by Rick Riordan
“Reyna!” I wedged Meg’s shopping cart against the truck and ran to help the praetor. Aurum and Argentum let me through.
“Oh. Oh. Oh.” I couldn’t seem to say anything else. I should’ve known what to do. I was a healer. But that break in the leg—yikes.
“I’m alive,” Reyna said through gritted teeth. “Meg?”
“She’s conducting,” I said.
One of the Target shoppers inched forward, braving the fury of the dogs. “I called nine-one-one. Is there anything else I can do?”
“She’ll be fine!” I yelped. “Thank you! I—I’m a doctor?”
The mortal woman blinked. “Are you asking me?”
“No. I’m a doctor!”
“Hey,” said a second shopper. “Your other friend is rolling away.”
“ACK!” I ran after Meg, who was muttering “Whee” as she picked up steam in her red plastic cart. I grabbed the handles and navigated her back to Reyna’s side.
The praetor tried to move but choked on the pain. “I might…black out.”
“No, no, no.” Think, Apollo, think. Should I wait for the mortal paramedics, who knew nothing of ambrosia and nectar? Should I check for more first-aid supplies in Meg’s gardening belt?
A familiar voice from across the parking lot yelled, “Thank you, everybody! We’ll take it from here!”
Lavinia Asimov jogged toward us, a dozen naiads and fauns in her wake, many of whom I recognized from People’s Park. Most were dressed in camouflage, covered with vines and branches like they had just arrived via beanstalk. Lavinia wore pink camo pants and a green tank top, her manubalista clanking against her shoulder. With her spiky pink hair and pink eyebrows, her jaw working furiously on a wad of bubblegum, she just radiated authority figure.
“This is now an active investigation scene!” she announced to the mortals. “Thank you, Target shoppers. Please move along!”
Either the tone of her voice or the barking of the greyhounds finally convinced the onlookers to disperse. Nevertheless, sirens were blaring in the distance. Soon we’d be surrounded by paramedics, or the highway patrol, or both. Mortals weren’t nearly as used to vehicles hurtling off highway overpasses as I was.
I stared at our pink-haired friend. “Lavinia, what are you doing here?”
“Secret mission,” she announced.
“That’s cacaseca,” Reyna grumbled. “You left your post. You’re in so much trouble.”
Lavinia’s nature-spirit friends looked jumpy, like they were on the verge of scattering, but their pink-frosted leader calmed them with a glance. Reyna’s greyhounds didn’t snarl or attack, which I guessed meant they’d detected no lies from Lavinia.
“All due respect, Praetor,” she said, “but it looks like you’re in more trouble than I am at the moment. Harold, Felipe—stabilize her leg and let’s get her out of this parking lot before more mortals arrive. Reginald, push Meg’s cart. Lotoya, retrieve whatever supplies they have in the truck, please. I’ll help Apollo. We make for those woods. Now!”
Lavinia’s definition of woods was generous. I would’ve called it a gulley where shopping carts went to die. Still, her People’s Park platoon worked with surprising efficiency. In a matter of minutes, they had us all safely hidden in the ditch among the broken carts and trash-festooned trees, just as emergency vehicles came wailing into the parking lot.
Harold and Felipe splinted Reyna’s leg—which only caused her to scream and throw up a little. Two other fauns constructed a stretcher for her out of branches and old clothing while Aurum and Argentum tried to help by bringing them sticks…or perhaps they just wanted to play fetch. Reginald extricated Meg from her shopping cart and revived her with hand-fed bits of ambrosia.
A couple of dryads checked me for injuries—meaning even more injuries than I’d had before—but there wasn’t much they could do. They didn’t like the look of my zombie-infected face, or the way the undead infection made me smell. Unfortunately, my condition was beyond any nature-spirit healing.
As they moved off, one muttered to her friend, “Once it gets fully dark…”
“I know,” said her friend. “With a blood moon tonight? Poor guy…”
I decided to ignore them. It seemed the best way to avoid bursting into tears.
