by Rick Riordan
I didn’t have the strength to nock another arrow. I stumbled, trying to stay conscious as I slipped in my own blood. It’s always a fun time when Apollo goes to war.
Through the haze of agony, I saw Nero smiling triumphantly, holding aloft a remote control. “Finally!”
No, I prayed. Zeus, Artemis, Leto, anybody. NO!
I couldn’t stop the emperor. Meg was too far away, barely holding her own against her two siblings. The bull had been battered into a pile of bones. Nico had dispatched the wolf-man but now faced a line of angry Germani between him and the throne.
“It’s over!” Nero gloated. “Death to my enemies!”
And he pushed the button.
DEATH TO MY ENEMIES WAS AN EXCELLENT battle cry. A true classic, delivered with conviction!
Some of the drama was lost, however, when Nero pushed the button and the shades on the windows began to lower.
The emperor uttered a curse—perhaps one Meg had taught him—and dove into his sofa cushions, looking for the correct correct remote.
Meg had disarmed Aemillia, as she’d promised, and was now swinging her borrowed sword while more and more of her foster siblings encircled her, anxious to have a part in taking her down.
Nico waded through the Germani. They outnumbered him more than ten to one, but they quickly developed a healthy respect for his Stygian iron blade. Even barbarians can master a steep learning curve if it is sharp and painful enough. Nico couldn’t last forever against so many, though, especially since their spears had a longer reach and Nico could only see through his right eye. Vercorix barked at his men, ordering them to surround di Angelo. Unfortunately, the grizzled lieutenant seemed much better at mustering his forces than he was at delivering remote controls.
As for me, how can I explain the difficulties of using a bow after being stabbed in the side? I was not dead yet, which confirmed that the blade had missed all my important arteries and organs, but raising my arm made me want to scream in pain. Actually aiming and drawing my bow was torture worse than anything in the Fields of Punishment, and Hades can quote me on that.
I’d lost blood. I was sweating and shivering. Nevertheless, my friends needed me. I had to do what I could.
“Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew,” I muttered, trying to clear my head.
First, I kicked Lucius in the face and knocked him out, because the sneaky little so-and-so deserved it. Then I fired an arrow at one of the other imperial demigods, who was about to stab Meg in the back. I was reluctant to kill, remembering Cassius’s terrified face in the elevator, but I hit my target in the ankle, causing him to scream and do the chicken walk around the throne room. That was satisfying.
My real problem was Nero. With Meg and Nico overwhelmed, the emperor had plenty of time to fish through his sofa cushions for remotes. The fact that his blast doors were destroyed did not seem to dampen his enthusiasm for flooding the tower with poison gas. Perhaps, being a minor god, he would be immune. Perhaps he gargled with Sassanid gas every morning.
I fired at the emperor’s center mass—a shot that should have split his sternum. Instead, the arrow shattered on his toga. The garment had some form of protective magic, perhaps. Either that, or it was made by a really good tailor. With a great deal of pain, I nocked another arrow. This time I targeted Nero’s head. I was reloading much too slowly. Every shot was an ordeal for my tortured body, but my aim was true. The arrow hit him right between the eyes. And shattered uselessly.
He scowled at me from across the room. “Stop that!” Then he went back to searching for his remote.
My spirits fell even further. Clearly, Nero was still invulnerable. Luguselwa had failed to destroy his fasces. That meant we faced an emperor who had three times the power of Caligula or Commodus, and they hadn’t exactly been pushovers. If Nero ever stopped obsessing about his poison-gas gadget and actually attacked us, we would be dead.
New strategy. I aimed at the remote controls. As he picked up the next one, I shot it out of his hand.
Nero snarled and grabbed another. I couldn’t fire fast enough.
He pointed the gadget at me and mashed the buttons like this might erase me from existence. Instead, three giant TV screens lowered from the ceiling and flickered to life. The first showed local news: a live feed from a helicopter circling this very tower. Apparently, we were on fire. So much for the tower being indestructible. The second screen showed a PGA tournament. The third was split between Fox News and MSNBC, which side by side should have been enough to cause an antimatter explosion. I suppose it was a sign of Nero’s apolitical bent, or perhaps his multiple personalities, that he watched them both.
