The Heroes of Olympus: The Complete Series

by Rick Riordan

  Nico arched an eyebrow. ‘Useful for a Roman praetor.’

  Reyna didn’t answer. She preferred not to speak of her power for exactly this reason. She didn’t want the demigods under her command to think she was controlling them, or that she’d become a leader because she had some special magic. She could only share the qualities she already possessed, and she couldn’t help anyone who wasn’t worthy of being a hero.

  Coach Hedge grunted. ‘Too bad. Super-muscles would be nice.’ He went back to sorting through his pack, which seemed to hold a bottomless supply of cooking utensils, survivalist gear and random sports equipment.

  Nico took another swig of unicorn draught. His eyes were heavy with exhaustion, but Reyna could tell he was fighting to stay awake.

  ‘You stumbled just now,’ he noted. ‘When you use your power … do you get some sort of, um, feedback from me?’

  ‘It’s not mind-reading,’ she said. ‘Not even an empathy link. Just … a temporary wave of exhaustion. Primal emotions. Your pain washes over me. I take on some of your burden.’

  Nico’s expression became guarded.

  He twisted the silver skull ring on his finger, the same way Reyna did with her silver ring when she was thinking. Sharing a habit with the son of Hades made her uneasy.

  She’d felt more pain from Nico in their brief connection than she had from her entire legion during the battle against the giant Polybotes. It had drained her worse than the last time she’d used her power, to sustain her pegasus Scipio during their journey across the Atlantic.

  She tried to push away that memory. Her brave winged friend dying from poison, his muzzle in her lap, looking at her trustingly as she raised her dagger to end his misery … Gods, no. She couldn’t dwell on that or it would break her.

  But the pain she’d felt from Nico was sharper.

  ‘You should rest,’ she told him. ‘After two jumps in a row, even with a little help … you’re lucky to be alive. We’ll need you to be ready again by nightfall.’

  She felt bad asking him to do something so impossible. Unfortunately, she’d had a lot of practice pushing demigods beyond their limits.

  Nico clenched his jaw and nodded. ‘We’re stuck here now.’ He scanned the ruins. ‘But Pompeii is the last place I would’ve chosen to land. This place is full of lemures.’

  ‘Lemurs?’ Coach Hedge seemed to be making some sort of snare out of kite string, a tennis racket and a hunting knife. ‘You mean those cute fuzzy critters –’

  ‘No.’ Nico sounded annoyed, like he got that question a lot. ‘Lemures. Unfriendly ghosts. All Roman cities have them, but in Pompeii –’

  ‘The whole city was wiped out,’ Reyna remembered. ‘In 79 C.E., Vesuvius erupted and covered the town in ash.’

  Nico nodded. ‘A tragedy like that creates a lot of angry spirits.’

  Coach Hedge eyed the distant volcano. ‘It’s steaming. Is that a bad sign?’

  ‘I – I’m not sure.’ Nico picked at a hole in the knee of his black jeans. ‘Mountain gods, the ourae, can sense children of Hades. It’s possible that’s why we were pulled off course. The spirit of Vesuvius might have been intentionally trying to kill us. But I doubt the mountain can hurt us this far away. Working up to a full eruption would take too long. The immediate threat is all around us.’

  The back of Reyna’s neck tingled.

  She’d grown used to Lares, the friendly spirits at Camp Jupiter, but even they made her uneasy. They didn’t have a good understanding of personal space. Sometimes they’d walk right through her, leaving her with vertigo. Being in Pompeii gave Reyna the same feeling, as if the whole city was one big ghost that had swallowed her whole.

  She couldn’t tell her friends how much she feared ghosts, or why she feared them. The whole reason she and her sister had run away from San Juan all those years ago … that secret had to stay buried.

  ‘Can you keep them at bay?’ she asked.

  Nico turned up his palms. ‘I’ve sent out that message: Stay away. But once I’m asleep it won’t do us much good.’

  Coach Hedge patted his tennis-racket-knife contraption. ‘Don’t worry, kid. I’m going to line the perimeter with alarms and snares. Plus, I’ll be watching over you the whole time with my baseball bat.’

  That didn’t seem to reassure Nico, but his eyes were already half-closed. ‘Okay. But … go easy. We don’t want another Albania.’

  ‘No,’ Reyna agreed.

