The Tower of Nero

by Rick Riordan

  “GOOD COMBAT, Lester-Apollo!” He beat his tiny fists against his chest, then ripped a speakerphone from the table and threw it in the face of an oncoming guard.

  Nico guided me through the chaos. We ducked through another doorway and ran straight into a Germanus, whom Nico impaled with his Stygian iron blade without even breaking stride.

  “The Camp Half-Blood landing zone is just ahead,” he told me as if nothing had happened.

  “Landing zone?”

  “Yeah. Pretty much everybody came to help.”

  “Even Dionysus?” I would’ve paid real drachma to watch him turn our enemies into grapes and stomp on them. That was always good for a laugh.

  “Well, no, not Mr. D,” Nico said. “You know how it is. Gods don’t fight demigod battles. Present company excepted.”

  “I’m an exception!” I kissed the top of Nico’s head in delight.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “Okay! Who else is here? Tell me! Tell me!” I felt like he was guiding me toward my own birthday party, and I was dying to know the guest list. Also, I felt like I was dying!

  “Um, well…”

  We’d arrived at a set of heavy mahogany sliding doors.

  Nico dragged one open and the setting sun nearly blinded me. “Here we are now.”

  A wide terrace ran along the entire side of the building, providing multimillion-dollar views of the Hudson River and New Jersey cliffs beyond, tinged burgundy in the sunset.

  The scene on the terrace was even more chaotic than the one in the conference room. Pegasi swooped through the air like giant seagulls, occasionally landing on the deck to unload new demigod reinforcements in orange Camp Half-Blood shirts. Nasty-looking Celestial bronze harpoon turrets lined the rails, but most of them had been blown-up or crushed. Lounge chairs were on fire. Our friends from camp were engaged in close-quarters fighting with dozens of Nero’s forces: a few of the older demigod kids from Nero’s Imperial Household, a squad of Germani, mortal security guards, and even a few cynocephali—wolf-headed warriors with nasty claws and rabid, slavering mouths.

  Against the wall stood a line of potted trees, similar to in the throne room. Their dryads had risen up to fight alongside Camp Half-Blood against Nero’s oppression.

  “Come, sisters!” cried a ficus spirit, brandishing a pointy stick. “We have nothing to lose but our potting soil!”

  In the center of the chaos, Chiron himself clopped back and forth, his white stallion lower half draped with extra quivers, weapons, shields, and water bottles, like a combination demigod soccer mom and minivan. He wielded his bow as well as I ever could have (though that comment should be considered strictly off the record) while shouting encouragement and directions to his young charges. “Dennis, try not to kill enemy demigods or mortals! Okay, well, from now on, then! Evette, watch your left flank! Ben—whoa, watch out there, Ben!”

  This last comment was directed at a young man in a hand-powered wheelchair, his muscular upper body clad in a racing shirt, his driving gloves studded with spikes. His wild black hair flew in every direction, and as he turned, blades jutted from the rims of his wheels, mowing down anyone who dared to get close. His last one-eighty had almost caught Chiron’s back legs, but fortunately the old centaur was nimble.

  “Sorry!” Ben grinned, seeming not sorry at all, then he wheeled himself straight into a pack of cynocephali.

  “Dad!” Kayla came racing toward me. “Oh, gods, what happened to you? Nico, where’s Will?”

  “That’s a great question,” Nico said. “Kayla, can you take Apollo while I go look?”

  “Yeah, go!”

  Nico raced off while Kayla dragged me to the safest corner she could find. She propped me in the only intact chaise longue and began rummaging through her med pack.

  I had a lovely view of the sunset and the carnage in progress. I wondered if I could get one of Nero’s servants to bring me a fancy drink decorated with a tiny umbrella. I started to giggle again, though what was left of my common sense whispered, Stop it. Stop it. This is not funny.

  Kayla frowned, clearly worried by my mirth. She dabbed some menthol-scented healing ointment on my busted nose. “Oh, Dad. I’m afraid you’re going to have a scar.”

  “I know.” I giggled. “I’m so glad to see you.”