Nero growled in frustration and tossed the remote away. “Apollo, stop fighting me! You will die anyway. Don’t you understand that? It’s me or the reptile!”
The statement rattled me, making my next shot go wide. It hit the groin of the long-suffering Vercorix, who went cross-legged in pain as the arrow corroded his body to ash.
“Dude,” I muttered. “I am so sorry.”
At the far end of the room, behind Nero’s dais, more barbarians appeared, marching to the emperor’s defense with their spears ready. Did Nero have a broom closet packed with reinforcements back there? That was totally unfair.
Meg was still encircled by her foster siblings. She’d managed to get a shield, but she was hopelessly outnumbered. I understood her desire to abandon the dual scimitars Nero had given her, but I was starting to question the timing of that decision. Also, she seemed determined not to kill her attackers, but her foster siblings had no such reservations. The other demigods closed in around her, their confident smirks indicating that they sensed imminent victory.
Nico was losing steam against the Germani. His sword seemed to become ten pounds heavier every time he swung it.
I reached for my quivers and realized I had only one arrow left to shoot, not including my Shakespearean life coach from Dodona.
Nero pulled out yet another remote. Before I could take aim, he pressed a button. A mirrored ball lowered from the middle of the ceiling. Lights flashed. The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” began to play, which everyone knows is one of the Top Ten Omens of Impending Doom in the Prophecy for Morons handbook.
Nero threw away the remote and picked up…oh, gods. The last controller. The last one is always the right one.
“Nico!” I yelled.
I had no chance of bringing Nero down. Instead, I fired at the Germanus who stood directly between the son of Hades and the throne, blasting the barbarian to nothingness.
Bless his fancy cowboy hat, Nico understood. He charged, breaking out of the ring of Germani and leaping straight for the emperor with all his remaining strength.
Nico’s downward slash should have cleaved Nero from head to devil tail, but with his free hand, the emperor grabbed the blade and stopped it cold. The Stygian iron hissed and smoked in his grip. Golden blood trickled from between his fingers. He yanked the blade away from Nico and tossed it across the room. Nico lunged at Nero’s throat, ready to choke him or make him into a Halloween skeleton. The emperor backhanded him with such force the son of Hades flew twenty feet and slammed into the nearest pillar.
“You fools cannot kill me!” Nero roared to the beat of the Bee Gees. “I am immortal!”
He clicked his remote. Nothing obvious happened, but the emperor screeched with delight. “That’s it! That’s the one! All your friends are dead now. HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!”
Meg screamed in outrage. She tried to break out of her circle of attackers, as Nico had done, but one of the demigods tripped her. She crashed face-first onto the carpet. Her borrowed sword clattered from her grip.
I wanted to run to her aid, but I knew I was too far away. Even if I shot the Arrow of Dodona, I couldn’t take down an entire group of demigods.
We had failed. In the tower below, our friends would now be choking to death—the entire camp wiped out with a single click of Nero’s remote.
The Germani hauled Nico to
his feet and dragged him before the throne. The imperial demigods pointed their weapons at Meg, now prone and helpless.
“Excellent!” Nero beamed. “But first things first. Guards, kill Apollo!”
The Germani reinforcements barreled toward me.
I fumbled for my ukulele, desperately reviewing my repertoire for a song that would produce a stunning reversal of fortunes. “I Believe in Miracles”? “Make It Right”?
Behind me, a familiar voice roared, “STOP!”
The tone was so commanding even Nero’s guards and family members turned toward the broken blast doors.
On the threshold stood Will Solace, radiating brilliant light. At his left was Luguselwa, alive and well, her stumps now outfitted with daggers instead of silverware. At Will’s right was Rachel Elizabeth Dare, holding a large ax wrapped in a golden bundle of rods: the fasces of Nero.
“No one hits my boyfriend,” Will thundered. “And no one kills my dad!”
Nero’s guards made ready to attack, but the emperor cried, “EVERYONE FREEZE!”
His voice was so shrill, several of the Germani looked back to be sure he was the one who spoke.