  Their first shadow-travel experience together two days ago had been a total fiasco, possibly the most humiliating episode in Reyna’s long career. Perhaps someday, if they survived, they would look back on it and laugh, but not now. The three of them had agreed never to speak of it. What happened in Albania would stay in Albania.

  Coach Hedge looked hurt. ‘Fine, whatever. Just rest, kid. We got you covered.’

  ‘All right,’ Nico relented. ‘Maybe a little …’ He managed to take off his aviator jacket and wad it into a pillow before he keeled over and began to snore.

  Reyna marvelled at how peaceful he looked. The worry lines vanished. His face became strangely angelic … like his surname, di Angelo. She could almost believe he was a regular fourteen-year-old boy, not a son of Hades who had been pulled out of time from the 1940s and forced to endure more tragedy and danger than most demigods would in a lifetime.

  When Nico had arrived at Camp Jupiter, Reyna didn’t trust him. She’d sensed there was more to his story than being an ambassador from his father, Pluto. Now, of course, she knew the truth. He was a Greek demigod – the first person in living memory, perhaps the first ever, to go back and forth between the Roman and Greek camps without telling either group that the other existed.

  Strangely, that made Reyna trust Nico more.

  Sure, he wasn’t Roman. He’d never hunted with Lupa or endured the brutal legion training. But Nico had proven himself in other ways. He’d kept the camps’ secrets for the best of reasons, because he feared a war. He had plunged into Tartarus alone, voluntarily, to find the Doors of Death. He’d been captured and imprisoned by giants. He had led the crew of the Argo II into the House of Hades … and now he had accepted yet another terrible quest: risking himself to haul the Athena Parthenos back to Camp Half-Blood.

  The pace of the journey was maddeningly slow. They could only shadow-travel a few hundred miles each night, resting during the day to let Nico recover, but even that required more stamina from Nico than Reyna would have thought possible.

  He carried so much sadness and loneliness, so much heartache. Yet he put his mission first. He persevered. Reyna respected that. She understood that.

  She’d never been a touchy-feely person, but she had the strangest desire to drape her cloak over Nico’s shoulders and tuck him in. She mentally chided herself. He was a comrade, not her little brother. He wouldn’t appreciate the gesture.

  ‘Hey.’ Coach Hedge interrupted her thoughts. ‘You need sleep, too. I’ll take first watch and cook some grub. Those ghosts shouldn’t be too dangerous now that the sun’s coming up.’

  Reyna hadn’t noticed how light it was getting. Pink and turquoise clouds striped the eastern horizon. The little bronze faun cast a shadow across the dry fountain.

  ‘I’ve read about this place,’ Reyna realized. ‘It’s one of the best-preserved villas in Pompeii. They call it the House of the Faun.’

  Gleeson glanced at the statue with distaste. ‘Yeah, well, today it’s the House of the Satyr.’

  Reyna managed a smile. She was starting to appreciate the differences between satyrs and fauns. If she ever fell asleep with a faun on duty, she’d wake up with her supplies stolen, a moustache drawn on her face and the faun long gone. Coach Hedge was different – mostly good different, though he did have an unhealthy obsession with martial arts and baseball bats.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘You take first watch. I’ll put Aurum and Argentum on guard duty with you.’

  Hedge looked like he wanted to protest, but Reyna whistled sharply. Th
e metallic greyhounds materialized from the ruins, racing towards her from different directions. Even after so many years, Reyna had no idea where they came from or where they went when she dismissed them, but seeing them lifted her spirits.

  Hedge cleared his throat. ‘You sure those aren’t Dalmatians? They look like Dalmatians.’

  ‘They’re greyhounds, Coach.’ Reyna had no idea why Hedge feared Dalmatians, but she was too tired to ask right now. ‘Aurum, Argentum, guard us while I sleep. Obey Gleeson Hedge.’

  The dogs circled the courtyard, keeping their distance from the Athena Parthenos, which radiated hostility towards everything Roman.

  Reyna herself was only now getting used to it, and she was pretty sure the statue did not appreciate being relocated in the middle of an ancient Roman city.

  She lay down and pulled her purple cloak over herself. Her fingers curled around the pouch at her belt, where she kept the silver coin Annabeth had given her before they parted company in Epirus.

  It’s a sign that things can change, Annabeth had told her. The Mark of Athena is yours now. Maybe the coin will bring you luck.

