The Tower of Nero Read online

  Meg and I had been together so long, usually just the two of us, that I felt a pang in my heart watching her stroll along with a different set of friends. She looked so content without me. If I ever made it back to Mount Olympus, I wondered if she would decide to stay at Camp Half-Blood. I also wondered why the thought made me so sad.

  After the horrors she’d suffered in Nero’s Imperial Household, she deserved some peace.

  That made me think about my dream of Luguselwa, battered and broken on a stretcher in front of Nero’s throne. Perhaps I had more in common with the Gaul than I wanted to admit. Meg needed a better family, a better home than either Lu or I could give her. But that didn’t make it any easier to contemplate letting her go.

  Just ahead of us, a boy of about nine stumbled from the Ares cabin. His helmet had completely swallowed his head. He ran to catch up to his cabinmates, the point of his too-long sword tracing a serpentine line in the dirt behind him.

  “The newbies all look so young,” Will murmured. “Were we ever that young?”

  Kayla and Austin nodded in agreement.

  Yan grumbled. “We newbies are right here.”

  I wanted to tell them that they were all so young. Their life spans were a blink of an eye compared to my four millennia. I should be wrapping them all in warm blankets and giving them cookies rather than expecting them to be heroes, slay monsters, and buy me clothes.

  On the other hand, Achilles hadn’t even started shaving yet when he sailed off to the Trojan War. I’d watched so many young heroes march bravely to their deaths over the centuries.…Just thinking about it made me feel older than Kronos’s teething ring.

  After the relatively ordered meals of the Twelfth Legion at Camp Jupiter, breakfast at the dining pavilion was quite a shock. Counselors tried to explain the seating rules (such as they were) while returning campers jockeyed for spots next to their friends, and the newbies tried not to kill themselves or each other with their new weapons. Dryads wove through the crowd with platters of food, satyrs trotting behind them and stealing bites. Honeysuckle vines bloomed on the Greek columns, filling the air with perfume.

  At the sacrificial fire, demigods took turns scraping parts of their meals into the flames as offerings to the gods—corn flakes, bacon, toast, yogurt. (Yogurt?) A steady plume of smoke rolled into the heavens. As a former god, I appreciated the sentiment, but I also wondered whether the smell of burning yogurt was worth the air pollution.

  Will offered me a seat next to him, then passed me a goblet of orange juice.

  “Thank you,” I managed. “But where’s, uh…?”

  I scanned the crowd for Nico di Angelo, remembering how he normally sat at Will’s table, regardless of cabin rules.

  “Up there,” Will said, apparently guessing my thoughts.

  The son of Hades sat next to Dionysus at the head table. The god’s plate was piled high with pancakes. Nico’s was empty. They seemed an odd pair, sitting together, but they appeared to be in a deep and serious conversation. Dionysus rarely tolerated demigods at his table. If he was giving Nico such undivided attention, something must be seriously wrong.

  I remembered what Mr. D had said yesterday, just before I passed out. “‘That boy has had too much bad news already,’” I repeated, then frowned at Will. “What did that mean?”

  Will picked at the wrapper of his bran muffin. “It’s complicated. Nico sensed Jason’s death weeks ago. It sent him into a rage.”

  “I’m so sorry.…”

  “It’s not your fault,” Will assured me. “When you got here, you just confirmed what Nico already knew. The thing is…Nico lost his sister Bianca a few years back. He spent a long time raging about that. He wanted to go into the Underworld to retrieve her, which…I guess, as a son of Hades, he’s really not supposed to do. Anyway, he was finally starting to come to terms with her death. Then he learned about Jason, the first person he really considered a friend. It triggered a lot of stuff for him. Nico has traveled to the deepest parts of the Underworld, even down in Tartarus. The fact that he came through it in one piece is a miracle.”

  “With his sanity intact,” I agreed. Then I looked again at Dionysus, god of madness, who seemed to be giving Nico advice. “Oh…”

  “Yeah,” Will agreed, his face drawn with worry. “They’ve been eating most meals together, though Nico doesn’t eat much these days. Nico has been having…I guess you’d call it post-traumatic stress disorder. He gets flashbacks. He has waking dreams. Dionysus is trying to help him make sense of it all. The worst part is the voices.”

