The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(49)

Grr-Fred glared at me from under his police hat. “I still do not trust you. Why would you surrender to Nero?”

“I see you, O Grr-Fred,” Nico said, “Mighty of Hats, Corporate Security Chief! You are right to be wary, but Apollo’s surrender is a distraction, a trick. He will keep the emperor’s eyes away from us while we tunnel. If we can fool the emperor into letting down his guard…”

His voice trailed off. He looked at the ceiling as if he’d heard something far above.

A heartbeat later, the trogs stirred. They shot to their feet, overturning soup bowls and breadbaskets. Many grabbed obsidian knives and spears.

Screech-Bling snarled at Nico. “Tauri silvestres approach! What have you done, son of Hades?”

Nico looked dumbfounded. “Nothing! W-we fought a herd on the surface. But we shadow-traveled away. There’s no chance they could’ve—”

“Foolish crust-dwellers!” howled Grr-Fred. “Tauri silvestres can track their prey anywhere! You have brought our enemies to our headquarters. Creak-Morris, take charge of the tunnel-lings! Get them to safety!”

Creak-Morris began gathering up the children. Other adults started pulling down tents, collecting their best rocks, hats, and other supplies.

“It is well for you we are the fastest runners in existence,” snarled Click-Wrong, his chef’s hat quivering with rage. “You have endangered us all!” He hefted his empty soup cauldron, jumped onto the roadway, and vanished in a skink-scented whoosh.

“What of the crust-dwellers?” Grr-Fred asked his CEO. “Do we kill them or leave them for the bulls?”

Screech-Bling glowered at me. “Grr-Fred, take Lester-Apollo and Meg-Girl to the Tower of Nero. If they wish to surrender, we will not stop them. As for these other three, I will—”

The platform shook, the ceiling cracked, and cows rained down on the encampment.





THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES WEREN’T JUST chaotic. They were what Chaos is like when Chaos wants to let her hair down and go nuts. And believe me, you never want to see a primordial goddess go nuts.

Tauri silvestres dropped from cracks in the ceiling—crashing into tents, flattening troglodytes, scattering hats and soup bowls and pots of mushrooms. Almost immediately, I lost track of Will, Rachel, and Nico in the pandemonium. I could only hope Screech-Bling and his lieutenants had whisked them to safety.

A bull landed in a heap right in front of me, separating me from Meg and Grr-Fred. As the beast scrambled to gain its footing (hoofing?), I parkoured over it, desperate not to lose my young master.

I spotted her—now ten feet away, Grr-Fred rapidly dragging her toward the river for reasons unknown. The close quarters and obstacles on the platform seemed to hamper the trogs’ natural running skills, but Grr-Fred was still moving at a fast clip. If Meg hadn’t kept tripping as they wove through the destruction, I would’ve stood no chance of catching up.

I leaped over a second bull. (Hey, if the cow could jump over the moon, I didn’t see why the sun couldn’t jump over two cows.) Another barreled blindly past me, lowing in panic as it tried to shake a bull-hide tent off its horns. To be fair, I would’ve panicked too if I’d had the skin of one of my own kind wrapped around my head.

I’d almost reached Meg when I spotted a crisis unfolding across the platform. The little trog with the propeller beanie, my server during dinner, had gotten separated from the other children. Oblivious to danger, he was now stumbling after his ball of crystal as it rolled across the platform, straight into the path of a charging bull.

I reached for my bow, then remembered my quivers were exhausted. With a curse, I snatched up the nearest thing I could find—an obsidian dagger—and spun it toward the bull’s head.

“HEY!” I shouted.

This accomplished two things: it stopped the trog in his tracks, and it caused the bull to face me just in time to get a dagger in its nostril.

“Moo!” said the bull.

“My ball!” shouted Beanie Boy as his crystal sphere rolled between the bull’s legs, heading in my direction.

“I’ll get it back to you!” I said, which seemed like a silly thing to promise, given the circumstances. “Run! Get to safety!”

With one last forlorn glance at his crystal ball, Beanie Boy leaped off the platform and disappeared down the road.

The bull blew the dagger out of its nose. It glared at me, its blue eyes as bright and hot as butane flames in the gloom of the cavern. Then it charged.

Like the heroes of old, I stepped back, stumbled on a cooking pot, and fell hard on my butt. Just before the bull could trample me into Apollo-flavored marmalade, glowing mushrooms erupted all over its head. The bull, blinded, screamed and veered off into the bedlam.

“Come on!” Meg stood a few feet away, having somehow convinced Grr-Fred to double back. “Lester, we’ve got to go!” She said this as if the idea might not have occurred to me.

I snatched up Beanie Boy’s crystal ball, struggled to my feet, and followed Grr-Fred and Meg to the edge of the river.

“Jump in!” ordered Grr-Fred.

“But there’s a perfectly good road!” I fumbled to secure the crystal ball in my pack. “And you dump your chamber pots in that water!”

“Tauri can follow us on the road,” shouted Grr-Fred. “You don’t run fast enough.”