by Rick Riordan
Oh, good, some small part of my brain thought. Maybe we’ll at least land in the water.
Then we dropped—not toward the lake, but toward the trees.
A sound like Luciano Pavarotti’s high C in Don Giovanni issued from my throat. My hands glued themselves to the wheel.
As we plunged into the eucalypti, the ghoul disappeared from our roof—almost as if the tree branches had purposefully swatted it away. Other branches seemed to bend around the hearse, slowing our fall, dropping us from one leafy cough-drop-scented bough to another until we hit the ground on all four wheels with a jarring thud. Too late to do any good, the air bags deployed, shoving my head against the backrest.
Yellow amoebas danced in my eyes. The taste of blood stung my throat. I clawed for the door handle, squeezed my way out between the air bag and the seat, and tumbled onto a bed of cool soft grass.
“Blergh,” I said.
I heard Meg retching somewhere nearby. At least that meant she was still alive. About ten feet to my left, water lapped at the shore of the lake. Directly above me, near the top of the largest eucalyptus tree, our ghoulish blue-black friend was snarling and writhing, trapped in a cage of branches.
I struggled to sit up. My nose throbbed. My sinuses felt like they were packed with menthol rub. “Meg?”
She staggered into view around the front of the hearse. Ring-shaped bruises were forming around her eyes—no doubt courtesy of the passenger-side air bag. Her glasses were intact but askew. “You suck at swerving.”
“Oh, my gods!” I protested. “You ordered me to—” My brain faltered. “Wait. How are we alive? Was that you who bent the tree branches?”
“Duh.” She flicked her hands, and her twin golden sica blades flashed into existence. Meg used them like ski poles to steady herself. “They won’t hold that monster much longer. Get ready.”
“What?” I yelped. “Wait. No. Not ready!”
I pulled myself to my feet with the driver’s-side door.
Across the lake, the picnickers had risen from their blankets. I suppose a hearse falling from the sky had gotten their attention. My vision was blurry, but something seemed odd about the group…. Was one of them wearing armor? Did another have goat legs?
Even if they were friendly, they were much too far away to help.
I limped to the hearse and yanked open the backseat door. Jason’s coffin appeared safe and secure in the rear bay. I grabbed my bow and quiver. My ukulele had vanished somewhere under the backseat. I would have to do without it.
Above, the creature howled, thrashing in its branch cage.
Meg stumbled. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. Then the ghoul broke free and hurtled downward, landing only a few yards away. I hoped the creature’s legs might break on impact, but no such luck. It took a few steps, its feet punching wet craters in the grass, before it straightened and snarled, its pointy white teeth like tiny mirror-image picket fences.
“KILL AND EAT!” it screamed.
What a lovely singing voice. The ghoul could’ve fronted any number of Norwegian death metal groups.
“Wait!” My voice was shrill. “I—I know you.” I wagged my finger, as if that might crank-start my memory. Clutched in my other hand, my bow shook. The arrows rattled in my quiver. “H-hold on, it’ll come to me!”
The ghoul hesitated. I’ve always believed that most sentient creatures like to be recognized. Whether we are gods, people, or slavering ghouls in vulture-feather loincloths, we enjoy others knowing who we are, speaking our names, appreciating that we exist.
Of course, I was just trying to buy time. I hoped Meg would catch her breath, charge the creature, and slice it into putrid-ghoul pappardelle. At the moment, though, it didn’t seem that she was capable of using her swords for anything but crutches. I supposed controlling gigantic trees could be tiring, but honestly, couldn’t she have waited to run out of steam until after she killed Vulture Diaper?
Wait. Vulture Diaper…I took another look at the ghoul: its strange mottled blue-and-black hide, its milky eyes, its oversize mouth and tiny nostril slits. It smelled of rancid meat. It wore the feathers of a carrion eater….
“I do know you,” I realized. “You’re a eurynomos.”
I dare you to try saying You’re a eurynomos when your tongue is leaden, your body is shaking from terror, and you’ve just been punched in the face by a hearse’s air bag.
The ghoul’s lips curled. Silvery strands of saliva dripped from its chin. “YES! FOOD SAID MY NAME!”
“B-but you’re a corpse-eater!” I protested. “You’re supposed to be in the Underworld, working for Hades!”
