The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(37)

(Look at me, caring about innocent bystanders. The other Olympians would have teased me mercilessly.)

“Nico,” Rachel said, “this is more of a canyon.”

“It’s all we’ve got!” Nico ran to the edge of the pit…and jumped.

My heart felt like it jumped with him. I may have screamed.

Nico sailed over the abyss and landed on the crane’s arm without even stumbling. He turned and extended his arm. “Come on! It’s only like eight feet. We practice bigger jumps at camp over lava!”

“Maybe you do,” I said.

The ground shook. The herd was right behind us.

Will backed up, took a running leap, and landed next to Nico. He looked back at us with a reassuring nod. “See? It’s not that bad! We’ll grab you!”

Rachel went next—no problem. Then Meg, the flying valentine. When her feet hit the crane, the whole arm creaked and shifted to the right, forcing my friends into a surfer’s stance to catch their balance.

“Apollo,” Rachel said, “hurry!”

She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking behind me. The rumble of the herd was now a jackhammer in my spine.

I leaped, landing on the crane arm with the greatest belly flop since Icarus crashed into the Aegean.

My friends grabbed my arms to keep me from rolling into the abyss. I sat up, wheezing and groaning, just as the tauri reached the edge of the pit.

I hoped they would charge over and fall to their deaths like lemmings. Though, of course, lemmings don’t actually do that. Bless their tiny hearts, lemmings are too smart to commit mass suicide. Unfortunately, so were the devil cows.

The first few tauri did indeed topple into the pit, unable to stop their momentum, but the rest of the herd successfully applied the brakes. There was a great deal of shoving and jostling and angry mooing from the back ranks, but it appeared that the one thing a forest bull could not smash through was another forest bull.

I muttered some bad words I hadn’t used since #MinoansFirst was trending on social media. Across the narrow gap, the tauri stared at us with their murderous baby-blue eyes. The sour stench of their breath and the funk of their hides made my nostrils want to curl inward and die. The animals fanned out around the lip of the chasm, but none tried to jump to the crane arm. Perhaps they’d learned their lesson from the Dares’ floating staircase. Or perhaps they were smart enough to realize that hooves wouldn’t do them much good on narrow steel girders.

Far below, the half dozen fallen cattle were starting to get up, apparently unhurt by the fifty-foot drop. They paced around, mooing in outrage. Around the rim of the pit, the rest of the herd stood in a silent vigil as their fallen comrades grew more and more distressed. The six didn’t seem physically injured, but their voices were clogged with rage. Their neck muscles bulged. Their eyes swelled. They stamped the ground, foamed at the mouth, and then, one by one, fell over and lay motionless. Their bodies began to wither, their flesh dissolving until only their empty red hides remained.

Meg sobbed.

I couldn’t blame her. Devilish or not, the cows’ deaths were horrible to watch.

“What just happened?” Rachel’s voice trembled.

“They choked on their own anger,” I said. “I—I didn’t think it was possible, but apparently Aelian got it right. Silvestres hate being stuck in pits so much they just…gag and die. It’s the only way to kill them.”

Meg shuddered. “That’s awful.”

The herd stared at us in apparent agreement. Their blue eyes were like laser beams burning into my face. I got the feeling they’d been after us before just because it was in their nature to kill. Now, it was personal.

“So what do we do about the rest of them?” Will asked. “Dad, you sure you can’t…” He gestured at our bovine audience. “I mean, you’ve got a god-level bow and two quivers of arrows at basically point-blank range.”

“Will!” Meg protested. Watching the bulls choke in the pit seemed to have sapped all her willingness to fight.

“I’m sorry, Meg,” Will said. “But we’re kind of stuck here.”

“It won’t do any good,” I promised. “Watch.”

I drew my bow. I nocked an arrow and aimed at the nearest cow. The cow simply stared back at me like, Really, dude?

I let the arrow fly—a perfect shot, right between the eyes with enough force to penetrate stone. The shaft splintered against the cow’s forehead.

“Wow,” Nico said. “Hard head.”

“It’s the entire hide,” I told him. “Look.”

I shot a second arrow at the cow’s neck. The creature’s shaggy red hair rippled, deflecting the arrowhead and turning the shaft downward so it skittered between the cow’s legs.

“I could shoot at them all day,” I said. “It won’t help.”

“We can just wait them out,” Meg suggested. “They’ll get tired eventually and leave, right?”

Rachel shook her head. “You forgot they waited outside my house in hot cattle cars for two days with no food or water until you showed up. I’m pretty sure these things can outlast us.”

I shivered. “And we have a deadline. If we don’t surrender to Nero by tonight…” I made the explode-y hands gesture.