by Rick Riordan
“Oh, gods.” Reyna stared in the direction the flock had gone, her fingers absently exploring her scalp where the raven had snapped off a hunk of her hair.
“It’ll grow back,” I said.
“What? No, not my hair. Look!”
She pointed to the Golden Gate Bridge.
We must have been inside the shipping container much longer than I’d realized. The sun sat low in the western sky. The daytime full moon had risen above Mount Tamalpais. The afternoon heat had burned away all the fog, giving us a perfect view of the white fleet—fifty beautiful yachts in V formation—gliding leisurely past Point Bonita Lighthouse at the edge of the Marin Headlands, making their way toward the bridge. Once past it, they would have smooth sailing into the San Francisco Bay.
My mouth tasted like god dust. “How long do we have?”
Reyna checked her watch. “The vappae are taking their time, but even at the rate they’re sailing, they’ll be in position to fire on the camp by sunset. Maybe two hours?”
Under different circumstances, I might have enjoyed her use of the term vappae. It had been a long time since I’d heard someone call their enemies spoiled wines. In modern parlance, the closest meaning would’ve been scumbags.
“How long will it take for us to reach camp?” I asked.
“In Friday afternoon traffic?” Reyna calculated. “A little more than two hours.”
From one of her gardening-belt pouches, Meg pulled a fistful of seeds. “I guess we’d better hurry, then.”
I was not familiar with Jack and the Beanstalk.
It didn’t sound like a proper Greek myth.
When Meg said we’d have to use a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk exit, I didn’t have a clue what she meant, even as she scattered handfuls of seeds down the nearest pylon, causing them to explode into bloom until she’d formed a latticework of plant matter all the way to the ground.
“Over you go,” she ordered.
“But—”
“You’re in no shape to climb the ladder,” she said. “This’ll be faster. Like falling. Only with plants.”
I hated that description.
Reyna just shrugged. “What the heck.”
She kicked one leg over the railing and jumped. The plants grabbed her, passing her down the leafy latticework a few feet at a time like a bucket brigade. At first she yelped and flailed her arms, but about halfway to the ground, she shouted up to us, “NOT—THAT—BAD!”
I went next. It was bad. I screamed. I got flipped upside down. I floundered for something to hold on to, but I was completely at the mercy of creepers and ferns. It was like free-falling through a skyscraper-size bag of leaves, if those leaves were still alive and very touchy-feely.
At the bottom, the plants set me down gently on the grass next to Reyna, who looked like she’d been tarred and flowered. Meg landed beside us and immediately crumpled into my arms.
“Lotta plants,” she muttered.
Her eyes rolled up in her head. She began to snore. I guessed she would not be Jacking any more beanstalks today.
Aurum and Argentum bounded over, wagging their tails and yapping. The hundreds of black feathers strewn around the parking lot told me the greyhounds had been having fun with the birds I’d shot out of the sky.
I was in no condition to walk, much less carry Meg, but somehow, dragging her between us, Reyna and I managed to stumble back down the hillside to the truck. I suspected Reyna was using her Bellona-mazing skills to lend me some of her strength, though I doubted she had much left to spare.
When we reached the Chevy, Reyna whistled. Her dogs jumped into the back. We wrestled our unconscious beanstalk master into the middle of the bench seat. I collapsed next to her. Reyna cranked the ignition, and we tore off down the hill.
Our progress was great for about ninety seconds. Then we hit the Castro District and got stuck in Friday traffic funneling toward the highway. It was almost enough to make me wish for another bucket brigade of plants that could toss us back to Oakland.
After our time with Harpocrates, everything seemed obscenely loud: the Chevy’s engine, the chatter of passing pedestrians, the thrum of subwoofers from other cars. I cradled my backpack, trying to take comfort in the fact that the glass jar was intact. We had gotten what we came for, though I could hardly believe the Sibyl and Harpocrates were gone.
I would have to process my shock and grief later, assuming I lived. I needed to figure out a way to properly honor their passing. How did one commemorate the death of a god of silence? A moment of silence seemed superfluous. Perhaps a moment of screaming?