Lotoya—who must have been a redwood dryad, judging from her burgundy complexion and impressive size—crouched next to me and deposited all the supplies she’d retrieved from the truck. I grabbed frantically—not for my bow and quiver, or even for my ukulele, but for my backpack. I almost fainted with relief when I found the Smucker’s jar inside, still intact.
“Thank you,” I told her.
She nodded somberly. “A good jelly jar is hard to find.”
Reyna struggled to sit up among the fauns fussing over her. “We’re wasting time. We have to get back to camp!”
Lavinia arched her pink eyebrows. “You’re not going anywhere with that leg, Praetor. Even if you could, you wouldn’t be much help. We can heal you faster if you just relax—”
“Relax? The legion needs me! It needs you too, Lavinia! How could you desert?”
“Okay, first, I didn’t desert. You don’t know all the facts.”
“You left camp without leave. You—” Reyna leaned forward too fast and gasped in agony. The fauns took her shoulders. They helped her to sit back, easing her onto the new stretcher with its lovely padding of moss, trash, and old tie-dyed T-shirts.
“You left your comrades,” Reyna croaked. “Your friends.”
“I’m right here,” Lavinia said. “I’m going to ask Felipe to lull you to sleep now so you can rest and heal.”
“No! You…you can’t run away.”
Lavinia snorted. “Who said anything about running away? Remember, Reyna, this was your backup plan. Plan L for Lavinia! When we all get back to camp, you’re going to thank me. You’ll tell everybody this was your idea.”
“What? I would never…I didn’t give you any such…This is mutiny!”
I glanced at the greyhounds, waiting for them to rise to their master’s defense and tear Lavinia apart. Strangely, they just kept circling Reyna, occasionally licking her face or sniffing her broken leg. They seemed concerned about her condition, but not at all about Lavinia’s rebellious lies.
“Lavinia,” Reyna pleaded, “I’ll have to bring you up on desertion charges. Don’t do this. Don’t make me—”
“Now, Felipe,” Lavinia ordered.
The faun raised his panpipes and played a lullaby, soft and low, right next to Reyna’s head.
“Can’t!” Reyna struggled to keep her eyes open. “Won’t. Ahhggghh.”
She went limp and began to snore.
“That’s better.” Lavinia turned to me. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave her someplace safe with a couple of fauns, and of course Aurum and Argentum. She’ll be taken care of while she heals. You and Meg, do what you need to do.”
Her confident stance and her take-charge tone made her almost unrecognizable as the gawky, nervous legionnaire we’d met at Lake Temescal. She reminded me more of Reyna now, and of Meg. Mostly, though, she seemed like a stronger version of herself—a Lavinia who had decided what she needed to do and would not rest until she did it.
“Where are you going?” I asked, still utterly confused. “Why won’t you come back to camp with us?”
Meg stumbled over, ambrosia crumbles stuck around her mouth. “Don’t pester her,” she told me. Then to Lavinia: “Is Peaches…?”
Lavinia shook her head. “He and Don are with the advance group, making contact with the Nereids.”
Meg pouted. “Yeah. Okay. The emperors’ ground forces?”
Lavinia’s expression turned somber. “They already passed by. We hid and watched. Yeah…It’s not good. I’m sure they’ll be in combat with the legion by the time you get there. You remember the path I told you about?”
“Yeah,” Meg agreed. “Okay, good luck.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I tried to make a time-out
sign, though my uncoordinated hands made it look more like a tent. “What are you talking about? What path? Why would you come out here just to hide as the enemy army passes by? Why are Peaches and Don talking to…Wait. Nereids?”
Nereids are spirits of the sea. The nearest ones would be…Oh.
I couldn’t see much from our trash-filled gulley. I definitely couldn’t see the San Francisco Bay, or the string of yachts taking up position to fire on the camp. But I knew we were close.
I looked at Lavinia with newfound respect. Or disrespect. Which is it when you realize that someone you knew was crazy is actually even crazier than you suspected?
“Lavinia, you are not planning—”
“Stop right there,” she warned, “or I’ll have Felipe put you down for a nap, too.”
“But Michael Kahale—”
“Yeah, we know. He failed. The emperors’ troops were bragging about it as they marched past. It’s one more thing they have to pay for.”