The demigods of the imperial family did not look pleased. They’d been about to give Meg the Julius-Caesar-in-the-Senate treatment, but at Nero’s command, they stayed their weapons.
Rachel Dare scanned the room: the pollen-covered furniture and barbarians, the overgrown dryad trees, the pile of bull bones, the cracked windows and columns, the shades still going up and down on their own, the TVs blaring, the Bee Gees playing, the disco ball swirling.
“What have you guys been doing in here?” she muttered.
Will Solace strode confidently across the room, barking “Out of my way!” to the Germani. He marched straight to Nico and helped the son of Hades to his feet. Then he dragged Nico back to the entrance. No one tried to stop them.
The emperor inched backward on his dais. He put one hand behind him, as if to reassure himself that his sofa was still there in case he needed to faint dramatically. He ignored Will and Nico. His eyes were fixed on Rachel and the fasces.
“You.” Nero wagged his finger at my red-headed friend. “You’re the Pythia.”
Rachel hefted the fasces in her arms like a baby—a very heavy, pointy golden baby. “Rachel Elizabeth Dare,” she said. “And right now, I’m the girl holding your life in her hands.”
Nero licked his lips. He frowned, then grimaced, as if exercising his facial muscles for an onstage soliloquy. “You, ah, you all should be dead.”
He sounded both polite and vexed, as if chiding our comrades for not calling first before dropping by for dinner.
From behind Luguselwa, a smaller figure emerged: Screech-Bling, CEO of Troglodyte Inc., festooned with six new hats atop his tricorn. His grin was almost as bright as Will Solace.
“Gas traps are—CLICK—finicky!” he said. “Have to be sure the detonators are working.” He opened his hand and let four nine-volt batteries tumble to the floor.
Nero glared at his foster children as if to say, You had one job.
“And how exactly…?” Nero blinked and squinted. The glow of his own fasces seemed to hurt his eyes. “The leontocephaline…You couldn’t have defeated him.”
“I didn’t.” Lu stepped forward, allowing me a closer look at her new attachments. Someone—I guessed Will—had fixed her up with fresh bandages, more surgical tape, and better blades, giving her a low-budget Wolverine look. “I traded what the guardian required: my immortality.”
“But you don’t have…” Nero’s throat seemed to close up. A look of dread came over his face, which was like watching someone press on wet sand and expel water from the center.
I had to laugh. It was totally inappropriate, but it felt good.
“Lu has immortality,” I said, “because you’re immortal. The two of you have been connected for centuries.”
Nero’s eye twitched. “But that’s my eternal life! You can’t trade my life for my life!”
Lu shrugged. “It’s a little shady, I agree. But the leontocephaline seemed to find it…amusing.”
Nero stared at her in disbelief. “You would kill yourself just to kill me?”
“In a heartbeat,” Lu said. “But it won’t come to that. I’m just a regular mortal now. Destroying the fasces will do the same to you.” She gestured to her Germanic former comrades. “And all your other guards, too. They’ll be free of your bondage. Then…we’ll see how long you last.”
Nero laughed as abruptly as I had. “You can’t! Don’t any of you understand? All the power of the Triumvirate is mine now. My fasces…” His eyes lit with sudden hope. “You haven’t destroyed it yet, because you can’t. Even if you could, you’d release so much power it would burn you to cinders. And even if you didn’t mind dying, the power…all the power I’ve been accumulating for centuries would just sink into Delphi…to—to him. You don’t want that, believe me!”
The terror in his voice was absolutely genuine. I finally realized just how much fear he’d been living with. Python had always been the real power behind the throne—a bigger puppet master than Nero’s mother ever had been. Like most bullies, Nero had been shaped and manipulated by an even stronger abuser.
“You—Pythia,” he said. “Raquel—”
“Rachel.”
“That’s what I said! I can influence the reptile. I can convince him to give you your powers back. But kill me, and all is lost. He—he doesn’t think like a human. He has no mercy, no compassion. He’ll destroy the future of our kind!”
Rachel shrugged. “Seems to me that you’ve chosen your kind, Nero. And it isn’t humanity.”
