Untitled Part 10
DIONYSUS HAD NOT ASKED FOR MEG, BUT she joined us anyway.
She plopped down next to me with her plate of pancakes 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-coloured 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 anaemic 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 HalfBlood, 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 Gaia. 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 got 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 Gaia, 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 honour 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?'
Meg belched. 'It's right there in the prophecy. The son-ofHades thing.'
Nico's face clouded over. 'What son-of-Hades thing?'
Will developed a sudden interest in his bran muffin's wrapper. Nico seemed to realize, at the same time I did, that Will hadn't shared all the lines of the prophecy with him.
'William Andrew Solace,' Nico said, 'do you have something to confess?'
'I was going to mention it.' Will looked at me pleadingly, as if he couldn't make himself say the lines.
'The son of Hades, cavern-runners ' friend ,' I recited. 'Must show the secret way unto the throne.'
Nico scowled with such intensity I feared he might make Will wither like the apple. 'You think that might have been good to mention sooner?'
'Hold on,' I said, partly to spare Will from Nico's wrath, and partly because I had been racking my brain, trying to think who these 'cavern-runners' might be, and I still had no clue. 'Nico, do you know what those lines mean?'
Nico nodded. 'The cavern-runners are ... new friends of mine.'
'They're hardly friends,' Will muttered. 'They're experts on subterranean geography,' Nico said. 'I've been talking to them about ... other business.'
'Which is not good for your mental health,' Dionysus added in a singsong voice.
Nico gave him a death-to-apples look. 'If there is a secret way into Nero's tower, they might know it.'
Will shook his head. 'Every time you visit them ...' He let his statement die, but the concern in his voice was as jagged as broken glass.
'Then come with me this time,' Nico said. 'Help me.'
Will's expression was miserable. I could tell he desperately wanted to protect Nico, to help him any way he could. He also desperately did not want to visit these cavern-runners.
'Who are they?' Meg said, between bites of pancake. 'Are they horrible?'
'Yes,' Will said.
'No,' Nico said.
'Well, that's settled, then,' Dionysus said. 'Since Mr di Angelo seems intent on ignoring my mental-health advice and going on this quest –'
'That's not fair,' Nico protested. 'You heard the prophecy. I have to.'
'The whole concept of "have to" is strange to me,' Dionysus said, 'but if your mind is made up, you'd best get going, eh? Apollo only has until tomorrow night to surrender, or fake-surrender, or whatever you wish to call it.'
'Anxious to get rid of us?' Meg asked.
Dionysus laughed. 'And people say there are no stupid questions. But if you trust your friend Lululemon –'
'Luguselwa,' Meg growled.
'Whatever. Shouldn't you hurry back to her?'
Nico folded his arms. 'I'll need some time before we leave. If I want to ask my new friends a favour, I can't show up empty-handed.'
'Oh, ick,' Will said. 'You're not going to ...'
Nico raised an eyebrow at him, like, Really, boyfriend? You're already in the doghouse.
Will sighed. 'Fine. I'll go with you to ... gather supplies.'
Nico nodded. 'That'll take us most of the day. Apollo, Meg, how about you stay at camp and rest up for now? The four of us can leave for the city first thing tomorrow morning. That should still give us enough time.'
'But ...' My voice faltered.
I wanted to protest, but I wasn't sure on what grounds. Only a day at Camp Half-Blood before our final push towards destruction and death? That wasn't nearly enough time to procrastinate! 'I, uh ... I thought a quest had to be formally authorized.'
'I formally authorize it,' Dionysus said.
'But it can only be three people!' I said.
Dionysus looked at Will, Nico and me. 'I'm only counting three.'
'Hey!' Meg said. 'I'm coming, too!'
Dionysus pointedly ignored her.
'We don't even have a plan!' I said. 'Once we find this secret path, what do we do with it? Where do we start?'
'We start with Rachel,' Will said, still picking glumly at his muffin. 'A Dare reveals the path that was unknown .'
The truth pierced the base of my neck like an acupuncture needle.
Of course, Will's interpretation made total sense. Our old friend would probably be at home in Brooklyn, just starting her summer break, not expecting me to crash her place and demand help.
'Rachel Elizabeth Dare,' I said. 'My Delphic priestess.'
'Excellent,' Dionysus said. 'Now that you've got your suicidal quest figured out, can we please finish breakfast? And stop hogging the syrup, McCaffrey. Other people have pancakes, too.'
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