First things first: survive tonight’s battle. Then I would figure out the screaming.
Reyna must have noticed my worried expression.
“You did good back there,” she said. “You stepped up.”
Reyna sounded sincere. But her praise just made me feel more ashamed.
“I’m holding the last breath of a god I bullied,” I said miserably, “in the jar of a Sibyl I cursed, who was protected by birds I turned into killing machines after they tattled about my cheating girlfriend, who I subsequently had assassinated.”
“All true,” Reyna said. “But the thing is, you recognize it now.”
“It feels horrible.”
She gave me a thin smile. “That’s kind of the point. You do something evil, you feel bad about it, you do better. That’s a sign you might be developing a conscience.”
I tried to remember which of the gods had created the human conscience. Had we created it, or had humans just developed it on their own? Giving mortals a sense of decency didn’t seem like the sort of thing a god would brag about on their profile page.
“I—I appreciate what you’re saying,” I managed. “But my past mistakes almost got you and Meg killed. If Harpocrates had destroyed you when you were trying to protect me…”
The idea was too awful to contemplate. My shiny new conscience would have blown up inside me like a grenade.
Reyna gave me a brief pat on the shoulder. “All we did was show Harpocrates how much you’ve changed. He recognized it. Have you completely made up for all the bad things you’ve done? No. But you keep adding to the ‘good things’ column. That’s all any of us can do.”
Adding to the “good things” column. Reyna spoke of this superpower as if it were one I could actually possess.
“Thank you,” I said.
She studied my face with concern, probably noting how far the purple vines of infection had wriggled their way across my cheeks. “You can thank me by staying alive, okay? We need you for that summoning ritual.”
As we climbed the entrance ramp to Interstate 80, I caught glimpses of the bay beyond the downtown skyline. The yachts had now slipped under the Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently, the cutting of Harpocrates’s cords and the destruction of the fasces hadn’t deterred the emperors at all.
Stretching out in front of the big vessels were silver wake lines from dozens of smaller boats making their way toward the East Bay shoreline. Landing parties, I guessed. And those boats were moving a whole lot faster than we were.
Over Mount Tam, the full moon rose, slowly turning the color of Dakota’s Kool-Aid.
Meanwhile, Aurum and Argentum barked cheerfully in the truck bed. Reyna drummed her fingers on the steering wheel and murmured, “Vamonos. Vamonos.” Meg leaned against me, snoring and drooling on my shirt. Because she loved me so much.
We were inching our way onto the Bay Bridge when Reyna finally said, “I can’t stand this. The ships shouldn’t have made it past the Golden Gate.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Open the glove compartment, please. Should be a scroll inside.”
I hesitated. Who knew what sort of dangers might lurk in the glove compartment of a praetor’s pickup truck? Cautiously, I rummaged past her insurance documents, a few packages of tissues, some baggies of dog treats….
“This?” I held up a floppy cylinder of vellum.
“Yeah. Unroll
it and see if it works.”
“You mean it’s a communication scroll?”
She nodded. “I’d do it myself, but it’s dangerous to drive and scroll.”
“Um, okay.” I spread the vellum across my lap.
Its surface appeared blank. Nothing happened.
I wondered if I was supposed to say some magic words or give it a credit card number or something. Then, above the scroll, a faint ball of light flickered, slowly resolving into a miniature holographic Frank Zhang.
“Whoa!” Tiny Frank nearly jumped out of his tiny armor. “Apollo?”
“Hi,” I said. Then to Reyna, “It works.”
“I see that,” she said. “Frank, can you hear me?”
Frank squinted. We must have looked tiny and fuzzy to him, too. “Is that…? Can barely…Reyna?”
“Yes!” she said. “We’re on our way back. The ships are incoming!”
“I know…. Scout’s report…” Frank’s voice crackled. He seemed to be in some sort of large cave, legionnaires hustling behind him, digging holes and carrying large urns of some kind.
“What are you doing?” Reyna asked. “Where are you?”
“Caldecott…” Frank said. “Just…defensive stuff.”
