The Tyrant’s Tomb
It uncurled its claws, gesturing toward the hearse.
I didn’t understand. I refused to understand. Did it want to eat the air bags? The upholstery?
Meg got it before I did. She screamed in rage.
The creature was an eater of the dead. We were driving a hearse.
“NO!” Meg shouted. “Leave him alone!”
She lumbered forward, raising her swords, but she was in no shape to face the ghoul. I shouldered her aside, putting myself between her and the eurynomos, and fired my arrows again and again.
They sparked off the monster’s blue-black hide, leaving steaming, annoyingly nonlethal wounds. Vulture Diaper staggered toward me, snarling in pain, its body twitching from the impact of each hit.
It was five feet away.
Two feet away, its claws splayed to shred my face.
Somewhere behind me, a female voice shouted, “HEY!”
The sound distracted Vulture Diaper just long enough for me to fall courageously on my butt. I scrambled away from the ghoul’s claws.
Vulture Diaper blinked, confused by its new audience. About ten feet away, a ragtag assortment of fauns and dryads, perhaps a dozen total, were all attempting to hide behind one gangly pink-haired young woman in Roman legionnaire armor.
The girl fumbled with some sort of projectile weapon. Oh, dear. A manubalista. A Roman heavy crossbow. Those things were awful. Slow. Powerful. Notoriously unreliable. The bolt was set. She cranked the handle, her hands shaking as badly as mine.
Meanwhile, to my left, Meg groaned in the grass, trying to get back on her feet. “You pushed me,” she complained, by which I’m sure she meant Thank you, Apollo, for saving my life.
The pink-haired girl raised her manubalista. With her long, wobbly legs, she reminded me of a baby giraffe. “G-get away from them,” she ordered the ghoul.
Vulture Diaper treated her to its trademark hissing and spitting. “MORE FOOD! YOU WILL ALL JOIN THE KING’S DEAD!”
“Dude.” One of the fauns nervously scratched his belly under his PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BERKELEY T-shirt. “That’s not cool.”
“Not cool,” several of his friends echoed.
“YOU CANNOT OPPOSE ME, ROMAN!” the ghoul snarled. “I HAVE ALREADY TASTED THE FLESH OF YOUR COMRADES! AT THE BLOOD MOON, YOU WILL JOIN THEM—”
THWUNK.
An Imperial gold crossbow bolt materialized in the center of Vulture Diaper’s chest. The ghoul’s milky eyes widened in surprise. The Roman legionnaire looked just as stunned.
“Dude, you hit it,” said one of the fauns, as if this offended his sensibilities.
The ghoul crumbled into dust and vulture feathers. The bolt clunked to the ground.
Meg limped to my side. “See? That’s how you’re supposed to kill it.”
“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled.
We faced our unlikely savior.
The pink-haired girl frowned at the pile of dust, her chin quivering as if she might cry. She muttered, “I hate those things.”
“Y-you’ve fought them before?” I asked.
She looked at me like this was an insultingly stupid question.
One of the fauns nudged her. “Lavinia, dude, ask who these guys are.”
“Um, right.” Lavinia cleared her throat. “Who are you?”
I struggled to my feet, trying to regain some composure. “I am Apollo. This is Meg. Thank you for saving us.”
Lavinia stared. “Apollo, as in—”
“It’s a long story. We’re transporting the body of our friend, Jason Grace, to Camp Jupiter for burial. Can you help us?”
Lavinia’s mouth hung open. “Jason Grace…is dead?”
Before I could answer, from somewhere across Highway 24 came a wail of rage and anguish.
“Um, hey,” said one of the fauns, “don’t those ghoul things usually hunt in pairs?”
Lavinia gulped. “Yeah. Let’s get you guys to camp. Then we can talk about”—she gestured uneasily at the hearse—“who is dead, and why.”
I cannot chew gum
And run with a coffin at
The same time. Sue me.
HOW MANY NATURE SPIRITS does it take to carry a coffin?
The answer is unknowable, since all the dryads and fauns except one scattered into the trees as soon as they realized work was involved. The last faun would have deserted us, too, but Lavinia grabbed his wrist.
“Oh, no, you don’t, Don.”
Behind his round rainbow-tinted glasses, Don the faun’s eyes looked panicked. His goatee twitched—a facial tic that made me nostalgic for Grover the satyr.
(In case you’re wondering, fauns and satyrs are virtually the same. Fauns are simply the Roman version, and they’re not quite as good at…well, anything, really.)
“Hey, I’d love to help,” Don said. “It’s just I remembered this appointment—”
“Fauns don’t make appointments,” Lavinia said.
“I double-parked my car—”
“You don’t have a car.”
“I need to feed my dog—”
“Don!” Lavinia snapped. “You owe me.”
“Okay, okay.” Don tugged his wrist free and rubbed it, his expression aggrieved. “Look, just because I said Poison Oak might be at the picnic doesn’t mean, you know, I promised she would be.”
Lavinia’s face turned terra-cotta red. “That’s not what I meant! I’ve covered for you, like, a thousand times. Now you need to help me with this.”
She gestured vaguely at me, the hearse, the world in general. I wondered if Lavinia was new to Camp Jupiter. She seemed uncomfortable in her legionnaire armor. She kept shrugging her shoulders, bending her knees, tugging at the silver Star of David pendant that hung from her long, slender neck. Her soft brown eyes and tuft of pink hair only accentuated my first impression of her—a baby giraffe that had wobbled away from her mother for the first time and was now examining the savannah as if thinking, Why am I here?
Meg stumbled up next to me. She grabbed my quiver for balance, garroting me with its strap in the process. “Who’s Poison Oak?”
“Meg,” I chided, “that’s none of our business. But if I had to guess, I’d say Poison Oak is a dryad whom Lavinia here is interested in, just like you were interested in Joshua back at Palm Springs.”
Meg barked, “I was not interested—”
Lavinia chorused, “I am not interested—”
Both girls fell silent, scowling at each other.
“Besides,” Meg said, “isn’t Poison Oak…like, poisonous?”
Lavinia splayed her fingers to the sky as if thinking, Not that question again. “Poison Oak is gorgeous! Which is not to say I’d definitely go out with her—”
Don snorted. “Whatever, dude.”
Lavinia glared crossbow bolts at the faun. “But I’d think about it—if there was chemistry or whatever. Which is why I was willing to sneak away from my patrol for this picnic, where Don assured me—”
“Whoa, hey!” Don laughed nervously. “Aren’t we supposed to be getting these guys to camp? How about that hearse? Does it still run?”
I take back what I said about fauns not being good at anything. Don was quite adept at changing the subject.