Brave words, but her eyes betrayed a flicker of worry, telling me she was more terrified than she let on. She was having trouble keeping up her own courage and preventing her makeshift troops from losing their nerve. She did not need me reminding her how insane her plan was.
“We’ve all got a lot to do,” she said. “Good luck.” She ruffled Meg’s hair, which did not need any more ruffling. “Dryads and fauns, let’s move!”
Harold and Felipe picked up Reyna’s makeshift stretcher and jogged off down the gully, Aurum and Argentum bounding around them like, Oh, boy, another hike! Lavinia and the others followed. Soon they were lost in the underbrush, vanishing into the terrain as only nature spirits and girls with bright pink hair can do.
Meg studied my face. “You whole?”
I almost wanted to laugh. Where had she picked up that expression? I had zombie poison coursing through my body and up into my face. The dryads thought I would turn into a shambling undead minion of Tarquin as soon as it got fully dark. I was shaking from exhaustion and fear. We apparently had an enemy army between us and camp, and Lavinia was leading a suicide attack on the imperial fleet with inexperienced nature spirits, when an actual elite commando force had already failed.
When had I last felt “whole”? I wanted to believe it was back when I was a god, but that wasn’t true. I hadn’t been completely myself for centuries. Maybe millennia.
At the moment, I felt more like a hole—a void in the cosmos through which Harpocrates, the Sibyl, and a lot of people I cared about had vanished.
“I’ll manage,” I said.
“Good, because look.” Meg pointed toward the Oakland Hills. I thought I was seeing fog, but fog didn’t rise vertically from hillsides. Close to the perimeter of Camp Jupiter, fires were burning.
“We need wheels,” said Meg.
Welcome to the war
We hope you enjoy your death
Please come again soon!
OKAY, BUT WHY DID it have to be bicycles?
I understood that cars were a deal-breaker. We had crashed enough vehicles for one week. I understood that jogging to camp was out of the question, given the fact that we could barely stand.
But why didn’t demigods have some sort of ride-share app for summoning giant eagles? I decided I would create one as soon as I became a god again. Right after I figured out a way to let demigods use smartphones safely.
Across the street from Target stood a rack of canary-yellow Go-Glo bikes. Meg inserted a credit card into the kiosk (where she got the card, I had no idea), freed two cycles from the rack, and offered one to me.
Joy and happiness. Now we could pedal into battle like the neon-yellow warriors of old.
We took the side streets and sidewalks, using the columns of smoke in the hills to guide our way. With Highway 24 closed, traffic was snarled everywhere, angry drivers honking and yelling and threatening violence. I was tempted to tell them that if they really wanted a fight, they could just follow us. We could use a few thousand angry commuters on our side.
As we passed the Rockridge BART station, we spotted the first enemy troops. Pandai patrolled the elevated platform, with furry black ears folded around themselves like firefighter turnout coats, and flat-head axes in their hands. Fire trucks were parked along College Avenue, their lights strobing in the underpass. More faux-firefighter pandai guarded the station doors, turning away mortals. I hoped the real firefighters were okay, because firefighters are important and also because they are hot, and no, that wasn’t relevant right then.
“This way!” Meg veered up the steepest hill she could find, just to annoy me. I was forced to stand as I pedaled, pushing with all my weight to make progress against the incline.
At the summit, more bad news.
In front of us, arrayed across the higher hills, troops marched doggedly toward Camp Jupiter. There were squads of blemmyae, pandai, and even some six-armed Earthborn who had served Gaea in the Recent Unpleasantness, all fighting their way through flaming trenches, staked barricades, and Roman skirmishers trying to put my archery lessons to good use. In the early evening gloom, I could only see bits and pieces of the battle. Judging from the mass of glittering armor and the forest of battle pennants, the main part of the emperors’ army was concentrated on Highway 24, forcing its way toward the Caldecott Tunnel. Enemy catapults hurled projectiles toward the legion’s positions, but most disappeared in bursts of purple light as soon as they got close. I assumed that was the work of Terminus, doing his part to defend the camp’s borders.
