The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(22)

Then I spiraled into unconsciousness.





BAD DREAMS?

Sure, why not!

I suffered a series of Instagram-boomerang nightmares—the same short scenes looped over and over: Luguselwa hurtling over a rooftop. The amphisbaena staring at me in bewilderment as two crossbow bolts pinned his necks to the wall. The Gray Sisters’ eyeball flying into my lap and sticking there like it was coated in glue.

I tried to channel my dreams in a more peaceful direction—my favorite beach in Fiji, my old festival day in Athens, the gig I played with Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club in 1930. Nothing worked.

Instead, I found myself in Nero’s throne room.

The loft space took up one whole floor of his tower. In every direction, glass walls looked out over the spires of Manhattan. In the center of the room, on a marble dais, the emperor sprawled across a gaudy velvet couch throne. His purple satin pajamas and tiger-striped bathrobe would’ve made Dionysus jealous. His crown of golden laurels sat askew on his head, which made me want to adjust the neck beard that wrapped around his chin like a strap.

To his left stood a line of young people; demigods, I assumed—adopted members of the imperial family like Meg had been. I counted eleven in all, arranged from tallest to shortest, their ages ranging from about eighteen to eight. They wore purple-trimmed togas over their motley assortment of street clothes, to indicate their royal status. Their expressions were a case study in the results of Nero’s abusive parenting style. The youngest seemed struck with wonder, fear, and hero worship. The slightly older ones looked broken and traumatized, their eyes hollow. The adolescents showed a range of anger, resentment, and self-loathing, all bottled up and carefully not directed at Nero. The oldest teens looked like mini-Neros: cynical, hard, cruel junior sociopaths.

I could not imagine Meg McCaffrey in that assembly. And yet, I couldn’t stop wondering where she would fall in the line of horrific expressions.

Two Germani lumbered into the throne room carrying a stretcher. On it lay the large, battered form of Luguselwa. They set her down at Nero’s feet, and she let out a miserable groan. At least she was still alive.

“The hunter returns empty-handed,” Nero sneered. “Plan B it is, then. A forty-eight-hour ultimatum seems reasonable.” He turned to his adopted children. “Lucius, double security at the storage vats. Aemillia, send out invitations. And order a cake. Something nice. It’s not every day we get to destroy a city the size of New York.”

My dream-self plummeted through the tower into the depths of the earth.

I stood in a vast cavern. I knew I must be somewhere beneath Delphi, the seat of my most sacred Oracle, because the soup of volcanic fumes swirling around me smelled like nothing else in the world. I could hear my archnemesis, Python, somewhere in the darkness, dragging his immense body over the stone floor.

“You still do not see it.” His voice was a low rumble. “Oh, Apollo, bless your tiny, inadequate brain. You charge around, knocking over pieces, but you never look at the whole board. A few hours, at most. That is all it will take once the last pawn falls. And you will do the hard work for me!”

His laughter was like an explosion sunk deep into stone, designed to bring down a hillside. Fear rolled over me until I could no longer breathe.

I woke feeling like I’d spent hours trying to squirm out of a stone cocoon. Every muscle in my body ached.

I wished I could just once wake up refreshed after a dream about getting seaweed wraps and pedicures with the Nine Muses. Oh, I missed our spa decades! But no. I got sneering emperors and giant laughing reptiles instead.

I sat up, woozy and blurry-eyed. I was lying in my old cot in the Me cabin. Sunlight streamed through the windows—morning light? Had I really slept that long? Snuggled up next to me, something warm and furry was growling and snuffling in my pillow. At first glance, I thought it might be a pit bull, though I was fairly sure I did not own a pit bull. Then it looked up, and I realized it was the disembodied head of a leopard.

One nanosecond later, I was standing at the opposite end of the cabin, screaming. It was the closest I’d come to teleporting since I’d lost my godly powers.

“Oh, you’re awake!” My son Will emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam, his blond hair dripping wet and a towel around his waist. On his left pectoral was a stylized sun tattoo, which seemed unnecessary to me—as if he could be mistaken for anything but a child of the sun god.

He froze when he registered the panic in my eyes. “What’s wrong?”

GRR! said the leopard.

“Seymour?” Will marched over to my cot and picked up the leopard head—which at some point in the distant past had been taxidermied and stuck on a plaque, then liberated from a garage sale by Dionysus and granted new life. Normally, as I recalled, Seymour resided over the fireplace mantel in the Big House, which did not explain why he had been chewing on my pillow.

“What are you doing here?” Will demanded of the leopard. Then, to me: “I swear I did not put him in your bed.”

“I did.” Dionysus materialized right next to me.

My tortured lungs could not manage another scream, but I leaped back an additional few inches.

Dionysus gave me his patented smirk. “I thought you might like some company. I always sleep better with a teddy leopard.”

“Very kind.” I tried my best to kill him with eye daggers. “But I prefer to sleep alone.”