I wasn’t sure if his voice fuzzed out that time because of static, or if he was being evasive. Judging from his expression, we’d caught him at an awkward moment.
“Any word…Michael?” he asked. (Definitely changing the subject.) “Should’ve…by now.”
“What?” Reyna asked, loud enough to make Meg snort in her sleep. “No, I was going to ask if you’d heard anything. They were supposed to stop the yachts at the Golden Gate. Since the ships got through…” Her voice faltered.
There could have been a dozen reasons why Michael Kahale and his commando team had failed to stop the emperors’ yachts. None of them were good, and none of them could change what would happen next. The only things now standing between Camp Jupiter and fiery annihilation were the emperors’ pride, which made them insist on making a ground assault first, and an empty Smucker’s jelly jar that might or might not allow us to summon godly help.
“Just hang on!” Reyna said. “Tell Ella to get things ready for the ritual!”
“Can’t…What?” Frank’s face melted to a smudge of colored light. His voice sounded like gravel shaking in an aluminum can. “I…Hazel…Need to—”
The scroll burst into flames, which was not what my crotch needed at that particular moment.
I swatted the cinders off my pants as Meg woke, yawning and blinking.
“What’d you do?” she demanded.
“Nothing! I didn’t know the message would self-destruct!”
“Bad connection,” Reyna guessed. “The silence must be breaking up slowly—like, working its way outward from the epicenter at Sutro Tower. We overheated the scroll.”
“That’s possible.” I stomped out the last bits of smoldering vellum. “Hopefully we’ll be able to send an Iris-message once we reach camp.”
“If we reach camp,” Reyna grumbled. “This traffic…Oh.”
She pointed to a blinking road sign ahead of us: HWY 24E CLOSED AT CALDECOTT TUNL FOR EMERG MAINTENANCE. SEEK ALT ROUTES.
“Emergency maintenance?” said Meg. “You think it’s the Mist again, clearing people out?”
“Maybe.” Reyna frowned at the lines of cars in front of us. “No wonder everything’s backed up. What was Frank doing in the tunnel? We didn’t discuss any…” She knit her eyebrows, as if an unpleasant thought had occurred to her. “We have to get back. Fast.”
“The emperors will need time to organize their ground assault,” I said. “They won’t launch their ballistae until after they’ve tried to take the camp intact. Maybe…maybe the traffic will slow them down, too. They’ll have to seek alternate routes.”
“They’re on boats, dummy,” said Meg.
She was right. And once the assault forces landed, they’d be marching on foot, not driving. Still, I liked the image of the emperors and their army approaching the Caldecott Tunnel, seeing a bunch of flashing signs and orange cones, and deciding, Well, darn. We’ll have to come back tomorrow.
“We could ditch the truck,” Reyna mused. Then she glanced at us and clearly dismissed the idea. None of us was in any shape to run a half-marathon from the middle of the Bay Bridge to Camp Jupiter.
She muttered a curse. “We need…Ah!”
Just ahead, a maintenance truck was trundling along, a worker on the tailgate picking up cones that had been blocking the left lane for some unknown reason. Typical. Friday at rush hour, with the Caldecott Tunnel shut down, obviously what you wanted to do was close one lane of traffic on the area’s busiest bridge. This meant, however, that ahead of the maintenance truck, there was an empty, extremely illegal-to-drive-in lane that stretched as far as the Lester could see.
“Hold on,” Reyna warned. And as soon as we edged past the maintenance truck, she swerved in front of it, plowing down a half dozen cones, and gunned the engine.
The maintenance truck blared its horn and flashed its headlights. Reyna’s greyhounds barked and wagged their tails in reply like, See ya!
I imagined we would have a few California Highway Patrol vehicles ready to chase us at the bottom of the bridge, but for the time being, we blasted past traffic at speeds that would have been creditable even for my sun chariot.
We reached the Oakland side. Still no sign of pursuit. Reyna veered onto 580, smashing through a line of orange delineator posts and rocketing up the merge ramp for Highway 24. She politely ignored the guys in hard hats who waved their orange DANGER signs and screamed things at us.
We had found our alternate route. It was the regular route we weren’t supposed to take.
