The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4)(22)

“But…how far have you gotten?” I asked.

“The first lumbar,” Ella said.

She showed no sign that she was joking.

Facedown on his torture bed, Tyson paddled his feet excitedly. “READY! Oh, boy! Tattoos tickle!”

“Ella,” I tried again, “what I mean is: Have you found anything useful for us concerning—oh, I don’t know—threats in the next four days? Frank said you had a lead?”

“Yep, found the tomb.” She poked my love handles again. “Death, death, death. Lots of death.”





Dearly beloved,

We are gathered here because

Hera stinks. Amen.

IF THERE IS ANYTHING worse than hearing Death, death, death, it’s hearing those words while having your flab poked.

“Can you be more specific?”

I actually wanted to ask: Can you make all of this go away, and can you also stop poking me? But I doubted I would get either wish.

“Cross references,” Ella said.

“Sorry?”

“Tarquin’s tomb,” she said. “The Burning Maze words. Frank told me: Apollo faces death in Tarquin’s tomb unless the doorway to the soundless god is opened by Bellona’s daughter.”

“I know the prophecy,” I said. “I sort of wish people would stop repeating it. What exactly—?”

“Cross-referenced Tarquin and Bellona and soundless god with Tyson’s index.”

I turned to Frank, who seemed to be the only other comprehensible person in the room. “Tyson has an index?”

Frank shrugged. “He wouldn’t be much of a reference book without an index.”

“On the back of my thigh!” Tyson called, still happily kicking his feet, waiting to be engraved with red-hot needles. “Want to see?”

“No! Gods, no. So you cross-referenced—”

“Yep, yep,” said Ella. “No results for Bellona or the soundless god. Hmm.” She tapped the sides of her head. “Need more words for those. But Tarquin’s tomb. Yep. Found a line.”

She scuttled to the tattoo chair, Aristophanes trotting close behind, swatting at her wings. Ella tapped Tyson’s shoulder blade. “Here.”

Tyson giggled.

“A wildcat near the spinning lights,” Ella read aloud. “The tomb of Tarquin with horses bright. To open his door, two-fifty-four.”

Mrow, said Aristophanes.

“No, Aristophanes,” Ella said, her tone softening, “you are not a wildcat.”

The beast purred like a chainsaw.

I waited for more prophecy. Most of the Sibylline Books read like The Joy of Cooking, with sacrificial recipes to placate the gods in the event of certain catastrophes. Plague of locusts ruining your crops? Try the Ceres soufflé with loaves of honey bread roasted over her altar for three days. Earthquake destroying the city? When Neptune comes home tonight, surprise him with three black bulls basted in holy oil and burned in a fire pit with sprigs of rosemary!

But Ella seemed to be done reading.

“Frank,” I said, “did that make any sense to you?”

He frowned. “I thought you would understand it.”

When would people realize that just because I was the god of prophecy didn’t mean I understood prophecies? I was also the god of poetry. Did I understand the metaphors in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land? No.

“Ella,” I said, “could those lines describe a location?”

“Yep, yep. Close by, probably. But only to go in. Look around. Find out the right things and leave. Not to kill Tarquinius Superbus. Nope. He’s much too dead to kill. For that, hmm…Need more words.”

Frank Zhang picked at the mural-crown badge on his chest. “Tarquinius Superbus. The last king of Rome. He was considered a myth even back in Imperial Roman times. His tomb was never discovered. Why would he be…?” He gestured around us.

“In our neck of the woods?” I finished. “Probably the same reason Mount Olympus is hovering above New York, or Camp Jupiter is in the Bay Area.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” Frank admitted. “Still, if the tomb of a Roman king was near Camp Jupiter, why would we just be learning about it now? Why the attack of the undead?”

I didn’t have a ready answer. I’d been so fixated on Caligula and Commodus, I hadn’t given much thought to Tarquinius Superbus. As evil as he might have been, Tarquin had been a minor-league player compared to the emperors. Nor did I understand why a semilegendary, barbaric, apparently undead Roman king would have joined forces with the Triumvirate.

Some distant memory tickled at the base of my skull…. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Tarquin would make himself known just as Ella and Tyson were reconstructing the Sibylline Books.

I remembered my dream of the purple-eyed entity, the deep voice that had possessed the eurynomos in the tunnel: You of all people should understand the fragile boundary between life and death.

The cut across my stomach throbbed. Just once, for variety, I wished I could encounter a tomb where the occupants were actually dead.

“So, Ella,” I said, “you suggest we find this tomb.”

“Yep. Go in the tomb. Tomb Raider for PC, Playstation, and Sega Saturn, 1996. Tombs of Atuan, Ursula Le Guin, Atheneum Press, 1971.”