  Whether that luck would be good or bad, Reyna wasn’t sure.

  She took one last look at the bronze faun cowering before the sunrise and the Athena Parthenos. Then she closed her eyes and slipped into dreams.

  VI

  Reyna

  Most of the time, Reyna could control her nightmares.

  She had trained her mind to start all her dreams in her favourite place – the Garden of Bacchus on the tallest hill in New Rome. She felt safe and tranquil there. When visions invaded her sleep – as they always did with demigods – she could contain them by imagining they were reflections in the garden’s fountain. This allowed her to sleep peacefully and avoid waking up the next morning in a cold sweat.

  Tonight, however, she wasn’t so lucky.

  The dream began well enough. She stood in the garden on a warm afternoon, the arbour heavy with blooming honey-suckle. In the central fountain, the little statue of Bacchus spouted water into the basin.

  The golden domes and red-tiled roofs of New Rome spread out below her. Half a mile west rose the fortifications of Camp Jupiter. Beyond that, the Little Tiber curved gently around the valley, tracing the edge of the Berkeley Hills, hazy and golden in the summer light.

  Reyna held a cup of hot chocolate, her favourite drink.

  She exhaled contentedly. This place was worth defending – for herself, for her friends, for all demigods. Her four years at Camp Jupiter hadn’t been easy, but they’d been the best time of Reyna’s life.

  Suddenly the horizon darkened. Reyna thought it might be a storm. Then she realized a tidal wave of dark loam was rolling across the hills, turning the skin of the earth inside out, leaving nothing behind.

  Reyna watched in horror as the earthen tide reached the edge of the valley. The god Terminus sustained a magical barrier around the camp, but it slowed the destruction for only a moment. Purple light sprayed upward like shattered glass, and the tide poured through, shredding trees, destroying roads, wiping the Little Tiber off the map.

  It’s a vision, Reyna thought. I can control this.

  She tried to change the dream. She imagined that the destruction was only a reflection in the fountain, a harmless video image, but the nightmare continued in full vivid scope.

  The earth swallowed the Field of Mars, obliterating every trace of forts and trenches from the war games. The city’s aqueduct collapsed like a line of children’s blocks. Camp Jupiter itself fell – watchtowers crashing down, walls and barracks disintegrating. The screams of demigods were silenced, and the earth moved on.

  A sob built in Reyna’s throat. The gleaming shrines and monuments on Temple Hill crumbled. The coliseum and the hippodrome were swept away. The tide of loam reached the Pomerian line and roared straight into the city. Families ran through the forum. Children cried in terror.

  The Senate House imploded. Villas and gardens disappeared like crops under a tiller. The tide churned uphill towards the Garden of Bacchus – the last remnant of Reyna’s world.

  You left them helpless, Reyna Ramírez-Arellano. A woman’s voice issued from the black terrain. Your camp will be destroyed. Your quest is a fool’s errand. My hunter comes for you.

  Reyna tore herself from the garden railing. She ran to the fountain of Bacchus and gripped the rim of the basin, staring desperately into the water. She willed the nightmare to become a harmless reflection.

  THUNK.

  The basin broke in half, split by an arrow the size of a rake. Reyna stared in shock at the raven-feather fletching, the shaft painted red, yellow and black like a coral snake, the Stygian iron point embedded in her gut.

  She looked up through a haze of pain. At the edge of the garden, a dark figure approached – the silhouette of a man whose eyes shone like miniature headlamps, blinding Reyna. She heard the scrape of iron against leather as he drew another arrow from his quiver.

  Then her dream changed.

  The garden and the hunter vanished, along with the arrow in Reyna’s stomach.

  She found herself in an abandoned vineyard. Stretched out before her, acres of dead grapevines hung in rows on wooden lattices, like gnarled miniature skeletons. At the far end of the fields stood a cedar-shingled farmhouse with a wraparound porch. Beyond that, the land dropped off into the sea.

  Reyna recognized this place: the Goldsmith Winery on the north shore of Long Island. Her scouting parties had secured it as a forward base for the legion’s assault on Camp Half-Blood.

  She had ordered the bulk of the legion to remain in Manhattan until she told them otherwise, but obviously Octavian had disobeyed her.

