The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus, #5)(16)

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 crinkled. ‘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.