The Tower of Nero (The Trials of Apollo #5)(87)

I couldn’t stop to mourn. My leg was on fire. My shoe was wet with my own blood. Naturally, those claws would be venomous. I’d probably just reduced my life span from a few minutes to a few fewer minutes. I limped toward the cavern wall and squeezed myself into a vertical crack no bigger than a coffin. (Oh, why did I have to make that comparison?)

I’d lost my best weapon. I had arrows but nothing to shoot them with. Whatever fits of godly power I was experiencing, they weren’t consistent and they weren’t enough. That left me with an out-of-tune ukulele and a rapidly deteriorating human body.

I wished my friends were here. I would have given anything for Meg’s exploding tomato plants, or Nico’s Stygian iron blade, or even a team of fast-running troglodytes to carry me around the cavern and screech insults at the giant tasty reptile.

But I was alone.

Wait. A faint tingle of hope ran through me. Not quite alone. I fumbled in my quiver and drew out Ye Olde Arrow of Dodona.

HOW DOETH WE, SIRRAH? The arrow’s voice buzzed in my head.

“Doething great,” I wheezed. “I gotteth him right where I wanteth him.”

THAT BAD? ZOUNDS!

“Where are you, Apollo?” Python roared. “I can smell your blood!”

“Hear that, arrow?” I wheezed, delirious from exhaustion and the venom coursing through my veins. “I forced him to call me Apollo!”

A GREAT VICTORY, intoned the arrow. ’TWOULD SEEM ’TIS ALMOST TIME.

“What?” I asked. Its voice sounded unusually subdued, almost sad.

I SAID NOTHING.

“You did too.”

I DIDST NOT! WE MUST NEEDS FORMULATE A NEW PLAN. I SHALL GO RIGHT. THOU SHALT GO LEFT.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Wait. That won’t work. You don’t have legs.”

“YOU CAN’T HIDE!” Python bellowed. “YOU ARE NO GOD!”

This pronouncement hit me like a bucket of ice water. It didn’t carry the weight of prophecy, but it was true nonetheless. At the moment, I wasn’t sure what I was. I certainly wasn’t my old godly self. I wasn’t exactly Lester Papadopoulos, either. My flesh steamed. Pulses of light flickered under my skin, like the sun trying to break through storm clouds. When had that started?

I was between states, morphing as rapidly as Python himself. I was no god. I would never be the same old Apollo again. But in this moment, I had the chance to decide what I would become, even if that new existence only lasted a few seconds.

The realization burned away my delirium.

“I won’t hide,” I muttered. “I won’t cower. That’s not who I will be.”

The arrow buzzed uneasily. SO…WHAT IS THY PLAN?

I grasped my ukulele by the fret board and held it aloft like a club. I raised the Arrow of Dodona in my other hand and burst from my hiding place. “CHARGE!”

At the time, this seemed like a completely sane course of action.

If nothing else, it surprised Python.

I imagined what I must have looked like from his perspective: a raggedy teenaged boy with ripped clothes and cuts and contusions everywhere, limping along with one bloody foot, waving a stick and a four-stringed instrument and screaming like a lunatic.

I ran straight at his massive head, which was too high for me to reach. I started smashing my ukulele against his throat. “Die!” CLANG! “Die!” TWANG! “Die!” CRACK-SPROING!

On the third strike, my ukulele shattered.

Python’s flesh convulsed, but rather than dying like a good snake, he wrapped a coil around my waist, almost gently, and raised me to the level of his face.

His lamp-like eyes were as large as I was. His fangs glistened. His breath smelled of long-decayed flesh.

“Enough now.” His voice turned calm and soothing. His eyes pulsed in synch with my heartbeat. “You fought well. You should be proud. Now you can relax.”

I knew he was doing that old reptile hypnosis trick—paralyzing the small mammal so it would be easier to swallow and digest. And in the back of my mind, some cowardly part of me (Lester? Apollo? Was there a difference?) whispered, Yes, relaxing would feel really good right now.

I had done my best. Surely, Zeus would see that and be proud. Maybe he would send down a lightning bolt, blast Python into tiny pieces, and save me!

As soon as I thought this, I realized how foolish it was. Zeus didn’t work that way. He would not save me any more than Nero had saved Meg. I had to let go of that fantasy. I had to save myself.

I squirmed and fought. I still had my arms free and my hands full. I stabbed Python’s coil with my broken fretboard so forcefully that it ripped his skin and stuck in his flesh like a massive splinter, green blood oozing from the wound.

He hissed, squeezing me tighter, pushing all the blood into my head until I feared I would blow my top like a cartoon oil well.

“Has anyone ever told you,” Python rasped, “that you are annoying?”

I HATH, the Arrow of Dodona said in a melancholy tone. A THOUSAND TIMES.

I couldn’t respond. I had no breath. It took all my remaining strength to keep my body from imploding under the pressure of Python’s grip.

“Well.” Python sighed, his breath washing over me like the wind from a battlefield. “No matter. We have reached the end, you and I.”

He squeezed harder, and my ribs began to crack.