  A dryad slammed a plate of huevos rancheros in front of me, almost making me jump out of my jeans. She smirked and walked off, looking quite pleased with herself.

  “Voices?” I asked Will.

  Will turned up his palms. “Nico won’t tell me much. Just…someone in Tartarus keeps calling his name. Someone needs his help. It’s been all I could do to stop him from storming down into the Underworld by himself. I told him: Talk to Dionysus first. Figure out what’s real and what’s not. Then, if he has to go…we’ll go together.”

  A rivulet of cold sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. I couldn’t imagine Will in the Underworld—a place with no sunshine, no healing, no kindness.

  “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said.

  Will nodded. “Maybe if we can take down Nero—maybe that will give Nico something else to focus on for a while, assuming we can help you.”

  Kayla had been listening quietly, but now she leaned in. “Yeah, Meg was telling us about this prophecy you got. The Tower of Nero and all that. If there’s a battle, we want in.”

  Austin wagged a breakfast sausage at me. “Word.”

  Their willingness to help made me feel grateful. If I had to go to war, I would want Kayla’s bow at my side. Will’s healing skill might keep me alive, despite my best efforts to get killed. Austin could terrify our enemies with diminished minor riffs on his saxophone.

  On the other hand, I remembered Luguselwa’s warning about Nero’s readiness. He wanted us to attack. A full frontal assault would be suicide. I would not let my children come to harm, even if my only other option was to trust Lu’s crazy plan and surrender myself to the emperor.

  A forty-eight-hour ultimatum, Nero had said in my dream. Then he would burn down New York.

  Gods, why wasn’t there an option C on this multiple-choice test?

  Clink, clink, clink.

  Dionysus rose at the head table, a glass and spoon in his hands. The dining pavilion fell silent. Demigods turned and waited for morning announcements. I recalled Chiron having much more trouble getting everyone’s attention. Then again, Chiron didn’t have the power to turn the entire assembly into bunches of grapes.

  “Mr. A and Will Solace, report to the head table,” Dionysus said.

  The campers waited for more.

  “That’s all,” Mr. D said. “Honestly, do I need to tell you how to eat breakfast? Carry on!”

  The campers resumed their normal happy chaos. Will and I picked up our plates.

  “Good luck,” Kayla said. “I have a feeling you’ll need it.”

  We went to join Dionysus and Nico at the International Head-table of Pancakes.

  DIONYSUS HAD NOT ASKED FOR MEG, BUT she joined us anyway.

  She plopped down next to me with her plate of flapjacks and snapped her fingers at Dionysus. “Pass the syrup.”

  I feared Mr. D might turn her into a taxidermied back end for Seymour, but he simply did as she asked. I suppose he didn’t want to polymorph the only other person at camp who liked pinochle.

  Peaches stayed behind at the Demeter table, where he was getting fawned over by the campers. This was just as well, since grape gods and peach spirits don’t mix.

  Will sat next to Nico and put an apple on his empty plate. “Eat something.”

  “Hmph,” Nico said, though he leaned into Will ever so slightly.

  “Right.” Dionysus held up a cream-colored piece of stationery
between his fingers, like a magician producing a card. “This came for me last night via harpy courier.”

  He slid it across the table so I could read the fancy print.

  Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus

  Requests the pleasure of your company

  At the burning of

  The Greater New York Metropolitan Area

  Forty-eight hours after receipt of this Invitation

  UNLESS

  The former god Apollo, now known as

  Lester Papadopoulos,

  Surrenders himself before that time to imperial justice

  At the Tower of Nero

  IN WHICH CASE

  We will just have cake

  GIFTS:

  Only expensive ones, please

  R.S.V.P.

  Don’t bother. If you don’t show up, we’ll know.

  I pushed away my huevos rancheros. My appetite had vanished. It was one thing to hear about Nero’s diabolical plans in my nightmares. It was another thing to see them spelled out in black-and-white calligraphy with a promise of cake.

  “Forty-eight hours from last night,” I said.

