The Tyrant's Tomb: Chapters 33–43

In front of us, arrayed across the higher hills, troops marched doggedly toward Camp Jupiter.

Despite how exhausted she must’ve been, she handily dispatched the remaining six with a blur of her golden blades.

Her immortal steed, the lightning-fast Arion, gave me the side-eye and nickered as if to say, This fool ain’t no Apollo.

“You don’t like carrying three. We’ll just drop off these two at Temple Hill and then head straight for the city. There’ll be plenty of undead for you to trample, I promise.”
That seemed to mollify the horse.

I was not surprised Tyson had dubbed Arion “Zoom Pony,” or that he seemed happier to see the horse than me.

As a member of a pantheon, I had an aversion to picking only one god. That was like picking your favorite child or your favorite musician. If you were capable of picking only one, you were doing something wrong.

Inside a ring of mature oak trees gleamed a silver pool with a single perpetual geyser burbling in the center.

Ella began sprinkling her proprietary blend of oils, spices, and herbs into the pit.

Whenever I was forced to inhale, I did not pass out from his body odor, despite his exuberant sweaty dancing.

I hoped I hadn’t squandered the soundless god’s final breath.

The emperors themselves came out to parley, standing side-by-side in a golden chariot.

Commodus and Caligula looked like they’d had a competition to pick the gaudiest armor, and both of them had lost. They were clad head to toe in Imperial gold: greaves, kilts, breastplates, gloves, helmets, all with elaborate gorgon and Fury designs, encrusted with precious gems.

The emperors’ retinue clattered to a stop. Hundreds of faces turned upward, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise.

Frank’s ploy was clever. The emperors couldn’t refuse his challenge without losing face in front of their troops.

I wondered if my godly strength had decided to make a cameo appearance.

With both hands, he raised his sword overhead to cleave me in two.

I stumbled away from him, and Commodus committed the most heinous of crimes: with one huge fist, he crumpled my ukulele like an aluminum can and tossed it aside.
“Heresy!”

I would have sobbed, but my tear ducts were as dry as Mojave gulches.

The pegasi were glaring at me. The one on the left had a blind eye, poor thing, but he shook his bridle and made a raspberry kind of sound as if to say, GET OVER YOURSELF, DUDE.

I took one last look at the Caldecott Tunnel, the interior still a maelstrom of green flames.

Even without fuel, Greek fire would just keep burning and burning, and that conflagration had been started with Frank’s life force—a final, thermal burst of heroism that had vaporized Caligula.

But she did run alongside them, exhorting them to greatness as they galloped into battle.

Meg and her friends slammed into a horde of vrykolakai—former legionnaires killed in Tarquin’s previous assault, judging from their grungy bits of armor.

A member of Camp Jupiter might have had trouble attacking old comrades, but Meg had no such qualms.

Her swords whirled, slicing and dicing and making mounds and mounds of julienned zombies.

As horrible as the scene was, something about it seemed oddly subdued.

We found Hazel just where Leila had predicted—two blocks down, where the street widened into a neighborhood piazza. She and Arion were surrounded by zombies in the middle of the square, outnumbered about twenty to one.

It wasn’t much of a narrative, but she seemed to get the gist.

One ghoul squatted on a comfy reading chair, drooling as he perused The Illustrated Book of Vultures.

Those troops were just my skirmishers, tasked with keeping you all divided and confused while I came here to secure the Books. Now I know where they are, which means the city can be properly pillaged!

The bandages had vanished, along with the festering wound.

Giant eagles and hunting falcons shared the rooftops. Wolves hobnobbed with Hannibal the elephant and the weaponized unicorns.

Thalia was dressed in her usual black denim, various punk-band buttons gleaming on the lapel of her leather jacket.

Never had there been such a bittersweet reunion between a girl and her deciduous fruit spirit.

“In fact, Reyna helped. She was knocked out for a while, healing, but she woke up in time to instill us with the power of Bellona, right before we boarded those ships. Made us all strong and stealthy and stuff.”

Her expression turned bleak. She gave me a curt nod—not hostile, just sad, acknowledging that we had things to talk about later.

Frank slept fitfully, muttering and flexing his hands as if he were still reaching for an imperial throat to strangle.

A moment later, his body collapsed with a noise like a relieved sigh, crumbling into fresh loam.

Dressed in full armor and his maroon cloak, he gave his eulogy while the legionnaires listened with awed reverence, as one does when the speaker has recently sacrificed himself in a fiery explosion and then, somehow, made it out alive with his underwear and cape intact.

As Lavinia bent to hug her, I noticed a stippled rash running down Ms. Asimov’s left cheek and neck, unsuccessfully covered by some foundation.