  The entire Twelfth Legion was camped in the northern-most field. They’d dug in with their usual military precision – ten-foot-deep trenches and spiked earthen walls around the perimeter, a watchtower on each corner armed with ballistae. Inside, tents were arranged in neat rows of white and red. The standards of all five cohorts curled in the wind.

  The sight of the legion should have lifted Reyna’s spirits. It was a small force, barely two hundred demigods, but they were well trained and well organized. If Julius Caesar came back from the dead, he would’ve had no trouble recognizing Reyna’s troops as worthy soldiers of Rome.

  But they had no business being so close to Camp Half-Blood. Octavian’s insubordination made Reyna clench her fists. He was intentionally provoking the Greeks, hoping for battle.

  Her dream vision zoomed to the porch of the farmhouse, where Octavian sat in a gilded chair that looked suspiciously like a throne. Along with his senatorial purple-lined toga, his centurion badge and his augur’s knife, he had adopted a new honour: a white cloth mantle over his head, which marked him as Pontifex Maximus, high priest to the gods.

  Reyna wanted to strangle him. No demigod in living memory had taken the title Pontifex Maximus. By doing so, Octavian was elevating himself almost to the level of emperor.

  To his right, reports and maps were strewn across a low table. To his left, a marble altar was heaped with fruit and gold offerings, no doubt for the gods. But to Reyna it looked like an altar to Octavian himself.

  At his side, the legion’s eagle bearer, Jacob, stood at attention, sweating in his lion-skin cloak as he held the staff with the golden eagle standard of the Twelfth.

  Octavian was in the midst of an audience. At the base of the stairs knelt a boy in jeans and a rumpled hoodie. Octavian’s fellow centurion of the First Cohort, Mike Kahale, stood to one side with his arms crossed, glowering with obvious displeasure.

  ‘Well, now.’ Octavian scanned a piece of parchment. ‘I see here you are a legacy, a descendant of Orcus.’

  The boy in the hoodie looked up, and Reyna caught her breath. Bryce Lawrence. She recognized his mop of brown hair, his broken nose, his cruel green eyes and smug, twisted smile.

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Bryce said.

  ‘Oh, I’m not a lord.’ Octavian’s eyes crinkle
d. ‘Just a centurion, an augur and a humble priest doing his best to serve the gods. I understand you were dismissed from the legion for … ah, disciplinary problems.’

  Reyna tried to shout, but she couldn’t make a sound. Octavian knew perfectly well why Bryce had been kicked out. Much like his godly forefather, Orcus, the underworld god of punishment, Bryce was completely remorseless. The little psychopath had survived his trials with Lupa just fine, but as soon as he arrived at Camp Jupiter he had proved to be untrainable. He had tried to set a cat on fire for fun. He had stabbed a horse and sent it stampeding through the Forum. He was even suspected of sabotaging a siege engine and getting his own centurion killed during the war games.

  If Reyna had been able to prove it, Bryce’s punishment would’ve been death. But because the evidence was circumstantial, and because Bryce’s family was rich and powerful with lots of influence in New Rome, he’d got away with the lighter sentence of banishment.

  ‘Yes, Pontifex,’ Bryce said slowly. ‘But, if I may, those charges were unproven. I am a loyal Roman.’

  Mike Kahale looked like he was doing his best not to throw up.

  Octavian smiled. ‘I believe in second chances. You’ve responded to my call for recruits. You have the proper credentials and letters of recommendation. Do you pledge to follow my orders and serve the legion?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Bryce.

  ‘Then you are reinstated in probatio,’ Octavian said, ‘until you have proven yourself in combat.’

  He gestured at Mike, who reached in his pouch and fished out a lead probatio tablet on a leather cord. He hung the cord around Bryce’s neck.

  ‘Report to the Fifth Cohort,’ Octavian said. ‘They could use some new blood, some fresh perspective. If your centurion Dakota has any problem with that, tell him to talk to me.’

  Bryce smiled like he’d just been handed a sharp knife. ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘And, Bryce.’ Octavian’s face looked almost ghoulish under his white mantle – his eyes too piercing, his cheeks too gaunt, his lips too thin and colourless. ‘However much money, power and prestige the Lawrence family carries in the legion, remember that my family carries more. I am personally sponsoring you, as I am sponsoring all the other new recruits. Follow my orders, and you’ll advance quickly. Soon I may have a little job for you – a chance to prove your worth. But cross me and I will not be as lenient as Reyna. Do you understand?’