  Kayla managed a weak smile. “You, too. Been a crazy afternoon. Nico and those trogs infiltrated the building from below. The rest of us hit the tower on several levels at once, overwhelmed their security. The Hermes cabin disarmed a lot of the traps and turrets and whatnot, but we’ve still got fierce fighting pretty much everywhere.”

  “Are we winning?” I asked.

  A Germanus screamed as Sherman Yang, head counselor of Ares cabin, threw him off the side of the building.

  “Hard to tell,” Kayla said. “Chiron told the newbies this was a field trip. Like a training exercise. They gotta learn sooner or later.”

  I scanned the terrace. Many of those first-time campers, some no older than eleven or twelve, were fighting wide-eyed alongside their cabinmates, trying to imitate whatever their counselors were doing. They seemed so very young, but then again, they were demigods. They’d probably already survived numerous terrifying events in their short lives. And Kayla was right—adventures would not wait for them to be ready. They had to jump in, sooner better than later.

  “Rosamie!” Chiron called. “Sword higher, dear!”

  The young girl grinned and lifted her blade, intercepting the strike of a security guard’s baton. She smacked her foe across the face with the flat of her blade. “Do we have field trips every week? This is cool!”

  Chiron gave her a pained smile, then continued shooting down enemies.

  Kayla bandaged my face as best she could—wrapping white gauze around my nose and making me go cross-eyed. I imagined I looked like the Partially Invisible Man, which made me giggle again.

  Kayla grimaced. “Okay, we gotta clear your head. Drink this.” She lifted a vial to my lips.

  “Nectar?”

  “Definitely not nectar.”

  The taste exploded in my mouth. Immediately, I realized what she was giving me and why: Mountain Dew, the glowing-lime-green elixir of perfect sobriety. I don’t know what effect it has on mortals, but ask any supernatural entity and they will tell you, Mountain Dew’s combination of sweetness, caffeine, and otherworldly je-ne-sais-quoi-peut-être-radioactif taste is enough to bring complete focus and seriousness to any god. My eyesight cleared. My giddiness evaporated. I had zero desire to giggle. A grim sense of danger and impending death gripped my heart. Mountain Dew is the equivalent of the enslaved servant who would ride behind the emperor during his triumphal parades, whispering, Remember, you are mortal, and you will die to keep him from getting a big head.

  “Meg,” I said, recalling what was most important. “I need to find Meg.”

  Kayla nodded grimly. “Then that’s what we’ll do. I brought you some extra arrows. Thought you might need them.”

  “You are the most thoughtful daughter ever.”

  She blushed right down to the red roots of her hair. “Can you walk? Let’s get moving.”

  We ran inside and turned down a corridor that Kayla thought might lead to the stairwell. We pushed through another set of doors and found ourselves in the Dining Room of Disaster.

  Under different circumstances, it might have been a lovely place for a dinner party: a table big enough for twenty guests, a Tiffany chandelier, a huge marble fireplace, and wood-paneled walls with niches for marble busts—each depicting the face of the same Roman emperor. (If you guessed Nero, you win a Mountain Dew.)

  Not part of the dinner plans: a red forest bull had somehow found its way into the room and was now chasing a group of young demigods around the table while they yelled insults and pelted it with Nero’s golden plates, cups, and cutlery. The bull didn’t seem to realize it could simply smash through the dining table and trample the demigods, but I suspected it would eventually figure th
at out.

  “Ugh, these things,” said Kayla when she saw the bull.

  I thought this would make an excellent description in the camp’s encyclopedia of monsters. Ugh, these things was really all you needed to know about tauri silvestres.

  “They can’t be killed,” I warned as we joined the other demigods in their game of ring-around-the-dining-table.

  “Yeah, I know.” Kayla’s tone told me she’d already had a crash course in forest bulls during her field-trip fun. “Hey, guys,” she said to her young comrades. “We need to lure this thing outside. If we can trick it off the edge of the terrace—”

  At the opposite end of room, the doors burst open. My son Austin appeared, his tenor sax at the ready. Finding himself right next to the bull’s head, he yelped, “Whoa!” then let loose a dissonant squeak-blatt on the sax that would have made Coltrane proud. The bull lurched away, shaking its head in dismay, as Austin vaulted over the dining table and slid to our side.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. “We having fun yet?”