The ghoul tilted its head as if trying to remember the words Underworld and Hades. It didn’t seem to like them as much as kill and eat.
“HADES GAVE ME OLD DEAD!” it shouted. “THE MASTER GIVES ME FRESH!”
“The master?”
“THE MASTER!”
I really wished Vulture Diaper wouldn’t scream. It didn’t have any visible ears, so perhaps it had poor volume control. Or maybe it just wanted to spray that gross saliva over as large a radius as possible.
“If you mean Caligula,” I ventured, “I’m sure he’s made you all sorts of promises, but I can tell you, Caligula is not—”
“HA! STUPID FOOD! CALIGULA IS NOT THE MASTER!”
“Not the master?”
“NOT THE MASTER!”
“MEG!” I shouted. Ugh. Now I was doing it.
“Yeah?” Meg wheezed. She looked fierce and warlike as she granny-walked toward me with her sword-crutches. “Gimme. Minute.”
It was clear she would not be taking the lead in this particular fight. If I let Vulture Diaper anywhere near her, it would kill her, and I found that idea 95 percent unacceptable.
“Well, eurynomos,” I said, “whoever your master is, you’re not killing and eating anyone today!”
I whipped an arrow from my quiver. I nocked it in my bow and took aim, as I had done literally millions of times before—but it wasn’t quite as impressive with my hands shaking and my knees wobbling.
Why do mortals tremble when they’re scared, anyway? It seems so counterproductive. If I had created humans, I would have given them steely determination and superhuman strength during moments of terror.
The ghoul hissed, spraying more spit.
“SOON THE MASTER’S ARMIES WILL RISE AGAIN!” it bellowed. “WE WILL FINISH THE JOB! I WILL SHRED FOOD TO THE BONE, AND FOOD WILL JOIN US!”
Food will join us? My stomach experienced a sudden loss of cabin pressure. I remembered why Hades loved these eurynomoi so much. The slightest cut from their claws caused a wasting disease in mortals. And when those mortals died, they rose again as what the Greeks called vrykolakai—or, in TV parlance, zombies.
That wasn’t the worst of it. If a eurynomos managed to devour the flesh from a corpse, right down to the bones, that skeleton would reanimate as the fiercest, toughest kind of undead warrior. Many of them served as Hades’s elite palace guards, which was a job I did not want to apply for.
“Meg?” I kept my arrow trained on the ghoul’s chest. “Back away. Do not let this thing scratch you.”
“But—”
“Please,” I begged. “For once, trust me.”
Vulture Diaper growled. “FOOD TALKS TOO MUCH! HUNGRY!”
It charged me.
I shot.
The arrow found its mark—the middle of the ghoul’s chest—but it bounced off like a rubber mallet against metal. The Celestial bronze point must have hurt, at least. The ghoul yelped and stopped in its tracks, a steaming, puckered wound on its sternum. But the monster was still very much alive. Perhaps if I managed twenty or thirty shots at that exact same spot, I could do some real damage.
With trembling hands, I nocked another arrow. “Th-that was just a warning!” I bluffed. “The next one will kill!”
Vulture Diaper made a gurgling noise deep in its throat. I hoped it was a delayed death rattle. Then I realized it was only l
aughing. “WANT ME TO EAT DIFFERENT FOOD FIRST? SAVE YOU FOR DESSERT?”
It uncurled its claws, gesturing toward the hearse.
I didn’t understand. I refused to understand. Did it want to eat the air bags? The upholstery?
Meg got it before I did. She screamed in rage.
The creature was an eater of the dead. We were driving a hearse.
“NO!” Meg shouted. “Leave him alone!”
She lumbered forward, raising her swords, but she was in no shape to face the ghoul. I shouldered her aside, putting myself between her and the eurynomos, and fired my arrows again and again.
They sparked off the monster’s blue-black hide, leaving steaming, annoyingly nonlethal wounds. Vulture Diaper staggered toward me, snarling in pain, its body twitching from the impact of each hit.
It was five feet away.
Two feet away, its claws splayed to shred my face.
Somewhere behind me, a female voice shouted, “HEY!”