Meanwhile, at the base of the tunnel, flashes of lightning pinpointed the location of the legion’s standard. Tendrils of electricity zigzagged down the hillsides, arcing through enemy lines and frying them to dust. Camp Jupiter’s ballistae launched giant flaming spears at the invaders, raking through their lines and starting more forest fires. The emperors’ troops kept coming.
The ones making the best progress were huddled behind large armored vehicles that crawled on eight legs and…Oh, gods. My guts felt like they’d gotten tangled in my bike chain. Those weren’t vehicles.
“Myrmekes,” I said. “Meg, those are myr—”
“I see them.” She didn’t even slow down. “It doesn’t change anything. Come on!”
How could it not change anything? We’d faced a nest of those giant ants at Camp Half-Blood and barely survived. Meg had nearly been pulped into Gerber’s larvae purée.
Now we were confronting myrmekes trained for war, snapping trees in half with their pincers and spraying acid to melt through the camp’s defensive pickets.
This was a brand-new flavor of horrible.
“We’ll never get through their lines!” I protested.
“Lavinia’s secret tunnel.”
“It collapsed!”
“Not that tunnel. A different secret tunnel.”
“How many does she have?”
“Dunno. A lot? C’mon.”
With that rousing oratory complete, Meg pedaled onward. I followed, having nothing better to do.
She led me up a dead-end street to a generator station at the base of an electrical tower. The area was ringed in barbed-wire fencing, but the gate stood wide open. If Meg had told me to climb the tower, I would have given up and made my peace with zombie eternity. Instead, she pointed to the side of the generator, where metal doors were set into the concrete like the entrance to a storm cellar or a bomb shelter.
“Hold my bike,” she said.
She jumped off and summoned one of her swords. With a single strike, she slashed through the padlocked chains, then pulled open the doors, revealing a dark shaft slanting downward at a precarious angle.
“Perfect,” she said. “It’s big enough to ride through.”
“What?”
She hopped back on her Go-Glo and plunged into the tunnel, the click, click, click of her bike chain echoing off the concrete walls.
“You have a very broad definition of perfect,” I muttered. Then I coasted in after her.
Much to my sur
prise, in the total darkness of the tunnel, the Go-Glo bike actually, well, glowed. I suppose I should have expected that. Ahead of me, I could see the faint, fuzzy apparition of Meg’s neon war machine. When I looked down, the yellow aura of my own bike was almost blinding. It did little to help me navigate down the steep shaft, but it would make me a much easier target for enemies to pick out in the gloom. Hooray!
Against all odds, I did not wipe out and break my neck. The tunnel leveled, then began to climb again. I wondered who had excavated this passageway and why they hadn’t installed a convenient lift system so I didn’t have to expend so much energy pedaling.
Somewhere overhead, an explosion shook the tunnel, which was excellent motivation to keep moving. After a bit more sweating and gasping, I realized I could discern a dim square of light ahead of us—an exit covered in branches.
Meg burst straight through it. I wobbled after her, emerging in a landscape lit by fire and lightning and ringing with the sounds of chaos.
We had arrived in the middle of the war zone.
I will give you free advice.
If you plan to pop into a battle, the place you do not want to be is in the middle of it. I recommend the very back, where the general often has a comfortable tent with hors d’oeuvres and beverages.
But the middle? No. Always bad, especially if you arrive on canary-yellow glow-in-the-dark bikes.
As soon as Meg and I emerged, we were spotted by a dozen large humanoids covered in shaggy blond hair. They pointed at us and began to scream.
Khromandae. Wow. I hadn’t seen any of their kind since Dionysus’s drunken invasion of India back in the BCE. Their species has gorgeous gray eyes, but that’s about the only flattering thing I can say about them. Their dirty, shaggy blond pelts make them look like Muppets who have been used as dust rags. Their doglike teeth clearly never get a proper flossing. They are strong, aggressive, and can only communicate in earsplitting shrieks. I once asked Ares and Aphrodite if the Khromandae were their secret love children from their longstanding affair, because they were such a perfect mix of the two Olympians. Ares and Aphrodite did not find that funny.
