The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4)(69)

Meg turned to regard the shipping container. She still had a stubborn geranium stuck in her hair. Her tattered dress rippled around her like shreds of seaweed.

“What is that thing?” she wondered. “What’s it doing up here, and why does it smell like roses?”

Good questions.

Judging scale and distance on the tower was difficult. Tucked against the girders, the shipping container looked close and small, but it was probably a full city block away from us, and larger than Marlon Brando’s personal trailer on the set of The Godfather. (Wow, where did that memory come from? Crazy times.) Installing that huge red box on Sutro Tower would have been a massive undertaking. Then again, the Triumvirate had enough cash to purchase fifty luxury yachts, so they could probably afford a few cargo helicopters.

The bigger question was why?

From the sides of the container, glimmering bronze and gold cables snaked outward, weaving around the pylon and crossbeams like grounding wires, connecting to satellite dishes, cellular arrays, and power boxes. Was there some sort of monitoring station inside? The world’s most expensive hothouse for roses? Or perhaps the most elaborate scheme ever to steal premium cable-TV channels.

The closest end of the box was fitted with cargo doors, the vertical locking rods laced with rows of heavy chains. Whatever was inside was meant to stay there.

“Any ideas?” Reyna asked.

“Try to get inside that container,” I said. “It’s a terrible idea. But it’s the only one I have.”

“Yeah.” Reyna scanned the fog over our heads. “Let’s move before the ravens come back for an encore.”

Meg summoned her swords. She led the way across the catwalk, but after twenty feet or so, she stopped abruptly, as if she’d run into an invisible wall.

She turned to face us. “Guys, is…me or…feel weird?”

I thought the kick to my face might have short-circuited my brain. “What, Meg?”

“I said…wrong, like…cold and…”

I glanced at Reyna. “Did you hear that?”

“Only half of her words are coming through. Why aren’t our voices affected?”

I studied the short expanse of catwalk separating us from Meg. An unpleasant suspicion wriggled in my head. “Meg, take a step back toward me, please.”

“Why…want…?”

“Just humor me.”

She did. “So are you guys feeling weird, too? Like, kinda cold?” She frowned. “Wait…it’s better now.”

“You were dropping words,” Reyna said.

“I was?”

The girls looked at me for an explanation. Sadly, I thought I might have one—or at least the beginnings of one. The metaphorical truck with the metaphorical headlights was getting closer to metaphorically running me over.

“You two wait here for a second,” I said. “I want to try something.”

I took a few steps toward the shipping container. When I reached the spot where Meg had been standing, I felt the difference—as if I’d stepped across the threshold of a walk-in freezer.

Another ten feet and I couldn’t hear the wind anymore, or the pinging of metal cables against the sides of the tower, or the blood rushing in my ears. I snapped my fingers. No sound.

Panic rose in my chest. Complete silence—a music god’s worst nightmare.

I faced Reyna and Meg. I tried to shout, “Can you hear me now?”

Nothing. My vocal cords vibrated, but the sound waves seemed to die before they left my mouth.

Meg said something I couldn’t hear. Reyna spread her arms.

I gestured for them to wait. Then I took a deep breath and forced myself to keep going toward the box. I stopped within an arm’s length of the cargo doors.

The rose-bouquet smell was definitely coming from inside. The chains across the locking rods were heavy Imperial gold—enough rare magical metal to buy a decent-size palace on Mount Olympus. Even in my mortal form, I could feel the power radiating from the container—not just the heavy silence, but the cold, needling aura of wards and curses placed on the metal doors and walls. To keep us out. To keep something in.

On the left-hand door, stenciled in white paint, was a single word in Arabic:

My Arabic was even rustier than my Dean Martin Italian, but I was fairly sure it was the name of a city. ALEXANDRIA. As in Alexandria, Egypt.

My knees almost buckled. My vision swam. I might have sobbed, though I couldn’t hear it.

Slowly, gripping the rail for support, I staggered back to my friends. I only knew I’d left the zone of silence when I could hear myself muttering, “No, no, no, no.”

Meg caught me before I could fall over. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I think I understand,” I said. “The soundless god.”

“Who is it?” Reyna asked.

“I don’t know.”

Reyna blinked. “But you just said—”

“I think I understand. Remembering who it is exactly—that’s harder. I’m pretty sure we’re dealing with a Ptolemaic god, from back in the days when the Greeks ruled Egypt.”

Meg looked past me at the container. “So there’s a god in the box.”

I shuddered, remembering the short-lived fast food franchise Hermes had once tried to open on Mount Olympus. Thankfully, God-in-the-Box never took off. “Yes, Meg. A very minor Egyptian-Greek hybrid god, I think, which is most likely why he couldn’t be found in the Camp Jupiter archives.”