The Tyrant's Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4)(80)

“Just hang on!” Reyna said. “Tell Ella to get things ready for the ritual!”

“Can’t…What?” Frank’s face melted to a smudge of colored light. His voice sounded like gravel shaking in an aluminum can. “I…Hazel…Need to—”

The scroll burst into flames, which was not what my crotch needed at that particular moment.

I swatted the cinders off my pants as Meg woke, yawning and blinking.

“What’d you do?” she demanded.

“Nothing! I didn’t know the message would self-destruct!”

“Bad connection,” Reyna guessed. “The silence must be breaking up slowly—like, working its way outward from the epicenter at Sutro Tower. We overheated the scroll.”

“That’s possible.” I stomped out the last bits of smoldering vellum. “Hopefully we’ll be able to send an Iris-message once we reach camp.”

“If we reach camp,” Reyna grumbled. “This traffic…Oh.”

She pointed to a blinking road sign ahead of us: HWY 24E CLOSED AT CALDECOTT TUNL FOR EMERG MAINTENANCE. SEEK ALT ROUTES.

“Emergency maintenance?” said Meg. “You think it’s the Mist again, clearing people out?”

“Maybe.” Reyna frowned at the lines of cars in front of us. “No wonder everything’s backed up. What was Frank doing in the tunnel? We didn’t discuss any…” She knit her eyebrows, as if an unpleasant thought had occurred to her. “We have to get back. Fast.”

“The emperors will need time to organize their ground assault,” I said. “They won’t launch their ballistae until after they’ve tried to take the camp intact. Maybe…maybe the traffic will slow them down, too. They’ll have to seek alternate routes.”

“They’re on boats, dummy,” said Meg.

She was right. And once the assault forces landed, they’d be marching on foot, not driving. Still, I liked the image of the emperors and their army approaching the Caldecott Tunnel, seeing a bunch of flashing signs and orange cones, and deciding, Well, darn. We’ll have to come back tomorrow.

“We could ditch the truck,” Reyna mused. Then she glanced at us and clearly dismissed the idea. None of us was in any shape to run a half-marathon from the middle of the Bay Bridge to Camp Jupiter.

She muttered a curse. “We need…Ah!”

Just ahead, a maintenance truck was trundling along, a worker on the tailgate picking up cones that had been blocking the left lane for some unknown reason. Typical. Friday at rush hour, with the Caldecott Tunnel shut down, obviously what you wanted to do was close one lane of traffic on the area’s busiest bridge. This meant, however, that ahead of the maintenance truck, there was an empty, extremely illegal-to-drive-in lane that stretched as far as the Lester could see.

“Hold on,” Reyna warned. And as soon as we edged past the maintenance truck, she swerved in front of it, plowing down a half dozen cones, and gunned the engine.

The maintenance truck blared its horn and flashed its headlights. Reyna’s greyhounds barked and wagged their tails in reply like, See ya!

I imagined we would have a few California Highway Patrol vehicles ready to chase us at the bottom of the bridge, but for the time being, we blasted past traffic at speeds that would have been creditable even for my sun chariot.

We reached the Oakland side. Still no sign of pursuit. Reyna veered onto 580, smashing through a line of orange delineator posts and rocketing up the merge ramp for Highway 24. She politely ignored the guys in hard hats who waved their orange DANGER signs and screamed things at us.

We had found our alternate route. It was the regular route we weren’t supposed to take.

I glanced behind us. No cops yet. Out in the water, the emperors’ yachts had passed Treasure Island and were leisurely taking up positions, forming a necklace of billion-dollar luxury death machines across the bay. I saw no trace of the smaller landing craft, which meant they must have reached the shore. That wasn’t good.

On the bright side, we were making great time. We soared along the overpass all by ourselves, our destination only a few miles away.

“We’re going to make it,” I said, like a fool.

Once again, I had broken the First Law of Percy Jackson: Never say something is going to work out, because as soon as you do, it won’t.

KALUMP!

Above our heads, foot-shaped indentations appeared in the truck’s ceiling. The vehicle lurched under the extra weight. It was déjà ghoul all over again.

Aurum and Argentum barked wildly.

“Eurynomos!” Meg yelled.

“Where do they come from?” I complained. “Do they just hang around on highway signs all day, waiting to drop?”

Claws punctured the metal and upholstery. I knew what would happen next: skylight installation.

Reyna shouted, “Apollo, take the wheel! Meg, gas pedal!”

For a heartbeat, I thought she meant that as some kind of prayer. In moments of personal crisis, my followers often used to implore me: Apollo, take the wheel, hoping I would guide them through their problems. Most of the time, though, they didn’t mean it literally, nor was I physically sitting in the passenger’s seat, nor did they add anything about Meg and gas pedals.

Reyna didn’t wait for me to figure it out. She released her grip and reached behind her seat, groping for a weapon. I lunged across and grabbed the wheel. Meg put her foot on the accelerator.