  “Yes,” Dionysus mused. “I’ve always liked Nero. He has panache.”

  Meg stabbed viciously at her pancakes. She filled her mouth with fluffy, syrupy goodness, probably to keep herself from muttering curse words.

  Nico caught my gaze across the table. His dark eyes swam with anger and worry. On his plate, the apple started to wither.

  Will squeezed his hand. “Hey, stop.”

  Nico’s expression softened a bit. The apple stopped its premature slide into old age. “Sorry. I just—I’m tired of talking about problems I can’t fix. I want to help.”

  He said help as if it meant chop our enemies into small pieces.

  Nico di Angelo wasn’t physically imposing like Sherman Yang. He didn’t have Reyna Ramírez-Arellano’s air of authority, or Hazel Levesque’s commanding presence when she charged into battle on horseback. But Nico wasn’t someone I would ever want as an enemy.

  He was deceptively quiet. He appeared anemic and frail. He kept himself on the periphery. But Will was right about how much Nico had been through. He had been born in Mussolini’s Italy. He had survived decades in the time-warp reality of the Lotus Casino. He’d emerged in modern times disoriented and culture-shocked, arrived at Camp Half-Blood, and promptly lost his sister Bianca to a dangerous quest. He had wandered the Labyrinth in self-imposed exile, being tortured and brainwashed by a malevolent ghost. He’d overcome everyone’s distrust and emerged from the Battle of Manhattan as a hero. He’d been captured by giants during the rise of Gaea. He’d wandered Tartarus alone and somehow managed to come out alive. And through it all, he’d struggled with his upbringing as a conservative Catholic Italian male from the 1930s and finally learned to accept himself as a young gay man.

  Anyone who could survive all that had more resilience than Stygian iron.

  “We do need your help,” I promised. “Meg told you about the prophetic verses?”

  “Meg told Will,” Nico said. “Will told me. Terza rima. Like in Dante. We had to study him in elementary school in Italy. Gotta say, I never thought it would come in handy.”

  Will poked at his bran muffin. “Just so I’m clear…You got the first stanza from a Cyclops’s armpit, the second from a two-headed snake, and the third from three old ladies who drive a taxi?”

  “We didn’t have much choice in the matter,” I said. “But yes.”

  “Does the poem ever end?” Will asked. “If the rhyme scheme interlocks stanza to stanza, couldn’t it keep going forever?”

  I shuddered. “I hope not. Usually the last stanza would include a closing couplet, but we haven’t heard one yet.”

  “Which means,” Nico said, “that there are more stanzas to come.”

  “Yippee.” Meg shoved more pancake in her mouth.

  Dionysus matched her with a mouthful of his own, as if they were engaged in a competition to see who could devour the most and enjoy it the least.

  “Well, then,” Will said with forced cheerfulness, “let’s discuss the stanzas we have. What was it—The tow’r of Nero two alone ascend? That part is obvious enough. It must mean Apollo and Meg, right?”

  “We surrender,” Meg said. “That’s Luguselwa’s plan.”

  Dionysus snorted. “Apollo, please tell me you’re not going to trust a Gaul. You haven’t gotten that addle-brained, have you?”

  “Hey!” Meg said. “We can trust Lu. She let Lester throw her off a roof.”

  Dionysus narrowed his eyes. “Did she survive?”

  Meg looked flustered. “I mean—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted. “She did.”

  I told them what I had seen in my dreams: the broken Gaul brought before Nero’s throne, the emperor’s ultimatum, then my plunge into the caverns beneath Delphi, where Python blessed my tiny brain.

  Dionysus nodded thoughtfully. “Ah, yes, Python. If you survive Nero, you have that to look forward to.”

  I didn’t appreciate the reminder. Stopping a power-mad emperor from taking over the world and destroying a city…that was one thing. Python was a more nebulous threat, harder to quantify, but potentially a thousand times more dangerous.