  “Austin,” Kayla said with relief. “I need to lure this bull outside. Can you—?” She pointed at me.

  “We playing pass-the-Apollo?” Austin grinned. “Sure. C’mon, Dad. I got you.”

  As Kayla mustered the younger demigods and began shooting arrows to goad the bull into following her, Austin hustled me through a side door.

  “Where to, Dad?” He politely did not ask why my nose was bandaged or why my breath smelled of Mountain Dew.

  “I have to find Meg,” I said. “Three stories up? Southeast corner?”

  Austin kept jogging with me down the corridor, but his mouth tightened in a thoughtful frown. “I don’t think anybody’s managed to fight their way up to that level yet, but let’s do it.”

  We found a grand circular stairwell that took us up one more floor. We navigated a maze of corridors, then shouldered through a narrow door into the Hat Room of Horrors.

  Troglodytes had found the mother lode of haberdashery. The oversize walk-in closet must have served as Nero’s seasonal coat-check area, because fall and winter jackets lined the walls. Shelves overflowed with scarves, gloves, and, yes, every conceivable manner of hat and cap. The trogs rifled through the collection with glee, stacking hats six or seven high on their heads, trying on scarves and galoshes to augment their incredibly civilized fashion sense.

  One trog looked up at me through his dark goggles, cords of drool hanging from his lips. “Haaats!”

  I could only smile and nod and creep carefully around the edge of the closet, hoping none of the trogs mistook us for chapeau poachers.

  Thankfully, the trogs paid us no mind. We emerged from the other side of the closet into a marble foyer with a bank of elevators.

  My hopes rose. Assuming this was the main entrance to Nero’s residential levels, where his most favored guests would be received, we were getting closer to Meg.

  Austin stopped in front of a keypad with a golden inlaid SPQR symbol. “Looks like this elevator gives you direct access to the imperial apartments. But we’d need a key card.”

  “Stairs?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “This close to the emperor’s quarters, I bet any passage up will be locked and booby-trapped. The Hermes cabin swept the lower stairwells, but I doubt they’ve made it this far. We’re the first.” He fingered the pads of his saxophone. “Maybe I could open the elevator with the right sequence of tones…?”

  His voice trailed off as the elevator doors opened by themselves.

  Inside stood a young demigod with disheveled blond hair and rumpled street clothes. Two golden rings gleamed on his middle fingers.

  Cassius’s eyes widened when he saw me. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting to run into me ever again. He looked like his last twenty-four hours had been almost as bad as mine. His face was gray, his eyes swollen and red from crying. He seemed to have developed a nervous twitch that traveled randomly around his body.

  “I—” His voice cracked. “I didn’t want…” His hands trembling, he pulled off Meg’s rings and offered them to me. “Please…”

  He looked past me. Clearly, he just wanted to leave, to get out of this tower.

  I’ll admit I felt a surge of anger. This child had cut off Luguselwa’s hands with Meg’s own blades. But he was so small and so terrified. He looked like he expected me to turn into the Beast, as Nero would have done, and punish him for what Nero had made him do.

  My anger dissolved. I let him drop Meg’s rings into my palm. “Go.”

  Austin cleared his throat. “Yeah, but first…how about that key card?” He pointed to a laminated square hanging from a lanyard around Cassius’s neck. It looked so much like a school ID that any kid might wear, I hadn’t even registered it.

  Cassius fumbled to remove it. He handed it to Austin. Then he ran.

  Austin tried to read my expression. “I take it you’ve met that kid before?”

  “Long, bad story,” I said. “Will it be safe for us to use his elevator pass?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Austin said. “Let’s find out.”

  THE WONDERS NEVER CEASED.

  The key card worked. The elevator did not incinerate us or drop us to our deaths. Unlike the previous elevator I’d taken, however, this one did have background music. We rose smoothly and slowly, as if Nero wanted to give us plenty of time to enjoy it.

