled inside me. A flood of heat burned away the haze and filled me with godly power. I bellowed like one of Poseidon’s sacred bulls at the altar. (And let me tell you, those bulls did not go gently to the slaughter.) I barreled toward Luguselwa, who turned, wide-eyed, but had no time to defend herself. I tackled her around the waist, lifted her over my head as easily as if she were a medicine ball, and tossed her off the side of the building.

  I overdid it. Rather than dropping into the alley, she sailed over the rooftops of the next block and disappeared. A half second later, a distant metallic clunk echoed from the canyon of First Avenue, followed by the angry weep-weep-weep of a car alarm.

  My strength evaporated. I wobbled and fell to my knees, blood trickling down my face.

  Meg stumbled over to me. Her new white leggings were soaked through from the wound on her thigh.

  “Your head,” she murmured.

  “I know. Your leg.”

  She fumbled through her gardening pouches until she found two rolls of gauze. We did our best to mummify each other and stop the bleeding. Meg’s fingers trembled. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “I didn’t mean to throw Lu so far. I just—I thought she was really trying to kill you.”

  Meg peered in the direction of First Avenue. “It’s fine. She’s tough. She’s—she’s probably fine.”

  “But—”

  “No time to talk. Come on.”

  She grabbed my waist and pulled me up. We somehow made it back inside, then managed to navigate the scaffolds and ladders to get out of the hollow apartment building. As we limped to the nearest intersection, my heartbeat flumped irregularly, like a trout on the floorboards of a boat. (Ugh. I had Poseidon on the brain now.)

  I imagined a caravan of shiny black SUVs full of Germani roaring toward us, encircling our location to take us into custody. If Nero had indeed seen what had happened on that rooftop, it was only a matter of time. We’d given him quite a show. He would want our autographs, followed by our heads on a silver plate.