The sound distracted Vulture Diaper just long enough for me to fall courageously on my butt. I scrambled away from the ghoul’s claws.
Vulture Diaper blinked, confused by its new audience. About ten feet away, a ragtag assortment of fauns and dryads, perhaps a dozen total, were all attempting to hide behind one gangly pink-haired young woman in Roman legionnaire armor.
The girl fumbled with some sort of projectile weapon. Oh, dear. A manubalista. A Roman heavy crossbow. Those things were awful. Slow. Powerful. Notoriously unreliable. The bolt was set. She cranked the handle, her hands shaking as badly as mine.
Meanwhile, to my left, Meg groaned in the grass, trying to get back on her feet. “You pushed me,” she complained, by which I’m sure she meant Thank you, Apollo, for saving my life.
The pink-haired girl raised her manubalista. With her long, wobbly legs, she reminded me of a baby giraffe. “G-get away from them,” she ordered the ghoul.
Vulture Diaper treated her to its trademark hissing and spitting. “MORE FOOD! YOU WILL ALL JOIN THE KING’S DEAD!”
“Dude.” One of the fauns nervously scratched his belly under his PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BERKELEY T-shirt. “That’s not cool.”
“Not cool,” several of his friends echoed.
“YOU CANNOT OPPOSE ME, ROMAN!” the ghoul snarled. “I HAVE ALREADY TASTED THE FLESH OF YOUR COMRADES! AT THE BLOOD MOON, YOU WILL JOIN THEM—”
THWUNK.
An Imperial gold crossbow bolt materialized in the center of Vulture Diaper’s chest. The ghoul’s milky eyes widened in surprise. The Roman legionnaire looked just as stunned.
“Dude, you hit it,” said one of the fauns, as if this offended his sensibilities.
The ghoul crumbled into dust and vulture feathers. The bolt clunked to the ground.
Meg limped to my side. “See? That’s how you’re supposed to kill it.”
“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled.
We faced our unlikely savior.
The pink-haired girl frowned at the pile of dust, her chin quivering as if she might cry. She muttered, “I hate those things.”
“Y-you’ve fought them before?” I asked.
She looked at me like this was an insultingly stupid question.
One of the fauns nudged her. “Lavinia, dude, ask who these guys are.”
“Um, right.” Lavinia cleared her throat. “Who are you?”
I struggled to my feet, trying to regain some composure. “I am Apollo. This is Meg. Thank you for saving us.”
Lavinia stared. “Apollo, as in—”
“It’s a long story. We’re transporting the body of our friend, Jason Grace, to Camp Jupiter for burial. Can you help us?”
Lavinia’s mouth hung open. “Jason Grace…is dead?”
Before I could answer, from somewhere across Highway 24 came a wail of rage and anguish.
“Um, hey,” said one of the fauns, “don’t those ghoul things usually hunt in pairs?”
Lavinia gulped. “Yeah. Let’s get you guys to camp. Then we can talk about”—she gestured uneasily at the hearse—“who is dead, and why.”
I cannot chew gum
And run with a coffin at
The same time. Sue me.
HOW MANY NATURE SPIRITS does it take to carry a coffin?
The answer is unknowable, since all the dryads and fauns except one scattered into the trees as soon as they realized work was involved. The last faun would have deserted us, too, but Lavinia grabbed his wrist.
“Oh, no, you don’t, Don.”
Behind his round rainbow-tinted glasses, Don the faun’s eyes looked panicked. His goatee twitched—a facial tic that made me nostalgic for Grover the satyr.
(In case you’re wondering, fauns and satyrs are virtually the same. Fauns are simply the Roman version, and they’re not quite as good at…well, anything, really.)
“Hey, I’d love to help,” Don said. “It’s just I remembered this appointment—”
“Fauns don’t make appointments,” Lavinia said.
“I double-parked my car—”
“You don’t have a car.”
“I need to feed my dog—”
“Don!” Lavinia snapped. “You owe me.”
“Okay, okay.” Don tugged his wrist free and rubbed it, his expression aggrieved. “Look, just because I said Poison Oak might be at the picnic doesn’t mean, you know, I promised she would be.”
Lavinia’s face turned terra-cotta red. “That’s not what I meant! I’ve covered for you, like, a thousand times. Now you need to help me with this.”