Nero cast his eyes desperately around the room. He fixed his gaze on Meg, who was now on her feet, swaying wearily in the circle of her imperial siblings. “Meg, dear. Tell them! I said I would let you choose. I trust your sweet nature, your good senses!”
Meg regarded him as if he were a distasteful wall painting.
She addressed her foster siblings: “What you guys have done up till now…it isn’t your fault. It’s Nero’s fault. But now you’ve got to make a choice. Stand up to him, like I did. Drop your weapons.”
Nero hissed. “Ungrateful child. The Beast—”
“The Beast is dead.” Meg tapped the side of her head. “I killed it. Surrender, Nero. My friends will let you live in a nice prison somewhere. It’s more than you deserve.”
“That,” Lu said, “is the best deal you’re going to get, Emperor. Tell your followers to stand down.”
Nero looked on the verge of tears. He seemed like he was ready to set aside centuries of tyranny and power struggles and to betray his reptile overlord. Villainy, after all, was a thankless, exhausting job.
He took a deep breath.
Then he screamed, “KILL THEM ALL!” And a dozen Germani charged me.
WE ALL MAKE OUR CHOICES.
Mine was to turn and run.
Not that I was terrified of a dozen Germani trying to kill me. Okay, yes, I was terrified of a dozen Germani trying to kill me. But also, I had no arrows and no strength left. I badly wanted to hide behind—I mean, stand next to—Rachel, Screech-Bling, and my old friend the low-budget Celtic Wolverine.
And…and. Nero’s words rang in my ears. Destroying the fasces would be deadly. I could not allow anyone else to take that risk. Perhaps the leontocephaline had been amused for reasons Lu hadn’t understood. Perhaps my sacrifice couldn’t be avoided as easily as she believed.
I stumbled into Luguselwa, who managed to catch me without stabbing me to death. Will, still glowing like an overachieving nightlight, had propped Nico against the wall and was now tending to his wounds. Screech-Bling let out a high-pitched whistle, and more troglodytes poured into the room, charging the emperor’s forces in a flurry of shrieks, mining picks, and stylish headwear.
I gasped for breath, making a grabby-hand gesture at Rachel. “Give me the fasces.”
“Please?” she prompted. “And, Gee, so
rry, I underestimated you, Rachel, you’re actually kind of a warrior queen?”
“Yes, please, and thank you, and all of that!”
Lu scowled. “Apollo, are you sure you can destroy it? I mean, without killing yourself?”
“No and no,” I said.
Rachel stared into the air, as if reading a prophecy written in the dancing lights of the disco ball. “I can’t see the outcome,” she said. “But he has to try.”
I took the fasces, struggling not to collapse under its weight. The ceremonial weapon hummed and shuddered like an overheating race-car engine. Its aura made my pores pop and my ears ring. My side started to bleed again, if it had ever really stopped. I wasn’t thrilled about the blood trickling down my chest and into my underwear while I had an important job to do. Sorry again, underwear.
“Cover me,” I told the ladies.
Lu leaped into battle, stabbing, slashing, and kicking any Germani who got past the troglodytes. Rachel pulled out a blue plastic hairbrush and threw it at the nearest barbarian, beaning him in the eye and making him howl.
Sorry I underestimated you, Rachel, I thought distantly. You’re actually kind of a hairbrush ninja.
I cast a worried glance across the room. Meg was all right. More than all right. She had convinced all her remaining foster siblings to throw down their weapons. Now she stood in front of them like a general trying to shore up her demoralized troops. Or—a less flattering comparison—she reminded me of one of Hades’s dog trainers working with a pack of new hellhounds. At the moment, the demigods were obeying her commands and staying put, but any sign of weakness from her, any change in the temperature of the battle, and they might break ranks and slaughter everyone in sight.
It didn’t help that Nero was stomping up and down on his couch, screeching, “Kill Apollo! Kill Apollo!” as if I were a cockroach he’d just spotted scurrying across the floor.
For Meg’s sake, I had to hurry.
I gripped the fasces with both hands and tried to pry it apart. The golden bundle of rods glowed brighter and warmer, illuminating the bones and red flesh of my fingers, but it didn’t budge.