  Meg and I had freed four Oracles from the grasp of the Triumvirate, but Delphi still remained firmly under Python’s control. That meant the world’s main source of prophecy was being slowly choked off, poisoned, manipulated. In ancient times, Delphi had been called the omphalos, the navel of the world. Unless I managed to defeat Python and retake the Oracle, the entire fate of humanity was at risk. Delphic prophecies were not simply glimpses into the future. They shaped the future. And you did not want an enormous malevolent monster controlling a wellspring of power like that, calling the shots for all human civilization.

  I frowned at Dionysus. “You could always, oh, I don’t know, decide to help.”

  He scoffed. “You know as well as I do, Apollo, that quests like this are demigod business. As for advising, guiding, helping…that’s really more Chiron’s job. He should be back from his meeting…oh, tomorrow night, I would think, but that will be too late for you.”

  I wished he hadn’t put it that way: too late for you.

  “What meeting?” Meg asked.

  Dionysus waved the question away. “Some…joint task force, he called it? The world often has more than one crisis happening at a time. Perhaps you’ve noticed. He said he had an emergency meeting with a cat and a severed head, whatever that means.”

  “So instead we get you,” Meg said.

  “Believe me, child, I would rather not be here with you delightful rapscallions, either. After I was so helpful in the wars against Kronos and Gaea, I was hoping Zeus might grant me early parole from my servitude in this miserable place. But, as you can see, he sent me right back to complete my hundred years. Our father does love to punish his children.”

  He gave me that smirk again—the one that meant at least you got it worse.

  I wished Chiron were here, but there was no point in dwelling on that, or on whatever the old centaur might be up to at his emergency meeting. We had enough to worry about on our own.

  Python’s words kept slithering around in my brain: You never look at the whole board.

  The evil reptile was playing a game inside a game. No great surprise that he would be using the Triumvirate for his own purposes, but Python seemed to relish the idea that I might kill his last ally, Nero. And after that? A few hours, at most. That is all it will take once the last pawn falls.

  I had no idea what that meant. Python was right that I couldn’t see the whole board. I didn’t understand the rules. I just wanted to sweep the pieces away and shout, I’m going home!

  “Whatever.” Meg poured more syrup onto her plate in an effort to create Lake Pancake. “Point is—that other line says our lives depend on Nero’s own. That means we can trust Lu. We’ll surrender before the deadline, like she told us.”
/>   Nico tilted his head. “Even if you do surrender, what makes you think Nero will honor his word? If he’s gone to all the trouble to rig enough Greek fire to burn down New York, why wouldn’t he just do it anyway?”

  “He would,” I said. “Most definitely.”

  Dionysus seemed to ponder this. “But these fires wouldn’t extend as far as, say, Camp Half-Blood.”

  “Dude,” Will said.

  “What?” the god asked. “I am only in charge of the safety of this camp.”

  “Lu has a plan,” Meg insisted. “Once we’re captured, Nero will relax his guard. Lu will free us. We’ll destroy…” She hesitated. “We’ll destroy his fasces. Then he’ll be weak. We can beat him before he burns the city.”

  I wondered if anyone else had caught her change of direction—the way she’d felt too uncomfortable to say We’ll destroy Nero.

  At the other tables, campers continued eating breakfast, jostling each other good-naturedly, chatting about the day’s scheduled activities.

  None of them paid much attention to our conversation. No one was glancing nervously at me and asking their cabinmates if I was really the god Apollo.

  Why would they? This was a new generation of demigods, just starting their first summer at camp. For all they knew, I was a normal fixture of the landscape like Mr. D, the satyrs, and ritual yogurt-burnings. Mr. A? Oh, yeah. He used to be a god or something. Just ignore him.

  Many times over the centuries, I had felt out-of-date and forgotten. Never more so than at that moment.

  “If Lu is telling the truth,” Will was saying, “and if Nero still trusts her—”

  “And if she can break you out,” Nico added, “and if you can destroy the fasces before Nero burns down the city…That’s a lot of ifs. I don’t like scenarios with more than one if.”

  “Like I might take you out for pizza this weekend,” Will offered, “if you’re not too annoying.”

  “Exactly.” Nico’s smile was a bit of winter sun breaking between snow flurries. “So assuming you guys go through with this crazy plan, what are we supposed to do?”