I glanced behind us. No cops yet. Out in the water, the emperors’ yachts had passed Treasure Island and were leisurely taking up positions, forming a necklace of billion-dollar luxury death machines across the bay. I saw no trace of the smaller landing craft, which meant they must have reached the shore. That wasn’t good.
On the bright side, we were making great time. We soared along the overpass all by ourselves, our destination only a few miles away.
“We’re going to make it,” I said, like a fool.
Once again, I had broken the First Law of Percy Jackson: Never say something is going to work out, because as soon as you do, it won’t.
KALUMP!
Above our heads, foot-shaped indentations appeared in the truck’s ceiling. The vehicle lurched under the extra weight. It was déjà ghoul all over again.
Aurum and Argentum barked wildly.
“Eurynomos!” Meg yelled.
“Where do they come from?” I complained. “Do they just hang around on highway signs all day, waiting to drop?”
Claws punctured the metal and upholstery. I knew what would happen next: skylight installation.
Reyna shouted, “Apollo, take the wheel! Meg, gas pedal!”
For a heartbeat, I thought she meant that as some kind of prayer. In moments of personal crisis, my followers often used to implore me: Apollo, take the wheel, hoping I would guide them through their problems. Most of the time, though, they didn’t mean it literally, nor was I physically sitting in the passenger’s seat, nor did they add anything about Meg and gas pedals.
Reyna didn’t wait for me to figure it out. She released her grip and reached behind her seat, groping for a weapon. I lunged across and grabbed the wheel. Meg put her foot on the accelerator.
Quarters were much too close for Reyna to use her sword, but that didn’t bother her. Reyna had daggers. She unsheathed one, glared at the roof bending and breaking above us, and muttered, “Nobody messes with my truck.”
A lot happened in the next two seconds.
The roof ripped open, revealing the familiar, disgusting sight of a fly-colored eurynomos, its white eyes bulging, its fangs dripping with saliva, its vulture-feather loincloth fluttering in the wind.
The smell of
rancid meat wafted into the cab, making my stomach turn. All the zombie poison in my system seemed to ignite at once.
The eurynomos screamed, “FOOOOOOO—”
Its battle cry was cut short, however, when Reyna launched herself upward and impaled her dagger straight up its vulture diaper.
She had apparently been studying the weak spots of the ghouls. She had found one. The eurynomos toppled off the truck, which would have been wonderful, except that I, too, felt like I had been stabbed in the diaper.
I said, “Glurg.”
My hand slipped off the wheel. Meg hit the accelerator in alarm. With Reyna still half out of the cab, her greyhounds howling furiously, our Chevy veered across the ramp and crashed straight through the guardrail. Lucky me. Once again, I went flying off an East Bay highway in a car that couldn’t fly.
We have a special
Today on slightly used trucks
Thanks, Target shoppers
MY SON ASCLEPIUS ONCE explained the purpose of physical shock to me.
He said it’s a safety mechanism for coping with trauma. When the human brain experiences something too violent and frightening to process, it just stops recording. Minutes, hours, even days can be a complete blank in the victim’s memory.
Perhaps this explained why I had no recollection of the Chevy crashing. After hurtling through the guardrail, the next thing I remembered was stumbling around the parking lot of a Target store, pushing a three-wheeled shopping cart filled with Meg. I was muttering the lyrics to “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” Meg, semiconscious, was listlessly waving one hand, trying to conduct.
My cart bumped into a steaming crumpled heap of metal—a red Chevy Silverado with its tires popped, its windshield broken, and its air bags deployed. Some inconsiderate driver had plummeted from the heavens and landed right on top of the cart return, smashing a dozen shopping carts beneath the weight of the pickup.
Who would do such a thing?
Wait…
I heard growling. A few car-lengths away, two metal greyhounds stood protectively over their wounded master, keeping a small crowd of spectators at bay. A young woman in maroon and gold (Right, I remembered her! She liked to laugh at me!) was propped on her elbows, grimacing mightily, her left leg bent at an unnatural angle. Her face was the same color as the asphalt.