She gestured vaguely at me, the hearse, the world in general. I wondered if Lavinia was new to Camp Jupiter. She seemed uncomfortable in her legionnaire armor. She kept shrugging her shoulders, bending her knees, tugging at the silver Star of David pendant that hung from her long, slender neck. Her soft brown eyes and tuft of pink hair only accentuated my first impression of her—a baby giraffe that had wobbled away from her mother for the first time and was now examining the savannah as if thinking, Why am I here?
Meg stumbled up next to me. She grabbed my quiver for balance, garroting me with its strap in the process. “Who’s Poison Oak?”
“Meg,” I chided, “that’s none of our business. But if I had to guess, I’d say Poison Oak is a dryad whom Lavinia here is interested in, just like you were interested in Joshua back at Palm Springs.”
Meg barked, “I was not interested—”
Lavinia chorused, “I am not interested—”
Both girls fell silent, scowling at each other.
“Besides,” Meg said, “isn’t Poison Oak…like, poisonous?”
Lavinia splayed her fingers to the sky as if thinking, Not that question again. “Poison Oak is gorgeous! Which is not to say I’d definitely go out with her—”
Don snorted. “Whatever, dude.”
Lavinia glared crossbow bolts at the faun. “But I’d think about it—if there was chemistry or whatever. Which is why I was willing to sneak away from my patrol for this picnic, where Don assured me—”
“Whoa, hey!” Don laughed nervously. “Aren’t we supposed to be getting these guys to camp? How about that hearse? Does it still run?”
I take back what I said about fauns not being good at anything. Don was quite adept at changing the subject.
Upon closer inspection, I saw how badly damaged the hearse was. Aside from numerous eucalyptus-scented dents and scratches, the front end had crumpled going through the guardrail. It now resembled Flaco Jiménez’s accordion after I took a baseball bat to it. (Sorry, Flaco, but you played so well I got jealous, and the accordion had to die.)
“We can carry the coffin,” Lavinia suggested. “The four of us.”
Another angry screech cut through the evening air. It sounded closer this time—somewhere just north of the highway.
“We’ll never make it,” I said, “not climbing all the way back up to the Caldecott Tunnel.”
“There’s another way,” Lavinia said. “Secret entrance to camp. A lot clo
ser.”
“I like close,” Meg said.
“Thing is,” said Lavinia, “I’m supposed to be on guard duty right now. My shift is about to end. I’m not sure how long my partner can cover for me. So when we get to the camp, let me do the talking about where and how we met.”
Don shuddered. “If anyone finds out Lavinia skipped sentry duty again—”
“Again?” I asked.
“Shut up, Don,” Lavinia said.
On one hand, Lavinia’s troubles seemed trivial compared to, say, dying and getting eaten by a ghoul. On the other hand, I knew that Roman-legion punishments could be harsh. They often involved whips, chains, and rabid live animals, much like an Ozzy Osbourne concert circa 1980.
“You must really like this Poison Oak,” I decided.
Lavinia grunted. She scooped up her manubalista bolt and shook it at me threateningly. “I help you, you help me. That’s the deal.”
Meg spoke for me: “Deal. How fast can we run with a coffin?”
Not very fast, as it turned out.
After grabbing the rest of our things from the hearse, Meg and I took the back end of Jason’s coffin. Lavinia and Don took the front. We did a clumsy pallbearer jog along the shoreline, me glancing nervously at the treetops, hoping no more ghouls would rain from the sky.
Lavinia promised us that the secret entrance was just across the lake. The problem was, it was across the lake, which meant that, not being able to pall-bear on water, we had to lug Jason’s casket roughly a quarter mile around the shore.
“Oh, come on,” Lavinia said when I complained. “We ran over here from the beach to help you guys. The least you can do is run back with us.”
“Yes,” I said, “but this coffin is heavy.”
“I’m with him,” Don agreed.
Lavinia snorted. “You guys should try marching twenty miles in full legionnaire gear.”
“No, thanks,” I muttered.
Meg said nothing. Despite her drained complexion and labored breathing, she shouldered her side of the coffin without complaint—probably just to make me feel bad.
Finally we reached the picnic beach. A sign at the trailhead read:
