The Tyrant’s Tomb

She ran toward them, me at her heels. As we closed in, I scooped up an abandoned quiver from the ground, trying not to think about why it had been dropped there, and sent a fresh volley of arrows into the pack. Six fell dead. Seven. Eight. But there were still too many. Meg screamed in fury and launched herself at the nearest wolf-headed men. She was quickly surrounded, but our advance had distracted the pack, giving the Third Cohort a few precious seconds to regroup.

“OFFENSE ROMULUS!” shouted the centurion.

If you have ever seen a pill bug uncurl, revealing its hundreds of legs, you can imagine what the Third Cohort looked like as it broke testudo and formed a bristling forest of spears, skewering the cynocephali.

I was so impressed I almost got my face chewed off by a stray charging wolf-man. Just before it reached me, Centurion Larry hurled his javelin. The monster fell at my feet, impaled in the middle of his incredibly un-manscaped back.

“You made it!” Larry grinned at us. “Where’s Reyna?”

“She’s okay,” I said. “Er, she’s alive.”

“Cool! Frank wants to see you, ASAP!”

Meg stumbled to my side, breathing hard, her swords glistening with monster goo. “Hey, Larry. How’s it going?”

“Terrible!” Larry sounded delighted. “Carl, Reza—escort these two to Praetor Zhang immediately.”

“YESSIR!” Our escorts hustled us off toward the Caldecott Tunnel, while behind us, Larry called his troops back to action: “Come on, legionnaires! We’ve drilled for this. We’ve got this!”

After a few more terrible minutes of dodging pandai, jumping fiery craters, and skirting mobs of monsters, Carl and Reza brought us safely to Frank Zhang’s command post at the mouth of the Caldecott Tunnel. Much to my disappointment, there were no hors d’oeuvres or beverages. There wasn’t even a tent—just a bunch of stressed-out Romans in full battle gear, rushing around carrying orders and shoring up defenses. Above us, on the concrete terrace that stretched over the tunnel’s mouth, Jacob the standard-bearer stood with the legion’s eagle and a couple of spotters, keeping watch on all the approaches. Whenever an enemy got too close, Jacob would zap them like the Oprah Winfrey version of Jupiter: And YOU get a lightning bolt! And YOU get a lightning bolt! Unfortunately, he’d been using the eagle so much that it was beginning to smoke. Even superpowerful magic items have their limits. The legion’s standard was close to total overload.

When Frank Zhang saw us, a whole g of weight seemed to lift from his shoulders. “Thank the gods! Apollo, your face looks terrible. Where’s Reyna?”

“Long story.” I was about to launch into the short version of that long story when Hazel Levesque materialized on a horse right next to me, which was an excellent way of testing whether my heart still worked properly.

“What’s going on?” Hazel asked. “Apollo, your face—”

“I know.” I sighed.

Her immortal steed, the lightning-fast Arion, gave me the side-eye and nickered as if to say, This fool ain’t no Apollo.

“Good to see you too, cuz,” I grumbled.

I told them all in brief what had happened, with Meg occasionally adding helpful comments like “He was stupid,” and “He was more stupid,” and “He did good; then he got stupid again.”

When Hazel heard about our encounter in the Target parking lot, she gritted her teeth. “Lavinia. That girl, I swear. If anything happens to Reyna—”

“Let’s focus on what we can control,” Frank said, though he looked shaken that Reyna wouldn’t be coming back to help. “Apollo, we’ll buy you as much time as possible for your summoning. Terminus is doing what he can to slow the emperors down. Right now, I’ve got ballistae and catapults targeting the myrmekes. If we can’t bring them down, we’ll never stop the advance.”

Hazel grimaced. “The First through Fourth Cohorts are spread pretty thin across these hills. Arion and I have been zipping back and forth between them as needed, but…” She stopped herself from stating the obvious: We’re losing ground. “Frank, if you can spare me for a minute, I’ll get Apollo and Meg to Temple Hill. Ella and Tyson are waiting.”

“Go.”

“Wait,” I said—not that I wasn’t super anxious to summon a god with a jelly jar, but something Hazel said had made me uneasy. “If the First through Fourth Cohorts are here, where’s the Fifth?”

“Guarding New Rome,” said Hazel. “Dakota’s with them. At the moment, thank the gods, the city is secure. No sign of Tarquin.”

POP. Right next to me appeared a marble bust of Terminus, dressed in a World War I British Army cap and khaki greatcoat that covered him to the foot of his pedestal. With his loose sleeves, he might have been a double amputee from the trenches of the Somme. Unfortunately, I’d met more than a few of those in the Great War.

“The city is not secure!” he announced. “Tarquin is attacking!”

“What?” Hazel looked personally offended. “From where?”

“Underneath!”

“The sewers.” Hazel cursed. “But how—?”

“Tarquin built the original cloaca maxima of Rome,” I reminded her. “He knows sewers.”

“I remembered that! I sealed the exits myself!”

“Well, somehow he unsealed them!” Terminus said. “The Fifth Cohort needs help. Immediately!”

Hazel wavered, clearly rattled by Tarquin outfoxing her.

“Go,” Frank told her. “I’ll send the Fourth Cohort to reinforce you.”

Hazel laughed nervously. “And leave you here with only three? No.”

“It’s fine,” Frank said. “Terminus, can you open our defensive barriers here at the main gate?”

“Why would I do that?”

“We’ll try the Wakanda thing.”

“The what?”

“You know,” Frank said. “We’ll funnel the enemy into one location.”

Terminus glowered. “I do not recall any ‘Wakanda thing’ in the Roman military manuals. But very well.”

Hazel frowned. “Frank, you’re not going to do anything stupid—”

“We’ll concentrate our people here and hold the tunnel. I can do this.” He mustered another confident smile. “Good luck, guys. See you on the other side!”

Or not, I thought.

Frank didn’t wait for more protests. He marched off, shouting orders to form up the troops and send the Fourth Cohort into New Rome. I remembered the hazy images I’d seen from the holographic scroll—Frank ordering his workers around in the Caldecott Tunnel, digging and toting urns. I recalled Ella’s cryptic words about bridges and fires…. I didn’t like where those thoughts led me.

“Saddle up, kids,” Hazel said, offering me a hand.

Arion whinnied indignantly.

“Yes, I know,” Hazel said. “You don’t like carrying three. We’ll just drop off these two at Temple Hill and then head straight for the city. There’ll be plenty of undead for you to trample, I promise.”

That seemed to mollify the horse.

I climbed on behind Hazel. Meg took the rumble seat on the horse’s rear.