  I’ve always thought you can judge the quality of a villain by his elevator music. Easy listening? Pedestrian villainy with no imagination. Smooth jazz? Devious villainy with an inferiority complex. Pop hits? Aging villainy trying desperately to be hip.

  Nero had chosen soft classical, as in the lobby. Oh, well played. This was self-assured villainy. Villainy that said I already own everything and have all the power. Relax. You’re going to die in a minute, so you might as well enjoy this soothing string quartet.

  Next to me, Austin fingered the keys of his saxophone. I could tell he, too, was worried about the sound track.

  “Wish it was Miles Davis,” he said.

  “That would be nice.”

  “Hey, if we don’t get out of this—”

  “None of that talk,” I chided.

  “Yeah, but I wanted to tell you, I’m glad we had some time together. Like…time time.”

  His words warmed me even more than Paul Blofis’s lasagna.

  I knew what he meant. While I’d been Lester Papadopoulos, I hadn’t spent much time with Austin, or any of the people I’d stayed with, really, but it had been more than we’d ever spent together when I was a god. Austin and I had gotten to know each other—not just as god and mortal, or father and son, but as two people working side by side, helping each other get through our often messed-up lives. That had been a precious gift.

  I was tempted to promise we’d do this more often if we survived, but I’d learned that promises are precious. If you’re not absolutely sure you can keep them, you should never make them, much like chocolate chip cookies.

  Instead, I smiled and squeezed his shoulder, not trusting myself to speak.

  Also, I couldn’t help thinking about Meg. If so little time with Austin had been this meaningful, how could I possibly quantify what my adventures with Meg had meant to me? I’d shared almost my entire journey with that silly, brave, infuriating, wonderful girl. I had to find her.

  The elevator doors slid open. We stepped into a hallway with a floor mosaic depicting a triumphal procession through a burning New York cityscape. Clearly, Nero had been planning for months, perhaps years, to unleash his inferno no matter what I did. I found this so appalling and so in-character for him, I couldn’t even get angry.

  We stopped just before the end of the hall, where it split into a T. From the corridor to the right came the sounds of many voices in conversation, glasses clinking, even some laughter. From the corridor on the left, I heard nothing.

  Austin motioned for me to wait. He carefully removed a long brass rod from the body of his sax. He had all sorts of
nonstandard attachments on his instrument, including a bag of exploding reeds, tone-hole cleaners that doubled as zip-ties, and a stiletto knife for stabbing monsters and unappreciative music critics. The rod he chose now was fitted with a small curved mirror on one end. He edged this into the hallway like a periscope, studied the reflections, then pulled it back.

  “Party room on the right,” he whispered in my ear. “Full of guards, bunch of folks that look like guests. Library on the left, looks empty. If you need to get to the southeast corner to find Meg, you’ll have to go straight through that crowd.”

  I clenched my fists, ready to do whatever was necessary.

  From the party room came the voice of a young woman making an announcement. I thought I recognized the polite and terrified tone of the dryad Areca.

  “Thank you all for your patience!” she told the crowd. “The emperor is just finishing up a few matters in the throne room. And the, ah, minor disruptions on the lower floors will be taken care of very soon. In the meantime, please enjoy cake and beverages while we wait for”—her voice cracked—“the burning to start.”

  The guests gave her a polite smattering of applause.

  I readied my bow. I wanted to charge into that crowd, free Areca, shoot everybody else, and stomp on their cake. Instead, Austin grabbed my arm and pulled me back a few steps toward the elevator.

  “There’s too many of them,” he said. “Let me cause a distraction. I’ll draw as many as I can into the library and lead them on a chase. Hopefully that’ll clear a path for you to get to Meg.”

  I shook my head. “It’s too dangerous. I can’t let you—”

  “Hey.” Austin smirked. For a moment, I glimpsed my own old godly self-confidence in him—that look that said, I’m a musician. Trust me. “Dangerous is part of the job description. Let me do this. You hang back until I draw them out. Then go find our girl. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  Before I could protest, Austin ran to the junction of the corridor and yelled, “Hey, idiots! You’re all gonna die!” Then he put his mouthpiece to his lips and blasted out “Pop Goes the Weasel.”